memorable Memories of Memory

So this is where all my troubles started.  Having nothing better to do it I started thinking – yes, this is the first mistake – me thinking!

I have photos on my external drive from 2007 till present.  A lot of photos. The drive is also backed up to another external drive giving me two copies of each file. So if one drive goes there the photos are still there on the other drive. The chance statistically of both drive failing at the same time is small.  I know my friends that are professional photographers have all the files backed up and stored in different places – to protect their data in case of fire, flood, and theft.

So here is where I started with the thinking thing.  While I am not a professional my photos are important to me. I have some pics of family and friends, events . … and several of the units here have been ripped off in the past month. Everyone has a very good idea of the identity of the guilty but not enough evidence for the police from what I hear.  Well what if the creeps come rip us off? The insurance would cover the gear but what if all my photos were gone?

You probably now see the direction my thinking is going.  I got out all my blank discs and started on the adventure of backing up all my pics.  Even though from what I read CD last longer than DVD discs I went DVD anyway because I have no one that would store that many discs for me – a hundred or so DVD discs maybe LOL.

I am no where near done at the moment. Somewhere along this thinking path I decided that an extra bit of ram would speed up the process of copying – maybe maybe not but it was a good excuse to get some ram memory for the Gateway that I use. The one I got when the XP machine took a dump (my friend Mike fixed it for me later).

I go down the a box store and bring the information on the memory the computer takes.  Each slot will take up to 2gb and there are two empty slots. The clerk looks it up and sells me the memory.  It takes me forever to get the computer case open – I only dropped one screw that took me a half hour to locate in the carpet – so am on a role. Then the oh no part – the dang memory banks are under the drives. Another frustrating use a screwdriver and I have the drives out. Yeah. I put in the memory, put the computer back together, hook everything up, and hit the power button and nothing happens the computer does not even beep it just sits there.

Ok err the memory must be wrong? I take it all back apart and get a magnifying glass out and read the dinky type on the memory and yep it says 4mb on each one. It was suppose to be 2 gb pieces not 2 4gb. So back to the box store we go.  Get a credit, go to the section where they sell the memory, explain the problem, and the clerk writes up the order for the correct memory and I go use my credit from the ones returned get the new memory and read the box. It says in big letters on the front 4gb and there are two chips in there but I took them back to the clerk and had them check – yes those are each 2gb chips.

I get home put them in smart enough this time not to put the machine together until I know they work AND all I get is a beep – the evil error code beep – not one, two or three beeps, but one long never ending one. I turn off the machine pull out the chips, go back to the store and come home with two 2gb chips with the exact specifications as the two in the machine and I put them in. Not only does the machine go beep once I get the things out it decides it no longer is gonna run. WTF??? I unplugged everything but the keyboard and mouse. I did the hold the del key down – nothing – the third time around I finally got to the bios and it says you have no freaking hard drive UGH?  I started and restarted wiggled and giggled, cursed and pouted , and finally got into the bios again.

It is a mystery it finally just decided to start up, load windows, and well I am sure making sure all my backups are good! I am thinking maybe I should use the Win7 machine as the mother ship that all the drives and printers are hooked up too – ugh oh thinking again . …

I have given up on the updating the ram I googled and finally found a forum where few folks had the same problem something about the ram had to be two sided instead of one? According the Gateway I just have gotten a load of bad ram bra hahahhahhaha …. I am going to take the ram DDR3 ram back – take my money and run – not walk to exit and never look back.  4GB  on my little puter just is going to have to be enough. See what I get for thinking?

I put an extra GB or DDR2 into the HP I picked up from Mike real cheap and guess I should learn Windows 7.   It was for KRP but she keeps using the good old XP machine.  All she does is get email and surf the web once in awhile – no appreciation for the over clocked Intel Duo etc. inside just the familiarity of XP over Win7. The last time she used the Gateway (Vista) she opened something and the anti virus stopped working. Ho hum …

Here is my growing pile of DVD discs full of photos.

I just keep telling myself that it was not so long ago the only machine we had died and now at least I have it back and all fixed up.

Still my buddy Mike is thinking of getting a new machine and wow the one he is replacing . …