Hearing Voices

In terms of photography, I haven't been all that productive the last couple of days. I was determined to keep my focus on my backup project. "Tedious work, but essential", the serious side of me kept repeating.

This evening, I couldn't stay with the file work and wandered outside to take photos of something—frankly, anything. There was that familiar brief flash of doubt, since I had no idea what I planned to photograph. Then, of course, as soon as I stepped out the door I found more than enough to fill my eye and soon lost track of time. Once I am looking through the lens, I find the process so relaxing and satisfying that I always kick myself for allowing my camera to gather dust even for a couple of days. I chose these shots to share with you since these tiny white blossoms had, after all, beckoned to me on another day when I thought I was much too busy. On that day, I had listened to the adult voice and focused on the back-up work. Today, I heeded a different voice.

(Click on the thumbnails to view larger image)

Digital Housekeeping Chores

I am immersed in the massive task of backing up files—not exactly exciting and creative, but part of life with computers. No one likes to back up files. You do it because you're terrified you will wait until it's too late. I run across this phrase constantly: "It's not a matter of 'if' your hard drive will fail, but 'when it will fail'." Comforting, right?

At least this time around, I ran into some super bargains when picking up external hard drives. Best Buy had Western Digital and Seagate drives on sale. Both those sales are over, or I would recommend them to you. Unfortunately, I caught them late in the cycle. But, not to worry. The prices on storage are plummeting. For example, I got a 500GB Seagate for $129.00. And, I remember how steep prices were when I bought my first 200GB drive a few years ago. With these low prices, it has now reached a point where external drives offer a far superior backup system, in my opinion. I would never go back to that laborious procedure of burning DVDs.