4/07/2008

Best Birthday present!

As y'all know, my computer croaked a few weeks ago...everything was lost. Files. My tax spreadsheets. Software that we can't find the disks to. And worst of all...about a thousand digital pictures of our lives for the past 4 years. Kid's coming down the stairs Christmas morning. Al's football games. Halloween costumes. Vacations. Family reunions. Grandparents who are no longer with us. When my old computer died while Craig was out of town, he called his coworker James to see if he could help. I wasn't sure James would recognize me when I brought in the old computer, so I told Craig to describe me as "The blond cry-baby lady carrying the 20 pound paperweight."

I must throw a HUGE shout out to Craig's coworker James. I'm sure I will greatly appreciate all of my family members' birthday presents for their thoughtfulness and love. But this year I'm not sure if anything could touch my heart more than the gift of James' taking the time to crack into my old, rickety, apparently virus infested computer hard drive and retrieving what appears to be 99.9% of those pictures!! (And the 1 pic I can't find...I can get again from my mother-in-law!) So "Thank you, James! You totally rock!"

I've got a semi-permanent computer as of last night (thanks, guys!). My birthday present from Craig also, was the new version of the photo editor I used before. (Now I just need to find those Kodak CDs so I can actually get pics off my camera!)

7 comments:

Queen B said...

Oh, wow. Usually you can download the photo drivers off the internet, so if you're having trouble finding the CD, I would just do a search on it.

I hope for your birthday you are getting an external hard drive to back things up on! I went without one for years, but the thought of being in the boat you were in motivated me to get one. They're about $80, and are so easy to use. That way you have a copy of all those precious photos!

Jinjer said...

That is SO awesome, what a great gift! Happy Birthday!

Anonymous said...

I've made it a priority to print pictures for every event as they happen just like I did up until 4 yrs ago upon getting the digital camera. I know the great thing of the digital was to be able to print only good pictures - but they never seem to get printed after they are viewed. So a good gift will now be photo paper for Gma. I'm glad you got your photos back. Glad you had a Happy Birthday too. Love Mom

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday! And definitely get the backup!!!!!!!!!

Bianka said...

Oh my gosh I experienced the exact same thing several months ago, my computer crashing due to viruses. I vowed to load all my pictures onto an internet photo program after they were rescued. I didn't care about anything else but getting those pictures!

Susie said...

I´m so happy for you Paula! Still, after reading this I´ve done NOTHING to secure my own computer... I need to burn my pics to some CD´s ASAP! And hey, I did what you said and started a blog! It´s in Swedish though *LOL* I wonder how long it will take for me to close it due to lack of time...

Jane said...

You are right, best gift ever!!!