Oh No, A New Computer!

This is so difficult. There are so many files spread around -- sometimes in many places, the same file -- sometimes only once, never to be lost. And somehow we need to get them safely into the vast environs of a new huge disk on a new machine.

I am confronting the confetti-like blur of a ton of family photos, a ton of "keepers", which are things I just cannot delete, they are so pithy, or clever, or funny, or dear, or momentous. Like the scrapbook that resides in the bookcase, with its pages turning to dusty shards, the gloms of memory beg to be saved and somehow preserved for the someday that will come sometime, maybe never...

Transporting this stuff is nearly as difficult as moving after thirty years to someplace on the opposite coast of the U.S.A. These files are "virtual", but somehow right now they seem even more important than the boxes of three-dimensional stuff that I moved some five years ago from Washington State to South Jersey. At least then I had three grown children whose homes could be used as dumping places.

Now I keep thinking of where I can stash this stuff until the move is complete-- and then I can "import" the stuff when I want to. I have sent my address book to Yahoo -- my email account is happy to accept it. Now if I can only think where to stash my "miscellaneous" files. So many of them called things like "STUFF" and "OTHER" and "KEEPERS".

Does this insinuate things about ADD? I don't know. My way of keeping files is a lot like my way of keeping house (surprise, surprise), in other words, it's all on the desktop! I have places on the desktop where I can click and lo, there is a familiar pile of stuff, sort of related, that I can sort through and find what I want. I know where it is-- no one else has to. Pity the hacker who tries to find anything in my computer (or my house, for that matter.) They will stumble on things like how to clip a recalcitrant dog and how to root privet cuttings. Or what was in somebody's Christmas stocking in 2004. They will look a long time to find anything worth "fencing."

My problem is not exclusively with my own file transfer. My problem is that I have to co-ordinate that with someone else who has his own system and who will also be using the new computer. I'm sure his system is more linear and "tighter"than mine, but I suspect that it's not all that easy for him either, since he is a sort of eclectic collector of data, like me. But his discipline as a scientist and engineer does things in charts and arrays and hierarchical charts.

Well, tomorrow's another day. The best thing that has been put on the table today is the concept of having two partitions of the new computer -- one for him and one for me -- so we can go on with our lives without getting grumpy, surly, and whatnot.

Meantime I am emotionally tossing my files to the winds, except for my address book, which I have exported to my online Yahoo account that I use when traveling. This means that if all is lost at home, at least I still have my people available, through anyone's computer. I have made a special note of my yahoo password and user name so I can find everyone, even if I cannot find "myself."

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