Back Online

Today's post doesn't deal with nature. I'm going to write about my computer experiences of the past few days. If you don't like reading about that stuff, I completely understand. I made sure I have some nice pictures here for you so you won't feel completely betrayed though. Let me know what you think about either thing. Here's my story...

I'm sure nobody really noticed my absence, but I was offline for about a day. I do keep a spare computer, so I was able to get a few things done. The reason for my absence was that I completely reinstalled everything on my computer. I gave it a total revamp!

I had to do it because it had gotten to the point that the computer was running like it was 20 years old. My computer is supposed to be a souped up hot rod, and it was running like an old clunker. I couldn't even leave comments on any of the blogs without it freezing up after every few seconds. It was awful!

After giving my backup computer a similar lobotomy, and seeing the great results, I decided enough was enough. I had to do something about my main machine too. It gets really frustrating when I have trouble doing things my old computer does with great ease. So that's when I started.

This wasn't going to be exactly that easy though. I had a great many things to backup first. My main hard drive was just packed with junk. A lot of my programs were there, and all of my blogging tools were on that drive, even my pictures that I post every day! This was a big project.

I backed it all up the best I could, and I jettisoned the junk that I didn't need. It was now time to go ahead and format the hard drive and install everything again, beginning with the operating system. I always hate to do this because there is always something valuable that I forget and leave behind. It ends up gone into oblivion.

I am happy to say that the reinstall went more smoothly than it ever has before. I actually had the computer back up and running in only a matter of hours. Of course, this was only running basic stuff still. I still had to reinstall all of my old programs. And that's when I discovered what I had lost!

It was actually two things. First was a little file I used as a start page for the internet. I kept it as a local file that contained valuable links that I visited regularly. I had forgotten to back it up, and it was now gone forever. I'm going to miss it terribly.

The second thing I lost was a very old program that I have had since the Windows 3.1 days. It was a very valuable little program called Cardfile. I used it to store all sorts of things, such as addresses and certain websites and settings. I was lucky enough not to lose those! The thing is that I knew I would have to let the old program go eventually because it was so old. I just couldn't find a replacement for it.

That is, until now! I found a new and better Cardfile, called Azz Cardfile, and it does much more than the old one. The best thing is that it can read my old files from the old program, and convert them to the new one. If you're interested, you can download it here. It's free to download, but you pay to keep it after the trial period. They even have a website that has collections of useful cardfiles! Personally, I'm really glad I found the program. That's why I'm eagerly advertising it for them.

Anyway, back to my reinstall. Asyou can see, I have my computer up and running, and I'm back on the internet, but still in a limited fashion. I'll be reinstalling more programs as I need them, so things will still go rather slowly for me. I don't even have all of my photo editing software loaded up yet. So I'll be trying to do my blogging and reinstalling all at the same time now. This is heaven for a geek like me!

Oh, and I'm sure you've noticed my forest pictures in the post. They obviously have nothing to do with what I'm writing about, but don't they look nice? I'll be back tomorrow with something a little more normal for me. Until then, happy blogging! (I always wanted to say that!)

(This post is a little early, so you might want to take a look at my previous post for a more natury subject.)