We've done a lot of geeky things these past few days, and while they're not totally responsible for my absence from the blog, they did involve a substantial investment of time.
Like the hours we spent trying to figure out how to separate my dad's family tree information into a file we could ship to him. He has a new computer now and after reading the printed information I sent him a couple of weeks ago, he bought an updated family history program to go on it. And while there's a companion guide built-in to the program (we have the same one) that supposedly tells you how to do it, it's never as simple and straight-forward as it would seem. Between including people we didn't need and not importing all the records and stories when loading as a new tree, it took longer than it should but we finally figured it out. Two heads heads really are better than one.
Two computers are better than one, too, as we could test load the partial tree on Wayne's computer. Well, actually we loaded the whole tree first so we'd know the procedure worked first before we got into the partial tree. And it did but those records and stories...there was a discrepancy between the number in the export file and the number in my master file. Wayne used some old MS-DOS skills to run reports on each and I sat down with the print-outs to find the 12 missing files. With 385 of them, it was a tedious task but I tracked them down and fixed them.
I'm working on a photo book too, and since Shutterfly no longer offers the design path I used for our New York book, I'm having to figure out my way around a new one. If learning new things is keeping the brain cells young, mine are feeling like spring chickens...or maybe they're old hens and worn out from all the new things.
Throw in backing up the last couple of months of photos, taking advantage of a gift card for free music from a site we've never used then figuring out how to get it into iTunes and added to my iPod, and downloading a couple of new apps for my phone and it's been a lot of time in front of a computer screen.
Not today though. With bright blue skies, low humidity and a high temperature of only 86 degrees, I spent the entire day outside. After more than two months with rain falling at some point on most days, this was Mother Nature's reminder that fall and the beautiful weather that accompanies it will soon be here. It was also a reminder that I haven't spent much time lately in my weed flower garden. After days at a desk, I loved being outside, even if I didn't accomplish as much as I would like.
On tomorrow's agenda, nothing geeky and a lot squeaky...clean, that is. The laundry/house-cleaning that is Monday's routine awaits. Lucky me.
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