Quick Report> Back-Up Drive Almost Done (or phase 1 anyway)

 

I’m starting to get as bored with this project as I keep imagining you are. I also keep forgetting to update the images of this project.

Still, I pushed through on this one. Yesterday I went through my old videos, which like with the photos was a nice trip down memory lane. There are duplicates I’m going to have go through in the future, as well as compare with my video project drive but that’s for some later project. This is about organizing the back-up drive so I can start backing things up again. I did a good number on this one. Additionally I managed to go through the leftovers from my first PC (my first actual computer was the Atari 800, the first PC was an AST Adventure 200), a lot of which were files for whatever version of Windows I was running at the time. There were audio and image files that I can use elsewhere, back-ups of sample footage from video editors that I can use in other videos and audio projects, and clip art for days. New folders were created, too.

I think once I’ve finally gotten this stage done I’m going to do something else for your sake as well as mine. This is something I needed to do, though when I go to actually back things up I can always do some further sub-organizing then. I have other things I want to do, some physical clutter to clean or things to review that will be far more interesting than these quick reports. So for any of you still reading I’ve hopefully encouraged you to get a back-up drive, organize the one you have, or start doing back-ups before your current computer gets the drop on you like my last computer did to me. Otherwise, we’re almost through this project and it’s still shorter than the comic mega-project.

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Quick Report> Back-Up Drive Documents

Not a whole lot new to add. This time I worked on my documents folder, possibly my biggest file set. There were a lot of links I moved to my links to try folder on my computer. I want to start going through those and deleting what I don’t want while just re-bookmarking them in the browser. Thanks to syncing I can have my bookmark list accessible on any computer provided they were included in the last sync up. So in the future I hopefully won’t have to save all my bookmarks and lose a site. I’m curious to see what sites I haven’t visited in years are still around.

Meanwhile the documents were sorted, some files were actually moved to a different folder I’ll be further sorting later on, and I got rid of a few duplicates, but I did keep some I want to double check later on. This one was a trip through the past, which was kind of fun. Except for some of the more saddening memories in hindsight, memories you cherish but remind you those people aren’t in  your life, or in some cases THIS life, anymore. You miss them but we have photos, videos, and writings that keep them with you forever, even if somewhere down the line they won’t mean anything to someone. They mean something to you and there’s nothing wrong with keeping them. You just have to organize them better so they aren’t as clutterful. Stuff you don’t need to remember can be done away with however.

Old documents, old images, old videos, stuff I kept from previous computers that I plan to eventually resort into the new system, manuals for things I use and some I don’t anymore…when I’m done it will be a lot cleaner system and I should be able to find stuff I want while having the extra room not cluttered by clutter. This is going to be a longer project that I thought but it’s one I really want to do before the inevitable computer issues and just stuff I didn’t get into the computer or “artputer” in the past. I’m glad I’m finally doing this.

Quick Report: The Back-Up Hard Drive Organizing’s Bonus Benefits

Nobody’s commented on the gag folders. Either I’m that uninteresting or nobody caught them. Or maybe the image is too small. I don’t know.

In this week’s chapter in the back-up drive reorganizing project I came up with a good idea. Every unorganized folder is marked with a plus, meaning I still need to do those. I only have to do this on the main list of my computer’s backups so I know which folder to do next. The plan with each project is to do at least one of these main folders a week, more if possible. The ones already organized were left without the plus sign and the ones I do from here out will have it removed. This makes it easier for me to remember what I’ve done and how much further I have to go.

This week it was the files tied to my other website, BW Media Spotlight. All of my banners, comics, and other images were resorted, duplicates or no longer needed files removed, and some other files put in completely different files that I’ll be sorting in the future. Further sorting may occur later, since I’m doing what I do with physical paperwork: larger organizing, sub category organizing, and so on until I only have what I need better sorted without a headache. Longer time but worth it in the end if I can put future stuff right into the proper sub category. It’s all about getting my files straight, and I may use the new system when reorganizing the files on my computer once this is all done and the actual new backing up begins.

I know these may not be the most interesting projects but letting these larger projects go has been a big mistake and the source of my disorganized…nearly everything. That’s why Operation: A Place For Everything exists and in a way this is an extension of that. Every file in a proper place so I can access it later and lose the files I don’t need. That clears up a lot of virtual space just as the other projects I’ve done has cleared up physical space in my living area. The battle continues, and I’m actually learning from this project how to go forward with other projects just as some of the past projects have taught me tricks for this one. So I’m cleaning AND learning. Neat!

Cleaning Up The Back Up Drive

This week I go to work on the project I didn’t get to do last week. I don’t back up my stuff enough, and this came back to bite me a few years ago when my computer died. I’m not sure how much I really lost but I’m sure I lost something I wanted. Thankfully a lot was backed up to my back up drive. The back up program that came with the drive doesn’t work on Windows 10, but that may be a blessing in disguise.

My back up drive has a lot of stuff I don’t need anymore, either because what was backed up has advanced well past that or certain things don’t work anymore. There are even a few things that came up in multiple copies for different reasons. So this week the first step in organizing this drive so I can back up my computer was the project of choice. Lucky for me since starting this de-cluttering project I managed to develop a system for organizing files and collections that I was able to translate to this project, and one I should be using to further organize my various files in the future. Maybe this will work for you as well, because this can seem as insurmountable as organizing your records or your (insert really big collection here) as well as trying to cut them down to something more manageable. However, my organizing system may take more time but it’s less headache inducing and the small victories can pile up almost as much as the small clutters. 🙂

Quick Report: Burning Through E-Mails

Taking time off from the other site to get rid of some distractions came with mixed success this week. The goal was to get caught up on my e-mails. I managed to get my personal box cleaned out recent, which was a nice victory, but the one I use for most of my projects still had a huge build-up from my 2016 medical crises (yes, sadly more than one) that I’ve been fighting to keep out of the 1000s for a while now.

Added to the problem is that for some reason I didn’t sleep well this week because I had…well, some of you might be eating. Suffice it to say my waste disposal issues came into play. It cut the time that I had to go through the various virtual letters, newsletters, and advertisements, and there were a lot of them. Losing part of a day to a brief power outage thanks to a storm that hit the state didn’t help any. Adding to the time issue was that some of them were rather long videos, some as short as 4-8 minutes or something but others reaching almost a half hour. That’s in addition to the YouTube backlog I barely scratched the surface of, and some of them that were YouTube hosted videos I shoved into my ever expanding “watch later” list, which means the other backlog that I’ll have to burn through if I ever get the recent videos backlog dealt with. I’m still trying to catch up with May on that one. More advantageous was anything that was outdated or wasn’t something I was interested in among the other things in the newsletter I was just went away while I focused on evergreen stuff or things that I really wanted to check into. Hopefully I haven’t missed anything interesting, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything important.

As it stands however, as I write this, I did manage to get up to 2020 in the project-tied e-mails, so while not a complete victory it’s certainly better that I had. With luck I can polish this off after you read this and get on to the last thing I wanted to do before resuming my other website. Whether that will be both things I wanted to do or just one depends on how long those things take plus an event that probably won’t let me work on the computer at all for a day, so I already know I’m going to lose a day. Still, the most distractions I can get rid of the sooner I can stop holding ground and finally move forward. All the medical issues (save Crohn’s and allergies) are dealt with and it’s time to finally get rid of the rest of the garbage 2016 saddled me with and get on with what I really want to be doing. I’ll take the light though I’d really like to get out of this @#$# tunnel now, thank you very much.

END OF THE DAY UPDATE!: I am now completely caught up with my emails! Now there’s just YouTube, the DVR, the RSS feed…

Setting Up My Aunt’s Computer

Saturdays are put aside for projects. Usually it’s the clutter projects or reviews I do for this site. This week however I had to help my aunt set up her new computer. So I didn’t get to do any clutter maintenance today. I’m hoping to at least cut more into my emails or something just to have something done, and hopefully next week I can do a more interesting project to discuss. Family is more important.

Quick Report: Getting The Artputer Going

I’m going to be devoting the next week or so to getting the “Artputer” fully active so I can make all kinds of cool stuff. It qualifies as a Clutter project because it involves me getting my work area going and some things I’ll have to do with the rest of the project days I have available. This week my project was getting it to minimum comic making status for my weekly comic. That included:

Quick Report: A New Laptop

The sticker I added. It says “my other computer is a time machine”.

The stimulus checks have allowed me to get a few things I needed. For example the Windows 10 desktop to replace the Vista desktop that died on me. With the latest round I was able to secure a new laptop. The XP laptop I have I’ve been using for my art desk, but the problem is thanks to a change in my primary comic and art software, the excellent Clip Studio Paint from Celesis (I highly recommend it for artists who find Photoshop restrictive as an art program, and even then you should try it out), has a new way of working its assets and now I can’t even update it. So I needed a Windows 10 laptop. Cheap because I don’t want to blow all the money I have since I still have no income to replace it and modern laptops have a built-in webcam, which I’d rather not deal with.

So I got a new computer, and this one doesn’t have a crack around the lid hinge that won’t let me close the top, which is another issue I have with my old XP laptop. Let me tell you about it real quick.

Meet My New Computer

I think this is the best look I have at the old Vista computer, a Dell 537s. The thing served me well for many years but as Microsoft decided to force everyone to their latest operating system and the computer got old while graphics and other stuff advanced it became harder for me to even use YouTube or Facebook. Browsers stopped updating. Online content was slow if it ran at all. All sorts of really annoying things. Being unemployed there was nothing I could do about it.

And then the hard drive died, wiping out stuff I hadn’t backed up along with stuff I had and resulting in my losing a few things. That made me sad. It also meant I would have to get a new machine. At first it seemed like my dad would be providing this but then the stimulus checks came out and suddenly I could actually pay for it. It’s probably the only good thing that’s happened since the pandemic began. It wasn’t very expensive but it’s pretty good for what it is. Actually, it’s leagues better than the old computer and my computer friend who helped me select and set-up the computer was amazed how fast it is. Want to see it?

The Latest On My New Computer

The computer in the picture is my old computer. This weekend I received my new computer and my friend who knows more about the computer set-up than I do (I know how to use it) just finished helping me put everything together. So I wasn’t able to do an article this week. Next week I’ll introduce you to my new machine and then things should get back to normal around here.

I did catch up on a few emails and articles via my slower laptop computer and tried to keep some kind of pace with my YouTube backlog thanks to my dad’s computer if you really want a related report. 🙂