Friday, February 17, 2012

Untitled Just Because

love new mexico and arizona

and Provincetown

and Stella



this was then



and this is the nearby back roads


favorite colors





emily shows up at the dentist. hard to believe....




i drew this at a book signing at a book store in Provincetown



Oooh, that felt good. I am in the midst and mire of computer high tech limbo. My trusty old laptop has died, my quirky new work laptop is unpredictable, I have a new canon printer I'm not yet up to speed on, I transferred my photos to picasa, new to me and I'm recently told ready to shut itself down, I'm on a new version of microsoft word and it's not the same, and I now have a backup system called dropbox that hopefully automatically saves but I'm not yet convinced.


I say all this having lost (deleted) five pages of original manuscript pages,misplaced my entire 330 pages of manuscript for long enough for me to be hysterical, and several times having my laptop instantly and unexpectedly shut down what I was doing (not saved) so it could install upgrades.

But I'm not complaining even though you could argue I am.

Because it's a beautiful planet, after all.

love and happy weekend.

kj

29 comments:

  1. Thanks for a little life tour in pictures. The computer stuff is hell to deal with. I have never backed up anything (yea, yea, someday, I say), and have lost 2 computers that held shitloads of writing and pictures. It's a devastation, and still I don't learn. Go figure.

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    1. barbara, i am now determined to deal with my conmputer deficits. it leaves me so fragile. for starts, i am buying a mac and i am going to learn what i need to know. i've lost two computers two. i'm oddly relieved that many of my photos are finally backed up. i hope you do it too. xoxo

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  2. Glad you're able to maintain a good attitude, KJ.

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    1. snow, are you kidding?! GGGRRRRRRRR! i've thrown vicarious eggs and frozen avocados at my keyboard. it's been maddening. i lost my whole manuscript again today BUT i now know how to find it and i did. and i keep reminding myself it;s a small bitch in the scheme of things. xoxox

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  3. Calm breaths. that computer is NOT the boss of you. but I know it sucks, I really do. I love my mac, just remember that its not infallible and takes awhile to move from the PC mentality to a Mac mentality. really took me awhile.

    I use dropbox to transfer files - but didn't know they had a backup system. Interesting.....

    and thank you, thank you for being there, email coming soon.

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    1. mim, i know my learning curve will not be easy. i'll use this unpredictable laptop i am on now until i know what i'm doing. yes, dropbox keeps a file on everything, including previous versions of the same document. BUT see pam and lori's comments below: not enough. i have to protect this manuscript big time because it's HORRIBLE when i lose something i've written, worse than never having written it! ♥

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  4. I use Mozy for my back-up, KJ. And because I am paranoid (from experience), I also email Rick the current copy of whatever I'm working on (when I've made changes/written). I lost some stories when a Mac of mine kicked the bucket years ago. The Mac guys got most of it off of there for me, but I learned a lesson: thou must regularly back-up. :)) I do so dislike having to learn new software/tech stuff, but learn we must! Love the pictures! Happy weekend - xox

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    1. ah pam, your comment is so comforting. thank you. happy weekend to you too. it's beautiful here, i hope for you too. xoxo

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  5. That first photo reminds me of Lolo.

    What do you mean picasa is ready to shut itself down? When I transferred my blog recently, more than a year's photos in it went missing. I'm trying to reconstruct and get it printed into a hard copy. Royal pain. But I hate the idea of losing picasa - that's where I keep all my photos.

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    1. cs, i'm no authority but i was told picasa sent out notices that it will withdraw from the photo business soon. i have no idea what to do, since i just moved to it from adobe. but finally i have backed up my photos onto dropbox. still can't find my trip to italy but i know it's somewhere. :^) ♥

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    2. Okay, from what I can find out, it looks like they are simply shape-shifting. Blogger will become Google Blogs, and Picasa will be Google Photos. Just a name change.

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  6. I have a yen to visit the southwest and love that top photo -- of course! :) And the header is perfect -- it's like a breath of fresh air over here. When can I visit you? :)

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    1. andrea, you can visit any time. seriously.

      you would love the southwest alot, i think. the terrain mirrors many of your paintings and colors. go, andrea. oh well, maybe visit me first and then go :^)

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  7. Ah, Dear KJB,
    How well I remember that first photo! CS is right...it is so evocative of our Lolo.... and...a lovely reminder of the magical Southwest! When you first posted that, we had just become friends....(now I KNOW I have been blogging for almost two years)!

    Thar shot of P-town always reminds me of an Italian town...the tower, the light...it remains one of my all-time favourite photos of yours!

    Stella..... she lives on in all our hearts... her sweet, gentle eyes....her beautiful paws (the one in the sand at P-town last year is another favourite)....

    *Emilwee* at the Dentist!!!! A-ha-ha!!!! I love it! Glad to know she has made it safely back to the East Coast! (That Wabbitt can slip through the tightest Police Dragnet!!!)

    I know one day my current *PC* will need to be replaced....and I will be struggling to learn a new system.... you are well on your way.....

    Big hugs and...even more hugs,

    Love,

    ♥ Cupcake ♥

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    1. what a sweet comment, robin. it's a chronology! the shot of emily at the dentist is not current. i still don't know where the heck she is. i think she may be heading to canada because rob-bear offered her help. or, she might be delivering avocados to anne. she owes me the bail money she didn't use!

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  8. oh darn kj, if you can hold out a little longer one of your grandsons will be able to help you. honestly, the kids know how to do everything, mine got us through many times. is there a student you could hire for an afternoon? and maybe you could use an external hard drive as well as drop box, for double insurance.
    and yes, looking at good memory photos sounds like a brilliant idea for stress relief.
    it's the weekend!
    xoxo, lori

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    1. how true, lori! but i can't wait that long!!

      actually, we have a young friend who is a whiz at computers and he and i have traded time in ptown for his computer help. he set me up on dropbox and has helped me backup important things, including my whole BLOG! the more i think about our blogs, the more i realize they are autobiographies. precious....♥

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  9. If you have questions about the printer, let me know the model. I've always used Canon's and am pretty good at troubleshooting (read that: fling by the seat of my holey pants) and figuring out how to optimize their output.
    As to the Mac, I KNOW NOTHING THERE.
    Top two photos....WOW.

    XXOO~~
    Anne.....who just MIGHT be giving Emily Rabbit safe harbor until she's out of trouble..... ;-)

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    1. anne, i love canons too. this one's an all digital and, i sadly say, more plastic. i can fax and copy. scanning alittle more challenging because i am learning picasa at the same time. one step and then another. and in between sometimes i swear...

      love from me to you

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  10. I wrote a long comment using my firefox browser but then couldnt post it. my prob is the word v's dont show up. but now I am on safari browser

    i hate having to learn new computers. To lose three hundred pages would be traumatic, but there are CD disks to which you can save your work. They remain exterior to the computer and thus can only be lost if you lose the CD.

    I dont know what all else i wrote before, so this is about it for now. glad to hear from you. seems lke it's been awhile. love, suki

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    1. oh suki, i almost died. i now know where to find the refresh or is it redo, oh no, it's called undo! and i copied the manuscript to an external disc and now i am going to follow pam's idea of sending the whole thing to myself in an email. the trick there will be to do it everytime i write or edit any part.

      sigh. i;m hoping all this energy will keep me young.... :^)

      love
      kj

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  11. I hate it when my computre glitches when I am in the middle of something heavy...one time I wrote a poem and post three times because of this....after the final crash I stoped and almost threw my computer across the lobby of McDonalds.....

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  12. I hate technology.
    I love technology.
    My camera has died.
    Therefore, I was forced to learn
    some more of my scanner options.
    I have a new camera now, and have attached
    the wrist strap.The battery is now charged.
    I am deleting photos that I no longer want, and uploading
    what I want to save to an external drive.
    Oh,,,I am soooo good!
    I dread loading the new software, and learning something new. Again.
    I've had 2 computer crashes and lost stuff.
    So am I doing back-up now?
    Naw.
    But OMG, had I lost all the manuscripts like you did, I cannot imagine the angst and agony of that!
    But you're right,,,it IS a beautiful planet, and we are fortunate to be on it,,,,slugging it out,,,Blogger and all!

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  13. All that technology is supposed to make our lives easier! Ha. We depend too much!!! I love all your photos. It's so easy to see your style and disposition when presented with such a wonderful slide show :) Oh crap, my neighbors have decided to come out on their patio and create noise pollution! Yippee. (not). I'm off to find my earplugs again. But all in all, you're right. It's a beautiful planet full of blessings.

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  14. I've long know that Emily had a scuzzy side to her personality, but I would have thought it was tastefully scuzzy instead of butt-naked and yellow all over scuzzy.

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  15. Just breathe deeply, and recognize (when you relax) you are in harmony with the universe.

    Computers are peculiar creatures, like a certain little girl:

    There once was a girl,
    The cutest little girl,
    With a curl in the middle of her for'head.
    And when she was good, she was very, very good,
    And when she was bad, she was horrid.

    Blessings and Bear hugs in the midst of your experience of the world, and or emily.

    Remember, just breathe. And tell emily, if you see her, that I just raided the jelly bean factory which is just done the path, and I have a huge bag of jelly beans for her. A bag probably bigger then she its.

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  16. my computer issues stem from SLOWNESS. I have wireless and bri has the modem upstairs. After talking to my computer fixer-upper Liza she gave me a few suggestions, one invloving tin foil!! hahahah! Like the old tv fixes on rabbit ears!

    Stay tuned :)

    Interesting what CS had to say about Picasa. I hope I don't lose everything. Yikes.

    xoxox
    Love,
    Lo♥

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  17. Love your photos KJ - is that one of Ces's paintings I spy on the wall? Soon you will be under the Mac spell and hopefully your computer issues will be a thing of the past!

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  18. losing 330 pp of manuscript would be enough to have me hysterical. admiring your relative sense of ease about all this change from afar....

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