Confounded Again

It's at moments like these that I really consider using a different operating system. A few days ago, while my mail was being compacted (something that happens whether I want it to or not), I left the room so that the computer could complete this task in privacy. When I returned, a good portion of my mail was missing - not all of it, just the most recent stuff from the last 4 months and a few other bits and bites in the folders marked "Save", "Client Files". To sum up, just the critical information was missing. However, clever Mr. Microsoft had preserved spam messages I'd forgotten to delete and party invitations from 2005. While there are no doctors in the family, I have the next best thing, a nephew named Andrew attending the Computer Science programme at University of Waterloo. And on Sunday, the very same, Saint Andrew found my mail files and put them back where I could find them.

Today, I have been diligently cleaning up my mail, dumping the trash and saving bits and pieces on other sections of my hard disk. In order to change tasks for a bit, I thought I'd blog on the topic of taking snow photographs, illustrating this short topic with photos I've taken over the last couple of weeks.

In the past, I would normally select the files I wanted, email them to myself - a quick way of getting the files made smaller (I shoot all my photos on the superfine setting - they're enormous) - then put them in a FORTHEBLOG file. However, this function that I have used on a daily basis seems to have been updated by Mr. Microsoft so that it no longer works. (Mr. Microsoft - Update as a verb means "to bring to the latest standard of technology" Were you not listening to President Obama today?) Instead I get a very odd looking screen, with a clear indicator line saying "this email has not been sent" and sadly no button to click on saying "Send".

Like an idiot, I've repeated the steps that worked so well in the past, hopeful that the outcome would be different, and I would be able to send myself smaller copies of my photos. Sort of the way I charge around the house, opening the same doors hoping to find that missing punch bowl.

So, a minor irritation on an otherwise glorious day. On a personal note - my dear Aunt Carolyn's 7 hour surgery for tongue cancer on December 22nd was brilliantly successful (talking, eating and feeling better every day) and today we learned the cancer has not spread to her lymph nodes. Plus, I've enjoyed the wonderful inauguration ceremony in the USA. And if that wasn't enough, the sun is shining brightly.

So as far as all the photos go, I'll work on those tomorrow, in the meantime, I took the 4 minutes and loaded up a photo I took today, just because it wouldn't be my blog without one.