I’m back. Actually, I didn’t go anywhere, but because last week I pretty much just recorded communication between Juls and I there isn’t much of a record. Oh well. I basically spent all of last week moving music from my LPs to CD & MP3 and setting up my Sony laptop to take over PC duties for the desktop. I’m a little excited about that project. I had to clear off a bunch of stuff (more about that later) because I want to refit the desktop PC and give it to my niece Laurel and her family so that they can have their Mac and this PC and have better means to get stuff working. I’d given Laurel an “inexpensive” digital camera for Christmas and, alas, the thing will only work on PCs. Thus, two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Just getting the Sony up running has been a big part of the struggle. Well, I guess it didn’t help that I decided to upgrade the OS from Windows 2000 to XP and install Office XP to boot (I had to install the OS three times before I figured it out, and Office twice, plus having to call Microsoft to get an authorization code because I had to reinstall office… ack). As for the current PC I have a ton of stuff that I needed to make sure that I backed up to CDROM. Step one was to move all of my drivers and programs that I’ve downloaded off the Net, then I had to make sure that I moved any PC-only data (my Outlook data file is over 300MBs alone and then my Quicken files…). I think downloads and data alone filled seven or eight CDs. Then I had a ton of “pix” that I wanted to clear off…. ack.

Let’s just say that I have a high-speed connection and some time in the Fall found a little utility that will scour the newsgroups for images. All I had to do was look through the list of newsgroups pick five or six and send the little program running. Think I’ve only run the program two or three times, but left it running overnight and ended up with GBs worth of “stuff.” Now a rational guy would just take all that “stuff” and dump it in the trash. Me? I think I’m too curious for my own good. There’s a story here that I’d like to go into right now, but suffice it to say that I did throw away tons of “stuff” and plan to burn the rest to disk so that I can put it in “safe storage.” In some weird sort of way this feels like another element to the transition that I seem to be in. I’d rather not consider the mental BS that enables me to edit and burn LPs from my Jesus Freak days on one computer while at the same time wading through the tons of porn on another computer deciding what to toss and what to keep. I’d like to believe that it’s a rare talent, but I have my doubts. Let’s just say that my purpose is honorable even if my methods may seem questionable. I’m just glad that I’m almost done with that “collection.” Amazing.

I’m going to take the home PC put it in a smaller case (which I already have), switch out the CD burner and separate DVD drives for my older CD burner that I have at school. The home PC has three hard drives and I’m debating on whether to leave it with two or just one. One is definitely going into the Mac (assuming that I can get three hard drives to work internally), the other may end up here at work. Hard disk space is really tight on the laptop (only 20GBs), but Sony’s tweaked the firewire port, so I have my doubts about using that to connect a second external drive. Ack. We’ll see. Also of concern is getting my 19″ monitor that’s currently on the PC to work with the Mac. When I purchased the Mac it wouldn’t work. I’m generous but I’d rather not part with the 19″ monitor. Anyway, a lot of this feels like I’m rounding another corner, which, to me, seems like a good thing. Oh yeah, I’m thinking about switch mom from the PC I gave her to one of those special purpose “mailstations” that Earthlink is pedaling. If I do (which is pretty likely) I’ll end up with another PC box. I just can’t seem to be able to get rid of them. Maybe, when things begin to pan out with Juls, I can let her use that one (if things split up, I have a feeling that Dan is going to want to keep their PC, which I’m sure Juls won’t care about). Ha, I was actually thinking that I’d eventually let her use the Sony laptop… it’s cute, like her, when we’re together, but possibly having mom’s old PC might be okay too. Who knows. I’m just trying to keep moving forward. JBB