Friday, December 19, 2008

Can Spring be Far Behind ? I Burned My First CD!

It got pretty warm yesterday evening, and I almost turned on the AC at bedtime. This morning it was a lot warmer than it has been, and back to tank top weather. Hooray, even for 1 day !!

After packing up the Dell and some other paraphernalia in the truck, I took off back to Dobbin so that Greg could get these computers sorted out. He took the phone plug-in thing out of the Sony and put it in the Dell. He also said that my cable shouldn't be going out as often as it does, and that I should find another place to get broadband. That is great, but the one I have is the only game in town, other than dial-up.

He is not familiar with Picasa, and how it has to be transferred from one computer to the other. He took the hard drive out of the Sony and installed it next to the hard drive in the Dell, and expected my Picasa pictures to be in the Dell. They weren't. I was devastated.

He had some Internet business to take care of, he sells on http://www.ioffer.com/ as he says eBay fees have just got too high. So I had to hang around quite a bit while he did that, before we could get back to my Picasa problem. He and Mel are babysitting their two year old grand daughter, and she was getting into everything, and trying to stick screwdrivers into the open computers. He would stop whatever he was doing and play with her quite often, so I was there a long time. I can tell he isn't the same as he was before the brain surgery, but then who would be ?

Finally, he put the hard drive back in the Sony, and voila ! There were all my Picasa pictures. He took the Sony's CD slots out of it, as we could see I was going to have to back up my Picasa with CD's, so he had to get them working again. That was the whole reason my camera's CD didn't work right, so the Camera Wizard never came up. It showed on the list of programs that it was installed, but it wasn't right. Using Picasa's Import was the only way I could see the pictures that my camera took. Other photo storage places don't seem to have that importing ability. Then I could select which folders to Export to my computer, as I needed them. I know that they were in my computer all the time, or Picasa couldn't have grabbed them, but it was the only way I could delete them out of my camera, so that I could use it again. It only takes 18 pictures at a time, as I don't have one of those thingies for it. Never used all 18, as I never go anywhere, just take pictures of stuff for sale or what we are working on. He got the CD thing working, gave me an empty CD, and sent me home with both computers to work the rest of it out myself.

Little did he know that I have never made a CD in my life, so I was in a state of trepidation all the way home. I didn't know who I could ask to find out how to do it, other that searching on the web. I hooked up the Sony, and stuck a CD in it called Get Organized, to see what would happen. A Daily Planner with today's date came up on the screen, so it worked. I started Picasa, once I found the Back-Up button, and chosen Back Up All, put a CD in it's slot, it gave three choices. Burn. Eject. Cancel. I looked up 'Burn' in the glossary in my Beginner's Computing book, and it wasn't there. I had heard of folks 'burning' CD's, but I didn't know what they meant ! So I took a chance and clicked on Burn. Hey, it worked. So now I have burned my first CD, and I didn't even scald a finger.

I have never had any reason to do this before, and now I know how easy it is, I won't be scared of it again. Young 'uns have such an advantage over us old 'uns. Gee, there is so much to learn about computers when you are starting from scratch at my age. I had bought some empty CD's, but I am going to have to find a four year old just to show me how to open the plastic boxes. Thank goodness Greg gave me one.

I still have to go through the directions that AOL sent me to "Transfer Personal Filing Cabinet", before I hook up the Dell again.

Folks often say "Written On a Mac", well this is "Written on a Sony", today.

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