It would appear that spring cleaning has benefits other than filling the garage with even more useless crap. While Deanne was at work this weekend, I was tasked with cleaning out the office closet, which has gathered random bits of electronic equipment ever since we moved into the house in 2002.
After a few hours of or zip-tying cables, sorting random PC peripherals, and cleaning up cat piss, I was beginning to feel quite pleased with my progress. I deserved a break. I decided to go through the stack of CDs that I had uncovered in one of the darkest corners of the closet. Using my PC and laptop I began examining the contents of each CD. Most of it was useless crap; random drivers, audio CDs, and coasters. But then I stumbled across the mother lode. The missing photos from the legendary 2000 road trip that Mike, Deanne, Quinn and I took. I had been looking for these photos for four years. I had initially thought they had been destroyed when my hard drive failed back in 2001. But no, here they were on a CD-R.
But alas, my joy was short lived as I tried to access the files. They had been corrupted. So close, yet so far. But I was determined not to be beaten. I scoured the internet for data recovery tools, and three hours later I was browsing through the 210 photos from our roadtrip. Take that, data corruption!
Also on the CD were photos from our time in San Ramon, a trip to Monterey Deanne and I had taken, more photos from my College football days, and some photos I had taken at SFO. Quite a trip down memory lane. I immediately uploaded most of them to my website, so I wouldn't lose them again.
The gallery now has over 2700 photos and I haven't even uploaded some photos I found from my buddy Jack's birthday party back in Canterbury. I'm also looking for the best solution to digitize a bunch of hard copy photos I have. If anyone has any solutions for scanning about 300 photos quickly and cheaply, let me know.
So anyway, enjoy the photos, a quick glimpse into my past!
P.s. The two photos at the top of the post are (l) Mike at Mojave in 2000 and (r) Mike at Mojave in 2005.