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Tackle It Tuesday — Picasa, Hard drives, and a Baby Giraffe

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Janice jumping in for a tackle…

Once upon a time, I tackled here weekly.

I started Tackle It Tuesday in 2006 when I realized I could use some blogging incentive to conquer my housework. In the last year, I have had some wonderful women take over my TT hosting duties. I must say, my house is much worse with my absence from Tackle It Tuesday!

Susan has been doing a great job tackling this spring, but I thought I would jump in this week with what I have been tackling for the last week.

tt-busch-gardens-giraffe

So, what does a baby giraffe have to do with Tackle It Tuesday?

Well, about ten days ago, I had the chance to visit Busch Gardens on my trip to ride the Manta at SeaWorld. You can few a video of me actually riding the Manta here and see some of my pictures from SeaWorld at my Flickr.

BUT, you didn’t get the chance to see my fun shots of giraffes, meerkats, lemurs and turtles yet because…

I needed to tackle my laptop!!!

Yes, my laptop was SO jam packed with photos that I couldn’t fit one more shot on it! I was able to download my compact flash card, but my computer was so bloated with images, my hard drive could barely function. I didn’t dare edit and add one more saved image.

I needed to delete more images. But before I did that, I wanted to get my back up files and external hard drives more organized. Inspired by Carrie’s 5 Minutes for Photography post about organizing her photos, I decided to try out Picasa and see how it worked for me for organizing my files.

I downloaded Picasa and tested it out this week. I definitely like it and if you don’t have Photoshop or Photoshop elements, than I highly recommend Picasa. It has some good editing tools and is fantastic for viewing, organizing and sharing your photos. (I use Photoshop Elements, and will continue to use it for its editing tools.)

Because I shoot in RAW, I am overwhelmed with thousands of large files. I have already filled up a few external hard drives! And while external hard drives will still be an integral part of my back up system – I need the portability of them – I wanted to get a larger system to house all of my images in one place.

So after playing around with Picasa, I called on Rob, Susan’s husband, to help get me some serious back up space! He got me some type of external RAID drive system with TeraBytes of space. I don’t even know what it is… all I know is how to copy files over to it.

It’s been a hugely time consuming process — and I’m still not done. But I’ve at least cleared up enough space on my laptop to edit a photo again. (And hopefully later this week I will get my post up with all my fun shots from Busch Gardens!)

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12 Comments

  1. The other day, while I was at work, my sister stole my iPad and tested
    to see if it can survive a thirty foot drop,
    just so she can be a youtube sensation. My iPad is now destroyed and she has 83 views.
    I know this is entirely off topic but I had to share it with someone!

    Reply

  3. Wow, cleaning out photos, and tidying up the hard drive is A LOT of work. That is so something I definitely have on my to-do list! Thanks for the organizing inspiration and the link!
    Abbie

    Reply

  4. O.K. Janice! Good for you. My laptop is a mess also. LoVE the picture of the giraffe! Ready to tackle again, if you need help. My whole summer is just one big tackle.

    Reply

  5. I’ve been going through the same problems with my computer. My desktop was getting so full that it was really sluggish. I’m going to have to do something about it, but my hubby also just bought me a fast new laptop for our anniversary, and it’s so nice to be able to browse the internet or send emails without sitting around forever waiting!!

    Reply

  6. We recently ordered Carbonite to backup my computer off site. It’s taking a while to do the initial backup since I have so many photos stored on my hard drive.

    This week we tackled a birthday party for our boys.

    Reply

  7. I love Picassa, use it regularly to share my pictures with family and friends.

    To keep my pictures under control every month I make copies of the ones I treasure on CD. I lost my back up hard drive a while back and it cost me well over $700.00 to get back all my treasure pictures back. My drive had to go into a white room and be taken apart by a man in a white suit. I learned my lesson very well and now I back up back up back up, probably to the point of over doing it lol.

    Reply

  10. I had completely forgotten about my Picasa account. I wonder if I can remember my username / password.

    It’s the technical stuff that always floors me.

    There are so many thing that I need to fix on the technical front that I hardly know where to begin.

    I feel ‘listmania’ overwhelming me.

    Cheers

    Reply