The first complication to this systemization is that my husband and I are a multi-computer household. My computer is not connected to the Internet. I find it runs beautifully without all the extra programs necessary for e-mail and searching the web. It serves me well for writing and creative projects. Mike’s computer is connected to the world; I share an account on it. Among other things, it has two separate programs to download the pictures from each of our cameras. This makes it quicker to flood the e-mail accounts of friends with the latest cute photos of family and pets.
The reverse side to this arrangement is that when I need to send the latest essay to Senior Women, I copy it from my computer and walk it over to his computer before I e-mail it. If I want to put a photo in a newsletter I’m sending snail-mail to family, it is copied from his computer and hand carried over to mine. What I’ve ended up with is duplicate files on both computers, plus the disks (and other USB devices) I used to get them there. Worse yet, I frequently make edits in my writing at both computers and have multiple versions floating around. Oh ... and I have a lap top computer. (Note to self: must remember to check for files hiding there!) The last step is to print out a copy of the current story along with related correspondence from readers and … you guessed it ... toss it in a box to file in a binder later. No one plans to create a complicated scenario like this. It just evolves like some bizarre Darwinian offshoot.
This month we made the decision to purchase external storage systems (his and hers, of course). We had been taking an informal photography class and one of the participants showed us a system she uses that isn’t much bigger than the palm of her hand; enticingly portable and convenient. This prompted the Domino Effect we are currently experiencing. As soon as one problem is solved, two more pop up.
Mike is focusing (no pun intended) his attention on all his photographs. He jumped right in with both feet and has transferred everything from his computer to the external storage device and is in the process of copying and discarding disks. It took me three days before I even removed mine out of the manufacturer’s packaging. I knew I should at least find out if the thing worked before misplacing the receipt.
I ended up returning to the store anyway, to select a protective case to store my device and make it easier to recognize ‘hers’ from ‘his’. If there was any danger of getting them mixed up, I doubt that Mike will ever mistakenly pick up the magenta case zippered around my gizmo now!
I discovered that for mysterious reasons unknown to anyone except a Class-A computer geek, our separate computers respond differently when we plug in the USB cables to use our storage devices. Mike’s tends to be quite content to wait for him to tell it what he wants it to do, while my computer wants know if I want to back-up the entire system or work on individual files. All I needed was a decision thrown at me! That seemingly simple choice was enough to make me halt progress, however little that may have been, and contemplate about how I was going to approach the entire process. Translation: nothing got decided for several more days.
I can’t fathom if this reaction highlights the difference between how the male and female minds operate, or if it is just an individual personality quirk. Perhaps it’s a measure of both. I have finally determined, after observing the process Mike is going through, that it will be simpler for me to work on the steps required to organize all the files on my computer and then save them on the external gizmo. He is working back and forth between the systems, occasionally losing track of what has been saved and where.
This morning he asked me, "Can the storage device ever crash and can the data be retrieved if it does?"
That question had already crept into the dark recesses of my mind while I was over-thinking how I should conquer the task at hand. I just hadn’t wanted to address that possibility so soon. Yes ... if something can go wrong, it certainly will. That was at least part of my reasoning in having the majority of everything important to me on my computer and then performing a system backup to the external device from there. What are the odds that they will both fail at once? (No. Please don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know.)