Thursday, January 27, 2011

Thursday Arch Series

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Arch 2009-11-28 #1

I've always liked this one, how the contrail seems to be erupting from the ground behind the wall, visually overwhelming the monument.

But that's not what's on my mind right now. I am pissed. As some of you know, I nave a niche specialty in federal administrative law. The agency before which I practice has kept their evidence files scanned into their servers for some time (no more paper) and gives counsel a copy on a CD. Worked fine. The agency recently decided it needed to encrypt the CDs for privacy reasons. Well, okay. But I use a MacBook Pro laptop and the new encryption systems only works on Windows. They have no intention of making a Mac version. But you can run Windows on a Mac these days, and I do. I got my first encrypted disk on Tuesday and the IT guy at the hearing office showed me how to use it. Went fine.

Yesterday, I got another in a different location. It looked like I decrypted and extracted the needed files but then I couldn't open them. Oh well, there was a public Win machine I could use. As I was closing the folder, I got a message asking if I wanted to securely delete the encrypted files. I said yes. The files vanished. So did my entire Windows installation, all my Windows apps and the majority of my photos and documents on the Mac hard drive. &^%#@*!


I have most but not all backed up. The originals of the last few days Costa Rica pix are gone for good. I know the person who runs this project for the agency and she will receive an email from me later today. And Republicans keep saying you can't trust the government.

ANONYMOUS: thanks for your gracious response.

We look at art and education today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

7 comments:

Olivier said...

ah le retour de l'arche. Bien vu l'arche et la trainée dans le ciel

cieldequimper said...

Groan. I feel for you.

The arch looks so small somehow.

Nathalie said...

Aaaaaaah the story is dreadful.

I thought Mac was really good for retrieving documents that were supposedly gone. No hope there?

Great photo though.

Suzanne said...

So sorry to hear the news. At least the photos posted on your blog are there.

Virginia said...

That makes me sick too. I'm so paranoid that I now bring home all my photos from Paris on the cards and load them again and save save save. Get this, I for some unknown reason had my iphoto library "reconfigure" and I had 16,000 of the SAME PHOTO! THe geniuses where I work had a big ole laugh over that one. Thank the lord for external harddrives.
V

PS Bet you shoot RAW don't you.

MyVintageCameras said...

WOW, I was going to comment on the contrails until I read the rest of your post.

Computers are a pain! I dodged a bullet last fall when some of my MAC memory went bad. I was still able to run a final backup before I had to wipe and re-install everything.

My I suggest that you buy one of those media storage/viewer devices (e.g. http://www.dphoto.us/news/node/2187). Copy everything to it in the field, keeping a copy on your memory cards as well. Then you can travel with two copies of everything.

Ann said...

Ooh, VERY sorry for your data loss. Man, you just can't trust Windows, can you!

Hope you find an encryption solution that doesn't endanger your computer!