Vacation Pictures

Okay, there is nothing quite like a brand new computer! It still has that new computer smell and jumps around as fast as lightning. But I have to admit that I become really attached to one after I’ve had it for a while. It’s kind of like your favorite shoes or a well-worn baseball glove; a part of the family. But when something goes wrong…I have to stop myself from throwing it out the window! I’m glad I don’t have such a volatile relationship with my family.

The latest near-miss episode involving my virtual best friend happened last night. Granted I had no business even being on the computer given the fact that I had just driven the six hours that officially ended a four day beach vacation. I should have been unpacking or cleaning up the dinner dishes, but what I really wanted to do was scroll through my vacation pictures! Milk it just a few more minutes!

I took the card out of the camera and slipped it in my card reader as I have done a million times before. I scrolled through the thumbnail images and chose several to email some friends we had met there on a fishing trip. I leaned forward slightly for a closer look and the laptop moved just enough to bump the USB connection of the reader with my freshly suntanned leg. The computer made the “new hardware” sound and the images disappeared. When I tried to open them back up...that damn loose USB port! Now it said that the SD card needed formatting! I had well over one hundred pictures that would be wiped out by this function.

I immediately looked online at several SD card repair programs that claimed to be absolutely free, but that was only to look at the pictures. “Oh, you mean you wanted to save them? Well that will be $39.95, you should have said so before you loaded all the software”. Luckily my wife stopped me before I downloaded a direct link to a Russian boiler room. Under direct orders to “leave it alone” I went to bed and promised to visit Office Max the next morning.

Luckily the clerk at Office Max had no idea what I was talking about. “Why don’t you just format the card yourself” was the best she could do. Wow, I never thought of that! Can I just throw my camera in the trash here or do I need to take it home and put it in the recycling? Sorry, the impatience returned there for a second. To make this story simply too long instead of way too long, I’ll finish up here. After a desperate plea, a Facebook friend sent me an article that mentioned a program called PhotoRec. It was absolutely free and it not only retrieved my vacation photos, it brought back about 200 more that I had long since erased from my camera! It runs in a DOS format that I don’t begin to understand, but it can’t be too hard because I saved my pictures! I may just keep that old baseball glove a little longer!