Sunday, April 06, 2008

Conquering Small Challenges

In social work, we talk about the "but first" tasks. I can't do THAT, because first I have to do THIS. And I can't do THIS, because there's this impossible thing in the way that requires THE OTHER THING..... On and on and on. Life can become a snarl of but-first tasks for all of us.

In my life, those snarls of impossible tasks holding everything else up are frequently mechanical. I got nothin' when it comes to mechanical skills. I've got less than nothing. I've reduced car mechanics to tears and begging me, please, never to attempt another thing on my car. Unless of course I have some weird fascination with being stranded on the interstate.

The challenge lately has been the digital camera. I got one for Christmas. I took pictures with it (after a certain amount of thrashing around and taking pictures of my own thumbs). And then the memory card was full. So, clever girl that I am, I knew I had to move the pictures from the card to the computer -where they will eventually fill up all the available space. But Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on me; I will think about THAT tomorrow.

"They" invented digital cameras to be easier than film cameras. "They" did not include me in the focus group, that's for sure. I could not for the life of me figure out how to get the pictures moved. I e-mailed computer-whiz-boy and his helpful text message in reply was "plug it in and turn it on, Mom". Can you hear the sarcasm? I could. Yeah, sweet pea. I thought of THAT.

But today, I made some progress towards figuring it out. It turns out that I'm not stupid. (assuming for a moment that the only evidence supporting the "Andrea is stupid" hypothesis was the camera. Work with me here.) The USB port I was using doesn't work. By plugging the camera into another port, I've actually made some progress.

So now, I can take pictures of my knitting projects for ravelry. Then I can mail the knitted items to the recipient (who isn't born yet) before she heads off to college. Having done THAT, I can move Dave's desk down to the basement so that I can use the office in ways I find more congenial. Having done THAT, I will have made yet another stride toward claiming the house as my own.

And all of this has been waiting for me to discover that the USB port I was using was faulty. Not me. The USB port.

7 comments:

Lexy said...

Honeybun, just because you load them on your computer doesn't necessarily mean they're erased from the memory card. Loading them and erasing the memory card are two different animals.

Hope it's easy!

Andrea Rusin said...

Oh hell :(

Lexy said...

Well it depends on your camera and program. Once you load the pics on your computer it MAY ask you if you want them deleted from the card. That's the easy way. My old computer didn't ask and I learned how to
delete from the card separately. My new MAC justs asks and I say "yes please!"

Lisa :-] said...

Heh heh heh... Now that you have THAT figured out...

Elizabeth said...

Hopefully you don't run into the dilemma of filling up your memory card too fast and needing to delete pictures before you can download them. I was forced to delete a perfectly good picture of deer poop before I was able to save my pictures.

Elisa said...

You might want to buy a better memory card than the one that comes with the camera. They usually give you one that only holds about a dozen pictures. But you can buy one that holds hundreds of pictures for under $20.

Andrea Rusin said...

Elizabeth probably has that one and still runs out of space. She's mondo-photography-girl! Me, I should probably get it. Check out ravelry; I uploaded pictures all by myself ;)