Journal - Projects

My Audio Book Heaven project is finished. I’ve gone over every book review and added the affiliate links as well as more relevant keywords. I think I have about sixty-three book reviews now. All that’s left to do now is write more book reviews. I’m not going to do as many this month, I've decided to only post on Wednesday's and Saturdays now, like I used to.

That means it’s time for a new project. Actually I already have a couple of things going. Earlier this year, I had begun reworking the labels on my posts here at Drums In TheDeep. I put that project aside when I started working on Audio Book Heaven, so now I can pick that up again. I don’t have any particular reason for doing that, it’s just something to do.

I’m also working on backing up all of our personal files on this computer. It’s an old computer and its behavior scares me a little sometimes, I’m afraid it’s just going to crash and all our stuff will be lost. We have a lot on this computer that would be pretty hard to replace; original blog post documents, Joni’s poems and writings, photos, Adam’s writings, and all of my genealogy files that I spent almost ten years gathering and organizing. It would be pretty devastating to lose all that.

The obvious solution to me, was to get some storage space on the internet. There are lots of different places that offer storage space for your files, some for free, some for a small price. The only problem is choosing one.

I decided to go with Google since it is a name I am familiar with and have come to trust. Everyone is familiar with the Google search engine, but I also use Google Mail for my email, plus Blogger and Feedburner which are also Google products. With Google, I found that you can get 50 gigabytes of space for only $5.00 per year. That's more than enough storage space for us and even I can afford $5.00 a year.

Well, I was disappointed with that right from the start. I had a really hard time figuring out how to upload files to the space I had purchased. I finally discovered that the “upload” button was not visible to my screen reader. I have no idea why, I’ve never had that problem before anywhere on the internet. This turned out to be a problem only with System Access To Go. With Jaws the button worked properly. It took me several days to figure all that out. During that time, I also discovered that it is impossible to contact Google for customer support. All they have is user forums. You can ask a question there and maybe another user will be able to help you. No one ever responded to my questions, though.

Anyway, I could upload using Jaws. Then I found out that Google only allows you to upload one file at a time. Not good, I have several thousand files to back up. I decided to give up on that and I couldn’t even ask for my money back. I called my bank since I had used my bank card to make the purchase. They couldn’t do anything either. The lady at the bank recommended using a credit card for online purchases instead of my debit card. Okay, lesson learned. I’m glad that lesson only cost me $5.00.

So I looked around some more and found that Windows offers online storage as well. With Windows Skydrive, you can get 25 gigabytes absolutely free. Can’t beat that. I signed up and started uploading files right away.

Anytime I try something new on the computer, it takes me a little time to familiarize myself with it, but I found that I was able to navigate the site without too much trouble. With Skydrive, I can upload all of the files in one folder all at once, although the upload is very slow. Luckily, I can start it uploading and then just let it run while I do other things. It’s running right now, in fact. Yesterday I let it run for twelve hours non-stop and it got through about 500 files so it will take several days to get everything uploaded.

One last thing. Tuesday at Bobbi's house I broke my cane. I was just standing there bending it like I always do, they're very flexible. But this time it broke. It didn't break off completely, though, only cracked so I can still use it. Also, I still have my old one but that one is a lot shorter. When I got home Tuesday, I ordered a new one from the NFB so I’m just waiting for it to get here.

Malachi 3:10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.