Lost, lost! All is lost!
By Genipher
@Genipher (5405)
United States
May 2, 2016 2:26pm CST
"Whyfor put send button right next to send all? This is just bad design."--Oh
I did a stupid thing the other day. I accidentally deleted ALL of our home videos from the computer...and I didn't have them backed up anywhere. Almost 12 years of memories. Poof! Gone. My Computer Guru (aka Hubby) did his best to find them on the hard-drive but the program is a hide-and-seek champion. The videos were gone.
Some of them were unimportant. Others? Well, it still makes my heart ache just a little when I think about them. Like the one of my son, C, when he was 6 months old. Somehow he had managed, at such a young age, to say, "I love you, dad". The words were as clear as day. And the startled look on his face after he spoke? Priceless. Almost like he remembered he was betraying some kind of infant protocol.
"Dang, it! Now they know I can talk and they'll be asking me about all the secrets of the universe!"
I am unskilled in the Ways of Technology. However, I know the difference between the delete button and, well, the other buttons. I did NOT tell that confounded computer to delete ALL my videos. Just that ONE stupid video that my kid took of me scarfing down all those donuts...ahem.
So, to all of you who are computer savvy, I ask you this:
Why is it when I want to kill a word document or something unimportant, the computer will ask me forty-two different ways if I'm SURE I want to end the program; but when I accidentally hit "delete all", it doesn't make a peep? Is my computer secretly out to get me? Does it have a vendetta against my lordship, er, ladyship?
After I finished raging and crying about our great loss, and after my hubby skillfully talked me down from slaughtering our computer with a butter knife, I realized I had learned an important lesson:
(1) videos (and pictures, for that matter) are nice to have, but people are more important. The kids are still physically with us and we can create new memories.
and
(2) I will immediately back all our new video memories up on a cd...once I learn how!!
Commiserate with me. Have you ever lost something that made you want to pound the couch in frustration and cry to the heavens?
Are YOU computer savvy?
Oh, yeah. Picture of Oh was gleaned from the interwebz.
1 person likes this
4 responses
@sulynsi (2671)
• Canada
2 May 16
oh no!!! are you sure they are gone?
I understand that not all erased things are really erased
I am guessing you already checked the recycle bin ?
but to the issue of memories, the new technology makes making memories and storing them really easy.
there were no smartphones or youtube when my kids were little
I couldn't afford a webcam so I have to rely on my less than perfect and getting worse brain cells, audio tape recordings and photographs - in albums
wish I'd been able to save all mine on a usb thingy or an electronic picture frame
quick! make some more!
1 person likes this
@Genipher (5405)
• United States
2 May 16
My husband ran a recovery program but it only found 2 or 3 of the videos. And they were videos I didn't care as much about.
:(
We're slowly catching back up with our home movies. I still need to figure out how to burn them onto something more permanent...
A few years ago I started printing our own family magazine. It is a great way to keep our "best" pictures "alive". I write articles on behalf of the kids that can't use the computer yet, and the older kids design a page about themselves. We usually end up with a 24 page magazine, full of information about what we've been doing and things we're learning. We send a copy out to friends and family, and keep one copy for our records.
I can't wait to show our future grand-kids all the funny articles about their parents!
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@MALUSE (69413)
• Germany
2 May 16
How utterly frustrating! I remember a member from this site writing that he had lost about 8.000 photos which he had stored but not saved on the computer due to some technical problem. Obviously, you're now able to look at the situation philosophically. Yes, you're still alright and healthy and that's the main thing.
1 person likes this
@Genipher (5405)
• United States
2 May 16
I still occasionally grumble at our computer. I haven't quite forgiven the thing yet. But I maintain my calm and patiently wait. At almost 10 years old, the thing is on its last legs and we'll soon be able to send it to its final resting place.
Mwahahaha!
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@zaga_cleuth (1407)
• Philippines
5 May 16
Try to download some of the recovery applications online. I know they can get the data that was previously saved and was deleted.
@zaga_cleuth (1407)
• Philippines
8 May 16
@Genipher that's sad, well, you can still make a lot of videos in the future. which will be memorable too. And that will always be part of your precious memory.
I remember my mom, she was a previous beauty queen contestant. She's furious when she found out that the photos and newspaper she kept for too long was gone and thrown away by our grandfather. She wanted us to see that but unfortunately she has nothing for us to see. There was no internet before and data before are hard to keep and save. I can feel her sadness everytime she's telling us story about it and have nothing to prove us. But, of course we believed that, because she's beautiful and smart, everyone said that.
That's why I can say, souvenirs can be erased and may vanished but memories aren't.
@Genipher (5405)
• United States
8 May 16
@zaga_cleuth
It'd be pretty neat if you could somehow track down an old newspaper copy of her beauty queen days. Don't they store old microfiche at the library?
That would be an amazing Mother's Day gift for her!
@sishy7 (27169)
• Australia
3 May 16
I feel for you - the kids are still with us, yes, but they are all grown and would never go back to the time of their first words, etc...
My kids were born in the 90s and we had videos of them in betamax and VHS that are now rather obsolete - we can't watch them as we don't have the player anymore.
@sishy7 (27169)
• Australia
4 May 16
@Genipher Yes, I do think that's a neat idea! Some time ago my son had a school project of making a coffee table book. I didn't really know what it was at first, so out of curiosity I peeked around of what he was doing. It was so interesting - it involved photography, writing, lay-out and book covers designing among other things...
1 person likes this
@Genipher (5405)
• United States
3 May 16
I wonder if there's a way to transfer the vhs to a dvd or something...?
Yeah, most of the keepsakes from when I was growing up was photos. My grandma, especially, has boxes and boxes of pictures of family, clear back to the black-and-white era. She's forever trying to organize them. I'm thinking it might be neat to take those pictures, do a little bit of writing about the people or situation in the photo, and then have it all transformed into book-format.
There are a lot of places nowadays that will print a single book, for fairly cheap.
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