Culture Trek

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My apologies for the lapse in writing. I have worked extremely hard at what feels like “spinning my wheels” since my return from Ghana. The one thing I looked forward to most upon my return was writing, yet it has consistently been forced to the bottom of the to-do list. For now, I offer you this excuse - I mean exercise - in frustration.

When I reached home on August 2nd, I was jumping out of my skin. I wanted to compile all I had learned in order to preserve my memories and allow every one I know to live vicariously through me. Most of all, I was desperate to find a way to empower my new Ghanaian friends. To do that would require money. To raise money required awareness. I got right to it.

First, I made a video of my time spent with the children at Have’s RC Primary School. My hope was to show the enormous mount of need there in order to raise funds for a new building. I put this short film together in about three days. Having never done it from scratch, much of that time accounted for my learning curve. Still, it looked nice enough and I was feeling pretty proud. I decided the best way to get the word out is to use, well, YouTube.  I mean really, isn’t YouTube the new evening news?

I downloaded some software to convert the file into an acceptable format and all was going well until…

 The first on-screen message had something to do with an incompatible codec, that thing that compresses the file from one format to another. Windows wanted nothing to do with it and tried to barf it up. When that failed, my poor, poisoned laptop suffered a complete system shut down. Before it went into a brief coma, up came the screen that all-too-calmly says, “Windows has unexpectedly shut down and will now attempt to find a solution to the problem.” Solution, my ass. Rather than offering up anything helpful, ANYTHING, it quit on me, shut down, died.

I nudged it with the power button. Nothing.

Then, slowly, it strained to get up. The OS rebooted with that other little message that says, “The previous session of Windows did not shut down properly. Would you like to restart in safe mode?”

“Hurrah! You’re back!” I selected normal startup, hit enter and watched events unfold with sweaty palms.

Getting one leg up at a time, the sign-on screen appeared. I fed it my password, logged in, and behold! Something! Oh yeah, we’re moving forward, Baby!… until that same false promise appeared about a solution. Another shut-down, restart, the message looping to infinity. It didn’t even need my input anymore. It had a will of it’s own.

With my information held captive inside the brain of a dying body, I sprung into action. Safe Mode. It’s like heart pills for hard drives. It’ll get you through a rough patch until real assistance arrives on the scene. Since the puter asked for this several minutes ago, I hoped it wasn’t too late… I cut the power, rebooted…

Seriously, how does this continue IN SAFE MODE?!!

My husband said to call tech support. I refused. Dell has trained me so well that I no longer need their help. My last computer died so many times that I could eventually troubleshoot or have the OS reinstalling in under two minutes. I have named each and every one of my computers Lazarus for their uncanny ability to rise from the dead.  

Obviously, I had to get inside the brain before the OS could spasm once more. I pressed F something (10 or 12, I forget now) and ran through every pre-boot BIOS test made available to man, or at least a good Dell customer. As those tests worked to churn out a diagnosis, I tore my house apart looking for the Windows Vista repair software on the misplaced installation disk. Finally… Found it! It was stashed with our Alaska stuff, because the hard drive fritzed in Alaska too.

When I returned, the tests had all come back negative. Lies! Surely my installation disc would fix things. I popped it into the drive, booted from the disc and guess what… The vicious cycle started once more. AND, Vista (unlike XP) has no repair mode.

In a heap of defeat, I grabbed the phone. From the other end, a bored woman spoke.

Dell technical support. This is Michele speaking. How can I help ya?

I told her all I had done, hoping for the warm, welcome words of hopeful and helpful advice. What I got instead was:

Seriously, that still happens in safe mode? I’m sorry. It sounds like you’ve done all you can. Are there any files you need to retrieve or should I walk you through a complete re-installation? Although, it sounds like you’re a pro at this. I doubt you need me.

I declined her offer and hung up. I now feared that I could lose all of my Ghanaian notes and a large portion of my photos and video. I had made weekly backups until about my third week – when sixteen hour excursions to the North or last chances to play with the children left me two options:

• I could waste time backing up my technology and writing about the days I had already experienced, or
• I could fully experience the time I had left, video everything, take a million pictures and hope to remember the nuances later. I opted to live the experience – technology be damned.

And so it was… damned that is. I suffered an anxiety ridden two weeks before learning that all my information had finally been rescued. Matt, my nephew at Best Buy’s Geek Squad, was able to move everything to my external drive and he threw in the little gift of an OS install with the latest updates. I spent three more days loading all my software and personal files. This entire experience had gone exceptionally well considering the alternative… you know, the one where I lose everything, obviously not the one in which it could have been fixed. 

My system and data was restored to normal for about a week and, since I needed more more room on my external drive, I deleted the 70 gig retrieval file. About a day later, tragedy struck once more.

While sorting through my photo files, I shrieked to no one in particular,

What the.. ? Where is my Brong Ahafo folder?!

No one in particular answered but I knew that the folder (complete with hundreds of photos of waterfalls, monkeys and monuments) was gone. I ravaged through every possible place it could be until the only place left was in the ginormous retrieval file I had just deleted.

I found some miracle software – the kind that finds and restores deleted files, a download that was going to save my life. I revved it up, searched my C drive and found nothing. In all honesty, I hadn’t expected to, but it was a smaller drive and would take less time to scan. Hey, you never know. Next up, the external drive. I selected it, filtered out which type of files I wasn’t searching for, hit scan and got that nasty little promise just before it shut down. I tried again. The program aborted. I screamed.

I wrote to tech support asking for help. That was last week. I still haven’t heard back, nor have they responded to my request for a refund.

Another day, another dollar or two, and a download later (this time a little goody called Handy Recovery), and I’m in. I hook it up and, two days later, it finished scanning through 44,812 deleted photo files. Of course, none of these were retained in their original file structure. The names had all been erased and assigned numbers according to the order in which they were found. I had to manually open each one to search for what I had lost. 

Three days later… 

I have found and retrieved 928 photos, all but one. How do I know this? I had been looking for the rooster perched in some kind of fruit tree. You can see it one or two postings back. One would think that if it resides in my post that I could just grab that version, but – not so fast. The resolution for this blog has been greatly downgraded and could never print as a crisp, clear photograph. And hey, it’s a pretty cool picture.

I have to admit I was on a mission at that point, unwilling to be defeated even by a single lost file. I thought out loud, “If Windows Live Writer [the program I used to write the post] includes a resizable version of this file, it must have the original stored somewhere, right?” Tearing through every folder in the program and it’s shared files, I found nothing. But sure enough, I could resize the file without losing quality. Hmmm. I opened the post within the program, deleted everything from it but the picture, renamed it Rooster Rescue and posted it to my blog. Ta-Dah! There was the photo in all it’s enormous glory! I right clicked it, saved the sucker to a safe place, and tasted victory for the first time in weeks.

Then, of course, horror struck once more. The modified post, although I had renamed it to a new file, had been converted into nothing more than the silly rooster. Hugh Grant’s line in Four Weddings and a Funeral came to mind,

F*CK-A-DOODLE-DO.

But hey, I just undeleted my entire life and this file was in the heap. I will take a bow now for successfully retrieving and re-uploading the original post. To my laptop, I have just one thing to say…

HUZZAH!!!

Don’t get too excited. Sure, I did, but I wasn’t as savvy as you, Dear Reader.

Next on the list of fritzes, Corel Photo Album 6 asked why it was installed on two computers. It couldn’t fathom that it might have been installed twice on one. When it slammed its door in my face, I tattled to tech support. As it turns out, they won’t support a program if there is a newer version on the market. But seriously, the new version came out three days ago. Couldn’t they help a girl out? Um, no. 

In my frustration, I begrudgingly bought the new version. Sure enough, the function I use at least 30 times daily has been stripped out. Seriously?

I wrote the nastiest letter explaining how they have turned a professional product (with the extremely useful and rare capability to visually arrange photos before a batch rename) into a dime-a-dozen, kiddy scrapbooking program. Their only reply was to send a refund form. 30 days from now I’ll have my money back.

As a last resort, I purchased a new key and downloaded the version I already own at a reduced rate. This time I bought download insurance, just in case. Being the last piece of the puzzle, I have finally restored my machine to the full function it was capable of before the meltdown (both the computer’s and my own.) Or so I thought…

Yesterday I tried to copy something but my laptop didn’t want to play nice with the scanner. I shoved a new driver down it’s interface and the two started talking again. Then, when I tried to print what I had successfully scanned, the laptop needed a bit more attitude adjustment before the two were back to being BFFs. 

All that said, I finally pumped out a post about my Ghana trip, complete with pictures, for the Village Volunteers Blog. You can find it below, because heaven forbid I’m able to do any work on my own stinking blog. For now, please visit:

Village Volunteers: Ghana: My Second Home.

Wait a minute. Could it be? Did I just successfully finish my own post??

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