Part 9-5th annual whats left on my want list swap
always in a hurry it was supposed to be part 9
LOL Patty

My seeds went in the mail today! I really wanted to get them out earlier, but it's only because I started early that I managed to get so many out just in time! I started working on packing the seeds a couple of weeks ago, which is good because it's hard to ignore a pathetic, come-play-with-me kitten for very long! I would stand at a table and pack seeds until she started climbing up my leg, then give up. I'd hoped to finish up Monday and mail on Tuesday, and I've learned that it's always good to aim for a day earlier than the real deadline. I ended up finishing up packing yesterday and mailing today.

I had made a document with each player's name and gone through all the lists and copied and pasted what I planned to send. Then I alphabetized the list, printed it, and used that so I could make up the right number of packets of a seed, and keep track. Later I would look at the list of who was getting what and make up the individual packets.

Yesterday was the day I started to sort everyone's seeds (which takes forever, so I really should have started that before) and guess what else happened yesterday? My laptop's mother board died! With no little sounds or weird warning signs, I just suddenly had no display. (I wasted a bit of time on the phone with Dell finding out what the problem was. I'd hoped it was "just" the screen and I could just hook the laptop up to a big monitor--no such luck!) But I have this ancient frankenstein desktop that is my backup computer, so I was going to be fine. But wait--that list of what I planned to send to whom--I never backed it up, I can't get it, it's stuck on the dead computer!

Angela's list to the rescue! I used the desktop computer (and immediately wrote out Patty's address before something else went wrong) and used the search function to see who was asking for all the seeds I'd packaged up. It was a little tedious when looking for a particular type of salvia, since I had to scan through all the salvias, but for the most part each search was really fast.

I got everything packaged up, used the computer to print out my postage, went off to the PO to buy stamps and get it officially sent off. I came home and wanted to email Patty the DC, but the computer had locked up. I restarted it, and...it was dead. "Unmountable boot volume." Dell says this means the hard drive died. So in 24 hours, my 2 computers have died! (and yet my mom has allowed me to touch her computer...)

Thank goodness the darn thing stayed alive long enough for me to use Angela's list and get the seeds sorted without dragging everything to my mom's house!

I don't live my life like my computer is about to die, and I guess I should! I do back things up, but not every day or even every week. I've been thinking that maybe I could have a memory stick in the USB port, and get some software that will back up anything added to the computer that day. When the drive is full, I'll burn a CD of it. Does anyone do something like that, and what do you use?

For the next big swap, I think I'll print out a lot more stuff instead of just keeping it on the computer!

Hi all this posting was a mistake it was supposed to #9 so please go to that to post
Patty