last summer trip, and loosing all my pictures...

If you are here for getting your pictures back after deleting them from your memory card skip to the end. If you are here to see the pictures I recovered and hear about our last summer trip, carry on...

As if the summer wasn't filled with enough travel, we decided to accompany Gary on a business trip before school started. Gary had seen a brochure about a place near Tampa FL that had "live mermaid" shows. This was something we HAD to take in given Nev's abiding love for mermaids.

The morning we were to leave Gary left early for work and I stayed behind to take Nev to speech. The morning began with Zurich throwing up. This did not bode well, but plans had been made so I threw a few hand towels and large Tupperware in the van and we headed off. Long story short: it took us two hours to make it 30 mins or so from home. What could possibly take so long? That sick boy, having to puke, dump said puke, that boy having to use a restroom for various functions. And it never happened on the same trip to the restroom. Loading 4 kids in and out of the van every 5 minutes is exhausting, not to mention they resist very strongly after about the 3rd trip in 15 mins.
It's hot in Florida, by the way.

There was a bit too much excitement when we had stopped and no one wanted to get out and no one but the sick one had to use a restroom, only to get back to the van and decide they did....

However, after that we were able to make it along without too much more issue. Thankfully.

But that day's plans had to be thrown out because there wasn't enough time to do as we planned and go to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium that afternoon, because it was no longer afternoon. So we checked into the hotel and Gary got off work and we went to dinner at Frenchy's and then spent the evening on Clearwater beach.


The next day I pulled on my brave britches and took the four kids to WeekiWachee by myself. We went on a boat tour and wandered around the park in search of baby peacocks and their parents, took photo ops and forced the kids to eat something when they were too excited to eat and proclaimed that they weren't hungry. They may legitimately not have been since I kept handing them drinks to keep them hydrated. :)

We took in a reptile show and then the live mermaid show of the Little Mermaid. Nev was mesmerized, I wish I had my camera out when the curtains opened and her face was full of giddy excitement and disbelief. The way they handled it all was pretty dang cool. Totally worth seeing and excellent pricing for the whole park. Afterward they had a photo op with a mermaid and Zurich was too "shy" as he said to join in the picture.
 
After that we changed to go swimming. I really wondered as I struggled to keep the right things dry and get everyone changed why I was even bothering since I was sweating like crazy. But the kids enjoyed it, and that's reason enough.

Again that night we went to the Clearwater beach. I love the little wading area there is there, it makes it so much easier with four kids to all have a good time.


The next day we went to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, home of Winter the Dolphin from the movie Dolphin Tale.This was for Olea. It helps that Nev loves dolphins "dolphies" too. It was fun to see all the animals they had, touch sting rays and climb through the turtle extruder.  As well as see areas where the movie was filmed and such. Zurich got a little scratch on his hand from a sting ray and kept saying, "It bit me." They do have some rough areas on them so who knows. I'm awesome and had a band-aid for him. By then Gideon had been neglected for a diaper change after having to deal with the 3 year old having a #2 accident  and forgetting to change him after spending so long in the bathroom with her and getting out to the other kids antsy to go again, and now being clear on the extreme side of where the bathrooms were... He'd been drinking a lot, so by the time I got him changed he'd soaked through all his clothes and the only change left for him was in the van and there was no way I was going to drag all the kids back to the van just yet, so he got to run around in just a diaper for a while. He was SOOO thrilled about this.

Gary met up with us there when he was done with work and he took the kids around some more while I took Giddy back to the van for a snack and change of clothes and then we all rode the trolly to the sister location in town. We picked up the kids' souvenirs there. Nev insisted on carrying her bag as we wandered around. As we were leaving I picked up Nev's bag to put on the stroller for easy loading on the trolly and noticed it was quite heavy... she'd done a little more shopping shoplifting. A figurine of a dolphin in Christmas lights and a ceramic dolphin. I took her directly back in to return the items. She was shy and sad about returning them. I'm just glad I discovered them before we had completely left. Nev kept sticking her head out the trolly window. Like a puppy and I couldn't get her to stop. Silly girl.
 
That night we were too tuckered out to go home and so we booked another night in a hotel and our hotel room was hot when we arrived. We turned on the AC and went to the pool out our patio and the beach there. ( no pictures) The beach was neat, Gary and I saw a dolphin about ten feet away. Olea and a lady on the beach were finding (mesoglea) clear gellyfish. After a while Zurich started whining about the clear little jellyfish in the water, that they were making him itch. We didn't believe him, (he tends to be a bit of a whiner) till we started feeling it so we showered off and went back in the hotel pool. Giddy was such a brave little sucker wanting to jump in again and again with no floaters on. He made me nervous though about wanting to do so in the deep end because I am not confident in catching him there. When we got back in our hotel room the AC was not working. Gary called the front desk. They called the mechanic and by 1:30 in the morning we were moved to a new room with working AC. What a pain. My poor sweaty babies!

Leaving this hotel I had major DeJavu as we were leaving this hotel, sitting on a bench in the entry facing a faux door, that as we were leaving I realized had a hotel key slot and we had already turned in our keys... Oh my gosh, I am so curious!

The first picture I took on the marine aquarium day was preceded by an error on my camera that flashed too fast for me to see what it said before it showed the picture preview. Since I saw a good picture and the kids were antsy to go it wasn't till 40 pictures later that I realized that the first picture had deleted all the pictures from not only the last two days but also the last 3 or so weeks. Awesome. I hadn't bothered to empty the memory card before our trip. Dumb mistake. There are few things, (okay there are probably a lot) that irritate me like loosing data, especially pictures. When I realized the damage I removed the memory card and put a new one in... like I should have done before the trip. I hoped I'd be able to some how recover the pictures I'd lost. Pictures are really important to me and later that night I was able to verbalize why to Gary. When I am doing something with all the kids, it's hard, it's fun, but it's hard. Looking back on pictures helps me see how much my kids enjoyed it, helps me correct my memory and replace it with the happy faces that sometimes I am too hot or stressed to see clearly at the time. It helps me keep doing cool things with my kids, it helps me be brave. :)

So how are there pictures on this post? Oh add a computer and a whole lot of diligent searching and a free program and my corrupted memory card and viola! My pictures are back. I didn't have as much luck with my videos, but I am cutting my losses and moving on with my life. Wanna know?

ZAR zero Assumption recovery http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm was the option I found that did a deep enough scan for the corrupted pictures, and regularly deleted ones. Use the top free option "General-purpose data recovery". It is easy to run and recover them. The only downside is that it couldn't recover my .mov files correctly, (white image and broken sound). The other ones you have to pay for don't have a preview option for videos so there is no way to know if they could recover the videos without paying and I decided I would cut my losses. I got my pictures back!

There are plenty of free options out there. A few I tried: 
Wondershare photo recovery: (shallow scan) and costs to recover, will work for pictures regularly deleted, but you can download the program and preview what it will recover for free.
Pandora Recovery: free, a shallow scan, will work for pictures regularly deleted
Recova: free, shallow scan, will work for pictures regularly deleted
Pc Inspector Smart Recovery: free, shallow scan, will work for pictures regularly deleted

I think they all can recover regularly deleted videos too, but not totally sure, since I wasn't going for that since mine were harder to retrieve.

Some look free but once they show you the pictures they want you to pay before you can recover them anywhere from $25- $100 is what I saw (like Wondershare). Nice thing is they do let you preview what can be recovered so you can see if it is worth it or not. Some of them are just as good as the free ones but make you pay. And some do a deeper scan and can recover harder to reach files like the "corrupted" ones I had from the error message. But I was determined not to pay $60 so I kept looking and was glad I did. When my sister's hard drive crashed she was also able to recover some of her photos using ZAR.

Finally Did it

So my palm battery has been dying. I looked into having someone put a new one in for me... about $50... no thanks. It's supposed to be a non serviceable unit, but I am out of my warranty range by years and palm doesn't support this unit anymore. At this point it's dead to me unless I can fix it. So thanks to a you-tuber who showed me how to get it open, and had a battery to spare I got out my soldering iron and put the new one in. It's a week in there now and so far so good! I haven't charged it again yet and it is used A LOT. Here's how I did it.

Do the techy dance of JOY

I am doing the techy dance of JOY
I won't show you what it looks like...
But I am doing it!
Remember this post?
No, of course you don't.
I was spending all my time on tech support and trying to uninstall the program that I never posted my HUGE irritation.
"Let me explain, no, there is too much, let me sum up."
(I'll give something spectacular to the first person who can reference the quote correctly).

I bought an external drive. It worked. I loved it. It worked on both my computer platforms. It was great. Then I updated the software. It didn't work anymore on my Vista. I did not love it. I was mad. I spent too much time on hold and too much time trying to delete registry entries. It happened back in January. It's October right? Finally I got sent high enough up the chain... Today I called the coveted direct line (because the babies were napping and Olea was choosing to be sweet) and this pleasant fellow provided the solution I have been waiting for (which according to him was available back in JULY... I did chat with someone in July, a number of times).

My drive is backing up almost a year's worth of stuff as we speak. Thankfully the year provided no mishaps or lost files. All is right on my techy front.
Dance it up.

My Camera is Possessed

My Camera is Possessed.
It's true. And it's probably due to the amount of times the kids have grabbed the strap hanging of the counter and pulled it down to the floor... aka dropped it.
About a month ago Gary and I woke up to a strange noise. It took me a while to locate the noise.
The camera in it's case was turning off and on. This includes the lens coming out and in. It was in the camera case so the lens couldn't come out all the way so it just went back and forth and back and forth.
Fluke, right?
It keeps happening. It's freaky.
I could always run over the camera with the car and HAVE to buy a new one. That worked last time. Sorrows... It makes me laugh now, but it was NOT funny then.
So here's the picture I took today when the camera turned itself on. It was sitting on our dresser and Olea was reading to Genève (who you can't see behind the book and Olea) in the big chair. Notice, I even made my bed today.

(holy crap is that red paint on her foot?! it is...I better go check the studio... and the carpet the whole way upstairs)

In other news, I am really looking forward to this weekend for a number of reasons:
1. We are finally getting a family picture with everyone ... except Lincoln who went to China.
2. My mother hired a photographer... so Dad doesn't have to do it.
3. I get to tat on the drive and Genève needs a few tatties (all the colorful ones I have given away or sold and she's left with the first few that I did before I started selling them).
4. We're going to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with my in-laws and my sister's family
5. I get to see my sister and my brother whom I have not seen for over a year at least, and all their new kidlets.

something I feel smart about

I have kids...
What?
you didn't notice?

well moving right along then.
who's children know how to load their own DVDs? Who has lost (meaning had a DVD ruined) a DVD due to their independent children? It sucks doesn't it. You spend 20ish dollars on a DVD and no one wants to do that twice. Did you know burning a copy of something you own to keep as a back up is not a federal offense. In fact it's recommended in some form or another. Disney has a thing to protect against kids ruining DVDs. It's called their Disc Replacement Program. If you haven't registered the disks you own... you should. You have to register... obviously so they can keep a list of DVDs you have purchased. My only problem with this is it still costs "a nominal charge of $6.95." It's still a good thing though... but in my opinion, even better is the cost of a burnable DVD.

So I did some research and found a way to back up my DVD's (for free... except for cost of DVD+R). I keep the original copies in a safe place and put the burned copies out for the kids. I still try to teach them proper care of DVDs but at least my stress level is less becuase I know I have the original safely tucked away.

Want to know what spurred this little thought? Oh the fact that I let Olea touch a DVD before I backed it up... and I'm not totally sure I can get it working again... So I feel smart about the other ones that I did protect from her not so careful hands.

Disgruntled fan

TECHNICAL WARNING: the following post consists of some rather simplified technical complaining. Do not read if you don't care.

As a graphic designer/ photo editing fanatic... I have to be a fan of Adobe software. I am. However, I have been frustrated with Vista and Adobe compatibility issues. The new compy I got for my design business came with Vista... blahblahblah. Thankfully my amazing husband got Adobe to tell us how to install CS2 on Vista... According to the tech support people I have talked to since about other issues: THIS IS A MIRACLE. Sure I should upgrade, I guess they just came out with CS4...anyone want to pay for it? Anyway, everything worked, except the PDF printer/ distiller, whatever it's called. This is frustrating as I rely on it quite heavily. I have hoped I would find a solution that was feasible... It's been a search, I'm sure someone smarter would have gotten to a solution sooner, but I just couldn't believe that if we got the rest of the suite to work that the printer wouldn't. I've looked on knowledge base, forums, tech support etc. It won't. So It guess if I had Acrobat 8.1.2 that it would work. I have 7. I can't supposedly upgrade just one component and buying it independently is too expensive. So I found bullzip.com. It's a free pdf printer. I haven't completely tested it out but the fact that I can customize a watermark over the pdf is useful to me. I usually use pdf printer in word and internet browsing. YAY that this works. Also, you can choose to save as jpg, png etc. It's got lots more options than just pdf which is handy. So I'm bugged that Adobe won't help me, but maybe it's my own fault for not having the thousands of dollars it takes to upgrade. :P In the mean time I am glad I have found a FREE pdf printer that works with Vista 64 bit. Bless the freeware and shareware souls out there who are smarter than Adobe, and more loving too. Here is a preview for your enjoyment.