No excuses

The last few months have been busy and I haven’t bothered posting.  Just the way it is.

My latest projects have been getting our “financial house” in order, getting our will done, getting caught up with backing up my raw photos and posting the processed ones to flickr, and obsessing over USB drives.

Finances: We had been doing well before – bills paid on time, etc.  But I wanted to get a few steps beyond that.  Since money hasn’t been quite as tight for a while, hubby and I decided to start putting funds toward retirement again.  I had hated to originally stop putting funds toward it, but there wasn’t a choice at the time.  (Retirement or health insurance.  Guess what I chose.)  But things are better and we are trying to use our money as wisely as possible.

Progress on the will – still in the gathering stage but not far from done with it.  I’ve been taking my time with this because I want to be thorough.  I could have had the list in a day or so what most of what we needed but by taking my time I’ve remembered and been able to account for what I believe will be everything.  Then to get the basic plan done and decide if we want to hire a lawyer.  In South Dakota, I believe you can just get a will kit.  So we will see.

USB drives.  I’ve been trying to backup important things, but hadn’t found a satisfactory solution.  Gmail is nice, but not all I wanted.  Then I discovered Daily Cup of Tech’s “Zen and the Art of the USB Drive Series“.   I was hooked.  There are encryption programs such as TrueCrypt, GnuPG, and others that allow you to safely store your more sensitive data (i.e. your finances).  Beyond data backup, the fun thing with USB drives has been the ability to run “PortableApps“.  They run from the USB drive and don’t leave a trace they were every there.  I really like not having to install much on my little notebook computer.  There’s not much of a hard drive on it.  Yet I can:

• View raw format images I took that day from my compact flash card using Irfanview runnig from the USB drive.
• Take notes from the USB drive during gaming sessions, and easily port the notes to my desktop compy.
• Scan any computer that my USB drive is connected to for viruses.
• Setup my little drive to ask to be returned should it ever be lost.
• Doing the same kind of setup for a lost child.  I want to have these for our next trip.  Airports are scary places with small children that like to run.  Yes I can squeeze the blood out of my child’s hand to keep her by me, but she’s tricky!  (Despite the training we’ve been working on to hold my hand in places like parking lots and stores.  It takes a while for this to stick.)  I want to have one of these for each kiddo just in case!  The oldest one would at least be able to say, “Hey my mom’s contact info is on the drive.  Plug it into your computer!”

Beyond projects, my hubby and I have been asked in several venues to help (church, local clubs, groups online, etc).  It’s been interesting how whenever I decide to try to simplify my life – that’s when it gets the most complicated.  We didn’t have people asking for us to volunteer until then.  Gotta love the irony.  I don’t mind at all being asked to help.  Just can’t say yes to everything.  That’s the hard part.