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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Tuesday's Tip: Learning the Hard Way or "You Can LOL Now"

We've all heard that old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished."  This all started as a "good deed."  My intention was to clean up the on-line accounts that I have to create to do anything on the Internet these days.  If you are groaning at the prospect of it, I was, too.   

I figured I'd start with the blog and more to the point, Picasa, Google's photo-sharing platform.  You can already tell by that language that I don't know much about this tech stuff, but that's what I call it.  I freely (and somewhat proudly, foolishly) admit to being less than savvy when it comes to the technological ways of the world.  I should have left well enough alone.  But I didn't...

As Blogger users know, Picasa is the freeware that uploads images to your Blogger/Blogspot pages.  Picasa also stores your images for you, without you doing a thing, unless you want to label, organize, share or edit them.  I never bothered with it much. 

So, still in my cleaning/organizing frenetic state of mind, one recent morning I began deleting (yes, deleting) Picasa albums of images I either had duplicated elsewhere, or felt I no longer needed.  I can only say:

DON'T DO THIS
IF THE IMAGE IS POSTED ON YOUR BLOG!

Also, don't do what I did, which was to overlook the warning pop-up as some  nonsensical bit of fluff that wouldn't be important.

If you are thinking about deleting anything, here's my advice:

1.  Think twice.  Do you really want to delete this?  Do you have it stored elsewhere?  Can you really live without this image if it turns out you don't have another copy somewhere? 

2.  Look for, read and understand any of those warnings that pop up when you are attempting to delete anything.  They are there for a reason!  A GOOD reason!

3.  If you do not understand the warning, DO NOT DELETE until you understand it.

Seems like simple enough advice, and I give it freely here to save you from having a morning like mine.  I spent a few minutes deleting photo albums from Picasa.  Eventually I read the pop-up.  Even then, I thought, "oh, it's in my blog...they wouldn't delete from there as well."  Well, they do...one click and it is gone from every Google product where I may have posted it.  This delightful image replaces it!  It's kind of  like an web version of the forehead tattoo "Dummy."

  


Followed by at least an hour retrieving and replacing all the image "black holes" that had suddenly appeared on my blog.  The only thing that saved me is that I store all photos on Shutterfly (and other places), so it was one-stop refilling the holes.   

It's all better now, at least it seems to be.  Go ahead, LOL now.  I've recovered. 


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