I think I make Steve Jobs sad

Sometime last week my Macbook kept flashing a little warning on my screen to inform me that my startup disk was almost full and files would have to be deleted. I didn’t even know I had a startup disk, much less that it was almost full.

I’d gotten that same warning about six months ago and took care of the problem by deleting a bunch of old pictures and maybe some important software that shouldn’t have been deleted. (More on that later) But this time I decided that I didn’t want to go through the hassle of burning a bunch of pictures to CD’s and it might be a better idea to buy a flash drive and put everything on it.

(Because it’s not enough that I have hard copies of all my pictures and that they’re all uploaded to Shutterfly, I need to have everything in triplicate because I am neurotic and what if Shutterfly ceases to exist and I lose all the albums I’ve created since Caroline was a baby?)

I bought a flash drive but wasn’t really sure about memory and full startup disks and gigabytes and whether or not the jeans I was wearing made my bottom look big. So I did what I do in most tech emergencies, I called my friend AJ who just happens to be in town this week.

God bless her for not hanging up on me every time I start a conversation with “I was wondering if you could help me with…”

I explained my full startup disk dilemma and told her about my flash drive purchase. She responded by asking me how many gigabytes it would hold and I replied that I had no idea but the flash drive cost me $29.99 at Office Max so I assumed it could hold about $30.00 worth of memory. Which makes total sense because dollars are real whereas gigabytes are just something that people made up about five or twenty years ago.

And then I mentioned that I liked the flash drive I selected because it is the prettiest shade of purple even though I’m not normally a fan of purple. At that point, AJ suggested that I probably wouldn’t want to share the details of our conversation with too many people (so I’m writing about it on the internet) because people might mock me for not understanding gigabytes.

But to those people I say that I don’t think their pocket protectors really work with the shirt they have on.

Fortunately, AJ volunteered to come over last night and help me figure out the issue with my startup disk and why it overfloweth. She also explained a concept to me that involves an external hard drive and suggested I might want to invest in one that holds between 500 and 1,000 gigs. Which kind of makes my four gigs seem a little pitiful even though they came in a festive purple color.

She also explained that all the movies I’ve saved in iMovie take up a lot of space and I should get them off the computer, but I told her I didn’t know what to do with them and asked if there was some way I could automatically burn them on a DVD that would play in my DVD player. AND THERE IS. I have been surrounded by this technology ALL THIS TIME and had no idea. I totally should have read the manual that came with my computer.

We began looking through all my movies so I could figure out what I wanted to keep and what needed to be deleted forever because it may have involve Caroline videotaping my rear end while I paint the backhouse.

While I looked through the iMovie files, I came upon a few video clips I’d totally forgotten about. They were videos of Caroline when she was just two years old. And I realize this is the equivalent of asking someone to please look at the slides from your vacation to Niagara Falls (the scenery is AMAZING!), but I had to share it.

Little Caroline from Big Mama on Vimeo.

OH MY HEART.

I would’ve totally dissolved into a big pile of sloppy tears and sentiment right at that moment, but AJ had moved on and informed me that I needed to get my Mac mail account up and running because Entourage is going to be non-existent in about a year.

The only problem is I deleted my Mac mail software the last time I tried to free up space because my startup disk was full. AJ didn’t even know it was possible to delete Mac mail off your Macbook, so I guess she learned something technical from me for a change.

Granted, it’s not something anyone really wants to know and definitely isn’t something you’re supposed to do, but I’m claiming it as an accomplishment anyway. I’ll take my tech victories where I can get them.

Although they won’t be sent through Mac mail.