So some time before the end of the year I'll get up some posts about Christmas and the break so far...

But I've spent fairly big chunks out of the past few days sorting out all the digital copies of dad's photos.  And I've done pretty much all I can do with the material I have.  The missing files from before 1999 never showed up, even on several disks I brought home from mum's.  Sadly they weren't on the other backup external disk, and the only other possibilities were on disks that were dead :(  So there's a thousand or so photos I'll need to scan again one day.

For everything else I went through his database of 14000 files, finding all the copies of the photos scattered about the place, and compiling them all into one location with a consistent directory structure, and deleting all the duplicates.  So now it's all neat and tidy.  And each year (from 2000-2012) is no more than a dvd backup's worth.  

Simple right?

Well dad never quite grasped that.  His idea of backups was filling cds seemingly at random with whatever files would fit.  So a few directories from one year mixed with directories from other years.  And then he'd make more copies.  There was a "working copy", an "archive copy" and an "offsite backup" (which were stored at my place).  But there's no rhyme or reason to what's on each disk, just a number "Ted_01" through to "Ted_95".  There's probably a database somewhere of what's on each disk.  Note these were all on cd.  At some point he's decided to do a "last chance" backup to dvd, with the contents of about five cds worth on each.  So we're already looking at a minimum of four copies of each photo series on plastic disk - three hundred pieces of plastic clutter.  Not to mention the entire large spindleful of these disks that just look to be copies at random.  I'm pretty much going to start again and burn thirteen disks - one for each year between 2000 and 2012 for his general photos.

The holiday photos are even more fun.  There's gold, silver and bronze "masters", slideshows, lending copies, working copies, backup copies, offsite copies.  Although even then not consistently - some there's only one copy!  Their Gulf Savannah and Top End holiday must have at least thirty disks sitting on my floor right now.  I'm going to toss the whole lot and make two dvds of that trip that have everything.  Clean and simple.

And I never found his slide scans either.  Not sure how far through it he got.  He scanned all his slides in 2002 but on a flatbed scanner, so they're not great quality.  189 x 36 slides to scan one day too... 

The saddest part of all of this was getting to the end of 2012 where he hadn't labelled everything and put into his numbering scheme and database.  And there were a couple of directories of files that he probably never even saw because they hadn't been downloaded from the camera.  :(

I really need to sort out my photos before I go and cark it... 

I spent tonight sorting out a snapshot backup I made of mum's computer back in April.  

It did my head in.

Firstly there was the five copies of his My Documents directory, fortunately only one appeared active and the others looked to be backups.

Then there's the ten copies of all his photos.  At least.  Some more than others I suspect.  All over the place, but with only one backup of *some* of the photos on a different drive (although there was until recently a second external disk, so I guess there would have been extra copies).  I'm still trying to figure out what his scheme was, and whether I should start again to try and get everything in order.  

Edit:  even though he was *seemingly* paranoid about his backups, I've still found there's plenty of missing stuff.  Like the excel files that have labels for the first 1000 photos (at least I have a printout), and even the first 1000 photos themselves.  Looks like there'll be some rescanning in my future...

I really haven't had the time for Christmas up until about yesterday.  Yesterday was awesome, just pottered around the house cleaning and tidying.  Managed 11000 steps without even leaving the house (other than to go across the road for supplies).

Last night EffanC came over for roast pork, and Kit came up as well.  Sooo much pork and the crackling was super awesome.

After dinner we sat around chatting and I put on the Carols in the background.  A good fun night.

Today I've finally had the time to go through my photos from the past two months and get a lot of them online in older blog posts.  Check em out.

In the meantime, here's some Christmas trees!  And Lego!

More Sydney.  More sorting.  More stuff.

Mum purges tupperware

This pigeon was on the first floor of the George St KFC.  It made quite a mess.

Vicki

Caught up with Jo and Marc again at Jet at the QVB for drinks and pizza on the Tuesday which was great, but a bit of a disaster getting home as the trains were all stuffed up.  Took me an hour and a half to get home :(  

Also had a lovely lunch with @StuartCRyan.  

Came home Wednesday night with a car filled up with stuff to give away or sort through (including all Dad's slides and physical photos).  

Thursday after dinner and washing we went over to Kit's for a few drinks which was fun.  Friday I watched Air Crash Investigations and much of Gladiator while tidying up the dungeon for the car load of stuff.

Saturday I'd originally been going to help out with the big Christmas party, but I decided a few days out that I really needed a day at home for my sanity's sake. I have just had so little time at home in the past two months that I think I might have died if I hadn't stayed home.  So I was up early and spent the morning tidying up the dungeon, then emptying my car.  In the afternoon I did more sorting, cleaning and put up the Christmas tree.  I got nearly 10000 steps without even leaving the house.

In the evening we went to Mishi's for lots of eating and chatting and a bit of Pirate Fluxx, which I won two games of, and Mishi won a game.

Today I'm back in Sydney.  We went to Ikea to pick up a china cabinet, and she bought a mirror as well.  Then back to Taren Point to pick up her tv unit.  Squeezed the whole lot into my car.  Hatchbacks are pretty awesome really.

Tonight was Carols Under the Stars at Como church, but it was all thunderbolts and lightning, so it was inside under fairy lights which was pretty cool.  

Listed more stuff on Freecycle.

So there's been trivia nights (that I ran), balls (that I had to organise/prepare for), work, holidays to plan, holidays to sort photos for, and two trips to Sydney for good measure.  We've Freecycled *heaps* of stuff, and I've brought two carloads of stuff back to Canberra for people that wanted things here.  I've barely been at home the past two months.  Ingress and exercise suffered most.  And my flex time - been in the red for a month and struggling to stay afloat.  I have a tonne of pics I want to upload.  One day...  

Here's one though, a spiny-leaf stick insect.. soo cute!

As usual, I'm amazed at the effort that goes into these things.

Raining Cats and Dogs

Batman and a witch

Olaf!

Entree was a choice of pork belly (very yummy, I tried a bit of Stu's)

Or smoked cutlets (which had a nice smokey flavour but weren't really hot enough)

Mains was scotch fillet (which I didn't get to try)

Or chicken, which was nice enough, and the veggies had a little bit of a spice kick

Dessert was either soft-set meringue

Or passionfruit tart, which was very nice

I don't think I looked particularly Elsa-like

Turns out the lead singer of the band is from our work as well!

Louise totally channelled Anna the whole night (sadly I didn't get any good photos of her dancing)

zOMG even Neil danced!  Must have been about the first time ever ;)

The light made my train look pretty cool

All in all a great, if expensive! night

I talked to the little brother last night.  And I thought *I* was stressed about everything.  Not only does he have mum's house to worry about getting stuff out of, but a close friend of his has decided to sell his house as well.  Note this friend keeps an entire railway museum in his house, and so it's in a much worse state of clutter than this place.  And David can't get away from work to be able to actually spend any time here so he's not in a good way.

Meanwhile I'm just depressed about the whole thing.  I was counting on having many more months to take my time to try and find new owners for things rather than seeing the whole lot just thrown out, but that idea has gone out the window.  

Mum on the other hand is all excited about moving to a new place and wants to sell this house as soon as possible and throw everything out and just go.

So she's happy, but we're in a mess.

Anyway, I've put up photos of everything we've documented so far - http://kazza.cia.com.au/freecycle-como/ and there is much more to come.  I've only had two responses on Freecycle, but at least they're going to take a couple of things..

Please pass this around and help me clear this place out by taking things (I can bring smaller stuff back to Canberra, but if you know people in Sydney please pass this on!)

Also, public transport sux..  (well people suck really)..

Thursday: work drinks, then Amazing Race, not sure why but I'm *still* surprised how loud, tedious and *dumb* Americans are.  Do they not teach you how to tell which way is north in America?

Friday: Watched part of Leon with the sweetie, then Air Crash Investigations and the Bourne Ultimatum.

Saturday: Went to Kingston and Fyshwick with the sweetie and was successful in part of our shopping mission, but not all.  Went hard on the trivia night, got pretty much everything ready except the whole process of getting it into the slide show.  I tried, but I couldn't connect up the work laptop for some reason, and then I couldn't connect to webmail either because I couldn't remember my pin.  So had to abandon that idea.  So I went ahead and finished geotagging all my holiday photos.  Also finished watching Leon with the sweetie.  Quite a good movie, enjoyed it.

Sunday: Cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and started culling holiday photos.  Also went out with EffanC for C's birthday.  Pics soon.  Then back to their place to chill out and chat for the rest of the afternoon.  Quite a lovely afternoon.  Food shopping, then home and then watched Frozen.  Hoping I don't get hungry later, because I really haven't eaten much since lunch time..

So you may remember that I've been freaking out the past few days about how busy I'm going to be for oh, you know, well til the end of the year.  On my calendar I have exactly one weekend where nothing has been planned, and that's the weekend before Christmas.

So you can imagine my delight finding out that the mother type person is planning to sell the house.  Like right now.  By Christmas.

Which leaves me exactly zero time to finish which would have taken probably at least another year's work in terms of sorting stuff out and either selling it or freecycling it.  Before Mum just gets a skip or five and chucks the whole lot out.

So now I'm studying my calendar trying to figure out what events I can drop, and what planning can be compressed into a half or a third the time I have available.  And what is going to need to give.  It'll probably be my holiday photo sorting.  I still haven't even *seen* most of my holiday photos.

Fun. Not.

Had a cleaning day today.  People will keep making mess, so I'll spend my life cleaning up after them .. hrmmm

Tony and Kiera convinced me to talk home with them.  Oops.  Did get a few new portals though.

Tonight I mostly geotagged photos (I've basically finished the Canon shots from the group tour).  But after you hit save on a day, you have about five to ten minutes where you can't do any more, so I used that time to work through some things on my todo list (mostly house cleaning type stuff heh).  If I can achieve as much as I did tonight *every* night then maybe I'll actually get everything done that I need to ...