We’re having some serious technical difficulties here. For goodness’ sake, all I’ve wanted for the last few days is to show you my tomatoes.
Thanks to Danni at On the Way to Critter Farm, her support, and her tomato seeds, this is the very first tomato I’ve ever grown from seed. And I’ve been so excited to share it with you.
Instead, as I’ve downloaded pictures from my cameras these last few days, I’ve been getting this:
And, instead of this:
I’ve downloaded this:
Because I was able to download photos successfully onto another computer, here’s what I do know about this issue:
- It’s happening to about two-thirds of my photos; not all
- It’s not my cameras
- It’s not my lenses
- It’s not the USB cable
- It’s not the USB ports
- Photos that I already have stored on the computer are not affected; only new photos that I download onto the computer are
There’s something going on with our computer and we can’t figure out what it is. Does anyone out there have any ideas?
By the way, the tomatoes are delish. Thank you, Danni! ♥
Morning Bray Farm 
September 15, 2010 at 5:14 am
Sorry, I’m not very computer savy. But I do have to say those tomatoes look really nice, great job!
What kind are they? (Never had tomatoes with bottom bumps like that before.) 🙂
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September 15, 2010 at 6:47 am
C,
They’re Riesentraube tomatoes. It’s an East German heirloom variety whose name means “giant bunch of grapes.”
Danni did a wonderful post on them here: http://critterfarmgirl.blogspot.com/2009/09/in-love-with-tomato.html
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September 15, 2010 at 7:00 am
No computer help here, either…but congrats on your tomatoes. I’m always amazed that those tiny seeds somehow know to turn into tomatoes, and not, say, grass or apple trees.
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September 15, 2010 at 7:05 am
Flartus,
Thank you… it was definitely fun to watch those babies grow. 🙂
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September 15, 2010 at 7:21 am
Your technical difficulties baffle me, too. Perhaps Bernard has been sneaking into the house again and playing with your computer? (psst…I’ll trade you some fresh eggs for some of those tomatoes).
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September 15, 2010 at 7:26 am
Carson,
Hmm… I hadn’t thought of Bernard as a potential culprit. I just want this fixed – waaah! 🙂
Sounds like you’ve got yourself a deal, though. 😀
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September 15, 2010 at 7:52 am
Um, I blame Mercury in retrograde.
Or sunspots. 🙂
At least the tomatoes are tasty!!
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September 15, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Cathy,
I love the way you think. Thank you for always making me smile. 😀
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September 15, 2010 at 8:37 am
Mmmm…thanks for sharing the tomatoes. I can taste them right now!
My computer ‘go-to’ guy just drove off. I’ll ask him if he has any clues about the strange computer happenings when he returns!
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September 15, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Cyndi,
Thanks… We really appreciate it!
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September 15, 2010 at 9:03 am
Okay…here’s what I know about computers.
*silence*
Here’s what I know about how to fix a computer.
*Cultivate friends who know stuff about computers*
There. In a nutshell.
Very nice tomatoes you have there, Lady.
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September 15, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Carolynn,
What a coincidence! That’s exactly what I know about fixing computers. 😉
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September 15, 2010 at 10:12 am
No help from me – I screw up all the photos I take. But the tomatoes look lovely!
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September 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Nancy,
I hardly think you screw up all the photos you take. Surely you’re being too hard on yourself. 🙂
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September 15, 2010 at 4:01 pm
interesting problem. however, i think it *is* your camera. possibly the memory card is going south, or maybe you’re having power issues (have you tried changing the batteries?) or, if you have a rechargeable battery, as i do in my nikon, perhaps try taking it out for a minute, then putting it back in.
just my two cents. jealous that you have such gorgeous tomatoes. i have a lot of green ones!
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September 15, 2010 at 6:16 pm
chook,
Thank you! We too still have tons of green tomatoes and are keeping our fingers crossed that most of them ripen before the first frost.
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September 15, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hooray!!! I’m so glad they grew for you, Justina! I’ve got Riesentraube practically coming out my ears right now…they sure are prolific, aren’t they? I’m tickled these were the first ones you were able to grow to harvest. Now, don’t forget to save a few of your prettiest, most perfect ones for seed-saving for next year’s tomatoes, ok? 🙂 🙂
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September 15, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Farmgirl,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m pretty darned proud of myself… if I do say so myself. Despite the fact that I think I babied them a bit too much (noted by the fact that we’ve JUST had our first two ripe ones), I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of this wonderful experience. I totally am going to save seeds for next year’s tomatoes, and again, thanks to you, have instructions to follow to do just that. You ROCK! 🙂 🙂
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September 17, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Let me inquire of my better half when he gets home … he has to mess with images a lot at work, and may have seen this sort of issue.
From all the things you’ve ruled out, I am assuming you have tried multiple cameras, multiple camera chips, multiple cables, etc, etc.
I know he’s seen various sorts of messed-up images, so he may have suggestions. If not, he can show this to the engineers he works with, and maybe they’ll have a suggestion……
On to the successes — love your tomatoes! I really want to try to have some sunny space where we can grow some next year. I used to have a garden in the back yard, but the neighbors’ trees grew, and now it’s too shady back there. I’m thinking, maybe, along our driveway…… And hope to DO something about it this fall so we can be ready to go next spring.
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September 17, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Vicki,
Thanks. I’m positive it’s the one computer and think it might have something to do with Vista, but don’t understand why now, after all this time.
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September 19, 2010 at 9:00 am
He and I and the computer were finally in the same place at the same time.
He says your hard drive is messed up, and it’s time to make a backup ASAP.
He says that the way the hard drive keeps track of where a file’s data is is messed up, and this is Very Bad Indeed.
He is surprised that you can use it at all……
He suggests backup, soonest, then trying to de-fragment your hard drive (your operating system will do that).
Then the next thing to do is “mark bad sectors,” which, again, your operating system should be able to do. This instructs it to mark certain parts of the drive to not be used, stopping it from trying to write to parts of the disk that can’t be read/written properly.
Here’s an explanatin of de-fragging, as I understand it.
When they are new, it’s like a bank of empty filing cabinets, which are filled from the front to the back, just as you would do if they were physical filing cabinets.
With the hard drive, though, when you delete a file, the space where that file was remains empty (wating for new stuff to be written there).
When the hard drive starts to get full, it looks for those empty slots, and goes back and fills them in.
So instead of a file being all in one place on the disk, it may be in fragments all over the place.
This slows the computer down (disk access is slower), and is an inefficient use of space.
De-fragmenting the drive means having all the stuff moved so that the files can have all their fragments in one place, rather than scattered here and there across the drive.
Of course you need a certain amount of empty space on the drive for it to be able to accomplish the de-fragging…..
This may be the explanation to “why now, after all this time” — it got fuller, and older…..
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September 19, 2010 at 9:19 am
Vicki,
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good to know NOW! 😀
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September 20, 2010 at 7:49 am
You are most welcome. 🙂
It would be awful if any of your pics were lost!
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