We’ve been back home for a while now, but the regular posting I figured I would then be able to do has yet to occur. I didn’t realize the amount of work I would have upon our return.

We were supposed to return on a Friday, but the airline didn’t get us to Seattle until 12 hours later than scheduled. More about that when I write about the trip, but it turned out not to be so bad.

Work, of course, had many things piled up waiting for my return.  For those of you who dread going back to work after a week’s vacation; imagine what I came back to after three weeks away!

But the big hold up right now is the pictures.  We took about 2,000 pictures, and video on top of that.  Much of it will never be shown, but it’s going to take quite to sort through that many and then do any necessary editing.  Loading them from the memory cards and portable card reader/hard drive took 8 hours alone!  Next I had to back them up to DVD and Karin’s computer before I was willing to start working with them.  Yes there is a lot of data, but part of the delay is our ancient computers.  Believe it or not, these two geeks are using 7 year old computers, as we are very budget conscious.  Yes they’ve been upgraded somewhat; but their age is showing.  Despite a USB 2.0 addon card, my computer continues to recognize everything as USB 1.1, thus the pictures were uploaded at a greatly reduced rate.  Now that they are on the computer, it can take minutes just to load one into Photoshop.  Editing that picture then becomes a lesson in patience, with much studing of the hourglass icon.  Even waiting for the computer to create thumbnails in Windows Explorer is painful.

I did take the DVDs to work and loaded them onto one of the notebooks I have in my desk, and it glides through everything.  The only problem is that I have not time at all right now at work to use that power I have there.

So the planned and long awaited upgrade to new computers that was going to happen after I did all of the editing might be better done before I start.  I didn’t want to delay describing our trip and posting photos by wasting time building and setting up two new computers, but I think it would actually end up being quicker to do that first.

So please be patient, I will get them all up; but in the meantime you’ll see random posts about other things.  I’m off to bed now so that I can get up and start designing two computers while drinking my morning coffe.