Blog (detall) (Photo credit: Lady Madonna)

I read a lot of them. Some are professional and followed by thousands of people, such as www.postsecret.com or http://blog.nationalmssociety.org/. Some are personal, with only a few dedicated readers. But I treat them all the same, and here’s what I mean.

Readers shouldn’t burden themselves with remembering to look for new posts from their favorite bloggers. Updated blog posts should come to the reader. If I like a blogger for any number of reasons, I make sure that I am given the opportunity to read all of their posts. Based on the title of an individual post, or on my impression of the first few sentences, I may or may not actually read the entire post, but I always want to have that option handed to me on a silver platter.

This means that, in one way or another, I subscribe to my favorite blogs. At least two methods are available to make sure that I never miss a post.

Email Notification

Many blogs have an option where the reader can be notified of new posts through email. For example, if you want to receive an email version of each of my blog posts, then simply enter your email address near the top right-hand corner of my blog, in the box entitled “Receive Email Updates of New Posts”. Many, but not all blogs have a similar option.

If you only follow a few blogs, then this method may work fine for you. However, I subscribe to a large number of blogs, and I don’t want my inbox cluttered in this way. So I go with another option.

RSS Feeds

For most sites I subscribe via a blog reader. By far, the most popular one has been Google Reader, which I have used for years. Unfortunately, Google Reader is going away on July 1. But there are several free, replacement options. I’ve chosen to start using a program called Feedly.com. This service interfaces with my existing Google Reader account, and when Google Reader is gone forever, Feedly will seamlessly take over, or so I am told.

If you have more than a few blogs that you subscribe to, I highly recommend that you take the five minutes required to set up a service like Feedly. Of course there are more blog reader options than just this one. In the comments section of this post, please let me know what service you like to use.

Why Waste Invest Time Reading Blogs

Prior to Al Gore inventing the internet, we had very limited sources of information, and said information was largely pre-filtered for us, whether we liked it or not. It was difficult to find specific, enlightening, entertaining reading on the most interesting subjects. This is no longer the case.

Each of the blogs that I have chosen to follow speaks to me in some way. They may address topics that I am passionate about, or perhaps I simply connect with the author. In a few cases, the bloggers are personal friends. In most cases, however, I’ve never met them.

Another great feature of blogs is their interconnectivity. I try to have a few hyperlinks in each of my blog posts, and so do the authors of the blogs that I follow. In this way, readers can drill much deeper or broader into the topic if they so desire.

Currently, I subscribe to about 50 blogs. Some of them post multiple times per day. Others post only a few times a year. If a blog repeatedly publishes articles that don’t interest me, I remove it from my list. Many of my favorite blogs, however, pique my interest as little as 25% of the time. But I still keep my subscription because those articles appeal to me, and I don’t waste much time on the other 75%. I simply read the first sentence or two before I determine that I’m not interested.

I know that 50 blogs is a bit extreme, but I have a thirst for knowledge and a lot of free time on my hands. I encourage you to find at least a few blogs that you wish to follow, and set up a system where the posts come to you, so that you can sift through them at your leisure. After all, you need something to stare at on your cell phone while everyone else around the dinner table is staring at theirs.

This is the seventh in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.    

Here are my other posts in this series:
     
1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
3. I Read Books
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
5. I Nap
6. I Blog

Obviously.

Why do I do it? It feels right. For example:

• I am productive, creative, and sometimes even influential when I blog.
• I become engaged in life, as opposed to dispassionate about life.
• I feel that I am sometimes helping people when I do it, and this makes me all warm inside.
• Against my better judgment, and despite the knowledge that I should not base my happiness on the approval of others, I relish the positive feedback I receive.
• I am networking and meeting people when I do it, and this satisfies my modest need for human contact, much of which had been lost when I stopped working.
• Since I’m an introvert, and rarely initiate communications with others, this is a way for me to update friends and loved ones about what is going on in my life and/or in my head. This way, I need not take any drastic action like picking up the phone and calling someone. Oftentimes even Kim learns what I’m thinking through my posts.
• I’m able to learn useful and interesting things from readers’ comments and emails.
• I’ve become introspective through the process of collecting, organizing, and acknowledging my thoughts and feelings before I write them down, as opposed to running on emotional autopilot (which I am prone to do at times). I’m not certain, however, that this is always a good thing. Ignorance and denial have a certain appeal in the world of the chronically ill.

My Process


I sit by the ocean and wait for inspiration to strike. No, not really…

I have a Microsoft Word file where I keep all of my future posts, half written posts, poorly written posts, and posts I may never post. I try to publish at least once per week. To meet this goal I begin formulating my post on the weekend or early in the week, whenever an idea emerges from the recesses of my brain, or maybe from something I read, heard, or watched.

I go to my Microsoft Word file, and I start writing, which for me is actually dictating using a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. My first pass is sometimes just a collection of random ideas, or it may be a lengthy narrative. But either way, it’s utterly unreadable and suitable for my eyes only. Then, over a period of a few days I keep going back to the piece several times a day and make another pass at it, each time improving it a little more. If the piece is long, I try to cut it to below 1000 words, or under 800 words if I can. Interestingly, this paring process usually improves the quality of the piece at the same time it reduces the quantity of words. I try to take the perspective of the reader. Am I being clear and unambiguous? Will the reader give a damn about what I am writing? Can I be more succinct?

I usually post in the evening. Earlier in that same day I put the finishing touches on my writing. Sometime after dinner, when I think I have it ready for publishing I email it to Kim, who is likely sitting on the couch about 5 feet away, for review and proofreading. It’s funny, even though I may have read over a piece twenty times, Kim can find a glaring grammatical error that I missed in each of those passes. It’s a classic forest and trees situation.

Once Kim has helped me find any errors, awkward sentences, or outright lies, I make the final edits in Microsoft Word. I then add graphics and hyperlinks, and generally jump through a bunch of hoops to get the product from Microsoft Word to my blog page.

When I’m ready, I click the Publish button, and the post goes live.

I have a couple of programs that I use to monitor traffic at my website. Don’t worry; I can’t see your name, IP address, or what you are wearing when you visit my blog. But I can see where you are visiting me from, and how you got to my website (Google search, hyperlink from another website, Facebook, etc). I particularly enjoy the comments and the emails that I receive from you. Keep them coming. Don’t be shy.

Thanks for being a reader.

(726 words)

This is the sixth in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.


Here are my other posts in this series:

1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
3. I Read Books
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
5. I Nap
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs

This is the fifth in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.

“Are you serious Mitch? You expect me to read a blog post about napping, and not fall asleep myself from boredom and disinterest?”

Challenge accepted! This will be THE MOST INTERESTING blog post you have ever read on the subject of napping.

Approximately 80% of people with MS suffer from disease-related fatigue. I’m one of them. In addition to the MS fatigue, as a person with limited mobility I have difficulty remaining comfortable throughout the night in bed. That’s another reason I am tired during the day.

Before MS I never, ever napped. But now I’ve gotten the hang of it. I can take naps between 15 and 30 minutes long once or twice a day while Kim is at work.

One tool that has made napping easier for me is my Invacare TDX SP wheelchair, which I use most of the time when I am inside the house. Here are some pictures of me assuming the napping position.

First, I have to silence my TV, laptop, iPad, and iPhone, and then I put a pillow behind my head.

I recline to a comfortable position, even though I could recline even further if I wanted to. Note that the 90° angle between my legs and my back is maintained throughout the reclining operation. My occupational therapist who helped me obtain this wheelchair said that I couldn’t get the flat reclining feature because I had no particular back problems. Maybe next time I’ll go for that feature. But this is pretty darn comfortable as is. It’s like I get to spend all day, every day, in my own mobile La-Z-Boy.

I lift my feet up a little bit, even though I could lift them further if I wanted to. I take one last look at the clock because I want to know when my nap started, and then I close my eyes.

I lie there until a little alarm inexplicably goes off in my head, and my eyes suddenly open. I then check the clock to see how long I napped. I sit back up and choose one of the other What Do I Do All Day? activities, now slightly rejuvenated.

How’d I do? Are you still awake?

Here are my other posts in this series: 
    
1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
3. I Read Books
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
6. I Blog
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.

It’s true. Some of the top universities in the United States and around the world now allow you to view their courses online, for free. You don’t earn the college credits, and you are almost never invited to fraternity parties. But neither do you have to suffer through midterms and finals or part with $50,000 a year.

Note: some programs do have quizzes and assignments, and in return you can earn a certificate of completion.

I’ve viewed three courses so far, all from Yale University. None of these particular courses had assignments or provided certificates of completion, which is just fine with me. My resume building days are behind me.

Each of the three courses I viewed consisted of twenty-six, fifty minute lectures. One convenient aspect of this method of learning is that you can either cherry pick the lectures that interest you the most, and skip the others, or decide to watch the course from beginning to end. Here are the courses I’ve completed so far:

Philosophy 176: Death
Spring 2007
Shelly Kagen

As a society, we have an understandable fascination with death and dying. As an atheist, I don’t have doctrine or scripture to guide me on how I should think about the subject.

“This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable?…and, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?”

Religious Studies 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)
Fall 2006
Christine Hayes

This is not a theological study of the Bible. That would occur in the Divinity School (which Yale has, but not online). I did not attend this class for spiritual reasons, but rather to better understand the origins of this culturally significant (to say the least) collection of ancient writings. As Professor Hayes said, “The Bible is not a book. It is a library.”

“This course examines the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) as an expression of the religious life and thought of ancient Israel, and a foundational document of Western civilization…Special emphasis is placed on the Bible against the backdrop of its historical and cultural setting in the Ancient Near East.”

Religious Studies 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature
Spring 2009
Dale B. Martin

“This course provides a historical study of the origins of Christianity by analyzing the literature of the earliest Christian movements in historical context, concentrating on the New Testament…the importance of the New Testament and other early Christian documents as ancient literature and as sources for historical study will be emphasized.”

I enjoyed all three courses, and am now contemplating what my next class will be. Maybe I’ll stray from the humanities and take something more technical in nature. Website design?

Although I’ve tended towards Yale University offerings, there are so many other options available. Here are a few links:

http://oyc.yale.edu/
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
https://www.coursera.org/
https://www.edx.org/
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative
http://ocw.tufts.edu/
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

Here is another form of online learning, with short videos instead of full-length lectures.

https://www.khanacademy.org/

I encourage everyone to consider participating in this new online opportunity. There is no particular time commitment, other than watching a one hour lecture whenever you feel inclined to do so. For example, I spread out the 26 lectures in my Old Testament course over a year and a half. I made a renewed commitment for my New Testament course, and watched those 26 lectures in only three months. Either way works.

I find that I don’t retain the course material as well as I did when I attended college many years ago. I comprehend the material well enough while it is being presented. However, I’m not able to later explain what it is I learned. This happened at lunch a couple of weeks ago, after I had completed my New Testament course. I described to my lunch companion how interesting the course had been for me, and how much I had learned from it. He asked me for some specifics, but I struggled to come up with many examples, even though I had just spent almost 26 hours over a three month period absorbing the material.

I’m confident that I improve my understanding of the subject matter by taking these courses, but it’s difficult for me to provide concrete evidence of that. The same thing happens to me when I attempt to describe a good book to someone. Is this failing the result of normal aging or cognitive deficit from MS? Who knows? And really, who cares? I’m going to keep on learning either way.

Here are my other posts in this series:

1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
3. I Read Books
5. I Nap
6. I Blog
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs

This is the third in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.

As a child I was a voracious reader. I often had multiple library books checked out at the same time. At school I remember the Houghton Mifflin readers with names like Kaleidoscope, Galaxies, and Serendipity. Every Friday at school we enjoyed something called the Weekly Reader. We also had a package of short pieces called SRA Reading Lab. Students would read a story printed on a fold-out card and then answer questions about it. As we progressed through the cards, we reached different color-coded achievement levels. Between my love of reading and my competitive spirit, I was always way ahead of the class in SRA.

I absolutely lived for the periodic Scholastic book orders. Deciding among all the interesting choices for books was one level of fun, but nothing matched the thrill of seeing the teacher open up a large cardboard box and distribute everyone’s books when they arrived weeks later. I smelled them. I ran my fingers over the glossy covers. I lost myself in their pages.

But then I grew up, and I no longer made as much time for reading. Oh, I’ve always had book in progress, but during my 20s and 30s it would often take me forever to finish one. I was too caught up in my life to slow down and smell the ink, as it were.

My young-adult equivalent of the Scholastic book orders was the Book-of-the-Month Club. Until the first Borders store was built near me, soon to be followed by the invention of Amazon.com, the BOMC was my primary method for getting a reading fix. I was surprised to find that they still exist today.

But since I went on disability retirement four years ago, I’ve been able to reignite my passion for reading.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, about two years ago I stopped reading books made from trees and started reading e-books, because paper books became too difficult for me to hold and turn the pages. My first e-reader was a Kindle, which I still use to this day when reading in bright sunlight. I’ve stayed with this platform. I have a Kindle reading app on my laptop, on my android cell phone, and on my iPad Mini. All of these devices sync with one another so that I never have to thumb through scroll through the pages to figure out where I left off.

So Mitch, what books are you reading these days? Okay, I’ll tell you. But remember, you asked!

I have a wide variety of interests. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve read in the last couple of years.

True Accounts of World War II

Although there has never been a period in human history with more suffering, there has probably never been a period in human history where more great stories were born. No need for fiction here:

· Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
· In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson
· The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45, Stephen E. Ambrose
· Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, Mitchell Zuckoff
· Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, Ben Macintyre
· I also read the well-known Vietnam War chronicle called Dispatches, by Michael Herr

Books about Neuroscience and Human Behavior


Since my diagnosis with a chronic neurological disorder, I’ve taken a keen interest in neuroscience, and just what makes humans so, well, human. I’ve read such books as:

· The Telltale Brain: a Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, V. S. Ramachandran
· Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schulz
· Lying (Kindle Single), Sam Harris
· Free Will, Sam Harris
· Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
· The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, Michael Shermer
· The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg

It is a commonly accepted notion that human morality does not fall in the purview of science. I respectfully disagree, and so does Sam Harris in his book:

· The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

Novels


I try to alternate between nonfiction and fiction books. But I must admit, even the most important and enlightening nonfiction books can be a slog to get through. When I fall into a good novel, however, I consume it within a few days. Here are some examples:

· Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins
· Stieg Larsson’s millennium trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
· Stoner, John Williams
· Charles Frazier’s Nightwoods and Thirteen Moons
· John Grisham’s The Litigators, Calico Joe, and The Racketeer

Books about Humanism and Select Topics in Religion


As a secular humanist, years ago I read all the landmark atheist books by such heavyweights as Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens. But I also read less confrontational humanist writing such as:

· Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, Greg Epstein

Being a nonbeliever in a religious world, I’ve probably read another 20 books of this sort over the past few years.

Still in the religion genre, I read two books by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is a former Somali Muslim turned atheist, who writes on behalf of women who suffer terribly in fundamentalist Muslim countries and families:

· Infidel
· Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations

I’m a bit of a feminist, so I also read a book by a former nun turned atheist who worked under Mother Teresa:

· An Unquenchable Thirst: A Memoir, Mary Johnson

I recently finished the memoir by Salman Rushdie, about his years in hiding, surviving the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa:

· Joseph Anton: A Memoir

Books about Multiple Sclerosis


Not so much anymore. When I was diagnosed, and for the first few years after, I read everything I could about this mysterious disease. But there’s very little in print that gives more than a passing mention to my particular type of MS. I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago detailing all the MS/Disability books in my library, and I encourage you to visit that post if you are interested in this genre of reading. Going forward, if you find any new and interesting books on MS, please let me know.

Although I’m a huge sports fan, I rarely read books written by athletes. I find them to be filled with a little bit too much “I am living proof that you can accomplish anything if you just set your mind to it.” In fact, I wrote a blog post about that very sentiment. Nevertheless, I have in my Kindle queue right now a book called:

Francona: The Red Sox Years, Terry Francona, Dan Shaughnessy

As a lifetime Red Sox fan, I’m looking forward to that read…perhaps on a warm, sunny Jamaican beach.

Here are my other posts in this series:

1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
5. I Nap
6. I Blog
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs

This is a follow-up to my earlier post What Do I Do All Day? I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos, and is only for those people who are interested in some of the nuts and bolts issues regarding a project such as this. The rest of you can return to chewing your toenails, plucking stray chest hairs, or whatever else you do to pass the time. 

Disclaimer: I’m no expert on this subject. I’ll discuss what I learned throughout my project, but by no means am I saying that my way is the only way, the best way, or even a good way. But it is one way.

Setting up the project

There are lots of proprietary programs that you can use to manage your photo database. However, it is my humble opinion that you don’t want to be reliant on those programs. What if they fall out of favor or go out of business? With this in mind, first you need to create individual .jpg files for each and every photograph. After you’ve built that folder, you can use these other programs for organizing, presenting, or sharing. My point is, don’t be completely beholden to any particular program.

You need to think about a file naming system

It makes a lot of sense to organize your photograph files by year. Of course, depending on your situation, you may also want to organize it in other ways, for example:

Photos taken by Dad when he was married to my mother, Jane

Photos taken by Dad when he was married to that slut, Betty

But within such categories, give serious consideration to organizing by year. This means that the first four digits of your filename should represent the year. The next few digits, maybe three digits, should be used to place the individual files in the order you would like them to appear, usually chronologically within the year. If you happen to have dates on all your photos, then you can use 2 digits for month and 2 digits for day. In my case, I usually didn’t have precise dates, so I just used three-digit numbers such that early in the year I was in the 100s in late in the year I was in the 900s.

So, a typical filename might be:

1964 133.jpg

or

1972 904.jpg

Note: For the remainder of the filename discussion I am going to drop the .jpg extension, with the understanding that it applies to all files.

At this point you may or may not want to add further qualifiers to your filename to describe where the source materials can be found. In the case of my father’s slides, I added three characters for the box number (I labeled each slide box with a two digit number) and three characters for the slide number within the box. In this way, a typical filename might be:

1964 133 B06S18

or

1972 904 B18S05

These are just examples to illustrate how you can use smart file naming to cross-reference your digital files with the actual photos. There’s a good chance that the original photos will never, ever be touched again after you finish scanning them, but you just can’t be sure.

Here’s another helpful hint regarding file naming. If you have five pictures that you are scanning, don’t name them this way:

1971 250
1971 251
1971 252
1971 253
1971 254

Instead, leave some space between them in case you want to reorder the files a little bit, or you decide to add files in between these at a later time. Maybe give them the following filenames instead:

1971 250
1971 260
1971 270
1971 280
1971 290

With a lot of my files I would also add some text at the end of all these numbers to indicate important information about the photo, such as who is in the photo and other pertinent information. I essentially embedded captions in the filename. Again, I know lots of proprietary photo management programs allow captions, but to the best of my knowledge they only work within that proprietary program. If anybody knows this not to be true, please let me know!

So I might end up with a filename something like:

1941 345 Venice Sturgeon 10th birthday.jpg

Hardware

For photo prints I used a flatbed scanner. Actually, it is part of my scanner/printer combo that I bought for just over $100. Here are some similar units.

I tried this style of sheet fed photo scanner but didn’t have a lot of luck with it. If you feed hundreds of prints into the scanner without a protective sheath, then the rollers get dirty and you end up with lines on your digital images. The sheath was too difficult for me to use, because of my poor hand dexterity. If you don’t have this problem, then perhaps this style of scanner will work for you.

If you do use a flatbed scanner, then for efficiency reasons you’ll want to place as many photos on the scanner frame as you can. Then you’ll need a piece of software to crop the individual photos out of the single scan that you get. I’ll address that further in the software section.

For slides, I used a special scanner that I purchased from Brookstone. I couldn’t actually operate the slide scanner, but my son Zachary did it for me at 10 cents per slide :-).

Software

Every time that I scanned a group of photos onto my computer, I would load that sheet of photos into a program called Photoshop Elements. I would then use Photoshop to crop this group of photos into the individual photos. I also learned some skills for improving the images in the following ways:

Brightness adjustments
color adjustments
cropping individual photos
repairing blemishes
straightening crooked photos

One image problem that cannot be improved with Photoshop, at least to the best of my knowledge, is to take a picture that has poor focus and bring it into focus. I just don’t think that can be done, unfortunately.

I took an adult education course in Photoshop to learn these very basic skills. I’m sure you could also learn introductory Photoshop skills from a book. Other than cropping the photos, you don’t need to learn any Photoshop skills in the short-term. You can always come back and work on improving the photos if you later acquire the skills to do so.

Digitizing videos

My parents didn’t have any videos, but Kim and I had a collection of video footage on VCR tapes. I borrowed a device from a friend of mine. I also had to borrow a VCR player, because we allowed all of ours to disappear.

It was pretty straightforward to bring all of the video footage onto my hard drive. Note that these files are very large, and if you are short on hard drive space that could be problematic. You can always offload each video onto other media such as writable DVDs after you digitize it.

I went one step further and edited the videos to crop out any boring or irrelevant parts. I don’t have the skill to improve the videos as much as I was able to improve the photos, but at least I trimmed a lot of the fat. The software that I used for this is called PowerDirector.

Protecting the files

Every night when you go to bed, you should assume that when you wake up the next morning your computer’s hard drive will have crashed, and you will have lost everything on it. So you should never leave too much material on your hard drive that has not been backed up onto another device. I employ the following backup strategy.

I have a backup, standalone hard drive that I plug into my computer USB port. I back up any data, music, video, or picture files that I have on my computer. I do this about once a week or so.

But that’s not good enough. What if you have a house fire or water damage, or someone steals your computer and backup hard drive? For these reasons you also need to have your files backed up off-site. I do this through a program called Carbonite. I pay about $50 a year and my files are continuously backed up. In fact, if I scanned in five new photographs, within a few minutes this program would notice the new files and back them up. If a plane were to crash into my house tomorrow, and I somehow survived, I could reload a new computer with my personal backed up files from Carbonite’s website.

So all my important files exist in three places: my internal hard drive, my external hard drive, and the cloud (as provided by Carbonite).

If you have any suggestions to offer based on your own experience, please share them in the comments section.

If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact me at email@enjoyingtheride.com. I’ll do my best to help you.

This is the second in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.

I slowly turn the pages of a dusty old album, uncovering photos that I’ve never seen before, photos that perhaps nobody has laid eyes on for 50 years. The images looking back at me begin to paint a picture of what life was like for my ancestors in the 1940s, or 1950s, well before I was born. For a while it’s as if I’m on an archaeological dig, unearthing fairly interesting pieces of jewelry or pottery. Then I turn the page one more time, and a picture just jumps out at me. I pause and admire this rare artifact. Perhaps it’s my parents, before children, posing hand in hand. Or maybe it’s my mother, the sweet, god-fearing, angelic person that she was, her ball cap turned backwards, in a drunken embrace with her friends who are clutching bottles of whiskey. Maybe it’s a picture of me as an eight-year-old striking a thoughtful pose, belying a measure of wisdom not yet earned. These are the types of extraordinary memories unearthed by digging through long forgotten family photos. There’s nothing like it.

There are so many reasons that our knowledge of our ancestors is lacking, but some of those reasons do not exist going forward. We now have the ability, and I would argue the obligation, to share our lives, our times, with those who will follow us. One basic step toward that end is archiving family photos and videos. This is a task that I took up with vigor after I stopped working a few years ago. Only recently did I complete the first phase. The photos and videos are all digitized, and stored in a secure manner.

I realize that many of you are simply too busy for such a venture. But I have an abundance of time, so I took on this project from scratch, if you will. However, there are services available which will digitize these photos and videos for you. It may be expensive, but it is money well spent. Once you digitize the photos and videos, and store the files in a safe location (or two, or three), then you can take your sweet time doing whatever it is you decide to do with these memories.

But you need to get your images digitized, and you need to do it sooner rather than later, for several reasons. First, these old photos and videos slowly and steadily deteriorate over time. I saw this repeatedly with my parents’ oldest photographs, and it was a shame. Second, these old photos and videos are subject to being lost, or suffering damage from fires, floods, and leaky roofs, not to mention overzealous attic cleanings. Third, it really helps to catalog these items before the oldest members of your family have passed away. I started digitizing my father’s slide collection a few months before he died, and I was able to question him about several of the slides. However, much of my work was done after both of my parents had passed away. I so wish I could’ve asked about the circumstances of some of these scenes. But it’s too late now.

I enjoyed a mostly happy childhood, or at least that’s how I remember it. Throughout this archiving process I reconnected with my youth, and became newly acquainted with my parents’ early lives. Sure, many, if not most of the people in the oldest photos have passed away, but I feel their spirit anew. Along with the tender, nostalgic feelings come occasional moments of sadness and loss. However, my prevailing sentiments are those of connection, discovery, and delight. Because of what I’m doing with my ancestors’ materials and my own materials, future generations of my family will feel this way too.

It has been a physical challenge for me to scan so many photos. Because MS has affected the dexterity and strength in my hands, in most cases I was unable to remove photos from their albums or slides from their boxes, and then replace them after scanning. Zach and Kim helped me out significantly. Also, I took my sweet time. I probably never scanned more than 25 pictures in a single day.

Scanning videos was more straightforward. I borrowed a friend’s device that is placed between a VCR player and a computer, and the videos were simply streamed directly to my hard drive over the period of a few days.

Now that I possess this wonderful collection, both my parents’ photos and those of Kim and me (we didn’t start taking digital pictures until about 2000), I have many of options on how to share them. In addition to sending around DVDs, etc. to friends and relatives, I know there are online services to facilitate sharing. My parents’ collection alone is over 2000 photos, spanning 80 years, so I’m not sure which online venue is best. I think some sort of invitation-only format would be appropriate. Suggestions?

As many of you with MS can understand, after spending my entire adult life frantically advancing my career, it was more than a little deflating to suddenly stop. But it’s projects like this one that help take the sting out of being home on disability. I can’t think of a better use for my time.

In a separate post, I will share some of the nuts and bolts lessons that I’ve learned through this long process, for the benefit of those of you who might be interested in diving into a similar project.

Here are my other posts in this series:

1. I Watch (mostly) Quality Television
3. I Read Books
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
5. I Nap
6. I Blog
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs

This is the first in a series of posts about how a disabled person like me passes the time at home, now that I no longer work.

Television is roundly criticized as a colossal waste of time. Granted, there’s a lot of crap on television that deserves to be ridiculed, but I’m here to tell you that there is a lot of quality television available as well. You just have to do some legwork (sample a lot of awful shows) to find the gems.

There are two basic categories of shows – network television and cable television. In general, the drama and comedy series on cable, such as those on HBO or Showtime, are superior to those on network television, such as ABC or Fox. But the seasons are relatively short for the cable shows. A typical run will be 12 consecutive, weekly shows, which are completed in three months. Most network shows spread 20 – 25 episodes out over approximately eight months.

Believe it or not (for those who know me, this is sarcasm), I keep a spreadsheet of the cable television shows I watch, how many seasons have been completed, and when or if the next season will begin. I don’t know why I make so many spreadsheets. You may as well ask me why I breathe so often.

Kim doesn’t care for television. She has only a few shows that she watches during the week, and I watch those with her. Other than that, I tend to record most of the programs that I’m interested in and watch them the next day while Kim is at work, rather than watching them live in the evening while ignoring Kim. Also, by viewing recorded shows I’m able to fast-forward through the commercials. This is particularly important during a political season, which seems to be most of the time these days.

Here is a list of the TV series that I watch on cable. I have rated each show on a scale of 1 to 10 for overall quality.

HBO

• Boardwalk Empire 6 (would get a higher rating if not for the over-the-top, gratuitous violence)
• Curb Your Enthusiasm 8
• Girls 7 (apparently I’m not too old and too male to watch this show)
• The Newsroom 7
• Veep 8

Showtime

• The Big C 7
• Californication 6
• Episodes 7
• Homeland 9
• House of Lies 4 (I’ve put it on probation)
• Nurse Jackie 8
• Shameless 7

Miscellaneous Cable Shows

• Breaking Bad (AMC) 9
• Downton Abbey (PBS) 8
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX) 6
• The League (FX) 6
• Mad Men (AMC) 9
• Portlandia (IFX) 6

Here are some network shows, of the comedy and drama variety, which I watch. I’m going to rate them on a different scale than the cable shows, because it’s a little bit of an apples and oranges situation.

• 30 Rock B (series finale this week)
• The Big Bang Theory A+
• Community C
• Cougar Town C (I’m hoping that this improves now that they are on TBS)
• Grey’s Anatomy C
• How I Met Your Mother A
• The Middle B
• Modern Family A
• The Office B
• Parks and Recreation A
• Smash (I fast-forward through most of the singing and dancing) B
• Two and a Half Men B (same rating I would’ve given it with Charlie Sheen)
• Whitney B (I think I’m in love)

Here are some other shows that I watch from time to time:

• 60 Minutes
• American Idol– once they are down to the final 12 (not sure I’m going to watch it at all this season)
• The Colbert Report
• The Daily Show
• Ellen
• Saturday Night Live
• The Today Show
• The Voice
• Sports, lots of sports
• News, lots of news (but usually it’s just on in the background because it tends to drive me crazy)

No apologies. This is what I watch, for better or worse. I don’t do cop or detective shows. They just don’t hold my interest. The only reality shows I watch are the occasional singing competitions. Notice that there are no History Channel or Discovery Channel, etc., shows in my list. Are there any that I should be watching?

I watch a lot more TV during the winter. In the summer, Kim is off for about eight weeks, and there are so many more options for passing the time in the real world. Even in the spring and fall when I can get outdoors by myself during the day, the television sits idle for long periods of time. But in the winter, if not for television I am certain that I would go stir crazy.

If television were my only answer to the question “What Do I Do All Day?”, then I would have a problem. But that’s far from reality, as you will see in my subsequent posts on this topic. To a certain extent TV educates me and makes me a more informed and well-rounded person. But primarily it just makes me happy, and isn’t that what entertainment is for. 

I look forward to your comments about specific shows, and about television watching in general.

Here are my other posts in this series:

2. I Digitize and Archive Family Photos and Videos
3. I Read Books
4. I Attend Courses at Top Universities (sort of)
5. I Nap
6. I Blog
7. I Read Other People’s Blogs