Commuter Rail to Creativity

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This is the 7:35 AM out of South Station headed south west to its final stop.   It soon shall be going in the opposite direction as the 8:45AM back to South Station.

Coming and going it looks the same.

Me, too.

I look the same coming back this morning at 8:35 AM (when I took a series of photos of this train) as I did when I went at 8:10 AM to drop off my main computer at the computer technician.   His name is Dave.  He has saved me before and fingers crossed he shall do it again.  But, there’s that pit in my stomach that anyone knows who has the back-up system as well as the main computer go phfloooey on you.  What if all my work was lost?

Yes, I’ve heard there are recovery specialists but they are expensive.  Raw photos and thousands of them take up a lot of memory.

So, I dropped it off and looked for secondary signs that things were going to be OK.  I was not going to be lost.  The woman behind the counter treated the issues as if they were solvable.  “Oh, yeah, we’ll get that Time Machine back for you.”  Oh, yeah, we’ll have your computer repaired in  five days.”

She made me feel better.  She knows nothing about computers, however.  If Dave calls me and says he can’t fix the computer without replacing something that will wipe out the contents BUT he can get my Time Machine back-up system to work again, I’ll be OK.

But, if that doesn’t happen, then I’ll just have to do what I have been doing.  Go out each day and photograph something.  We know I love trains and things in motion and photographs from behind the wheel, so I started again, this morning, day one of my new portfolio with the 7:35AM out of South Station.  What I’ve learned about creativity can’t be lost.

Now, that really made me feel better.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

7 Replies to “Commuter Rail to Creativity”

  1. Gulp and yikes and oh how I share your train, um, pain.

    Our reliance on this electronic box is daunting and the waiting to find out how bad or not bad it is, is interminable. Dave. Dave sounds like a guy who will come through for you while you continue to add more great images like this one to your coffers.

    I hope you’re on the receiving end of good news.

    ( I see my fellow Virgin Islander Don, paid you a visit, above )

  2. oh they have all kinds of miraculous ways to retrieve lost data these days. i had one crash so bad right in the middle of some serious work and had no backup. i thought i was a goner. then the guy used this thing called ‘drive genius’. not only did he get all my data back, but he fixed the whole thing and even repaired the cd drive which wasnt working for a while. meanwhile i nailbitingly got a new one, well cuz that one was already six years old, like an old pal. now the two computers are friends. hooked up together too. aint life grand!
    and i can hear that train shooshing by, gorgeous.

  3. Great shot. I love the way how the boom gate is sharp.

    As for hard drives, I bought an external HD with a terabyte of memory (My book) and is was quite cheap.

    It recently saved my bacon when one of my other hard drives (I have four) failed and I lost all the websites that I’ve done for clients. Luckily I had them backed up and I didn’t have to spend an eternity downloading the webpages from a multitude of remote servers. It would’ve been a nightmare as some of the larger sites have over 700 images on them.

    The only reason why I bought such a large back up drive was because a client of mine freaked out when he found out that I didn’t have an independent back up and read me the riot act.

  4. Wonderful photo! My fingers are crossed for your computer and Dave’s skill. I know how scary this is.

    Happy New Year to you, too, by the way. I don’t know what I’m doing on Tuesday. I’m still trying to work out a way to get down there. I’ll let you know what happens …

    Here is my favorite bit: “so I started again, this morning, day one of my new portfolio with the 7:35AM out of South Station. What I’ve learned about creativity can’t be lost.” Something so powerful. It really resonated with me.

  5. Thanks, Don, and welcome. I went to your site and couldn’t help but be entranced by your color palette compared to snowy New England! I think you must love trains to travel all the way from St. Croix to here!

    Bonnie, Oh, thank you for sharing my train! Still no news but I’m putting up, after these comments, photo #2 for my new portfolio. In some ways, it has made me a bit frantic and then also quite confident that my creative habit is truly the product of the past few months, not the individual shots.

    Oh, Tipota! That makes me feel so hopeful to hear your story. I tend to catastrophe when things go wrong, so its comforting to hear your words. As usual!

    I know Sweetiegirlz! Maybe they should have a computer nerds calendar?? Oh, I’m laughing now. You shoot it cuz you are better with people photography!

    Razz! I have my fingers crossed. I have so many damn hard drives that are all full. Plus, the Time Machine is a 1 Terabyte and that is 100g from being filled. How many flippin’ back-ups of back-ups does a girl need?? I’m about to find out. I can’t wait to see pictures of your new pond–you pondmaker, you.

    Stacie, Oh, I so think you should go to DC. I was going to go but the size of the crowds anticipated scare me. If I were young like you, I’d say, “What the hell…” You’ll be sorry if you don’t, and you are almost there. If not, I’d for sure find me a spot near the train tracks to tip your hat as his train goes by. And, you know, the part you highlighted in my post is truly the most important to me as well. Amidst the frantic feeling, there is this kernel of calm. It is so like the past months as well.

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