Thursday, March 23, 2023

Flashback to the Fourth


I've told you that I'm trying to clean out some of our stuff. Well, Dave has an old iPad that he hasn't used in years. It's been sitting on a stack of his paperwork near the couch, untouched. My mission is to eliminate this stack, so the other day I charged up the iPad and looked through it to see if there's anything on it that we needed to keep.

I came across these two old photos of Dave and Olga in the garden from July 4, 2015. We had a party that day. I uploaded the pictures from the iPad to my Flickr account and discovered they were taken with my Canon camera. So then I excavated the depths of my photo archives and found the original files. I don't know why I never put them on Flickr or anywhere I could see them, because they're good shots. (I must have e-mailed low-res versions to Dave, which is how they wound up on his iPad.)

So, today on the blog, a blast from the past -- almost eight years ago!

I'm still unclear what we're going to do with the iPad itself. It still works but it's so old it can't run any modern apps, so maybe we'll just wipe it and give it away or recycle it.


Yesterday was a half-day at school. We worked more on the tornado, setting up panels of readers to review the challenged books. I'm on two panels so I'll be reading two books over the next week or two. I suppose I can manage that. First I've got to finish "The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.," which I've been neglecting for the past several days. (I am not a person who can read multiple books at a time. I like to finish one before starting the next.)

We had classes in the morning and meetings all afternoon, including an all-school gathering where the librarians received applause from our colleagues for dealing with this book challenge. It was good to have everyone's support. Then I went to the pub with my co-worker Chris for a catch-up. We hadn't really talked since we went to see the William Morris museum months ago.

Today and tonight we're supposed to receive "heavy and torrential downpours at times." Big excitement!

There were 94 comments in my spam folder this morning, going all the way back to 2007. Again, mostly my own. (Sigh)

29 comments:

gz said...

That's a nice photo of them both.

Good to hear that things are progressing and that librarians have support.

We had the heavy and torrential downpours last night, here..stay safe and dry!!

sparklingmerlot said...

So much going on in those photos! Olga looks happy. Dave has lovely eyes.
You deserved that round of applause.

Andrew said...

To use an old parlance, Dave wasn't a bad looker.

Are there not ewaste recycling places to take the old iPad to? Take it apart, score the hard drive and you don't have be fussy about putting it back together.

Moving with Mitchell said...

Such cute photos of Dave and Olga. That iPad made a good paperweight.

Yorkshire Pudding said...

Why two pictures of Dave? Is it a "Spot the Difference" competition? He appears to be holding Olga like a bundle of laundry.I trust that you will be removing anything by William Faulkner from the school library. After all, his books were banned in France during the Nazi occupation and those guys knew a thing or two about Literature.

Suzanne Connelly said...

Hillsborough county is going to try to go after the public library system. I liked Gender Queer so much I bought a copy, I'd love to talk about it with you sometime.

Marty said...

A perfect moment. Plenty of wine, handsome fella, and cuddly pooch.

Bob said...

Good on your co-workers for standing with you!

Ms. Moon said...

I, too, have an iPad that just...sits there.
Has anyone searched to see if there's a reason that old comments are being deleted? I get a few in my spam folder and I generally restore them but like I just said on Mr. P's blog, who cares if they are or not? It's sort of silly.
I got "The Last Confessions of Sylvia Plath" out of the library. I recognized it from your post. I will give it a whirl.
I, too, like the fact that your co-workers are supporting you librarians. You are the keepers of the books and as such, you are doing holy work in my opinion.

Beth Reed said...

Awesome photo of Dave and Olga. It's fun to look back on old memories. I am sure that you can take the iPad to a used computer shop, and they can either take it from you or they can recommend someplace else. Here we have places that actually buy our used electronics and they repair them or whatever and donate to places like homeless shelters. It is always good to give for places to keep little ones busy while they are out of their elements.

Dave and Olga look relaxed and happy. Dave is sure a handsome fellow!

Ellen D. said...

I have an old IPad also, handed down from my sister. I think I only used it to play solitaire on when I felt lazy and didn't want to turn on my "big" computer.
I think Dave is very handsome! And Olga is a pretty pup!

The Bug said...

Love those photos of Dave & Olga. She looks like a little pillow on his lap :)

I have an ancient iPad too. I used to plug it into our sound system & play music on Pandora. But now our cable has music channels so I rarely go through the trouble anymore.

Marcia LaRue said...

Thanks for sharing the old photo of Dave ... it reminds me of an old boyfriend! Sigh!

Ed said...

We have an original iPad that we still use. While very few apps still work on it, Facebook and Messenger still do so we use those apps to video facetime my wife's family back home in the Philippines. As long as we both have wifi access, it is essentially free communication.

NewRobin13 said...

I love the old photos of Dave and Olga. Such sweet faces they both have.
I am so glad that you have the applause and support from your colleagues. This is such an interesting thing to be dealing with there. I am looking forward to updates.
I am surprised by the spam folders comments going back 16 years. Why are they showing up in your spam folder now? Very strange.

Red said...

Regularly in Sept our school got a box of junior fiction for teachers to red and assess.

Sharon said...

Great photos of Dave and Olga. If you have an Apple store near by, they will recycle them. I have one I need to take in too.
94 comments in the spam folder is crazy.

Boud said...

Dave is cute..and I'm glad the library staff is getting support. One of friends took back an ancient iPad to the store and got a significant reduction on her new one. Trade in value.

37paddington said...

Love the photos of Dave with Olga as a toddler!

The Padre said...

Olga Girl !!!

Margaret said...

That's so weird that it's seeing your own comments as spam. Perhaps because there are so many of them--back when you used to respond to each comment in an individual comment. That's a great photo of Dave and Olga!

Jim Davis said...

What a great photo of your family! Very pleased to hear about the process your school is using to deal with the "tornado". Let us hope reason prevails.

Kelly said...

What wonderful photos of Dave and Olga!! The top one is my favorite. I love Olga's 'side-eye'. I never thought of her as a lap dog before! 😂

Claudia said...

I am glad things seem to be working out with the Tornado. Reading the books is of course the way to go. I imagine that you have already read some of them because of the on going controversy. Nothing like banning a book to encourage students to read them as well.

Catalyst said...

Great photo of Dave and Olga. You should print and frame that. It's a keeper.

River said...

"so old it can't run any apps'
I have the same trouble with my ipods, which are now obsolete and neither windows10 or itunes recognises them so I haven't been able to edit the playlist for several years now.
I'm glad you found those lovely pictures of Dave and Olga though. I hope you get the stack of paperwork whittled down.

Steve Reed said...

GZ: Our downpours never materialized!

Caro: Dave DOES have lovely eyes, I concur. :)

Andrew: We could recycle it at school, I think, but now Dave is thinking he wants to keep it so who knows?

Mitchell: That's exactly what it is at this point!

YP: Faulkner might be banned for being boring! LOL

Suzanne: I loved "Gender Queer." I feel like it taught me so much about gender identity and expression. It's a great book!

Marty: It was a good moment, and finding the pictures was such a good reminder!

Bob: Yeah, we've had great support from everyone. It's been nice.

Ms Moon: I like keeping all the comments. They're part of the post, to my way of thinking. Maybe it's the archivist/librarian in me. :)

Beth: It would be great to find someone who could use it, but now Dave is thinking he might want to keep it!

Ellen D: Maybe that's what I'll do too -- keep it around for quick online tasks. But then, we have phones for that too.

Bug: You can see how happy she is to be on his lap, all cozy. She thinks she's much smaller than she actually is!

Marcia: Sigh indeed! Hopefully they're good memories. :)

Ed: Oh, Facetime is a good idea. I bet we could use it to talk to Dave's parents. We usually do that on the computer but maybe the iPad would be easier.

Robin: Yeah, I have no idea! Blogger is obviously going back through old posts and culling comments for some reason.

Red: Interesting! We have publishers here who send out boxes of books on spec but we rarely buy from them.

Sharon: OK, good to know! I'd like to get rid of it. Maybe I'll sneak it out when Dave's not looking. :)

Boud: I think if we could get something for it, Dave would be more inclined to let it go.

37P: Ha! Or a young adult, anyway. She was about five by then.

Padre: YOUNG Olga girl!

Margaret: Maybe. I really think brevity is part of it. I often respond with just a few words and that seems to trigger Blogger's spam filter.

Jim: So far, so good. I will report back!

Kelly: She's really NOT a lap dog, but she thinks she is. :)

Claudia: Yeah, I've read several of them already. But I'll re-read them now with an eye toward the complaints.

Catalyst: If it's here on the blog (and on Flickr) I'm much more likely to see it than if it's hidden away in my archives!

River: Yeah, iPods are REALLY old technology. I still have my original iPod but I haven't turned it on in probably ten years. I'm not even sure it still works.

John Going Gently said...

Handsome pair

Jeanie said...

Those photos of Dave and Olga are precious. I'm glad you resurrected them. I don't envy you your task of reading the books but it should be interesting and instructive. I'm glad you all got well deserved applause. I'm curious about the criteria for evaluating the books. I should think that would be tough. And when you deal with zealots on the other side, you've got to get it right or they'll just take over. UGH>