once i'm all done with this hard drive failure fiasco, i'm going to do a summary blog entry but what i've been doing lately, since i was able to recover my digital photos, is printing the damn things out! one of the christmas presents i received was a photo album for just that but my ass didn't get around to it until it was pointed out to my by the computer gods how important it is to have multiple copies of files, including hard copies of soft copies. i'm using twiddle thumbs's photo printer which is a standard home consumer printer. nothing fancy, probably even on the cheap end. my digital camera is definitely on the cheap end--that's the main reason why i bought it. given those 2 factors, i didn't expect much of my prints but i am so impressed. each time i print i become more impressed with the results. damn these look good! it's more rewarding to physically hold photos than it is to scroll through them on a computer. it's like the difference between holding a vinyl record and holding a cd. some pleasures of the tangible do not have an alternative.