Such a doofus!

I've been uploading photos to the Shutterfly website because I got an email from them saying that I could get a free photo book.  You might remember from a previous post that I had uploaded over 200 photos to the Snapfish website because they had 50% off on photo books.  The website slowed down so much, however, that I wasn't able to get even halfway through a 20 page book before the offer expired. 

So, now comes this deal from Shutterfly, which means I have to upload the 200+ photos again, this time to their website.  They have an Express Uploader that can be downloaded.  That worked pretty well for the first 100 photos, but then it all bogged down and would only upload 1 or 2 before the uploader stopped working.  I uninstalled it once and reinstalled, but that didn't help.  Then I tried uploading using the old uploader.  But, no luck there either.

I looked at the Help section and found out that I could upload directly to Shutterfly from the Picasa program that "captures" (my word, not Picasa's) all the photos I download to my computer.  I installed Picasa a year or two ago.  That's where I do my photo editing.  It has some other cool bells and whistle, such as facial recognition...which tries to select faces from every image I save to the computer and group them with like faces.  In other words, every time Wayne, say, is in a picture, it saves that picture in a folder with all the rest of the Wayne pictures.  Seemed like a good idea when I enabled that function...but, now I'm beginning to wonder why I would ever need such a file. 

But here's why I'm such a doofus.  I have been popping back and forth between the recliner in the bedroom and the computer in the office, looking to see if the photos have finished uploading so I can select and upload the next batch.  After doing that several times, I thought, "Idiot!  You have a laptop and a wireless connection!"  So, I unplugged the laptop, and wiggled the A/C adapter from the power strip thingy.  I took the plug into the bedroom and plugged it in and then brought the laptop in and got comfy.  I can watch television and upload pictures and post to my blog...all at the same time! Nice...but kinda dumb that I forgot I could do that. 

As if that wasn't dumb enough, when I got into the recliner with the computer on my lap, I forgot to plug it in.  I never noticed until the display dimmed a little bit.  By then, it had only about 56% battery life left.  And that was the second time in less than 24 hours that has happened.  Last night I had used the laptop in the bedroom and when I finished, I unplugged from the laptop and then from the power strip.  I took the A/C adapter back into the office and plugged it in, and then took the laptop back to the office.  And forgot to plug it in.  It was backing up some files to Carbonite, so I didn't shut it down.  It ran out of juice sometime during the night, poor thing.  I suppose I should just get in the habit of taking the laptop and the A/C adapter at the same time.  I think I might remember to plug it in if I did that.

I know one thing...I need to buy a 2nd A/C adapter so I can leave the one in the office plugged in.  I'm going to leave parts of it in the power strip one of these days if I have to keep wiggling it out.  And then I would be, to quote my mother, who never cussed, "in a mell of a hess."