fun with numbering my photos.

Ever since I first started creating and using digital photo files (about 9 years now), I have been dealing with the issues around organizing, naming, and finding the photos I want, when I want them.

Now that I am a librarian, I work all day every day to make information accessible and findable for anyone and everyone who wants or needs it. So these issues are even more in the forefront of my mind.

For many years now I have used this method to name my files. Basically, every photo I take or scan gets renamed. The name starts with a 4 digit number, indicating the year and month of the photo, then a space, then a brief descriptive name. The description is almost always proper nouns, such as names of people or places.

When I search for photos, I am almost always looking for a person or a place. If I type "Barry" in my search engine, all photos of "Barry" will come up. And since all photos are dated with numbers, the search results will list the photos of Barry in chronological order, with the year first. Even if the photo is just Barry's name, I can see that a photo with 87 at the beginning is one of Barry's baby pictures, and 07 will be close to his senior year in college. Photos are also stored in descriptive folders that usually have the event name on them (as well as the date). So I don't need to label the photo (usually) that this is Barry at Christmas, or Barry at the beach, or Barry having a birthday party. The folders will say that. If I search for "Christmas" all Christmas folders will come up, and all the photos will have a 12 in the number, for December.

Overall I have been reallyhappy with this system. I tried switching to iPhoto several years ago and that was a giant fail. I won't belabor the point. I have since used Adobe Bridge and it alleviated every problem I had with iPhoto. I love Bridge. However, I still want to be able to move my photos around, from computer to computer, and be able to access and use my files no matter what computer I use or have, or what software that computer has.

However there are some drawbacks to my system. Mostly I work around them, or live with them. The percentage of times where these drawbacks are too big to ignore is a small percent.

One of the main drawbacks is that photos cannot be stored chronologically, or in any other "story" mode, inside the relevant folders. All photos in a folder have the same date, so they all begin with the same 4 numbers. After the numbers, they sort alphabetically.

If the folder has 10 or 20 photos in it (or less), as the vast majority do, that is not a big deal. But say Mary and John got married last month and I have 300 pictures from the wedding -- this system breaks down if I want to see my photos in the folder "1109 Mary John Wedding" in the order of the day's events.

Say I open the folder itself. I want to see my photos of the event at least roughly in the order they happened. I want the photos taken before the ceremony to come before the ceremony itself photos. I want the walking down the aisle to come before the kiss. I want the ceremony to come before the reception.

The way I have been organizing and naming my files, this has been challenging to impossible. I have gotten around it by inserting letter codes in the file name:

1109 C aisle bridemaids
1109 C aisle John Mary
1109 C aisle Mary
1109 C vows John
1109 C vows Mary
1103 C vows Mary2

C is for Ceremony, R is for Reception, P is for Portraits, etc.

You can't really see the problem, looking at the list by file name above, which is why most of the time I can live with it. But if you tried looking at the photos as thumbnails in the folder, you would see that the bride and groom walk down the aisle together at the end of the ceremony, and therefore 1109 C aisle John Mary should be at the end of all the ceremony pictures. Because the folder sorts alphabetically, that photo is in the wrong spot.

What I really disliked was not being able to look at photos that I specifically took in a sequence -- like on my letterboxing hunts -- and see them in that sequence. When you are hiking through the woods and taking 4 trails, but not in a row, and all the trail pictures end up grouped together and you can't tell which trail is which, that can be very annoying.

So I lived with it. Never realizing that I had other problems that were hidden by this method. Problems I consider far more serious. It especially comes into play when you have -- as I do -- at least 100 old family photos scanned with no dates or names associated with them. Or names that mean nothing except they were written on the back of a paper photo that has been scanned. Or when you have multiple scans of certain photos, but all in the wrong folder. It's hard to tell, from a file name, that photos are missing, out of order, or duplicates. It's easy to tell when actually looking at the image itself.

About 8 weeks ago I had a Eureka moment. I decided that i could, in fact - YES - number my photos AND keep the date intact, in front.

It's so ridiculous. Maybe I thought of this before and just didn't like it at the time, or it "felt" wrong to me. I just know I didn't like having an extra space in there:

1109 1 aisle bridemaids
1109 2 aisle Mary
1109 3 vows John
1109 4 vows Mary
1103 5 vows Mary
1109 6 aisle John Mary

And I really didn't want to run the numbers together:

11091 aisle bridemaids
11092 aisle Mary
11093 vows John
11094 vows Mary
11035 vows Mary
11096 aisle John Mary

So this is what I came up with:

1109.01 bridemaids
1109.02 Mary aisle
1109.03 John vows
1109.04 Mary vows
1103.05 Mary vows
1109.06 John Mary recessional

The best thing is something I can't really show. It's that I can open up the folder and use the icon or thumbnail view. Instead of looking at the file names in order, I look at the images. In order. In order of when they happened. This is especially fantastic for photos of trips! I no longer have to separate photos from a trip into smaller subphotos based on the day or location. I want to look at all my related photos, together, not click a bunch of folders. In order to do that, I was inserting so many little letter codes, it got ridiculous and cumbersome:

0807 WD UD B me Jacob (Going on an Upper Dells boat tour in Wisconsin Dells with my nephew)

It's not a big deal if you use iPhoto or similar and always view your photos visually like that. But iPhoto did not work for me for many other reasons. More, I do not want my photo organization to rely on a piece of proprietary software. I have moved photos too often from computer to computer, from Macs to PCs, from laptop to external hard drive. The organization needs to be intrinsic to the files, not through software, and that means file structure and naming.

So now I am looking at folders, and i am seeing that I have photos missing. Photos I know I took, photos I own, but they are not in the folders. I am also seeing I have duplicate files. These dups come from scanning old family photos and not having a good tracking system to tell me what I already scanned. Since the photos are a jumble of people and babies I don't know and don't have names for, the file names are not helpful. And as anal as I can be, I had no real system for naming photos that were undated and unknown people. Now I am using the archives designation of "nd" (for no date) on photos without a date, but storing them in the decade folder closest to the probable date (1940s, 1950s, etc). If the photo is of people or events I do't know, it contains "unknown" int he file name. Now I can search for "unknown" and have them all come up, so I can ask my mother about them.

I'm also finding that when I look at photos this way - especially family heritage photos - I can recognize relationships between images. I can recognize that is the same woman in the four photos, and one of them was labeled with her name... so now I know the name of someone in all 4 photos. And since that is her baby, every time I see the baby in a photo, I know whose baby it is. This is immensely helpful when trying to figure out photos that are unidentified.

This is not really a method I'd recommend to everyone, unless you do it from now on. Going back to all my photo folders and renumbering my photos has been a project I've been working on since the summer. It is really a lot of work. I personally enjoy it. I find it relaxing and I like to organize things. I could spend all day just working on this stuff and be happy. That is why *I* have a degree in museum studies and one in library science. I can imagine many people would want to tear their hair out trying to do this! Actually, there have a been a few larger folders that have really been irritating. A couple of them are not done yet because I have to think about the story of the images and how to tell it visually.

To renumber my photos, I view the folder in thumbnail view. Then I go thru the files and replace the date number (1101, 1816, etc) with just a number, in order. 1 -2 -3 -4, in the order the photos should go. I continually refresh the folder to look at the pictures and see they are in the order I want. Yes this is a bit tricky and that's what keeps this from being a really boring project. Once I have the photos set in the order I want, I then add the date and the dot to the beginning of every file name. This would be a pain in a Windows interface, but it's easy on a Mac.

If I make a mistake and miss a photo, or someone sends me a photo I want to stick in the middle there, yep it's a pain. I have to renumber and resort. Again, I mostly enjoy the process, which is why it is not a giant waste of my time.

Now that I have spent this time with my photos, I am going on to all the places online where I have random photos stored - some on flickr, some on Photobucket, some on Snapfish, etc, and I am able to check and make sure I have on my computer all those photos, and then delete them from the online accounts. All that mess was making me twitchy. I have also found some photos (from other people) that I did not have, and downloaded them. I am also working on comparing my laptop files with my external hard drive and making sure they match.

It's the little things that make me happy!!

FPU : competition makes the world go round.

Or at least, mine!

So I am taking this FPU class and according to DAVE married couples are supposed to consult with each other before purchasing anything, and in making a monthly budget.

Well, shoot, I am not married? What do I do about that? Initially I was using my sister as my "accountability partner" since we are doing this class together. But now that's not gonna work.

My sister and I have decided to make this into a little friendly competition - who can save the Baby Emergency Fund faster. Now, she has more money coming in than I do (2 incomes) but she also has kids, and her husband is not 100% on board with the whole thing, which makes it more challenging. Since we can't really compare actual dollar amounts, we are using percentages to make it more fair.

So I am just posting this to proclaim that I have F I N A L L Y pulled ahead of her slightly in the savings category. *smug*

I know she reads this. That's right! I have more money saved than you do. How you like them apples? :-) Class is tonight!

PS. I won.

Fun with Financial Peace University

I just went and looked at my checking account balance. It is $101.00.

For some people that might be a lot of cash, and not too long ago I would have felt the same. But for me, right now, that is a very small amount of money to "live on" for another week (until payday).

The great thing is, I don't have to "live on it." I don't even need it. It's extra. I will probably not spend any of it at all.

FPU is supposed to be about getting out of debt and then, more importantly, building wealth. You only get out of debt so you can free up your income stream in order to build wealth. I would not be interested in a mere "get out of debt" plan, because I have lived within my means and paid off thousands of dollars in debt more than once. But I like the wealth-building part of it. I want to build some damn wealth. When you owe as much as I do in student loans, "wealth" is a very distant-seeming goal.

The name "Financial Peace" means something. It means PEACE. Peace along the way. Peace knowing I am taking some kind of steps. Peace knowing I am a force of nature in my own life. I am not letting life just happen -- I am happening to IT. I may or may not be successful, but I tell you what -- I always go down swinging.

Peace means when I have only $101.00, I have peace. Not because I pray to Jesus to not let anything come up this week, though that might work for you. Not because I have a credit card with an available $1000 or $5000 line of credit on it for "emergencies."

I have peace right now because I have already withdrawn all the cash that I need to live on, and I have it. In my actual possession. And I know it's what I need to live on, because I decided it's what I need. I don't just have a wad of cash in my purse. I have money alloted for the various needs I actually do have -- and some wants like hair and make up, entertainment, having fun, and eating out. I have withdrawn all the money I will need to live on for the next week for daily living. I have bought groceries and will not need to go to the store for a couple of weeks at least. I have set aside money for anything else I can think of. There are things I have not thought of, because I just started this thing, but hey, I have the $101.00 extra sitting there just in case anything is truly needed that I did not think of.

And I have money saved. Money for me. Money put aside. Right now it is several hundred dollars. Not a huge amount, but...

I will tell you, Internetz, due to being in school for years, and before that trying to pay off debt, it has been many years since I have had several hundred dollars of cash available to me, that I have put aside for the long term. Occassionally I have put money aside for an upcoming trip or purchase, but never very much for Life's Little Emergencies. So when they have happened, they truly were an Emergency!

When I looked at my bank balance today, I started to feel this tightness in my chest. This sense of anxiety. I was not actually hyperventilating, but I was getting a little wiggy in my head. Subliminally I have felt that all my life, and now I know what it is, because I live without it a lot more of the time these days.

I was able to look in my purse and see envelopes with money for the day. I know I have more money at home. And I have a savings. I was able to look at my list of monthly bills and see that anything I need to pay online out of this paycheck, is paid. And I have taken money out of my last paycheck, and put some in there, so I paid myself first. So I probably have no reason to make any more withdrawals at all.

I also have made 2 small gifts to organizations of my choice. I am not giving away 10% a month like a tithe, but I am enjoying thinking about who I want to give money to, and who will get my small gift next month. I have some ideas. :-) My small amounts will not set the world on fire, but they give me some peace. Peace knowing I don't need to miserly keep every thin dime and penny that comes across my path. I can choose to give some of what I have to others, and to support causes and groups in which I believe. Believe it or not, that spiritual discimpline also makes a difference, in your training. That's what I am doing -- training.

No it's not all sunshine and roses. One thing I need, right now, and do not have money set aside for, is a crown for this root canal I had last month. I don't want to have gone through all that pain and trouble just to lose this tooth. So I don't want to spend that $101.00. I want it to stay there and be added to. I could just call it "Dentist" money, take it out, and stick it in an envelope. But I am going to leave it there.

That's another form of training. Learning to leave it alone.

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1. Photo from "How to Create a Household Budget: Part 6." Trees Full of Money weblog. 12 Mar 2010.

financial peace university.

So. Last month I started attending a Financial Peace University class at a local Lutheran church. If you have not heard of it, FPU is a Christian-faith based, church-centered program for getting out of debt and building wealth. My sister wanted to go, and I said I would do it with her.

If you know much about me, you might rightly be wondering, "WTF?" For the record, lightning did not strike me out of the sky when I put my hand on the church doors, and the metal did not burn my hand, hee. It is true that "prayer" is a strong component of the program. Sometimes... I do get a bit um... twitchy... when I have to listen about how everything I have belongs to God and I am just a steward of God's resources. But that is another topic for another day.

I've been hearing about FPU for years, and I was curious enough about it to read the book The Total Money Makeover. At that time it was not for me. Most of it (it seemed) is geared toward couples / families, with a Christian perspective, who make around $40-60K a year, and have a lot of unsecured debt and large payments on things. For a single woman, devoutly non-Christian, who lived on cash mostly and very frugally already, it was not helpful. Well that is all still true, so the adaptation is a real bear, and I am not 100% on how to do some things. But I am trying.

A few weeks ago I was directed to this blog, where a young family paid off over $30,000 in student loan debt in less than 18 months. The wife worked part time, the husband did not have a regular job and was not getting clients, they have a house and a baby. I found it inspiring to read their story, and helpful to see the details of their failures and triumphs. I might not have thousands in car payments and credit card debt, but I do not want to be making minimum payments on my student loans for the rest of my life. I want to pay them off.

So I agreed to check out the first class for free. Anyway that's how I got started. Now after a month... well. There have been successes and failures. Not everything in this program makes sense from a math perspective. It is really more a behavior modification program than anything else.

I have modified some of my behavior. While I was always on a cash basis before (as much as possible), I used my debit card to swipe my purchases. Thus, I removed much of the emotional connection to my money and spending. Now, I physically use cash. It makes a huge difference. Huge.

Now, when payday comes, it is not just numbers on a paper that then become numbers on a website. I take a large chunk of cash out of the bank and I divvy it up into envelopes. When I want to buy something, I gotta get out the envelope and take out the cash. Then later write down what I spent on the tally and subtract. It can really be a PITA. So I don't buy stuff unless I feel like doing all that! It's a small deterrent but in the short term, that's all you need. After a few weeks (21 days to make a habit) your thought process has adjusted.

The other thing this does is make me think in advance about what I am going to buy and how much it is. Because our world makes it somewhat inconvenient to use and carry cash. I can use my debit card at restaurants and coffee shops, and I don't even have to sign a slip any more. I just hand it over. I don't have to look at the receipt, because the charge will appear on my online statement. It's so easy to spend. Companies spend millions of dollars figuring out how to make it easy and painless and convenient.

Right now, I want the inconvenience. I want the "stubling blocks." Because every time I get money or spend it, I want there to be a pause while I re-check my direction and re-orient myself. I no longer want to be $10-ing myself to death at the Walgreens across the street, or $20-ing myself here and there, and then I wonder where all my money went.

================

Carrie: "What happened to all my money? I know I made some..."
Miranda: “At $400 a pop, how many (pairs of shoes) do you have? Fifty?”
Carrie: “C’mon…”
Miranda: “100?”
Carrie: “Would it be bad if I did?”
Miranda: “Well $400 times 100, there’s your down payment.”
Carrie: “Well no, that’s only $4000.”
Miranda: “No, that’s $40,000.”

Carrie's reaction ----->>>

=================

While the whole marriage/church/God thing is not for me, there are so many ideas in this program that I do like, and that I find eye opening when applied to me and my life.

I love the idea that money is energy and that it is constantly moving. It is always in flux. If I buried $10,000 in cash in my yard today, in 10 years that $10,000 won't have the same buying power. Money is always growing or decreasing. It never really stays the same.

I love the idea that I am responsible for directing the flow of energy, for steering the car. That's really what I have never accepted before. I have accepted that I need to generate income, and I need to keep it and spend as little as possible... but only so I have more to spend, or to miser it away in a little room called Savings Account where it sits and bugs me because it's just sitting there. I have never thought about money as an energy flow that moves through me. I like the idea that I need to learn to focus that power, through concentration, through my Will, and direct it to where I want it to go.

I love the idea that I should never have any "lazy money" around. I have always had lazy money. Change tossed on the floor of my car, random bills in pockets, coins in the couch cushions and little bowls on the counter, money in checking, money in savings, money in a credit union, money in an IRA... I like that money never, ever, just "sits there." Even if it is waiting in reserve for something, it has a job to do, and I tell it what it's going to do and I decide when. I know that I am going to get my hair cut and colored every 3 months, and I know this costs $100. So just because I have kept aside $33 this month and $33 next month, doesn't mean that money is randomly sitting around. It has a job to do come November, and that job is to get my hair cut and colored. That money is labeled, it has a spot, it knows what to do and when. It's not random unallocated money just laying around.

I love that I am losing my guilt and fear around my money.

Long ago, back in the day, I was scared of dogs, especially big strange dogs. Then I had someone who really demonstrated to me that dogs just want to be loved. They just want to be paid attention to. They want to be told they are good doggies. They want approval. Now I love dogs, and wheenver I see one, I want to love it.

I was never afraid of money, exactly, but it was always like one of those dogs that might let me pet it, but could also snap my hand off if it felt like it, for no reason at all.

Now I know, it just needs attention. It needs me to be the Big Boss Of It. It needs me to tell it what to do, and when, and how. Like an eager puppy, it needs to be trained. Training doesn't mean spend it all, either. Being The Boss doesn't mean Go shopping. Though, I can and have shopped, when I need to, when I choose to. Just like having a house, a car, a dog, a wife, a husband, a child, a family... sometimes there are fun parts and sometimes there is work involved in those relationships.

And as the energy is trained and directed, so is the Apprentice trained and formed.

I love that I can take a cab ride to a regular appointment every two weeks, and I don't berate myself for "wasting" money and then feel spoiled and guilty because I owe money on student loans and I am supposed to be saving money. I have decided the cab ride is the best option. I know how much it is, with tip. I have assigned an amount of money - in cash - to this trip and I put it aside. When the day comes, I spend it. And if I want to take an extra cab in there for some reason, I have a category called "Blow Money" out of which I take the funds. It's not called "Miscellaneous", meaning "Unallocated" (lazy). It is for blowing, and blow it I shall.

Meanwhile, I am paying the minimum payments on all my debt, and I am saving extra money and putting it into an Emergency Fund. When I have a certain amount (FPU says $1000, but I may go with $500, or I may go with $2000, haven't figured that out) saved, in cash, then my extra discretionary income will all go towards a particular debt that I have decided to pay off first. I will not feel guilty that the other debt amounts are not being reduced much right now.

I had an odd moment today. I was looking at my bank account online. I was jotting down what I spent and where prior to switching to my envelope system. (That was rather funny itself. You could see the demarkation line. I went from having dozens of small transactions all over the place, to having only a few, large transactions from paying bills or taking out cash.) I looked at my amount in the bank and I realized that is my actual amount.

Which sounds odd but... even if all my transactions have cleared, I have never known what I really had to spend or use before. Because there was always a bill coming up later in the month, or next month, that I had to pay and thus needed to keep that money aside. I also needed money to live on, to buy gas, groceries, personal items, medicine, or just cab rides. I also had a deep primal need to keep as much money in my account as possible, "just in case."

Well, I have all the money I am going to need for food, medicine, personal items, entertainment, blowing, gas, or anything, for the next few weeks, in my actual possession, in cash. My numbers might be off, but so far I have over-allocated.

And I have almost $500 saved in an Emergency Fund, so if something really urgent comes up and it can't be covered by the cash I have on hand, I have that Fund. That's what it's for.

Today I found out that I had a small overdue amount due to one of my student loans for unpaid interest. I am sure they told me about this in some fashion, but my eyes glazed over, because it didn't have any meaning for me. This random $59 that I owed them on top of the tens of thousands for my education was not a blip on my radar.

But today, even though I did not technically have money budgeted for it (I did and I didn't, complicated to explain) I didn't feel the need to wait until my later payday. I don't need to carry it around in my head, don't forget, don't forget, don't spend that money, don't forget...why haven't you paid it, it's just sitting there...

Nope. I went and I paid it. Out of money in my checking account. And I don't feel at all nervous about it. I don't feel at all like OMG, what if my car breaks down and I need that money next week and it is gone!?!?! Or, What if I wrote a check that needs to clear?? Or, What if I need to buy something unexpected and expensive?!!?

Anyway, This is not a perfect system. I am still trying to work out putting aside money for Christmas. For other gifts. Saving to move to another place. I still struggle. I still have questions.

But last month I thought it would take me at least until Jan 2012 to save an Emergency Fund, and lo I am almost halfway there. In fact while writing this I just had another idea of where I can get some more cash to add to my Fund.

Also, yes there are parts of this that are very very hard. But like many things, it's only painful THE FIRST TIME. then it gets easier, then you get used to it... and someday... you start to like it. :-)