Disk cleanup

I've spent two days doing computer chores I haven't had time to do for months. Last year I bought a 200G backup drive to be sure I had the artwork for the book safely backed up. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of tinkering with files, so every time I changed a directory or file name, the whole thing was backed up again on the hard drive. I don't know how many copies I had of all those images, which were TIFF and CMYK files--huge. That big hard drive was almost full. So I cleared out the duplicate files and removed my HP printer from my computer to make room for a new Epson that's on the way. Add/remove balked. It took me a long time to get rid of all the printer files on both hard drives and I finally got rid of the printer by putting in the installation CD and clicking all the .exe files until I found the uninstaller. Why do they make it so hard? That done, I defragged the C drive, which took a couple of hours. The backup drive is almost finished, after six hours. Now I remember why I haven't done it for months.

By the way, Charley Parker has a great blog on Walt Kelly , father of the Pogo comic strip, one of my favorites. Not to be missed.