clearing out the past

i feel a little sad today... i realized last night that it was time to do something i had been putting off for months, if not years - cleaning up my address book.

my address book sits on my Google Apps account, and feeds out to all my computers and devices keeping them in sync.  some of those devices also pull information from Facebook and Twitter and so on, plus anyone who's in my G+ circles has the ability to update their own data, and so on... and when women get married or people move and only change their info in one place you end up with extra information, old information, duplications, and so on - ugh, it was a mess.  to the tune of 1300 contacts.

my friend reminded me that some of them were even dead.  reality.

facebook is trying to be a global address book of sorts, those who use it on a mobile level may have noticed it regularly asking for your phone number - this is why.  i realized that the 800 people on facebook don't all need to be in my address book for just that reason.  some of them i rarely talk to, some of them i will probably never need to talk to - but if i really must find them, they were be there.  poof - 100 people gone from the 1300.

(however, the reality is that while i keep a policy that i need to have really known someone before i add them on facebook, via school, or work, or something present or past... the reality is that i could probably clip another 100 from the fb list as well - i'll have to come back to that).

Google has many features, including the ability to find and merge duplications - poof, another 100 gone.  this wasn't as easy for all of them, as some of them were Sr. and Jr. men who shouldn't be merged, and others were women who's names had changed that were listed twice because the link to Facebook had them differently than in my address book.  personally, if i knew you before you got married (and especially if i dont really know your husband), then i know you by your old name... but, to make things easy, i gave and merged new names into old.

then, the dead... this was kind of a bummer.  one woman died a few years ago, she was a brilliant and giving soul who's body just wasn't able to keep going.  i hate to see good people go, she was so fragile, but had no fear, and through her life of poor health recognized what was worth being bothered by and what was a waste of time.  i remember a night when she and i went out and ran into two of the loudest most obnoxious men i know, and she handled them with no problem - even to the point where by the end of the night one was helping her broken body get around, up and down stairs and so on.  on some level, she brought out a good side to the bad.  i didn't know her as well as i wish i had, and it sucked to delete her if only because she was such a good person.  however, life goes on.

from there, an app - because there's always an app for that.  i broke out the MyPhone+ app for iPhone and used that to update as much information in people that could be matched to my facebook friends (541 of them i think)... this also helped with the name changes and so on, though my niece adding to her name had to be adjusted.  after that - another merge.

after that, another page by page review - i'm finally below 950.  this is crazy... i look at some of these people and realize that i may never do business with them, or that the odds are slim i'll ever need to call my friend's mother... but then i think that the point of this is to have those listed so that in the event of the need its available to me.

and, the Google Contact List is the cornerstone of all the Google services... so, G+, and Latitude, and all the facial recognition tags in my Picasa will be screwed up if i delete someone who's listed in any of that, so i can't just take someone out because i talk to them daily.

so... who to keep and who should go?  on some level i'm going to stick with the facebook idea in that i've been lucky enough to meet and get along with many good people in my life.  just this past spring i met a man in hong kong who talks to me often on facebook, great guy, and if i need to contact him i can always do it via facebook.  some people have left facebook for personal reasons, so i'll keep them in my address book.  others have done the infamous 'defriending' of me for one reason or another... i know one woman does that simply because she only uses facebook to communicate with people she is currently actively social with, so she stays in the address book... another woman defriended me for unknown reasons, but has had numerous emotional issues over the last few years and often pointed the finger at others in her inability to move on.... yeah... i'm not sure how to handle her... ugh, before the drama we were friends, she didn't get up in my face about it, and i can't just let people go like that, so she stays.

hmm.... the list gets thinner... women i dated but never had a friendship with and haven't spoken to in a while - gone.  you were all beautiful in some way, but if we aren't talking there's a reason... and in reality, getting you back into the fold would probably just lead to trouble.  i'm sure there's a few of you on facebook that need to come to the same fate.

family... oof... my mom is one of 17 kids, there's a LOT of family in my address book.  however, i also get a printed family buzzbook every year, and my mom is a walking address book... so, i may have to thin that out a bit.

then there's an odd problem i think many people have - people i keep in my address book because i DON'T want to hear from them.  people who's name i want to pop up on my screen so i know NOT to answer... how long do i let that go until i've decided they're probably not going to call anymore?  i'm going to go with a year.

i have a friend who keeps well under 100 people in his address book, and those people generally only get one email address, etc.  he's not very social.... and i'm on the other end of the spectrum.  i need to work on keeping this simple, yet current and well rounded.  if anyone has tips - i'd love to hear them!

photo migration

some time ago, i got big into pictures, big into memories, and keeping them.

i wasn't going to put too much effort into it, but i wanted to put in a solid effort to keep an archive of my photos from my life, if only so that i could look back at them over time and relive, or relearn.

this past weekend, i found out that a woman i know lost the last 6 years worth of pictures because she had them all on her hard drive, but didn't do any kind of backup... nothing burned to a disk, no saved SD Cards, no online albums.  this sucks.

i have been keeping a growing photo archive on Picasa, and decided to move it this weekend to an account i use more often.  i may actually keep the old account and lock it down just to have two places to store things, because on some level they are precious.

never again will i see my nieces small, i won't share those moments with friends again at home or traveling, i don't want to forget those who are no longer in my life and why and what i learned from having them in life, losing them to death, or letting them go.

i'm going to eventually have to post another blog as to how i keep my pictures archived, especially now that in so many ways it is SO simple.