Storage Wars

          I had a rude awakening the other day. I was uploading a new blog, complete with a handful of pictures I had taken when I was completely stopped in my tracks. It was like dropping the transmission when you downshift into the wrong gear.
          A window popped up informing me that I had run out of storage. Really? Well shame on me for not realizing exactly how Blogger works. It being a piece of the vast Google pie I should have known better but when you sign up for a Blogger account you get a certain amount of free on line storage with Picasa. After about 20 months of posting lots of pictures five days a week I had exhausted that free amount.
          So I was stuck with a dilemma. I could stop posting pictures, move my blog to another host or go back and delete some of the pictures that were in my Picasa account. I opted for the latter.
         First off it is rather difficult. Picasa has randomly organized my photographs chronologically into numerous albums. On the surface this isn't such a bad concept. Except that some albums have 900 photos and others have only one. If each individual post or even week of posts had been assigned to their own specific album then I would have had a fairly easy time of it. But no.
          As I initially began exploring my albums I realized that I had a lot of extraneous shots uploaded that I had never posted to the blog (or my burger blog). Those I took down. I also immediately took down the majority of the pictures from my burger blog, keeping only what I considered to be the most important. My next cuts came by taking down pictures that did not belong to me. I had done several blog entries where people had sent me pictures of their vehicles. Yes, they had consented to allow me to post them and so there was no copyright issues in play but I made the executive decision to remove those pictures.
          With those deletions I was able to start blogging again; at least uploading more of my pictures.
          Until I got stopped cold again.
          It seems as though what I removed only allowed me a brief respite in my picture posting rage. I again ran out of available space. (Oh, yes, of course Google would provide more on line storage but a monthly fee. And with Blogger there is no way to host the pictures elsewhere in a cloud drive and still have them available on the blog.)
          Ultimately I have made the decision that I need to take down the photographs from the oldest blogs, those dating all the way back to that forgotten time known as 2011. I am trying to keep the pictures of specific cars on line. By that I mean, if I have done a piece on an owner and their car or on a specific model car then I'm trying to keep those posts intact. What I'm deleting are the pictures from the various car shows I've covered. I'm working my way through 2011 and hopefully that will provide me with enough storage to chug my way through the rest of 2012 and well into 2013 if not further.
          This is my way of apologizing to anyone whose car image has come down off of my blog. I still have all of my pictures. If you are interested just drop me an email at turnerbudds@yahoo.com. And starting on Monday, I'll be back to my old tricks.