A Place for Giant Files

How timely: my iPad goes fritzomatic just in time for the release of the iPad2. In the course of my half-hearted attempts to fix it, I manage to fill my start-up drive to the point of crashing (notwithstanding I have an entire terabyte of media storage and another full terabyte of backup). I think the entire Library of Congress would fit on a few terabytes. What the heck is all this stuff? Insomnia and internet addiction are a fatal storage-eating combination. I tend to have odd research binges at 3:00 am, wildly downloading and storing all kinds of files in connection with whatever fleeting obsession catches me before the dawn. A few years ago, I stumbled on a new edition of my great-grandfather's novel (from a publisher likely inspired by Obama's election, since the protagonist in some ways resembles him more than 100 years later). Public domain is a bitch. Anyway, that spurred some serious midnight OCD, wherein I found this photo on the Jacksonville University web archive. Remarkably enough, there's my great-grandmother, the undertaker Mrs R.G. Walker (nee Holmes), proudly displaying her cars and corporate headquarters in one of the massive files that has been clogging up my hard drive. I guess burying black folks in the South was pretty good business at that time. Well, I had to do something with the file before I put in the black hole that is my media archive drive. There it is.