Time for a timeline?

There may be hope for The Timeline, if my wrists hold out.

I think I've mentioned The Timeline before in this column, but if I did it was years ago. And if I'm not sure, then chances are that you've forgotten it.

The Timeline is a family document we started on our first home computer. That was a Tandy from Radio Shack at Strohl's Appliances, which we bought when the twins were about 10 years old or, in other words, more than 20 years ago.

The purpose of The Timeline, as originally envisioned, was to stop family arguments, the kind that come with fading memories. What summer did we visit Niagara Falls? Or did we go two different times?

That sort of thing.

The very fact that I can't remember for sure when we started the darned thing explains why The Timeline was important. Memories disappear too quickly, and they are at best unreliable.

So, on that reliable - though primitive - old Tandy, I started recording memories dating back to the year that Connie and I first met. Not every memory, but key dates and events.

And when the Tandy was nearing its last legs, I printed the thing out on an equally ancient dot matrix printer, then keystroked it onto our first home Mac.

And all was well upon the land, and The Timeline grew. It had started by reaching back several years in time, but as it went along it was more or less current. And when you're recording something more currently, there are more details to add that seem important.

While the first entries from 1968 or 1969 are only a few sentences long, the later ones grew to a full page. Single spaced.

The file moved from our first Mac to our first iMac, one of those jellybean models that looked so futuristic at the time and look so quaint now. And then it moved - growing all the while - to our second iMac, one of those that looked like a chunk of a globe with a lamp sticking out of it.

And all was well upon the land, and The Timeline grew.

All was well, that is, until that iMac - after several years of impeccable service - unceremoniously croaked.

And The Timeline was lost.

That was last summer, and I've kicked myself a thousand times for not having proper backup. (I now own about half a dozen flashdrives and am shopping for a backup hard drive for the iMac that replaced the one that died.)

I've also rifled through file cabinets in hopes that I had had the good sense to print the thing out at some point in the past few years.

Fat chance. Good sense? Good luck with that.

What I did discover was that an earlier incarnation of The Timeline, complete up to about 2002 or so, still existed on that old jellybean machine of yore. It had been spared a trip to the landfill and was still in Sally's room, where it was occasionally used to play computer games that wouldn't work on newer machines.

There was just one problem: Getting the file off the old jellybean computer and getting it installed on the current family computer in my study.

I couldn't print it out. The printer that came with that computer had disappeared long ago.

I couldn't drag the file over to a flashdrive. That jellybean iMac had a USB port, but it was for show only. Apple hadn't installed USB software.

I couldn't burn a CD. That particular model could play CDs but not burn them. Models made a week later could do both. But not that one.

Finally, fueled by the caffeine from a particularly good pot of coffee on Sunday morning, I started the only thing left to me.

I powered up the jellybean iMac, a process that now requires a ballpoint pen because the button is broken. I booted up Word for Mac 6, a software lost to the ages, and I opened The Timeline file.

Then, fully caffeinated, with Connie's laptop on my lap, I started transcribing: "1968 - Jack and Connie meet, for real, on April 7."

By the time the coffee had worn off, I'd keystroked all the way up through 1986 when Sally was born.

With luck and a few more pots of coffee, I ought to be able to rescue the entire file, save it on both the laptop and a flashdrive, then download it to the home computer.

Then, the tough work starts: Trying to remember what's happened in the past several years to bring the thing up to date.

Is it worth it? Ask me when it's over.[[In-content Ad]]