Back Online!

In my last post I'd talked about going up to Skye's Spirit Wildlife Rehabilition Center in Harrisville, Pa., which is just about 20 minutes away from New Castle. Hope and I went up on Saturday, October 6th. The owner-operators of this rehab center have it on their own 15 acres. I spent several hours there because I fell in love with the Bobcat that was there. He was found when he was just a baby. Someone had owned him illegally and let him play with a rubber dog toy. He chewed it up and ate it and it became lodged inside. He wasn't able to eat or anything and was very sick. The owners couldn't take him to a vet or they'd be found out that they owned a wild animal illegally, so they just turned him loose to live or die on his own. Someone found him and brought him to the rehab center. They took him to a vet and he had to have surgery. By then he was too old to turn out into the wild as he wouldn't have learned his hunting/survival skills, so he's a permanent resident at the rehab center. He has been declawed for easier handling. He was GORGEOUS and he's very friendly. When we walked up to his enclosure he PURRED!!! And he kept pacing back and forth and rubbing up against the wire in the front as if he wanted petted! I wish I COULD have petted him. We also saw a Broadwing Hawk that is a permanent resident because he lost the claws on one foot. There was a vulture there as well who is also a permanent resident, since he fell as a baby and is blinded in one eye and his beak is twisted. I'd always thought vultures were black and ugly, but upon seeing one up close I discovered they have BEAUTIFUL teal and black feathers. The vulture was very friendly too and came right up to the edge of the enclosure to bask in the attention. We weren't able to see some of the other animals they are dealing with who need medical attention. They said due to hazards of dealing with wild animals they could not allow those animals to be viewed by the public just yet. I have pictures that I took up there, including the photo of Skye...their white horse the rehab center is named after. When I get my Paint program working right, I'll post the pictures.
The evening we came home from the wildlife rehab center, when I got on my computer I discovered it had crashed!!! I was devastated! I couldn't afford to take it to a professional and get it repaired, so first I tried running my recovery CD to try to repair whatever errors there were but that didn't help. I needed a new hard drive. Oh NO!!!! I figured I was stuck for awhile. I couldn't afford that. I got my webtv up and running, but there's only so much you can do on a webtv... I was getting deparate... I pay all my bills online and since it was the beginning of the month they were all due. I played around with my recovery disk...running it multiple times with no luck.
I was able to pay just a few bills online on the webtv, but the rest had to be paid by snail mail, which caused a problem as I had to locate all the addresses to send them to. Webtv didn't allow me on some websites due to encryptions so unfortunately a lot of my bills were paid late... :-( I got most paid but then I went to visit Abby and Ryan and Abby let me use her computer. I got the rest of the bills paid on her computer and then I was also able to get into my AT&T email account and delete out most of the 2111 emails that had stacked up in there. That was a big help! I was also able to order my medication online using her computer.. Our prescription plan at work requires us to order all medications to be delivered through the mail.
BUT... MY BIG BREAK CAME... my WONDERFUL cousin John Double in Colorado Springs is a real CHAMP!! He just 'happened' to have the 80 gig hard drive 'laying around collecting dust' as he put it that I needed, so he sent it to me along with his confidence that I could actually install it myself and get my XP loaded back in and all the drivers and programs. I got it on a Wednesday, but I waited until the following week on my day off to try to mess around with it. I wanted to be able to give it my full attention and not have to stop and go to work.
Well, that turned out to be easier than I thought. When I took the cover off the tower I WAS a bit daunted when I looked at everything that was inside, but I just proceeded to unscrew the bracket holding the old hard drive, removed it, inserted the new hard drive and screwed the bracket back down. I put in the recovery disk, loaded XP, put in all the disks for the drivers, put in my AT&T disk so I could get online. I went to Windows Update and download all 87 updates (groan...it took 6 hours on this dial-up connection I use). Next I put on my McAfee Security Program and I'm BACK IN BUSINESS!!!! Whew!!!! What a relief to have my computer back in operation again!!!!! It sounds like I did it all in one day, but no... it took two days because I didn't work on it non-stop.
Unfortunately my Paint program is not what I had on here before..it seems to be a very basic program and doesn't have the features the other one had. I can't resize my photos. Also I don't have my Microsoft Office or Word programs... Hmmmm... I've got to figure that problem out. When I do, I'll be able to post some pictures, but until then it's strictly text on this blog.
One last thing I have to do is to connect up the old hard drive (as the slave) and try to copy my personal files from it to the new hard drive. I sure have learned my lesson. From now on...everything I put on the computer.. documents..photos, etc. will be copied to a CD IMMEDIATELY. Luckily I DID have most of my photos on CD's already, but there were a few I just had downloaded and hadn't saved yet on a disk. They're still on the old hard drive.
I'm not in too big a hurry yet to try to do that... I'll wait a bit on that, but I definitely need my OFFICE AND WORD programs. John seems to think I may have another disk laying around here somewhere that has those programs on it, since they came with my Dell computer when I first purchased it. I'll have to do a thorough search tomorrow while I'm off work and see if I can locate it. I sure can't afford to buy them as new programs just now at Christmas time!
We had a baby shower for Abby on November 4th. I have some photos from that which I'll post hopefully when I get my Paint program back. There's only SIX WEEKS to go until her baby boy is due. He's named Eden Connor O'Donnell. I can't wait... I'm soooo excited to be a GREAT-grandmother!!!! I can't wait to hold that baby boy!!
We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at Jodie Fye's house. Everything was very delicious! I LOVE turkey, but the only thing about eating at someone else's house is there NO LEFTOVERS! I roasted a Butterball turkey breast for myself a few days ago, so now I can have lots of turkey!
Well, that's about it for now until next time! :-)