Okay, I'm finally back
Thanks for the sentiment. I believe I will be able to hang out more, as I have in the past, beginning now.<o></o>
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</o> It will take me awhile to catch up. Following is briefly some of what has been keeping me otherwise occupied:<o></o>
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1) Being caregiver for my paraplegic wife.<o></o>
2) Assisting her with a lawsuit against her former employer.<o></o>
3) Dealing with the settlement from said lawsuit.<o></o>
4) Tending my honeybee colonies.<o></o>
5) Tending my bamboo collection.<o></o>
6) Tending my CP collection.<o></o>
7) Dealing with the unusually higher level of heat here in <st1:city><st1>Tucson</st1></st1:city><st1:city></st1:city>, which has complicated most of the items listed above?<o></o>
8) Most critical has been that I had been using a laptop PC running Windows XP Home, while my wife had been using a desktop. She deserved a laptop too, so we invested in a second laptop PC. The new PC was preinstalled with Windows Vista Home Basic. Since she was familiar with XP, I backed up the PC with the intention to migrate to the new Vista PC, so she could use the laptop with XP installed (she is a non-tech minded person). I anticipated that I could adapt to using <st1>Vista</st1> more easily than she. I learned that I was mistaken in that assumption. The many programs and hardware devices I routinely used were outdated and would never play nice with <st1>Vista</st1>. This was not acceptable and prevented me from getting my email and surfing as I was accustomed to doing.<o></o>
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Meanwhile the older PC, which she was now using, began to "crash" (lock up unexpectedly, though it was not thought to be serious, at that time). So we again switched laptops. She now has the new PC with <st1>Vista</st1>, and adapted to using it easily. Meanwhile I was back on my old laptop PC, but now without any of the software and files that I had previously installed (I removed them for my wife’s benefit), and kept having system crashes while attempting to restore the PC back to its former Joseph-friendly self, but without success. Turns out the hard drive was failing, in a non-catastrophic, but entirely annoying manner. Yesterday I finally replaced it and rebuilt the system to, again, suit me.