Hey, thanks for the replies! Yes, the sucker on the right/front of the tree gets fruit - not the 1/2" purple crabapple fruit like the rest of the tree but a 3" old fashioned/wild apple kinda fruit. The sucker on the left/back of the tree is the same crabapple as the main tree - honestly I'd never thought of it as a sucker before, just part of the tree. To remove the old-timey apple sucker would only remove one tall piece, it doesn't have any branches coming off it.It's like a combo sucker/waterspout (is that the right term?) The other, bigger "sucker" is half the tree and I wouldn't remove it without carefully considering how it would look, or if it might kill the tree. Much to my surprise my reading says the best time to cut out suckers and waterspouts is right after blooming - true? Also, most everything I've read says cutting out one sucker can lead to many more - but I guess they're easier to take care of if I do it as soon a s I see them... Whaas, where did you cut your suckers? I shouldn't go beneath the soil line, right? btw, the tree bark on the main tree looked smooth too until the tree reached a certain age. toronado3800, I'll never move from here, the tree is in a side yard in the middle of my patio. The look of the sucker's bloom, etc actually pleases me and I don't want to remove it unless it is weakening the tree - my reading says suckers do, but I haven't read why yet. Is it simply because they are vigorous and use more nutrients than before the tree? I'll try to take another pic from a different angle when I get home from work tonight if it isn't raining (like it is now!) To show how the three trunks are in relation to each other. Thanks again for helping!

yes in fact that is how the conficker pest travels is by removalable media, it is why microsoft put out warnings to turn off the auto load features for removable media and if you are not up to date on your windows updates you definitely could have got conficker or some other infection. Always when you put a device in your usb port immediately find that drive on the pc and right click and select to run your antivirus program on it and your malwarebytes on it to make sure before you open it on that pc that it is clean, if you don't then you sure run the risk of infecting any pc you put it into. As stated get and run malwarebytes asap and go run a good online virus scan also (be sure to always update the program prior to running a full scan) FREE Online Virus Scan Make sure you have all of your windows updates too.

so you did not read the part at the top with the date from 08 where we had been having a discussion about how to remove things using the safely remove icon???? I do recall the discussion we had been having about using the safely remove icon, in that discussion urlee jumped in to make the above comment. So to make things perfectly clear for you the original discussion was concerning the USE of the safely remove icon, not necessarily for use with a memory card, but in general how to use it. This would be why in my response I mentioned the use of both a usb plug in reader and her built in card reader. This whole post was not actually a question on her part but to say had she read her manual she would have seen that she did not need to use the safely remove icon for her memory card using her pc slot. Hence her "LOL"

Okay I'm using Vista and getting back to the original question my computer does the same thing when I use the Safely Remove Hardware Icon... my drives disappear. What I understand is using that Icon basically turns off the USB drives making it safe to remove the device and upon bootup they are turned back on again. For now I only use the USB ports for my thumb drive and digital camera. Since there are no moving parts in the thumb drive... once the copying is done with can it just be withdrawn from the computer without using the Safely Remove Hardware or will it damage the computer? The same for the camera... would it be safe to simply just unplug the cord once the downloading of pictures is complete? Bob