hello, the machine is only 3 years old,yes i did destroy all the data on it after i formatted.i still have the larger drive but it won't read it. last night a neighbor gave me a windows 2000 disc and i formatted the drive again and it worked;it saw the full capacity of the drive and is ready to use, however when i try to bring the second drive with 225 + gigs of data on it it will not see it no matter how i switch things around bios won't read it, so i took it out, the drive i have working is set to master and is the only drive in the pc but bios says it is a secondary slave drive but it is on the primary ide channel and set to master!!everything in bios is set to auto detect drives,but as soon as i connect the other drive as a slave drive and reboot, the computer freezes and gets stuck on the post screen and hangs.funny thing is when i take that drive and put it in the hard drive enclosure that converts regular drives to use with usb and plug it into the computer i am on right now and reboot, windows comes up and says : found new hardware,mass storage usb device,your hardware is installed and ready to use,it even gives me a new drive letter,shows the drive as a western digital drive but... when i click on the drive letter it says please insert a disk into drive j....hmmm

Your cell phone bill. Let's talk about that as an example. You have UNLIMITED use of the internet, emails and texting. Right? Wrong. I pay per minute! LOL The more I use, the more I pay. And FWIW, my cell bill runs $2-$10/month. I have prepaid and currently have 240 minutes available and need to add time next month. And there you go again... "google it"! LOL This thread is the one getting "silly"! Sheesh. Joyful, I certainly agree with your basic premise on the highway analogy but that brings up another issue: Should not the "boonies" pay for their highways, phone lines, electric lines and maintenance and not the city folk? Higher populated areas subsidize the boonies. Go back to Rural Electrification project where the rural areas were first brought electricity. The cost was borne by the "richer" city dwellers since the cost per person in the rural areas were prohibitive to the people there if they were required to pay their own way. Not unlike hurricane Katrina, Rita and the like. Those costs were borne by the country as a whole rather than making the people pay their way there. That's not right. Local Government Aid (LGA) distributes state monies to different areas, smaller areas get a benefit at the cost of the bigger areas. Does a city person get a benefit from the boonies having electricity, telephone, cable TV or the like? Seldom. There's no doubt that there's inequities in billings. I get charged basically the same for garbage/recycling/refuse as the Octowench would. I don't put my garbage can out every week. Is that fair? No, but practicality dictates that there's not going to be a fair way. They average it out to save money in other ways. People without kids in school should not have to pay school taxes if you want to be fair, but the ones with the families have controlled politics to give themselves that benefit. Most people have a certain level they reach on usage of many things, whether phone, internet, garbage, sewer or the like so to make things easier, appease the masses and the like, they average it out and the unrecognized minorities wind up paying more. At the farm, I have to pay ditch tax. My property does not benefit from the ditch. Why should I have to pay it? Because the ones who benefit cry and rationalize it that everyone should pay... and then say "google it!" ;) Should I pay the same vehicle license fees as someone who drives 10 times what I do? Is that fair? Again, practicality ease come into play. I get no benefit from a sports stadium. Should I have to pay for it? I could go on and on but won't. I'm just amused to see that the power of prayer is taking second place (or further down) to the power of petition now! :D E pluribus taxem, eh?

I think getting a wii is a great idea! While she's tending 8 babies, she can plug in the wii and tell the six kids to bowl, hula hoop, or some sport. They need to keep busy! I can't imagine she's buying it for her own use, at least not daily. Unless she's super woman. It's going to be mega tough taking care of 8 babies but 8 toddlers plus six others would make me lose my mind. I hope she has some help. yea, I'm tired of hearing about it all too.

SD10 has come from a family in Ca. that stops everything for the children. They actually run wild. Not something that I am used to at. Although SD10 is not wild, she is very well behaved, she does retain that "I am the most important person in the room" attitude. She has made progress and as her daddy makes progress (LOL) I think she will do much better. She made a comment after arriving here that sums it up quite adequitly I think. She was dead serious when she remarked..."I'm just not right anymore!"....She had never been challenged before she moved in with us. So here is a 13 year old boy and a 17 year old girl and myself refusing to be told how life works by a 7 year old....pretty funny. Dad would just let her have her way, she ran the show. Having her home for the holiday break is giving me a chance to work on things. She is limited now to 2 hours of TV unless we do a movie or something extra. She and I have played on the Wii together and she spent time at a friend's house. She was drawing in the living room when I came in here to post. I had a long talk with DS16 last night and he is missing the "old" days before I remarried. It has been difficult for him to accept SD's age/behavior. But then of course he was the youngest before she came along. I was quite sad about it, did a lot of crying and then decided that he and I should have a date night every so often. SD and dad could do a date night on the same night and that would give her his undivided attention. As far as extra activities....she is in an extra math and science class twice a week, private violin lessons once a week and church youth group once a week. We do trips to the library.....she loves to read. We also do church every Sunday and she is in Sunday school there. She has a pretty well rounded life. I do want to make sure that I am not picking on her. I know that she is doing what she has been taught and what has worked for her before the remarriage. I have to teach DH how to be part of family and not an outstanding individual so to speak. I don't mean that disrespectfully. Family dynamics from childhood play a big part in it, both on his side and mine. I remember my first SD being the same way and she was an only child not to mention the grandparents favorite. I had never seen adults stop what they were doing to watch a child dance until I met her. She wasn't even taking lessons. I thought...ok...when are we just going to sit and watch her breath!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was raised in a household where kids were to be seen and not heard and most of the time nobody even wanted to see you.