I found my missing Fall bin! I had previously said if I (later on) found it in my Christmas storage, I'd scream loud enough for you to hear. Well I did find it with other Christmas bins....thankfully now instead of in Dec... but I almost screamed anyway! You see the "Gi-normous" blue bin? It is totally FULL of Fall. It feels like bricks are in there, I could barely drag from garage into family room! I didn't do anything so far but lift the lid to confirm it was Fall. The size and weight of this thing is REALLY scary! Especially as I unpacked 4 other Fall bins, the size of the green one, and you saw how much I've decorated. Holy Purple Cow! Maybe this one should have STAYED missing! Sheesh. It was in one of the places I'd looked THREE times already. Guess one should never stop looking, huh? I have a corner in the garage with Christmas bins, most all the size of the green one cause that is an easy size for me to lift and carry. Tho I do have some the next size up for garlands as I have so many of them. This blue one, needless to say, was on the bottom of the stack. And I was POSITIVE all my big Xmas garlands were stored in there. POSITIVE, I tell you! Of course if I had any working brain cells left, when I put it out there last year and had clearly written FALL on it in a big black marker, I'd have made sure the lettering faced the FRONT and not the garage wall. Arrrrrggghhhh. Anyway, this evening, out of frustration after previously checking all the green bins before... without having to move any of them... I moved all of them and looked in the blue one just to prove to myself it did hold the Xmas garland. Wish you'd seen my face when I saw what I saw. And glad I couldn't see the look of horror that it must have showed. Especially when I went to move it. (I swear there has to be bricks in there!!) I probably will have to drag it out on the back porch in the morning as I can't have it, or a mess of stuff, in my family-room cause company is coming over. The man who wrote Jason's book is coming back to go thru my photos, and the memorabilia (articles, magazines, etc) I've collected since he was burned. He'll probably be here around 2 hrs. The book is at the publisher waiting for photos. Will be ready to order soon hopefully. (Jas and Russ both will sign copies for any of you who want it by the way. Unfortunately I don't know the price yet) Well, my back is screaming at me for dragging that bin and moving all the others full of Xmas things, so I better go move around and treat myself to some Vicodin. If I was smart I'd throw them out and get some Vodka. LOL. Probably be cheaper and I'd probably be more fun to be around. hugs, Karen PS...Marlene, how neat you and I almost share the same anniversary day.

I would not take out the router it gives you added protection in that it has a built in firewall, if it was set up properly and securely it really should not alter your speed. My guess is that your actual speed from your provider for DSl is the source of your slow speed, especially since you mention you are very rural, for DSL to give good speed you must be with in a certain mileage distance from the co that you are connected to, if you are at the very end of the line you will have poor speed. What I would do is contact your provider and tell them you are having very poor speed and ask them to come out and check for you see if it is bad lines between you and the CO which many times it is and when they repair or replace them the speed can change a lot. Have you tried plugging your laptop directly into the back of the router and using it wired instead of wireless to see if you find any difference? This site below has a good speed test you can see what your speeds are, try it at various times of day. do you know if your router is a G, or an N? if you gave us the name and model we might be able to tell you a little more. Also malware on the computer will definitely cause it to slow down, do you have a good current updated antivirus program on it and do you have either malwarebytes or superantispyware? if not I suggest you get malwarebytes free install it update it and run a full scan to see if it finds anything, it is free and should be updated and run weekly, it will not interfere with any existing security programs. How to download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware application for Windows computers Here is a link that might be useful: speedtest

I felt I should report back to my fellow Computer Forum members. I received a brand new hard drive from Dell via FedExp. yesterday and plan to have my son-in-law install it tomorrow. I will let you know the results. My son-in-law doesn't think it happen because of the latest Windows update...he thinks my hard drive just crashed. I didn't lose any data because I have all my data on a cd....thanks again for being here and letting me sound off. I have to admit Dell Chat did help me.

Sorry no hyperlinks. Things are kind of busy right now. I don't know if you want to get into this sort of thing or not, but Windows 7 should have a Windows XP Compatibility Mode that makes it possible to run older 16-bit programs like MasterCook. It may take some work-arounds, but as a MasterCook person myself, the last thing I want to do is switch programs after all these years. Here's some info from Microsoft support: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx There's also a blog that discusses a work-around to use MasterCook in Windows 7: http://mastercookinwindows7.blogspot.com/ The one remaining issue is the web import feature may not work with Internet Explorer, but if you have FireFox there's an add-on that will fix this problem. The blog discusses the issue. This may be more than you want to fiddle with, but if you do things step-by-step, I think you'll be able to keep your old MasterCook. It's a little investment at the front end for a big payoff. At the very least it's worth making the attempt (It's time but not money.) before investing in a whole new software program. Carol