Well I Ended 2008 On A Bright Note

Most of the people I have spoken to are kind of glad that 2008 is over with and are looking forward to a brighter & better New Year in 2009. Usually Maryann and I can look back and find some really bright spots in our lives each year, however, last night it was just a bit more difficult, although we have not had any personal disasters in 2008.

To end up the year, my computer crashed on December 25, 2008, at a time when I really needed it, as I had a lot of communications coming in about The Steeple Market Fire. Fortunately, I was able to use Maryann's Computer and retrieve my mail from the Web, do some downloads on an external drive that I have and get the items back up on my forum where there was a constant string of visitors looking for any new information they could find. I got out the old lap top which I hadn't used since 2005, and of course when I plugged it in, I had download updates galore from Windows Updates and McAfee that took about 6 hours to complete. Hopefully I caught all the e-mails and responded to those necessary during that time.

I finally got a new computer on Monday of this week which has Windows Vista. I was able to get it set up so I could get e-mail, although my latest current e-mail addresses up on the web had not been updated for 6 months. My printer and scanner wouldn't work and it wasn't until yesterday that I got everything going with the help of my daughter. As of last night, I believe I have everything working - The thought had crossed my mind that my 10 years of work on Fairfax Genealogy might not work on Windows Vista either with my Roots4 Program, but fortunately, I guess, it is an MS DOS program and the only thing that has to be done on any computer I have ever used it on is to make a change to config sys, which my daughter also did for me. Now that is working too, thank God.

This morning, other than starting off the day at 3 degrees below zero with a rather brisk breeze, everything is almost all back to normal.

My wish for all of you in the year 2009 is for a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year.