My computer problems have continued ceaselessly and I fear that my 5 year old intrepid Dell Inspiron 5000 notebook that made the trek all the way across to the South Pacific Top Samoa and back is about to be relegated to the laptop graveyard. The problems started back about 3 weeks ago when I was still in Sedona and the computer wouldn't start. I ordered a new power cord, cracked open the notebook (literally, because I busted the case when I tried to open it) and digged around inside to find the problem. I don't know if you're ever opened a laptop, but if you're used to working on desktop PCs, this is whole new ballgame. Everything is so small and not exactly easy to get to. I removed eveyrthing I could, dusted off all the kitten hair, and there was a ton of it. And when I put the thing back together it magically started up. Then about a week later, the notebook started blue screening, which means that there is something so drastically wrong that the operating system cannot startup. I tried everything I could think of to solve the problem. I went into Safe Mode and started removing recently installed programs. But then after a few restarts, I couldn't even get into Safe Mode without getting a Blue Screen of Death. So I reinstalled the OS, Windows 2000. No luck, same problem. Then I installed XP. It worked, but it runs like such a hog on my poor underpowered machine that I decided to removed it and try again with WIN2000. When I reinstalled last night, I got the same problem. I'm trying one more time and then I'm going back to XP and I'm just going to deal with the consequences. I could buy more RAM or I could just buy another computer, which I'd probably need anyway if I go to grad school in the fall. If there was some way I could wipe the C drive clean and start fresh, I'd do it, but I can't figure out how. I'd take the whole drive out and find the biggest magnet in town but I have files on the D drive that I want to save. In the meantime, I'm taking all these great pictures that I want to share with y'all, and I hopefully I will be able to soon. So you're just going to have read and imagine what it looks here. (It's quite nice).