Success!

I found the product code. I even found the CD. It was, of course, the fault of the cats. Who else? They'd hidden it. I'd tried product codes from every CD I could find and nothing worked. Then, suddenly, I come of the exclusion room to find Mops pulling something out from under the dresser. He'd hooked a claw into the paper edge. What was it? The missing CD with product code. The cats! It had become their toy. My product code CD!

Then, I could not get the computer online. It was a comcast thing. I briefly considered calling them. They were demanding a password, long lost. I was about to throw up my hands, call it quits, and live without online access too, as I am now living without all but four of the TV channels I used to love. Who needs it, I thought, and I really don't.

I love being able to post videos of the cats, maintain a blog, keep up my petfinder site and check e-mail. But..actually, those are the only things I do online anymore. I'm not a websurfer. Sure, sometimes I spend time blog hopping. And I do like to read the blogs of other people, see how other people think, what they worry about, what they do in their daily lives.

See I do love people. I may not sound like it sometimes. But I love the idiosyncracies of people. I marvel at how some survive horrible beginnings, traumatic events, extreme poverty, even extreme wealth. Sometimes, when I'm sitting at a stoplight, staring across at other people on the other side, or watching people go through the intersection, I wonder about them. What prompted them to be in that particular vehicle, where they might be going, who they might be meeting or going home to.

The world of people is so interesting! Oh, I get fed up with people I deal with, nonetheless most are fasinating. So glimpses into people's lives and minds, as expressed in personal blogs, to me is addictive.

But, other than those things, I do not use the internet really at all. I've lived without it up until about three years ago and did not even know how to use a computer until about six years ago when someone took me to the library in Corvallis and showed me a new world and how to access it, in about ten minutes. I was instantly enthralled. You can only use a PC at the Corvallis library, however, for 15 minutes at a time. I then lusted after a PC of my own. I got one in parts, found in alleys and at thrift stores, and with a lot of frustration, finally got it to work. I signed up with the cheapest dial up I could find and I was accessed!

However, where I then lived, the phone lines routinely shrunk or expanded according to how wet the weather was. During the winter, I couldn't even open an e-mail the connection was sooooo slow. I would use the library computers then, or hook up with somebody with a fast connection. My older brother gave me broadband when I moved to Albany and another new world opened up to me.

I often was without a connection for weeks or months and I survived just fine. In fact, I had more free time and was more productive. Same with TV. I had antenna connection most of my life, and could barely see any shows on TV, through the snow, unless I was at somebody's house with a decent connection or cable. In the circles I was in, nobody had cable and even the word was spoken with a bit of awe "You have cable?" (eyes wide and skeptical). Nobody I knew could afford cable.

Then I moved into a building where your rent included basic cable and I began watching shows I never knew existed. When I moved again, however, gone was the cable again. I didn't miss it much.

My older brother used to tell me about Animal Planet and Steve Irwin. I wanted to see what he was all about. I never did, however, before he died, although I would see clips here and there, on the regular news stations.

So my brother tells me I was never supposed to be getting most of the channels I'd been getting up until yesterday. With the digital changeover by comcast, they must have figured out that whomever hooked things up here did something wrong. I never really knew, because my brother gave it to me as a birthday gift two years back. He got all the correspondance and I just never really knew what he'd ordered. So that's why I suddenly have just the three regular networks now, OPB and FOX. That's fine. He does not have time to even talk to comcast and says he can't cancel the limited basic because then the internet either has to be cancelled or goes up in price. So whatever. No problem.

I am having a birthday in a couple of days here once again. I'm not hinting, I just remembered.

So anyhow, I am back to using the newer computer. Yaywho!

Yesterday, five cats got fixed. An albany calico. A Lacomb calico and three cats also from Lacomb who I didn't see, because their owners dropped them off and picked them up. But two were females and one of them was pregnant and one was in heat. Tomorrow, they are taking up three more. They have about 20.

I got a call from catman Roger, too, who has had another feral Siamese show at his place and has neighbors who feed about 8 ferals, one of them pregnant. Got to get those in, too.