SUCCESS!!!

We had success yesterday and it was not the rice variety.

The new hard drive has been installed. It is a Western Digital Caviar drive. The new Windows XP operating system has been installed. All updates and drivers have been installed.

Most of last night was spent locating installation discs for many of the very necessary programs. I have to run 3 separate word processors due to the variety of computers I work with at work and other locations. It took a while but I finally located my Microsoft Office installation and added it to the other two programs. I also use Mailwasher Pro from Firestrust and it took some time to locate the registration key for it and a few other programs.

The next thing I need to do is to reprogram my macros into my keyboard to get all my shortcuts back. I use a Logitech G15 keyboard that allows me to program up to 54 shortcuts and macros into the keys to make work easier. And let me tell you, that does come in handy when it comes time to work on the blog.

After the keyboard I will need to work on my Favorites. Fortunately I was able to import them from del.icio.us. The only problem is they were stripped from their folders and I will have to reorganize them for ease of location. After this I will need to try to get all the e-mail addresses back into Outlook, as well as redoing the calendar and trying to recreate the schedule.

Hopefully the blog will be back to normal by Sunday. Thanks for bearing with me through this crisis.

Oh, I also installed a nifty backup program to back up data off site. Maybe that will help to alleviate problems like this in the future.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Mixed Bag Today

Well, yesterday was a mixed bag. We got the Kindergarten Texas Primary Reading Inventory End of Year (TPRI EOY)scores today. The results showed a lot of growth and all at the school were much relieved. That was the good portion of the mixed bag.

Now the bad portion. Started to install a new hard drive last night. Much more difficult than you would think. Spent much time transferring data from the old drive to an external drive so that I have the files and can go through them at my leisure. Then had to try to get the old drive to boot in order to run data tools as an extra safeguard. I was planning to reinstall Windows XP as a clean install on the drive. This way I wouldn't have all the "junk" that comes with a new computer. Buttttt, I couldn't get the disk to boot on the new drive. Now I'm stumped because I've tried every combination of drive settings, etc. that I can think of.

Update tomorrow.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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BLACK TUESDAY

I woke up yesterday morning to every computer owners nightmare; or least my nightmare.Something happened in the dead of the night. When I went to sleep my computer and I were in 2008. I woke up yesterday morning still in 2008. My computer didn't. It thought it was in 2003. In fact it thought it had just been taken out of the box. That's right. It wanted to take me by the hand and guide me down the path. I wasn't ready to deal with it so I got ready for work and left it secretly hoping it would come to it's senses and come back to the present.I got home after work and decided to check the computer. It was still in 2003. Man that's bad. It doesn't recognize the keyboard. I had to drag the old keyboard and mouse out and reattach them before I could do anything. Gack!!! The screen, the drivers, everything.....all screwed up. It wanted to install things and do things that it shouldn't be doing. Most of my programs, KaBlooey!I guess the hard drive reformatted, sooooo----Hard Drive City, here I come.I am able to blog though. If things look a little different or blogs are a little late it's because of the current computer situation. Bear with me and I will endeavor to work through it.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Double Duty Knee Surgery

I wrote a couple of days ago about my memories of Hillcrest Hospital. Not only have I had memories of living by the hospital, but I also have had my own experiences with the care from Hillcrest.

You see, when I was going to Baylor University I had to have arthroscopic knee surgery. The surgery was at Hillcrest Hospital in 1978. I hurt my right knee playing football when I was in junior high. When I was in the 7th grade I played each play of each game on the offensive and defensive line until the last game of the season. In the last quarter of the game I was illegally blocked and tore the cartilage in my right knee. I sat out the rest of the game and didn't get to play much in the 8th grade due to knee problems. By the 9th grade I acted as football manager. For whatever reasons I lived with the knee problems and it eventually seemed to get better.

Actually, what happened is I began to favor my right leg and place more pressure on the left leg. Also, whenever I stood I was place most of my weight on the left leg. This eventually led to even more problems.

When I finally visited my orthopaedic surgeon he told me that I had torn cartilage in the right knee and an extremely bad left knee. You see, all the years of pressure on the left knee caused it the cartilage to wear thin and in some spots the bone began to rub against bone. Ouch!

I went to Hillcrest during the summer and had the surgery on both knees at the same time. OUCH!

I was special. I had one surgeon on the right knee and another surgeon doing the left knee. That was on a Monday morning. By Tuesday morning they were getting me into rehab. Unfortunately, my knees and stomach had different plans. They did get me up there that afternoon. By then I was better. I then got to enjoy the run of the hospital in my wheelchair. By Thursday, I had to learn to get around on crutches. Fun, fun, fun. On Friday I was on my way home and had to learn how to cope with stairs and other obstacles. By the time summer was over I was ready for Baylor and getting around campus on better knees.

Was the surgery worth it? Sure. But now that it has been 30 years since the surgery the old knees hurt now and again and are a little creaky, but are still much better than that summer Monday morning at Hillcrest Hospital before the surgery began.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Picture Monday, May 5, 2008

More pictures of me again. I tried to take a break from focusing on me; but after all this is my blog and sometimes it's all about me.

Here I am with my Grandmother. This is Ethel Creswell, my Mother's Mother. I knew her as Grand Mammy. It looks like this is when I was doing my residency and having to make house calls.

It's me again, the tall one in the back. This was my Cub Scout Pack. We were a strange looking lot back in those days weren't we? I like the sneakers on the guy up front.

Here I am at my brother's wedding. I am holding my niece, Meredith. Look at those sideburns would ya.

I guess it's not all about me. Sometimes it's about Christmas, Christmas 1958 to be exact. I was two. I'll bet the little stool, the Fisher-Price Popcorn Popper, spinning top, and the other box was mine. I'm just guessing that the bike was a might too big for me and I certainly hope the doll was not intended for me. I love the curtains. If you look close you can see the little pom-pons on them. Ahhh, the height of home decor fashion in the 1950's.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

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A Few Memories From Hillcrest

This may seem like a funny thing to say but, I have a lot of memories of Hillcrest Hospital, A.K.A. Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, in Waco, TX. The first thing I want to share is not a memory though. It is a statement from some very reliable sources, "Barry, you were born at Hillcrest Hospital!" Now I don't remember this because I was much too young at the time of my birth, but as I said, many people that should know have told me this many times in the past.

My first memories of the hospital do not really occur until I was in the 7th grade at North Junior. My family had just moved 2 blocks away from the hospital. Often times ambulances would fly by our house heading north on 30th Street with sirens wailing. Boy, for a 12 year old guy in the 60's that was really neat. I would run out of the house when I heard them just so I could see them race by, not really realizing that there may be a battle between life and death taking place inside the ambulance. After it went by I went back to my own little world not thinking of what may be taking place in the nearby Emergency Room.

Then one day I rode my bike to a nearby convenience store. The store was just across the street from our local A&P Grocery. At the time the store was named Milky Way Food Stores, then it changed to Zippy Foods. It later changed again and eventually closed. In order to go to the store I generally rode my bike in front of the hospital and down the street to the corner where the store was located. I can't remember what I bought anymore because the trip home was much more memorable. While on my bike riding home I was zig-zagging in front of the hospital. Now I know why they told us kids not to zig-zag on our bikes. I fell and smashed my chin on the pavement. An elderly man was in his yard and asked if I was OK. I told him I was and started home. I didn't realize I had sliced my chin open when I hit the ground until I got to the end of the block. I then held my hand under my chin to catch the blood and would then sling to the side to get rid of it. When I got home my brother took me to the hospital emergency room. At the time it was upstairs. We had to ride the elevator up to the waiting room and wait for my stitches.

When I was a little older I got a little bolder. I would occasionally ride my bike to the hospital and watch them unload the ambulances. I did this one day and watched as they took one of my cousins out of the ambulance. He had been in a wreck but soon recovered. I didn't go to the hospital to watch this anymore.

I went to the hospital to visit people a lot. The younger brother of a friend of my sister was involved in a motorcycle wreck. He was headed back to The University of Texas when someone pulled out in front of him. He was not doing well and was in the hospital for many months. I remember going to visit him often. His room had a stereo in it and I thought it was great. I would sneak in one of the back stairways to visit him after visiting hours. This was before better security and more lenient visiting schedules.

I even visited my brother in the hospital once. He had to have a hernia operation. He was in junior college at the time but the only room they had was in the children's ward. It was funny to see him there.

My mother told me that many of the injured and dying from the failed raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco were brought to Hillcrest Hospital. She said there were ambulances and helicopters coming and going at the time. I remember that Chris and I came to Waco shortly after this had occurred and we saw helicopters circling the hospital. I can only assume that they were police helicopters that were running security for the hospital due to the nature of the emergency. If we only knew all that went on I am sure we would be amazed.

While some of the memories are, well memorable; there are some that are much less so but still a part of me. This is the hospital where I saw my father fight cancer. It is also the hospital where I was with my father in the last moments of his struggle to overcome. He lost the fight but won the war when he went home to be with the Lord on that particular day. This is also the hospital where my mother fought many of her battles with cancer. She too lost the fight but overcame the war when she went home to be with the Lord.

In the past for various reasons I have had to visit Chris' parents. These were not good times either. I have been to the hospital to visit newborns. Now that is always an enjoyable visit. And, I have even been there to visit students from my pre-kindergarten class that had to be hospitalized for one reason or another.

Why all the memories? Hillcrest Hospital is building and will be moving to a new location sometime next year. They are leaving their north Waco location that gave them there name some 80+ years ago. You see, they were located on a hill, the highest in the area. They are relocating to IH 35 and State Hwy. 6 in Legend's Crossing. They will keep this location open and use it for more long term care and other needs.

Visit My blog Visions of My World for a few pictures of Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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