I haven't posted in a few weeks. July 3rd, I was finally able to visit the Mütter Museum after wanting to go for years. I went with my cousins. We took the train down to 30th Street and walked about 3 blocks or so down to 22nd Street where the Museum is located. Definitely better than driving in downtown Philadelphia traffic or looking for parking! I wish I had pictures, but photography is not allowed inside the museum. It is a medical oddities museum. They had Siamese twin skeletons, babies with birth defects in jars from the 1800 & 1900's. A full wall of skulls from people that passed from different diseases. They had animal brains in jars, rats, ferrets, cats, dogs, etc. Any organ you can imagine. The world's tallest man skeleton, a dwarf skeleton. Human leather... some of the stuff makes you go "Ew!" or "Wow!" but it's a really interesting museum. My mom & brother want to go some time so I will definitely be going back!

About 4 more months until I am off to the Philippines. I can't believe it's already July! In September I have to apply for my visitor's visa from the Philippine Consulate in New York. I am still making copies of everything for our immigration process next year. It's slow but I'm getting there!

Sugar's two tumors are growing very large. She has one under her right armpit and another near her right back leg on her tummy. She is still able to get around but I've had to learn to pick her up differently now by supporting her bottom in my hand when holding her instead of picking her up around her waist. A few years ago I bought a carrot shaped calcium chew for the rats but no one would touch it. Then Spice developed a mammary tumor and she would chew and chew on the calcium chew. After Spice passed no one touched it again. Until Sugar developed her tumors... I am thinking with the tumors sucking nutrients from her body she needs the extra calcium and vitamins. I've been buying her calcium chews at the pet store. (Never salt chews! Salt is bad for rats as it can dehydrate them quickly.) She really loves these ice cream shaped ones.

I discovered Pet Discounters through a Yahoo Search. Their prices are unbelievable! I pay $5.99 at Petco for Sugar's calcium chews. For some of my girls other treats I pay $3.99-$4.99 each. I bought 9 items at Pet Discounters and only paid $30 including shipping! I would have spent $50+ for the those same items at the regular pet store. Fast shipping too! Everything arrived this morning and I ordered on Monday!

What else have I been up too? I finally caved and purchased The Sims 3 during my mini vacation from work. (Love The Sims!) Thought it might be a bit much for my 3 year old PC. But it runs really well actually on my 2.0GHz Duel Core Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 256MB video card PC. (Even with the graphics set to medium & high on some options!) The biggest issue I have with my laptop is space. I only have a 87GB or so hard drive. (Originally 100GB but system hardware & Windows XP take up some of that space.) I have about 23GB left. I uninstalled some other programs, but I do still have The Sims 2 and all it's expansions, plus 2 stuff packs installed. I want to get an external hard drive at some point.

Actually, at some point down the road I want a whole new laptop from Dell. I asked F.B. when we're married if we get a new laptop can I have it and I'll give him this one, haha! He said since he likes older games my laptop would run his games perfectly with my specs so he would love mine. I really want a higher 2.0GHz processor. Probably Core Duo 2. (It's the fastest processor for a laptop.) Windows 7, 4GB of RAM would be nice and a 512MB video card! A bigger hard drive too. Anything from 200 to 500GB. Sigh.... Haha!

When I was in the Philippines the left button of my touch pad on my laptop died, so I ordered the part online. I've been putting off dissecting my laptop for more than a month now and it's a 3 day weekend so it was time... I was getting tired of using a mouse.

I love my Dell Inspiron E1505... but I've had issues with it. The M button went on my keyboard last year, so had to replace the keyboard. The hinges on the laptop lid went and needed to be replaced and now the touch pad needed to be replaced. I get my Dell parts from Parts-People.com

In order to replace the touch pad the entire front cover palm rest had to be removed. Which meant I had to take out my cd/dvd drive, remove my keyboard and take off the LCD Display... fun.... I just love dissecting my laptop, lol. I'm always so grateful Dell has the service manual published online.

It took about 40 minutes to remove and replace everything. And there was 3 years of dust, dirt and grime once the palm rest was removed... wow... yuck! I cleaned that out before replacing everything. So now I have my touch pad back. My co-worker joked with me and said if I keep replacing parts I'm just going to have a whole new laptop eventually, haha!

My laptop is nearly 3 years old now.... I bought it back in May of 2006. I love it, because I got to customize it online when I purchased it. I like alot of simulation type games, mainly the The Sims 2, The Sims, Sim City 4, Roller Coaster Tycoon Series, etc. I also create alot of web graphics with Macromedia Fireworks. So I really wanted a system that could handle those types of programs.

My laptop has a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 2GB of RAM, 100GB hard drive, 256MB ATI Radeon video card. Plus it has a really nice 15.4 wide screen display. I paid the extra money for the 2.0GHz processor because that's the most important part of a computer. I wanted a laptop that could perform like a desktop.

My #1 rule for buying a computer is to make sure you have at least a 2.0GHz processor or better, #2 would be your RAM (at least 1GB or more.), #3 video card (at least 256MB or more.), #4 hard drive size, etc. It really depends on what you want to use your system for. If you want your computer to run fast & smooth, the processor speed is what you should look for first in a system.

My only issue with Dell, is the casing for their laptops... very cheap plastic. The computer system itself though, runs great... so I don't mind that I've had to make some repairs to my laptop over the past few years. As long as your LCD screen or motherboard isn't damaged it's definitely cheaper to do the repairs yourself. (Which... if those go... you're better off just buying a whole new computer anyway!)