Civil War tragedy

Most of my Civil War participant ancestors are on my Mom's side and they were all Confederates. On my Dad's side in his direct line the men of the right age were burdened with families or were too young or too old to serve. I've been research axillary lines, trying to find out where a patriarch lived since he doesn't show up on the census where I know he lived.

I found a distant cousin, George Clayton Hoagland, born in March 1847 in Union Springs, Cayuga County, New York. He enlisted in the 111th New York Regiment in 1861 - at the age of 14 - and died in Wilderness, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1864 at seventeen. Along the way, his regiment fought at Gettysburg. Far too young to see such horrors and then die.

Animal fun with balls

UPDATE: Please send my friends good thoughts for their horse Mickey

UPDATE in post #8

This is the family that takes care of my farm and horses for me. The wife has had this lovely bay gelding for several years and is finally getting time to ride and enjoy him. She and her daughter keep their horses at another farm where the daughter has friends who ride and where they both take lessons.

Last night whoever checked the horses last didn't latch Mickey's stall door. This morning Mickey was found loose with a broken leg - broken above the knee. They took him to the vet and spent all day there trying to figure out a way to save Mickey. The prognosis is worse than "not good."

Horses carry 2/3 of their body weight on their front legs. With their size and the musculature above the knee, there really is no way to set the bone. (Well, maybe if it were valuable breeding animal and they had lots and lots of money to spend on it with a chance of future profit.) The vet told them that even if they can patch it up, Mickey will always be "three legged lame" and probably in pain.

They are making the final decision tonight or over Christmas. I think I know what decision they will make and it breaks my heart.

Need a refresher course on introducing a new cat to the house

I just had a call - and I will be adopting a new kitty!

Lily is not really new to us. She was adopted by the family that takes care of the farm for us with the idea she'd be a barn cat. Lily is NOT barn cat material. She is sweet, fluffy and not a hunter at all. But she did OK at the barn for a couple of years, so long as she had food, a bed, a litter box in the tack room, and lots of cuddles.

A few months ago she was attacked by some dogs, not hurt seriously, mostly just slobbered on with a few nicks that bled enough to scare the family. They took her to the vet to be checked over and since then she's been living in their house. Meanwhile a feral kitten showed up and claimed the barn as territory. It's much more fitted to being a barn kitty and the biggest problem will be to catch it to get its vaccinations.

The living situation in the family's home is not ideal for a cat. They have two Labradors and a Blue Heeler. The Labs are cool with the cat once they understood she was part of the family, but the Blue Heeler has not adjusted and has gotten more and more agressive and attacks Lily any time she can.

So the family called tonight and asked if we could take Lily. We'd offered before, once when it was obvious Lily was not barn cat material and again when she was attacked. So I've just told them we can take her after Christmas. We'll be gone on Christmas Day so I thought it best to wait until then to bring her over.

The problem is my cat, Tashi. He and Lily had stand offs and fights back when Lily first moved into the barn. They reached some sort of accommodation - my cat stopped going to the barn and Lily would visit the exterior of our house but wouldn't come onto the porch. Tashi used to be really aggressive, but he's almost 14 years old and has mellowed.

Tashi has not had to share our house with another cat since our old cat Edmund was put to sleep in 2009. When Tashi was a 4 ounce kitten he terrorized 20 pound Edmund and the two cats never got along. Eventually they learned to tolerate each other - as in stay in the same room without one of them snarling or attacking - but they never were friends.

I need some advice in how to introduce Lily into our house without upsetting Tashi too much. It's been so long since I've put two cats together, I don't even remember what I did!

Pictures will posted once Lily gets here.

Buying board books for toddlers

I've got a two year nephew so had to venture into the children's section of the bookstore the other day. I'd found one set of Dr. Seuss board books at Costco, but wanted to get a few more.

I found the cutest series - BabyLit board books. They are "based" on children's classics - I bought Frankenstein, Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Frankenstein teaches anatomy, Huckleberry Finn teaches camping, and Moby Dick teaches about the sea. There are far more in the series and I was disappointed that my budget wouldn't let me buy more - and that by next year the toddler will be too old for them!

For anyone else who has to buy for little ones: http://www.babylit.com/shop-books/ (not affiliated with the company, just liked their products)

I can't wait to see what the kid (and his parents and older brothers) think of these!

White, Christmas Arrested in Tallahassee Store Burglaries

Just saw a coyote out in our lower pasture - in broad daylight

Big, full grown, healthy looking coyote - not something you want to see on a farm with livestock. Or in a location surrounded by residential properties where people have lots of pets. I went out on the porch and yelled at it, but since it was way down in the bottom pasture, about 300 yards away, it just looked around and ignored me.

Damn. I hate having to do this but I called the father of the family that is taking care of the farm. Last time we had coyotes hanging around he staked out the area where we'd been seeing them and took out one of them. The other one was shot in the backyard of one of the homeowners to the east of us, on the other side of the swamp.

We have prime wildlife habitat on our 60 acres. The bottom 30 acres is in woods and wetlands with a protected wildlife corridor for the wetlands that extends north and south from our east border. To the north a neighbor has 50 acres of mixed hardwoods, pine and wetlands. East and south of us are subdivisions with "ranchettes" between 3 and 7 acres - not big enough for keeping livestock so a lot of the lots have undisturbed woods. Across the highway to the north are 10-14 acre parcels, many of which have not sold and most of which have not been cleared - those used to be a hunting plantation, as is the land to the northeast.

There have been black bears spotted in the woods to the east of us. Back when we first bought here, the county forester came by for a timber assessment - on his way here he saw a large cat jump across the highway. He was sure it was a panther since it had a long tail and cleared the road in two bounds. We've seen alligators, otters and bobcats on the farm and welcome the red and gray foxes that live here. Birds - we have a wide variety, too many to list.

But a coyote bold enough to be out in the daylight that doesn't spook at the sound of a human voice - that is NOT welcome. I'm glad I don't have any foals due this spring.

NEW Simon's Cat! Catnip (A Christmas Special)

Best American holiday based commercial so far this year

Moving Windows 7 Pro to a new, larger hard drive with a system image file

I've got Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on a 128 GB SSD drive. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to keep programs and Windows from putting stuff onto the C: drive, Windows keeps filling it up and then complaining there is not enough room.

So after I saw a discussion of drives with a SSD buffer I ordered a 1 TB drive from NewEgg.com. I looked up how to clone Windows and found what sounded like good instructions for creating a system image with Windows Backup and then restoring that to the new, larger drive. I even checked several sources, compared the instructions and thought I was set.

I created a system image on one of the other hard drives (I have a 3 TB and a 4 TB drive, partitioned into 1 to 2 TB sectors), created a system recovery disc per the instructions, disconnected the SSD drive, connected the new drive, put the recovery CD in, and rebooted. No joy.

First problem - error message: "This very of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows." I tried booting with the Windows installation disc and selecting Repair Windows installation - same message.

So I hooked my SSD drive back up, booted back to Windows, did some internet research. Finally after going round and round, I realized that maybe it was that the SATA bus that the DVD/CD burner was on was set to IDE while the other SATA busses were set to AHCI (I think that's the scronym) - I reset all the SATA busses to IDE, rebooted, SUCCESS - the recovery disc let me get to the system image restore menu. I jumped through all the hoops, clicked on Finish to let it start restoring the image to the new drive. SHIT!

New error message: " The system image restore failed. Windows cannot restore an image to a computer that has different firmware. The system image was created on a computer using BIOS and this computer is using EFI."

OK - maybe I needed to create a new system image with the computer set to IDE for the SATA busses. So I re-connected the SSD drive, went through all the steps to create a new system image AND yet another system recovery disc, disconnected the SSD, reconnected the new drive, and tried again.

No joy. I am stuck.

Has anyone else tried to do this?

I have looked at using third party software - and there are several free versions I've seen recommended. But I don't understand why the Windows Backup system image will not restore. And the third party software most recommended - Macrium Reflect - seems to have some problems with Windows 7 Pro from my reading in their support forums.