Thanks for the additional input! What do you see when you folks try to run it on your computer? It's a tiny program that lives safely in its own directory and can be deleted in a cinch afterward, so it shouldn't bee to risky to try it for yourselves. Do you get the "I'm sick" message, the lack of animation and audio, and does it crash when you click the moose avatar or try to open the control panel? If you're getting the same behavior as I am, then it might be more straightforward for you fellows who know what you're doing to debug the program on your end rather than hope that I'm savvy enough (sorry I'm still so new to this!) to identify the smoking gun myself and pass it along to you. I think that if anyone can get it to work, then that would be a great start. And maybe we'd learn more about the MS text-to-speech system in the process. Thanks again for the help! It's greatly appreciated.
