Personally I think this is a really interesting discussion. I am an engineer at Honda R&D near Columbus, OH. At my location, there are over a thousand white collar workers, mostly technical. Within a hundred mile radius of me, there are a 4 Honda assembly plants, employing around 10,000 people. At other sites in the US and Canada, there are probably another 15,000 workers. Each of these plants is turning out thousands of new Hondas per day. Nearly every Honda/Acura sold in the US (by volume) is made in the US. The engines, transmissions, every major component. Furthermore, Honda actually *exports* cars from the US, something that the Big 3 can barely talk about. Sure, there are niche cars like the S2000 roadster that are 100% Japanese, but that is a tiny part of our market. I think these are pretty impressive numbers, especially if you consider that Honda is only something like the 7th largest market share in the US. Its been here since 1979, I'd wager that in those 27 years Honda has contributed significantly to Americans and their way of life. There are a lot of secure $25/hr plus full benefits jobs available in Ohio because of Honda. The US auto industry lost their way in the oil crises. They haven't been able to turn it around since then. They concentrate too much on short-sighted markets like giant fuel-guzzling SUVs. Its not that the Big 3 makes bad cars, its that they make cars that aren't in demand. Compare a Focus to a Civic. A Taurus to an Accord. Sure, those Fords might last 200k miles, but I'd much rather spend that time in a nice Accord than a hard plastic Taurus. I would rather support the thousands of American workers who build Hondas than support a few suits in Detroit and drive a Mexican Dodge. That said, my garage: 1980 Lawn Boy 7229 1996 Stihl trimmer 1997 Honda Accord (shocking, right?) 2002 Triumph Speed Triple (mc) 1976 Honda CB400F (mc) 1976 Suzuki GT550 2-stroke (mc) 1948 Johnson Sea Horse (outboard) 1949 Evinrude Zephyr (outboard)

The sunlight shouldn't affect it. I can't think of any way that it would. "I have solid green and orange LEDs, " But that doesn't mean that they are aligned correctly and the slightest vibration could throw them off. They can be close enough to make the LEDS light up while the door isn't moving. Watch the LEDS while it is closing and see if they blink. Use a string or straight edge if you have one that is long enough, or you can also use a laser level. Using a string is easiest to describe, so I will use that example. I hope you can figure out my instructions! It's easier with two people but if you are doing it alone. Tie the string below one sensor and pull it over the top of it, then over the top of the other sensor. The string should lay flat across both. Adjust if needed. Then tie off to the side of one and pull across the other and adjust that axis also. Repeat step one in case the adjustment moved the other axis. I hope this helps.

shortleaf2002, that photo looks like the damage I see on many of the maples and other soft wood trees in our area. One of my oaks that is growing with a main leader trunk all the way up had lateral branches, growing off its trunk, broken about 4 feet way from the trunk. Non of them have stripped bark along the part of the branch which was not broken. Also none of the main leader trunk has bark stripped, off like seen on the modified leader trunk in your photo. I am concerned that once all the broken branches of my oaks are pruned back to the break, the side branches will look pretty strange with the short lengths of branches which remain undamaged between where they attached to the trunk and the four feet further-out pruning. My other 30 year old Shumard has a modified leader trunk starting about 8 feet up. On that tree, once the needed massive corrective pruning job is done, this might present a good time to try and shorten one of the leaders so a better main leader can develop. Of course the tree specialist, might tell me it is too late to try such a correction on the tree. I have noticed that all three of my Shumard oaks are most heavily damaged on their north and northeast sides. My Scarlet oak is not protected by any other trees or building on it's north, west or east sides. There is a two story house just 40 feet to the South of this oak, and an enormous cottonless cottonwood tree in the back yard of that neighbor's house, that cottonwood tree is southeast of my Scarlet oak, It does not make sense that the cottonwood or the two story house would have sheltered my Scarlet oak to prevent it from suffering damage. Especially since my 8-9 foot tall Green Giants growing near, in a East west line, but still just south of the Scarlet oak, collected so much ice that their tops bent over toward the north all the way to the ground from the weight of all that ice. That indicates to me that my Scarlet also must have collected as much ice on its north and east sides as my Shumards. Still it's side branches that come off its main leader trunk did not break at all. All around town, I see other shumard oaks with the same type of side branch damage as I have described mine. So that also leads me to think that the damage my shumards suffered was not specific to just my three shumards. Late yesterday afternoon our electricity was restored, and we checked out of the hotel and returned home this morning. Since returning home, I have been busy cleaning out my refrigerator and doing laundry, my DH spent the day at work, and so we have not had time to do anything to the trees yet. Tomorrow it is predicted to rain and Saturday predicted to snow about 2-4 inches. Hopefully, if I am not being unrealist, we can at least do the corrective pruning on my damaged trees by next week, several days prior to Christmas.

Well, a few months later and I thought I'd give an update. I may get some flack for our decisions, but they feel right to me. First, we decided to keep the Hyundai and get it fixed. Taking it to a couple of mechanics was on DPs to-do list (this never got done). Second, we had been working on some real estate tax problems and those were finally resolved. This resulted in enough cash for us to get started on the kitchen. Again, we already had most of the expensive stuff. A friend of DP is doing the work at a discount and DP is helping around work hours. I'm just complaining that the kitchen I've waited 2 years to get my hands on is finally being done without me ;) Soon after the kitchen decision, the fridge died, however we got a new one, great deal, at Sears Outlet. It has a couple of dents, but is bigger and much more efficient than the old one. And it works lol. One day DP took down the ceiling light in the kitchen. He reached up to the much larger than it should have been bundle of wires hanging from it and all of the cloth insulation crumbled off! Well. That answered that question. And why were there so many wires running through that fixture? Well, we no longer had any working ceiling lights on the first floor, and the outlets in our bedroom on the 2nd floor also stopped working. So, DP and 2 very handy friends replaced all that wiring. Since nothing was being added/removed/taken out it was safe. At the same time they split up all those things that were on 1 fuse into 4 fuses. DP has also bought a circuit box (?) load center (?) something like that and will be replacing the fuse boxes - again with experienced help. Because of the delay with the electric (3 electricians never showed up, must be plenty of work in Chicago) we (I mean they) had time to demo the plaster (not good enough to keep) instead of drywalling over it. Because we took it down we were able to insulate the exterior walls :) On to the AC. I find it extremely amusing that after saying Chicago only has a couple of miserable weeks a year, this has been an AWFUL summer already! Luckily we had decided to buy energy efficient window units. 1 on each floor keeps it just bearable. I still end up with cold showers some nights though. The whole pregnancy = higher body temp thing is apparently true. Last - back to the car. We got a great deal on a 2005 VW wagon. It's bigger, safer, etc. It's definitely a family car, not a "sport wagon" and I still haven't made my peace with that, but everything in due time ;) Baby could come anytime in the next 2 - 3 weeks, I'm due the 20th. The kitchen isn't done and the house is a disaster, but I'm not worried. My electric is safer, my car is big enough for the whole family, and I have enough AC to survive. We're stable financially and are both looking into additional income sources to be safe. As always, thanks to the great GWers for the rational advice!