RC, I have rebooted my pc many times over several months, the open disks have been there several months but nothing I have been able to do has gotten them to close. Yes i did go into 'my computer' and click directly on each drive letter and tried to close from there but i get this Yellow Triangle ERROR alert titled PROBLEM EJECTING USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE, In the error box it says "windows cannot stop your MS/MS-Pro USB Device because a program is still using it". But I am not using any of them. None of the usb ports that I am referring to have anything plugged into them.

Sometimes drives are finicky about the formats used to create the files it tries to read, and they get worse as they age. (sort-of like people :-) ) If this is a CD-R (not +R), see if another CD-R disk can be read by his computer. It's not alweays enough to say it can read other discs if we don't know how the others were formatted.

Jude, go back to gardening section and keep scrolling down the page and check out the first column, it's way down there.

I think I wrote in an earlier post to you that you need to be careful about the costs of additions -- they are expensive! That was about the construction cost, not the architect's fee. I cannot say how much it should or might be but I can say that we paid $5,000 for just a structural engineer's work and towards the upper end of the range you set out for the architect -- for a 2-story addition. I'm sure there is more than one way to accomplish all of this but here's one way. First, you shop around for an architect, the same way you would for anybody else: interview, check references, look at portfolios. While I personally would not recommend design/build firms you do want to make sure that the architect you hire really has a firm grasp on construction costs. You seek to have something that could be called "phase I" drawings or "conceptual drawings" or something similar to that. These are just the ideas -- more than one but probably less than four -- and that costs you maybe 1-3 thousand. (I'm sure that if my range is wrong someone will correct me.) Once you have that, then you can obtain an estimate on the cost of construction. This is just an estimate, it's not based on what actual ppliances, flooring, etc. you will have. It is not a firm bid. Nobody is promising that this estimate is accurate. This is where things can also go very wrong. The estimate may be way lower than the actual costs will be. This is where you have to throw away your desire to hear Low Numbers and Demand that your architect give you the really bad news. If you read mightyanvil's comments it appears that he is suggesting that you have a GC involved during this whole process whose job it is to keep an eye on the costs on a consulting basis. (I think this is the idea of hiring an expert on costs to be involved which costs you more up front but keeps you out of trouble later. I have no experience with this.) If your architect doesn't know enough about construction costs he or she will be useless to you at this critical stage because this is where you decide whether you want to plunge in and hire the architect to enter the really expensive part and you need to know what the construction costs are going to be before you make this investment. Now, perhaps your addition isn't at all complicated and you just need drawings, not really anything that's the least bit of design work...I have no experience here either but perhaps someone else can advise you.