Bruce, newbie314, It's not really a secret at all. The theory is rather simple and common sense but it does however take some time to get used to.... Basically, it all has to do with timing and removal of worms. Also, your main goal would be to harvest "worms" and not castings. What I used to do was start a new bin, then let it process for 3 to 4 months and then dump the entire contents including worms and castings. I would then sort out the worms from the finished castings but when I weighed my harvested worms, there would always be the same biomass as when I started. No matter how I devised schemes to split my bins up the same things always happened. However, I did obtain some pretty good vermicompost. Instead of waiting for a bin to process for three to four months as described above, the technique is to remove "some" of your worms about every 30 days or so and place them into a new bin. By removing worms on a continous basis ( every 30 days or so), the worms will never reach their max population for the bin. Also, you want to remove some of the castings each time you remove some of the worms. I have been told that the castings building up is what is responsible for the worms not reproducing too fast. You will have to ask Kelly about that but I only know it works, so here is what I have been doing as suggested by others and it works really good... I start a vermicompost bin and care for it just like normal. However, after about 6 weeks (not months) when you first notice castings starting to appear at the top of the bedding (still lots of unproccessed material), then it is time to harvest "some" of the worms. To do this I attract the worms to the top of the bedding by placing some food on "top" of the bedding surface. After a couple of days, a large number of the worms will be attracted to the top of the bin where the food is at. Then, simply take the top 4 inches of the bedding (worms and all) and remove it from the bin. At this point in time, you have removed a large portion of your worms from the bin, but you really do not want to remove too many. Replace about 1/2 - 3/4 of them back into the old bin. All as your trying to do is to remove a small portion of your worms (maybe 20% or so) and place them into a new bin.. Also, in addition to the 4 inches of bedding and worms that I remove, I also remove a couple more inches of vermicompost. So all together, I have removed about 6 inches of vermicompost/bedding from the original bin. You need to replace this right away with new fresh bedding material. You can start a new bin with the few worms (and vermicompost) that you have removed from the original bin. Then, every 30 days, remove some more worms from the original bin and throw them into the second bin that you have already started. Make sure you also remove some of the vermicompost. So, if you remove some worms every 30 days, and if you make sure that you also remove about 6 inches of castings (or vermicompost) then your worms should multiply good. This takes experience to get the hang of because if you remove too many worms from the original bin, then breeding will be slow. Also, you cannot remove just worms but you must also remove some vermicompost and replace it with fresh bedding. I don't know the exact mechanism behind why this works I only know it works for me. I have been told by others who use similar techniques that as the castings build up then the worms do not breed as much. If I am incorrect about why certain things happen here, then you will have to excuse me but I have only propogated what I have been told. Kelly will hopefully correct this if any of the facts are bunk. I only know that this technique works because I have been using it for some time now and it doesn't take long before you will be operating lots of bins. I had so many bins that I eventually had to start some outside systems and it happened in short order. By adding new bedding every 30 days when you remove some of the worms and bedding, you are sort of "diluting" the ratio of castings to brown bedding material. If you do not remove some of the castings then each time you remove some of the worms, it really will not do you much good because the worms will slow down in breeding from the castings building up. So, the two important factors are to remove some of your worms every 30 days and also to remove some of the castings every 30 days as well (at the same time). In addition to the original bin, you have started a second bin with a few worms in it. You will be adding to this bin every 30 days with a few worms from the original bin. Once you start to see castings building up in this bin, then you can do the same thing to it that you did with the original bin. You can start a third bin. Another important thing to know, is that in the original bin, you should do a total harvest of castings after 6 months or so. You will be taking worms out of it every 30 days but after about 6 months the castings towards the bottom half of the bin will be processed a great deal. I hope I explained this well enough but if not I will try again, just let me know what you may be foggy on or don't quite understand. Darryl

I was talking about how to hilight more than one line as in a whole section or in a list several items at one time as a block. place the cursor at the very beginning of the word or phrase that you're trying to highlight, before the first letter. hold down the "Shift" key and keep it held down. now go to the end of the list or section/block that you want to highlight place the cursor at the end and click. that entire section should now be highlighted and ready to select. It is called shift clicking. there are a lot of highlighting tricks here are more How to Master Text Highlighting with Your Mouse How to Highlight Text Like a Keyboard Ninja about using the safely remove icon in the systray here is why you need to do that any time you remove anything from a usb port on the pc. "Many USB devices (and certainly all flash/pen drives) draw power from the USB port itself for their functioning. Yanking off a device without using safely remove feature could affect both the device and the port. Certain operating systems do delayed writes to devices to optimize writing. If this is the case with the operating system in question, there is a risk of data getting corrupted if the device is pulled out abruptly. Writes could continue even after the operating system signals that the writing is over. If the light on your device is blinking, it means that it is in use and should not be pulled out." It is quite simple to do, when you plug any device into the usb port it will be recognized, in the systray by the clock you will see a new icon the safely remove icon, when you are completely done using the usb device click on the safely remove icon, select the device, wait till it tells you it is safe to remove it. you can google it for more info also

I think it's over becaue I think I did something while looking for it that rewrote it. I what Exgm said and found out that the "Default" file is the "Public" folder under "Users" and I did find the file that says it is a "Copy" of the one I was looking for, but when I opened it it is the empty database so I think I must have tried opening it again and it reverted back to its original form or something. I dunno, I didn't open it righ away but might have done so under the tuteledge of the techie at work, since we couldn't find it. Anyway, the file path was C:\Users\Public\Documents if anyone else has this problem. Not sure why that didn't show up in a search though. I searched for ANY file on the C drive that had been altered today before I did anything else. I also tried to look in Google docs but I don't really get how to search that. I don't think I used that, I think I would have realized that. But I did try what Exgm said, and if I open a sample downloaded .xls file without saving it and then opening it, it DOES just go about saving it into this default file. Don't know WHY that folder does not show up on a search though. If it had showed up with the search I would have seen it since I searched for ANY xls file. At this point I've spent almost as much time on this as I did creating the file so I have to give up. I think it is hopeless anyway Somehow I must have rewritten the file thanks to the "help" from our techie. Or else it was just long gone anyway, since it seems like a search would have turned it up. I'm very suspect of this whole search function now.

gmom, Here is the link that is most likely to save your day: www.OEHelp.com/OETips Scroll down to the red 'Update'. Have a read, but before you do anything else, download the free programme Outlook Express Quick Backup (don't worry about the command line instructions because you never use them - you just push the buttons). Before you run OE Quick Backup create a new Backup Folder (preferably on another drive) e.g. 'Current'. Run OE Quick Backup and select the 'Current' folder then click 'Backup All'. Once your latest data is safely backed up in 'Current' create a couple more folders e.g. 'Old 2008' and 'Old 2007'. This is because, if things work o.k., you are likely to end up with several .dbx files with the same name and you need to save them in different places - as explained in the next paragraph. So, to recover e.g. an old "Sent" email folder copy sent.bak and save it to your current identity as sent1.dbx and then backup that to "Old 2008". A quick word about .bak files - when Widows saves a later version of any file with the same name as the original one it changes the extension of the original file to .bak e.g. text.txt to text.bak and program.exe to program.bak. This gives you only one chance to 'easily' recover your data because if you save again using the same name then the first .bak file is overwritten - this is windows way of preventing your hard drive from becoming full with obsolete files. N.B. My Windows theory might not be 100% correct (I am both old and self-taught!) but the general principles are about right and it could save you from corrupting anything that you do manage to recover. Good luck. Colin Here is a link that might be useful: Outlook Express Help Main Index