If he really does not know what he is doing he runs the risk of wiping out his C drive, personally I do not suggest trying partitioning for those that are not fairly computer experienced, with out guidance at hand. I see every day, people who were trying to partition their windows to put in linux or some other OS on part of the drive, and are now frantic because some how all their stuff is gone. Since he already has the 2 partitions, I think you have the best way to go with what you have told him to do use it exactly as it is and keep his C drive nice and clean, put his data and stuff on the other partition. At the same time go through and clean out and eliminate completely what is no longer needed. Every linux live cd comes with a great partition tool built in and you can get a linux live cd free or burn an iso of a distro to make your own live cd. This link is one that was given to me way back when I first needed to partition a drive for my linux, it does a good job of covering the basics. Studying several of these tutorials is always an excellent idea. How To: Repartition Your Hard Drive For Free Without Formatting or Losing Data and before doing anything I sure would get one of the free drive imaging programs and do a few images of the drive in case something goes bad.

ole joyful - Maybe I missed something some where along the way. Do you drive a truck and that's why you need a truck driver's license? I think one of the reasons so many have suggested that you might stop driving is that they care for you and are worried about you. You mentioned that you failed the test for the following reasons: "driving too slowly, didn't give nearby car enough space in multiple lane turn, not check blind spot enough, etc." These reasons seem valid reasons for failing the test. I understand that you passed the vision test for a regular license but my concern is the driving part. When my Dad moved in with us at age 85 he was still driving. He had only had one minor accident in 20 years. One day I happened to be following him home and noticed he was driving very slowly, not coming to a complete stop at stop signs and when he turned he made such wide turns that he was in the other lane. So one afternoon my neighbor and I followed him so that I could have another opinion of his skills and unfortunately his driving was even more erratic. I was planning on talking with him about it that evening. Unfortunately that afternoon he was parallel parking and thought the car was in reverse - it was in forward and he hit the car in front and pushed it 8 feet into the intersection. He came home and was so shaken up that he handed me his keys and said that it was time. I apolozige if I've offended you. I certainly don't know how well you drive and if I am wrong I wish you many years of happy driving. But we are all concerned and I hope that when my time comes to give up the keys someone who loves me will tell me.

For those of you with the dead computers, just take the drive out and attach it to another computer, then wipe it using the common Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN) or any other wiping program. Try not to wipe your current working drive though. For the drillers - I'm not sure that would really make the non-drilled portions of the discs unreadable, using fancy data recovery methods. And for those resorting to sledge hammers and the like, I really wish I could get my hands on your drives - what the hell do you have on there anyway, that DOD 3-pass or RCMP TSSIT OPS-II multipass can't destroy ? Maybe it's for the stress relief. If so, I'm all for it.

A month of so ago, I started getting emails from Zillow (have no idea how). They show a picture of a kitchen, the total cost, and then, when one scrolls down, they show a breakdown, by category, of materials and labor. It was a HUGE eye opener for me as I thought cabinets were a MUCH bigger part of the budget than they appear to be. One can subscribe to "budget", "mid-range", and "luxury" kitchens. I think the biggest price I ever saw for cabinets in a HUGE kitchen, was about $30-40,000. Appliances? Often $20,000. Countertops & backsplash were another high ticket area. And labor clearly varied, based on whether there was extensive electrical/plumbing work or blowing out walls. I asked my KD about this (he owns the company and also supplies the labor for most of the work), and he said that in the nearly 40 years he's been doing this, he has seen the cabinet percentage of a kitchen remodel go down substantially. He said this is due to many manufacturers doing semi-custom which cuts cost dramatically. He said it's a rare client who springs for total custom as they rarely need to be able to spec things to the 1/4 inch. He said there are so many ways to work around this and then do NOT involve "filler strips". My own kitchen is going to come in at around $25,000, $13,000 of which is cabinets. But my kitchen is an anomaly as I am reusing my kitchen counters/integrated sink, all the undercounted lighting can be reused, ceiling pot lights were done over a decade ago - only 1 new one added, existing hardwood floors are being used (finished on site 13 years ago), and we're even reusing the Perrin & Rowe faucet - it's still made and now twice the price it was when I bought it. So, in reality, I'm doing a $40,000 kitchen, I just paid for much of the high cost stuff over the years. Did I make some compromises? Of course! I wish the cabinet interiors were wood, not a thin veneer of maple melamine (they will be painted wood on the glass doored cabinets), but it was not worth several thousands more to get this. No one sees them but me and they will be easy to keep and clean. Am I getting every single thing my little heart desired? Again, no! But this is due to the fact that I have an 11 x 15 kitchen and there is simply no room to build in the microwave or get other appliances off the counters (without sacrificing valuable real estate which I was unwilling to do). Is it going to be a show piece? What kitchen that size is! No island, just a $99 Ikea 17" wide cart. I hope this helps you. Try to subscribe to the Zillow kitchen emails - they are invaluable when pricing things.