Don't worry, Bob. Will Robinson left long ago, after realizing that your grasp of worms, motherboards, BIOS's and needing another XP copy are matched only by your comic genius. Please don't read this -- it contains a Garden Webworm that will SATA your PCI bridge, as well as defoliate your pecans, and then your SCSI backplane will really be SOL.

A few thoughts... Stuff never lasted forever in the good old days...but in college in the 1990s one of my apartments had a fridge from the 1960s that was still working. Nowadays, things aren't made to last very long at all. The ROHS no-lead initiative, though a nice idea on paper, was probably a clever form of planned obsolescence. Superficial testing says it is ok. But no long term testing has proven that lead-free solder won't eventually form tin whiskers...little connections between circuit traces that cause the destruction of the boards. Moist environments like kitchens will hasten this kind of demise. Companies see repairs as money making opportunities. I had an outboard effects unit that was about 10 years old die on me. Harman Audio at the time wanted $500 to even -start- to diagnose the problem. Because it was a pro piece of equipment with XLR outputs...you're a pro, you must be rich and be able to expense everything. I looked into it myself. The power supply was dead - it turns out most serious electronics made since the mid 90s have sets of standardized switching power supplies with matching pin outs and board standoffs. It took a while to track and x-ref various manufacturer codes, but I found a power supply board that fit in the exact same spot and had leads with the exact same voltages. It was $50 from Mouser. Harman would surely have marked up this power supply so repair costs would have been 500+100+(30x2) for UPS shipping both ways...probably $630. Likewise I needed some opamp ICs on a mixer swapped out. After many, many hours of searching, I found a guy in Baltimore who does such replacements, he did about 15 chips for something like $75. Did an excellent job, you would not even recognize it had been resoldered. Point is, SOMEONE out there would know how to fix almost ANYTHING you might own, ALMOST all of the time. Sure, sometimes rare or custom ICs die and there's no replacing them, but 80-90% of the time its capacitors or simpler discrete components. Though a fridge compressor can die, more often it's the thermal switch or some other replaceable part. The challenge is you may never be able to find the good ones who will actually do this kind of work well, and correctly. I'm not even that into appliances but I've read many threads like this one, on various websites, so the experience is far from unique. When I replaced my fridge last year, I spent hours reading online reviews. It seems these days you are either lucky and get one that really passed all its QC checks or you get a lemon that the manufacturer let slip out the door.

Thank you for this post even if I never see it in person. I wish I had known this Summer that Papa Meilland was such a desired rose with great fragrance. They had beautiful large 2gals. at Walmart for cheap. I thought if they had it, it must not be desirable. Isn't that stupid? Maybe they'll have have next year. It seems one never knows where good roses will appear. Romogen, DB is a wonderful rose for me thus far, but if my NOID is TdU, it's also well worth having. They both seem to WANT to bloom, much like Sugar Moon, even in less than ideal situations. That Malvern Hills looks gorgeous judging by Malorena's pic in another thread from today. She loves it, but she's in England. Maybe you can find some Austins like I did at Lowe's next year.

The guys in the lab at DuPont are all saying "We told you so." to the marketing and design departments. The bald people at DuPont are all in the Public Relations department. They've pulled out all their hair. Swami Joe predicts they pull the plug on this; it's unsustainable because of the internet. I'd love to throw some Tenax Quartz Toner on that stuff just to see what happens.