I am just about to get my rice cooker and am also interested in cooking different grains - I am considering buying the The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger. You can check out the forward & table of contents using the following link. It has recipes for quinoa, bulgur and barley, but I'm not yet sure if these are specifically adjusted for fuzzy logic cookers. Please share any additional info you find out - Thanks! Here is a link that might be useful: Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook

FWIW, I didn't really pay too much attention to the aesthetic changes, since I realized immediately that the lack of compatibility with many of my 20 or so add-ons would make upgrading at this time more pain than gain. But in my case I already have done some customizing of the look with FF3: Tabs on Top (I guess I was way ahead of FF4 with that one ;-). When using Iron/Chrome I liked that compact feeling and tried to imitate it, using also the add-ons below:) Tiny Menu Hide GUI Bars (hides, among other things, the status bar, making it a pop-up at the bottom left that display only when needed) Hide Caption Title Bar (The title bar in any browser has always seemed like a big waste of space to me.) As I say, I didn't look too closely at the new look of FF4, so it's possible that some of these add-ons are incompatible precisely because they are no longer necessary. (Like the hidden status bar ? Does it pop-up on FF4 when needed ? Or maybe show in the address bar as in Opera ?) But others of my add-ons (Favicon Picker, Text Link, and some others) are also incompatible. Perhaps their functionality has also been incorporated into the default behaviour of FF 4 as well. Or not. Maybe I'll get brave enough to try upgrading again next week. For now it's a waiting game..... As the OP, I appreciate the continued comments. Thanks ! :-)

I agree that very few of them beat the averages ... how could they? They have offices to run, computers, phones, postage and staff ... and buy and sell a lot of stocks, and though their fees are low, many of them pretty well turn over their whole portfolio annually. Those that do that ... have a lot of capital gain to report to you (you hope!) annually ... of which the income tax people want their, in that case, ongoing, share. And they have that management expense fee (often higher than the income tax cost) that reduces their effective rate - and they get their guaranteed rate, whether they produce or not! Also - when it comes time to sell those units, you'd better have kept records of not just your original cost ... but also of all of those declared payouts that were reivested, in order to calculate your capital gain. Many mutual funds keep track of your average cost per unit ... that works O.K. ... until they get bought out/merged, etc. and usually the new system just starts from when they took over. Have you checked Morningstar, the agency that rates them? What about learning how money works and buying individual stocks yourself? I bought shares in one of Canada's half dozen or so nationwide banks over 40 years ago for about $4.20 per share, that was paying about a dime or a bit more as annual dividend. A year ago May each of those shares was "worth" (i.e. "could be sold for") $107.00 ... but they were heavily involved with the U.S. stinky problem mortgage situation, so their price slipped down through the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s into the 50s ... and have recovered a bit to low 60s. Some here recently said that, of course, I sold ... no, I hadn't. Partly, at the time of the high price, didn't have any idea that it would slide so far ... plus, it went from 4.5 doubles in 41 years to about 4 doubles in those years ... which, apart from the increased income via dividends over those 40 years, is a pretty good rate of growth. But if I were about to buy more bank shares, it'd be a different one, as this is not their first goof in recent years. Recently dividend rate grew from $2.80 to $3.08 to $3.48, which earlier in Canada were tax-advantaged, and recently that advantage increased substantially: so that a person with solely that kind of income went from tax-free $28,000. - 30,000. tax-free, to $46,345. tax-free, an increase of over 60% in one year. Further ... I've subscribed to what I consider Canada's best personal money management magazine for quite a number of years, that carries no ads, is pretty well all text - and the writers respond to subscribers' questions. Local subscribers meet regularly in about 40 places across Canada and I've met with about 20 others monthly here for about 8 years or so: many perspectives and I've learned a lot, there. Cost? Gas to get there, wear and tear on the car - plus, time ... a couple of hours a month, and another at the coffee house after, with a few of the guys and gals. If I'd put that $4.20 into the average even equity-based mutual fund 41 years ago, would the size of that asset have doubled that well? Rather doubtful, I think. A couple of mine have - several haven't. But I don't want to dump 'em this year, due to forced sale of a major holding - Canada's largest telco going private (damn it!). And that's with the income reinvested - and my shares paid me dividends quarterly, with frequent increases, for 41 years. However - the big proviso - the average growth rate has not been that good. I've avoided some taxes as I went along, but that piper will have to be paid, one of these days. Whether while I'm alive ... or for my executor to take care of, before dispersal of my estate to my kids and charities. Had I put that $4.20 into a bank account, GIC, bond, etc. where the number of dollars of principal has been guaranteed, would I have developed any such result? No way! Apart altogether from the tax advantages in the equity-based game (whether of the mutual fund or individual investment variety)! Did I say earlier ... that I prefer to run my own show? Further ... though it was 60 years ago, I grew up on a farm, and farmers are used to irregular income, with loss of some potential income when a cow dies, or reduced yields due to drought or flood (but the price of diesel fuel, fertilizer had to be paid, regardless). And seasonal income, for many. How many town folks could handle getting paid once or twice a year? Plus, they manipulate not only capital, but labour - to repair the tractor, or trade it on a bigger one? Which would require getting bigger tillage equipment, as well. Put a new roof on the barn, this year ... or build it larger? Farmers were much more used to uncertainty than city folks. Or, rather, than city folks used to be. Now, with pensions shrinking and disappearing like fog in the morning sun ... and, in many areas, the values of one's equity in one's owned home (well, "partly-owned", considering the mortgage), and with employment being uncertain, with full-time work scarcer, there have been major changes in the economic picture for city folks, as well. Back up and look at the far horizon ... occasionally, at least. Good wishes for increasingly more effective use of not only your income, but of your assets, as well. ole joyful

It is a very fine line, and it sounds like you're walking it exactly right. I too helped my son until about sixth grade, and then he was on his own 100% (6th-11th grade so far). It takes time to build up to it, and you're right, it's because it's far more sophisticated than it was in the past. My son started out with only the idea and a faint idea of where to go. It started out I'd talk to him, playing devil's advocate for realizing where experiment pitfalls might be, or was it too simplistic. I had him dictate what got typed up for the board, and I cut it out. We glued it together. The next year, I still had the conversation, but he had to type it up and we cut/glued together. The next year, it was all him. Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. He's a junior now and he can do entire presentations and experiments with robotics on his own. But they need help getting there. My son came up with a project I thought would be a total bust, and I learned something! He wanted to see how quickly you cool down flowers would help preserve them. Cryo-chrysanthemum was his title. Looked like icicles dripping down. Good luck on titles! I wish I was as creative as my kid, but alas, I am not.