WF - No LAFFING! Ok - I'm grinning too, but NO LAFFING. It's really NOT FUNNY. I'm trying to be serious here. . . .STOP IT. ..(grin) I get these STUPID calls this time of year - from friends that went shopping - and didn't have ANY form of protection. . . .I just want to hand them my credit card and tell them to throw the machine out the window. I'm serious. . .tis the season. That and the "what should I buy" stuff with those ads - every freakin' ad that comes out in some da*mn newspaper. . .trying to explain to someone NOT to purchase anything with a celeron - an athalon is fine - watch out for this, that and 15 other things. I go into a complete psychosis at this time of year! No laughing! Comonnnnnnnnnn. . . .(grin) I just wanna play in the dirt! Leave me alone! Buy a set of crayons and write your order! (very sarcastic grin) Speaking of . . .I have to go in tomorrow and fix a corrupted profile from someone who can't stop surfin' . .jeez I'd like to slap some people. . . .and then re-write an app that is misbehaving. . .the users won't use the command buttons right so I have to "disable" some of those in the application. Ya know, how many times do you have to tell people not to "crash" out of a shared database? Want me to draw PICTURES FOR YOU?!?!?! I'm gonna disable the red X. Stopped the corruption in the other ones when I disabled it. No laughing - this time of year stinks for some of us. LOL. . .(sigh!)

I agree with Violet. I too, am a health professional and there are more people(especially young people) developing more cancer and chonic diseases. And there are plenty of studies out there that show environmental links. Also studies done on the nutrient content of food shows that during the last 50 years, our veggies and fruit have become less nutrient packed. The studies indicate that this is due to the fact that the N_P_K are being returned to the soil in adequate amounts by chemical fertilizers, just not all the micro nutrients that we need for healthy bodies(the plants do not necessarily need them to grow). We need more types of nutrients to grow than plants. It is true that the nutrients in chemical fertilizers are just as effective as those in organics. Its just that it is not complete. In organic gardening, before any nutrient in the soil is used by the plant, it must be available in a form the plant can absorb. This is done by bacterial action. The organic nutrients are first used by microscopic organisms and the waste that is produced feeds our plants. Adding chemicals kills not only earthworms, it kills the microorganisms that allow us to garden organically. This is how "dead soil" develops. I am sure that an occasional use of chemicals is not going to destroy your soil, but my thinking is why at all if you are going organic. I know that there are many organic gardeners out there that insist that only compost is needed to garden organically, and I am sure plants grow just fine with that. But compost is a soil amendment, not a fertilizer. Everytime I harvest vegetables or fruits from my raised beds,I add a compost and a tiny bit of alfafa meal(nitrogen), rock phosphate(Phosphorous) and Kelp meal(potassium and trace elements). I've been doing this for quite a few years now and my yields improved, my plants are larger, and I have no trouble with diseases or insects. I learned from not only what I have read, but what I do, that healthy soil and growing organically makes a difference. Hope some of this information helps.

just be sure if you decide to use zonealarm you get the free version not the trial version and do not get any of that added stuff. ZoneAlarm ® Firewall that should be the direct download for the free za as was stated as you go along with a firewall and it asks you to allow it to access the internet the ones you know for sure like your antivirus and your browsers you can put a check mark in the remember this box and it will no longer ask you for that one unless you do an update to the program then it will ask again and you tell it to remember again. You do not want to give server rights to anything so if the box pops up asking for server rights say no then it will pop up asking for just permission to access that one you can allow if it is something you are familiar with. If you do not recogonize the name of what is asking for permission you say no, then if you see that something you were trying to use would not open you know that was the thing that was asking for permission, so you can know to allow it next time. That generic 32 one that had you worried you MUST allow that or you can not do anything, that is a process you need to set to always allow. First time you use any program the firewall will have to ask you for permission, say your music player for example, tell it yes to permission and check the box for remember and you are done with that it will not ask you again. At first it seems daunting but once you get thorugh that initial flood of setting up what can and can not access then you rarely ever get bothered by it. What you are trying to prevent is allowing something that you are not familiar with which may be malware that got on your computer and is trying to phone home to whoever wrote the malware and it will then be sending info from your pc to that person. that is why it is very important not to just always click to allow, know what you are allowing. If you do not recognize a name copy and paste it in google and see what you find out usually you can tell right away what program it is. also with most firewalls you can click for details and it will give you info that can help tell what is asking for access. I am totally self taught and also one of the older crowd, we were all newbies at one time! but please if you do not put in a firewall DO go turn on the one you have with xp it is better than nothing, however if you put one in you must turn that xp one off you can not have 2 firewalls.

Larisa, I forgot to mention, the reason I asked Henkel about their Persil Sensitive fragrance situation, is because if someone is trying to avoid chemicals in fragrance as a whole, it is also good to avoid masking fragrance, which can possibly use MORE chemicals. I use traditional products since green ones didn't clean to my standards, but I still prefer limiting unnecessary ingredients. I have 5 little girls and my youngest has previously reacted to Tide Original liquid. Fragrance is full of hormone- disrupting, cancer-causing chemicals that companies do not have to disclose due to trade secret laws. Fragrance as an ingredient can contain 100+ different ingredients itself. I'm really not liking the way Henkel states "Perfume-free" on Persil's label, but "fragrance" is an ingredient. So, perfume is not fragrance now? I'm sure it's legal due to loose laws, but it's misleading. I just expect better from a company I'm supporting. Okay, end rant. Surf was recently purchased by Henkel (over a year ago, I think). So, if anyone currently uses Surf, don't be surprised if it changes. Or, maybe it has already changed and is worth trying again? I FB'd Henkel a few days ago to ask if "all Oxi" liquid has been changed. They stated that it hasn't undergone any recent changes. Well, it smells entirely different. I sniffed it at the store yesterday after reading an inquiry about it here. I have also read complaints in various other places, including their Facebook page. Someone else publically inquired, and they received the same answer I received. I asked about WHEN it was last changed, but they didn't respond to that part of my question. I tried "all Oxi" after going to a fire station open house and seeing that our local firemen use it. The fire station tours are really nice for laundry room creeps like me. Actually, their W/D is right out in the open, so I wasn't creeping around at all, LOL. Anyway, I'm not sure what to think of this (or any of these companies anymore really), because I trust that my nose knows.