I looked in the Monterey Yellow Pages, and see that there is a Ewing Irrigation Supply outlet in Monterey, and they would have a better selection of Drip Irrigation supplies than Home Depot does. Just be aware that the component drip tubing and connectors that correspond to 1/2" size tubing are not the same between Irrigation Supply companies and Home Depot/Orchard Supply Hardware drip tubing. The 1/4" tubing is interchangeable, but the larger sizes are not. Another problem I often have with shopping for drip irrigation at places like Home Depot, is that they are not fully stocked, and often missing exactly what you might need. Ewing will also have information pamphlets on designing and installing drip irrigation, but is not match for companies like The Urban Farmer, which will actually design a system at no cost if you buy all your materials from them. There may also be similar Irrigation Supply companies in your area that offer the similar service. Last comments, I would recommend you not install the 1/4" laser tubing which acts as a soaker hose, as the 1/4" tubing with in-line emitters at either 6 or 12" spacing is much more reliable, and makes less noise when operating. Also, you should be aware that drip emitters should be moved as plants grow larger, or have emitters added further away from plants to encourage wider/deeper rooting. Too often, no further work is done to systems after initial installation, and you may provoke root rot on some plants because all the water is concentrated right at the base of the plant, rather than further out as they grow larger.

The smaller panels from Crappy Tire, ( less than 15W) are good for trickle charging a battery, or for occasional use small appliances. As such they are good for maintaining a battery on a piece of equiptment that lies fallow for a while, or supplimenting the battery power in things like cars, campers, RVs, trailers, boats, etc where the major recharging is done by an alternator. For example, a couple of 5W panels on the back of a boat will recharge the fishfinder battery through out the day, so that in bright sunlight, you may never have to pull the battery and hook it up to a charger until the fall. The folding panels are the same, but useful for camping, if your idea of camping is with a laptop, cell phone, CD player, Playstaion, etc. The 15W and 30W panels are useful for small stand alone systems, where you are willing to pay a premium to drive into town and pick the parts up, rather than order the parts on line or by phone, arrange Customs, duty, delivery and wait a couple weeks, then go into town and pick the parts up. For example, I have one of their polycrystalline 15W panels, on a pole by the pond. It charges a deep cycle Optima battery via their charge controller, which powers a Shurflo 12V RV water pressure pump, which provides water for the garden. In early fall, the system gets drained, the battery pulled and everything goes in the root cellar until spring. As the garden grows, the system will get plumbed to a 500 gallon cistern on the hill, equipted with a float switch and there will be gravity fed drip irrigation system. I may do something similar to solve the problem of cell phone service. Hook a 30W panel up via a charge controller to 2 Optima deep cycle batteries, then to a 12V 800-1900MHZ Wilson Repeater Amplifier and Yagi antenna, so that I dont have to hold my cell phone up high, antenna parallel to the ground, pointed at Mile High just to get a signal. Im not ready yet for Household power, but know what I want for a system, (10 100W or 120W panels, 24 batteries, 1 Whispergen 80W Wind genertator, MPP charger, 2 inverters in series for 240V). There are no Canadian suppliers with the type of Catalog inventory like the States, but there are Canadian suppliers like Carmanah. I will be getting quotes on the components from everybody, and will probably wind up getting parts from all over.

jim, Nope, never done anything dumb in the kitchen myself, ever ever... ;-) We do like to tell a similar story about one Thanksgiving in my childhood. My Dad had made stock from the turkey carcass in the big stockpot, and it was sitting cooling in the corner of the kitchen. Later that evening, my mom asked my little brother (who, to be fair, was only 10 or 12) to take the pot downstairs. Now, what she meant, and thought was clear from context, was to "take the pot of stock and put it in the second fridge in the basement, where there is room for it." What my brother understood was "take that big pot full of really dirty water and dump it down the big sink in the laundry room downstairs." Being in a helpful mood, my brother even scrubbed out the pot while he was down there (he figured whatever was in it must be really nasty if mom didn't even want it poured down the drain of her kitchen sink) and brought it back up shiny clean, proud to be such a good son. Zabby

If you invest $1.00 at 5% and let it run for 50 years, it would have grown to $11.00+, without allowing for the erosion of your income, whether annually or after a period of years, several times, by income tax, or the ongoing erosion in value of your asset by inflation. If, however, you could invest it at 10%, after that same 50 year period it would have grown to $117.00+. Your investment could lose 3/4 of its value and still come out ahead of having invested it at 5%. Actually, more than that - for it's the value after taxes and inflation that really counts. Do you expect that companies like Exxon, Gillette, Coca Cola, and such, or other major petroleum, pipeline companies, etc. may go out of business? Or even suffer serious losses. A person who invests a major portion of his (probably less likely "her", cause women generally are more risk-averse and less likely to plunge; [some would say, "smarter"]) total invested asset into highly speculative issues seems to me to have cheese for brains. The stock markets as a whole have average growth of 7 - 8% or so, over the long term. Few mutual fund managers' holdings have grown faster. And they charge fees for their expertise - somewhere between 1 - 2% in the U.S. for equity (i.e. stock market based) funds, most of them over 2% annually in Canada. If they match the long-term average growth of the market ... they're reaping about a fifth to a quarter of the growth, a larger proportion in Canada. Unfortunately, if there is no growth - they still get their percentage. Many persons calling themselves financial planners/advisors are actually mutual fund sales people: that's all the equity-related financial issues that they're licensed to sell. They don't want to talk to you about individual stocks, for they can't sell them and it's illegal for them to recommend them unless they've taken the courses that stockbrokers take (which few have - their courses are much less complex). There are a few who sell no financial products, but many of them stop doing that because often their income levels are much lower, despite many people who want to invest saying that they'd really love independent advice. One should investigate what kind of training a prospective personal financial advisor has taken and whether s/he has advanced courses above the minimum requirements. Also what kind and length of experience the prospective advisor has. Also what lifestle experience the prospect has: some have seen a great deal more of life than others - and have learned much more per year than many who have lived as many years. Finally - you need a person whose personality and ideas are compatible with yours. You will trust that person with a very important part of your life. Some years ago, when I had a display at a county fall fair, someone asked me what right I had to call myself a financial planner. I said that we could get rid of unemployment tomorrow - we need only have every unemployed person put out a shingle on his front lawn calling himself a financial planner, as it was unregulated - any darn fool could do it. Stock brokers were regulated, as were mutual fund salespeople, but in our area at that time financial planners were not, as there were few of them operating outside of stockbrokerage and mutual fund sales agencies. That's not the case now - but it would be a good idea to ask several of them what kind of regulations there are governing them. I took the course that stockbrokers take, over 20 years ago and worked for a mutual fund sales brokerage (i.e. they could offer mutual funds managed by a large number of managers, rather than only funds managed by their own company). I didn't produce enough sales to suit them, so was there for only one year. I'm more tuned into the idea of helping people set their financial goals, look at some concepts that they might not have thought of, and work toward achieving them. I am totally devoted to helping my clients decide what they want to achieve and start out on a plan of how to achieve that/those goals. They don't have to be concerned that my advice or recommendations may be slanted toward various financial products that I just happen to sell, for I don't sell any. One local person that I met a few years ago said that he'd done well in business and managing his investments, so some friends asked him to manage some money for them. He asked for a minimum investment of $10,000., asked the client to sign a power of attorney for that account only, and when he made decisions about investments, a copy of the confirmation went to the client and one to him. He charged 10% of the growth (exclusive of dividends, if I remember correctly). Rather a good idea, for if he doesn't produce, he doesn't get paid. There is a fairly major proviso, though - that he might choose some fairly risky investments where there could well be a possibility of major gain. He being a person of integrity, I think that he was quite strongly guided by the level of risk that his clients were willing to tolerate. When I asked what happened if there were no gain - he said that there hadn't been a year yet that he hadn't been able to send a request for payment to every client. I'm not sure how many years the concept had been in operation. This has been rather off topic - sorry about that. As for many people lacking time to manage their investments ... ... many people spend more time on consideration of where they'll go for a two week vacation than they do on an investment system that may well be in place for forty years (or more). Good wishes for making your money work well for you - rather than better for someone else. joyful guy