Hi Mike! Thanks, :-) That's Goober. Worlds biggest pain in the butt, spoiled brat, love bug. lol... My process? I guess you could say I'm a organized mess. lol.. I have been sifting a bag of bark twice to make sure to get all that I can use out of it. I make different mixes for the different types of plants and where they are. Inside or out.. I'm mainly using pine bark, and because it's more flat in nature, 3/8" to 1/8" is O.K. for the gritty mix, and 3/8" to dust is O.K. for the 5-1-1. (1/2" to dust can be used for the 5-1-1 too, but I don't like the bigger pieces of bark) If using fir bark, 1/4" would be used for both mixes. The left over bark that does NOT go through becomes mulch. As you know, I tired to break it down for use in the mix in my blender, but that did NOT work so well. lol! I have 3 garden beds, and I like to mulch containers too. We do get hot here. ;-) So none goes to waste. A few pieces have also been thrown in the grill to help get it started, sap wood too ;-). lol. What DOES go through the 3/8" will be sifted over 1/8" to remove all the smallest particles. That is set aside and used in various ways. It's great for seed cover in the garden beds, or added back to the bark for the 5-1-1 instead of peat. After the very small has been removed like mentioned above I will have clean bark ready for different needs. If it's a very small container, like for a succulent, I like to sift it over 1/4"(and use 1/4-1/8")I don't like or want large pieces of bark in a 3" pot, and my plants do fine with it. If it's to be used for the 5-1-1 It will be ready to use, and I would add back in the less than 1/8" pieces, to powder, in place of peat. O.K. , so does this make sense? I haven't had my coffee yet. ;-) I'm glad to hear this has been of some help to some of your friends! JoJocolor>

We are pushing the limits of good sense here in north Texas planting out our tomato transplants last Sunday. (Surely these plants will be 'blessed' because we put them in on Sunday????) They certainly enjoyed the multi-inch rain on Tuesday and the mild temps since. One of our first projects was to re-do the small water feature near the back porch. The old one developed a leak and had to be replaced. The new container is in and the fountain is splashing merrily. It needs the rocks fussed with and fresh mulch, but it sounds and looks good. We've scraped up the old mulch path in the white garden....ummmmmmm good mulch. And replaced with fresh pine bark nuggets. The swing in that garden got stripped and repainted as well. Today I put in a few white petunias and the area looks so good. We sprayed our home-made bunny-be-gone on some potential munchies....now the new growth on the daylilies will last longer than a day. Every time I go outside I want to take photos of the red tulips in the front yard. I've already taken photos, but the flowers are so bright and fresh, I want to take more. LOL See the tulips on my blog, linked below. Happy spring everyone! Here is a link that might be useful: Creative Soul

It sounds like you bought a commercial patch panel for your relatively simple home application. A 24 port patch panel is designed to allow you to connect 24 incoming lines to 24 phones, but I think you want to connect 12+ phone jacks to one set of incoming lines. To use a 24 port panel for your application you will have to make some jumpers to interconnect all the jacks. Home Depot and Lowes sell a Leviton Cat three panel for 9 phone jacks and up to 4 phone lines. You just punch down the incoming network line to the first position, and then punch down the line for each phone to the one of the other positions. All the punch down jacks are electrically connected inside the panel. There is no need for jumpers between the lines because the punchdowns are already interconnected. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-Bridged-Telephone-Expansion-Board-R01-47603-110/100013049#.UhM_X5Jq-So Leviton also has a home security cat 3 patch panel that adds a jack for a home security system to be plugged in. Bruce

The welder most likely has the two hots wires and a ground. The range receptacle has two hot wires, a ground, and a neutral. You just don't connect anything to the neutral, it doesn't need or care about it.