Wow Jacob, I dub you the Harry of SoCal! I can't believe how many tropical/subtropical fruit trees you have. I especially love your Mangosteen tree. Can you give me some pointers on what you feed it, how often and what kind of water you water with. Do you do any foliar feedings? I just recently got into citrus also and was looking for a blood orange myself and after doing lots of research, I settled on a Smith Red Valencia. I just purchased a citrus juicer and juiced bags of Moro and Taroccos blood oranges and depending on where I purchased the fruit from, it was very sweet and delicious or very tart. I really wish I had a backyard as large as yours. I can imagine how wonderful it would be once most your trees are in full production. You guys with large yards make me so envious. Thanks for sharing all your pictures and information. Simon

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.

Fly, don't worry about mustering up courage! I just called Land's End about your pillow, and they said YES, you can absolutely return it. They will either send you a new one of the same pillow or they will refund your money. No questions asked. Guaranteed. Period. Just like they say. They keep your order history for 3 years, so they will still have a record of what you paid for it. RE the memory foam pillows, I've gone through three of them so far, over the past five years or so. The first one I got at Target (it was a "8" shaped one). It lost its memory after a short time and I couldn't use it any more. I didn't really like the shape of it; I had to put another regular pillow under it to make it high enough. So I replaced that one with another memory foam pillow, but shaped like a regular pillow. (I still had to use another pillow under it, though.) I don't remember where I got that one, but the brand is Sleep Innovations. I probably got it at Fred Meyer or Target. That one also failed me after a while. I recently got a new pillow at IKEA, and it' fine so far. They have many to choose from; I think the one I bought was about $15. The problem I have is that my ears are shaped weird, and regular pillows push on the hard curved part of my ear and make it hurt. I need either a very squishy pillow or a very soft foam one. I just wish I could find a plain old foam pillow from the 1970s. There are none to be found; they're all memory foam now. BTW, I mostly sleep on my side, but if my shoulder (or ear!) starts to hurt, I'll sleep on my back for a while. Basically, I just flop around like a fish all night. :)

The first thing is to determine where the home’s shut off valves are. That’s inside the dwelling, and outside at the street or meter. If there are shut offs under those sinks, they likely are frozen open and will self destruct when you try to use them. Next, figure out what type of plumbing supply lines that you have. CPVC? Copper? What material supplies are you going to need? Go to the store and get some stock fittings, glue, solder, etc. You'll need all of that now and for future projects. Next, Shut if the water to the home, at the main shut off, and drain the internal pipes by opening the most downstream one to drain. Cut off the shut off valve and glue or sweat a cap to them. If you haven’t sweated copper bis fire, practice that for a week or so before tackling this. Any water in the lines will make this really difficult. Leave the pipes long enough to be able to extend with new pipe or a new valve. Cut the drain waste arm going into the wall. And stuff a rag in it. Trim up all the spaghetti hanging down from the top for easier handling. Once the pipes are capped, then cut free the caulking holding the top to the walls and vanity. A long slim blade, and then a cat’s paw pry bar will be needed. Then a bigger pry bar. These things are much heavier than you think they are. You will need help to lift it up and off. Once the top is off, then find all the screws holding the vanity to the wall, and remove them. Look for screw at the bottom too, holding shims there. You and your helper tilt it forward to be sure you haven’t missed a screw. Then slide out the bottom. You likely will have some wall damage to repair. You can put it on Craigslist to sell it or donate it if you don’t damage it or the top. If you damage it, use a sawzall to cut it up into manageable chunks to dispose of. Many municipal waste companies don’t like construction debris in the household cans. If that’s the case here, you’ll have to haul it to your local dump. Some will require a dump fee. Some allow so many free trips per year. Use that opportunity to get rid of a few more things in either case. Putting in a new vanity, top, and plumbing, is more than twice as hard as demolishing the old. It’s an advanced DIY skill. You need to own multiple levels, and know how to shim things to level in all 6 directions. Then you screw it to the walls through the shims. Install the faucet to the top first, before setting. Shim the top level, and silicone to set. Then you redo all of the plumbing. I’d suggest making friends with your new neighbors and find a friend with some DIY skills that you can help with her jobs a time or two before tackling this. You will need tools. Those tools will cost as much as hiring a pro to do it for you. But you get to keep the tools to do it again! Good luck!