bump

Sorry. I only get basic cable. That's all the TV I choose to pay for, when 16 mins. out of every 30, is advertising. I watch mostly PBS, news and weather.

I DVR'd the show and went back to look at it after the initial buzz in this posting. The only thing I was impressed with and would consider doing was the lighting design in what I think is the Green kitchen. Remember, the automatic lighting and lighting the path to the kitchen for a midnight snack? I also absolutely loved the under-lit onyx island, but I was appalled to watch the family cut directly on the onyx without even using a board to protect the surface! I eliminated marble for my island because I felt we would be too rough on it, and onyx is much more fragile! I also agree that I've seen many more beautiful and functional kitchens here. I love my kitchen, which I have not posted here yet because I have a few things to finish first. Being Italian, I decided to bite the bullet and put in a wood fired pizza oven, not in our kitchen, but just outside on our patio. We originally considered incorporating one into a two sided fireplace, but I decided I really did not want the mess of wood and ashes inside my kitchen, nor the extra heat it would generate in the summer. The guy on the show with the pizza oven obviously enjoyed making the pizzas, but I felt he was too isolated from his guests in his alcove. I make the dough up ahead of time and have toppings set out on my island. After a quick demo from me, our guests make up their own individual pizzas and bring them outside and watch them magically appear in 2 minutes. Everyone has a blast plus it's low stress on us.

There are only two places where farting can be a major life event -- the first is anywhere several guys are together; and the other is in a hospital post-surgical ward. Until you can fart, you don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of there (because if you can't "pass gas," it means your intestines aren't yet functioning after being under general anesthesia). Chris Harrison said in his blog that Wes was asked to be on the MTA special, but declined. Then, Wes started contacting some of the guys in an attempt to see how many would "support him" if he were to appear on it. He then contacted the producers to say that he wanted to be on the show, but they (the producers) said no. I wasn't watching the show at all when Ed left. I think I only saw one episode before he came back. So, although I know he works in Information Technology, I don't know for what company he works, or what his duties/responsibilities are, etc. The "IT world" encompasses one heck of a lot of different stuff. I work in IT, and there are a little over 150 of us in the IT dept. With the exception of the desktop support group (about 20 folks), there aren't too many of us who can take over other folks' duties and responsibilities. Desktop support is desktop support is desktop support. But the database administrators couldn't suddenly take over the duties of the Citrix administrators; the Exchange administrators couldn't suddenly take over the duties of the webmasters, etc. In addition to not having the skills or experience to do the other stuff, there are the network permission restrictions. Only specific folks can log onto a server to apply patches or make any changes; only specific folks can make changes to the network firewall, etc., etc. And there aren't too many folks in IT (at least where I work) who have so little to do that they don't have to worry about whether or not they're at work for days or weeks on end. So, I can completely understand Ed being worried about his job. Any IT person who really cares about what he/she does would be concerned about how it was being handled in their absence.