I have another one... new today: The day you are going to show off your pond and skippy filter to another ponder, you have a massive thunder/hailstorm that smashes lovely flowers and your stream developes a leak so the pond is about 8" down.

Ewwww,, Loud bang, snap, then flap, flap flap when starting the car.... Is the neighbors cat missing???? As sad as that sounds, it actually is not all that uncommon of a "diagnosis". Of course it could be just a straight mechanical problem, locked up accessory pulley, bad belt etc. But many times it is the result of an innocent animal climbing up to "something warm" and going to sleep. For the most part what Kalinin is saying is unfortunately way too accurate. At least 50% of our phone calls today are not about someone wanting to bring a car in for repair, they are solely about taking the knowledge of the technician while saving themselves every penney they can. Again, THAT'S AT LEAST 50% OF THE CALLS. Strange as it may seem, for me half of those calls anymore are other shops that have suddenly found the 2004 (or newer) car they have in their stall does not communicate to their scan tool. Or there is no information in their repair information system. I do make it a point to assist other shops, they will likely be my client some day provided they don't abuse what I will share. Some shops I have cut off from that help and they can either step up and make the investment to get up to speed, or fail. Their choice. Saturday I had one appointment. An inspection. The vehicle had a severe gouge in the sidewall of the RF tire. That would be a "It just blew out without a warning" if left unnoticed. The RR tire just passed at 3/32, the RF inner tie rod was worn plus various lamps were inoperative/broken. All of this was about a $600 repair, and the car would give normal service to it's owner through-out the year barring any suprises. The vehicle's owner's father called me and started trying to wheel and deal on the price say "his mechanic" would do the repair for much less than the estimate. I only have one response to that strategy, "Let him fix it then". I'll cancel his sons appointment for this coming saturday. You see, I don't pull any punches when it comes to investing in training, and equipment necessary to be ready for whatever shows up at the door. No-one in the four state area is keeping pace with me when it comes to those two areas. While I have been keenly focusing on being the very best that I can be I have had to put pricing where it has to be in order to do that. Because of that I'll never be the cheapest, that's a tug of war I cannot win. But lets play who's the best, (at electronics/diagnostics) and who can keep pace with the dealer on the majority of the cars on the road all the way through current model year, 2008. (over 97% of the new cars on the road I have a current O.E. scan tool for) Oh, one thing changed from a few months back. Honda heard our(my) complaint about the scan tool turning off. They released a new laptop based version, for which I was able to have my Ford IDS laptop sent out, the hard drive partitioned and installed into the same laptop. Instead of some $7000 just for Honda, I was able to take my $6000 Ford tool, and add about $3000 to it to make it also the Honda O.E. tool. One win for the little guy.......

I assume you are not talking about oven with a pilot light. I assume you are talking about spark plug type of igniters. Check and see if the spark gaps on any one of the stove burners is shorted or wet or carbonized. Clean everyone of them. If one of them is shorted, none of the other will work. Yes, you can cook a turkey in a microwave, but you cannot brown a turkey in a microwave. Good luck, and have a nice TG meal. dcarch

Sort of along those lines...for YEARS, I collected then threw self set hips from the fifteen-hundred-plus roses of all types in the Newhall garden on the facing HOA hillside which they over irrigated nightly. A friend and I used to laugh ourselves silly, thinking of some "rustler" who, some day, might find some of the resulting seedlings and just KNOW they were something rare, exotic and "lost". There were vermin of ALL types in that canyon. I'm sure there must be some seedlings which resulted from those literally thousands of hips we used to fling over on that hill! They had dozens of Banksiaes planted as hillside cover, along with Russian Olive and, later, many five gallon Fortuniana which were simply planted and allowed to grow as they wished. I thought about visiting my sister and wandering out where the garden used to be just to see what might have come up, but never did. Now it's several hours away, I doubt I will.