I am another who thinks the cross posting feature Houzz pushes so much is a huge detriment to the forums and I routinely flag as "miscategorized" posts that show up in forums that have nothing to do with them. It is confusing at best and I personally find it to be a huge irritant. btw, there is no compelling need to cross post - it is an option only. You only have to pick a single forum to post in - the other two choices are not requirements at all! If you do choose to do so, at least pick forums to which the topic is related!! It is also not winter yet and based on the activity on other gardening forums, there is still plenty of interest going on outside. But if you want to engage in a non-gardening discussion, please do so in one of the proper discussion forums!!

Typing was required in 9th grade at my Overseas dependents school. Being run by the military where men typed everyone had to learn. Their thinking was all of us were going to college or the military and you would need typing. Smart actually. I sucked big time. As an over achiever sort of student I had perfect grades. I made a D my first semester. I did not get much better. The harder I tried the worse it was. My fingers had minds of their own. It was a mess. Doomed. My sisters are good at it. Still I got a typewriter for graduation. A portable Smith-Corona-in blue of course with the hard case. One of my younger sisters still has it last I heard. You might think this was preparation by my parents for college but my mother did not believe in college for girls. She saw it as a waste of time and money. You were going to get married or some such nonsense. I am not sure why I got a typewriter. I was grateful when computers came along. I know where the backup key is automatically. I spend a good deal of time backing up but I do type much better than I used to. We had electrics in the library at college but I never mastered using one-took a light touch. Fortunately the College of science did not approve of papers for undergrads. They saw them as a waste of professors time. I am not convinced of that. Still I didn't have to do much typing.

arkansas girl, your point about how it is not profitable to produce really durable consumer items is on point. Back when Singer was filling homes with sewing machines they built some pretty good machines and they built them to last. But, that meant that people were buying fewer machines because they lasted so well. So, Singer started offering incentives to trade in old machines and buy a new one. But what they did was destroy the old machine rather than reselling them. They did not want a lot of older machines being used and handed down and resold because it cut into their market. Durable machines did not make for profit. And, back then, they could not just add a bunch of useless features to the machines as easily as can be done today in order to add percieved value.

The posts displayed newest first? You could like a comment and not get booted out? Me too. Twould be nice.