My turn to source for example photos has, more and more, become Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/groups/orchidspecies/ Many of the photos used on Jay's site are from there anyway. Frequently, collection details and/or growing conditions are provided with the astounding photography! Last time I checked, there were 148,529 uploads tagged with orchid. Orchid species has 7,851 photos, alone, that doesn't include all the other orchid photo groups. Many of them include a high resolution photo option, which always gets high points from me! The link below is to the main site. Everything there is organized and not so random. Scott Here is a link that might be useful: Orchid Species Photographs

Davin, I am definitely a DIY person. Self proclaimed experts who know it all drive me crazy. There are a lot of them out there and I rarely bother with anyone who announces their way is the only way. Over the years I have filled one binder after another with printouts from the net and articles about various ponding methods, products, styles and systems as well as the fish and plants. Many amateurs have good info to share so they are represented as well as the professionals. Even with all the info I have collected, there is always something new to try out or research. Some of the Extension services have good handouts although it is more directed to plants rather than hardware. They are not permitted to endorse products for the most part. The DNR and Universities are good resources too.I try to read reviews when they are available for hardware. Too many products don't live up to the claims and my budget is too limited to waste time and money on them. So far I find the simplest, most basic is the best. Less to go wrong and I don't need a lot of support. If you are running a business to sell hard goods, make sure you know what you have and what the competition has. Be honest with your customers and they will come back. If you over sell top of the line or sell less than what is needed, they won't.

I went ahead and joined i-Naturalist and so far it is working really well. It is a lot faster submitting sightings than BAMONA. So far I am just adding photos I already had online starting with the most recent and working my way back. It seems other people are very quick to "agree" with most of my sightings to make them "research grade". I also got some quick ids on things I wasn't sure of. Obviously the ones that are a little harder to id won't happen as quickly. When I'm done I'm going to go in and add things to my life list that I have seen, but have no photo of. Those are not considered research grade, because there is no proof for others to confirm. Just like BAMONA, there are not many sightings on there for my county so I will be able to add a lot to that list. If I used a smart phone with a good camera and gps turned on I imagine that would make the process even easier using their app while away from home. My camera is not something I would carry around all the time and doesn't have gps so I have to add the location manually, but it does let you add the location to a whole batch of photos at once so that is nice. Also the majority of my sightings are at home so that makes it easier too. It is pretty cool watching my list grow as I add more pics. Many of the people helping with ids will add helpful comments on distinctive markings to look for and such. I highly recommend it to any other list making nerds!

I'm just glad I had a copy of the plans to prove that the granite was not to spec. Not that they necessarily would have denied it, but it eliminates any chance. The plans show all five units, and I don't think any of the islands were done properly. I doubt that contractor will work for them again. When I dug in my heels about this, the builder shared correspondence from a month ago in which they approached the granite guy about this and with no response. All the better for me, since I can live with it as-is and am getting the other details taken care of. I urge other buyers to make sure you have copies of the plans, as well as documenting every stage of your build. That attention to detail served me well when buying my current house, too. Originally I was under contract for a condo, as I had no idea they were building similarly priced triplexes in the community. I met a realtor who told me, but I'd already put down a substantial condo deposit. However, I'd been going back and forth with the condo builder because they didn't provide me with a copy of the community covenants and kept putting it off. A bit of research revealed that under state law the contract isn't officially in effect until I have all those documents, so I was able to break it when I pointed that out, get the money back, and get the home I've enjoyed for the past 10 years.