Guilty to all of the above and many more. Have been known to take a couple of seed pods from plants I've seen in shopping center medians or the parks. I just figured I had RESCUED a few seeds that needed to be transplanted somewhere else. (Like my place) LOL I have even dug tulips up that were in a bar ditch. They are the ones that multiply like crazy and come back year after year. There use to be an old farm house there and now it's just an empty pasture and the tulips take up about 5 acres. Of course when the maintainers (big heavy road equipmnet) come in and grade the road several times a year they throw a ton of dirt on them. They are at least a ft deep in dirt on the side of the road now. I really should go dig some again next spring so I can have some at this house. LOL I've also called real estate people and ask if I can harvest seeds from houses I see for sale or rent that might have a flower or something I'm interested in. LOL Yelp, we're all addicts but I'd rather be a flower/garden/plant addict than any other kind. However when your not working and can't even afford to send postage to others for plant swaps it's not good. You suffer from empty mailbox syndrome. Happy Gardening all you Addicts and Enablers! Love Marian

Every electrical motor has a maximum rpm that it can turn without sustaining damage. Once that speed is exceeded, centrifugal force will pull the windings from the armature and they will bind into the stator. In the case of the Prius transaxle we are actually talking about a rotor assembly that has permanent magnets attached to it. Exceed the rated speed of that rotor and it will grenade. The engineers are correct. http://eahart.com/prius/psd/ In order for the gas engine to propel the car, MG1 actually has to be a generator and provide resistance for the engine to push against, as well as MG2 being a motor that helps the gas engine push the car. Using the java applets on the site I provided you get to see the normal operation of the motors in the transaxle, and how they work together. Take note there are times that MG1 actually is forced to spin backwards. The Prius has a maximum vehicle speed of 94mph, with the primary reason being risking over-revving the electric motors and causing a catastrophic failure of the transaxle. Here is a link that might be useful: Prius Power Split Device.

I have a 92 Chevy Caprice Classic that I've been driving for 19 years. I drive it about 8 months out of the year. In winter it's parked under cover, but the rest of the time it's in my driveway or parked under a tree. A month ago I took it to the mechanic to be inspected and have an ABS sensor replaced. It turned to need new brake pads as well. When I drove it home, the climate control was acting strangely. "Vent," which normally brings in air from the outside, now produced air conditioning. And the fan, which is controlled by a separate switch, didn't turn off when I turned off the A/C-Vent-Heat switch. It normally does. Plus an awful smell was coming out of the system. To me it smelled like moldy tobacco. (No one has ever smoked in the car.) So I took it back to the mechanic. He said nothing he did in the previous repair would have impacted the climate control. He looked at it and said debris from the tree had gotten into the area by the windshield wipers and clogged up the A/C drain, and that's what I'd been smelling. He cleaned it out and left the panel off it so that it could dry out. He said he'd put the panel back on in a week. It's past a week now, but I still smell the smell and the other problems haven't changed. Also, the engine sounds like the A/C is on all the time, even when it's turned off. It makes that cycling sound, if you know what mean. That doesn't seem like a good thing. I love this car (I really love this car!), but I'm on a fixed income and don't have much of a budget for car repairs. It's been amazingly free of trouble all these years, but does this repair sound like something that's going to make up for that? Here's my car's "glamour shot." :-)

So, my husband went up to the attic this afternoon to trace the fan's power source. He did find a thermostat, but get this...it was 10 FEET AWAY from the fan, BURIED in the cellolouse insulation between ceiling joists. Fire hazard! The cabling then jutted down into a wall. My husband is just going to install a junction box and cap the wiring before it goes to the thermostat. We think that will be fine rather than ripping open walls and tracing that circuit all the way to the breaker box. I'm just shocked that our home inspector missed such a glaring hazard. I don't think thermostats are supposed to be buried in insulation. I'd like to know why this was done, being that the house was rewired in 1997, and how it passed code inspection, or why the thermostat wasn't relocated if they wanted to keep the fan. I'm also wondering why we just found out about this fan running...we've never heard it before in the three years we've lived here. Maybe there was a problem with the thermostat, because the rattling would be heard even on cooler days and nights, which would mean the fan came on. I'm thinking that a properly operating thermostat would only activate the fan on hot days. It makes me think that there are other problems not so easily apparent. Although, knock on wood, the house has been flawless for us thus far. Thanks for all your help...I had a hunch the noise was something mechanical. I never thought that it would be a big, beastly fan that "suddenly" decided to come out of hibernation.