This may not be hardly on the same theme as annoying comments about your gardening skills, but I just need to vent. For the past several years, job,family and not a very good location kept me from doing much gardening. always in the back of my mind was... someday and somehow I am going to return to a property that I had owned for years, and have a garden. During that time, friends that knew my dreams would give me startings from their gardens and family and friends would give me a plant for special occasions. If I found a plant I liked on clearance I would buy it. Dh had been told many times that instead of a vase of roses, I would much rather have a rose plant. My yard basically became a "holding place" for my dream. A year ago things finally fell into place, for this to happen. But first things,first-- the house had to have major renavations, and my mother had a stroke and was hospitalized for 5 months before passing away. Needless to say my dream had to move down my list of proierities. Since we still own the property, we had just moved from, I thought my "treasures" would be safe until I could get a chance to move them. Imangine how I felt when people would come up to me and ask what I was going to do with all my flowers since I had moved away. One person remarked " you"e got flowers I have never seen before". Well, I am moving them to a new "Holding place", and will eventually get them into the right spot. If I had anything I didn't want to move, I would like the liberty of deciding what to do with it-- trade it-- gift it-- or even compost it. I"m not a selfish person, I love to divide--- but I want to know when I finally find the right spot for a special plant that it will still be there for me and that someone has just not helped themselves to it. Sorry for the rant-- I"ve waited 15 years, and I just don't want to be rushed now! Janet

I used induction for over a year (Miele 36" cooktop). I moved to Seattle and the home I am renting (and leaving) has a Kitchen Aid 6 burner gas cooktop. I hate it. I cannot get a true simmer and had to buy an induction hob. No one should be using a round wok to stir fry, so that is not an issue. Check America's Test Kitchen results on using a wok. For me gas totally sucked. It takes forever to boil water - over 10 minutes compared to On gas, I have two size "burners". Smaller flame or wider flame. You have to put it on high to cover your pan for even heating then everything burns, so you have to keep it small. On induction, you just match the pan to the ring size and everything is perfect - very low simmer to fast boiling. Induction also conducts up the sides of the pot and the handles don't get hot. I have to use a pot holder just to stir food with gas. Making Bernaise without a double boiler is a snap. Plus the sauce thickens better getting heat from the sides at the same temperature as the bottom. Maybe other gas ranges are better, compared to this crappy Kitchen Aid (the DW, Wall Ovens, & Fridge also suck). Renting new home in a couple months.

I am having to post this from another computer and Konqueror browser. Since the appearance of the strange characters I can not click on any of the options at the top of the main pages on any GW forum including the create new post none of them are clickable on any forum. Also I can not post a reply here on this thread because the entire reply box has somehow become linked to the brackets square link that is in ccdrys post right up above this one. If I click in the reply box it immediately goes right to the google page in his link. I have let Tamara know of this, if anyone else is having these problems please post about it and let them know using the contact us button. I can not access them using my Linux with firefox, windows 7 laptop with firefox, but can access them with my Android tablet and Android smartphone, and I can access it using Linux with the Konqueror browser. So knowing what does and does not work would be helpful. Everything was working fine till the appearance of those strange characters.

From what I've read, most of the changes are of a User Interface nature. The under-the-hood stuff has been stable and efficient back to 7. Of course, we all know that it was just the UI area that caused Microsoft the nightmares that they're trying to put behind them. WIn 8 has been great to work with as far as my experience has gone. The infamous Start button problem became something most people found could be quickly and easily fixed. Smartphones have had useable voice recognition capabilities for many years. My five year old car has it for telephone use, and in my newest car I can control everything in the center part of the dashboard, except climate control. I've found that the novelty quickly wears off. Even with very capable voice comprehension software as is now available, it remains easier to not use it, in most cases.