B., I was excited when you described the wings because I knew such a distinctive feature would make it much easier to ID this critter. And then you went ahead and figured it out pretty quickly which is great. I'm still not sure they're a problem, though, unless you have tons and tons of them. Lots of the little critters that visit compost piles actually help the materials break down. Since they are flies, and they like decomposing material, I think it is likely they may be using your compost heap as a site to lay their eggs so the larvae can hatch and grow in your compost pile. If having the flies in your compost pile concerns you, or if you are afraid they'll move to something else, you could use an organic product that disrupts the life cycle of the flies. Honestly, though, I think God made each and every creature for a reason, and they all have a role to play in the balance of nature and the circle of life. So, I feel like Mother Nature works best if I leave her alone. The only time I take action against one critter or another is if, for one reason or another, the population of any given creature is out of balance. Even then, I try to figure out WHY and correct the conditions instead of trying to eliminate the insect. For example, spider mites on tomatoes. Spider mites are virtually everywhere in the summer heat but MOST of the time the beneficial mites (different from spider mites) prey upon them for food and keep them under control. If something has happened to the population of good spider mites, though, the bad spider mites can get out of control. At this point you have 2 options: (1) address the situation by trying to kill the spider mites, or (2) address the situation by purchasing and releasing good mites so they can take care of the bad mites. I would choose option #2 because it is a better long-term strategy. It is more important to me to re-establish a population of good bugs, than to wipe out a population of bad bugs. Why? Because a miticide cannot and will not wipe out all the red spider mites and I am still going to need good mites in the future to wipe out the surviving bad mites. Just a little food for thought. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Nematodes for fly larvae control

Thanks, Martha. I tried both suggestions, but no change. Not sure exactly I've been using IE7...a couple of months, maybe? I'll be interested to see if the problem exists on my other computer. I can't tell at the moment because it needs a new monitor. Since posting the first time, I discovered that I can't open the comments to one of my blogs and I can't open the log-in screen that will let me download archived articles on a newspaper website. This is getting very irritating! I'll go see if Microsoft has some sort of help forum... Susan

I poked around a bit and found nothing except a bunch of places selling replacement remotes. Aiwa has a reputation of making nice inexpensive stereos, so I would say if YOU like it, buy it.

According to Tamara, my only option is to remove my cookies and restart and see if that fixes my problem. It's the "see if" that makes me pause. I also don't understand why my cookies would be the problem when others here are having the same auto log-out problem each time they leave GW and our problems seemingly began at the same time. I pointed out to Tamara that we are using different browsers and systems but she didn't address that in her response to me - at least it doesn't seem that she did. Instead she wrote, "Nearly all websites will set cookies when users login. You may not like them, but they do serve a purpose -- part of which is that you don't need to re-login each visit. Sometimes they get stuck, sometimes your browser does not reset them as necessary. While browsers are generic in nature, they become very personalized based on your use and what might work for one, may not work for another." Could it be that our different browsers became personalized at the same time? Blast those computer gremlins! I knew they were up to no good and now it seems that they've banded together to cause more havoc! ;-) Oh, she also said that the Vibrant Opt-out problems that occurred in the beginning have been fixed and I shouldn't worry about losing this option. I'd have more confidence in that if someone hadn't just posted that the opt-out feature stopped working for them and they're getting the mean greenies again. Has anyone tried to remove cookies and start again? Any luck?