Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com (all the same!) goes down. A lot. It has nothing to do with your end's equipment. If one of their servers goes south, it drags. It shows up badly because it keeps EVERYTHING except your message headers and preferences on its servers. That includes your attachments, mail, mail aliases, and address book. You rely on their servers to be hot and spicy, and they ain't always so. If you complain (I have) they'll get back to you after things are fixed and report no problem found.

Please do what you feel is best for you and I hope your continued success with the protocol. For those who are inexperienced and reading this thread, all too often low and non-threat data miners and tracking cookies are recognized by some users (not speaking of any member here) as spyware/malware and malicious. In most circumstances these cookies as well as most others, are non-invasive, non-threatening and safe. They tend to be more of a privacy question than a security question. If any user feels a desire to be focused on the threat of cookies so be it, but I ask users to remember if they are delivered on your system between removals why isn't there damage created during their short-term stay? They are not isolated nor are they dormant. Now the disclaimer: Yes there has been cookie oriented threats in the past and likely will be in the future. By there nature and design they were quickly defeated and removed with standard applications. However, this potential threat is undoubtedly of less concern than the other threats we face; rootkits, keyloggers, viruses and bots. Be safe, be aware, and use your protection utilities in a systematic manner. DA

One weird problem I've had (that I attribute to the awfulness of the GW message board software...) is that, occasionally, if you do a search on Google, you'll hit on a thread that has http://www.thathomesite.com/forums/ as the leading part of the URL rather than the normal http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/ that you get if you go to the GardenWeb website and navigate to this forum. For whatever reason, although you can click and see new messages just like you would if you were actually in the forum, if you try to log in it will just cycle you through a loop, with "name" appearing blank. I have no idea why these aren't seamlessly integrated or why it's possible to see the new posts with the old domain, but if you just type over it with ths.gardenweb.com it will fix the problem. Probably won't work for every instance of this, but if you're someone like me who searches in Google or other outside search engines, it's worth making sure the address bar shows the right domain if you have trouble logging in. Also, for those with Macs---if you're having problems with not being able to clear the old user name/password, you might make sure Keychain isn't set to save your user names. That info won't get reset when the browser cookies and cache are cleared.

Over the weekend I decided to look at the Design Dilemma page on Houzz. Thought I noticed some of the same posts there as on GW pages. Just looked again and see posts that I'm guessing were originated in GW are also appearing on DD. Or maybe it's the other way around. Post from GW Home Decorating. This is the Design Dilemma page. Both posts from GW appear. My guess is Houzz has kept the formatting of the GW site, but the posts are being feed over to Houzz. Time for another test. ETA: Posted on DD page and tagged Home Decorating. My thread does not show up on DD page, but rather in the GW Home Decorating Forum. Do you suppose they have coded it to look if we have GW member in our profile and therefore move it to GW? Spooky. ETA, again: found that it does appear in DD. So, here's what I think is happening: If you post in DD and tag a category (I.e., Home Decorating, Building a Home, Bathrooms), post will appear in DD and whatever category you tag that has a corresponding GW Forum, with the exception of Kitchens. Guess they heard loud and clear from Kitchens that these posts were not welcome. Beware other forums!