Kimya, 'Plants do for us not because of what we do for them but in spite of what we do for them' (source unknown). There are a few things about growing plants in the office/mall or other commercial location that are different. It is true that plants require light but I have seen a healthy Chamaedorea seifrizii in an office where the only light is from a fluorescent desk lamp. Dark offices, lit by the computer screen(s) only are very much in vogue and they often have plants. Plants in these situations are treated as design features rather than horticultural specimens. The plants are carefully selected for size and shape and after installation they are maintained to the specs. of the interior designer. The technicians who maintain these plants must be some of the best horticulturists anywhere. Back to the plants in your office. Watering is the challenge. If the containers are free draining, be very careful of water spills; Murphy's first and second laws apply. If the containers do not drain, devise some way to determine if water is collecting in the bottom; Murphy's fifth law. Put a yellow sticky insect monitor into each plant to trap any bugs that find their way into the plants. If you are not into popularity contests, the presence of fungus gnats in your plants will guarantee that you are a non starter. Clean the plants regularly; the ubiquity of dust in what-are-supposed-to-be-dust-free environments will one day earn someone a PhD. Grow your plants out to the extent that they complement the rest of your office decor and maintain them to that standard ever after. Because if it does work out others will be encouraged to discard artificial plants in favor of the real thing. Now, that I believe, is a worthwhile endeavor.

You don't have to run away from here. You have a pretty good understanding of cars at this point and that's important. I have to deal with situations all of the time, where the only thing some people are thinking about is saving themselves money, and they totally forget what "fair" really means. Fair is always something that works for BOTH parties. I can't tell you why "BrakeMax" didn't see a gaping hole in an "air intake hose". I suppose you are either describing the plenum hose between the air cleaner and MAF sensor, and the throttle body, or some other vacuum hose, or a hose that directs air for the IAC. I can envision quite a number of different systems, and I don't have specifics on exactly what vehicle you own. So I'll stick with the plenum hose, since an air leak between the MAF and the engine will severely affect performance. A DPFE will give you a check engine light, but have little or no effect on performance. I won't rule out the possiblity that the plenum hose simply finally completely failed after the DPFE was looked at. They do have to flex constantly, and are a common failure item. There are several master mechanics on this forum. I looked at that web site. It looks pretty good. But still taking a code, and then asking advice about what could be wrong, is still leaving the wrong impression. Follow this. 2002 Pontiac Grand Am with a 3.1l Auto. It's setting a code P0101, that is a Mass Air Flow Sensor performance code. This car is owned by a family friend, who happens to work at an Auto Zone! They pulled the code and wanted to replace his MAF. Jason chose wisely and brought the car to me to test first. By monitoring scan data and taking snapshots for playback I was able to measure the reported volumetric efficiency (VE) of the engine. VE is the measurement of the actual amount of air the engine can pump. For example, a 3.1l engine at 5000rpm should easily pump 160grams or air per second at wide open throttle. Jason's MAF sensor was reporting 90 to 105 grams per second, and struggled to get over 4500 rpm. VE measured 55%. Well that's why it had a P0101, the computer knows how much air the engine should be pumping, based on throttle opening and rpm. At this point, there are still several possible causes for the code. A bad MAF is clearly one of them. Funny you should mention it, but a torn plenum hose would do the same. Some type of an engine mechanical issue could do this, heck even a very bad air filter could actually have given the same findings. But there is one more, how about a restricted exhaust? The test for this is to remove the front O2 sensor, and install a gage and actually measure the back pressure. The spec allows for a maximum of 1.25PSI, and that's under a load. Simply speeding the engine up in neutral had this one building 14 PSI. The fix was to replace the catalytic convertor, which was still under the 8yr/80,000 mile warranty at the dealer. No one, reading a forum would effectively lead the poster to that diagnosis. There were more details uncovered during the testing that helped make the decision to measure the back pressure. One of them was by watching the long term and short term fuel trims on the scan tool while driving the car. If the engine was actually getting more air than was being reported, then they would have been shifted way positive, because the engine would have been too lean. But because the MAF was actually reporting how much air was truly entering the engine, they were reasonably close to neutral. I can remember when I first started working on cars, I was 14 when I tore down my first Chevrolet 350 to put a cam in it, and had a valve job done on it. My grandfather had given my dad the car because it was running so bad. BTW, that wasn't my first engine job, I did a head gasket in a lawn tractor a few years before that. The thing here is there are people who are born with the ability to do this work. I suspect you are one of them, just like I am. It's not easy work, and most of the time the pay actually stinks, especially when you keep dumping huge pieces of your paycheck to buy more and more tools. But if someone really likes fixing cars, there is a freedom there that few other fields can offer. Now do you know why it's hard to find a good motorcycle mechanic? Probably because it's too hard for them to make enough money to stay in the field long enough to get really good at it. Running a repair shop, cars or motorcycles is expensive. The overhead eats some 60% of the gross profit, and then the wages and benefits start coming out before the owner finally gets his/her piece of the pie. Your couple of quotes about how much something was going to cost you if a shop had done the work, fails to show exactly how much profit the shop would have actually made if they had done it. In short, less than $125/hr of profit would have me working for free. That's how much it costs to run a shop like mine. That means, I would have to diagnose, and repair your air hose problem in about 35 minutes based on the numbers you provided, and be hard into the next job, or else I would not actually make any money at all. I invest heavily in O.E scan tools and software. That's one of the reasons it's so expensive for my shop to operate. The facts are, if I could double my parts mark-ups, and double my labor tomorrow, (and still stay busy) and then throw all of that money into more software and O.E scan tools and I'd actually still be losing ground. In 1993 I had one scan tool, a Snap-On MT2500. I could work on anything that showed up at the door. Today that same capability would cost more than 1/4 million, and the updates, and software licensing for the tools would continue to eat tens of thousands of dollars each year to continue to support them. You are correct, you don't have to be overly mechanically inclined to do some repairs. You do have to be very gifted for many others. Plus anymore you just about need a business degree to balance the pennies so that you have a chance to be there for the customer in the first place. The others that post here have seen some of my diatribes like this one. If you want to learn about cars stick around, just give us some room to earn a living. We should not have to apologize for trying to do that. ASE CMAT L1 30yrs exp.

I had similar issues but then figured it out. The trick is to slide the can housing over as far as you can to one side - then hold the can pushing it against the truss or rafter you are nailing into with one hand. With the other hand nail the two rails on that side in and that should hold the housing in place. Then swing around and you can do each of the other two rails one at a time. When nailing - use one sharp blow rather than small taps. When I tried to take smaller taps I had a greater tendency to bend the nails. The screw thing works too but it is more time consuming. Another trick I figured out was how to spot cans. I took a 4" piece of PVC drain pipe and cut it about 1.5 inches lower than the height of the ceiling. Then took a toilet flange and turned it upside down and stuck the pipe into the flange - so I could stand the pipe vertically and it would stay there. I used round cardboard cutouts and layed them on the floor where I wanted the center of the light beams to shine - then used my pipe jig to make sure the housing would fit in between the joists with enough clearance. Made adjustments by moving the cardboard pieces around on the floor. Once I had the right spots - I spray painted around the cardboard cutouts to mark the locations. I did this for 87 cans without ever getting on a ladder. Once all the cans were spotted, i went back and placed my pipe jig on the painted spots. Got up on a ladder and hammered in the can - using the top of the pipe as a reference. One shot install - never had to play around on the ladder with adjustments of the housing due to joists in the way. This really works well if you have a cluster of lights and you want perfect spacing between them. Plus you get precise markings on the floor so when the drywallers cover up your cans - you know eactly where they are. I had about a dozen cans covered that were easily located.

If the room is dark and you arent happy with light colors, how about making thr room brighter with additional lighting? If you are in a 1 story, small LED cans are unobtrusive and put out a surprising amount of light. The dining room in my current house is reasonably light, if the only activity was eating. We added a wall sconce directly above existing electrical and added a pull chain to the fixture instead of trying to fish wire to a switch through plaster walls. That room is painted a chambray blue which is one of my faborite paint colors against dark stained trim. I'm not sure if my trim is cherry or possibly walnut but no way would I ever paint such beautiful trim. I stripped the crown molding in a single small hallway and that was enough to convince me to leave well enough alone I added a pair of wall sconces to a different dark dining room and they make a nice amount of light by themselves if we didnt want to turn on the main light. Sometimes the answer is multiple sources of light, not just a brighter fixture in the center of the room. Wall sconces may be more practical is you don't have attic access but adding led ceiling lights might be easier than you think