Well, I work on BIG daries, I own my own beef cows, and my past is in beef operations of all sizes... I can say that producers of all sizes are against the NAIS in any form they choose to present it. For my big dairy customers: It is all they can do to get employees who can write down numbers acuarately enough to use a simple numbered eartag system with any accuracy much less reporting the results to the USDA. No matter what I am trying to look at when I deal with records on big dairies I expect to see a ten-percent margin of error due to employees making mistakes... The USDA has not come up with a way to overcome that and their system won't work until they do. As far as my small beef herd: The hassles of just having the herd itself are almost not worth it. It would just take a little bit of government to get me to throw up my hands and tear out the pasture and plant citrus. As far as my past with beef operations: Ain't no way in **** the USDA is gonna track those animals! I used to help on a ranch whose strategy to control inbreeding was to ride out into the backcountry and shoot every bull over three years old that didn't have a brand... The country was so tough that they couldn't even gather all of their cattle to work them. There are more ranches like that than we realize and they can't survive if they are expected to track every single animal.

I agree Ziggy, condoms and ornaments? Otherwise sounds good to me. Beautifying a public space using his own free time and funds. He says that he doesnt bother private land, which is good, because, regardless of its state, it still isnt his. Have to admit though, I havent read many articles related to gardening that mention Che and Mao. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

A lot of quotes are mostly "I" and "why". For me the quotes of the day comes from Emily Post: "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use". Seems to me that now too many look for the fork.

It is extremely easy to "follow" someone inadvertently. I know because I have done it any number of times just while clicking on a post.....get that cursor in the wrong place for a sec and click and voila!!....all of a sudden you are following Jane Doe or Dudley Doright or whoever. You can very easily delete or 'unfollow' whoever you might have clicked on to follow in error. But you cannot delete your own followers. Deactivating that option in your profile - as Emily H (a Houzz administrator) - has indicated her response above is the way to go about ridding yourself of any online "stalkers". And I say "stalkers" very much tongue in cheek!! They are NOT stalking you and in fact have no way of knowing where or when you post. The "following" option is more like a "like" button for a particular poster....not just a post or comment. On the Garden side of the forums where I hang out most of the time, very popular or knowledgeable posters that are valuable contributors have many followers. But unless they look at their own profile regularly, they may never know they are being followed by anyone. It is just not obvious to the member being followed - no obvious signs while participating - nor does it give your followers (either intentional or inadvertent) any indication of where or when you post. (Note: I used to get notifications of new followers but that feature vanished about 35 followers back :-)) As to privacy issues, as long as you don't use your real name and don't divulge any details about specific location, you are about as private here as you can be anywhere online. Deactivating the messaging and following features will provide even greater privacy. I do not belong to Facebook or any other social media so have no idea how those might link up with Houzz but I know they do and IMO, that would be the most likely source of any privacy concerns.