I was having the darnest time with the forum posts opening up and then closing down my AOL. Seemed it was taking forever to close down. I did a Live Chat with an AOL rep and was told it could be that since I opened so many pics in emails and other stuff, that they were being saved in my "offline storage" area. I was told to open AOL but not sign on, go to "Settings" in the AOL menu bar, then to "Offline Storage" and reduce the amount of space from "60" to "35" and then go to "File" and "Exit" the program (not just "X" it down). Next step was to reopen AOL, again not sign on, again go to "Offline Storage" and reset the storage space to "60" - again close down using the "File" and "Exit" buttons. After that my AOL opened quicker, forum pages opened quicker, etc. Luvs, it could also be a "music program" that may have been an attachment to an email (without you knowing about it). I had this happen months ago also. When I chose to "Shut Off" a screen would pop up saying this so-called music program was closing down - it was "in the background" so to speak. I did a technical search and found others in the computer world had this same music program problem when shutting down. The solution was to go into your "Programs" and literally "delete" that music program. Maybe doing some of the above will help you but I will agree doing a disk cleanup and Defragmentation of your computer will get rid of things you think you deleted completely but are actually still stored on your computer. A defrag will get rid of those deleted files and temp files, etc. and give you more space on your computer.

THHW will be illegal unless it was also rated THWN or something else approved for wet locations, but most of the stuff out there these days is. Your voltage drop estimations sound reasonable. Even at 60 it would be OK, you'll have less drop owing to the fact that your actual current flowing appears to be less than 30 most of the time (assuming your 120V loads are distributed across both legs). The new building will need it's own grounding system (rods).

lily, I'm hooked on my noise machine as well, and even wake up suddenly if a power outage shuts it off! kathsgrdn, thankfully I don't hear the sounds of a distinct voice, lol. It's more that the smooth sound the white noise used to make, is now a bit more inconsistent and pitchy, which makes it sound like muffled singsong phrases. I'm pretty sure it's just the ageing motor that's causing the inconsistent sound, so I guess it's time for a new one!

Another thing that could be slowing down your connection is the router itself. If yours doesn't have a reset button, unplug it and remove the backup battery (if there is one) and let it cool down for 10 minutes, then plug it back in. It could take a long while to fully reinitialize, so do it before you start cooking or something, and let it get a clean load without trying to connect until it's done. Also, check your settings. If your browser cache empties automatically overnight or something like that, it could just be that the first connection to Houz, lags because you have to download all that gobbledegook, but later on it's cached so you can reconnect more quickly. Have a full cache can bring on lag, as others have said, but having commonly visited pages cached really speeds up the loading time.