My parents had a cock a poo who had one toy his whole life, a little stuffed animal that he loved as much as a child loves a special blankie to suck on. I grew up with this dog and thought that's what dogs did. Then, as an adult, I got a jack russell, who destroys all toys. Stuffed animals are meant to be shredded immedialtely and any toy not food related is not interesting. Well, she does dearly love to flip lizards in the air and she has caught some garden moles but otherwise she only has two toys. Stuffed Kongs and stuffed old socks. I take a holey sock and put a bit of meat in it and tie it in a knot. I keep layering socks and meat until I have about a dozen or so socks all stuffed into one another. It makes a big football sized sock that she has to chew through and dig out all the meat. She will suck on those socks for days. Then I either throw them out or wash them for another time. She gets one about every two weeks. If I so much as go down the hall to the linen closet where I keep the clean socks she gets all excited. This works well for us because I wear footies around the house and my feet put holes in the socks quickly. I started saving them for the dogs and I've been doing this now for 5 years or so. They don't like nylabones at all. The other dog, a beagle mix loves tug toys that I play with him.

Select the metal clad wood window product for long lasting durability. The metal can always be repainted in the future (just like the fiberglass or wood). In CO, we can expect a quality exterior paint finish on wood to remain protective for approximately 2-8 years, depending on sun exposure. However, the sun exposure aspects are more intense at our mountain elevations than in TX. Another very important consideration in the clad-wood vs. all-wood window discussion is the additional structural integrity offered in a properly designed clad-wood window. The extruded aluminum acts as a component to adding strength to the wood joints (particularly in the sash construction). Marvin is a very well designed product when the proper use of cladding is considered, as is Eagle and Kolbe. Fiberglass window construction shouldn't even be considered, unless the discussion is in regards to energy efficiency; Plastics and fiberglass conduct much less, but are also not as durable as metals. Additionally, metals will paint just as easily as fiberglass or wood. Your concern about being stuck with a paint color, when choosing clad-wood windows, is unfounded. The only disadvantage to field-painting clad-wood windows is that the paint will degrade in the same time frame as painting an all-wood window, so you would lose the "low-maintenance" benefit of the clad-wood window after you have decided to change the color in the future. Consider the added structural integrity offered by some clad-wood windows, and the fact that the all-wood windows are likely the same price as the clad-wood. If there is a difference in price, think of the cost savings each time you don't have to paint your clad-wood windows, until that time comes when you decide to change the color. Select the clad-wood windows, if repainting is your only concern.

Wow, what a bunch of mis-information in a single comment. I normally would leave it at this, but I don't want people to search the archives and get confused. A plasma TV's temperature is not an indication of lower energy efficiency. Temperature isn't an indicator of energy efficiency, but heat output very much. Any energy consumed by the device has to be released somehow, either as mechanical energy (not applicable for a device that doesn't have a motor), as light energy (a smaller percentage, even for a TV), or as heat (the bulk of the energy). As this is hard to quantify, I looked at watts/h instead. That's the definition of energy efficiency. And with the exception of really small screen sizes, plasma TVs are consistently a lot more wasteful than any modern technology. [ Lots of hand-wavy vague discussions how TVs are complicated. ] If anything, the reverse is probably true. Older TVs had tons and tons of discreet parts, whereas modern TVs are highly integrated and frequently only have a very small number of highly integrated components. This has been a general trend and explains why TVs can be built so much cheaper today. Just to put this into perspective, if you look at the size of a settop box from only about 15-20 years ago, it was the size of a small shoe box, and it probably cost on the order of $100. Today, the equivalent device is the size of a USB stick and costs on the order of $20 -- and it probably does a lot more, too. You'd observe the same thing, if you opened up a modern TV. Very little electronics that are left in there. I have a hard time finding a tear-down of a modern TV, as it simply is so boring that nobody wants to document it. But here is one for a 4 year old model: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Changhong+UD42YC5500UA+4K+42-Inch+LED+LCD+TV+Teardown/64167 Notice how little there is to making a TV. [ Statements equating weight with quality. ] The bulk of the weight of a plasma TV came from the insanely heavy front glass panel that is needed to build all the plasma cells. That simply isn't necessary with LCD or OLED technology and explains both the smaller depth and the much reduced weight. And while weight isn't really an indicator of quality, being lightweight is a real advantage for many consumers. A modern TV can easily be hung on the wall, but a plasma TV is almost impossible to mount that way. That also partially explains why larger format plasma TVs never took off in the market. Nobody would be able to carry a 90" plasma TV without hiring professional movers. [ Then OLED and QLED came along and completely solved that problem by using multiple different layers of TV panels within a single TV panel. ] What a bunch of crock! There is no such thing as multiple layers of panels. A plasma TV had an array of pixels that had alternating colors of phospors in front of each adjacent plasma cell. A LCD (that includes QLED) panel has a white backlight and alternating color filters in front of each adjacent LCD pixel. An OLED display has alternating colors of adjacent organic LEDs. Do you notice a pattern? Exactly! It's all a similar design of differently colored pixels right next to each other. But some of these pixels are more efficient than others. OLED are by far the best approach, but they are costly to manufacture. LCD is cheap to manufacture at scale, is lightweight and very thin, and color quality is close enough when using a good backlight and good color filters. This is where QLED comes into the picture. The idea of FullHD is an illusion. The human eye cannot process the colors that "FullHD" purports to put out onto a TV screen. I really hope that was a typo. FullHD has absolutely nothing to do with colors. But yes, there are difference in color gamut and in dynamic range. Historically, that was one of the areas where plasma had a distinct advantage. It used to have a much better dynamic range than LCD technology, only OLED was equivalent (or better). But OLED didn't really exist as a viable consumer product at that time. Color gamut is the big elephant in the room though. Traditional standard definition TV has a really narrow color range, and that's really noticeable when compared to film. These days, you can get a similar visual experience, if your TV is HDR capable, and if the source material includes the necessary information. In general, this is only available for 4k-enabled systems. So, independent of resolution, 4k does bring important picture improvements. And even if you no longer have 20/20 vision, most people will easily be able to tell the difference between standard and high dynamic range. All of a sudden, details in dark scenes are possible to be made out without washing out bright spots in the same scene. A good starting point to learn more about high dynamic range and color gamut is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_video Make sure to click on the links though. There is a lot more information hidden on Wikipedia that is relevant to this topic. The human eye can only process at most, 480p It should be self-evident that this statement is obviously incorrect. The human eye doesn't have a fixed resolution in pixels. It does have a limit though as to what the smallest detail is that it can discern. This means, the closer you sit to the screen the more pixel you can discern. But nobody sits a foot away from their screen. In fact, because of our limited field of vision, there are guidelines how far away you should sit given a particular screen size. In practice, many people sit back a little more than the optimal distance. The average distance from the screen in the US is about 9 feet. For people with normal 20/20 vision and with a normal ~50" screen, that means that can easily distinguish between 480 scan lines, 720 scan lines, and even 1080 scan lines. But most of us wouldn't be able to tell the difference of 2160 scan lines in a 4k image. But don't take my word for it. Have a look at this very informative Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HDTV_viewing_distance

I recently had an I ground pool installed and really wanted a wood deck around it for a tropical look. But Ipe was too expensive- even to add as an accent. And other wood options concerned me with splinters and getting hot and maintenance. I went with a white limestone and could not be happier. It does not get hot at all and it is all in full sun in Houston. It was listed as an option under travertine pricing for me. But my friends recently redid their pool decking with a light color travertine and it was hot to me. I was another pool last weekend with flagstone and my feet were on fire. But if I’d had the money I would have loved to use Ipe. Although one pool guy convinced me to not use it by saying the gross bugs who cannot be named would crawl up the cracks. So maybe I wouldn’t! Haha