Noticed the same thing. A couple weeks ago one of the sidebar ads was crashing Firefox on me. It's stuff like this, and the total lack of spam moderation, that made me laugh when they were asking for volunteer FAQ editors. Yep, let me get right on that, iVillage.

MWheel, a friend piqued my curiosity when he said you got a special message on reachng 10,000 (and it's true...and still another message when you hit 20,000). Besides, I love word games LOL. Andie...I'm not sure about the number of grains...maybe 40 in a half cup which expands to one cup when cooked? The site originally offered 10 grains for a correct answer then changed to 20. I feel it's sort of a plus to be able to help a little...sort of like one person's recycling doesn't solve the greater problem but at least it's something. josh

I use firefox and its just OK. I don't know why people seem to be in love with this browser. It blocks ads until the ad companies find away around it. It's like anything else Flash is one great example. Supposedly there is an add-on that will prevent it from playing flash animations unless you tell it you want to watch it. I haven't found that yet. I don't use flash, haven't had flash on my computers in 5 years. It started out innocently enough. CHEESY intro pages and annoying animated graphics that hoard bandwidth and slow everything down. Fine, that's annoying but you can live with it. Then media conglomerates figured out flash was a great way to show us tv-like ads with audio instead of low resolution static images and unlike other video formats like java applets or windows media player, we needed flash to see cheesy intro pages and silly you tube videos. OH and automaker's web sites. Great. Hey I spend a lot of time on the web. I somehow manage to get by without flash. True I can't watch you tube. Maybe I'm missing out. But that's exactly what corporate America wants me to think, right.

Yeah, definitely an old discussion. I think it pretty much got torn to shreds by the rather eloquent opposition. But the real question is: how much markup is acceptable, and when should one attempt to bargain with one's mechanic for a slightly lower price when the parts are known to be more than 100% marked up? Of course, the immediate answer to the bargaining question (as discussed above) is to simply find another mechanic who will charge a total amount which is acceptable. However, what if I have come to appreciate a particular mechanic / business to a point where I want to do business with said mech/business as opposed to supporting their competitors? In other words - let's say I am quoted $300 for parts plus $145 for labor (about 1.5 hrs) for a repair. I do the research, and find that a typical supplier will charge $100 for the parts. If I pay the quoted price, the business gets $445 for the ---- In defense of the repair industry: I am a skilled PC (computer) technician, and have worked as such before - both employed and freelance. I, too, had to deal with the issue of mark-up. Doing freelance work, I felt bad about marking-up goods that I did nothing but diagnose the need for and order. As such, I did some research on what is fair in terms of mark-up. The conclusion I reached in the end was that 100% mark-up is typical and thus, fair. Ergo, I would judge that markup in excess of 110% is "gouging" unless some manner of extra effort was required to obtain the parts. However, for a business to be efficient, the employees don't have time to shop around. Therefore, they will most likely use their standard parts dealer, at whatever cost the dealer quotes (they don't care - the customer pays for it). So the only way to really know if mark-up is exceeding a fair amount is to contact the dealer yourself (perhaps under the guise of an employee of the shop you're a patron of ;) ). So, don't expect that your shop always gets parts at the lowest price themselves - they can get gouged as well. --- And to Dr. Farrell, I enjoyed your humorous anecdote about offering independent business to the mechanics. I know _I_ would much rather give my money directly to these people than to give the shop say, $65 an hour just to have the shop pay the mech $8 an hour - I've been on both sides of this situation before. On the other hand, don't get all high-and-mighty because you can put "Dr." in front of your name - even sodas can do that. Agreeably, I doubt pharmacists really work all that hard. However,lawyers DO do a lot of hard work, and are doctors as well - most of them just don't get such big heads about it that they have to _title_ themselves. Furthermore, intelligence isn't measured my how much schooling one has managed to progress through - the mere cost of schooling, for one, has seen to that. That being said, there are some of us who work in certain lower-paying fields because we are, for the time being, happier here. There is a big difference between enjoying one's work and simply enjoying one's paycheck. Which is one reason which we will always have plumbers, mechanics, et al. - I, for one, fully support doing one's own work - when such action is an option, of course - but we can't each do ALL the work which could be done by others. Sure, I can learn how to fix parts in my own vehicle, or I can pay somebody else to do it for me; but paying for it doesn't make me less intelligent. In fact, this do-it-yourself fallacy of logic quickly spirals out of control. Did you mine, refine, form, etc. your own glass, metals, and plastics to use as raw materials for your truck? Did you create each part yourself from these materials, then assemble them into a functioning vehicle, etc., etc.? In our all-too-short lives, we have to pick and choose our battles. For you, education and minor vehicle part replacement seem to be central to your enjoyment of life; but we all find value in different things, sirrah. By the way, what does a physician need a utility truck for? I can only assume it's for "squander[ing] away [your] earnings" as mentioned earlier in the case of the half-hearted mechanic. The enlightened find drinking more rewarding than trying to out-do their neighbors in a worldly possessions contest. (Hey, I can make uneducated assumptions and generalize too, can't I?) Knowledge does not grant education Education does not grant intelligence Intelligence does not grant wisdom