carice Your post appears to be asking if you can plant two tomato plants in a *non-EarthBox* 18-gallon Tote in your new location and would the rain and your own watering be sufficient moisture. The answer is a qualified Yes. People have been doing this for years. EarthBoxes are relatively new on the scene, and they ARE great since you know the plants have exactly the moisture they need as long as you keep the water chamber filled. I'd think you'd have to check your non-EB containers daily to make sure they haven't dried out though. There's also fertilizing. Watering from above and drainage below washes the fertilizer out of the container pretty quickly, so you'd have to compensate. EarthBox setups also provide critical aeration for the soil, which is much more iffy in non-EB containers. Good drainage is about the only provision you can make for airflow through the soil top to bottom. You can add a simple wick to drain the perched water table out of a container (look it up on GardenWeb -- it's an interesting container phenomenon) to provide more aeration and root-room. None of these factors is enough to discourage you from growing in non-EB Totes though, just differences that it's good to keep in mind. I grow my onions in 18-gallon Totes cut in half, no EBs for them. I wish the halves were about 6 inches deeper, but so far, so good. I've been thinning delicious Spring onions from the sections that are thickly planted and am hoping for some good-sized onions later. The drainage holes are not on the bottom of the containers but on the sides at the bottom. Finally, if you grow tomatoes in non-EB containers, they'll need the same sturdy supports they'd need in EarthBoxes. Try it. See if it works for you.

Nice forking tire shop. Went back to look at the two cars again. There is something wrong. Sure enough. The 96 has 205/60/r15. the 95 has 205/65/r15. Well the 96 is supposed to have 215/65/r15 at 33 lbs. and the 95 is supposed to have 215/70/r15 at 35 lbs. I thought the deck hight was low on both cars. It gets better. I checked the tire pressure on the 96. Right front 18,left front 30,right rear 27,left rear31. That explains the left pull on the 96. what the hell is this industry coming to ? They replaced what was on the vehical and didn't even check to see if the car had the wrong tires. Do you take a safe off the same way as it went on ? NOT. If i pulled that stunt off in my early years i'd be out of a job faster than you could wipe out .2 on a tail light bulb change in a flat rate shop. I just tore a new pie hole in the tech of the front end shop yesterday and sending the car back. Now i have to appologize to this poor men. ( car is going back anyway ). Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the garage. Oh Yah. I finished the 30 day inspection on the old ladys 94 sunday and the right rear wheel cylinder is leaking. It wasn't leaking 30 days ago. When does it stop ? We've had 3 weeks of -30 with -42 wind chill. Maybe that has something to do with it. Yes the tires do freeze and form a flat spot over night. It goes away in about 1/2 mile and your down to about 6 miles to the gal. Normal winter up here. At $4.82 cents a gallon it gets a little pricey. You guys complain about $2.50 a gallon and it's Canadian gas! I feel so sorry for you it makes my laugh. Sorry guys. Not having a good day. I have 4 new tires that i can do nothing with. Oh well, i'll just put them in stock you never know.Have a good weekend.

Hi Gary. As you outlined, that also is the experience of virtually every other professional technician. People typically don't do things that they don't get paid for, and the whole idea of trying to beat the shop down the street on price means the shop has to cut costs, and that's one of the ways they do it. Not getting paid extra to machine the rotors is still common through-out the industry. Some shops require it as part of every brake repair. Meanwhile the flat rate guide is quite specific, there is a labor fee to do the basic brake repair, one to R&R the rotors, and a third for the actual machining time. It actually adds up to a lot more time than shops actually charge! Measuring run-out, and in the few instances that require the technician to do even more work to correct for it when its discovered create another dilemma that up front adds a little time to every brake repair, (about five minutes). Correcting for it in some cases can add an hour, (or more) to a job that has its price already quoted, and since the shop feels pressure to "price the same as everyone else because its just brakes" and to not do a repair price-wise that the average consumer would not understand, again the technician often does not get directly paid for that repair. Just remember every time someone price shops auto repair, and moves away from a top shop to someone who advertises cheap price, they add fuel to this fire. I can hear a manager saying "well feed you some gravy work to make the time back up" right now. A good friend of mine has a little saying. "Getting old sucks, not getting old REALLY sucks...." Just remember the phrase "Anybody can do brakes", now say it the right way, "Anybody can do brakes incorrectly". Dang, can't believe this, in the process of writing this I just had a phone call from a guy that had a "neighbor that has a shop" who put brakes on his 99 Safari, and now he has no brakes at all that's going to be towed in. The neighbor thinks that this is solved with the factory machine that we put the car on.

Marcell, Thanks for the possible way to get some final value out of my old equipment built as part of a hobby and career. I was in the Naval Air, and Electricians Mate, was an AE2 P1 when I got off active duty and went into the reserves, I was a Chief Petty Office when I decided to get out of the reserves in 1968. I built Eico versions of all the instruments you mention, except the tube tester. That was on my list, I just didn't get to it before transistors took over. I went to college after leaving the Navy and have worked as an electrical engineer for many years - as could be concluded from the date I put on myself above, not to mention the date of the subject of this excursion away from the subject of this CAR forum thread. I have all the manuals to go with the test and signal generation equipment. As I mention the scope didn't work well, the problem there was a poor quality (multi-output) transformer, which had to supply the hight voltages associated with vacuum tubes. A few years back I purchased a dual trace scope from Radio Shack. It is a fully calibrated (time base and amplitude) with multiple trigger capabilities. It looks and functions like the old Tectronics (sp?) and HP scopes I used in my early days as an engineer. I think I paid about $300 for it, I couldn't pass up the buy. I rarely use it, but enjoy seeing it on my electronic/computer workbench anyway. This bench still has projects on it, that I never seem to find time to get around too... could be I'm spending too much time chatting on these forums.