Just take some scissors and snip off the old/dead spikes. No need to sterilize. You're leaf tips are browning due to low humidity. Keep it bright, raise the humidity and if possible put it outside for late spring into fall. It will very high light and fall night-time temps down into the 40's to bloom again.

Found a local janitorial supply company. They sold me a 12 foot extension rod and duster. Saved $50 off of Frontgate price. They said it would reach 30 feet as you would hold the rod over your head (and depending on your height that would be 6 - 8 feet). Turns out that isn't quite true (for those of you who may be in the same boat) as the rod and duster, although the rod is hollow, is somewhat heavy to hold over your head and manipulate. I'm more comfortable having some of the rod below my hands. Did work though. No more dust kitties on the ledge!

i would make it the kids' toy area/playroom if you have young kids and want to keep their toys out of the family room... obviously set up storage/toy boxes/easel, etc in area that isn't visible from doorways! if you have kids and they're alittle older and the house doesn't have a basement that you'd be going down to, it seems a good size for a pingpong table! we had a basement full of assorted game tables, and pingpong was by far the favorite! but, foozball could work too. either table could fit in the fireplace area and not be seen from the other room when looking straight on... if you don't have kids, i would probably set it up as an excercise area if you don't belong to a gym...

You probably know this but the power buttons are usually "programmable" so to speak. They can either be set to "Put to sleep" or "Power off" when pressed. I've seen it where they're set to "Put to sleep", and I've thought the computer was off, but it was actually in Sleep mode, and came right out of sleep when pressed again. I have to remember to hold the Pwr button down for 4 seconds to make it actually power off. That the monitor won't come out of sleep is a little mysterious but somehow telling - but of what I'm not totally sure. It needs to get a signal from the mobo, but the mobo needs to get power from the PSU. So which one is causing the problem ? Hard to say. What if you use the Linux live cd, and choose "Restart" - will it then restart ? But that would only rule out some kind of problem with your Windows OS, and we're not thinking that's the problem anyway. The thing about putting a drive in a new computer, is that the mass storage drivers are loaded very early on, and that's what a "universal restore" feature is made to handle. All the other hardware will probably be identified in the boot process, and if the necessary drivers are not found, you can install them later. But there's usually no easy way to do that for the mass storage drivers as it just won't boot to the point that you would have an option to supply the correct ones. If you want to install Win7 on a different machine, there is a tricky way to capture all the Win7 install boot info necessary, even though it's an OEM install for that particular machine. I can give you the links if you're interested. I had to do it, although it was on the same machine I think, but a fresh install. It was a situation where I had a laptop with no install disks, and had to use a generic Windows install disk. Yeh, the live Linux distros are fun. I just made a little bootable MicroSD flash gizmo with Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, Pupply, and Knoppix, plus a whole bunch of other utility cds using a multiboot builder called Sardu. It really works well - boots anything on the MicroSD easily. Sardu Multiboot Creator Very handy, and gave one to my nephew as well.