tig, the same thing I think was happening to me there for a while. I was having a whole lot of problems at the time though...no updated antivirus working 'all' of the time, no firewall, just lacking a lot of good protection and no way to stay on dial-up line long enough to get anything downloaded and working. I eventually got high speed, and protection and things ended up working themselves out. I like you had many pages open at once, and it would shut down...usually giving me a seconds counter counting down b4 it happened. I would just log off, well actually I usually had to press and hold the button on the tower to get away from things. Once I would turn it back on, and log on, it would ask me if I wanted to restore session, to which I replied 'yes' and all the tabs I had open previously would reopen...in time. ok, i know no one sympathizes with me on dialup but that's my life! Oh, but I can empathize...been there...done that...wanted to pull hair out and scream! There was just no other option available for an ISP at the time...so I do understand. " Are you actually reopening the browser for each site, rather than putting them on tabs? It will be quicker just opening a new tab. " Not sure what tabs means. I open a mozilla browser for 1 website and while reading there on that page I open 3 or 4 other websites. So as they load I read at the 1st then I read one of those others as I go to another site at the one I just read. follow that? Just how do you open another website? page? thread? Go to a favorite and right click on it and choose "Open in new window or open in new tab? Go to a forum, and see a message you are interested in reading and then right click on it and choose "Open in new window or open in new tab? Go to file (upper left corner) and left it to click on open new 'window' or open new tab? And then click on a favorite to open in that tab? When you have lots of pages open, does the brief header appear above or below the page you are looking at? If they are 'above' they are tabs. If they are below, they are windows. You can open several tabs in each window. Have I made any sense whatsoever? Sue...who sometimes has 5, 10, or20 'tabs' open or opening at once.

I am a Ph.D. chemist and I completely understand the origin of the black deposit. The black material is soot or from a chemical standpoint it is carbon. When you use the fireplace you will see a cool yellow flame rather than a blue flame from hot combustion of LP or propane. The cool yellow flames means that carbon monoxide is a product of the partial combustion of your gas source. Most of the time this carbon monoxide goes up the chimney. If the flames were blue in color that would mean that the flames were not only hot but a main product of combustion would be carbon dioxide. Getting back the carbon monoxide product with yellow burning gas, carbon monoxide will disproportionate to carbon (soot) and carbon dioxide. The chemical reaction is 2CO = C + CO2. This reaction is speeded up at lower temperatures particularly in contact with metals such as iron. The lower temperature explains why the carbon deposits occur on the logs in the front because they are lower in temperature. The disproportionation of carbon monoxide (CO) not only depends on temperature but on material. Certain glassy materials will completely inhibit the decomposition of carbon monoxide. One such material is quartz. Namely because of their chemical makeup, certain fireplace logs can inhibit suit formation and others will accelerate suit deposits. I am in need of a log material/manufacturer which will minimize carbon monoxide disproportionation and suit formation. Please contact me (by e-mail) for help and more information.

Gardenweb occasionally has trouble with logins, and is aware that this occurs. I have had it occur sporadically over the last couple of years. At one point, about 2 years ago, I might have to log in half a dozen times before it would take. The only thing that seemed to help was to login only from the GardenWeb home page rather than while I was in a specific forum. I have not had login problems for a while now, but I know others occasionally do. I don't think there is much you can do, other than to try logging in from the home page.

The Garden is doing some upgrades, causing a few problems here and there.