Hi all! I've been playing around with rooting leaves for the last 5-6 years! I bet some of you remember my rooted Hoya compacta leaf story.... it rooted right away & became pot bound, the leaf kept growing bigger and bigger but never grew into a plant. (it fianlly died this winter & just looks like potatoe chip in a tiny pot!LOL!) I haven't counted how many leaves I've rooted, but I'd guess 30 or 40 in the past few years. I have had three grow into plants, both very hardy little plants too! One is a leaf that got knocked of a Hoya pubicalyx that Susan Carol sent me a couple years ago. I'm assuming that since it got knocked off it may have had a bit of stem tissue attatched. The other is a leaf off a Hoya finlaysonii cutting Mel sent me probably three years ago. The cutting was pretty small and not doing well. The vine slowly shriveled up, as well as all the leaves exept this one. It had fallen off the vine & still looked healthy so I stuck it into water. It rooted right away I potted it into some soil mix. I guess I noticed the vine 3 months or so later! I have never done this as a controlled experiment at all! If I don't forget to water the leaves and kill them after seeing no vine appear I pot them up with rooted cuttings to fill in the pot!

This was in the business section of our newspaper today. Pitfalls of PayPal can touch off a reversal of fortune for eBay sellers James Derk-Scripps Howard News Service I have been using PayPal, the online payment system, for more than seven years. In the industry you hear all kinds of horror stories about every Web site, but my personal experience with PayPal has been rather calm. Though I am not a terribly active eBay seller, I do use PayPal to sell signed copies of my new book, so I am using the Web site quite a bit to accept payments and print mailing labels. Recently I did sell a Playstation game console that developed some issues; maily I place it on eBay "as is" for someone to use for parts or to repair. Someone with zero feedback on eBay bought it and promptly paid with PayPal. I gave him good feedback on eBay and shipped the device. I forgot about it for a few weeks until I sold a book and had to go into PayPal's site to print the mailing label. I noted on my list of transactions that my account had been debited and the Playstation buyer now had a "reversal" near his name. Turns out he had received my console and reversed the charge, something I didn't even know was possible. So he had the money and the console and positive feedback on eBay. A pretty good scam, I thought. This will be easy to reverse. So I called PayPal. Representatives told me the issue was my fault because I didn't respond to three e-mails they sent me. I check my inbox and didn't find any e-mails. PayPal then told me to appeal. "I am sure they will rule in your favor," the clerk told me. I appealed and 24 hours later received a form letter stating that the issue was my fault and I was out of both the money and the equipment. This dance of annoyance went on for days and could fill a couple of columns, but I want to share with you what I have ultimately learned. First of all, e-mails from PayPal are among the most "phished" in the world, meaning many "fake" ones come to your mailbox hoping you will log in to fake PayPal sites and give away your info. Windows Mail, the new mail program in Windows Vista, does a great job in filtering out what it thinks are "phishing" e-mailsllltrouble is it also filtered out these real e-mails from PayPal. So I never got mine, as I get hundreds of spam mails a day to that folder. Michael Oldenburg, a PayPal spokesman, told me that the vast majority of users on the site are happy with how PayPal works and many of those are focused on fraud prevention. When disputes are filed, he said, "they are usually worked out amicably during that process." My recommendations are simple: keep very little money in your PayPal account. If your account is hacked or a transaction is reversed, there won't be much money in there. Also keep checking your PayPal account and don't rely on e-mails to notify you of anything. It is up to you if you want to avoid the platform altogether (if you read the complaint site PayPal Sucks you'll never wan to use it again) but it has become ubiquitous on eBay (PayPal is owned by eBay). Just be careful out there.

Ok, I'll play too. I too am just as confused as OJ is in the post above. As far as the Canadian dealer who works with magic jack. Be careful. Ok...so if I go with it, I should just go with a US dealer then...huh? Also have at least a netzero dsl ok...so netzero dsl is not available in my area. Are you saying it will not work with the hundreds, maybe thousands of other high speed ISPs? The scammers feed off half truths and set up a lie to decieve. I tend to see a LOT of that, especially on the 'net. remove internet explorer, disable all explorer related access So you are saying just delete it totally...never getting any Windows updates or anything? FYI...there are some things that can only be downloaded via IE. I sure won't be uninstalling my IE. You might want to run a bunch of this stuff by The Computer Help forum. I think it might make for a great debate...well it might even make a great debate at Hot Topics Forum. All I can really tell from what you posted here and in the other thread, is a bunch of confusion. You might want to try and get some of your info in understandable form via the link below. Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Computer Help Forum

colickyboy - it must have just been your samples. I have had Minas soapstone from Dorado Soapstone for a couple years now and have not had ANY problems. I have 2 kidos who live and distroy my kitchen... (we cook together, do science projects, have friends over, etc) and it still looks just as great as the first day we installed them. I too love the look of the traditional black soapstone and the Minas was the only soapstone i that was really black to me. Hope your experience did not discourage you away from soapstone.