better2beoutside First let me fix something for you..... I know enough to "think I" know when the garage is trying to rip me off. In reality, few people understand what it costs to run a shop and have a technician trained, tooled, and ready to service your car. If you don't know what it costs to run a shop, then you really don't know what they should be charging. That quite often means, people want to claim "rippoff", when in fact they are totally wrong in their assessment. (Please no anecdotal responses, I can probably match you ten to one about people choosing price first over training, tooling, and experience only to have handfull of parts thrown at a car and it still not be fixed) You also said.... "As for DIY with toolsno, not my own, but I am married to one and the daughter of one. So I know enough to trouble shoot a problem, do the brakes, change the oil, change a tire, just the basics" Trouble shooting a problem, can be one of the most difficult things a tech has to do, it's far from the basics. Plus many DIY's think they know how to do something "as simple as" brakes, when in reality if they suddenly decided they wanted to be an auto tech professionally they would quickly learn they didn't really know as much as they thought they did. "My plan at this point is to replace the battery (simple fix) since the one in the car is original. The battery cables are firmly attached without any corrosion." A very plausable solution to this problem with your car, but you should have the battery, alternator, and starter, and cables tested before you change the battery. Otherwise, you could infact be ripping yourself off.... Now we are to this point. "OK- Let me try this again. It appears that the battery was not dead (hence the lights, raido & fan). The starter was engaging, but was turning the engine too slowly to start it. " Excellent, these are great observations, without tools. The possible causes though are still, the battery, the alternator, the cables, and/or the starter. With the information you have given me, as a tech I can now proceed to duplicate the conditions that cause your cars symptoms and test accordingly. "I dont believe that the battery is the problem, but is easily replaced. The Starter would be my next guess. But the big question is- why does it only happen when I wash the car? It's raining again today and there is no problem with it running." Why does it only happen when you wash the car? Maybe your keeping the car door open for a while as you clean the interior pulling the battery down? Possibly it's because once you drained the battery the first time, you simply haven't charged it sufficiently for it to completely recover? (It can take 40 hrs with a "trickle charger" to bring a battery back to full charge once it's been run down.) Another possibility is maybe the alternator ouput is low, so that has worked to drain the battery. The alternator could be weak all by itself, or maybe evem the belt is worn and slipping. When this happens, the result is a weak battery, able to run lights ect for a short period of time, but too weak to start the car. There are a lot of possibilities at this point. I would recommend you have this looked at by a good tech instead of simply throwing parts at it. One reason for that is there could be a drain on the battery (somethin on the car not completely turing off) and while the car manages to start most of the time, if you are doing something with the car like washing it, you could be pulling the battery just low enough to have trouble starting.

My two cents: Violence happens in all large schools and all kids, whatever their mental health or developmental issues, have the potential for violent or negligent acts that can result in death or damage to themselves or other students. This is not a "urban" vs "suburban" issue and its not even a "good kids" vs "bad kids" issue. Nice kids injure *themselves* all the time, nice kids despair about their b+ grade and kill themselves, nice kids get drunk and drive to endanger. On an even sadder note nice, suburban kids routinely bully and injur other kids, especially outsider, non-white, non-normal, or just plain female kids and its never reported to teachers or parents. How many nice suburban highschool girls have been assaulted or raped by nice, suburban, jocks?And how many of those rapes ever get reported? Violence and secrecy about violence is nothing new, even in nice suburban schools. This case made me think about something else, though. To my mind violent acts by a determined psychotic individual, and violence in general in large groups of kids, can't be entirely done away with. But any particular instance of violence by a teenager who is not determined could probably have been deterred or delayed until the sparking incident blew over. What deterrence requires is some serious structural attention to the setting of violence in advance. In this case my feeling is that if there is no history of violence in the school and no history of violence between other kids and this new kid the issue is one of induction. I don't think that schools have the time, money, or ability to truly induct and educate all their students into expected civil behavior. I noticed instantly that the first thing that was reported is that the school doesn't have metal detectors. I don't think metal detectors deter anything anyway but I think a more important gate keeping function is for schools to realize that new students are very vulnerable and their vulnerability makes them potentially dangerous. A school is a "total institution" like a prison. What that means is that the institution surrounds and controls the individual, setting the terms for interaction (For good or ill) and that for the individual the institution presents an overwhelming monolithic force. Prisons, for good reasons, have systems for inducting new prisoners into the prison: letting them ease slowly into the new rules, special rooms, floors, work assignments etc... I"m not saying any of that works in prisons, but at least they have a recognizable model in which newcomers aren't just left to flounder. In my experience of large schools they totally lack a serious community building, integrative model for new students and families. They don't work hard enough to mainstream new kids: to make sure they feel secure, to civilize them (if necessary) to help them understand the norms of their new environment and they don't work hard enough to make the old students responsible for the welfare of the new students. If the older students/regular students had been part of an official welcoming committee the whole snitching on the new student thing wouldn't be an issue--they would have been working with the new student as well as with the faculty as a kind of team. abfab

Hey everybody, what a wonderful discussion. I'm 58 too, a former university professor, and I've been spending the last 3 weeks by myself here in our remodeled Santa Fe adobe getting organized. Papers, tools, stuff from storage locker, everything. One way to think about it is finally finishing a 2 year process of moving from LA to Santa Fe that included an extensive and exhausting remodel. My husband is away and I elected to stay here to get this work done;; we are so sick of looking for things! I've vowed to live the organized life for once in my life, and I have some new thoughts about it that have come as I've worked on it. Still not done of course! The first is, a lot of us including me chastise ourselves regularly for being disorganized. Yet my main learning in the process I'm going thru is that our idea of being organized requires on the front end, and probably as maintenance too, an incredible amount of work. I'm not even talking about the emotional side, deciding to get rid of stuff, etc. I mean just the pure physicality of "getting organized." What I've realized is that there are many many steps, and it costs money too. And, that while these steps are going on, things are very disorganized, worse than before. *And,* that to get thru the process it takes many hours of concentrated work. I'm lucky--I am a house-creator (a term I like better than house-keeper) now, this is my job, no kids at home, and so I do have the time. But even for me, in this situation, the time demands are enormous. And we honestly don't have huge amounts of stuff--I would say a medium amount, but relatively lots of activity type stuff, such as sewing, hiking and backpacking, skiing, travel items, and lots of books. I'm not a packrat; one of the things I just did was to go thru my clothes and give away half of them, and this is after doing the same 2 times before over the last 2 years (I don't like having a lot of clothes, too confusing, does it really fit, etc.) I know this is long but let me give an example. I'm organizing the garage right now. Major steps include: creating spaces for tools, paints, etc (I like to faux paint and paint furniture). This meant first painting the walls white, then buying and putting up shelves (we used closet maid runners with melamine shelves), cutting the shelves to get them to the right width, before this shopping to get an idea of the size of boxes that we wanted to use so the shelves would be the right width. This is before even starting to "organize." The lesson here is that you can't organize very well without *first* creating/cleaning/clearing off old junk to make a space to put the organized stuff on. This is a huge step that gets lost in the general concept of "organizing." Then there's the shopping for, and getting of containers for the stuff you want to organize. I'm a believer that a key to getting and staying organized is containers. To be space efficient they need to be the right size, and they should be expected to hold up to dragging out and not to hide dust and mildew etc. I gave up on cardboard boxes a long time ago--cheap but dusty and can get moldy easily. A big problem until recently was that it was hard to shop for plastic on the web because the sizes were only given in quarts & gallons, not in inches, so who could tell what would fit where? In my book of lists I have lists of which stores carry which sizes in inches, and for how much. That means going and measuring. Time & work and "organizing" hasn't even started yet! Then there's the dismantling of whatever's in the space you want to use already and the boxing up/sorting and putting back in of the stuff you now want to keep there. Oh and I didn't mention, sometimes after you're almost all done, like I'm going to do today, you realize that the shelves really aren't spaced right for the things you're putting in. So off comes all the stuff you've already loaded on, the shelves get moved, and on it goes again. I know I can skimp on this, just jam the boxes on somehow and not as many as I'd like, but my experience tells me that the organization system will eventually fall apart if I do this. The boxes will start cracking from being pushed too hard, it'll be too much trouble to have to pull them out and so stuff won't be put back. And then there's just the physical work of moving stuff, even tiny stuff around so it's in its right place. I found some giant rubber bands of the kind I like to use to hold plastic bags on wastebaskets, and that are hard to find, in a random box in the garage. Up I went 2 flights to deposit them in their right plastic drawer thingy in my sewing room (where I keep them, who knows why). I try to group things to go to this room or that but somehow special trips seem to happen often. Or even across the garage to put the single just discovered screwdriver in the screwdriver box. My experience is that deep-down organizing eventually comes down to this. Lots of physical trekking and carrying of small items, even when grouped. Sorry this is long, but I guess my point is, is it so surprising that so many of us, me included, are less "organized" than we want to be? It is a huge undertaking and I think the perhaps smartest question is, given how much work it is to get there, how much time & effort am I really willing to spend? Instead, maybe we should give ourselves credit for how "organized" we actually *are*, given the huge family and work demands so many of us face. I personally am involved in an experiment to see what it's like to be really organized--will it be worth it? I don't know. But one thing that keeps me going is that i'm curious about the process, and I'm thinking of all the physical work and carrying as a form of exercise! Katie

Hi. I'm so glad to find this thread and hear your good experiences with the Canon Powershot SD1100. That is one of the ones I'm thinking about. The other considerations are the canon powershot sd880, and the sony cybershot dsc-w300. There might be a panasonic linux or Olumpus I'd consider as well. Here are the things I'm hoping to find: - very small and portable - 7 ounces or less, can fit in a pocket (even if snuggly) - very very good picture quality. I sometimes sell on ebay and craigslist and a good photo can make a huge difference in whether you make the sale - and what price you can get. most of those items are still, relatively small items (2 feet diameter to a couple of square inches) - being photographed indoors. - pictures of my daughter and family and friends - more indoors than outdoors. I don't like what my 5 yo olympus does to skin tone and other items used indoors with flash - I want either a flash that doesn't wash out and overexpose - or a camera that doesn't blur if i try to hold it still for an indoor shot without flash. This is very important to me. - I'd prefer a viewfinder - but might be willing to give this up for other features. - a zoom of at least 3x (if there's a reason I should have more, please let meknow) - maybe the ability to change settings or do a little manual adjustments - I don't know how to do this now, but I'm hoping to have this camera for a few years and I might be interested in learning a little more soon - here's what I think I can't have everything - occasionally get an action shot of my daughter - dancing, playing, etc - ability to take reasonable quality video - I'd probably use wide angle if I had it, but I haven't had that feature on a camera in over a decade. Price - under $400. under $300 is better, but I'd pay a bit more if there were such a thing as having it all. From what I've read of the samsung l210 and casio exilin card ex-s10, they seem to only have good image quality.. And now for a separate question. My camera is a 5 mp, olympus camedia c-50 zoom. I believe it's 5 years old (maybe 6). Will I gain a noticeable improvement in quality and features that would make it worth my while to upgrade from this camera. It used to seem to me I could get decent pictures on this, but now when I take pictures of my daughter or items to sell, I dislike more than half of them - they're either too blurry, or not lit well. I do have more handshake than I used to - so image stabilization might be very worth my while. Thanks. Lynn. PS - I started really seeing what crisp clear pictures could be like from the kitchen and cooking forums here.