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Go with the aluminum gutter. If something overheats there's no chance of igniting it like the PVC. Here's some full-spectrum T5 tubes. I'll see if I can find T6s later. You'll probably need to custom rig something to hold the sockets. Overall if you do this with switches it'll cost only a...

Thanks for reminding me about the IceCap ballasts and T6s, udaman. I think I've even seen full-spectrum T6s somewhere a while back. This might be another viable solution to Dave's lighting project. Also, I haven't gotten around to answering your latest emails but I'll try to find time this...

If you go with T5 tubes instead of T8 then I think 4 sets in parallel could be made to fit into a rain gutter. T5 tubes are a different length that T8s, and use a different ballast. They cost more also, but not prohibitively more. Anyway, since the tube is 5/8" in diameter instead of 1" then...

I saw this thread yesterday but haven't had time to give it a decent response. I'll try now. First off, yes, you can indeed dim flourescent lighting. The downside is that dimming ballasts for a pair of lamps run at upwards of $75 (when you can even find them). For the size room you mentioned...

I only changed the GPU frequency. The card voltage was already at 1.5V in the BIOS and that was the lowest setting. It's not heat-related, BTW. The GPU temperature is at most 70°C. The limit is 145°C and the card will automatically clock down as it approaches this. On another strange note...

I'm periodically experiencing the exact same thing on the new PC I set up about a year ago. I think it might be video card related since it occurred very infrequently only after I purchased a new card (it's an EVGA 128 MB Geforce 6200). It mainly occurs when playing 3D games after a few minutes...

It may not be a drive problem at all. About two or three years ago my main PC was exhibiting similar symptoms. First one of the drives was periodically spinning down. Eventually all three of them started to. The number of reallocated sectors started climbing on two out of the three. As things...

From an indestructibility standpoint the stuff made with metal tubes and mesh can't be beat. It's also very light plus easily disassembles in case you move often. The only thing is either you like it or you don't. If you like high-tech decor then you'll probably like it, otherwise you won't. I'm...

I guess the consensus then is that Bose is the best. :rofl: :bglaugh: That old thread also made me LMAO. Talk about not giving up a hopeless argument. :x I was also reminded of yet again of the reasons why Merc holds Prof. Wizard in so much, umm, esteem. On the subject of headphones and...

They should be able to. As udaman mentioned, tire sizes are never exact. The car has to have some adjustment (at least 10% in either direction) to account for this. Maybe there's even some procedure in the service manual for your car to do this, assuming you have it. My brother gets the service...

Well, at least here it saves a good amount of time over doing 70 or whatever the speed limit is since it's a long commute and he's doing it often. In one day 100 versus 70 on a 100 miles each way commute you save 51 minutes. In a week you save over 4 hours. In a year you save the equivalent of...

Increasing tire size is a common way to effectively get "overdrive" without going through the expense of a new transmission. You would drop your RPM from around 5000 to about 4675 @ 100 mph according to the info you gave. As for affecting the accuracy of your speedometer/odometer I believe any...

Your equation seems right. I'm not sure about the examples though. Where does the minus sign come in? (edit-never mind- you were just using the minus sign in between the tread width/sidewall height and wheel diameter numbers. Your math seems correct). Interestingly, bicycle tires are actually...

Happy holidays to all! And here's a few pictures of my house lit up for the holidays:

Either way the kitten will be getting a far better home than he would have staying with the morons who thought he was disposible goods.

That's great news! I'll be looking forward to receiving it. And my mom will be thrilled to have a better system than the old Pentium 200 she's been using. Now on to Newegg to order the rest of the parts for the system....

They use high temperature to fuse the toner to the paper. I've noticed the smell is less than when I first set it up. I've also found a good spot for it. ;) I took apart my inkjet just for kicks and soaked the circuit board with the cartridge contacts on it in lacquer thinner followed by...

Since I have a few spare NICs and SATA isn't terrible crucial right now (I don't even own a SATA drive yet much less my mom) I'll go with the Gigabyte.

That sounds like a good idea if the A64 will be on hold for a while. Just a few questions: Am I correct in assuming based on your post that Soyos have an issue with SATA ports? I checked the specs for the Soyo board and it seems to match what I'm looking for, SATA issues aside. What is the...

That's probably true. So far I've registered on I think seven forums. Four of them are train related and I hadn't posted much to any of them for a while even before my father passed on. I just needed a break from the train stuff. The other three are SF, SR and Candlepowerforums. I haven't...

I bought the printer today. It took a few minutes to set up. Print quality is excellent-photos look better than on my Deskjet 940C and text is tack sharp. Best of all no more runny ink every time the page gets a little wet, plus it's no noisier than my inkjet. So long as this new printer...

Going over the members list I noticed quite a few regulars haven't posted here in a while, sometimes a long while. Anyone know what happened to: Cougtek Fushigi Howell/Cliptin Prof. Wizard flagreen James SteveC honold Jan Kivar That about covers all those with >200 posts who haven't been here...

Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings does the commentary in the US. Yes, he's a celebrity but I think he does a decent job of it. Thank goodness they didn't use Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson or Paris Hilton, to name a few people I wish would just permanently disappear to the far side of the moon.

CityK, Thanks for the TV/video capture lesson. I look forward to your further updates later on. For now that's quite a bit of info to digest.

We have Time Warner cable. Right now I'm using my late father's 30" Westinghouse HDTV in the basement. When the prices come down I may buy a 42" or so 1080p for my bedroom. We can get something like TiVo through the cable company but I'm really not interested mainly in recording programs so I...

No problem at all. I'm aiming to get the machine set up by roughly New Year's but there's really no hard schedule.

Anyone else here watch Meerkat Manor? It's basically live action footage of wild meerkats with commentary. The action is totally unscripted yet it reads like a soap opera. I've been hooked since late summer. The meerkats are also quite a bit cuter than most human actors as well. ;)

The changes must have worked. I'm getting about 800KB/sec steady which is around the highest I can get on my connection from anywhere.

The ATMs by me don't suck the card in to read it so this scam just wouldn't work. I'd probably notice and remove the X-ray film anyway. In fact, if someone ever tried to pull this scam, I might well play along, and then take out the film and card just when they think they've got me.

And it's been working out very well! :) BTW, please let me know when the Biostar board arrives and how much you want for it. I'm assuming the board can take DDR and has a AGP8X slot. The older graphics card I have should be fine for her uses. Somehow I don't think she'll be playing any 3D...

Is any card in particular better for SDTV? Would a card that uses the CPU for encoding overtax my XP2500? What about HDTV? Any card you would recommend? I might put in the difference between what my brother is willing to spend and what an HDTV card costs. Is 2GB RAM sufficient for HD video...

The local BJs has the Samsung CLP-510 for $250 with a $70 rebate good through 12/31. I'm seriously thinking of purchasing it since my HP Deskjet 940C refuses to recognize color cartridges, and therefore won't do anything. HP tech support either refused or didn't know how to tell me to override...

Results for my traceroute: Tracing route to storageforum.net [69.57.180.83] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1 2 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.48.0.1 3 6 ms 6 ms 8 ms gig0-3-nycmnyu-ubr9.nyc.rr.com [24.29.113.149] 4 8 ms 6 ms...

I got 359 KB/sec. Roadrunner recently upgraded from 5 Mb/sec to 7 Mb/sec. In other words, the download should have been ~800 KB/sec. I still seem to be getting better speeds than everyone else here though.

The circuit breaker box was already a 100 amp/240VAC or 200 amp/120VAC service when we moved in. Even with all the ACs running we don't come close to that. The main concern was getting heavy loads by themselves so we didn't have breakers tripping if we were making coffee and using a microwave...

My brother asked me what I needed for my birthday. I told him a TV card would be a good idea. I'm basically looking for something to enable me to transfer VHS tapes and/or record programs to DVDs. I'd prefer a component connection to my cable TV box for best signal quality. If possible, I...

Much easier if you start from scratch, especially the electrical work. This is doubly true in NYC since we have to use armored cable and metal boxes. I'm using 12-2 (cable jacket is ground) BX cable which is a real pain to get around turns, or to cut. All told I added or rewired 20 outlets, 3...

I'm in the process of building my mom a new PC. I'm using a Lian-Li PC60 case and Seasonic power supply just like I used for the PC I built myself early in the year. The motherboard must have the following: 1) Slots for at least 3 GB DDR memory. Slots for DDR2 are OK also but it must have...

Thanks all for the condolences. While I've gotten over my initial grieving a while ago it's still strange not having my father around. I only wish my father had taken his health more seriously. I thought a wakeup call would have been when his younger brother (my uncle) was diagnosed with...

Many here have speculated on my reasons for being absent from these forums for over 8 months. A few people who have contacted me privately already know the reason. Since this is a close knit group I thought it time to let everyone know the reason, and it should be obvious from the thread...

Mostly catnaps where I sleep for a few hours, if that. So long as I go into REM sleep for a few minutes in some manner, I'm OK. My problem is that I just get so caught up in whatever I'm doing that I don't want to sleep. What usually happens is I'll keep working until I literally just drop...

It looks black on my monitor but it's probably dark purple.

My reason for leaving my PC on 24/7 is that I seldom don't use it in any given 3 or 4 hour stretch, so turning it off every time I leave it would mean about 20 power cycles a day. This wouldn't concern me if not for the hard drives. I'm uncomfortable cycling hard drives that often. Therefore...

Wow, I haven't been here for a few days and now this terrible news. :( Be strong for her sake. More than that, see what's available with alternative treatments if this does indeed turn out to be cancer. For what it's worth, my mom has several friends who have had breast cancer and gotten...

Thanks Merc for keeping an amazingly high signal to noise ratio even with such a huge number of posts (more than all mine totaled on all the boards I post to). Here's to 8000 more! :beer:

Guess I'm rich then and I didn't even know it since I tend to save >50% of my albeit meager earnings. :wink: Truth is the poor aren't always poor because they can't manage money. You need a certain amount of income coming in to even consider saving. Nowadays many people make so little that...

Actually, with unregulated capitalism the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We're seeing a lot of this right now with fewer and fewer regulations on capitalism. This is because the rich can set things up so that most of the wealth stays in their hands, and only pay workers enough to...

I share many of David's views although my problem isn't so much that I'm against the idea of the government helping those less fortunate but rather against the very high taxes that always seem to come with a multitude of government programs. I don't feel anybody, including the very rich, should...

Congratulations, Coug! If it's any consolation, I haven't yet had any job working for others that I enjoy. That's the same situation I'm in. Seems despite my Ivy League college degree the only kinds of jobs people hire me for are low-paying, boring, manual labor or technician type jobs...

Mass distribution also enters the equation (lower center of gravity is better) but your observation simply shows the many conflicting requirements between making a vehicle which can cope with real-world driving conditions versus one which can attain maximum possible efficiency. Ultra-low...