Recent comments

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Try to always buy seeds that are NOT genetically modified, such as all natural, nonhybrid. This is better for your yard, plants, and animals attracted to the plants.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    I have a big outside dog and often her water in her water bowl gets dirty. So instead of wasting it, as I live in a desert, I put it in a bucket and water my plants in the front yard with it.

    This is a very simple way to use that extra water to keep your greens green without increasing the water bill and without wasting a valuable resource.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Our backyard was a disaster when we moved in. We took the buckled cement walkway that went around the perimeter of the yard and smashed it up. We used the broken pieces of cement to build a series of trellaces/ retaining walls that are beautiful! Not only did we save money by not buying materials, we didn't have to haul away all that heavy waste.

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    The slow path with it's frugality and saving is the only way that's going to actually work in the longrun. Yes, I know that we modern Americans have no patience, but we need to learn it again. We need to spend less, save more, consume less and produce more. That's really the only way we get through this. Yes it will take a long time. What's the rush?

  • Make Your DVD Player Region-Free in Seconds   16 years 51 weeks ago

    I have spent most the evening now and the better half of yesterday trying to find the procedure for the Samsung DVD-VR375. My was born 2008.04, and I've used all the tips and ways that I think are out there, for this region 1 unit (29334). Some say open open DVD door, some don't mention it, some have you enter another code before your region code, others do not. Either way I cannot get it to work, some say you will see a flash of the code, but once I hit that menu button, that's all I see, and nothing else appears when I follow through with adding or pressing any more buttons. Please, I'm hoping someone does have the procedure, because I'm getting near to the procedure of the "sledge hammer and the check book"! Thanks in advance! MoksaMan

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Plant your beds and gardens a little more densely than the seed packets or plant containers suggest. Stagger them into triangular arrangements, closely enough that their leaves will just barely overlap when they're at their full size. The leaves will shade the soil, meaning less watering, and you'll get a few more plants in. Compost well so that every plant gets enough nutrients.

    Also, in addition to vinegar and boiling water to kill weeds in patio/sidewalk/driveway cracks, a generous dose of salt in those cracks will keep them from coming back.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Plant native plants. They will require less water, pesticides, and have a less negative impact on the environment.

  • Budgeting Hack: Gift Calendars   16 years 51 weeks ago

    That is so true. I never put much thought into planning for gifts, yet they really are so important! My wife and I have set a fund apart where the unexpected expenses can come out of and we put money into it each month. It has been nice to have this! I loved your calendar idea also.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    I fill in patchy spots on my lawn in the Spring with organic manure with humus and water in. The grass will spread and grow to green up evenly.

  • 8 Truths From a Mystery Shopper You Must Read Before You Get Started   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Kudo's to the great information. Another little known way to get rewards for trying products is through Nielsen Ratings. They have a program that allows select volunteers to be involved with their consumer product research panel. The website is http://www.nielsenratingsvolunteer.com

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    @ Guest:

    The National Income and Product Accounts, where I got my data for wages and salaries, have a pretty expansive definition.  Wages and salaries include:

    the monetary remuneration of employees, including the compensation of corporate officers; commissions, tips, and bonuses; voluntary employee contributions to certain deferred compensation plans, such as 401(k) plans; employee gains from exercising nonqualified stock options; receipts-in-kind; and miscellaneous compensation of employees.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    I don't yet have a yard, so I don't have any tips, but I do have some pet peeves. Don't throw away your green waste, compost it. Don't water in the middle of the day, water early morning or in the evening to make sure you don't waste water. Also, watch where your sprinklers are aimed, make sure they are watering what you want watered and not the sidewalk.

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Anyone who thinks that management is underpaid is nuts. Look at the salaries of the cretins who destroyed the biggest banks in the world. That's their pay for doing the worst job imaginable.
    Hey Chuck Prince! Enjoying those tens of millions....I thought so.

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Sweeping generalizations are just that, if one does not acknowledge specifics.

    1. Great technological advances aren't noted in the data. If jobs with great increases in productivity are due to tech, then those people pressing the "on" button, theoretically, would have had increases in wages for even less work. Take a fast food worker. Tech allowed a worker to only have to press a microwave button or a cash register button with a burger picture and the amount given by the customer. Thus, the job requirements are actually lower then in the past when one would have to know how to fry a burger, know the price of the burger, or calculate change. Should the button pushers be paid more because the company earns more, or should the investors (who put up their money for tech capital expenditure) be paid back in the form of dividends?

    2. In recent decades, there has been a greater shift to partnerships, profit sharing, stock options, etc. for top earners. These owners/partners are usually not included in the "wages" data points.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Plant Marigolds on the outside of your garden to keep the bugs away.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Don't cut the grass too short - slightly longer has deeper roots, is healthier and able to stand droughts better.

  • Help Make Wise Bread Better (and Win a Free Wise Bread Book)   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Just wanting you to know that I did go to bat for ya.  (And others who really, really dig uni's.)

    Linsey Knerl

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    @SJ:

    Yes, at the first approximation, I'd have to estimate that whatever money goes to workers does not go to owners (or managers).

    On the other hand, it's probably not precisely zero-sum.  After all, part of the justification of the change in customs and traditions about the relationship between wages and salaries of the rank and file versus salaries (and bonuses) of senior management has been that great management "adds value" through all its various maneuvers to optimize the allocation of resources, spread risk, etc. 

    Those operations look a bit less optimal these days.  Maybe paying management less would produce less maneuvering, to the benefit of us all.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    de-thatch the lawn

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    aerate the yard

  • 15 Things You Should Do Today to Prepare for a Pandemic Flu   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Forgive me for addressing an distasteful issue, but toilet type solid waste disposal is important. Kitty litter can be used by humans too. If there is a extended power outage, then the sewage facilities can go off line. Also, sewage facilities worker illness can affect operation. Furthermore, most conventional toilets rely on a pressurized water supply. Water pumping and supply facilities are also subject to disruption. For those who rely on well water, pumped by electricity, alternate sanitation is even more important. The Boy Scout manual talks about digging a latrine and squatting over it. I prefer a make shift toilet, over a bucket of kitty litter in the garage. The garage is a bit more private, drier when it is raining and usually has fewer biting insects. Extra plastic shopping bags can hold the residue, removed from the kitty litter.
    This works. I had to use it when I lost power for over a week, due to a wind storm. Circumstances mandated staying home. Improvisation was necessary. Fortunately the raw materials were available. Kitty litter has many uses, and not just for cats.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    I agree with Colleen. I, too, use no chemicals on the lawn and it is perfectly fine.

  • Beautify Your Yard: What's Your Best Advice?   16 years 51 weeks ago

    This is kind of a strange tip, but we have a big gopher problem on our property, and I was just reading last night that building barn owl nesting boxes was the best "green" way to deal with the problem. Barn owls, obviously, will prey on the gophers and hopefully scare them off. I like this idea much better than poisoning or gassing their burrows, so we'll see how it goes!

  • Another path to recovery: higher incomes   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Wow. Really interesting post. Lots to think about, so no judgment.

    But basically seems encouraging the class division right =)

    I do like how it accepts money flows vis a vi zero-sum games.

  • Help Make Wise Bread Better (and Win a Free Wise Bread Book)   16 years 51 weeks ago

    Just an fyi, but this survey forced me to select the number of employees in my company and the field in which I worked even though I'm a homemaker. Just wanted to let you know... I chose "Travel and Hospitality!" :-)