Corey

I did some pretty serious research on these 2 years ago. I will be getting one installed in my house this year at some point. From everything I have read, these are almost the standard in the Pacific Rim area and a lot of Europe. From my research, Bosch seems to be the one to buy. Another thing I have found is that you can make a PVC grid system using some 3 or 4 inch PVC that can be used as a pre-warmer for the water coming in. The PVC can withstand the pressure of pump or municipal water, it basically uses the warmth of the air surrounding it to start to warm up the water, creating a more efficient water heater. I am not fully convinced that I want to use a pre-warmer setup like this, but I haven't ruled it out. I suppose with a bit more money and a lot more work, a copper pre-warmer could be put together. If I could find the links, I would provide them, but unfortunately I have no idea where I have them stashed. cd.

Firing a ballast in a flourescent bulb or fixture uses approximately 6 hours of running power that the flourescent fixture consumes. If you have a 6w CFL and turn it in, it will use 24w just to fire the bulb. So if you turn on and off a CFL more than 4 times a day, you are better off to leave it on the entire 24hr period. As well, until they can build a CFL that will withstand the cold of a Canadian winter, there should be no way that we are forced to use CFL's outdoors. They just aren't reliable in sub-zero temperatures. Another hint is to find bulbs that have instant firing. You can get ones that ramp up to full brightness over a period of several minutes, or ones that fire to full brightness almost instantly. cd.

If Maple Leafs fans weren't such idiots, they would stop supporting a team that never wins until they get the right talent to win. The Leafs management are smart... why spend all the extra money on a winning team when your dumb-ass fans will always support a team they know will never win. duh.

Makes me wanna go to the basement and dig out my lead pot... I will be digging it out soon enough to cast some slugs for the shotgun... If anyone in the Hamilton/Niagara area ever wants to make some lead, let me know... I have various jig molds as well as some other ones too. cd.

I knew if enough people spread a rumour of nekkid women fishing live on here it would bring in the crowds.

You have to have the legal owner's permission to fish or hunt there. Having the cousin's blessing for the fishing part is OK, but I would mention the conversation to your Sgt and explain to him that if his cousin ever changes his mind, you will still need your Sgt's written permission. This could be a subtle way of bringing up a conversation between the Sgt and his cousin.

Did you have to purchase any type of license to fish down there?

Not that this would help with the MSN problem, but there are a number of IM clients out there that will handle multiple IM networks. This effectively allows you to be on MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc. All at the same time with a single client. cd.

Hope they aren't buying any Mac crap. High speed internet, so Gerritt doesn't have to do the dialup dance at lunch to look at everyone else fishing while he is working eh.

Wooo here we go again... glad it was just a stone and nothing more serious. He should go see a renal dietician now. I know all about kidney stones... 1.3cm on one side and 1.4 cm on the other, fortunately or unfortunately, mine are a wee bit too big to pass and I will be headed under the knife for the 3rd time to remove my stones. Percacets are awesome. cd.

Good stuff... I know Headhunter had something lined up for me as well, but I ended up taking a job much closer to home. Joe (Headhunter) is excellent to deal with and gives solid advice for people to tweak out their resume's and such and can find you a job if you have the right stuff. Enjoy the drive Gerritt cd.

I think a mime would be a perfect fit for an act like this... cd.

The $311 includes the restricted as well, and like I said, rates do vary. And yes, it's another $60 or $80 for the PAL or RPAL. The place I did my tests and hunter course charges $235 for just the non-restricted and hunter safety course. I have 2 guns now... Remington 870 Wingmaster with a 20" slug barrel and a 28" vented rib barrel with removable chokes. I also have an Anschutz .22 target gun. I signed up for the turkey course in Hamilton in April. cd.

Resolution 47 is just proof of the liberals not actually knowing the laws already in place in out country. Automatic weapons are already prohibited, meaning only the people who have been grandfathered into a position where they can legally own automatic weapon can posess them. In addition to that, you cannot take the prohib out hunting or to the range anyhow. If the liberals would actually educate themselves on the current Canadian law, they wouldn't get egg thrown in their face when they come up with resolutions like this.

When I looked into everything, for me to take the non-restricted course & test, the restricted course and test, and the hunter safety course and test, including books for all, it was $311 for the whole thing. The prices do vary from place to place. I believe the non-restricted stuff and hunter safety stuff is around $240 on its own. I ended up challenging the 2 firearms tests, which you can do for $30 each. The hunter safety course you have to take in Ontario unless you have had a hunters license in another "recognized" place. Like another country or province.

This is all good and everything, but I just fired up my satelite receiver and it would seem as though the wind has decided to reposition my dish over the last few weeks. I don't know what I am going to do to watch the fights now. Maybe I'll have to go to the local bar. cd.

Ya know... nobody seems to quite understand what is the root cause of this fuel shortage. In truth the shortage is the direct result of CN Rail. Because of the strike by the CN conductors, they cannot get enough fuel into Ontario by rail. People keep talking about refineries, but this has very little to do with our fuel shortage. Believe me, the refineries in Ontario hardly produce enough fuel for Ontario's use. The majority of our fuel is brought in on rail cars, as well as the unrefined fuel used by the refineries. If people want a company to complain to about this, call CN and ask why they can't work out a descent agreement with their unions, ask why they make it impossible for trucking companies to get in and out of their depots. The fuel supply shortage started happening when the CN conductors went on strike, it just took until this last week for gas stations to start running dry. Anyone who drives a truck hauling sea containers in and out of the Brampton CN yard will know what I am talking about. For the record, I don't drive a truck, nor do I have anything to do with it or with CN. I just know a lot of people in a lot of industries. cd.

My first suggestion to Bill was take some thyme and red wine, put it with the meat in a ziplock and let her soak overnight. That was no good as he wanted to cook it today. So my suggestion was some montreal smoked meat seasoning rubbed on and then wrap the meat in seran wrap and throw in the fridge until he was ready to cook. I think the most important thing for people to do when preparing meat is to wrap it tight. Keep it away from the air as much as possible. That goes for fish as well, when you catch fish that you want to keep, it's best to wrap the fish right away to keep it away from the air. This is even more so important if you are ever going to get a skin mount of a fish, according to possibly the best taxidermist in Canada. cd.

The most important channel in my house is treehouse. It's on pretty much all day long, not only do the kids like it, the birds like it too. With the technology we have today, we should be able to subscribe on a channel by channel basis, but this would most likely cut into the revenue of cable companies. If there were a satelite provider out there that charged a reasonable monthly fee, like 10 bucks a month or something to that effect, and then $1 per channel per month, that would be providing great customer value. I would by all means buy 20 or so channels, the ones I want to watch. Instead I have to pay for a heck of a lot of channels that I will never watch, and have to deal with the fact that the only cogeco theme pack that is not available where I live is the one with WFN and Fight TV... go figure. cd.

I have driven Ford, Chev and Dodge trucks. With that said I am definately a Ford guy. I have not driven a Dodge Hemi, but the Dodge that I did drive didn't have nearly the nuts that the Ford or Chev had, maybe the Hemi makes a difference. The Chev interior is like sitting at home in the lazyboy chair, very comfotable, but for some reason I don't like the steering wheels of the Chev. Either way, if I still had my F150, I would have loved to challenge one of them big old Hemi's just so that I could have seen the look on the no-neck drivers face when I blew their doors off running down the road. I used to stomp all over imports at Cayuga, nothing better than a little ol' pickup truck running high 11's to the imports 13's. cd.

does this mean I am on the winning team?

Without trying to start any arguements, for the last month or so I have seen MNR trucks driving up and down the QEW quite a bit. At least twice aweek and I am on the highway between 3 and 4 times a day from various places to places, all between Hamilton and Niagara. cd.

Ya that sucked. I am a huge Mark Martin fan. They should have thrown the caution. He deserved the win, especially considering how long he has been in the game and is finishing up his career.

Not to try and offend you here, but 60-80k a year is bunk. I know several artists who have descent album sales still and don't see nearly that much money. Considering the average artists receives less than $2 for each CD sold, you are saying that because people download your music you lose 40,000 CD sales per year? That's what I am calling bunk on. I bet your production runs are less than 25,000 a year and still don't sell that much. You would have to be the tragically hip to make that dollar amount claim as far as loss's. You should know better than anyone that it's the touring and product sales that make you the real money. How much are your production costs for making an album? Less than $100,000 I would imagine. Why are we paying the same amount of money for a CD as we are for a DVD which usually cost upwards of $50 million to produce? The average cost of a film production is 500 times that of an audio production, which means that if a DVD costs $20, an audio CD should cost less than a dollar to buy. I cannot stand artist who defend the recording industry knowing that they are getting it up the donkey just as much as the consumer is. cd.

OK... my $0.02. First of all, downloading music is theft, plain and simple. Where I have issues though are these points. 1. In Canada, we pay a levee on all recordable media, that is passed back to the various companies who distribute music and video in this country. As someone who buys a lot of media, does that mean that I am pre-paying these companies that lose when I download copyrighted material? To me this means that no matter what I do with the media, I am paying money to these companies which makes it legal for me to download music because they already have their cut. 2. These companies who claim to lose money because of illegal downloading of music have posted record profits in the past few years, which are the only years that music has been available en masse on the internet. Does this mean that "try before you buy" might be the actual effect of all this illegal music downloading? Seems to be a working business model that the recording industry refuses to buy into. 3. A very large number of recording artists support the free download of their music. People still buy the media, which is obvious by recording industry profits. The musicians get such a small cut of media sales, that by having more people listen for free, more people will attend concerts and events, which is where most recording artists make their real money. 4. The recording industry knows they cannot stop the illegal download of music. Very much like the war on drugs. The recording industry have been fairly successful using scare tactics via lawsuits to gain money from the ordinary person. These people include a lot of older, retired people who down know much about computers, but have children and grandchildren who are computer savvy. Lately there have been numerous successful countersuits against the recording industry showing a growing trend of right back at you. Either way, I have downloaded music. I own thousands of CD's and have spent more than my share on music. I do still buy certain CD's, but only after I am sure I like the majority of the music on the disk. How do I find out? I download certain tracks and listen to them. The "try before you buy" business model would be a fantastic model for the recording industry to move to, it works. cd.