@zorg: Love it.

@Phouka: OK, I hear what you're saying. It's true that I always use a cutting board, especially for meat, and that I clean the counter every day—often multiple times a day—so the counter is surely cleaner than the floor. But the floor is thoroughly washed every week and there are no pets in the house. I just don't…

I don't know...I can't think of the last time I dropped raw meat on the kitchen floor. On the counter—you know, where food is all the time—raw meat has very probably made contact in the last month. Does that mean that I should throw away anything that touches the counter?

@dboudwin: English and Spanish fluently, enough German to get into trouble, enough French and Italian to find a bathroom or order a meal.

Awesome! This looks like just what I need to figure out what pest has destroyed my eggplants!

I'm thinking about adding an HTPC to my setup at home. Can anyone comment on the Asus EB1006 EEE Box, the Acer Aspire AR1600, the Acer Aspire AR3610, or the Zotac MAG HD-ND01 (or similar machines)? Can they handle HD content?

It's useful, for sure. I use it some of the time. But once it really gets integrated with a variety of mobile phones, I'll be all in.

@hanyou0: Please do. I just tried it to no avail.

@rolltimer: That's accurate—you can get exactly two to go to the same landline. What I really need is more than two.

I still wish I could have more than two Google Voice numbers forward to the same home number. There are more than two people in my family.

I just put together a new machine and am trying out a 64GB SSD for my OS drive (Win7 Pro). Of course I will not be putting any media or long-term file storage on the SSD. Any suggestions on what other kinds of programs/files I definitely should or should not put on the SSD?

@10thmayfly: I have never lived in LA, but I can highly recommend Philly. It's a wonderful, vibrant city, and close to DC and NYC (among other places). The weather isn't bad, and the traffic near Penn isn't bad either. The city has a lot of character, and the "steaks" are fantastic. Penn is a great, great…

I am looking for recommendations on a simple TV tuner card. I am using Win7 on a nice i7 machine and have DirecTV (so I'll be going through a receiver). I do not need anything fancy, just a way to record TV occasionally, and would like to do so at a relatively low cost. Any recommendations?

I am considering turning an older PC (P4 3.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 1.5TB HD) into a WHS box. It will provide storage for photos (many), music (a lot), and ripped DVDs (not so many). Ideally, it would allow me to stream media to other machines (and perhaps a WD Live TV) through gigabit ethernet. Running WinXP, the machine…

Vote: Wordpress

@jaaydn: Yep, I completely agree. We dry herbs, pickle cucumbers (and beets, carrots, and onions), bottle tomato sauce and whole tomatoes, and make jalapeño jelly, among several other ways of putting up our garden produce. We end up with very little waste, other than the ridiculous productive chives.

@verminskyi: No, but maybe I will now! Sounds like a fun one to try. Thanks for the suggestion!

This is worth considering, for sure. However, it's even better you if you combine it with a couple of other principles:

I'd echo the importance of picking the right seat—for me, it has to be a window seat. It's one of those things where upfront planning really pays off. It also points to the author's approach to sleeping on a plane. He doesn't get on a plane and then think, "Oh, maybe I'll take a nap." He's committed from long…

I love the geeky process of planning the vegetable garden layout each year. After poring over the various seed catalogs and coming to an initial list of seeds I'm buying, I have a lot to consider. Which plants need trellising or other supports? Which are tall and therefore need to be on the north end of the garden?…