Nothing transforms a room faster and more dramatically than a fresh coat of paint! It’s an inexpensive, fun and easy project. Whether you’re thinking of making a splash with bright colors or simply want to freshen and brighten with white or a neutral, there are several different types of finishes to choose from: flat, satin and semi-gloss. Flat paint has no visible sheen and is a perfect choice for walls with an uneven or rough texture. Satin paint has a slight sheen and can be washed, which makes it a great choice for high-traffic areas. Semi-gloss is shiny and very washable; it’s a great choice for moldings, doors, bathrooms and kitchens. If you chose a darker paint color, consider using a tinted primer first for better coverage.

The key to any successful paint job is preparation and using quality paint and supplies. Remove smaller furniture items, lamps and decorative items from the room and move the rest of the furniture into the center and cover with a protective cloth or tarp. This way you’ll have easy and complete access to all the walls and don’t risk splashing paint on anything.

Cover the floor to protect it from paint spills and drips. Use sturdy craft paper or plastic drop cloths and tape them down with easily removable masking tape to make sure they don’t budge. If you do get a paint spill, wipe it up with a damp rag as soon as possible.

Paint adheres best to clean, even surfaces, so preparing the area to be painted is important. If the walls are dirty or dusty, wipe them down with a damp sponge and let them dry properly. Use a putty knife to fill holes and fine cracks with spackling paste. If the surface is uneven after spackling, sand it smooth with fine-grit sandpaper, then wipe away excess dust. If you have water damage, use a wall primer with a built-in stain blocker or else the stains will bleed through the new paint.

Remove anything from the walls that shouldn’t be painted such as light switch and electrical outlet covers and heating and a/c vent grates. Unscrew wall mounted lighting fixtures or cover them with plastic to protect them from paint splatters and drips. Once the walls are clean and prepped make sure the temperature is at least 50° Fahrenheit and that you have enough light for you to see what you’re doing. Also, make sure that the room is adequately ventilated.

Now you’re ready to start painting! If you have more than one gallon of the same color, pour all of your paint into a 5-gallon bucket and blend it, since batches of paint can vary in color. Disposable paint tray liners come in handy — you won’t have to rinse out the paint tray if you need to take a break. You’ll need a 2-1/2″ angled sash brush for cutting in, a cut bucket (any plastic, quart-size container will do), a roller handle and a 3/8″ synthetic roller. Consider investing in a higher-quality brush for best results. Brush out the roller with a wire brush to remove fuzz, which can cause bubbles in the paint. Some rollers need to be soaked in water first — be sure to read the directions on the package.

Surfaces should be painted from top to bottom in the following order: ceilings, walls, baseboards, doors and window trim. Instead of masking off adjoining areas to avoid getting paint on them, professionals use a technique called ‘cutting in.’ Give it a try! Hold the brush like a pencil for better flexibility and control, dip it in paint and flick off the excess, then wedge it into place at an angle and slowly drag it along the edge of the trim. The cut bucket will come in handy when you’re standing on a ladder as you won’t have to climb down every time your brush runs out of paint. Paint along all corners and trim before filling in larger areas with a roller.

After cutting, you’re ready to paint the walls. Dip the roller in the paint tray and roll off excess paint. The roller should be saturated but not dripping with paint. Paint the walls in 3 feet square sections, following a ‘W’ pattern. Don’t overreach — move along the wall as you work. The paint will look lighter when it’s wet as paint darkens as it dries. For lighter colors, two coats should suffice; darker shades may require three coats. Let paint dry thoroughly — ideally overnight — before replacing light switch covers and re-attaching wall fixtures.

Once you’ve moved all your furniture back in, you’re ready to enjoy your new room! You’ll be amazed what a difference a fresh coat of paint makes. And remember, your local paint store can match paint to virtually anything — artwork, a bedspread or your favorite flower. So get inspired and don’t be afraid of color!

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Some people’s response to leasing is that it’s always a bad decision, but ask those people to explain how leasing works and the pros and cons and they rarely can.

The truth is that leasing is a great alternative to buying IF you know where to look for good deals and how to tell how good of a deal something is just by looking at all of those ‘weird’ numbers they throw around. The other huge caveat is that leasing really only makes sense on certain vehicles with low depreciation, high manufacturer backing, and if you are the kind of person who can predict their yearly mileage within a reasonable range, and are the kind of person who can be happy with a car for 2-3 years and then be ready to get into something new anyway.

OK, this is a great forum to find all of the vital stats you need on leasing the car of your choice. If you don’t see it, search for it, or request it.
http://forums.roadfly.com/forums/fin…num=504&page=1

Here’s a thread discussing BMW’s January rates:
http://forums.roadfly.com/forums/fin…8186473-1.html

Here’s a lease calculator:
http://www.leaseguide.com/calc.htm
Click on the above link and follow through the below math and explanations with me.

Here’s how it works. I’ll use a 335i sedan as an example as the rates are pretty good on it at the moment.
Let’s just say I’m getting it as stands… no options, really. Just the standard equipment. And we want to hop to a new car after 2 years - within those 2 years we expect to drive say no more than 33k miles and no less than 27k which makes 15k/miles a year cost effective anywhere in that range.
Here’s the rates per that site:
BMW 335i Sedan - 24 mo/15k mi – Residual Value 71% of MSRP – .00150 Money Factor Buy Rate

OK so the first thing in question is the MSRP which is 39,395 with destination. Your residual value, stated at 71%, means the car will be worth 71% of that MSRP after 2 years. The key to saving a lot of money here is to negotiate the actual selling price as low as possible because that’s effectively 100% profit to them and 100% loss to you. Invoice is $36,300.

What you have to understand here is that despite whatever they may try to tell you, the price “Base Capital Cost” - aka the negotiated lease price, IS negotiable JUST like the purchase of a vehicle. If you could buy a 3-series for 700 over invoice, then you can lease a 3-series for 700 over invoice, and they will make the same amount of money on it just as though you had bought it for 700 over. As far as the dealer is concerned it’s the exact same value of transaction.

So let’s say that’s what has been negotiated. $37,000 (700 over invoice)

Next comes the downpayment. I suggest you NEVER make a downpayment because of two reasons: if the car is wrecked and totalled out, your insurance company will often times pay off the remaining balance of the lease and call it even. Thus if you total the car after 2 months of owning it and you had put 2500 bucks down… you lose that 2500 bucks - it just vanishes with the exception of the slightly lower payment you achieved for the first 2 months. The second reason is typically they do not give you any ‘interest credit’ for the money. In other words, the interest amount they charge you (called the money factor) doesn’t change a single penny if you put money down. You’d think if you put money down, you are “borrowing” less so it’d save you some money. Nope. Granted, there are some exceptions - some insurance companies will reimburse you for down payments (check with yours), and some dealerships will allow you to benefit from down payments. I know Lexus, for example, has a way for people to get around paying interest by basically putting the entire value of the car down as a ’safety deposit’ on the car… so basically you lease a 40k dollar Lexus, put 40k in as a safety deposit (not toward the value of the car, though) and they don’t charge you any interest… then you get the 40 grand back at the end of the term.

Next comes the residual value - again, in this example, it’s 71% of the MSRP for 24 months and 30k total miles. The MSRP here is 39,395, and 71% of that is 28 thousand dollars. So your payments will basically be your negotiated purchase price of 37,000, minus 28,000 = 9,000 dollars in depreciation for 2 years. Now spread that out over 24 months.
28,000 is also what your buyout will be at the lease end if you decide you want to keep the car. The car will likely be worth quite a bit less, though, so you’d be better off not buying it at the end since this residual value is artificially inflated by BMW financial to make it more appealing to lease (the equivalent of cash rebates for purchases).

Next comes the money factor. The money factor is hard to explain and kinda stupid that they give it as a number like .00150, but effectively that translates to them charging you 3.6% interest on the entire value of the car. Why the entire value? Because you are “borrowing” a 40k dollar car, even if your lease payments and sales tax are only based on the next 2 years worth of depreciation.

Now go through the last few steps of the calculator, enter sales tax if you know what it is, and if you punched in all of the numbers you should have a final payment of $473.71/month for 24 months with zero down, plus whatever you punched in for your tax rate (and remember tax is only being charged to you for the depreciated value - the 9 grand, not the 37 or 39 grand.!)

Now have lots of fun, beat the snot out of the car, don’t worry about maintenance because it’s not your car (and in the case of the BMW they do it for free anyway) and hand ‘em back the keys 2 years later having spent only ~11.5k bucks assuming you didn’t damage it substantially or try to turn it back in with bald tires or something.

Thanks Threxx

Professor’s lecture on what he has learned about life by looking at death. A clip from ABC about Dr. Randy Pausch’s memorable lecture.

Starting the computer and having to wait for that Windows loading screen can get irritating. However, there is a trick that you can use to speed it up dramatically. This trick is done by moving the Virtual Memory from the system hard drive to any other hard drive. Unfortunately, this only works if you have two or more physical hard drives (not virtual/partition):

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Right click on My Computer and then Properties. Choose the Advanced tab.
2. Click the First Settings Button under Performance. Click on the Advanced Tab on the new window that pops up.
3. Click Change under Virtual Memory
4. Select the hard drive that is not the system drive, to move the virtual memory onto it.
5. Click Custom Size. Set both values to be around twice the RAM that is currently in your computer. For example, if you have 1GB of RAM, set the size to 2048 (1GB = 1024 MB). Click Set.
6. Select the hard drive which had the virtual memory on it (the system hard drive) and click No Paging File. Then, click Set.
7. Click OK to the rest of the windows. Restart your computer. Done.

Note: This might not work after the first reboot. Give it some time. There are cases where this decreased the boot time from around 10 seconds to 3-5 seconds.

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There are more than 44 million dog owners in the United States — and untold millions more dog-loving city dwellers who would enjoy having a pooch or two but don’t have the time or space to walk, groom and clean up after them.

That’s the market Marlena Cervantes decided to tap when she founded Flexpetz, a groundbreaking dog-rental service that lets you bask in the unconditional love of man’s best friend without the trouble of having to care for it.

A dog owner and former behavioral therapist, Cervantes has experienced firsthand the positive effect that interacting with a dog can have on people with health problems, especially children. Many families, however, are unable to take on the added responsibility of dog owner-ship. Renting a well-behaved dog to those families seemed like an opportunity to spread joy - and make some money. So in March, Cervantes quit her job and launched Flexpetz in San Diego and Los Angeles. She has plans to expand her operation by opening branches in New York and San Francisco as well.

Rental and registration fees come to $120 per month. You book time with Flexpetz online or by phone. Each dog comes with its own bed, bowls, leash, chew toys, doggy waste bags, and prepackaged and premeasured dog food.

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A research team led by professor Masayuki Sumida at Hiroshima University’s Institute for Amphibian Biology has created a type of transparent frog whose internal organs are visible through its skin. The researchers say the see-through frogs can help in the study of diseases and in the development of medical treatments by allowing laboratory scientists to check the status of internal organs and blood vessels while the frogs are alive and without having to dissect them.

According to Sumida, the transparent frog is the result of breeding two specimens of Japanese brown frog (Rana japonica) that had a genetic mutation giving them pale skin. By selectively breeding their offspring, the researchers were able to create a frog that remains transparent for its entire life cycle. Most of the world’s known transparent creatures live underwater, and transparent four-legged animals are extremely rare.

The researchers also say that by fusing the genes of fluorescent proteins to the frog’s genes, they can create frogs that glow. Glowing frogs can help scientists study specific “problem” genes by providing a real-time visual indication (i.e. the frogs glow) when those genes become active.

Professor Sumida says, “Transparent frogs will prove useful as laboratory animals because they make it easier and cheaper to observe the development and progress of cancer, the growth and aging of internal organs, and the effects of chemicals on organs.”

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“We’ve really been struggling to find something that could challenge the Total Blender’s blending capabilities. What could we blend that’s stronger than anything we’ve ever blended? Then it hit us like a roundhouse kick to the face…Chuck Norris! ”

A point of interest: most of the pirated videotapes in this story are neither Beta nor VHS….they’re 3/4″ U-Matic!! The only people who seemed to own a VCR in 1978 were either the affluent or people who worked in video. Friends and family I knew didn’t get a player until 1982-84. Back then, if you missed a movie in the theather, you would have to wait years to ever see it again, especailly if it was a blockbuster. So yea, I would buy in back then…. but today, movies come out too fast on DVD to bother with getting a bootleg.

These kids are pretty awesome!

“This is the best and most accurate Master Chief Costume on Ebay. The suit is so awesome, it has been featured on Spike TV, G4 TV, and in a Dell Commercial. This suit is FAMOUS!You can have this suit in time for the halo launch! Wait until people see you walk in the door with this thing on! People will love you. Then, you can win all sorts of costume contests when Halloween comes around. ”