Alton Brown Pico Review, and some LJ Brain Trust Help Requests

[geminigirl]

Picoreview of Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt-good summer filler. It's interesting. I do wish they'd captioned the bits where he's talking and on the bike at the same time...I'm having a hard time hearing and understanding him.

Brain Trust Reqest #1:

I'm looking for help with a UPS or two. We seem to have more frequent power outages at the new house, and I'm looking for one UPS that I can plug the desktop computer/modem/router into, which will live in the office, and a second that will probably live in the family room, and which the laptops will get plugged into. I know effectively nothing about them, so I need help.


Brain Trust Request #2 (which I'm sure aquariumgirl will have some answers for)

I'm looking for information about fish-keeping. We're thinking about a fish tank. Freshwater, 20-30 gallons. I'm looking for information about building a healthy, relatively low maintenance system for hearty tropical fish-variety still TBD.

Brain Trust Request #3 If anyone has a better fix for the firefox bug that causes the apostrophe key to bring up the search box than the one I'm using now (which involves opening a tab, going to about:config, and changing the value for accessibility.typeandfind.flashbar) please let me know.

Brain Trust Request #4 is about toasters. I love my toaster oven, but in the interest of preserving limited counter space, I'm thinking about replacing it with an under the cabinet model in the new house. I know there have been issues in the past with fire, but does anyone know anything about current models?

Comments

[beaq.livejournal.com]

guppiesguppiesguppiesguppiesguppiesguppies!

[koyote.livejournal.com]

guppies!

and catfishies.

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

If you don't know how the Nitrogen Cycle in an aquarium works, look it up (google it some more, to get more links than that one). It is the basic thing to understand about starting an aquarium.

I have a fondness for Gouramis, especially if you keep a swarm of guppies or something like that to keep them nourished.

[emperor]

I have an APC ups here, and it's pretty good. The 1100VA model will run a single desktop for about 20 minutes, so would probably suit for your "first" one. Re the second - laptops have batteries in, so I wouldn't generally bother with a UPS for them.

[geminigirl]

It's less about the batteries and more about mitigating power surge, with the laptops. We get so much lightning here that we'll probably have the power company install surge protection outside the house, at the meter, which reduces the problem, and if we don't get a UPS for the laptops, we'll buy the mega surge things that the power company sells, if we can't find comprable (and cheaper ones) elsewhere.

[sweet-tea79.livejournal.com]

If you can wait a few days for me to get back to you, I'll ask my father about the UPS. He used to design UPSes for airports, and was rather manic about making sure all of our computers were on personal UPSes and knows quite a bit about them. He's very smart, however, he's not always so quick with the emails so give him a few days to respond. I'll get back to you!

[geminigirl]

No rush. We're not moving til the end of the month anyway. And thanks and good luck today.

[jennifer0246.livejournal.com]

oh my GOD #3!! i thought i was going insane. i mean, not that i use grammar or apostrophes much, but really now.

[geminigirl]

Not you at all. It's a bug in Firefox, and they're aware of it, and working on a fix, AFAIK. I can explain in more detail the solution that I posted, if you like.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

seperate ups for router/modem/networking stuff means you cna stay online with the laptos for loonger than you may be able to keep the desktop running.


what is a ups for the laptops for, are the batteries not working?


APC, 650 for desktop, 650 for networking gear, should keep you in business for long enough to know if the power is going to be out all night.

or, if your power goes out for more than an hour on a regular basis, get a 1200 for the networking gear.

spare laptopp battery, and car charger probably more important than a ups for the laptops.

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

I haven't had (or noticed, at least) the Firefox bug, even though I'm using the latest version. But someone posted about a similar problem in ljgenie awhile back. Not knowing about the bug, I suggested she check to see if her menu key (http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/w/winkey.htm) was stuck. Playing around with that key seemed to solve her problem. I'm not sure if it was a matter of the menu key toggling some setting or what.

Also: guppies and the like are cool because they are livebearers. They are also uncool because they are livebearers and will make lots of incestuous little guppies unless you separate the males and the females.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

A more radical suggestion for #3 then you're looking for: Try Opera for 24 hours. Since it's free and easy to very install, the trial won't cost you much. Personally I find it not as good as Firefox -- with all the extensions I want -- when Firefox works right. But given that Firefox's bugginess and the fact that the extensions keep ceasing to work when I install a new Firefox version, I prefer Opera. Most of the things that are extensions I want in Firefox are built in in Opera.

[geminigirl]

I tried Opera a while ago, and didn't much like it, but might try it again. I haven't had issues with Firefox extentions yet, but that's good to know.

[geminigirl]

There is plenty of other stuff going on in your life right now, and it's not like I'm jumping off the couch to go get a dog tomorrow, so take as much time as you need.