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

[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.