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One day we'll just pick up the device and it won't work. What would do that?

Can't know without diagnosing the cause of each of those failures and seeing if there's a commonality. Although if there are toddlers or infants in the household, you might not have to look far for a cause.

Once, a friend of mine gave another friend a VCR that had mysteriously stopped working. Said if he could fix it he could have it. The mystery was solved when he opened the vcr and found a bunch of small objects had been put into the front-loading casette slot. Their toddler had been trying to "play" ballpoint pen caps and other non-VHS formats for quite some time.

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The only problem? Smoke! It's too smoky to sit close to it, and if you sit far enough away to avoid that, you're sitting in the cold. Doesn't some wood produce less smoke than others?

I think the solution is more likely to be extending the length and exit location of the chimney.

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Here's what I want: a maroon cap, (..) with nothing other than the classic Redskins logo on it.

I would have said Cafe Press, but now that I think about it, they will not allow you to print up trademarked/copyrighted materials. In fact, no self respecting company will let you print up copyrighted or trademarked materials. In theory, you should only be able to purchase things with a redskins logo from authorized resellers.

Did you think of this? Get your favorite kind of blank maroon cap, and buy a redskins iron-on from an authorized reseller.

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Does anyone have preferred software for encoding in H.264 on Windows?

Quicktime, with a Pro serial number. Slow, but works.

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Does anyone here use a start/home page service?

Yes. It's called "edit your own HTML file with whatever you want, store it on your hard disk, and tell the browser to use that as your home page."

Mine has some fancy tricks, like storing my last UPS/Fedex numbers in a local cookie so that I can check details on shipment status of my latest orders with a single keystroke.
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Tony Fabris