According to CNN, a 66 year-old man was beaten to death on his front lawn by his 36 year-old neighbor for watering it yesterday in Sydney, Australia. Apparently, the pair started arguing over his water usage, and the victim sprayed his neighbor with water from the garden hose. Then the 36 year-old beat him severely, punching and knocking him to the ground where he kicked him repeatedly. And ultimately an off-duty police officer arrested the attacker, but the victim was pronounced dead at the hospital soon after.

Now amazingly, the victim had actually been following the guidelines on water restrictions for the Sydney area when this happened. Those state that you can, in fact, water your lawn before 10a.m. and after 4p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays.

NBC in Los Angeles is investigating a nationwide epidemic of fraud being perpetrated by Home Depot. Is it that bad? Yeah, it's that bad. From KNBC:

Now, NBC4 has heard from customers in 22 states and from insiders from across the country, who have given NBC4 a paper trail of internal documents, suggesting the company overcharges customers on window and siding installations, kitchen remodels and on roofing jobs."

Similar to the Kill-a-Watt and Wattson that we mentioned yesterday, except on a whole-house scale, the PowerCost Monitor is a very handy little device that monitors your home's energy use in real time, and tells you how much it's costing you. It makes it easy to see which appliances are sucking up the most electricity, and how you can save money by conserving. With just two pieces (the display and the sensor) and easy installation (no electrician required), the PowerCost is an easy, low-maintenance fix that can help reduce your home's electricity use by 5 to 20 percent; get one, and watch with glee as your energy use plummets after installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs and turning the thermostat down a degree or two. TreeHuggers who live in northern Ontario whose utility is Hydro One are eligible for a free PowerCost, and more utilities are reportedly not far behind; for instant gratification, they can be ordered directly from the website for $150 CAD. ::PowerCost Monitor via ::Hugg (jetsongreen)

Arrange your furniture virtually with Furnish, a free program that lets you design rooms in 3D.

For most people, it helps to visualize a room before placing the furniture. And then there's those of us who want to make sure that when we work it only has to be done once. Furnish gives you the tools to create rooms based on actual dimensions, then design furniture pieces (or draw from an included library of them) and position them to your liking.

Slick program, and fairly easy to use after you poke around the interface a bit. But it took forever to load on my relatively powerful PC. Also, people have complained of difficulty downloading the program but Furnish is free. Always a good price and for you mac users it requires windows.

Imagine this scenario. You have been living in this old home for years now and your have decided that it needs a bit of a facelift. You decide to redecorate and give it a fresh new look. You plans are extensive, involving some structural changes so you hire out for a contractor. The work begins as expected and is humming along nicely when one day your are called in by one of the builders. While punching through one of the walls and old cast iron fireplace is found. They want to know what they should do with it. A few days later, while stripping the paint from some of the walls you’re summoned again. Some old wallpaper dating back to the Victorian era has been found, again, you are asked what to do with it.

Recently some kids on the block were playing hockey out in front of my house in the street, when a ill-fated puck came and broke my window. Leaving me with two questions. One, how bad of a shot do you have to be to shoot the puck parallel? And since I have to get a new window should I just replace all of them? My windows have been around since I first bought the house in 89 so It's about time. Plus the kids parents gave me money to replace the window. So i went out and bought 3 windows, just enough for the front of the home to look a little nicer. I got a brand called Pella ThermaStar, I never heard of them but man are they easy to install! It took about an hour to complete a window and when you live in Colorado in November that seems like forever but it was really fast.