Strip It Down

Our best-selling bicycle maintenance book is back in an expanded, revised, and updated edition. With step-by-step photos, it gives any rider the confidence and knowledge required to tackle regular maintenance, repairs, and even major overhauls.

In my life I have seen the horrors that happen in this world and have on occasions been present when they happened. My experiences of life give me the qualification to write my book. I have written this book for a very young boy who is very severely handicapped and who is gaining more knowledge every day. He is an inspiration to all disabled people. He also is having an adventure. I love him to bits At the moment I am retired after spending a long time with the forces and security service, so have seen a little bit of action. Again enough qualifications to write my book. The forces even gave me a few medals, which are in a case on my wall. It is a shame they have to be taken down to be cleaned. The silver ones seem to tarnish the worse. I live with my wife Ann and we spend our time between the UK and Italy.

This is the eBook version of the print title. Access to the media files found on the DVD included with print editions included with Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 21 Edition, is available through product registration—see instructions in back pages of your eBook. For 25 years, Upgrading and Repairing PCs has been the world’s #1 guide to PC hardware: The single source for reliable information on troubleshooting and fixing problems, adding hardware, optimizing performance, and building new PCs. Now, better than ever, this 21st edition offers beefed-up coverage of the newest hardware innovations and maintenance techniques, plus more than two hours of new DVD video. Scott Mueller delivers practical answers about PC processors, mother-boards, buses, BIOSes, memory, SSD and HDD storage, video, audio, I/O, input devices, networks, Internet connectivity, power, and much more. You’ll find the industry’s best coverage of diagnostics, testing, and repair—plus cutting-edge discussions of improving performance via overclocking and other techniques. NEW IN THIS EDITION • The newest processors, including Intel’s 3rd generation Ivy Bridge Core i-Series processors and AMD’s 2nd generation Trinity CPUs • 3TB (and larger) disks, 4K sectoring, partition alignment, faster SATA disk interfaces, and SSD (solid state drive) hard drive replacements • New firmware innovations, from full UEFI BIOS support to built-in motherboard flash BIOS upgrade utilities • Integrated video and audio, including 5.1/7.1 surround sound, HDMI, and DisplayPort connections, and Windows 8 compatible multi-touch touchscreen technology • Updated PCI Express 3.0, 4.0 interfaces, and Power Supply specifications for powering high-end video cards • Emerging interfaces such as SATA Express, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt • Updated coverage of building PCs from scratch—from choosing and assembling hardware through BIOS setup and troubleshooting INCLUDED MEDIA Don't forget about the free bonus content available online! You'll find a cache of helpful material to go along with this book. To access these materials at no extra cost, see the instructions included in the back pages of this ebook. You will be required to register your book and supply a code found in the instructions. Download two hours of up-to-the minute, studio-quality how-to videos—all playable on your computer! In this edition, Scott Mueller offers true insider information about several of the key components in a PC, including motherboards, solid-state drives, and more. You also can download PDFs of the complete 19th and 20th editions of this book.

Natural wonders were Leon Hale’s lifetime subject matter. He looked for them wherever he went, and found them surprisingly often. In the lives of plain people and eccentrics, in the brilliant smile of a tiny 100-year-old black lady, or the hi-jinks of his cousin C.T., in what happened on a dirt farm in 1930 or why he found value in chiseling brick, he revealed truths and wonders we might not have noticed on our own. When published in 1982, A Smile from Katie Hattan was Leon Hale’s first column collection after nearly thirty years of writing for The Houston Post. It was widely celebrated for presenting the delightful daily work of this writer, at last, to a wider audience. What is remarkable, now, forty years later, is how fresh and interesting the 155 columns remain, as we roam with the author through a Texas that remains as vivid and enjoyable as the day he wrote about it.

They call us SPECIAL THEY CALL US SPECIAL is an adventure in NE Africa, what could possibly go wrong? Wild animals, shooting the coup d’etat instigator, run from govt forces, his forces, regulars, militia, insurgents, rebels, renegades, criminals and then get attacked by those you never knew about. At home, asleep, dog tired from working too long without breaks, WULFGANG von WULF is in bed. Why would he be woken and dragged back into work after just 90 minutes sleep? On the chopper, on Wulf’s front lawn, it is all most unmilitary like. Off the chopper, into the old man’s office, then nod off every time he starts a new sentence. The TEAM arrive, they get light jungle kit, and very skimpy at that. 22 minutes to take off the briefing starts, a non-military all black jet waits, strange even for special ops. There are 5 pinkish, yellowish space suits. Put them on, some hours are gone, take them off some more hours are gone. Put the suits on, jump out of the plane at 60,000 feet, twice the height of Mount Everest, head downward and achieve 400 mph, sheer insanity. Wulf and the team try to locate a man on the ground pointing a laser pencil into the night sky. Steer towards him. It is tough for Wulf who has never done a parachute jump before. He has to land near someone else. The suits can only be unlatched from the outside. Eight minutes of oxygen is all you have, start to finish. Suffocation is all you have to look forward to after eight minutes. They load the truck, travel across country at sunrise. It is rough and ready. The old truck maybe reliable but doesn’t have a single pane of glass in it. It is not this year’s model. They stop to take on water. Along come two strange vehicles, with apparently, two Germans and three local guides or assistants. They look suspiciously like us, the same sort of deadly contractors. There is not enough time to negotiate, to share information, possibly band together in a common cause. We leave, unhappy to say the least. Worried, concerned, distrustful, all of these and more. 10 am we are in place at the village when the Colonel will come by, that is what our intel says. We are all positioned well, just as we like it. Not more than about two minutes before 10 am, those two Toyota Landcruisers appear in the middle of the village and begin refuelling. They came in from the north, the Colonel is expected from the south. The Germans begin to shoot before the Colonel’s trucks have come to halt, it is premature, it is creating problems. Instead of six bodyguards we expect, he has twenty four. We have to support shoot for the Germans, we have no choice unless we abandon the mission. That is not good form at all. After the carnage, we “speak” to the Germans, they feign ignorance of our language yet they reply instantly to our inquisitorial approach. They leave, we leave. The second part of the mission is to secure the niece of the Colonel, abduct her without abducting her. She will not be safe now with her uncle dead, she may even be suspected of playing a part in our assassination of him. She has valuable local knowledge of politics, of who is in bed with whom else. We have to get her to come with us. We flee town. The niece is with us, although she is large and difficult to manage, culturally, emotionally and physically. Hyena attack us, the defence is rugged, we decimate the pack although we don’t necessarily want to. It is them or us. The niece is terrified. We get to the pickup point. It is a one off option, totally unheard of in these modern times. There is always a backup plan, alternatives, and options. We can’t communicate with the plane or home base, or even Kentucky Fried Chicken. Could the plane have come and gone, early maybe? Would we have to run cross country with this 300 lbs girl or woman? Surely that is impossible. The team could split and run across any country and all get home, easily, it is within our skill set and we had done this many times, but 300