Problem removing item from top bar

["Thomas H. George" <lists tomgeorge info>]

I inadvertantly put an item on the top bar and cannot remove it.  I
found a help instruction which said right click on the item, then click
on delete.  This does not work.  Right clicking on the item opens a
window with two items: launch and properties.  There is no delete
option.

Note: I have just recently starting using gnome, first gnome 2 on
squeeze and then gnome 3 after upgrading to wheezy.  I find gnome 3 a
very attractive rearrangement of gnome 2 but cannot find two needed
apps.  One forced the system to stay awake and one which would kill any
program which was not responding.

Also a mystery.  Apparently years ago I tried gnome but decided to use
icewm instead and continued with icewm until just a month ago.  One of
the reasons I abandoned my early use of gnome was that when it timed out
it would not accept my password to restart.  Instead I had to click on
switch user which then accepted my user name and password.  I posted a
message about this recently but have never had a response that solved
the problem.

A second mystery.  When I click on Places one of the options is a
directory Home Improvements.  This is apparently a residue of that very
early attempt to use gnome.  It is, of course, one of the subdirectories
of my home directory but not one that I need very often.  I would remove
it from the Places list but I am unable to find where it is called out
for inclusion in the Places list.

I would appreciate any help with these problems,

Tom