Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with Activity

What to do at the beach besides gamble?

frosty_hut — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:45:09 -0800

Avoiding beach boredom! It'll be me, my dear hubby, my mother in law, my sister in law, and my adorable nephew Stevie on a short trip to the beach. Last time we did this, the adults all hung out at the casino, and I felt bad because we neglected Stevie.

What fun things can we do to include him this time? He's thirteen, but is a younger thirteen. Loves video games, and if we don't come up with alternatives, he could well spend the entire trip playing them.

He does like to wander on the edge of the water and find the weird little animals that live in the rocks. I can do that for an hour, and then I get bored. What else should we try? It wouldn't have to be beach-specific. Stevie is artistic, and I thought it would be fun to take some Sculpey with us and build things together...

Any other ideas would be welcome.

Calling all nerds/geeks/dorks and Socially acceptable people

hadjiboy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:51:29 -0800

Asking this on behalf of a friend of mine: can you help him out with a quiz that will give him an accurate description of how someone will stand on a DNG/SA scale that he's created--where DNG stands for Dork, Nerd, Geek, and SA stands for Socially Acceptable? (Bear with me for a second, will you?) "So while out with my roomie and a friend of ours, we discussed how my g/f rates as a 4.5 on the nerd scale. However, she disputed this, saying that the rating system was overly subjective and that she would like to appeal the rating given out by the committee (the committee consists of myself, my roomie, his brother, and two friends). So, we've decided to come up with a rating system. The "Dork/Nerd/Geek" rating divided by the "socially acceptable" rating gives us the DNG/SA ratio. Our goal is to come up with enough questions covering the DNG area of things (with varying degrees of dork, nerd, and geek dom) while still factoring in how socially acceptable or "normal" someone may be or might appear. So, to keep some sense of objectivity in the creation of this, I thought I'd seek some suggestions.

What I'm looking for from you guys are some activities, habits, or quirks that may make someone either DNG or SA and give that activity a rating between 1 and 10. For instance, what the committee agrees upon as the a 10 in the nerd area of things is LARPing (Live Action Role Playing). For the record, I've never done this, never plan to, but I've known people who have. Another instance would be watching sports or following a popular TV series...that would garner somewhere between an 8 or 10 (depending on the sport or TV show) on the SA rating.

So, if you have any suggestions, please, let me know. Also, if you're suggesting anything for the DNG, please indicate whether you believe this activity to be dorky, nerdy, or geeky.

Once we figure out which questions to include, we're going to figure out whether or not we'll do a "yes/no" format, or the "strongly disagree/often/whatever thru strongly agree/least often/whatever" format that you see on weirdo personality tests and job apps sometimes. After that, it's a matter of figuring out the math and a little bit of coding. We're thinking of putting it online ;p Yes, our DNG/SA ratio is undoubtly high."

Seeking information about self defense course(s) and related activites/classes.

iamkimiam — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:03:32 -0800

I am interested in self-defense classes. There are lots of methods and places to do this. The options are a little overwhelming and I know very little about the topic. Can somebody break it down and make some suggestions and/or recommendations that might be best suited for me? Based on the following (below), what would be a well-rounded type of self defense that might be most effective for confidence-building, safety, and exercise?

• I am a 5' tall, physically active, late 20s female
• I have lots of free time (could attend one class, or a series, but don't know what the difference is between a single session or an intensive course)
• I live in Oakland and can travel
• Would be interested to martial arts (there's so many kinds!) and/or other forms of activity
• Classes that allow me the opportunity to meet other women and/or men in the area would be great too

Any other info and ideas welcome. Thanks!

Salon activities for Non-poets and dreamers

ikahime — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:25:09 -0800

We're holding a salon tomorrow (in the artsy sense of the word), and are looking for good activities to suggest for those who might not be blatantly artistic. We'll be having a few poets and musicians come, but what can we suggest for those whoe might be 2-D artists, or those who don't consider themselves creative at all (which I think is a myth anyway). I'm considering things like Exquisite corpse type activites, but was hoping MeFites could give me more ideas...

Help me think of an interesting group activity that I can do with a group of kids aged 12-15.

913 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:47:01 -0800

Help me think of an interesting group activity that I can do with a group of kids aged 12-15. The more abstract, the better. Myself and a group of friends (college aged) have been getting together with about a dozen kids aged 12-15 for the past few months. We meet every Friday evening, have some pizza, joke around, and try to do activities or have discussions on anything meaningful. Since we're in class all week and they're in class all week, we really try to keep everything lively without making it cheesy, and for the most part we chill with them, trying our best not have have an authoritative role but rather more of a friendship based one.

With all that said, help me come up with an engaging activity for this upcoming meeting.

For example: Last week I did an activity where the the kids brainstormed problems in the world (homelessness, global warming, war, etc - we went pretty in depth) and they had to choose one and focus into it. Once they had a focus, the goal was to design a product that would help fix the problem. The product didn't actually have to work but it was all about getting a group discussion going and it worked out really well.

Thanks MeFi!

Why Does the Hard Drive Light Blink Exactly Every Second?

petebest — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:21:11 -0800

Why is my (windows) hard drive light blinking every second? I've started in msconfig "diagnostic mode - basic devices and services only" and it still does it . . . I noticed it was blinking every second - on the second - when I noticed it synched up with the ticking of the clock on the wall.

Then I wondered what was accessing the hard drive every second.

Using the Start -> Run -> msconfig utility, I've started bare-bones and run diagnostic "Disk monitor" and "Process Monitor" (and "TCP View") from the seemingly excellent Sysinternals site.

I've gotten it so Registry, File System, and Process & Thread activity is essentially stopped - but the HDD indicator light keeps blinking. Every second. Tick . . tick . . tick . .

Nothing looks out of the ordinary TCP wise . . . Spyware, malware, virus, etc. scans show it's clean . . . ???

I thought it was spyware but no processes run, no ports are open, no disk activity - just this @#! blinking light . . .
It's a 5-yr old Dell Optiblast or whatever, and afaik the HDD light didn't blink like this before

Thanks very much for any suggestions . . and happy bidding!

Beware. PHB lurking ahead.

Jonsnews — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:45:03 -0800

Help me prevent my Pointy Headed Boss from implementing a daily required karaoke session. Theres definatly Ok.. Well my boss has it set in his head that we need to do some daily activity at some point in the day to boost morale. His current idea consists of MAKING everyone in my office sing a song together.
Words cannot express how horrible this sounds to me.
So what can I counter propose as a fun (to everyone, even introverts) activity we can all do for 5-10 minutes a day.
I have been searching google on team building activities, but I think this is more of a attitude adjuster then team building..
I wish I could convince him how much fun a 10 minuite networked game of GTA would be, but alas, I'm the only gamer..

Party ideas?

eustacescrubb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:23:15 -0800

I need inexpensive but fun ideas for a birthday party attended by 3-4 year-olds. There will 8-10 toddlers at my son's birthday party. Last year, just letting them run around was entertainment enough. This year, I'd like to have some games and fun activities for them. I'd prefer if it wasn't too structured. Also, with the heat, I'd prefer no outdoor activities. Most of all, I want the activities to be fun stuff the kids and parents will enjoy, and I want it to be DIY if possible.

unique nyc experience?

saffron — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:38:27 -0800

Unique New York experience for a couple - beyond helicopter rides? I'm looking for a unique activity in New York for my partner's birthday. It will be just the two of us, and we like it that way -- no touristy/big group/too-trendy stuff. Perhaps some kind of private tour of a hard-to-access place? A very unique dining experience? Our concierge suggested a helicopter ride, but that seems a bit cliche. Something along those lines though would be great. I appreciate any ideas!

What to do with a rediculously long & narrow balcony?

shanevsevil — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:31:50 -0800

My new apartment has a balcony with some pretty strange dimensions. It's only 3 and a half feet deep (wall to railing) but it's over 25 feet long. I'm really not using the space, I'd like to come up with some cool uses for it. The best idea I have so far is a hammock (there's a pretty solid wooden awning above that I could anchor it to) but I'd almost be afraid of toppling out over the (3 foot high) rails if I rolled over. How can I make this a space that me and my guests will want to use?

What are humans best at?

stoneegg21 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:48:14 -0800

How are humans different physically from other creatures? What are we best at? What sort of things are humans best at? I've always heard that while humans can't hear very high or very low, we've got the largest hearing range. As well, I don't think many other creatures have the same range of color vision that we do. I think that humans aren't good at sprinting, but that we're pretty good at endurance activities. Finally, I've been told that humans have pretty huge penises considering their bodysize, along with the weird fact humans don't have penis bones of any kind. Which of these are wrong, and what else are there?

Here is London, giddy London. Is it home of the free or what?

skylar — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:15:13 -0800

Inside, a question about nocturnal activities which will be best answered by Londoners, night-owls and lateral thinkers. I've lived in London, England for many years and know it very well. I'm also subscribed to every London-related site I can find from London by London to Londonist to London Lost and Found to Flavourpill and Urban Junkies. I read the Guardian Guide and Time Out. In short, I think I'm pretty damn switched on for things to do.

But something always stumps me in this less-than-24-hour city, and that is: things to do after 11pm on a weekday. That's when most of the pubs shut and London begins to go to sleep. We don't boast the same number of late night cafés and bars as New York, where I've never had a problem servicing my night-owl tendencies.

So I'm reaching out to you, dear AskMeFi friends, for some unusual and interesting suggestions. Late night bars are kind of obvious, but feel free to suggest any. There are about four 24-hour cafés that I know of - any recommendations? Bus journeys? Late night walks? Strange shops or clubs? Good places to break into? In short, any kooky, memorable place - or even just a route to take - which might help instigate an adventure in London during the wee hours.

It doesn't have to be legal, sensible or free. The only rule is that it must be something I can do after 11pm on a weekday in London, preferably central London.

Where can I find simple Windows freeware to track costs for projects?

obiwanwasabi — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 00:25:16 -0800

I'm looking for some very simple Windows freeware that will let the 20-odd people in my office assign hours to projects and then add up the costs. We're currently using a poorly-designed prehistoric Access database that's updated by rekeying info from printed Excel-based timesheets (seriously). The replacement doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles - we just need to be able to:

- add people (name, team, position and salary);
- add projects (name, and to assign it to one of maybe five categories of project);
- let each person say "well, I think I spent x hours on Project Y today'; and
- have it work out how the office spent its time (and money) by project, team, project type etc.

We don't have products or customers or different rates for different kinds of project - it just needs to track how much time people spent on each project and work out the total costs based on our respective annual salaries. Bonus points if you can enter total time worked for a day (or a week, or whatever), then assign percentage guesstimates to a number of tasks (for example, "I worked 37.5 hours this week, and I think I spent 15% of my time on Project A, 25% on Project B and 60% on Project C). Freeware a must, standalone / no installation required is way up there on the "nice to have" list - some kind of clever self-contained webby thing like the very cool NextAction would be great, but I've no idea how these kinds of things stand up to multiple simultaneous users. Thanks!

Dr. Strangelove Travels

strangelove — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:17:03 -0800

San-Diego-business-trip-filter Guten Tag, the good Dr. Strangelove will in San Diego half-day August 6th, all day on the 7th, business on the 8th... What to do with the free time? Strangelove can see the zoo (prison), go to Mexico (don't take the rental car!!!!) or...?
Any suggestions?
The Doctor is 24 and looking for something cool to waste time with, it is not only possible, it is essential!
The ocean is an idea, but the Doctor would have just returned from Mexico, Atlantic side, a couple of days before SD, so he may be ocean-out. Would not mind a nice restaurant by the beach to drink cheaply though…(is it safe to drink on the beach with a book?)
As well, what should be expected of SD and Mexico near SD?
Vielen dank!
Merkwurdichliebe

Activities for a work picnic

fishfucker — Tue, 24 May 2005 03:26:37 -0800

Woo! It's BBQ time at work, and we're planning a big party. It's come down to me to pick out the various activities, and I'm looking for suggestions. Ideally, I'd like to have things that EVERYONE can do and have fun doing, including our non-athletic co-workers and children, as well. Ideally we'll be able to have some event that each person has an equal chance of "winning", because we've got fun prizes for folks. We're going to have 10-30 people, and there are volleyball courts and horseshoe pits where we are having the BBQ. I'm already thinking that we'll have a pinata, and the idea of sack races has been tossed about, so think down those lines. I think things like a trivia contest would be too boring, but I also don't want to get into, say, a pushup contest or something that's too hard for folks that don't usually participate in sports (we're a web company and ages range from 21-mid-thirties, so think outdoors geek fun).

as much as I'd like to just have everything hinge on a drinking contest, i don't think that would be fair to my coworkers, as i'm obviously a shoo-in -- also we will have some teetotalers in the mix.