Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with argh

New facebook privacy

four panels — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:04:06 -0800

New facebook privacy settings. How do you hide friends from Google search results? How do you hide fan "pages" from non-facebook friends? Are these now permanently public?

She drives me crazy, and it needs to stop.

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:39:23 -0800

How do I get this woman out of my head? It's distracting and unhelpful. I've known her for almost a decade. She simply charms the hell out of me—pretty, smart, kind, funny, etc. Aside from one clumsy attempt to court her years ago, I've never told her in so many words how I feel about her, but I think she knows well enough by now. I know that she cares about me and values our friendship, but I eventually realized and accepted that it was going to be just that—friendship—and stopped reaching for something more.

Then there was the other night. We hadn't seen each other in a couple of years (though we've kept in touch online). We decided to get together on the weekend (at her invitation). We ended up having a fabulous time—we made a delicious meal from scratch, drank plenty of wine, had some sober and intimate conversation about our inner lives (she's having some problems), laughed and joked and played a lot too, and exchanged a good bit of PG-13-but-pretty-damn-flirty physical affection (certainly more than is our custom). I may have been a little more forward than she, but she certainly didn't discourage me.

It was all very comfortable and easy and spontaneous—were it not for the circumstances, I'd call it a successful date. (Also of note: she told me outright that she hasn't had sex in a year and would very much like some; I believe the exact phrase was "I need penis", or something similar.)

Here are the circumstances: she's married.

I know; I know. We didn't do anything for which we're going to Hell, but nor would I expect her husband to be happy with the cuddling and the footrubs and the flirty embraces and the little (very little) kiss goodnight. I feel crummy, but I'm glad things didn't go any farther than they did.

Her aforementioned problems, you see, revolve around the fact that she is no longer romantically interested in her husband, and has been seriously thinking about ending the marriage for some time. (For what it's worth, it seems to be a mutual thing.) She's feeling trapped and uncertain, and is generally starting to doubt whether the life she's made for herself (a quite successful one, by external standards, and she's still young) is really the life she wants to live. I had a vague inkling that something was up beforehand, but only an inkling.

Now, I know damn well that I can't pursue this (whatever "this" actually is—which may be nothing more than an unintended byproduct of mutual sexual/emotional frustration and too much wine), and I'm not going to. But the evening rekindled my affections for her in a serious way, and now I can't get her out of my head. I want her something fierce (not just physically, though that's certainly part of it). It's distracting me from my work (such as right now), and I'm wasting too much time on unrealistic (and selfish) what-if fantasies. My brain manages to take thoughts such as "maybe I should get another cup of coffee" and "gee, I should probably change the litterbox soon" and somehow connect them to her. She pushes my buttons like crazy.

I would like to put these distractions out of my mind. I can't act on my desires, and even if it was more than a drunken lapse in judgement, the important thing right now is for her to find answers to her questions. As her friend, I would gladly help her with that if I could, but I'm (quite obviously) in no position to offer objective counsel.

And, to be honest, I've spent too much of my life as the Nice Guy (read: chump) who's always there with a shoulder to cry on and eager to sublimate my own wants for the sake of an imbalanced relationship (the other wanting only friendship, me wanting something more). And I kinda feel like doing anything with this other than pushing it out of my mind would be heading back down that road.

So, hive mind: how do you put thoughts like these out of your head? Cold showers? Run marathons? Hardcore drug use? Help! Throwaway email is monkeybutter1@live.com, if you want to correspond privately.

What is the date, Gates?

fish tick — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:29:42 -0800

Windows clock/calendar annoyance: why does the date appear only sometimes when the mouse pointer hovers over the taskbar clock? It seems to be the same with XP and Vista.

Law Review is already killing me, and it hasn't even started

mesha steele — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:18:40 -0800

Please help me find a law review topic, hopefully pertaining to Oklahoma. I am tearing my hair out here. I just joined Law Review (it's my 2L year), and we have to have a topic for our note or comment set soon. The deadline is in two weeks.

I've always been bad at picking topics for papers, and creative stuff like that. I joined Law Review because I thought I'd enjoy the editing aspect more, and obviously because of its reputation as a resume-booster. Now I'm seriously regretting this decision because I can't think of anything to write about.

I've checked all the Law Bulletins and Highlights stuff on Westlaw, like the editors mentioned, and I've done many a google search on "Choosing a Law Review topic," but I'm still lost. I read stuff about new cases and circuit splits but I don't know how I'm supposed to formulate a paper out of that; I just can't seem to figure out how to make a case into a thesis.

Even though a comment is longer (40 pages vs. 20 pages for a note), it might be marginally easier to find a topic for one, since it's based on an area of law rather than a specific case. Too bad I still can't come up with any ideas. I thought of something related to the use of chemical restraints in nursing homes (something I researched this summer at an elder law firm), but it was written about by a prof in another law review 5 years ago, and quite thoroughly.

Other ideas I had were related to regulation of whole body donation non-profit companies like MedCure (but I don't know what laws that would really involve, or any cases) or something about adapting Oklahoma's new transfer on death deeds for real estate to also apply to personal property like cars (my boss this summer said you could use them for cars in MO).

I can't think of anything else, really, and I never really talked to any of my professors last year, so I feel uncomfortable asking for help. I also don't know any of my profs this semester, so same problem.

Please help me if you can, by giving any sort of advice or suggestions for Oklahoma-y topics. Thanks!

How do I get iTunes to stop downloading?

chinese_fashion — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:42:55 -0800

How can I remove unwanted downloads from my iTunes queue so they won't get in the way of the stuff I do want? Every time I buy an HD version of a TV program from iTunes, I get saddled with the SD download as well. It's very considerate and all, but I actually don't want those versions. Now, every time I connect to the store to try and get a different program, the store automatically resumes all the TV downloads I keep trying to stop. It's getting to where I can't clear those out of the way and iTunes is telling me that my disk is full.

How do I stop this? I just wanna get some copies of Mad Men to watch with my gf tonight, and would like the Lost episodes I've already seen to step out of the way.

iTunes, let me watch this TV show please!

fantine — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:02:08 -0800

How can I make iTunes play a large video file? I am trying to watch an HD video on iTunes. The file is 1.62 GB (aka huge) and my iBook G4 does not like it.

Basically, the audio runs ok but the screen glitches and freezes and does not "keep up" with the audio. The whole thing runs slowly.

I would download a poor-quality video just to watch but it was only available on iTunes in HD (bah). I have shut down all other programs running to make it run faster, to no avail. My RAM is limited but I can't help that.

What are good short-term solutions? Some way to degrade the file quality to shrink it? Some hidden process on my mac that I can shut down to speed things up?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Please recommend some 24/7 classical music internet radio streams that never feature Fred Child.

Your Time Machine Sucks — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:35:17 -0800

Please recommend some 24/7 classical music internet radio streams that never feature Fred Child. Not his fault, but his voice goes into my ear and takes a shortcut to the irrational anger center of my brain. I like to code while having some classical music on, and ideally some regional American voices occasionally describing what I just heard, but I don't really care for the generic US "cultured" media accent that sounds like a combination between a Californian with strange diction, a gram of soma, and a smiling baby. In the last couple of weeks I was listening to the WGBH HD radio stream, when he came on, at which point I switched to Minnesota Public Radio, which slightly later on ran a Fred Child segment, at which point I found another station, with the predictable outcome the next day. There seems to be some kind of broadcast franchise situation there which I'm guessing is NPR-related.

So, please recommend some classical music streams to me, best case scenario a 24/7 radio station with actual radio-voice-having DJs, US regional accents a plus. If the assertion that there are US regional accents or that someone would enjoy them makes you feel an exciting urge to speak you're branes, skip this one!

Thanks for your recommendations!

Low-Riders and My Sanity - Am Losing My MIND!

watercarrier — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:40:22 -0800

Would you go crazy if you were living in the boonies and every couple of minutes some dude comes careening around your corner on an ATV or motorcycle revving up slowly and maliciously? Just wondering if it's only me that's reacting like hot coals are being poured down my brain neurons. What would you do? What are my options? I live in the wild-wild-wild east and there's no *law* that anyone will be upholding soon. They're kids with wheels and noise and they've found that it's better than drugs. I've got music - loud to drown it out - got ear plugs - what else am I missing here? Is there anything I can do to deter these freaks?

Did I Ruin my Jeep's battery by adding oil?!

hoborg — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:30:22 -0800

Jeep Repair: I have a 97 Grand Cherokee (actually, the badge reads "Cheeroke" for undetermined reasons). I performed some recent seemingly-unrelated maintainence./ Why isn't it starting?! I was doing some routing cleaning and maintenance yesterday when I found that the oil level wasn't even appearing on the dipstick. Not at all comfortable/familiar and yet suspicious of cars, I decided to put a little bit in at a time to see if I could get it to register on the dipstick. The Vehicle Information System is supposed to read when your oil level is low, but hasn't piped up. So I took a chance. After about 1/4 quart (cup?), the oil began to register on the dipstick, well below the "Add" section. I kept adding it in slowly, checking often to avoid putting too much in, which is specifically warned against on the dipstick. I put the entire quart in, drove it around the block and parked it where I could get enough light to repair the liftgate, which had stopped working (apparently pretty common). Some scraped knuckles later, I successfully jimmied the hatch open and could now remove the interior rear panel to actually fix the problem of the lock, but by this time the sun had gone down and so I put everything inside the car and closed the hatch, sure that I would be able to get it open now that I have the rear panel off.
Today I went out to finish the job, and lo and behold. The car won't start! The diagnostic readout said Error 12, which means that the battery has been disconnected sometime within the last 50 startups. Ok, so maybe it's a battery problem, I thought, but the lights were coming on (though dim). Did removing the rear panel, which as far as I could see had NO electrical connections drain my battery? Did adding (too much?) oil?
I got a jump start later this evening - the hood light lit up quite a lot more after I attached the cables, which is a good sign. The engine wouldn't start as I turned the key, except when I was giving gas, and as SOON as I stopped pushing the pedal, the engine stopped completely. If I turn the key with no jumpstart assistance, I get a rat-a-tat-tat machine-gunny sort of sound and also bupkis.
So, not being a car person, I'm throwing myself upon the askMe altar: Can someone help or point me to a good place to ask a newbie?

Help out my creaking old computer.

By The Grace of God — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:00:02 -0800

Succour for Aged Computers Filter: I've got an old computer that is having two problems. 1) When it boots up, it always asks to go into safemode. This is an old problem. 2) when it boots up, I can use the kb to select safemode (or not) or make selections in the bios, but when XP loads up, mouse and kb aren't working! I will note that when I set up this old beast, the kb and mouse worked, and it would usually boot into windows after two or three tries. (It's a backup computer for when there are too many people in the office.) Now, it will boot up after two or three tries, and then the mouse will hover in the centre of the screen; the keyboard won't work (the caps lock key won't even light up at this point, and the green keyboard light goes off).

It's not a USB keyboard - it came with the (Dell) computer and plugs into its dedicated port in the back.

As regards the safemode booting: It boots up, and the black screen ("we apologize..") comes up with the option of safe mode, safemode with networking, load windows normally or load windows with the last working settings. I usually do normally or last working settings, and windows will either load (slowly) or will freeze while loading.

When it does load, the networking etc. are working - i can't test anything due to no mouse or kb input tho! When the kb and mouse were working, everything did work properly when windows would start up.

I'd appreciate help with either or both of these problems. Many thanks in advance.

The IRS says I owe them $18K, now what?

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:07:05 -0800

I have inadvertently ignored letters from the IRS and they have "filed a tax return for me"; the results they got are clearly absurd, and now they claim I owe them $18K. Do I have any recourse? We had some uh.. "issues" with how our mail was getting handled when it was brought from the mailbox to our house, and as a result a bunch of notices from the IRS piled up and didn't get looked at until just now, when I was cleaning up piles of stuff in my office. What I found were various stages of "please file your tax returns for 2004 and 2005", including a final set where they filed my 1040 for me and quoted tax nubmers that seemed completely absurd to me (as I've *always* gotten a small refund), and then a bill for 9K for each of those years.

I *really* don't think that if I were to actually file for those two years I would owe that kind of money; has anyone dealt with this before? Do I have any recourse at all? I am 100% sure I don't have my W-2's for those years, so I'm not sure how I even would go about filing those years' taxes (if you have tips on how to deal with the W-2 bit, that would help too).

JavaScript/IFrame/Form woes.

TunnelArmr — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:32:31 -0800

Help me solve my seems-like-it-should-be-easy-but-I-can't-figure-it-out JavaScript/Greasemonkey problem! OK, Here goes: I have a list of many thousands of ID numbers that refer to records in a database. I need to submit each one to a form in the URL (i.e. form.php?id=12345), change the value of one measly pulldown menu on the form, and then submit it. I can't do anything spiffy with AJAX or modify the form somehow, because it's hosted/controlled by another entity. It seemed stupid to me to do these all by hand, so I thought I would try to write a Greasemonkey script that would loop through each ID number, load the form in an IFRAME, change the value, and submit the form. It seemed simple enough at the time...

To test it out, I made a basic mock-up page that loads a form in an IFRAME with the same relevant form information and field name, and then tried to write a script that would change the form. The problem is, nothing works! I know there are a lot of different syntax and browser considerations for how to refer to different objects, and I've pored over dozens of code examples but am clearly still missing something. I can get the script to acknowledge the existence of the form using getElementsByTagName(), but I can't get it to do anything with the form or the SELECT element in it. It always either doesn't find anything at all, or it says the object has no properties. It seems like it should only require a few lines of code to:

1. Find the SELECT object with the name "right.a" in the form that's inside the IFRAME with the id "myframe"
2. Change the value and selectedIndex of that form item
3. Submit the form

But I can't get the element by name, nor can I get it through an array (i.e. forms[0]). Using contentDocument to get to what's inside the frame after I've changed the src seems to be a step in the right direction, but I can't get any positive result after that.

The relevant pages are here:
The test mock-up
The form
The Greasemonkey script

And the source code snippets are here.

Any insight would be much, much appreciated so I don't give myself carpal tunnel clicking through all these...

Easy way to make published iWeb site less of a mess?

obiwanwasabi — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 07:16:26 -0800

Is there an easy way to 'streamline' a site developed in iWeb? I like iWeb because it's easy to use, has lots of lovely templates (well, my family likes them, and the sites are for them) and integrates with other stuff on my Mac like iPhoto. However, the published files and folders are a mess. Each page gets its own folder; elements that are common to each page are replicated (and so reloaded) in every folder; pages have stupid addresses (like www.yoursite.com/Welcome%20to%20my%20site.html); and images are often huge, despite iWeb converting everything to PNG.

Is there a tool I can point at the folders for an iWeb site that'll say, for example, "well, you don't need 10 identical copies of logo.png - I'll just change your HTML so it all points to a single copy of logo.png instead"? Or, "Hmm, logo.png doesn't really need to be 130kb; here, I'll compress it to 13kb for you"? If there's no such thing, any tips for making the manual process less painful? A 4-5mb site for ten pages with a handful of pics is a joke.

Slow iBook

roll truck roll — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:58:31 -0800

Why is Mac OS 10.4.9 so slow on my iBook G4? I've tried everything I can think of and am going crazy. This is probably going to be a little overly wordy, for the simple reason that I really don't know what's important information and what isn't.

For starters, I have a two-year-old PPC iBook G4, 1.2 GHz, 768 MB RAM. Thank God I got Apple Care, as the logic board has already been replaced twice.

About three weeks ago, my computer started acting up. I couldn't open Microsoft Office. Also, I could open iTunes, but couldn't get into my music library. I quickly determined that the problem had to do with Disk Permissions. The Disk Utility gave me the message, "Underlying task reported failure." And apparently when you get that message it's time to cut your losses.

So I did a complete reformat and reinstall. While reformatting, I did the complete disk repair (the one that takes like three hours, whatever it's called). After all this, my computer ran perfectly, just like new.

I don't know how relevant any of that info is, except to say that I should theoretically be starting from a completely clean slate.

About a week after reformatting, I downloaded and installed 10.4.9. And ever since that point, it's been painfully slow. I'm not doing anything fancy. If I have open Firefox, Thunderbird, iTunes, Skype, iCal, and Word all at once, I'll get the spinning beach ball every few minutes. When one program is stuck, I can't switch to anything else. When more than one program is open, switching between two takes 5-10 seconds. Even switching between tabs in Firefox is a pain.

It never completely freezes. I just sometimes have to wait a long time for my computer to respond.

I took it to the Apple store twice in the past week. The first time, the guy deleted some Cache files. He also did some key combination on startup to "restore factory settings." Very little change.

The second time, the guy did a reinstall of 10.4.9. There was some improvement, but it's still prohibitively slow.

Again, I apologize for the longwindedness. I'm hoping that I've provided enough information that the problem might be obvious to someone.

Muppet Cannibalism

divabat — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:23:16 -0800

Muppets eating Muppets? Or am I crazy? I remember when I was about 4-5 years old (late 80s/early 90s) watching a Muppets show (I think it's the Henson variety) where some Muppets were eating each other. Gobbling them alive. It may have been black and white.

The reason I remember this is because the 1812 Overture was used as background music for the whole thing, and now everytime I hear that song I feel fearful. (Yes I was traumatized).

My question: Did this episode really exist? Does anyone else remember this episode? Were they Jim Henson Muppets, or something else entirely? And WHY were they eating each other?!

Do not bring: Non folding bicycles

beerbajay — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:43:27 -0800

How do I get to Stansted Airport with a boxed bicycle?!!?! I'm coming from Bristol and flying from Stansted to Malmo (Sweden!). I'm taking a bike (two actually) in a box.

I can get to central London by rail, but the train to Stansted doesn't accept bicycles (apparently there is no room), National Express Busses don't accept bikes, and a taxi seems to cost 80 pounds (more than my flight.......)

Do I have any other options?

I want to know what I've been listening to a lot recently.

heeeraldo — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 20:12:48 -0800

iTunes Smart Playlists: how do I see what I've been listening to a lot recently? I have one playlist that pulls the most-played tracks from everything I've played in the last week, but since it uses the all-time most-played tracks, I tend to get a list that looks pretty much the same as my Top 25 Most Played. Is there any way to wrangle Smart Playlists so that I can see what I've listened to repeatedly in the last seven (or however many) days?

(XP/iTunes 6/G5 iPod, if that helps)

Fix my MS Word table!

exceptinsects — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:33:52 -0800

How can I get the cells in my MS Word table to "stick together"? It keeps putting page breaks in weird places, leaving a single cell stranded at the top of a page. It seems like only some of the cells are infected with this standoffishness--most of them flow together just fine.
Does anyone have a clue how to fix this? I am spending way too much time trying to figure this out and am on the verge of doing something desperate.