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How do I keep those durn' kids off my lawn?

codacorolla — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:40:59 -0800

Is there a way to control skateboarding on public grounds while being fair to skateboarders and not causing them to feel persecuted? I browsed the archives first, and came across this:
Why prevent skateboarding?

This particular question seems to come from the perspective of the skater. Recently I've started working for a public library where skateboarding is a concern. Our parking lot draws local skaters, and it eats up a lot of staff time asking them to leave. In fact, if I remember myself from my teenaged years, the constant badgering probably makes them want to do it even more.

The branch manager has asked for a 'no skateboarding' sign on a few occasions, but upper management wants to phrase it in a more positive manner before they pay for signs.

Our branch is about a 1/4 mile from the middle school, which means our building is a hot-spot for kids from 3 o'clock to around 5. The best solution to the problem would be to have a skatepark within distance of the school, but that probably won't happen given the current economic climate, and the general conservative nature of our community.

We don't even mind the boarders so long as they're using their boards as a means of conveyance; but they tend to congregate in one spot in the parking lot to do tricks and hang out. This, of course, creates a huge liability for us if someone ever got hit by a car, and is dangerous for the boarders.

The first solutions that come to my mind are: creating an informative program that gives out our policies while offering something entertaining for the kids (good luck on getting attendance though), just buckling down and yelling at the kids every time they break the rules (engenders bad feelings, and might make the problem worse), putting in no-skate measures (probably too expensive, also might make the problem worse).

I was wondering if anyone has any creative solutions for the problem, or has ever had to deal with a similar situation.

Resume distribution services: good use of money or a bad idea?

rybreadmed — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:45:31 -0800

Is it worth it to pay for a "targeted" resume distribution service? I'm trying to find a new job. Through some of the big job sites, I find links to these resume distribution services. It's not too incredibly expensive, and the job search is wearing me thin. Of course, I don't want to waste the 50 bucks or so if it's not going to work. They promise not to be resume blasters that blast out your resume to 50,000,000 email addresses; supposedly, they're targeted.

There's this service through Monster: https://www.myresumeagent.com/?ch=monster_fromea. Does anybody have any experience with this? Does it work?

Also, I found this list of resume distribution services: http://www.jobgoround.com/resume_distribution.php. Is it all garbage?

I already know that finding a job depends on who you know. I've gone through my personal contacts, applied to many places, but I'm looking for new channels. I can't find any information (such as consumer reviews) on any of these sites. Even if the ones listed above don't work, can you suggest any that do?

Is it just a scam, though? Is it for people who reach a point so far into their job search that they're desperate for some magic bullet? Will my resume actually end up in the hands of somebody who could actually do something?

Help me encourage a great future doctor not to lose faith in herself.

dorothy humbird — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:59:09 -0800

I'm out of fresh encouraging perspectives, and the stakes are higher than ever. Please help me figure out how to best be a supportive friend in the 11th hour of my pal's struggles with studying for the med school boards. So, my friend is a very intelligent and principled person, and has for most of her education been in honors classes and in other ways recognized for her commitment to learning and knowledge. She also happens to be one of the most caring people I know, and is absolutely one of my best friends. She is the sort of person who is keenly sensitive to the human element of any problem or situation, and for this reason I think she would be an invaluable addition to the field of medicine, which can sometimes be heavily populated by self-absorbed jerks and/or people who are only in it for the money.

But, as far as I can tell, she is burned out in the extreme from years of studying and studying, not to mention her family worries and expectations (she is a 1st gen daughter of immigrants from a country with pretty conservative expectations for offspring, and despite somewhat Westernized viewpoints on the part of her parents, there are still major friction issues). She has struggled this entire year, her second in med school, with getting herself to buckle down and study, and has been discouraged time and again even when she did with grades that fell below the median of her class - but she's scraped by. And now, with classes over so the students can completely focus on studying 10+ hours a day to pass the board exams, she is really and truly putting in the effort, only to keep getting dismal results on her practice tests for the boards.

She's discouraged. I'm discouraged for her. She's been seeing a counselor, but sometimes sabotages herself even there by not revealing the extent of her struggles, or not doing the tasks that the counselor suggests for her. It takes so much effort for her to just focus on studying these massive tomes of knowledge that she somehow has to ingest and immolate into her very core that when she doesn't make progress, she loses almost all faith in herself. She has mentioned to me that her brother, who also attended med school and is now in residency, did poorly in the books section too, but excelled once he was in a more hands-on environment doing rotations. So, I've been encouraging her to look ahead to that -- but the problem that she and I both obviously can't ignore is that she has to PASS the boards to get there.

I'm out of supportive words and phrases. Everything I can think to say, I've already said: just hang in there; quit beating yourself up; I BELIEVE IN YOU - YOU CAN DO THIS, BUT YOU NEED TO BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT; it's okay to take more time (she is now pushing back the beginning of her 3rd year to give herself more time to study because her practice test results haven't been enough to pass), you are smart! you are intelligent! you of all people should be a doctor because you actually care about human beings!

I've said it all already, and I can't imagine that repeating this to her is any help at this stage.

I need insight into this experience; who out there in MetaFilter has had similar struggles in professional schools - med school, law school, anything else similarly demanding? I am meeting to have coffee with her this evening, and I just want to give her the most encouraging pep talk I can feasibly manage without personal experience of what she is going through. It would crush me to see her defeated by this, and if there is anything I can say or remind her of to help her avoid that, I want it in my bag of resources. Help me help her.

Where can I find a list of bulletin boards in San Jose?

crysflame — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:21:50 -0800

Where can I find a list and/or map of "bulletin boards" in San Jose? More specifically, public posting boards where folks post a variety of commercial (and non-commercial) notices, such as "services for hire" and "room for rent" and so forth. Growing up in my hometown of Eugene, I could wander around the university campus housing and find five or ten public corkboards where folks would just staple or thumbtack their advertisements. In general it was good to date your posting so that folks didn't cover it up for a few days. Does anyone know of a list of these boards in San Jose, or have any suggestions where I should be looking? I found one by accident at Whole Foods.

Dead as dial-up?

sonofslim — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:34:05 -0800

I'm jonesing for some old-school BBS action. Are there any worthwhile boards still around, with telnet access? I'd even settle for a social/builder MUD with good signal-to-noise ratio.

True Crime message boards make me want to commit a violence!

taz — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 03:32:34 -0800

Are there any "smart" true crime community blogs or message boards? A couple of times I've become interested in some crime-related news (one was the BTK case, and another is now, the disappearance of a young mother), and gone looking for a (generally) Mefi-style place where people are discussing and updating... and what I've found has been awful.

What I don't like:

The repetition: The exact same (usually obvious and simplistic) comments and observations are posted again and again, ad nauseam... and gods help you if a bit of misinformation gets introduced - 70 pages and 3,000 comments later people are still discussing that bit of false information as though it has some bearing on the case. And the people who dash into a thread with thousands of comments and are all, like, "So, what happened? Sorry, I couldn't read all these comments."

The psychics: "I have a very strong feeling that VictimNameHere will be found by water" ; "I think it was the husband, JMHO"; "She wouldn't have ever done X in a million years"... blah, blah.

The stupidity: Oh... man. Too much here to cover.

The smilies, avatars, and sigs: Gag.

The gooey: "My heart just breaks for that poor family." Yes, absolutely... but 800 comments like that makes me want to kill you all.

The Expert Victims: I have never seen one of these boards in which there weren't a least a couple of people going on about their experiences being stalked, attacked, etc., with lots and lots more comments saying, "oh, how awful for you!" Most boards even have their resident Star Victims, and almost nothing they talk about has any bearing on the case at hand, except in the most superficial way, ie: "She must have been so afraid... I remember when I was attacked, I was very afraid." Sure, sometimes real life experience can bring something to the table, but I haven't seen this happening.
________________________________

So. Isn't there someplace where the discussion is a little more rigorous and disciplined?

best forums and community software for .Net platform?

andytmp — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:30:58 -0800

Does anyone have an opinion on the best of breed web forums software and drupal-like or community software out there for an asp/.net environment? I'm relatively knowledgable on similar offerings in the *unix world but I now find myself needing to find equivalent software for an asp/.net environment. And I'm starting from scratch.

So I'm talking about classic web forums, and also user generated content with rating systems... that genre of thing.

I've found Community Server (http://communityserver.org/) and Carbon Communities (http://www.carboncommunities.com/) as two options.

But since I'm new to this particular platform I'm realizing there may be some great software (open source or otherwise) that I'm missing.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Where's the BEST Cycling Information?

thebarron — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:49:42 -0800

I've seen the well-balanced cycling board, BikeForums.net, and want to know if are there others that also deal with road bikes, fixies, etc. besides the usual mountain bike chatter. What are they? How about the best deals on cycling gear too?

What to know when creating a forum?

Hesychia — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:08:35 -0800

I'm creating a family reunion website & want to include a community forum/bulletin board. What are the pros & cons of hosting the forum on my own server vs. using an outside one?

Message board archive app?

queue_strategy — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 05:02:58 -0800

Recommendations on an app which can archive message board content on my PC? I'd like an app to be able to sequentially crawl a block of messages (say #s 1-5000) and archive them to my PC for local searching. I'm primarily thinking of Yahoo's finance boards - I find their online search terrible. Thanks

phpBB or SMF

chef_boyardee — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 10:13:48 -0800

phpBB or SMF for a new forum? Or something else? I'm not trying to stir up a Windows vs. Unix type debate but am interested in your thoughts and experiences, either as an administrator or user.

Personally, I have run some phpBB boards, and overall have been ok with them, but found that (1) the board is not very flexible in regard to moderator or superuser privileges, and (2) phpBB's that aren't upgraded in step with the patches seem to attract vandals (don't even get me started on phpNuke).

I'm trying SMF and like the flexibility, but I seem to get random 415 "Server Temporarily Unavailable" messages accessing the board from certain computers but not others; I'm thinking it's related to one computer having a login cookie and not another. Still, though, SMF triggering an Apache error like that is bad bad bad.

Where to find niche discussion on the internet

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:34:09 -0800

"If you want to discuss [foo] on the Internet, the most popular/active/intelligent place at which to do so is http://[bar]." Is there a website that can fill in the blanks for all types of [foo]? Various specialty or niche topics are most passionately and intelligently discussed in some of the farthest reaches of the internet. For example, the best place to discuss the Boston Red Sox is the nonintuitively titled sonsofsamhorn.net. And most topics are discussed in more than one place, in parallel communities on the web and Usenet that get varying amounts of traffic and insight. So I'm looking for a repository of links that will tell me where to go for the best discussion on a variety of topics, whether it be TV shows, computer games, gadgets, real estate, whatever.