Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with catastrophe

Help me avert an iTunes disaster!

jdroth — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:34:57 -0800

My wife is going to kill me. While "fixing" her computer (g5 Macintosh running Leopard), I managed to move 20,000 of her mp3s to the trash. I actually thought I as moving one genre with "select-all", but apparently I moved the entire frickin' library. She doesn't know yet, but it's only a matter of time. I have not yet deleted these files. All 20,000 (well, 19,868) are sitting in the trash can. There's no "restore to previous location" type option, though. Help! Is there anything I can do? Is my only option to have iTunes re-import the entire lot? Fortunately, I backed up everything on her hard drive recently, just before installing Leopard.

What would be the effects on the earth if the moon exploded?

tcobretti — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:28:47 -0800

What would be the effects on the earth if the moon exploded? Let's forget about the "how," and just focus on what would happen, both long term and short term.

This is for a cheesy scifi project I am working on, not just because I was idly wondering about it.

Philly or SF, which is safer?

rorycberger — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 11:14:30 -0800

Which city is safer: San Francisco or Philadelphia? I know there are a million "safest/least safe" cities lists available, but most of them are based only on violent crime statistics. I'm looking for a comprehensive assessment that factors in things like the chances that an earthquake is going to destroy san francisco tomorrow, the chances that terrorists drop a bomb on philadelphia, the odds that I'd get hit by bus, struck by lightening, etc. Also I'd like to factor in the proximity to other safe/unsafe cities, just in case I happen to get lost and end up in, say, Camden or Oakland. For purposes here, I'm only concerned about things that will kill me, not so much things that might wound or emotionally scar me. All things considered, where would I be safer?

[yes, this is to settle a bet]

Installing a Pre-hung door.

iamabot — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:46:41 -0800

Installing a pre hung door. Or rather filling the hole you put in your new house when you decided to replace the door. This weekend while we were painting the house before we moved in I noticed that one of the back doors to the house was actually an interior door. Having my father with me eager for a project and doing a *bit* of research it seemed like a fairly easy proposition to purchase a pre hung door and install it ourselves. It is not.

The demo went fine, installed the new footer and entry way that was rotten, insured it was flat and level for the prehung door. I went with a steel door with 8 panels of double paned glass to match some other doors in the house.

So we get to the actual installig of the door, did a test fit of the door in the structure, pull it out, remove the unnecessary packaging and insure there is .5 inch of clearance all around the frame, and shim it in (doing the leveling dance and following the manufacturers instructions for the shim points. Here is where we hit problems.

Is there any special trick to get these suckers in? We had adequate clearance all around to isolate the door from the structure, but it keeps twisting, and we can't seem to get the door to open cleanly after it's been shimmed in.

I'm a bit stuck here, after 5 hours of wrestling with it yesterday with my dad and the fiancee's dad I'm about ready to call a carpenter and beg for assistance. I'm sure we're just doing something totally boneheaded and missing a critical step in the process, but nothing stands out.

Escape from New York!

onalark — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:21:18 -0800

Escaping the Big Apple if disaster struck. Suppose you live a quiet life in the Upper West Side filled with mathematical homework and reading Metafilter. Suppose this life was interrupted with CATASTROPHE! How would you escape the city on foot? What sort of 'go bag' would you have set to go? What would you take with you? What would you leave behind? What would your primary and backup paths be?

You are allowed to speculate on different escape/hunker-down strategies for different disasters, but the 'go bag' must be a general and reasonably priced kit.