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Needed: Credit Card That Allows Hard Spending Limit On Companion Card/AU

flummox — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:42:41 -0800

Hello I am in need of a credit card that allows me to set a hard limit on authorized users. In addition I need for the card to allow a different limit for the primary and secondary card.
Other then the above here is the rest of my wish list:

I need MC/Visa. (Amex not excepted at enough of the AU's vendors.)

I would like a card with no fees, annual, or for the second card.

Decent customer service would be nice.

Having it be possible for the AU to go online and see their account details without being able to make any changes could be helpful.

Other considerations:

The balance will be paid in full every month.

There is no need for any type of rewards.

A debit card will not work in this situation.

This card/account will only be used for the maintenance of the AU.

Explanation:

I am using this card to help a family member to pay for basic living expenses. Sadly my family member is not always good about keeping track of or managing expenses.

I currently am using a BoA business card but a year or more ago they changed their policy and allow the AU to spend above the limit I have set. With the new policy spending is only supposed to go over the limit by 20% ,if I remember correctly, but they routinely allow the AU to go over by >50%. This is very frustrating, I have called customer service multiple times about the issue but there seems to be no way for them to enforce a hard credit/spending limit on this card.

Thanks for your help.

I have a 250 gig MacBook Pro with only 40 gigs of free space left...

TwilightKid — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:49:25 -0800

I have a 250 gig MacBook Pro, which is about 3 years old. I have approx. 115 gigs of music stored in my Itunes library. All duplicate MP3 files were deleted. That leaves 135 or some odd gigs of space. I keep a large majority of my documents and files in a cloud service. I maybe have 5-10 gigs of random files I keep on my HD. That leaves approx. 125 gigs of space... I know that the computer uses (and I'll guestimate 25 gigs for the OS & random program files I have on my system)... That still leaves about 100 gigs worth of space un-accounted for.... When I open my 'finder', it tells me I have approx 50 gigs of space available. I have downloaded Disk Inventory X which is suppose to give you a break down of where all the space is being used. I have also read about a program called DaisyDisk. Both seem to be reputable and popular. I d/l'ed DIX first cause it was free..It did the analysis.... But....While I have somewhat of an idea of computers, I am not sure what is safe to delete, what should't be touched....What if I delete something that has specs attached to files that shouldn't be deleted...Neither utility really gives me an idea of what is safe to delete and what should not be touched. I know I must have a large cache of files and stuff that could be deleted....Image previews, etc.... I just don't know where to look. What is safe to get rid of.....Not sure what to do..... Thanks!

How to extract the addresses of a couple hundred bounced emails?

ManInSuit — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:22:08 -0800

I have been running a couple of email announcement lists for a while, and want to clean out all (or most) of the addresses that are bouncing. What is a good way to do this? I have a couple of email lists I use to promote local events. Everyone on them has asked to be on them, and, of course, unsub requests are processed promptly.

What I haven't been processing, though, are bounces. Every time I send an email to one of these lists, I get a lot of emails bouncing back. In general, this has not been a problem for me, so I haven't been deleting the bounced addresses from the list. (I hope this isn't a terribly irresponsible practice. I have a feeling you're not supposed to do this, though I'm not totally sure why.)

Now I'd like to clean up the lists, largely because I'm in the process changing how I send mails, probably to use Mandrill (previously), and I realize having a lot of bad addresses in my list is not something bulk mail services like.

I wonder if there's an easy way for me to get a list of the addresses that should be removed from the list. I have a this of information to work with:

a) For one of my lists: several months worth of old "bounce" emails all in a single folder on my IMAP server (fastmail) and in my email client (thunderbird)

b) For my other list: A few months of old bounce messages are all in a single folder in my gmail account

Is there some piece of software or service that can parse these messages into some sort of easy to work with form, and give me a list of what addresses produced what sorts of bounces, and how often? In each case: The lists have something like 3000 addresses, and I think about 10% of the addresses are bad. I'm hoping for something free or cheap. (Less than, say, $50 for a one-time sweep of the bounces...)

(Less critically: I also have a couple of smaller, older lists, where I don't have current bounce messages. That is- I just have a list of email addresses. Is there any way to check whether those email addresses are still valid other than sending messages to those addresses?)

Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks!!!

Where the hell is my laptop hard drive?

unSane — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:50:05 -0800

I have lost my laptop's internal HD. Please help me find it. This going to get convoluted, so be prepared.

My wife and I both have MacBook pros. Let's call the internal drives HD1 and HD2 respectively.

HD1 was being backed up on a Time Machine volume. Let's call it HD3.

HD1 failed, so as a stopgap I bought a new external drive (HD4) and managed to restore from HD1 and HD3.

HD4 then failed after being dropped. I bought a new drive (HD5), managed to restore everything on to it, and put it in my wife's MacBook. HD4's enclosure was destroyed in the process.

The logic board then failed. So I swapped out HD2 from my laptop on my workbench and swapped in HD5, so my wife could use my laptop while hers was in the shop.

I put a HD in her laptop so they could burn test it. I THINK it was HD4 which was kinda sorta working.

We just got the laptop back so I went up to me workbench and took HD5 out of my laptop and put it back in hers.

So far, so good. She's happy, all her stuff is there, life is good.

I go back upstairs and I put what I think is HD2 back in my laptop. Only it won't boot and I realize I've put in HD1, which I saved just in case. So i swap that out and put in the other hard drive sitting on the workbench. Only that turns out to be HD3. Wtf? OK, it must be THIS one. No, that's HD4.

At which point there are no more HDs.

HD2 is gone. But as far as I know all I did was take it out of my laptop and put on the workbench. No computer was ever opened anywhere else. I have no recollection of moving any HD anywhere else.

I am left with the strange feeling that I am missing something. I know this is the nerd version of I lost my keys, but can anyone spot what happened?

Data recovery in and around Boston

Cat Pie Hurts — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:09:05 -0800

Can anyone recommend a reputable and reliable Boston-area data recovery service that will provide a quote before sending in the drive? I have a 2Tb HFS+ formatted drive that I need to have data recovered from (if possible). The drive is failing. I have a significant amount of experience recovering data (ddrescue and TSK are some of my best friends and I've done clean room surgery on a few occaisions), but my boss is irritated at the amount of time that it is taking and wants me to ship it off somewhere to have it done. I've never actually used any data recovery services before. I always hear about Techfusion(where data is never lost!) on NPR, but they've been unresponsive to my queries for a quote. Same goes for Disk Doctors. Any suggestions would be amazingly helpful.

Gauss, Escher, Bach. Give me math that doesn't read like math!

desultory_banyan — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 03:55:03 -0800

I have a very strong background in humanities but I've completed three-year undergraduate course in math. Though I passed it without trouble, I feel like traditional textbooks didn't teach make me understand a lot. What are best math resources (books, but not necessarily) that instead of trying to look like PM read more like literature or work on your intuition and talk about big picture implications instead? Something like Godel, Escher, Bach for various areas of mathematics. What I'm trying to say, I guess, is: I don't work well with text that is trying to be beautiful by being as concise as possible. I need to ramble a bit and explain myself almost everything by way of analogy. And somewhere along the way I'll internalize the concept. Furthermore, I love texts which intermingle hard science with stories, historical and philosophical background.

Here are things I'd like to get better understanding of:
- information theory (plus complexity and all that Chaitin jazz)
- probability theory, stochastic processes, statistics (and bits of finance, actuarial stuff)
- calculus and measure
- algebra, symmetries, group theory
- cryptography
- various math tools used in physics (if I could ever understand math machinery underlying quantum mechanics I'll die a happy man), bits of physics also welcome, of course
...or anything else that's interesting and not hugely specialized, really.

What I don't want: totally entry level, big simplifications.

FYI, I'm studying in Eastern Europe, where (supposedly) there is much more emphasis put on 'going deep' when learning maths (which usually means just biting more than you can chew).

Encrypting a partitioned backup drive with TrueCrypt

Quisp Lover — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:25:16 -0800

How do I encrypt a partitioned backup drive with TrueCrypt? I want to back up data to an external drive. I already have a daily backup scheme; this is an extra thing, strictly for extra insurance. I'll only synch it a couple times per year.

The drive has two partitions. #1 will contain a clone of my everyday hard drive, and #2 will back up various data from another external drive. #1 needn't be bootable, but I do want to be able to clone it back to my desktop computer and have THAT be bootable.

I use a Mac, OS 10.6.8. And I want bathroom lock level encryption of all data.

I'm figuring TrueCrypt is the way to go. But they don't have up-to-date Mac tutorials. Can anyone talk me through how to set this up?

And: can I then use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner to do the clone (and to re-synch once in a while)?

FWIW I own Espionage. But I'm guessing it's overkill for this(??)

How do I upgrade the SSD I boot from?

nickhb — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:52:12 -0800

What's the best way to upgrade my hard drive on my desktop? I have a 40GB SSD that I boot from, and I want to upgrade that to an 80GB SSD. What's the best way to move all of my information from the old drive to the new one, and then have the computer boot from the new drive? If I just copy everything from the old drive to the new one, and plug the new one into the motherboard, will everything still work?

Remove Acer front panel

KRS — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:39:35 -0800

How do I get the front panel off to install a second hard drive in my new computer? I got a new Acer Predator G3620-UR20P. The hard drive cage has room for a second drive, but it's partly blocked off from the inside, so I need to remove the front panel to slide the new drive in from the front.

The Acer Help line idiot told me I'd have to take it to a repair shop, and the Acer manual merely says that the thing can be done, but doesn't say how. I tried gentle prying, but it's making creaking, "I'm about to break" noises.

How stupid is this stupid hard drive question?

sully75 — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:08:31 -0800

How bad an idea is storing my backup disks (hard drives in my car)? I'll keep this short.

I'm a photographer (not professional anymore but wicked seriouz). I'd like to be backing up my photos monthly to hard drives that I keep off site...in case of fire, theft, etc.

For quite a while I kept my hard drives in the trunk of my car, which lives on the street. Obviously there is a risk of theft, but I figured it was unlikely that my car and my house would get robbed the same night, so if I did lose my drives, I could still backup my computer.

Then someone mentioned that it does get painfully hot in a locked car in the summer. Yup. Hadn't thought of that one.

So...leaving a hard drive long term in the hatchback of a parked car, is that likely to do damage over the long term? It's just a convenient solution for me, I can keep the drive offsite enough that I figure a common accident would be unlikely to force me to lose both my computer and my backup drive at the same time, but close enough that updating it regularly is pretty convenient.

But if the drive is going to get destroyed (note: these drives stored like this have worked fine) I should probably find another solution.

Thanks!

USB3-->USB2 Woes

Quisp Lover — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:08:47 -0800

I'm getting awful speeds transferring to a USB 3 external drive from my USB 2 Macbook Pro. I have a 2009 era Macbook Pro with firewire 800 and USB 2. I bought a Seagate Expansion 1 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive for $90. And, my god, it's averaging 5mb/sec transfer!

It's not a huge big deal, since I will only use this drive every few months or so (for infrequent off-site backup). And I can let the job run overnight. But....ugh.

I own a (smaller) USB 2 drive, and it seems to transfer reasonably quickly....a lot better than 5mb/sec. Is there an intrinsic problem using USB 3 drives with USB 2 computers (Seagate claims compatibility for both)? If not, is there anything I need to check? (I did format the drive to extended/journaled). One solution would to return this drive and try to buy another USB 2 drive....if I can find one.....

How to get data consolidated from a bunch of computers with money rather than work?

paultopia — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 16:46:02 -0800

Service to pull data off a bunch of old computers and then recycle, in bay area? Hi everyone,

So I'm in the SF bay area and I have a TON of old useless computers. 2 old mac laptops, 1 old windows laptop, and one old windows desktop. As far as I know, none of them work anymore. About to move across the country, so it's time to deal with it.

Here's what I'd like to be able to do:
- pay someone a not unreasonable amount of money to
- take all the machines
- yank their hard drives
- copy their hard drives either to a big usb drive or to a bunch of DVDs
- either destroy the old hard drives or give them back to me, and
- recycle the rest.

Does anyone know any business around here that will do that sort of thing? Surely this has to be a need that people in silicon valley have all the time...

thanks!

Are your eyes so tough you animal are your eyes very tough

Greg Nog — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 11:36:47 -0800

Which animal has the hardest eyes? I was thinking about how eyes are pretty soft and it might be advantageous for a creature to have "natural goggles" protecting its squishy eyes. Which animal's eyes have the toughest coating? (I do not care to hear about the protective qualities of retractable eyeLIDs, only the surface which can not be retracted, and which must be seen through.)

Obsolete iMac Hard Drive Replacement. Where to purchase?

hdh — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 09:33:32 -0800

What internal Hard drive can I purchase for an iMac 20" G5 computer? I need to replace the internal hard drive on my 20" iMac G5, which has become damaged. I've removed the hard drive, but don't know where or what to purchase to replace it. The computer other than that works fine. I can boot from a CD or in Target mode from my Macbook. I've had no success figuring out how to get an external drive to be the start up drive.

I was running the latest version of Tiger when it crashed and did manage to backup all of the data on it using Disk Utilities Restore function to an external hard drive. Disk Utility, nor Disk Warrior were able to repair the internal hard drive.

Any advice would be appreciated. I can't afford a new computer.

Save my pipes!

M Edward — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:14:47 -0800

Would a whole house water softener be worth it? I get my water from a well with very hard water. So hard that I buy 5$ shower heads and toss them after 6 months due to clogging. The build up has also clogged multiple toilet refill tubes and the water intake hoses for my washing machine and dishwasher. I also have resorted to buying cheapy coffee pots due to this.

Basically I am curious if a water softener would alleviate any of this. I am afraid to drop 500$ on a heavy duty softener just to find out it won't noticeably help. I also fear the hard water might claim the softener itself as a casualty.

What are your experiences?

It is a small residential well with a bladder tank that was dug about 30 years ago.

Red flag or just a pink one?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:46:54 -0800

How personal is too personal for a job interview question? I recently had a job interview where one of the questions dealt with a period of unemployment I went through post graduation.

The interview question (after I explained the volunteering and odd jobs that I did during this period): "I supposed your parents must be wealthy?" Now, I don't know what to make of this. I simply said YES, because I found the alternative to be worse.

I guess I just can't imagine a tactful answer to the question. And I can't imagine a justified reason to ask it.

Granted this, is this a sign of things to come? Should I trust my gut? I was terribly hurt by the question and feel this is a bad start to a working relationship. Am I being too sensitive for my own good here?

Please enlighten me, Mefites!

Lock/Unlock switch on a hard drive?

sanskrtam — Sun, 06 May 2012 00:16:08 -0800

Lock/Unlock switch on a hard drive? I have a PQI external portable hard drive H551. I'm very curious about the switch-like thing that has a lock/unlock sign. What does this switch do?

Help Me Find a Program to Manage Multiple HD's

millerizer — Sat, 05 May 2012 20:13:50 -0800

Is there a program that I can manage multiple harddrives as one large virtual HD? I need a program that will view multiple HD's as one and allow me to move files around.

In Windows, when you move files around on the same HD it is instant, just moving not copying. The program I have in mind would let me do that virtually, then when everything is in place commit to that and have it copy/move/cut things around to make sense on the HD's.

I'm on Windows 7 by the way.

Quiet hard drive enclosures

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:38:04 -0800

Any recommendations for quiet eSATA two- or four-hard drive enclosure that supports RAID 0/1? Looking to replace a noisy enclosure (cannot replace hardwired fans) with a new box that is near-dead quiet, with eSATA, that quietly supports two or four 2 TB drives in a quiet, mirrored or striped arrangement. If such a thing exists, I would welcome your advice. Thank you.

How do I restore a laptop hard drive to factory settings through my desktop?

New England Cultist — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:09:25 -0800

How do I restore a laptop hard drive to factory settings through my desktop? I have a laptop hard drive (HP Pav Dv5) that I want to format via my desktop. My reasons for doing this is that the laptop has pulled a funky and won't boot. I think the bios is corrupt; I slipstreamed XP onto it shortly after buying it with VISTA pre-loaded.

The hard drive is partitioned into C and D, with the latter containing the image file that restores the drive back to factory settings.

This is Ms Cultist's old laptop. She now uses a Mac, but I'd like to have a go at fixing this one, if only to use as a back-up. I have removed the drive from the laptop and am accessing it via usb on the desktop.

How do I reformat the C drive using the image file on D via the desktop, without potentially making the desktop drives unstable? I'm a fairly old hand at formatting, but I've never loaded an OS onto an external drive in this way.

My laptop needs a new hard drive. Am I getting the best deal?

ptsampras14 — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:24:16 -0800

My laptop needs a new hard drive. Am I getting the best deal? So my Dell Studio 1535 encountered a light drop and is now extremely slow and buggy.

I need a new hard drive, but my resources are limited to Googling "Dell Studio 1535 hard drive"

I found this drive 500 GB 7200 RPM 16 MB that I like for $135.

Is there a way to search for a generic drive that will fit my computer, that might be any cheaper? Or am I getting a good deal?

Can you solve a time dilation math problem?

CarlRossi — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:32:49 -0800

I'm writing a story and it has to do with time dilation and I don't want it to be one of those stories where people roll their eyes and say, "Well... It's just a story." I want accurate math. I suck at math. Here are the parameters. The story I want to tell is about a man who travels away from the Earth at near-light speed and returns almost exactly 50 years later. His total journey time from his perspective should be roughly 18 months there and back. It isn't really important how long he stays at his destination, so for the sake of argument, he can spend as little as 30 minutes before he starts his journey home.

Can he make it to ANY body/object outside the solar system?

Ideally the answer I'm looking for is this:
1 Earth to destination at .999 the speed of light is X days.
2 Hang out at destination is Y days.
3 Destination to Earth at .999 the speed of light is Z days. (I suspect X=Z but you tell me)

So X+Y+Z= 18 months(roughly) and Earth is now 50 years older(roughly).

I like stiff drinks, but not stiff towels

DrGail — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:18:42 -0800

Yet another laundry question. We have these towels and love their weight, size, color, and absorbancy. Our only complaint, and it's a big one, is that they are pretty hard and stiff now. I'm at my wits' end trying to soften them up. Please hope me. They're maybe a year old. That's not brand new, but well within what I would consider their usable lifespan. The towels are washed weekly in a HE machine, using very little fragrance-free liquid Tide, then dried fully in the dryer on "normal" temperature. In the summer, when mildew is a problem, they're washed in hot water. The rest of the year I wash them in warm water and rinse in cold water.

I've tried adding phosphates with the detergent (a few times), using an organic detergent, double-rinsing, and once even threw a dryer sheet in the dryer with them. Nothing seemed to soften them up much.

Is there something else I haven't thought of to try? Have I not given enough of a chance to something I've already tried? Or will I just have to live with lovely, but stiff, towels?

Can I transfer 360 data to an external hard drive?

HostBryan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:00:10 -0800

Is there a way I can transfer over 4 gigs of data to a new 4 gig Xbox 360 console by using an external hard drive? So my 360 gave up the ghost today with an E-73 error. This isn't the first time it's happened to me, and the first time it did I sent it to Microsoft for a warranty repair. Naturally, it decided to break again with the same error now that I'm out of warranty.

Weirdly, both incidents happened the week a new Soul Calibur game came out, but I digress.

So anyway, I went through the rigamarole with Microsoft's tech support website, and was informed that there was nothing I could do to fix the machine myself and that I'd have to send it back to Microsoft for a $99 out-of-warranty repair. And of course, they'd send me a refurbished old model unit, which is only under warranty for 90 days and could easily break again.

So rather than put up with that, I've decided that just getting a new console is probably the way to go. I'm not really in the mood to drop another $300 into Microsoft's coffers, so I'd rather just get the new 4-gig unit. The problem is that I had a 20-gig unit originally, and while I definitely don't have over 4 gigs of save data, it has posed a unique situation:

1. The 360 supports external hard drives. I have one that's perfect for the task, and would give me about another 30 gigs of space, more than I have now.

2. However, the Xbox 360 Transfer Cable transfers all the data at once.

3. So can I plug my external hard drive in and choose to copy everything over from my old 360 hard drive to that external hard drive during the transfer process, or will it automatically transfer to the onboard memory, of which there is not enough to hold everything I have on the 360 hard drive?

Basically, I'm mostly concerned about my save files. I can redownload anything else, but those are trickier. Any assistance?

The Hamster in my hard drive is back

silsurf — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:28:59 -0800

I have a Iomega Home Media drive on my LAN that starts chattering like it is about to explode with activity. I had the same thing happen on the last one and it finally just died form exhaustion. It just started accessing reading/writing whatever at a ferocious speed, sometimes for a second, sometimes for a minute. On that previous one it started and kept going for a few weeks until finally it died.

This "new" one is a refurb replacement. It was silent for about a month and today the chattering/insane/hamster wheel accessing has started.

I looked at Console, but there does not seem to be anything unusual. Then I tried Little Snitch to look at the Local Network Activity and again I can see nothing odd going on at all. I thought perhaps it was Spotlight trying to index the drive, but it is not listed as a source for indexing in the preferences.

All I keep on it are movies files that I use for NAS to my ATV.

Love to get some more ideas on how to get this thing calmed down, it makes me nervous just hearing it under the desk, like time bomb.

Thanks MeFi
The drive is connected to a Ethernet switch that is coming out of my Time Warner Motorola Cable Router.

Mac OSX Lion
Iomega Home Media Drive
Ethernet Switch
All hard wired

There is also an ATV and a Time Capsule on the same LAN. I also use BackBlaze for remote backups (No the drive is not listed there as well)