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Securing a bicycle seat

pulled_levers — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:08:58 -0800

Recommendations on securing a quick-release bicycle seatpost? I'd really prefer for my seat-post to stay intact without adding too much weight to my bicycle. Any recommendations?

Wrong address on the envelope, what am I to do?

913 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:00:50 -0800

Canada Post filter: I sent a registered letter yesterday. I JUST realized that the return address I put on the envelope is slightly incorrect. What can I do? - The address isn't totally incorrect. It should be 905-109 Street but I accidentally wrote down 109-905 Street (there is no such address in my city - it's technically the middle of a park).

- The letter inside the envelope has the correct address on it.

- For all intents and purposes, I'm not able to contact the recipient to tell them the address on the envelope is incorrect.

Basically, I'm looking to see what my options are. I've tried calling Canada Post but they're closed until tomorrow morning (I will try again then).

Do people respond to letters (to a company) via the address on the envelope or would they use the address on the letter? Would I be able to re-direct mail from that address to mine? Main issue is that it would probably be registered mail coming to me, too - so I'd have to sign for it.

What caused my drive to die?

comradestu — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:22:07 -0800

What happened that suddenly caused my harddrive to not be recognized by BIOS? I fired up my computer this evening to discover that none of the SATA devices were being recognized during POST/in BIOS. This included 1 LG DVD writer, 1 Seagate 1TB drive, and 1 Seagate 500gb drive.

[After panicing] I took out all 3 devices and tried them individually in two different computers. It appears that both the 1TB drive and the DVD writer are detected by BIOS on their own, and the 500gb drive is not. When the 500gb drive is coupled with either component, nothing is detected.

No strange noises are being made by this harddrive. It does sound like it's spinning up, but I can't be 100% sure. The drive was functioning fine when I was using it last night, and nothing out of the ordinary happened during the shut down procedure.

I'm running Windows 7 Pro x64, on ~2 month old hardware. Motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P. This 500gb drive (model ST3500320AS) however, is older. I'm currently looking for the receipt to determine exactly how old it is.

Do I have any hope of prying data off this drive? I don't own a SATA enclosure for 3.5" drives, but I can probably borrow one from a co-worker tomorrow (or buy one). Since having this drive plugged in seems to cause every other SATA device to stop working, I can't use a live cd to run testdisk or similar software.

More importantly, did this drive die on it's own, or could there be something else going on? How can I test for such a possibility?

(I'll mention that I do have backups of important files, so this shouldn't be a big issue.. But who wants to download 20gb of games off Steam again?)

Australia Post Alternatives?

LongDrive — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:27:19 -0800

Small business looking for Alternative to Australia Post for international shipping. Does one exist? What started as a simple side-project for two geeks has spun into a bit of a runaway phenomenon which leaves us in a peculiar financial situation relating to fulfilling our product.

We always knew Australia Post's fees for international postage were high, but were happy to eat the cost. But now we are dealing with a very large quantity, and the cost of postage pretty much eats all our profit, in some cases, costing more than the manufacturing itself!

We understand Australia Post offer discounts on contract, but you have to sign off on a large annual spend, and they don't even consider it until you have shown consistent spend for a few months.

We have considered:

-Drop-shipping (simply too many countries to do it effectively.)
-Printing and fulfilling overseas (a possibility in the near future)
-Borrowing a friends Australia post account (most likely solution)
-Finding some sort of mail house (discounts are pretty slim if any, and they have semi-dodgy ways of getting the post there to begin with)

Has anyone else in Australia been in this boat before? Are we missing something? Does anyone have specific referrals? Does Australia Post simply hate Small Business? Are we simply too far away?

Glee, Seinfeld and a Question about Post-Modernism

CollectiveMind — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:45:14 -0800

I keep thinking about the word, "post-modernism." As I understand it, it began after the crash of 1929, and has since represented a ironic self-evaluation of our relativistic values, ideas, cultural touchstones, etc. I've probably missed the nuance, but I'm wanting to get a generalized understanding. If it began after 1929, does that mean the tendency for us to criticize our own navel gazing happens when we experience shattering events, like Pearl Harbor, or 9/11 or the Great Recession of 2008?

And if its marked by irony, is that why there are so many, (some would call) smart, snarky, dark or meaningless comedies beginning with, maybe, Seinfeld, and now including Community, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Glee, etc?

Finally, if this post modern ball got rolling around the 1930s, is it destined to keep rolling forever, meaning I wonder, if post-modern itself is doomed to be eternally post-modern; the old irony continually crushed by the new irony. Hasn't this always been the human condition?

She said I should talk more about my cat; that people like that sort of thing here. I didn't know I still had a cat. Explains a few things.

grumblebee — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:22:15 -0800

Did anyone archive the cwalken posts on Twitter? There used to be a fake Christopher-Walken account on Twitter. The posts were brilliant, surreal gems. But Twitter shut it down. There's a new account that might be by the same writer, but all the old posts are gone. I'm hoping someone saved them somewhere.

Who is the best person to diagnose post partum depression/anxiety

dasheekeejones — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:26:04 -0800

Who is the best person to diagnose Post Partum Depression/Anxiety? Your OB, psychologist, psychiatrist, marriage counselor? I gave birth to my son the end of Dec 08 and the first week he was home, my whole world changed to where all I see in my husband are his bad points and we fight every week since then. I realized something was up with me so I'm back in therapy to figure it out (she's a LCSW who I've seen before). Yet I just feel like it's going nowhere. But I also don't know if my feelings towards my husband are PPD, PPA, or just wanting a better life for me and my son. Plus I have a constant feeling that something bad will happen to our son. He was born with meconium aspiration syndrome and I realize now how serious it was. For an hour I didn't get to see my son, hear what's going on, etc. The docs just distracted me and wouldn't tell me what's going on but I KNEW that something was wrong. At 6 weeks, he acquired RSV and was struggling to breathe and was in the hospital for a week. Then more bumps in the road from double hernia surgery, another 2 week bronchiolitis infection and trouble breathing, acid reflux, milk allergy, etc. All I "see" is something bad happening to him. I love him more than words can say to the point of tears (literally) and I just feel like no one cares about him like I do, including my husband. He talks about vacations without him, going out and about disturbing quality naps in his crib (which throws him off), taking him swimming (he's in class now), etc. I just have this intense feeling that he will die. I don't know why. And I also feel that my husband's influence on him is nothing but trouble--the way he grew up with a rough crowd, never went to college, etc. It scares me to death and now all I do is worry, worry, worry that our son will follow the same road. So we fight to the point where my husband is lashing out--screaming at me in front of our son (I demand for him to stop and he blames me for provoking him), telling me somethign is wrong and I need "fixing", etc. I want him to go to therapy for his attitude/behaviors and he doesn't do anything with the phone number. So I thing about divorce a few times a month and worry the effect staying or leaving has on our son. He's only 6 months old.

Sorry to ramble. I'm so confused and lost at to where to go, what to do, is this PPD/PPA, do I need meds, or is it really that my son opened to my eyes that in the end, my husband isn't the right person for us and we should be apart? Do I stick with this therapist, go to my OB and have her recommend someone, or get us both into marriage counseling and have him sort it out?

Wordpress can't save.

lockedroomguy — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:16:11 -0800

Wordpress- When trying to save a post, I get redirected to my public blog page. When I try to write a new Wordpress post, and I either click "Save" or "Save and Continue editing", instead of doing so my browser redirects to my public blog page, i.e. the blog root. If I then re-enter Wordpress Site Admin, my post is not there. It doesn't seem to matter what's in the post--it happens even with a single character.

- New behavior as of yesterday. Worked fine on Sunday.
- I am the only person who (legitimately) makes changes to Wordpress and no one else should have access. I haven't made any changes.
- Hosted shared server at Pair.com. I opened a service ticket, and they say it's not their problem and have not changed apache or Linux recently.
- Browser and OS independent
- Wordpress 2.2.1.

I'm not eager to try a Wordpress upgrade as the first solution.

I checked the Wordpress forums. There are several open threads on a similar problem on multiple versions of Wordpress. The threads that are resolved were fixed via hacking mod_security. Didn't work for me, but I don't rule out any other solutions along those lines...

Any ideas are welcome, either to fix the problem or to place responsibility on Wordpress, my hosting provider, or elsewhere.

Thanks!

Please, help me post a video that's currently too large. I'm a Mac user.

Toto_tot — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:44:32 -0800

How do I get a too large video on line? A friend of mine passed away and I created a slide show tribute that I would love to post on-line. I created it with Photo to Movie and have it rendered as an MPEG-4 which is 140 ish Megs. It is also 11:30 Minutes. When I rendered it in Quicktime it was more that 2G.

I have the typical Mac software at my disposal.
I have a place to host it where it needs to be 100 Megs or less.
Is there a way for me to use iMovie or some such to dip the quality a bit? It will only play on people's home computers.

Alternatively, is there a different place to host it? Create a website maybe?
I can put some money into this...

Thanks SO much.

Help me track this package from Iran!

estherbester — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:40:09 -0800

Help me track this package from Iran! I have a tracking number but no idea who the carrier is. Someone in Iran mailed us a package for work (a video cassette) and I don't know where I can enter the tracking number: in the email they said they sent it "by coliy post no:RRxxxxxxxxIR from IRAN-TEHRAN-15" (where each x is a digit)

The most promising lead was http://tntsearch.post.ir/ but the number doesn't work when I enter it.

Post & Beam in Asheville, NC

Glendale — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:01:16 -0800

Looking for a Post & Beam construction job in Asheville, NC. Any suggestions? I have an excellent resume, great references, and pretty darn good cover letter. Unfortunately, I'll only be in Asheville from January-September 2009. I'm looking to work an entry-level position to gain experience. I've been working carpentry and remodeling for a few years now, and before that was doing high-end residential house painting.

Lying/stretching the truth about the amount of time I'll be with the company isn't an option for me. I'm looking to work with/for happy, down to earth folks that appreciate good hard work and an appreciation for detail and quality labor. Do you know any businesses (big or small) that fit this mold?

Post cards and Florida

mad_little_monkey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:32:28 -0800

Post Office Post Card Filter - how can I find out how many post cards have been sent from Florida over the last century? I'm working on a paper for a Master's Degree on why Florida is so weird. I suspect it has a lot to do with postcards. If any of you know of any factual or anecdotal info on postcards and Florida I would love to include it.

Here's what I am trying to find out: Is there any record of how busy Florida post offices were with post cards? Were any post offices in Florida exceptionally busy because of them? Did Florida sell more 1 cent stamps relative to other states? How much did it cost to send a post card between 1900 and 2000? What about National Post Card week?

Anything on Florida and post cards would be truly appreciated...

What are these weird posts on the sidewalk in Manhattan?

dcjd — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:25:12 -0800

What are these weird posts on the sidewalk in Manhattan? I recently have seen rectangular posts installed on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan. (south of 14th street) They are painted gray, have two circular yellow barriers on the street side to prevent cars from hitting them, and have a scary sticker on the top warning of electrocution. Another hint: the wet paint sign on one says Department of Transportation on it.

Here are two pictures of what I am talking about:

Picture 1

Picture 2

Parcel from France

gimonca — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:15:50 -0800

Package shipped from France, really should have been sent by Chronopost, instead was shipped surface mail. How long will it take to arrive in the U.S.? Roughly speaking.

What gets blogs noticed?

LSK — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:37:01 -0800

What gets blogs noticed? Well, this is a generic question, but one I couldn't find an answer to by searching previous questions, so I'm curious: Why do some blogs get attention when hundreds of thousands of others don't? Is it some ability of the author or just plain luck?

Recommend me some good post-apocalyptic movies and books

dcrocha — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:24:42 -0800

I have just found out I'm a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction books. Somehow I like the idea of an individual or small group of survivors almost alone in the world trying to find out what the hell happened to the planet and fighting for their survival. What are some good books and movies the hive mind can recommend?

Dead Letter Office

Shepherd — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:01:47 -0800

What happens when I tell catalogue people I am dead? Somehow -- I suspect it was the Folio Society, because it seems to be mostly book companies, British culture companies and classical music clubs -- my name and address has been sold to a list mill. This is addressed mail, not "Occupant" or "Current Resident" mail.

Conventional Internet spam wisdom is "never tell them you don't want their catalogue, because that just confirms the address is valid and raises your spam value rating." Does the same apply to junk mail?

And if so, what's the best way of dealing with it? I have considered drawing a line through the address and putting "UNSOLICITED" on the mail, then leaving it sticking out of the mailbox for the postal person to return to sender, but I'm worried that that's not a recognized reason to send mail back. "DECEASED" is more fun (and kind of cool), but I'm concerned that it, along with "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS," will result in the post office proper thinking I am dead/no longer resident and bouncing legitimate mail. My name, in theory, becomes valueless and is removed from lists (rather than becoming confirmed and therefore more valuable).

I am in Canada, and we do not have an equivalent to the options listed here. I think nipping this in the bud, and telling these companies I am "dead," either by "DECEASED: RETURN TO SENDER" post or by calling their 1-800 numbers, is the best method of getting my name conclusively removed from their lists, because dead people generally do not purchase things by mail order or otherwise.

But are there ramifications to being catalogue-dead that I am not considering?

Code For A Random Blog Post?

Jaybo — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:31:13 -0800

I have a blog and would like to add a "Random Post" button. I'm hosted with a company called Blogware which, unlike Blogger and WordPress, seems to have no no way to add a "random post" button.

I'm not a programmer but suspect this should be fairly easy to do. I'd like advice on how to go about this - do I try to do it in JavaScript? PHP? Something else? Whatever's the easiest solution is best for me. (Major bonus points if someone provides the code itself that would do this, either as a text link or a button I can add.)

All posts on my blog have the basic format of: http://blog.jason.hammond.net/blog/_archives/yyyy/m/dd/

...so if I can define the start date of my blog (Feb 28, 2006) and occasionally update the script with the most recent date of a post as an end point, that would be close enough for what I want. (I try to post daily but don't mind if users end up on a blank day or don't have every single recent post I've made in the range.)

I should also mention that I'm not able to get to the "guts" of the site but can add third-party widgets and other bits of code.

To do this, I think I need to:
- define the start date of the range (2006/2/26)
- define the end date (for now, say 2008/4/26) and be able to easily change this monthly or whenever I get a chance
- generate a random date in the format yyyy/m/dd
- append that to the URL: "http://blog.jason.hammond.net/blog/_archives/"
- go to that URL

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

Help me mail my stuff securely!

catburger — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:59:43 -0800

I need to mail a passport and possibly other important, hard-to-replace legal documents from one Canadian address to another. Deadline is within the coming week. What is the most secure way to do this? If you have personal experience with this, please describe how long it took, cost, risks, etc. Thanks very much in advance.

Film work in the US of A

mooza — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:46:31 -0800

Working in the US film industry as a foreigner. Please explain... Can the Hive Mind break down how the post production side of the film industry works in the States? The SO and I are looking into the possibility of working there (we're Australian). We are a film editor and sound editor, with credits in series TV (so no ads or corporates), although you know, they're mostly Australian credits. Aside from the frightening visa issues, which I'll save for another question, we just want an idea of how things run in general.

Are most things done on a freelance/contract basis? What sort of permanent work is out there (I figured it was like working for a big company like, say, MTV and being farmed out on their in-house productions)? Permanent work makes getting an E-3 visa viable for us. Do most people have agents? How necessary and how hard is it to get into the unions? I know LA is the place to be, but is NY doable? Have I broken MeFi rules by asking so many questions? Sorry, a little overwhelmed here.

We'll probably end up in London. But we can dream, can't we?!

Where should an aspiring indie Mac developer and his family move: SF Bay Area or Seattle (or Other)?

mboszko — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:34:56 -0800

My wife and two kids and I are not able to renew the lease on the house we're renting in a Maryland suburb of DC (the landlord is selling his other house and moving back into this one), so we're looking to move at the end of August. I've also been contemplating a career change for a while, and as this "opportunity" has dropped in our lap, we're thinking about making a city change as well, that would benefit my intended Mac development career, possibly to the SF Bay Area or Seattle. (more inside) Currently, I am a video post-production professional (doing mostly offline/online editing for History/Discovery cable TV series, but with some simpler motion graphics, some small video engineering work), but I'm working toward my goal of becoming an independent Mac software developer. Of course, with my current workload, I've been finding it very hard to ramp up on the coding, and also could really use the support and inspiration of a weekly coder meeting like NSCoder or something akin to that.

So, my big goal is to find somewhere where I can:
A.) Continue doing video work on a freelance or employed basis, while I
B.) Meet regularly with a like-minded community of independent Mac developers,
C.) Find a reasonably priced rental with 3 bedrooms within a 45-60m drive from the city, and
D.) My wife can continue to homeschool the kids, assuming living expenses are reasonable enough, or a place that has phenomenal public schooling, if expenses are high enough to require her to go back to work.
E.) Optional and ideal would be finding an indie Mac software house that needs video work, and would be willing to entertain programming questions from a budding Mac dev. ;-)

Right now, I'm considering the Bay Area (maybe living north in Petaluma or such), Seattle, and taking a glance at Portland and Chicago. I suspect the Bay Area would be best for me professionally, since there's a decent amount of video production and incredible Mac developer resources, but I'm afraid the housing situation may preclude that.

Sell me on your city - any advice or recommendations are welcome. Thanks!

Craig won't list my posts

onshi — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:14:26 -0800

I posted to craigslist >48 hours ago. Post comes up perfectly via the direct link, but won't show up in the category listing or through various spot-on searches. What's the deal? Curious, I tried posting to several other categories (nothing offensive or otherwise likely to be flagged) but still, no dice. I've tried using Firefox, IE & Safari in Vista. In the past I have been able to post to Craigslist with great success. What might I be doing wrong this time?

I wish I could run my BIOS in a debugger.

mindsound — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:24:01 -0800

Help me guess which part of my homebrew PC is causing my POST video failure. I built this box six months ago. Its stability has been flawless. Now, suddenly, my POST keeps doing a <long>beep</long> <short>beep beep</short> which for my BIOS is a video failure. It then boots sans video. If I unplug the power and fool around for 15 minutes or so (that's as precise as I can be after a couple evenings of despair) it will boot with video again.

This is my parts list; here it is on Newegg with moar linkies if you have a login there. The proc is a 45W Athlon X2 and I dual-boot XP and Ubuntu. There are a few vaguely related prior questions but I couldn't find any love for my particular crisis. I'm having the same POST error as phrontist here, but he had a notebook.

Is it the:

Video card? It's a fanless NVIDIA 8500, which is allegedly somewhat fail-y due to the passive cooling. However, the system has never had any instability or lockups in six months and when it boots again after fiddling it's rock solid.

Motherboard? The fact that the system is stable once it boots makes me wonder if maybe the BIOS is somehow flaky.

PSU? It only boots now after the system has been unplugged for a while...

I talk big but I am fairly ignorant about hardware and haven't built a system since like 2001. All of the above is (I think) returnable but the software developer in me wants to know what is going on. What do you think is wrong? What would you do in my shoes?

Return Address?

Ignatius J. Reilly — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:37:48 -0800

Am I legally required to include a return address when using a first class stamp with the US Postal Service?

Need a cheap way to send a single pencil to someone.

inthe80s — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:43:46 -0800

What is the cheapest way to mail a single pencil to someone? I'm talking US domestic to US domestic address. An ideal solution wouldn't require a trip to the post office (although the first one I send probably would be through a desk clerk to make sure it's ok). I want something I could stick in my mail box as the need arises. Looking for suggestions for packaging material as well as postage. I'm planning on only sending one at a time to people, and probably no more than a dozen or two dozen different addresses. Not doing a bulk mailing for some direct marketing company or anything. Just something funny for a select group of friends. I don't have a scale to weigh them, or a postal meter or enough to get bulk discount mailing rates from the post office.

We're talking your standard #2 yellow pencil like you get in school (customized with a message).