Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with reception

Human (And Dog) Antenna

amyms — Sun, 25 May 2008 11:01:22 -0800

A question about how our bodies affect radio reception... We have a stereo in our living room that has poor radio reception. It is plugged into a power strip that is in turn plugged into a wall outlet (an inner wall, if that's important). It doesn't have an antenna.

Whenever one of us walks by, the reception gets crystal clear, and significantly louder. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we could get clearer reception on the television by holding the "rabbit ears" in our fingertips. But, with the stereo, there's no one touching any part of it when the phenomenon occurs. It even happens, though not every time, when our dogs walk by (they're both small terrier mixes, if that matters), but not when the cats walk by.

I understand that our bodies can act as antennae, but how does this work, especially when simply walking by the stereo without touching it?

Weddings for Dummies

desjardins — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:14:36 -0800

[WeddingFilter] I need recommendations for a really, really basic book or Web site that explains how to plan your own wedding. Bonus points if it holds your hand and tells you "there, there, it will all be alright." We're in our 30s and this is our first marriage. We're on a budget. We have no idea what we are doing. None. We can't afford a wedding planner. We have mothers that are all too willing to help, but we don't want them to stage a takeover (which they will, if given an inch).

We need resources that will explain what to do in baby steps. I don't know how to set a date if we don't have a place and I don't know how to look for places if we don't know how many people we're inviting and I don't know how many people we should invite if we don't know any costs.. etc. I'm overwhelmed.

I've also never been good with remembering traditions and social etiquette stuff. I need something that will tell me if I really should invite that cousin I haven't seen in 15 years, and what to do when the people I'd want to stand up in my wedding are scattered throughout two countries and too poor to make multiple trips for bridal showers, dress shopping, etc. I am not a girly-girl and haven't paid much attention to all this stuff when others around me have gotten married. His sisters had quickie-OMGbaby! weddings, so that's his frame of reference.

I want something fairly traditional, but not at a church. (He's agnostic, I'm buddhist, both raised Christian. The ceremony won't be too far from the normal procedure, just with the Christian references removed. My uncle is a judge and can marry us.) This will be in the midwest US, most likely Milwaukee, possibly elsewhere in SE Wisconsin.

Help me choose the cell phone company to replace my horrible Sprint contract

worker_bee — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:52:54 -0800

I'm close to ending my cell phone contract with Sprint (Thank God, I'll be rid of them at last). Now I have to make a choice on which carrier to go with and want to make sure I get the best reception in our home area and especially in the house itself. Is there a single website out there that has good information or comparisons on the reception from different cell phone carriers in a particular area (which in my case is the Virginia hinterland between DC and Richmond)? Maybe some kind of users group or something, but not tied to a specific cell phone company?

Realistically I don't expect any sales person to tell me the truth, so other than tracking down neighbors and quizzing them on their carrier and how their cell phone sounds I don't know how I can get this kind of information.

Looking to MeFi'ers to once again come up with the right answer so I can make an intelligent decision (for a change) that I won't hate for the next two years .

looking for texas wedding venue

madmamasmith — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 07:35:37 -0800

I live in Austin Texas and just got engaged. I am trying to find a venue that offers an outdoor ceremony site and an indoor or covered reception area. My budget is no more than 2,000 dollars. Our ideal setting offers seating for 80 people, allows us to bring in our own vendors and use decorations. I would also like something that either offers camping, cabins or is close to lodgings. We really want a country or hill country setting and recently I thought how cool it would be to have it in an old train depot or church or even abandoned old building with great architecture. There are alot of places listed online, but I am looking for something more unique, less fancy, less run of the mill. Does anyone have any ideas about cool buildings or locations that might be open to hosting a small wedding???Or know of any state parks with cool event halls? Thanks!

Seattle jazz group recommendations: Sax in the Rain?

fatllama — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:39:25 -0800

Seattle area jazz/swing bands (for a wedding reception)? Google offers a big-ass list. But you have thoughtful, intelligent recommendations. Please to hope me?

Help us Find a simple Wedding Ceremony and Reception Location in Southern California!

matthelm — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:44:29 -0800

Help us find the right place for small wedding ceremony / reception in Southern California We have a budget of about $2500 for a small wedding ceremony and reception. Just trying to find unique places for a ceremony of 10 and then a unique place for a reception of about 25 people were we can eat and dance...any ideas?

Where should we have our reception?

explosion — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:42:23 -0800

Help us find a place for our wedding reception! My fiancée and I are planning to get married next year, around May or June. We've decided that a nice restaurant would be good for our reception because it would concentrate a lot of the planning, and make it easier for us. Our problem is that we don't know of that many nice restaurants in the Boston/South Shore area.

Our budget is kind of undefined, as her father has told us not to worry about price, but her mother has been telling us to shop around. We're ultimately looking for a wedding that feels affordable and nice, but neither cheap nor over-classy.

Our criteria:

-A decent vegetarian menu. There will be meat as well, but we are vegetarians, and we'd like more than the token pasta primavera.

-Our reception will be approximately 70-90 people total.

-We would like to have the (extremely short) wedding at or nearby the restaurant, so a nice exterior is a big plus.

We had Barker Tavern suggested to us, and it does look nice. We're going to take a look next week, but we'd like more options so that we can compare and make a choice.

Bonus question: Is there anything we should be looking for, or remember to ask when taking a tour of a restaurant for a wedding reception?

Getting Married in Milwaukee?

yellowbkpk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:57:35 -0800

Where is a cool place to get married and have a reception in or close to Milwaukee? At the risk of getting yelled at for duping this question, can anyone suggest a site for reception and ceremony in the greater Milwaukee, WI area?

I like all of the suggestions about talking to caterers and photographers in the thread I linked to above (and will definitely look into it), but can you offer and specific suggestions?

Bonus points for finding a place less expensive than the Milwaukee Art Museum's Calatrava addition (way too expensive), but just as cool.

We (the couple) are youngish, are interested in a pretty/interesting/neat-looking site, and have fairly large families. The guest list is 200 people right now.

Thanks!

Why cut the rug?

slowfasthazel — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:51:01 -0800

Why do people want to dance at a wedding reception? My fiancé and I do not go dancing. My friends do not have dancing at their parties. Out of a guest list of around 80, I would say maybe 5 make an effort to go dancing in their regular lives. So why are we expected to provide "Brick House" and a smooth surface because we are getting married? OK, I know we don't HAVE to do this, I just want to understand why everyone wants and expects dancing at a wedding when dancing is totally off the radar the rest of the time.

I thought this was supposed to be static-free

Ms. Saint — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:17:39 -0800

What factors affect my XM radio's reception? I've had my XM radio in my car for about 10 months now. Most of the time, I only listen to it when driving to and from work (about three miles each way). This means that I'm usually listening to it at the exact same place I was the day before, and the day before that, and so on.

The thing is, sometimes it's staticy and sometimes it's not. There is an underpass that I go under every day--a few weeks ago, there were three days where the sound would short out for a split second when I went under it. Since then, however, the radio has sounded perfectly fine at that part of my route. Similarly, there is an intersection where, sometimes, the static gets so bad that I can hardly hear the music. Other times, there's no static there at all. Most of the time, at that intersection, the static is noticeable but not very loud. I have never noticed any important differences at these locations (and others where the radio behaves similarly) on the different days (though I'll admit I don't know what to look for).

So, my question is, what the heck could be causing these differences? Is it something about the FM frequency I'm using (even though I have tried several different frequencies with the same result)? Does it have to do with the receiver? Something else? Is there anything I can do to stop it?

I'll admit I don't know much about the technology, so sorry if I'm naive in some stupid way.

How do we avoid kissing at our wedding reception?

ODiV — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:12:51 -0800

How do my wife and I avoid kissing at our wedding reception? We're really not big on the idea of kissing in public, especially with all eyes on us. How can we avoid kissing during the reception? It seems to be universally expected and people do that annoying glass clinking thing at EVERY wedding I've been to.

Working against us is that the reception is falling into a very standard format: dinner/speeches/dancing. I have a feeling that if we had a "different" all around wedding reception, we might be able to avoid the kissing thing entirely. For reference, we're in Canada.

I've been looking around online, but only really finding alternatives to the way in which our guests can prod us into kissing. Google strategies would be appreciated as well if no solid ideas come up.

Has anyone here pulled this off or been to a wedding that managed it?

We do plan on kissing for the ceremony, though. Still not sure about tongue.

How do I improve my crappy cell phone reception in my apartment?

zembla3 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:07:16 -0800

I have a Samsung SCH-A990 cell phone with Verizon Wireless. For the past few months, I have been getting terrible (sometimes non-existent) reception in my apartment. I used to get slightly better reception. My roommate has the same carrier (different phone) and gets much better reception. I have contacted Verizon several times about this and have found them to be totally unhelpful. I'm wondering whether getting a new phone or changing my number would help the situation. (I have a Long Island area code but live in Brooklyn.) I'm not sure why my reception has gradually worsened over the past few months, unless it's all those pesky condo towers going up in my neighborhood. I've tried dialing *228 to update the signal, but that hasn't really helped. Fyi - my apartment building materials haven't changed. It's still your standard concrete facade.

Colorado Convention Center: Decent Cell Coverage?

migurski — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:04:46 -0800

What kind of cell phone reception do you get in Denver's Colorado Convention Center? We're possibly involved in a conference there in a few weeks, and a project we're doing hinges on coverage good enough to send and receive SMS in the convention center. I've heard that it's "spotty" in the below-ground parts of the center, but that could mean anything ... is it good enough to deal with hundreds of attendees bouncing text messages back & forth? Ideally, we need to know ASAP. =)

This is a question about AM radio reception in my car.

thirteenkiller — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 08:14:30 -0800

This is a question about AM radio reception in my car. I currently live two states away from where I grew up, and every now and then I drive back for a visit. When I start getting close, I try to tune in to my hometown public radio station, 910 AM. It seems like I can never get good reception until I'm just 20 or 30 miles out. When I leave my hometown again, though, having tuned into the station in town, I get good clear reception for nearly 200 miles. Why does this happen? It really does seem to be a regular thing. My antenna is imprinted in the rear right window of my car. Is it possible that once my radio has been tuned into the station, it can maintain it longer? Or am I just imagining things?

Better boombox FM reception?

CwgrlUp — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:56:42 -0800

How do you get better FM reception from a boombox? I have a relatively inexpensive Emerson boombox at work. Needless to say, it has no external antenna jack. I'm in the center of the building with florecent lights all around and reception is crap. How do I rig some kind of antenna? (Can't put anything on the outside of the building or anything like that so it has to be indoors.)

Sappy sentiments welcome

JaredSeth — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:04:41 -0800

Looking for suggestions for a message to put on party favor sand bottles. The wife and I were married in Sri Lanka back in December, and now we're throwing a party for friends and family here in the States.

As a party favor, we're planning on giving some sand from the beach where we had the ceremony in little bottles labeled with our names and the wedding date and the location of the ceremony. We'd also like to hang a tag on them with a message to the effect of "we're sorry you couldn't be there with us, so we brought a little bit of the wedding back to you" (yeah, I know it's bad). So far we haven't come up with a way to phrase it that we both like. It needs to be fairly succinct as the tags aren't large.

Anyone have any ideas?

My apologies if this is ChatFilter.

Help us with dance music for a wedding!

k8t — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:36:04 -0800

Dance music for a wedding! Please help. You've already helped with the "mingle" music, but now we wanna get our dance on. '70s, '80s, indie, light on the hip hop. It needs to work for all ages, but doesn't have to be totally sex-free. We don't want any YMCA or Macarena. PLEASE HELP!

How should I get 170 people good and drunk?

Alison — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:38:36 -0800

I'm doing a (semi) limited bar at my wedding reception on a (semi) limited budget. What is the best hard liquor to serve? How much should I buy? We would also love to hear suggestions for wine and champagne that offer the most for our dollar. My reception facility is mercifully BYOB, so we will be stocking both bars. We want to serve beer (at least two kinds), wine (white and red), two or three kinds of hard liquor, and champagne if the budget allows. We're also doing a few signature cocktails, so our hard liquors will definitely include tequila and rum. Our facility will be stocking all of our mixers for us.

We'll have about 170 drinkers and a budget of $600-$700. However, if this is too little we can raid other areas of the budget to make sure we cover any monetary shortfalls.

My questions:
1) Is about 3 glasses of beer per drinker enough? We can obtain two 1/2 kegs and two 1/4 kegs of two very nice beers for $250. That should yield almost 500 12 ounce glasses of beer.

2) How much red wine should we buy? How much white wine should we buy? What brands/vintages should we look for?

3) Are there any other hard liquors that we should consider stocking? How much should we buy?

4) What are some good budget champagne suggestions? Would it be terribly gauche to buy just a few bottles of the nicer stuff for the lucky few who get to them first?

I'm not much of a drinker, so please let me borrow your refined palettes.

Thank you, Ask Metafilter, for continuing to plan my wedding!

Where to get married in NYC for under $15K?

Silverlantern — Mon, 28 May 2007 07:15:31 -0800

Where in Manhattan or Brooklyn can we have a wedding reception for under $15K? I have been trolling Citysearch, NY Magazine, Indiebride and other sites for awhile, trying to find a restaurant or space in Manhattan or Brooklyn where my finace and I can have a ceremony and reception for under $15K (including food, open bar, taxes and gratuity) to little or no avail. What can folks suggest? Ideal place would also have some sort of outdoor space and space for dancing later on.

What do cell phone reception bars mean?

norm — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:59:03 -0800

What exactly do those cell phone reception bars represent? I seem to have great cell phone reception (Cingular) everywhere but my home. Yet often while I'm getting terrible reception and dropped calls, the phone tells me it has three bars of reception. What's THAT all about? Is my provider telling my phone to intentionally inflate the reporting of my reception or is something about my home causing my problem even though I nominally have good reception?

Know of any cool places to get married and have a reception in West-Central Wisconsin?

adamwolf — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:47:51 -0800

I'm getting married. We're looking for a cool place to have the ceremony and reception. We're looking for places that aren't fire stations, town halls, or church basements. Unless they're *really cool* fire stations. I'd also like to not be at a wedding factory, where they pump out weddings multiple times a day. * Within an hour of Eau Claire, WI (West Central Wisconsin)
* Ceremony and reception at same place
* Enough space for 100 people to eat, and 200 people at the dance
* High ceilings
* Well lit
* Natural colors
* Plated service
* Not potluck food (no sloppy joes, coleslaw, baked beans)
* Won't look like a conference room being used for a wedding reception

We're pretty flexible, and mostly just gathering ideas, so feel free to suggest something that doesn't quite fit all my requirements.

Can you hear me NOW?

CwgrlUp — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:16:10 -0800

Where can I get a good, used, Cingular-compatible phone online? My gf and I have Ericsson z525a phones with Cingular. The reception is terrible. Way too soon in our contract to try to get an upgrade from them. We can't afford to buy two new phones outright. I am looking for suggestions for reputable sites for buying used Cingular phones online. (I'd love to hear models you like as well. Think simple, please. We're concerned with reception and ease of text messaging but nothing as serious as a Blackberry or anything. We're used to making due with regular ol' 1-9 keypad phones to text.) TIA.

PS Ebay intimidates me a bit because you have to watch it constantly and outbid other people and deal with Paypal, etc. Also my dad had an account there a few yrs ago and it was hacked into. Long story! Let's just say I'd prefer somewhere else.

Unique reception venue in Sioux Falls?

bristolcat — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:59:43 -0800

Please help us find a unique but elegant wedding reception venue in Sioux Falls, SD! My fiancé and I are planning a Spring 2008 wedding. We have met with much frustration. At the risk of sounding like a Bridezilla, I'm having trouble picking a site that fits my "dream wedding." My fiancé seems content with wherever, but I am adverse to the thought of a reception in a tent, church basement or hotel meeting room.

The kicker is our capacity needs. He has a HUGE family and is inviting EVERYONE, so we need room for at least 240 people. This blew away my dream of getting married in the Old Courthouse Museum, which has a capacity of 160.

Can mefites suggest anything just as unique and elegant? Sioux Falls isn't a very big town and it's making this choice frustrating. Personal experience or pictures/websites is a huge plus.

Thank you!!!!

What can I do to improve my cellphone reception indoors?

Kickstart70 — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:50:55 -0800

What can I do to improve my cellphone reception inside my house, and not one of the scammy crap things than I see available in spam and Google searches on this subject? My cellphone works generally ok outside the house, but once inside I can't even make a phone call. I often end up standing inside with my head outside the door to have conversations with people. My wife's cellphone does the same thing (maybe slightly better than mine).

We don't have a landline, and use Skype for long distance, so I -can- make calls from inside the house. However, when I want to call a Canadian 1-800 number Skype fails. Our living space is a groundlevel suite, about 20 years old, and has some metal interior framing, which I suspect is part of the problem. Additionally, our wireless baby monitor has piss-poor reception as well.

Is there anything I can do? FWIW, my phone is an LG6070.

Small reception sites in Mpls/St. Paul

Zosia Blue — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:44:16 -0800

Looking for a place for a small wedding reception in the Tiwn Cities, with a few other specifications. This is a spur-of-the-moment wedding, so I don't hold hope I'll be able to meet all of my desires, but here's a go:

The wedding reception will be 15 people or under on a weekend in early December of this year. I'd like a nice restaurant with a private room. I'd like it not to be exorbitantly expensive, as we're on a budget. (I don't want to throw out price ranges, as I'd like to see what you guys come up with.) The actual ceremony will be in Excelsior, so I'm not opposed to restaurants in the outer suburbs. I'd like to completely avoid downtown Mpls, which I know limits options, but, man, I HATE downtown. My most specific request, and I'm flexible on this, is that the private room have a window or two. Most don't, I know, but I'd like to avoid being stuck in a basement or a wine cellar. A plus PLUS would be a restaurant on one of the lakes, but I know those tend to be in the upper price range. Good vegetarian fare is a plus, but not a must. Basically: a nice place (but not TOO nice as to impose a stiff atmosphere and a weighty check) with a great atmosphere, not downtown.

Any ideas? I'm open to the idea of renting a space, and bringing in catering, too.