Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with scale

Mistake in federal job announcement: Recourse in holding agency to terms?

Alaska Jack — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:36:36 -0800

Federal HR experts: Due to an "unfortunate mistake," I am being offered a salary less than that which is listed on the federal job announcement. This after investing an enormous amount of time, energy etc. in the application process. Do I have any recourse? So, after a *tremendous* amount of personal time, effort and emotion invested, I have been offered a good job working for a federal agency in Alaska. The position is a GS-14; the job description says:

"Salary Range: 95,010.00 - 123,519.00"
"Series & Grade: GS-1035-14"
"In addition to the salary listed the selectee will also receive a cost of living allowance of 23%."

So I just got a call from the HR folks, making a formal offer. Here's the thing: The woman who called me said the salary listed on the job announcement was a "very unfortunate" mistake - the actual amount she was authorized to offer is $83,445 + COLA.

Needless to say this is dismaying, particularly since I invested so much time into interview preparation, getting my portfolio together, etc. etc. etc. Do I have any recourse here to hold the agency to the salary listed in the announcement?

Any guidance gratefully appreciated.

PS If it matters, I THINK what happened (I am totally not an expert -- this is just what I came up with after a little research) is this: In the Lower 48, you get a base salary ($83,445) plus a "locality adjustment." In Alaska, you do not get this "locality adjustment"; instead, you get the base salary plus a "Cost of Living Adjustment." If I'm right, the salary listed in the job announcement mistakenly includes a base salary AND a Lower-48 style "locality adjustment" (plus of course it says "In addition to the salary listed the selectee will also receive a cost of living allowance of 23%.")

Create scale animation in Photoshop?

aaronetc — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:48:44 -0800

I am trying to create an animated button in Photoshop CS4 which includes a logo scaling down and moving a bit across the animation. I've created two frames that I'll tween between, but no matter what I do, when I scale the logo it changes in both frames. I've turned on and off the three unify buttons and the propagate frame 1 checkbox, and I've scaled using Transform and with the move tool options, every time it scales in both frames. Moving it from one position to another works just fine. Can anyone help?

Where to find a good weight chart for the kitchen?

The corpse in the library — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:55:15 -0800

I'm looking for a poster showing the weights of various commonly used ingredients. I like to use my kitchen scale when cooking because it makes cleanup so much easier, but most of my recipes are American and show measurements in cups, not ounces. I'd like to have a poster in my kitchen that showed things like:

1 CUP SUGAR = 8 OZ
1 CUP WHITE FLOUR = 4 1/4 OZ
etc.

Basically this, but pretty enough to put on the wall. Either ounces or grams is fine. Anybody seen an attractive chart like this?

The time machine in back to the future was just a DeLorean covered in __. What's the word for _?

bartleby — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:41:51 -0800

Prompted by the success of a previous post, I have another special effects question. Is there a term of art for the stuff like extra model kit parts and other doodads glued to a model to give it a sense of scale and complexity? Most often seen in sci-fi stuff.

Think the Death Star: if it was just a smooth ball, it would have looked kind of silly and would have given no sense of proportion or scale. But spend a month gluing _______ to it, and now it seems like a giant space station. Or the opening of the original Star Wars, that long pan over a Star Destroyer? That was one long shot of ___________ that made it seem huge, when it was really just a 6-foot scale model.

Or the time machine from Back to the Future. Rather than design something from scratch, why not just take a stock DeLorean and cover it in _________ ? See, now it looks like a time travelling car.

Is there an industry term for _________ ?

I want to say "cruft", but that's bloated or unnecessary computer code. Another word? Better one?

Fitness level for body fat scale

jclovebrew — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:30:29 -0800

My body fat measuring scale requires me to give it parameters: Age, Height, Gender, and Fitness Level (1, 2, or 3). What should I enter for fitness level? The instructions just say something like "enter your fitness level on a scale from 1 to 3". Does anyone have a similar product and have a rule of thumb for this?

What is the best digital scale for humans?

melodykramer — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:07:12 -0800

I'm trying to lose some weight and people have recommended weighing myself every day, as motivation or somesuch. I was wondering if you have a digital scale that you absolutely love, and if so, what the name of it is. Thank you.

Help me scale an image in Photoshop

featherboa — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:18:23 -0800

Help me scale an image so that part of it is a specific size using Photoshop CS3. I've got an image, and I know that I need one part of that image to be a specific size in pixels, is there a way to scale the image so that that part is the correct size and the rest of the image scales appropriately?

I'm using Photoshop CS3 on a Mac.

I can do it by eye using free transform, but that's ridiculously time consuming, and not as accurate as I'd like. Is there another way to do this?

0.1 gram scale

Infernarl — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:32:40 -0800

recommendations for a 0.1 gram accuracy scale that does not reset if you tare it to 0 and then remove the weight and has a capacity of more than 1kg? I need a scale that can weigh in increments of 0.1g. It also needs to be able to display negative numbers. for example if I put a small tray on the scale and hit tare and then remove the tray I want to scale to display -0.56g of whatever the missing weight is. Most scales I have used just reset if they go into negative weight. I would also like the scale to have as large an upper weight limit as possible. 2kg would be good, more would be even better. Does anyone use or know of such a scale?

Cleaning scale from pool tile

TungstenChef — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:51:14 -0800

How can I best clean hard water scale from pool tile? We have a pool with ceramic tile at the waterline that is getting badly covered with hard water scale. How can we remove the stuff most efficiently? This page says that you can use muriatic acid in a spray bottle to help clean it, but I don't want to be spraying undiluted acid at basically eye level! What dilution can you use to loosen the stuff, and do you want to let it set or scrub immediately? Also, what tool is best to use for scrubbing? That link mentioned a putty knife, in other places I've seen a pumice stone recommended. Any other tips would be very helpful.

How many times do I need to weigh a given object to overcome the scale's inaccuracy?

geoff. — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:30:04 -0800

If I have a scale that is accurate to .1 grams and I want it to be accurate to say, .05 grams, how many measurements do I need to take to do this? Can I even do this? The digital readout is up to the hundredths, even though the claimed accuracy is in the tenths. Would such inaccuracy follow a normal distribution? Could I correct this my measuring the object say, 1000 times to get a better estimation? I feel as if there's a way to do this, and that it might have been on a chemistry final at some point in my life.

help me not kill my new lemon tree!

beandip — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:22:06 -0800

Help! I was just given a potted lemon tree! What do I do? I don't know anything about growing potted citrus plants (or any kind of potted tree). My mom gave me this plant, which a friend gave to her a couple of years ago. She said it was too hard to take care of, and that it was leaving sticky residue over everything nearby indoors. I think she's been watering every day. And when there were blossoms, she pollinated with a Q-tip. She moved it outside when the weather warmed up. I don't think she's done much else with it, other than trimming the top branches last year. And she repotted it recently but did not fertilize. Last year it produced some lemons.

Right now it's on my west-facing balcony, which gets a lot of sun in the afternoon and evening. That is the sunniest spot in this apartment so hopefully it will be enough. We live in Minnesota so I know that's going to make things harder.

My questions are:
1. How much water is enough? It seems like daily watering is probably overkill, especially if it's outside for the summer. Some of the leaves are yellow...
2. How do I know when to fertilize?
3. Should I be worried about bugs. When I picked the tree up, it was covered in ants (we're in a second floor apartment and have never had ants here, so I think that will be less of an issue than it was in my mom's backyard.) Some of the leaves look chewed. And there are a lot of brown bumps on the leaves (both top and bottom surfaces). Here are some pictures. Are these things anything to worry about? If so, what should I do? I'd really like to be able to eat any lemons that survive, so I suppose that most insecticides are ruled out.

Also, what are your favorite gardening sites where I could learn more about how to care for this thing?

Please help me! I am terrified of killing this tree through ignorance.

What's the radio scale bar for?

Jimbob — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:33:31 -0800

A number of radios I've owned in my life, in addition to the AM and FM frequency labels, also have a "Scale" label, going from 1 to 10, across the range of frequencies. What's this all about? Is it ever used for anything? I've never heard a radio station say "Tune to 6 on your Scale Bar".

Recommend a postal scale?

Zed_Lopez — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:19:25 -0800

Have a recommendation for a postal scale? Thanks to a book swap site, I've been shipping a bunch of small packages. Waiting in line at the Post Office has gotten old. I need a postal scale, but the prices vary a huge degree, as do the on-line user recommendations (even for the same model.) And so I turn to you, dear MeFites: do you have a model to recommend?

Probably 98% of what I'd want from it is 5 lbs. (2.3k) or less, but a larger range would be nice if the price difference were small. And accuracy to within .5 oz (15g) sounds adequate.

How to create automator action to resize images to a certain width?

krunk — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:37:54 -0800

How do I create an automator action to resize images to a certain width? The "scale images" action only resizes the longest side, which is sometimes the height, not the width. I want a quick action to resize images for blog posts, so they are 470px wide, no matter what. Images that are taller than they are wide get the height scaled down to 470px, but then the width is less than 470px.

Domestic Help - How Much?

terrier319 — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:01:40 -0800

Domestic help? How much? Laundry, dishes, beds, straightening up, occasionally driving the kids to the sports practices. We live about 45 mins. outside of NYC. This is a 6.5 hour-a-day arrangement for four days a week. She drives approximately 10 miles each way. What's a fair pay? Would you pay for her leaving early leaving for personal reasons, vacation, holidays? Is is better to do a weekly pay scale, hourly or daily? Thx

A VNC-like program that can scale high resolutions?

aerotive — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:38:56 -0800

I use VNC on computer A, 1680x1050 resolution, to control computer B, 1920x1080 resolution. This results in a lot of scrolling. Anyone know of a better solution that's also free or very cheap? Since computer A runs at a lower resolution than B, I get horizontal and vertical toolbars that are really time-consuming to deal with.

Are there any alternatives similar to VNC that could scale the resolution down to something more usable? Or a VNC variant that could do this?

Computer A is Vista, B is XP.

Good Sliding-Scale Therapist Resource for L.A.?

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:09:33 -0800

Anyone know a good resource for finding a good sliding-scale therapist in the Los Angeles area? I'm ready to shop around for a new therapist and would love to be pointed in the right direction. I have some bare-bones health insurance, but nothing that would cover regular therapist visits, so i'm looking for someone with a sliding scale. I saw an LCSW for a couple years and thought I made good progress until my employer's insurance switched and I no longer got those visits covered. It's been three years since then.
Help me find the right therapist! Is there a resource that has gained the trust of the hive mind? Any advice would help.

(oh and in case it matters, the area of expertise I'm looking for is anxiety/depression/ADD)

A Problem of Scale: Halfway in size between an atom and the universe

0bvious — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:10:04 -0800

"A human is halfway in size between an atom and the known universe"... This is a paraphrased quote I have come across several times. I like it. Who said it first? How true is it in the most literal sense? And, finally, what errors arrive in postulating a universe, or an atom, which can be measured AT ALL from our singular, relativistic, perspective? I found this quote from Cosmic Evolution which further complicates the whole relative size issue:

"Roughly halfway in size between an atom and a human, the amoeba has poor awareness and coordination. It generally responds only at the point stimulated, communicating the information sluggishly through the rest of its body. Although amoebas have developed a crude nervous system, living things that aspire to be more agile—and smarter—surely need quicker internal reactions." - link

Kind of sets another stage from which to view this question.

I also found this quote from Holmes Rolston which further complicates things:

"The human world stands about midway between the infinitesimal and the immense. The size of our planet is near the geometric mean of the size of the known universe and the size of the atom. The mass of a human being is the geometric mean of the mass of the earth and the mass of a proton. A person contains about 10²⁸ atoms, more atoms than there are stars in the universe. Such considerations yield perhaps only a relative location. Still, questions of place and proportion arise." - link

Who first made this often used statement? My earlier questions still stand :-)

Thanks...

Name That Book

Infernarl — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:21:10 -0800

Name That Book Filter: I recall a book that was based on the eloquence and development of a scale. I believe it was about the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale... Maybe the Richter Scale. Did I just imagine this book? If not, what is the title author of said book?

RSS Over Time

joshjs — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 12:28:00 -0800

How does a typical RSS feed behaves over time, as the content grows? If I set up an RSS feed and continually update it for, say, five years, won't the size of that XML file get way too big? How is this concept worked around? Do feed publishers establish a time frame, say the most recent three months, from which they provide content? Do feed readers generally impement that (which seems less likely)? Is a workaround for this problem a part of the RSS specification that I'm just not seeing?

Help me find bathroom scale that measures body fat.

ernie — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:40:45 -0800

Help me pick a bathroom scale - with decent BODYFAT SENSOR. Lost url of a review from about a year ago that had good info on common models. The googles do nothing for that particular review, however I keep thinking I saw this review on Slate.com (but try as I might I can't find it). It included about 10 different models, ranging from about $29 to $150 and the 'best' one was somewhere in the middle.

I guess I don't HAVE to have find this review in particular, but I liked the style & objectivity of it. These types of scales have the metal pads that measure the resistance in your bare feet and then automagically calculate your body fat. I know this isn't the most accurate way determining body fat, but I'm not interesting dunking myself in a vat or whipping out calipers every Sunday.

So again, I'm looking for something fairly precise (consistent and repeatable) more than accurate. It doesnt have to have fancy multi-user memories or bar graphs ( but I'd love it if it did).

on the review - it was in the same style as one they had sea salt and ergonomic chairs, where at the conclusion the author lists them in ascending order of awesomeness with some mini conclusions on each model, and some arbitrary scoring system. usually these reviews involve a group of the author's friends.

Does "economies of scale" really make a business efficient?

jacobean — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:44:43 -0800

Economies of Scale One thing that fascinates me about the business world is the way so many businesses around the world go for the holy grail of "economies of scale"...but how big can a company
grow before it becomes inefficient ?

Everyone I know who works for a big company always
talks about the level of waste that goes on compared
to a small company.

So do "economies of scale" really work / not work for a business ?

Yellow scale in toilet pan

lunkfish — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 03:10:54 -0800

Why am I getting a an unpleasant buildup of scale on my toilet and how can I stop it? When I moved into this place, the toilet already had a big buildup of yellow scale. After a while, the smell started getting noticable, like rank old urine.

I got some descaler from the plumbing supplies place - hydrochloric acid or 'spirit of salts' and cleaned it off. This sorted out the smell as well.

A few weeks later, and the scale along with it's odour is coming back. As you can see in the picture, it's starting under the water level, but it was over the whole toilet before. The water hardness is the same as other places I've lived in, and my toilet habits have not undergone any drastic changes.

PHP - resize image to a specific (k) size?

staggernation — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 08:53:18 -0800

Formula to resize an image (in PHP) so that the resulting file is roughly a certain size in bytes? The task: If a file uploaded through a web form is >50k, scale it down so it's about 50k.

My PHP code for the actual scaling is working fine; what I'm trying to figure out is the best way to calculate the target height and width. (Leaving JPEG quality out of the equation for the time being.) This tends to produce files that are too large:

	$pct = ($max_k * 1024) / filesize($file);

	list($width_orig, $height_orig) = getimagesize($file);

	$height = $height_orig * $pct;

	$width = $width_orig * $pct;

I think I need to somehow either adjust the percentage based on the proportion between the two dimensions, or multiply the area by the percentage to get a desired area and then do something with that, but what? Square roots?

Or is it going to come out inaccurately whatever I do because there's so much variation among individual images?

Any suggestions appreciated.

Recommend an accurate bathroom scale

Mr. Justice — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:26:20 -0800

I would like to buy a cost-effective bathroom scale that is pretty darn accurate for a 200 lb. guy -- margin of error plus or minus one pound. How do I buy one that is accurate? Any brand name suggestions? Do I have to buy one of those things with manually adjusted weights that run along a bar to get this level of accuracy? Please do not instruct me not to weigh myself more than once a week, etc. -- I am looking for a set of scales that will give me a reliable snapshot.