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How to keep a marriage from falling apart? Young child, demanding jobs and much more inside...

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:30:44 -0800

Any advice for a rough patch in marriage? My wife and I have been married for 4 1/2 years. We have a wonderful daughter that is 16 months old and up until about 3 months ago, we were really getting along and tackling both marriage and parenting together. This has changed. In the last 3 months, we seem to get in fights every other day. She says I am not a "partner" and that I don't do enough to help in general, around the house and with our child. Personally, I don't keep a list of all the stuff I do, but I do think I carry my weight and am not a hands off dad, nor do I neglect household duties (I make dinner 5 nights a week, clean the kitchen nightly, vacuum, take out the trash, etc). As a side note, everything seems to be hinged upon our inability to sell our house (yes, tough market) and our not being able to move closer to her family. We both work in very high-stress jobs and while she is the bread winner, I've closed the gap purposely to try to make her life easier ultimately. This has made things difficult considering my duties at work have tripled in the last year or so.

I love my daughter (and furthermore, my wife) very much and am afraid that the further my wife and I drift apart, the more likely we will get divorced. As the product of a divorced home, I do not want to do this to my daughter. The thought of not being there for her hurts me immensely and I've mentioned this to wife several times.

Furthermore, we have not been intimate in over 8 weeks. While I've mentioned this as a truthful frustration, it seems to have made my wife more mad as she sees me treating her as an object. I've tried to be more romantic. I've sent flowers to her hotel when she is on the road and I've tried to make myself more accustomed to her schedule if she's tired. I've tried a lot.

I'm just really confused as to how to get this back on track. When I try to talk to her, it always comes back to the "you're not a partner" sentiment and it is driving me crazy. Any advice for someone in a rough patch of marriage? Any ideas on how to become intimate again? I would really just like some words of encouragement if available, or interesting takes on this reality. Thanks.

How can I prepare a bitmap image to print in black & white plus one spot color?

pantufla — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:43:08 -0800

How can I prepare a bitmap image to print in black & white plus one spot color? I'm doing an illustration for a magazine, and I've been given the instructions that it will print in black plus one spot color. I've scanned a drawing into photoshop (b & w) and created another masked layer with the specified spot color. My contact at the magazine does not know how to set up a photoshop file to print black & white with the one spot color. I tried creating a duotone (black plus the spot color) but that seemed to require tinting the whole image with the spot color, when I want some areas to be tinted, and some not. I tried creating a cmyk file and adding a spot channel, which allows me to tint the image selectively, but I'm not sure if that's the way to go. I'm waiting to get more info from the magazine people, but in the meantime, if you were asked to prep a bitmap (not vector) file to print in black & 1 spot color, how would you go about it? Thanks! (mac, photoshop cs3)

How much medicine do I need to give my fish tank?

aqueousdan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:12:11 -0800

Any fishkeepers able to give me a definitive answer to how much formalin I need to put in my fish tank to try and cure a case of white spot (Ich)? I have a small fish tank (biorb) that holds 30 litres. I recently bought some new fish but noticed white spot on one of them and borrowed some formalin from my mother. Unfortunately there aren't any instructions with it. I looked on various websites but I keep seeing various ranges and dont want to kill my fish!

The formalin I have is "pure" i.e. it is 37% formaldehyde mixed with methanol and doesnt have any other ingredients with it.

The fish are 6 small platys in a tropical set up.

Help me save my shirts from being sliced up and made into rag rugs!

Stewriffic — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 06:05:41 -0800

How have you successfully removed old grease stains from shirts using common household items, rather than specialty products I'd have to go out and purchase? I've got a ton of solid colored t-shirt type shirts that I no longer wear because I dripped food on my chest and the spots didn't come out in the wash. I don't want to trash/recycle them, but I'm very self-conscious of the darker spots the grease left behind.

The kicker is that they've all been through the wash and dryer at least a few times. Some I've caught before doing laundry and pretreated with dishsoap (think Dawn, not Cascade) or commercial laundry pre-treaters, but that didn't work.

Description of shirts: cotton and/or cotton knit in a variety of colors, including both pastels and darks/brights.

I'm looking for a way to try to once and for all get rid of these stains, using something I'm likely to already have at home and that won't ruin my clothes or washer.

Have any of you done this successfully? How? I have a few shirts I'm willing to experiment with (i.e. potentially ruin), if anyone comes up with a particularly creative solution.

I don't want to go out and buy a specialty product, but I will if that's the only solution. Thanks!

What is the name of the song playing in the IDM "Ideating" tv commercial?

Apo11o — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:44:26 -0800

The new IBM "Ideating" commercial...What is the music in the background? Recently a I've seen a few clever IBM commercials for innovation. The music in the background hooked me the second it hit my ears. For 3 days I've diligently searched and have come up with nothing but a few youtube clips. So, what is the name of the song in the background, what is its genre and where can i find more just like it.

Is it a black hole?

the giant pill — Mon, 15 May 2006 05:52:52 -0800

I would like to get an educated guess about what this black spot is in some old x-rays. This is the first x-ray whole. Detail.

This is the x-ray taken later. Detail.

I realize that black spots indicate a void or something, so what is likely missing?

Sorry for the imageshack links. I don't have any hosting