Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with stupid

Is it safe to fly with (mystery) reflux?

bitterkitten — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:20:53 -0800

Safe to fly with (mystery) reflux? I'm not sure that's what I have, but I'm definitely not ill (cold/flu) wise. I don't have (the feeling of) heartburn and have rarely had it. I've been checked out by a ton of doctors over the last year, including a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for a slowly worsening stomach condition that feels like it just keeps getting bigger - all they've found so far via endoscopy a couple months ago is "it's red and irritated, but we can't see anything else". It's like this 24/7 regardless of what I eat or do not eat. Or even if I eat nothing (maybe 24+ hours of no food from the capsule study wasn't enough time for it to quiet down, if it can). And I've been scoped and scanned and xrayed all over and every which way. Pleasant, eh?

This past weekend, it seemed to have worsened, making breathing more difficult than it was previously, and now I feel like I'm clearing my throat all the time, feel like my throat is perpetually full of gunk, which is typically a symptom of some kind of stomach/gerd/throat thing. I've already done trials of prilosec, nexium, and prescription zantac, and none of them did anything, and have been attempting cpap but have not been successful (strangely, my doc decided on this last visit to take away the machine, and wants me to try to sleep better on 'safe' non-benzo sleep meds before trying the machine again). I've also been working with a psychiatrist on getting a new anti-depressant to help ( i was on Zoloft a few years ago) , but haven't found a good new one yet.

I have been treated for allergies/asthma/Hashimoto's/IBS for years, and drainage out the wazoo - I'm pretty sure this is not those. My nose feels pretty darn clear and I think my chest is ok... it really feels like the throat. I also have a list of all the things this thing might be (and I was going to post it as a 'mysterious-diagnosis-me, mefites' in the next couple of days) - I even wrote a letter to this guy a couple days ago, but the thing right now is, after seeing 4 different docs in the last few days, none of whom said "we must get into an er right now to look at you again", but instead "ok, we'll scope you again in a few weeks as soon as you can get in there", I am supposed to get on a plane tomorrow morning and fly my ass to New York to visit the family.

The answer is probably the obvious one "if you don't feel up to it, don't get on a plane, dumbass". Still, outside of possibly catching something from somebody out there with flu or a cold, which I feel would end up with me needing serious help, is there any reason why just going on the plane, change in pressure, etc, should make any difference? I mean, there could be heat, change in humidity, etc... or perhaps me perceiving that I'm having more difficulty breathing just from making myself do this, rather than an actual problem.

So while I'm not asking for a diagnosis here, unless you feel like it, I'm just wondering if this is a really stupid idea. I have already flown twice in the past year feeling the big stomach pressure, but was not having as much trouble breathing then as I've had the last couple of days. Normally I fly with my little pillbox of tricks in case of whatever might happen, but for this, nothing seems to be making a difference.

Bet They Won't Play These Songs on the Radio

dlugoczaj — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:38:52 -0800

Mix CD filter: Suggest stupid/funny songs! I am planning to make a mix CD that will go in my stepson's Christmas stocking. He's an immature but rather dry-witted 16-year-old with an endearingly geeky bent, and I already know he's fond of Tom Lehrer (but has most of Lehrer's stuff that he "gets" on his MP3 player already).

I'm interested in new or classic funny stuff, preferably fairly clean (it'd just be too creepy otherwise). Stuff already in mind:

--Some of Weird Al Yankovic's songs, mostly those like "One More Minute" and "Dare to Be Stupid" that don't really require a knowledge of the songs they're parodying, since he most likely won't know them.
--Some They Might Be Giants (probably "Why Does the Sun Shine," "Why Does the Sun Really Shine," "Particle Man" and/or "We Want a Rock").
--Some Monty Python stuff, a la "I Like Chinese," "Lumberjack Song," "Always Look on the Bright Side," etc.
--Possibly some Brian Dewan, although I don't know his catalog too well.
--Old Dr. Demento stuff, a la "Wet Dream," and "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha."
--The Muppets, "Mahna Mahna"

What else should I consider? Stuff that's readily available through Amazon MP3 download is preferable (I can do iTunes but I don't like it as much and it seems to conflict with the Amazon MP3s).

Dear Diary, I can't tell if Johnny likes me anymore..

fiasco — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:56:39 -0800

Dating filter: How do you broach the “What are we doing?” question without striking fear into the hearts of all involved? Also, what do you do afterward? Boy and I have been casually “dating” for three months or so. We’ve known one another for a little less than a year. Yes, we are physically intimate. No, we have not met the parents. No, we do not speak in the future tense. We spend time together. We both seek one another out.

I’m not trying to rush him to the altar or any such. I am also certain that if or when I approach the altar, he will not be the one standing next to me. I am pretty sure he feels the same way.

I oscillate between whether or not this is okay with me. Part of me is fine since I’m not in a great position to run around in the daisies and proclaim love. I like him. We are maintaining. It’s convenient. The other part of me is hurt because I cannot shake the feeling that I could be anyone to him. He could be biding his time with anyone. Quite simply, I feel I am a placeholder. I am fairly certain I like him more than he likes me. This hurts as well.

Boy is reserved and a bit of a loner. He’s nice and polite. He's a gentleman. In relationships, I’m not sentimental or overly affectionate but something – a compliment, a gesture to let me know I'm someone to him – would be nice.

I’m terrible at ending things. I’m even worse at sticking to endings unless explosions or small wars occur. So far, I haven’t ended things with him because a) I don’t have a concrete idea of how he feels, b) I’m afraid of feeling terrible over losing him as opposed to quietly stagnating with him, and c) I can never stick to my guns and I’m afraid I’ll just be weak.

How do I ask him where he is at in our dating thing without striking the fear of God in his heart? Or both of our hearts, really. I don’t exactly know what I want but this situation has been making me unhappy. It has been manifesting itself quietly and whether or not I can take much more of this, I have no idea. I feel like asking him could be the catalyst leading to a change. I know it’s terrible to ask him a question so his answer can give me my own, but I don’t know what else to do.

If we do continue dating, how do I communicate to him that I don’t even know if he finds my personality, my conversation, my appearance, my anything at all attractive? I don’t want to fish for compliments, just validation that I’m someone to him. Not some random stranger he plucked from the sidewalk.

I don’t want to make the mistake of sounding typical or demanding. I’d just like to feel wanted.

How do I ask him where he thinks this is going? Have you ever been in a dating relationship where neither people were falling head over heels? If so, how did it work out? If I decide to continue on with this, how do I express my hurt over feeling replaceable to him?

Thanks so much.

Cleaning a cat-peed leather jacket?

iftheaccidentwill — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:10:36 -0800

Cleaning a cat-peed leather jacket? I just returned home from a Scrabble tournament to find my leather jacket on the floor. My fears were confirmed when I picked it up and noticed a certain... waft to it.

How can I clean this without ruining the jacket? There are no tags on the inside with cleaning suggestions. If possible, I'd love to avoid sending it to a dry cleaners (I was quoted 50$). If I have to go that route, will they get the stench out?

Please help me make school more bearable

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:47:46 -0800

How do I learn intimidating material without making myself miserable? I am in a mathematical/logical course this summer. Perfecting the material requires extended practice more than anything else - knowing how to solve a problem correctly is more of a "skill knowledge" thing than a "fact knowledge" thing. Because it is 13 weeks of material (in the regular year) being squeezed into 6 (half a summer credit), the course moves veeeery quickly, so there isn't really very much time for all that practice you need. When I study for this course, the following sequence occurs, pretty much always:

1) Do some problems.
2) Inevitably, make some mistakes (because otherwise you wouldn't need to learn, right?)
3a) Become despondent and insecure, cry: I'm stupid, I'll never pass the course, etc.
And/or:
3b) Become frustrated and angry, scribble out the whole page, crumple up my paper, hit the table, etc.

I am acutely aware that this behavior is self-defeating and ridiculous. Studying becomes so emotionally intense that it makes me strongly disinclined to study, and less effective when I do manage to make myself study. (Nonetheless, I work on this class for 4-8 hours every day.) And I do not know how to turn it off: By the time I've made my second or third mistake, the tears are welling up, by my third or fourth, I'm crying. On bad days, it takes less than that.

It's worth noting that I've always harbored extreme intellectual insecurities (I can remember feeling this way as far back as kindergarten), and I've always resorted to coasting/not trying when they threatened me: If you don't try, you can't really fail. The alternative is to face your own limitations, which is scary. Because I've been able to successfully progress through my entire education up until now, in my last year of undergrad, while coasting, I haven't had a very strong incentive to work on this problem. This is the first time I've ever really tackled it, which itself constitutes progress. But it's really, really hard. It's horrible and draining. I hate it. And I've been at it for a while, and it's not getting any better.

I think I've always held a strong but implicit belief that smart people do not have to try - they understand things immediately, and they don't make mistakes. I've seen the literature (e.g. Carol Dweck's work) that makes clear what a destructive attitude this is toward learning.

I'm asking for two kinds of coping strategies here:

1) Short-term ones that will allow me to get through the last week or so of the course while enduring a minimum of misery. (Do such things exist? Is there any way I can reduce the intensity of this problem in the short term by even, say, 10%?)
2) Long-term ones that will allow me to tackle this problem the next time I encounter it (and, given what an enduring issue this is for me, and that I want to continue in academia, I will encounter it again.)

More specifically, I'm looking for concrete practices I can implement when my emotions begin to overwhelm me, ways I can intervene in this emotional progression that feels very much outside the control of my conscious, rational mind (which knows I'm being ridiculous.) Just telling myself (or hearing other people tell me) that I'm being absurd is not enough.

Before anyone brings it up: I'm in CBT. I have long-standing and documented, diagnosed issues with depression and anxiety. Picking up meditation is on my "to-do" list, but it's not something I have time for right now, in the midst of this crazy, fast-paced course.

Help me help my browser to go back to completing missing URL endings even though my ISP is jerky

Your Time Machine Sucks — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:39:57 -0800

My ISP's new "feature" of rerouting incomplete URLs to their own custom (awful) search page is hijacking my normal browser behavior of completing URLs with .com. Anything I can do to reassert normalcy? My ISP is T-Online, which like a few other ISPs has started to hijack malformed URLs and send me to an awful "did you mean...?" page, which coincidentally happens to contain advertisements.

Until this started happening a week ago, if I typed "something" into my Safari 3.2.1 (OS X 10.5.x) location field, Safari would complete the URL as "something.com" and go there, but no longer (at least, I was under the impression that this was a Safari thing and not a DNS thing, since Internet Explorer always manifested the re-route-to-a-search-page behavior).

T-Online claims that it is possible to opt out from their new "Navigationshilfe" ("Navigation Help") program, but when I followed their instructions to opt out, nothing changed. Is there a technical solution for this? My router runs dd-wrt so if there is anything I can do there or on my local machine with DNS or hosts settings, that would be ideal.

T-Online's customer support is pretty dumb, so I will consider calling them if there is no workaround, but it is improbable that they will a) know what I'm talking about, b) know if it is possible to turn it off, c) take the correct steps to turn it off, d) not somehow find a way to increase the cost of my plan in the process, so that is definitely a last resort.

Thanks for any advice!

We heard that you were feeling ill, headache, fever, and a chill

c:\awesome — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:23:02 -0800

I want to send someone a singing telegram, but they're too expensive. What's a gift that is equally as corny that I can have delivered to a hotel conference room in Orlando?

My cat bites his own tail.

desjardins — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:48:03 -0800

My stupid cat keeps biting his own tail to the point where he's drawing blood. He's a male neutered DSH around 2.5 years old. He's (knock on wood) been healthy and seems fine other than this. He doesn't seem to realize his tail is attached to him and chases it. He acts as if it's threatening him. I have found trails of blood on the floor and a scab on the very tip of his tail (about 1 cm in length). It does not look infected. Today when I came home he was actively bleeding so I put styptic powder on the wound to heal it. He's sleeping now and not acting strangely (well, more strangely than usual).

We do have another cat (and 2 dogs) in the household but I am sure they are not doing this to him. The cats do play-fight but bite each other on the neck, not the tails. The dogs ignore the cats.

Anyway, how do I stop him?

When friends use social media badly

micawber — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:03:24 -0800

I have a friend who just discovered new social media and he has no boundaries. How can I tell him to back off without hurting his feelings? I use social media. If you think it's stupid, please avoid reading this post.

--

My friend "Bob" and I have known each other for about 15 years. 15 years ago, we were in regular contact, but that stopped about 7 years ago, dwindling down to maybe an email or two a year. We see each other every once in a while at events of mutual friends.

Within the past six weeks, Bob has discovered Facebook. And Twitter. And all of the web sites I write on and for. He responds to everything I twitter. He is upset I won't follow him on my professional account so he can direct message me, and actually ARGUED WITH ME about it.

So he started sending me text messages instead.

It would be okay, probably, if we were closer friends, or if he was being helpful or interesting. But instead, he send me stats for baseball games I am SITTING AT (and yes, he knows I am there). he would text me "sky blue" when i just posted a picture of the sky. etc etc etc etc.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with my elderly aunt and as such was not online or tweeting or texting or doing anything of that nature. When I had seen her into her car to go home, I took out my phone and turned it on... only to get a text message from Bob, asking why I wasn't tweeting about [live event]. Frustration got the better of me, and I replied, "Because I 'm not CNN."

His response: "But you told me you took this seriously and that was why you couldn't follow me!"

I did not reply to that.

Today he sent me a text regarding something that was not interesting, or timely, or necessary (regarding something happening NEAR MY HOUSE... in a neighborhood he does not live in). It could have gone in an email. It could have been a phone call. It could have been a @ in twitter.

I replied back that I was over my text messages this month on my phone plan and was asking everyone to please stop txting.

That's going to work for a while, but not forever.

The problem is, that this guy isn't a close enough friend that I could just say, "Hey, I know you're having fun with this stuff, but could you turn down the volume?" and he isn't a distant enough friend that I can just block him. I know that this is like the friend who gets on Facebook and takes every quiz and sends you every application and puts you in every top 25... except that it is on my phone. all the time. and costing me money. he has sent me more text messages than my boyfriend, more text messages than my sister. i don't reply to them all, and when I do, I am curt. he isn't getting it.

how can I tell him to stop without hurting his feelings? or is there no way around this? I know, it sounds stupid, but every time my phone buzzes, it's him with some other inane, stupid comment. I know this is the danger of Twitter. I know Twitter is stupid [TM Metafilter]. this is not like teaching your relatives to not forward chain letters or cookie recipes. This is on.my.phone.

this whole thing sounds so stupid. but I am jumping every time the phone buzzes. and if i don't find a nice way to do it the next time he annoys me out of my mind I will say something not-nice and then completely lose a friend.

People are Stupid?

the NATURAL — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:14:15 -0800

Social Filter: Do I have a problem? (long alert) I consider myself to be a little smarter than the average person. My parents raised me with a normal, not-maladjusted, not-extreme sense of right and wrong (no Dexter). I feel like I'm more open to ideas and people than most other people, if a little less extroverted and more introverted.

Now, with that being said, I dislike almost everyone I meet, and find many people to be stupid, self-centered, self-serving, and generally inconsiderate. Do I have a perspective problem, or is this just life?

I say hi to amiable bus drivers. Talk to nice janitors. Make jokes with strangers, when the mood strikes me. I feel that I'm at least as nice -- if not nicer -- than most people to customer service representatives and service industry employees.

Growing up in a small (55k) town in Hawaii, I don't feel like I had my "problem." By and large I liked the people around me in town, everyone was nice (small town bias, I know), and I looked up to everyone -- I was moved ahead in third grade, so I was always among kids who were older and more mature than I was, and they gave me loads of shit. I didn't react too negatively (I have no jail record, there's no literal skeletons in my closet/backyard, I still run with my old small circle of friends from high school when I'm in town).

When I graduated and attended an Ivy League school, I found the vast majority of people that I met to be disgustingly selfish and inconsiderate. The people that I met were constantly looking for a leg up on other people, and were overly concerned with status, the perks of status, the corporate ladder, and grades. The school was full of weasels. My one good friend from college (other than my girlfriend) is a jolly North Carolinian who is completely unpretentious and frank -- and hilariously freewheeling, almost to the point of self-destructiveness. My girlfriend (who, by school standards, is successful but also disillusioned with school) convinced me that the real world, while not as cheery and rose-colored as people who love life would have me believe, was not represented by the slice of people in school.

Now, four months removed from graduating, I hate my (temporary) job working in the State Legislature. My employer, a state representative, is narcissistic, an incompetent manager, and mildly bigoted (which gets passed off as humor). People around the capitol are, by and large, rude, inconsiderate, vapid, and stupid... and it drives me crazy.

One thing in particular: one of my job capacities, as the unofficial receptionist of the office, is to greet people that enter the office. Representatives from organizations defer to me, and we talk; people visiting the office to visit my longer-tenured coworkers ignore anything I say/greet them with (good morning, etc.), looking past me and walking past my cubicle like I'm not there... it drives me crazy.

As weird as it sounds, I feel like the strangers I happen to like the best are the ones that I know from playing pick-up basketball or surfing -- which is completely dumb.

I don't feel like I hate life. I know that I'm exceptionally blessed for a number of things -- to have been born in a First World country, to have college-educated middle-class parents raise me together, to have been lucky to do well in school and attend college. There's a lot to be thankful for. I'm happy to be alive and to experience things.

Now, with that being said, what's my problem? And how can I correct it?

Stupid stupid stupid

Mave_80 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:36:37 -0800

Waste of a question-filter: Can anybody remember one of those stupid "do you think more like a man or woman" tests? I'm trying to remeber one of those stupid tests kids ask each other to trick each other. Only thing I can really remember about it is that it involved about 5 questions and one question involved how you look at fingernails. A bloke would curl his fingers over his hand, while a woman apparently would stretch her hand hand out with fingers stretched straight out. Can anyone remember the rest of the questions?

Can't believe I'm asking this. Urgh.

Why am I so fucking stupid?

Ghidorah — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:11:52 -0800

Drunken Japanese Filter: I just got home to find my JLPT test results. I took level two of the Japanese language test for the second time, two years after the first go-round, and got 41%. Should I just give up? If not, what the f can I do? I took the test two years ago, and I got 33%. I've been freaking living in Japan for almost 9 years. I've been fucking married for a year, to a Japanese woman, and I've pretty much committed to living here for the rest of my natural life, yet, according to my test results (a whopping 41%), I speak Japanese like, well, a child. Not a very swift child, at that.

What can I do? My job is teaching English, and to that extent, my knowledge of grammar vocabulary is passable. Aside from that, I'm an idiot pointing and grunting. Everyone else I know has passed the 2nd level of the JLPT, yet here I am, the retarded stepchild.

To make things even more fun, my test results make a joke out of all of my good faith efforts to convince my Japanese wife to learn English, seeing as I've made neither faithful, nor good efforts to learn her language. I know, at this point, I'm appealing to a very, very limited group of mefites, but to some extent, I'm not sure what else to do, between posting an Askme, or stepping in front of the chuo-sen.

Help me find a cord

bradth27 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:55:08 -0800

Can I buy a new cord for my camera's battery charger? I have a new Olympus camera that uses the Li-ion LI-40c battery charger. I can't find the cord. It looks like this.

Now, I don't need a new charger - just the cord that plugs in the wall. Is there anything special about it, or can I pick one of these up somewhere? I can't seem to find something like this online.....

Half-arsed pork chop preparation! Help!

chihiro — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:20:58 -0800

I have 3 pork chops which have been dipped in garlic butter and then dredged in panko. Can I now pan fry them or shall I bake them? They're sitting in my kitchen right now. This is the result of some bastardized "little of this, little of that" cooking approach. If I fry them will the breadcrumbs fall off because the only thing holding them on the pork is melted butter? If I cook them in the oven, at what temperature and for how long? Help!

Ow.

t0astie — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:27:17 -0800

Help me respond gracefully to an ouchy text message from a boy I liked. So… I liked a boy. And I got a text message from him that made me think he liked me, all talking about taking care of me. But clearly I was wrong about the liking because I just got a second message from him asking me to pass his number on to another (much younger, cuter) friend so they could have dinner.

Which hurts. But, whatever. You can’t choose who you like, and if he likes her and not me, well, he does. It’s not as though the hurt was intended.

But it does hurt pretty badly all the same.

So… my judgement is a bit clouded just now. I don’t know what to say in reply. I feel hurt and humiliated enough without making that obvious to him and I'm scared that somehow I'll telgraph that without meaning to.

I was just going to write ''Sure!'' and text her his number.

Hive mind, help me reply gracefully so I can move on and forget about it?

How liable am I if I was 'just following orders'.

smackwich — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:51:27 -0800

I was told to falsify information at my job and then fired for it a year later. I received no training regarding the form that I was told to change and had no idea that it was considered a legal document. Do I have any recourse here or am I just a dumb rube who got played by higher-level bastards?

PISS LASER!

klangklangston — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:08:39 -0800

PISS LASER! How to use urine most efficiently in carving of urinal cake? In one of those quixotic quests to amuse myself in an office building, I've been attempting to piss in the same place into a urinal cake every day, hoping to carve a hole through. But lately, the sheer numbers of people pissing in another, more obvious place on the cake (I picked mine because it was accessible and unlikely to be hit by as many confounding streams) have been digging deeper and faster than I have.

There have to be tricks of angle, or of motion, that will allow me to cut faster with roughly the same amount of urine. Should I be trying to hold steady on a single point, should I be attempting to hit it head-on, should I be attempting to change the chemical composition of my urine? What are the secrets used by miners with high-pressure hoses?

Road Rash iPod

SansPoint — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:25:30 -0800

How can I repair/replace my 80GB iPod classic (black aluminum) faceplate? My iPod classic took a dive from my coat pocket as I ran to catch a bus. It hit the pavement, and I stepped on it (slightly)... Here's a pic.

Surprisingly, I think the new classics are built to take more potential damage than the previous models. The damn thing still goes. iTunes doesn't throw any error messages, scroll wheel works, plays like a dream, it just looks like hell. It's fairly new, so I'd like to know what I can do to clean it up short of shoving the damn thing into a case... though I'll probably do that anyway.

Even if you can just help me reduce the scratches on the screen, I'll be in your debt.

Insanely tacky Florida neck tattoo image

Bugbread — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:27:06 -0800

I'm looking for an image or two images I saw a year or two ago, of two guys who got drunk on a trip to Florida and got neck tattoos. I can't remember if one did or both did, or which got which images, but the tattoos consisted of a set of mickey mouse ears, a bright 80's looking flamingo (wearing sunglasses, I believe), and the word "Florida". Googling extensively has gotten me nowhere.

How Do I Get Vista To Rename 'User' Folders?

RokkitNite — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:27:40 -0800

Idiotfilter: How do I get Windows Vista to update my new user name across all the folders? Okay, this is probably the stupidest, most basic technological question anybody's ever asked, but I'm desperate, so here goes:

My decade old PC died last week and my younger brother managed to crowbar out the hard-drive and transfer the data to a new computer complete with Windows Vista. In his brilliantly highbrow and sophisticated idea of a joke, he called the User Account '[my name] is Gay'. Hilarious, I know.

Problem is, though I managed to change the name (by clicking on 'change name') there are still folders called '[my name] is Gay' that Vista hasn't changed and won't let me rename manually. I've tried unchecking 'Read Only' in the 'properties' box, to no avail. I use this PC for work and I've now got a load of documents with '[my name] is Gay' in 'properties' as the author.

Now, maybe I'm a crazy prude, but I don't think work reports are the place for declarations about my sexuality. How do I change this? I know it's probably stupidly simple, but I can't find a previous AskMe question about this and I've got a deadline I'm likely to miss unless I can figure out how to accomplish, in good ol' security-less 98, would be a thirty-second task. Thank you in advance, and sorry.

Fool Suffering Filter!

miss lynnster — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:40:09 -0800

It's a fact of life: some of us are brilliant & utterly delightful to deal with, and then there are... other people. I have a friend who works for a luxury tour company in Africa. He has to tour spoiled wealthy people around a lot (mostly British, American & French), and he's been going through some health problems (chest pains, etc.) because the stupidity and attitudes of the people he works with (both in the company and as tour clients) have gotten him so stressed out. He just doesn't suffer fools well, and I can relate to that. But, he talks about quitting his job and I know he can't afford to do this. Since he'll be meeting fools for the rest of his life no matter where he goes, I've been trying to give him advice on how to handle situations calmly instead. That whole "You can't control other people, you can only control how you react to them" thing.

The other day he asked me this question: "What do you do if you are driving someone around and they tell you to go to the left but you know that if you do so you will drive over a cliff? Keep in mind that you are in the service industry so your job is to make these people happy... but the fact is that these people are idiots who do not know what they are talking about, and they are insisting that you do what they say... but if you go over this cliff you will die. Do you fight with them? Or do you go over the cliff and die? What are you supposed to do?"

I thought I gave him some pretty good advice about making them feel heard but still remaining in control and with a smile on his face, but then a day later I found myself in a similar situation with a young green musician I'm going to be doing some music work with, and I started to feel chest pains myself. He's a nice enough guy, but if I say no to his bad ideas I will come across as a controlling diva & probably create some resentment. If I say yes, I'll be a doormat who is agreeing to be the focal point of an onstage train wreck that I would hate every minute of. I would prefer to allow neither scenario and to just do whatever I want while keeping everyone happy. But... how?

Sooo, here's today's question: how do YOU deal with people who come across as stupid/ignorant/etc.? What do you do when someone is telling you to do something and in your heart you want to reply by telling them the top ten reasons that they are an idiot? Is there a way to handle these situations gracefully & powerfully where people end up liking you and everyone is contented... without feeling chest pains, without insulting anyone, without being a diva or a doormat, without quitting a job, but still remaining in control & happy & not dead at the bottom of a cliff?

Do tell.

And yes, I'm still avoiding doing my taxes.

Ringfilter: How to wear this ring?

hannahq — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 01:23:36 -0800

How does one wear a ring with lettering? We're having a debate here. I'd like to defer to you guys 'cause you're all so smart!

Should the lettering of a ring be facing the wearer (so it reads right side up) or the other way around?

Turn off repeated Google Notifier notifications?

Mo Nickels — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:11:52 -0800

How do I stop Google Notifier on OS X from notifying me repeatedly about an event? I just want the stupid things to come up once for each event, not every minute for ten minutes. I've clicked high and low to no avail. And I don't need that stupid red flag in the icon, nor the stupid green exclamation mark. Just give me one notification, let me click it away, and be done with it. Also, once the alerts have started, you can't go into the event and turn off notifications, which means you can't stop the stupid notifications that way, either. The only way I know to stop the notifications is to quit Google Notifier.

How to Download a movie trailer?

bradth27 — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:36:06 -0800

How to download a movie trailer? Okay. So I'm not the smartest kid on the block. I need to download the Charlotte's Web full trailer, and can't seem to find a direct link. Sure, I can watch it - but how do I download the whole thing? If someone could provide a direct link for the entire file in WMV , I would appreciate it......

Please, I know this easy. Be gentle with me.

I'm a consumer whore! And how!

Bageena — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:38:33 -0800

PS3 filter; you knew it was inevitable. How can I get my hands on a Ps3 tonight or tomorrow? I'm in Phoenix, Arizona and I'm not about to go drop $2k to get one off of Ebay. I know. I should have pre-ordered it. I should have started camping days ago. There are no excuses (actually, there are - I had to work and I didn't have the money). Yet, here we are - the eve of another next gen system dropping and I've decided I want one.
So yeah - any ideas? I've already called every Walmart, Target, Circuit City, and Best Buy within a 20 mile radius. Does anybody here work in a store that might carry said product and not below a little bribe money? *wink wink* I'm not below paying someone a lil' sumthin' sumthin' if it helps secure this incredibly expensive little toy.
Other than the connections/insider angle, any good ideas of places others might overlook? Any good ideas on how to get one period?