Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with suck

Thanks again police

BrnP84 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:08:35 -0800

I'm almost certain these tickets are not worth fighting but who knows, maybe there's something I could do? So last week I bought a motorcycle with the intention of selling it. I had some people help me work on it and got it running great, so I was in the process of selling it and decided I should test ride the bike before I sold it. I rode the bike down the block a few times and got pulled over. I had no plate, no insurance, and wasn't wearing a helmet (which breaks a learners permit violation) and the worst part was I was a block from my home but I know that doesn't matter. I do have the Title in my name though. Here's the tickets

1. Riding w/o insurance-240$
2. Failure to register-121$
3. Riding w/o a helmet-121$

But here's my thing, I was planning on selling the bike so like an honest seller I wanted to make sure the bike was in a safe and running condition, I'm not going to sell a bike that I have no idea if it runs good or not. I feel like since I just bought the bike and was test riding it for a sale there could be some kind of leeway but I really have no idea, the cop didn't seem to care that's for sure. Also, I was not given the option of what towing company to use, the cops called one in for me and the one they chose happens to be owned by a big local family who charges an outrageous amount for towing and they also killed my battery and didn't do anything about it.

Help me fix my washing machine!

sdis — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:58:24 -0800

Washing Machine troubleshooting fun! Sometimes-not-working-pump! Here's a long shot, but maybe someone knows their washing machines!

We have a Eurostar 1000a front loading european washing machine that we got from our private landlords. We moved in a month ago or so, and it worked a few times pretty well, and then every once in a while, it would end up all soaking wet. It's gotten somewhat worse, and with careful use of the scientific method aka writing everything down these past few days, we've found that there's something wrong with the pump.

The basic cycle seems to consist of 4 parts:

1. Water in
2. Agitate for a while
3. Pump water out
4. Spin and pump water out
-Repeat 4x, add high-speed spin at the end.

parts 1, 2, and 3 all seem to work.
Part 3 leading into Part 4, the pump tries to pump out water, but there's not much left, and so it keeps trying to pump but nothing comes out. Then it starts spinning, and water comes out of the clothes, but the pump still doesn't get anything out. As the spin cycle continues, the water from the clothes basically comes back into the washing machine, and sudsy water is spun around with the clothes. Then the next rinse cycle begins, with sudsy wet clothes instead of fairly dry clothes.

For a while, we thought this was due to the extremely small (maybe 0.5cm diameter opening) syphon connector thingy on our drain, because it would work better if we detached the hose on the washing machine side during part 1 each time and blew into it *hard*, seemingly dislodging whatever would get stuck in the connector each time. (seemed like if I didn't do this, it wouldn't fully drain on part 3 as well as part 4). However it wasn't a perfect fix, and to test it out, I tried running the hose simply into the sink, and got the pattern described above.

Seems like the pump gives out whenever there's not enough water to make pumping simple.

So! Now what? I don't want to buy a new washing machine, and if I can avoid it, I would like to avoid fighting with my landlord if there is an affordable fix (a big perk of this place is having a nice, friendly relationship with my landlord, and I have little to no idea how Austrian tenant laws apply in this case). Anyone know what's going on here?

What's up with my nipples?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:03:06 -0800

A few weeks ago my boyfriend was sucking on my nipple and after about 30 seconds he said that he tasted something really sweet. Any idea what that might have been? He couldn't describe exactly what it tasted like, just sweetness. This happened when I was one or two weeks into my menstrual cycle and I just started my period a few days ago so I know I'm not pregnant. (I've heard that breast milk is sweet.) I'm 23, not on any medications, I've been sexually active for about six years and never been pregnant. I've never heard of this happening to anyone before and it hasn't happened to me since. What came out of my nipple?!

My roommate almost never leaves the house!

bondgirl53001 — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:37:50 -0800

How do I get my roommate out of the house?? My roommate moved in with me and spent the first three months on my couch playing video games. And drinking beer. And doing a lot of scratching. Anyway, he paid his share of the rent every month but not the bills. Now he's finally found work and promises to pay what he owes me.

All this is peachy, but there's one thing I miss more -- my privacy! I had this naive idea that after he would finally find a job, he would acquire some form of a life.

No. He now spends all his FREE time playing video games. He has some real human friends but ultimately prefers to spend his downtime cursing out players on Halo.

Unfortunately, we work the same hours. I can't get one second in our apartment alone! I don't have any immediate plans to dance around naked or anything, but it would be nice to have some "me" time in the place, outside of my room. And if I hear one more "come on ---ers, we're storming this ship!" bellowing across the living room I think I may kill him.

Please help prevent this.

What's up with my mouth?

thirteenkiller — Tue, 22 May 2007 08:03:06 -0800

Once in a while after mild to strenuous exercise, I can suck air through a little spot in the roof of my mouth (kinda just behind the "aveolar ridge"). There aren't any obvious holes up there. This happens fairly rarely. It's not particularly uncomfortable. What's going on here? Is this normal? Does this happen to anyone else? Please don't make fun. :(

New Verizon DSL user: Is their e-mail really this suck?

desuetude — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:22:07 -0800

Just got Verizon DSL. A simple question: Is it just me, or is their web-based mail client incredibly, weirdly pokey? It seems to take forever to open up my mostly empty in-box.

Can I fix these recent horizontal black glitches on this onboard SiS chipset?

adamwolf — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:46:47 -0800

How can I fix my SiS onboard video? What did I even do to break it? I recently reinstalled my girlfriend's Linux machine, adding a hard drive in the process. For some reason, the display shows horizontal glitches and every once in a while blinks black for a few seconds. This is onboard SiS video. It is independent of monitor. This sounds quite like video bandwidth issues, but I'm not exactly certain, because of two reasons. The 99% of the time these horizontal black glitches occur during a keystroke. You can tap out a drum solo on the spacebar, and the flickers will follow as well. Is this typical of video bandwidth issues? Another thing is that assuming it is memory bandwidth issues, I decided to set the display to 640x480@8 bits per pixel. Still horizontal glitches. This makes me say it isn't a memory bandwidth issue. Another test I performed was playing a video. The "glitch rate" didn't increase.

The display also blacks out every once in a while for a few seconds. Here's the kicker--It worked a month ago, and she's never seen the glitches before. I haven't really changed anything except I installed GNOME. However, Xfce4 *also* has this problem. I've tried to see if text mode has this problem, but its hard to see the glitches on a black background. X detects ~64 megs of video memory. This *should* be enough by my calculations for 3.5 frames of 1280x1024@16bpp. I've used alternate monitors and alternate video cables.

What would do this? BIOS settings? Was there an Xorg update recently that would break something? I'll accept "random hardware failure" if there are no other choices, but I can't help but wonder. It's extremely hard to work with this machine, and I'd really hate to have to replace it this soon. I've googled with my usually amazing google-fu, but have had no luck.