Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with timing

How can I converse in large groups?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:32:01 -0800

Help me carry on conversations in groups with my *special snowflake* situation. Yes, I know this question has been asked before, but my case is different.

I am an 18 year old female college student. I am a shy introvert, who is a mix of INTJ/ INTP. I have always had trouble carrying conversations in large groups (say more than 4 people). I think one problem I have is timing. I can't seem to get a word in edge wise. I don't want to be *that girl* and force my point in where it doesn't flow. When I do get a comment in, other, more forceful people seem to move the conversation elsewhere, and thus people rarely respond to my comments.

If it matters, the groups are usually 100% female. They seem like nice people, and I would like to get to know them better.

Compounding factors: I have learning disabilities (but not Aspergers) that make it hard to read people and sense timing. My parents were very strict when I was growing up, so I was not allowed to watch tv, watch very many movies, or listen to popular music. I still do not really enjoy these things today so I have very little "popular culture" currency. I am commonly lost in the conversation, because I am not familiar with the particular show or band. It would be hard to even research these topics, because they change every conversation. Further research cannot mitigate 18 years of lack of popular culture.

Potential things in my favor: I am self aware. I have a roommate, an INTJ, who can help me to a point.

The other questions I have seen before seem to be about grown up mingling. Here, this is not about approaching the group. Nor does finding fellow wall flowers apply to this situation, because everybody else is actively participating in the one conversation. I would find it strange to ask questions about topic to the group (to try to understand the topic), because it would disrupt the main conversation.

In short, I'm looking for advice to improve my conversation skills keeping in mind my *special snowflake* situation. I am still working on meeting new people with different interests, but that's hard when I can't converse with people in larger groups. I will reiterate that I do not have Aspergers. I'm just awkward and shy around people.

Best Time for Yellowstone Visit to Avoid Crowds

aabbbiee — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:11:22 -0800

What's the best time in late spring for a Yellowstone/Grand Tetons visit? I want to plan a road trip to see Yellowstone NP and Grand Tetons NP in late spring 2010, but I'm flexible on dates so far.

I want to beat the crowds of summer/Memorial Day, but I want to have nice weather & conditions for photography.

I was in Yosemite in early April, which was perfect timing for what I like to do, photography-wise. The trees were greening up and there were lovely poppies blooming in the lower elevations. Waterfalls were at high capacity. The roads at high elevations weren't open yet, but there were very few crowds mid-week.

Can you recommend a timeframe for me that would give me similar conditions in Yellowstone & Grand Tetons?

Any other advice would also be great.

A quality piss is at least 20 seconds

Christ, what an asshole — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:00:29 -0800

I'd like to learn how to count off seconds in my head with more precision. Are there any popular songs out there at exactly 60 or 120 bpm?

Running watch for couch to 5k timing

srboisvert — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:36:16 -0800

I'm looking for a running watch with a programmable countdown timer that would be suitable for doing the couch to 5k routines. Anybody have some recommendations. It would have to sophisticated enough to handle the need for different length intervals per the couch to 5k plan. That is stuff like beep after 90 seconds then after 2 minutes etc...

Movie in which thieves sync their heist with songs?

oxit — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:13:06 -0800

What's that movie in which two male thieves synchronise the timing of their heist by whistling jazz songs? I've seen it probably in the eighties, the jazz songs most probably where swing standards and the whistling might have been singing or even humming. Still I think the respectives parts of the movie where accompanied with the real music, played by a band.

Unfortunately search engines and movie database's similarity features didn't help. Thanks for letting me tap your memorisation.

When should I send my resume?

Midnight Rambler — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:50:38 -0800

When should I send my resume online for a job I want to apply for? Are there specific times at which it is less advantageous to send a resume? For instance, is a resume sent on the weekend likely to get lost in a barrage of accumulated weekend emails, or seen and just forgotten once the actual work week has started?

Also, are there specific times when I should/shouldn't be sending it? Would sending a resume with a 3:30am, for example raise questions about why I am up at such an early hour?

Or, am I just over-thinking all of this?

When should I have Keyboard Cat play me off?

Anonymous — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:42:47 -0800

I started a job after taking a year off of work. I've found I don't think I want to stay at it long-term. How soon can I leave without hurting my future employment prospects? I took a year off from work during which I played around with a few projects, thought about where I wanted to go with my career, did some volunteering, and relaxed. At the end, I concluded that, for my day job, I wanted to work in the same sort of job as before but in a certain industry.

So, I moved across the country to take a job with a company in that industry, taking a roughly 20% pay cut in the process. (It hasn't put me anywhere near the poverty line or anything like that, though.) Well, I've been at this company for two months, and while I don't hate it, I'm fairly certainly that I don't want to be here for a really long time. It doesn't make me feel the way I thought it would, nor is the company as mature as they seemed during the interviews.

I have a long-term plan, but I'm going to have to keep a day job for a few years at the least to make it happen, so I do need a job. I thought about sticking it out here, but now that I know that I can achieve the same levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction at a job that pays a lot more, why should I?

If I hadn't taken that year off, I'd be looking for a new job right now. The thing is, taking a year off, moving across the country to take another job, then leaving that job a short time later understandablly makes me look like a capricious flight risk to a prospective employer. Having stayed at jobs for 4+ years at a time before my break might mitigate the appearance of flakiness some but probably not.

How long do I have to wait at this job to avoid having prospective employers automatically check the "flake" box after looking at my employment history? And when asked about why I left so soon, what's the best way to frame my answer to convince them that I can be counted on to stick around for 1-3 years at a job that's not all rainbows and gumdrops?

Can't access an SSL page on Craigslist?

Twinedog — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:20:07 -0800

I can't access the craigslist accounts page to edit/ or post from my home computers? Okay here is the situation. I can't seem to access the craigslist accounts page from my home machine. I can access the regular craigslist site and my home city site losangeles.craigslist.org

However, for some reason on my home machine only I can't access the accounts page. The requests keep timing out. I even tried tracert and ping and it keeps timing out. I tried getting a new IP address from my provider and that didn't resolve it. I tried deleting all private data including cache and its not working. I tried using IE and Firefox and no luck.

The weird thing is I can access my account from other locations like a family members computer. And I could still access my account.

Is it possible they changed server location and not all the DNS servers have gotten the update? Is there a better explanation for this? Any insights would be appreciated.

Should I tell him?

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:37:00 -0800

Do I tell him how I feel even though the timing is bad? I mean, really bad? S and I have been friends for about two years. We started off as real life friends who hung out and all that, but became much closer in the last 9 months or so, mainly via online chatting and email. We both travel a good bit for work and are rarely in the same time zone, much less the same city. But we manage to catch up usually every day, sometimes more. Recently, our conversations have become more meaningful - both of us finally getting to the point where we trust the other with pretty significant stuff. Our conversations are never scheduled and we've never made any type of "I'm going to make you a priority" statements. But there's something unspoken, I think. There's no expectation that we'll chat every day, but we both just show up. It's a daily choice, and I really like that. We both know we've got something good. And so in the midst of all this, I realized that he's become more than just a friend to me. He's become a really important person in my life.

I relaxed and enjoyed this new feeling for about a week.

And then (dun, dun, dun) he got offered a job. In many ways, his dream job. But also a job that would pretty much mean we wouldn't share the same time zone for a really, really long time. Right now, we see each other about once a month. But like I said, most of our contact is online these days. So if he took this job, that aspect of our friendship probably wouldn't change. But now I suddenly feel this urgency, that he needs to know how I feel. We haven't talked at all about if his job decision would impact our friendship. When we've talked about his thoughts with this job, our friendship has not entered the equation at all. We feel safe talking about our feelings, except when it pertains to feelings for each other. We literally have never gone there.

So here's my question: Would it just be really awful of me to dump my newly-realized feelings on him, especially in light of this possible job change for him? Is it better to let him focus just on the job decision and maybe bring up my feelings later? He's voiced some hesitation about the job offer but hasn't gone into detail. Even though we've never talked about dating, my hopeful heart wonders if the idea of moving further from me is one factor in his hesitation. But I also know the danger of presuming anything of the kind.

I'm especially interested in hearing from persons who have been in a similar circumstance and had either a positive or negative outcome. Also just general opinions are welcome - if you were contemplating a career move and a good friend dropped the "I like you" bomb on you, how would you react?

When should I change my 401K investment strategy from active to passive?

shinybeast — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:21:23 -0800

Given today's equity market conditions, when should I change my 401K investment strategy from active to passive? In my 401K, I'm planning to switch investment styles, moving out of diversified actively managed equity funds to diversified passively managed Vanguard equity, REIT, bond, and TIPS index funds.

The question is, when should I do this, today or when my current fund mix has climbed above the performance of the S&P 500 index? Or, should I wait until the market recovers its YTD losses. I'm using the S&P 500 as a crude performance benchmark. According to Morningstar, my mix of funds is currently underperforming the S&P 500 by 4% YTD and underperforming the funds' respective category benchmarks by 0.25%.

Currently, YTD, the S&P 500 is down 20%.

I can't quite figure out when to make my move. My fear is that if I move money into REIT, bond, and TIPS funds now, I'll lose out if the equity market makes a healthy recovery later.

Any suggestions?

MetaHelp: I need your google-fu!

myodometer — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:55:00 -0800

Does Ricky Gervais have an opening act when he does his stand-up sets? My girlfriend was awesome enough to have bought me tickets to see Ricky Gervais on one of the two nights that he's going to be doing his new stand-up set in Los Angeles this summer. Unfortunately, we had already booked a flight to the east coast for that same night, scheduled to leave at 11:55PM.

His show is listed as starting at 7:30, and I'm assuming that the fun likely won't be starting until at least 8 - but does anyone know if he has an opening act before he comes on? I've been scouring Google and can't seem to find an answer.

Worst case, I'll just rebook my flight for the next morning.

Is timing everything?

hydrate — Fri, 30 May 2008 06:25:27 -0800

When it comes to relationships, when do you go for it, even if it's inconvenient or the timing seems to be way off? About four months ago I moved to Turkey. That now means I'm a few time zones away from family and close friends and the comfortable life I'd had in the States. I really like it that way. I started following through on all the promises I'd made myself to paint and sculpt and create. Perhaps selfishly, I've decided to connect with the parts of myself that I've let disappear a bit as I've chased after all the things that any normal American would want (financial security, family, etc.) Result: In these past months, I've started to come alive. ALIVE.

But in order to come and do this, I pretty much had to decide that among other things, dating was not going to be part of the picture for me. I wanted to focus on other things. I didn't want distractions or other things tugging at my heart. I wasn't running away exactly, but I was definitely ready for a break.

I'm not entirely sure if I made that decision completely out of a desire to have an adventure. If I were totally honest, I'd probably admit that I partly made that decision out of pain, past disappointment, and exhaustion from endless dates that went nowhere. Maybe that point doesn't really matter. But regardless, I was looking forward to having some time in my life where dating was not an option.

But then another person came into my life. Unexpectedly. Beautifully. And VERY inconveniently.

There is no doubt there's a mutual attraction - intellectually, physically, spiritually. I don't believe in the idea of "the one" so it's not like I feel like my only chance at love could slip through my fingers if I let this opportunity go. But if I were open to dating right now, I'd be all over this one.

So here's my question: Should I stick with my decision not to date, no matter how fabulous this person is? Or should I deal with the inconvenience or complication that this could cause, for the sake of something that could be really great?

So when it comes to being ready for a relationship, is it true that timing is everything?

I especially would like to hear from persons who have made similar decisions and what they did when dilemmas like this arose.

Get pregnant now or later?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:53:59 -0800

Marriage, illness, medication, bad timing and having children - what should we do? This is the situation - we've been married three months (I am the female half). I'm 29, he's 39 and really wants to be a dad. I want to have kids as well but time is not pressing so much for me. Or it wasn't, until recently:

Just before we got married, my now-husband was diagnosed with a fairly rare blood condition (a myeloproliferative disorder - polycythaemia), which is essentially benign and can be kept under control. However, his condition has developed such that he is now producing too many platelets so the doctors want to put him on a chemotherapy drug (hydroxyurea) which will keep his bone marrow activity in check. This means he won't be able to try for children while on the drug, and he could well be on the drug for ever. He hasn't started on the drug yet.

In the meantime, I've had a recurrence of gallbladder problems - I have multiple small stones, which don't cause me any problems as long as I don't eat fat - if I do, they cause me very severe pain. No jaundice or fever has accompanied my attacks (yet). I've had a scan which has confirmed the stones, and will be seeing the surgeons soon.

My husband is storing some sperm at the hospital before going on this treatment. Our options seem to be:

1) wait until my gallbladder is taken out then try to get pregnant with stored sperm (which is of good quality, the sperm-storing doctors say)

2) as he's not on the drug yet, try to get pregnant now and take the chance that my gallbladder problem will worsen during pregnancy (my GP couldn't give me much advice about this except to tell me they wouldn't normally operate on a pregnant woman)

3) ask about 'holidays' from husband's drug

4) investigate the possibility of him taking another drug which will make him feel like crap but which doesn't cause sperm damage (interferon-alpha)

I'm having a lot of low-level stress about this (so is husband). Things I'm worried about:

a) a finite amount of sperm is stored, so if we use it all and I don't get pregnant, that's it - what are the chances of conceiving with stored sperm?
b) what really are the risks of getting pregnant when I know I have gallbladder disease? could I do myself permanent damage/risk my life?
c) what are the risks if my husband doesn't take the drug? I have read research that says that young patients have a low risk of thrombosis - does he really need it?

We're both seeing the relevant doctors (separately and together) and are trying to come up with a plan, but am setting out my story here in case anyone else has had a similar dilemma or can shed some light in any way. Also the process of writing this has calmed me a lot (though I know this isn't what the site is for!)

We're in the UK so health insurance is not an issue (except that we've got some coverage through his job which may mean I don't have to wait long for a gallbladder operation).

Is Timing Actually Everything?

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:19:13 -0800

Is timing really so important in dating and relationships? Maybe I'm just too weary of an on-again/off-again relationship with a guy that just doesn't seem to go away, but lately, I've been wondering whether "If only we could just get the timing right!" is just wishful thinking. Is its importance just a concoction of the romantic comedy genre (think: Love, Actually, and Definitely Maybe), or do you really need good timing in order for a relationship with someone to succeed?

I mean: time and time again, we've all had to face that painful realization that if he or she really cared as much as we did, they would have moved hell and earth to make things happen. That is also the message of that whole market of books centered around He's Just Not That Into You. And personally, I know when I'm into someone, I do stubbornly pursue them, and some part of me expects others to do the same.

But I'll also be the first to admit that sometimes I'm too scared or hurt or just not ready to put myself back out there (though hell, I usually still do it anyway). I can't be the only person who has ever been in that situation...can I?

Do any of you look back at a relationship you ended with someone and think "If only the timing for me had been different?"

PS: I've seen the Second time's the charm thread already. There were a lot of inspiring success stories, but I'm looking for more of a focus on the importance of timing, rather than "Do these things ever work out?"

Re-raise before the turn?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:15:45 -0800

i'm considering asking for a raise at work, which might essentially require asking for a raise for my whole team. soliciting opinions on if it's appropriate at this time. I'm a contractor at a well-known but not top-tier startup in the Bay Area. It's a position I've held since mid-January on a 3-month contract that expires next week and for which I have a verbal agreement to re-up, but not a signed one yet.

I make $13/hr for my role here, plus a performance-based bonus of $175/month, which is easily and regularly achieved. There are 10 people total on the team, and from what I gather the manager and at least one other, likely two other people are on salary. I know that including myself 4 of us are on the same contract, that a 5th, more tenured person has the same pay rate plus health care, and that a 6th, also more tenured person is on the same pay rate but does not have insurance. Neither of these people asked for more money, and my take is that the 5th did ask for health and the 6th did not, although the 5th might have just been offered it.

My role is pretty simple admittedly, and I think they'd have a pretty easy time hiring people at this rate. And I signed the first contract willingly and I understand that it's a business and they are under no obligation to me. But I also find that $13 in this town is barely livable, and I figure if I'm going to ask at any time, this is the one. So I did talk to my boss, who agreed that we don't make much and sorta halfheartedly said she'd look into it, but that any sort of rate change would apply to all of us, not just me. Fair enough, but this now means we'd be looking at a $25 - 50K year budget addition instead of five to ten thousand. We have the money; I know that.

I'm torn on what to do because I'm feeling pretty broke these days and am emotinally stirred every time I think about this, so I'm not sure I trust my judgement. I'm also feeling forced to look for other opportunities which might require me to break a contract, so I'm leery of asking for more money and bailing soon after anyway. We have the opportunity to ask anonymous questions at regular all-hands meetings and I'm considering asking "Can my whole team have a raise?" but that seems foolish. What's the best way to handle this? I'm hoping to get bumped up at least to $16-18.

further details, tryingtogetpaid@gmail.com

How to "keep in shape" between infrequent romantic visits?

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:27:43 -0800

i'm in a long distance relationship, so my sex life goes something like this: five or six-week dry spell, intense weekend of sexytime, wash, repeat. i need help physically adapting. previously, we (me the girl, he the boy) were at college together and got to have sex all the time, with no problems. now that we don't see each other as often, the sex has hit some road bumps. due to the previous lack of sex, i feel pretty tight and need a lot of lube for our first "reunion." this is often slow going and somewhat painful for me. sometimes i bleed a little and get what feel like small internal tears. this of course puts a damper on the next time we have sex, since i'm uncomfortable. usually it's only by the end of the visit (three or four days) that i'm "back in the saddle." this is very frustrating since we get to see each other so little as it is, and we want to make the most of our time together. we'd like to get back to the comfort level i had when we had sex more frequently.

how can i "keep in shape" so we can avoid the reconditioning period every time we see each other? should i just practice with a vibrator (i.e. insertion)? time our visits with the "horny" week of my cycle? take some kind of hippie herbal supplement to relax? should we just get liquored up?

advice from others in long-distance relationships would be especially appreciated.

What's Taking So Long in There?

Gucky — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:03:25 -0800

What do people do in public bathrooms (besides the obvious) that takes so long? Why am I quicker at it? I've had a number of people comment to me -- coworkers, friends, my husband -- that I take an inordinately short time to use the bathroom. Particularly in a not-at-home context.

If I go into the girls room at the same time as a male coworker goes into the guys room, I'm waiting for him outside (much to his apparent surprise). If I go into the bathroom at the same time as a girl, I'm done *long* before.

I'm a girl. Yes, I wash my hands. And use soap. Every single time (if there's soap to be had). I dry my hands, but quickly. I don't use a paper towel to open the bathroom door. I don't use those froofy seat covers, but those can't take an extra full minute, right?

I wear either jeans or a skirt with tights, so it's not a fast access thing. I don't touch up makeup, but since I'm beating boys as well as girls, that's not an issue, right?

Am I just less bladder shy than the rest of the universe? Is there some magical bathroom hokey pokey I'm supposed to do once I get into a stall that I'm missing out on?

IMAC purchase

dougiedd — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:15:17 -0800

Would like to finally buy an IMAC and wondering about the Timing of a purchase? New rush to buy one, and I know one can never know when product upgrades will come forth from Apple, and the IMACs are relatively early in the cycle, but still i see this over at Mac Buyers guide:http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac
"Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle".
So i am thinking to at least see what comes up at Macworld next week before taking the plunge. Thoughts would be appreciated.

Estimating when a specific airfare will increase?

sparrows — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:04:21 -0800

Estimating how long I can wait to book a specific airfare I found, before that fare increases...
After a lot of searching I found a perfectly timed and cheap roundtrip flight for a trip I'll do next summer. I've gone through the booking steps on the airline's site on a few different days now, and it keeps coming out the same fare, but I assume at some point the fare will increase. I'm not positive about my trip's dates yet, so I can't book until I find out some stuff which may depend on slow communication from other people.

So this question is about whether there's any way to guess how long I have to decide before the fare increases, or whether that is so unpredictable that I really can't even guess.

(The fare is JFK-ARN-JFK on IcelandAir, leaving in May 08 and returning in July 08. I want to use them not because they're absolute cheapest but because they offer the free stopover in KEF on this itinerary.)

Having a baby while in grad school?

Anonymous — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:17:45 -0800

Having a baby while in grad school? Yea or nay from any of you who have gone through it, especially the women... I am a woman so hearing about your first-hand experiences would be good (although there have been some great past posts from dads in grad school as well). A little background (kind of long, but I want to dump my brain as this is anonymous and I can't answer questions as easily):

I have been one of those people who swore to the ends of the earth that I was never going to have kids and if I do, I will probably cause my mother to have a coronary simply from shock.

However, I have suddenly been struck with "the urge" (which is rather shocking to me) rather strongly. The idea doesn't cause me to cringe internally and even though I still have some reservations, they seem to be outweighed by visions of having a little tyke around the house. I look at my husband and think of what a fantastic dad he would be, how thrilled my mom would be at a grandbaby (after recovering from the coronary), and how I, even though I never saw myself as such prior, could probably be a good mom.

So, because of my past reluctance, I'm thinking I should strike while the iron is hot (I can see myself maybe cooling to the idea a bit, but, thanks to a past super-late period "scare", I know that if I were to become pregnant, I would go through with it and be fine). We do not currently have health insurance, but we will through my husband starting in June (and it is a good comprehensive plan) and I will also be covered when I start my grad program (M.A.) in July. I am debating whether it would be smarter to wait until I finish this program next summer, though, or just throw caution to the wind and start trying once the health insurance is in place.

I have already done one M.A. (yes, I am addicted to academia) so I know what the atmosphere and routine is like. I have heard arguments that grad school is actually a good time to be pregnant and have a baby because even though you are busy, your schedule can be much more flexible and the environment (depending on your program and school) can be very supportive. I also wonder if it makes more sense as well because if the baby is a few months old when I finish the degree, it might be easier to handle going back to work, etc. rather than starting a job and then getting pregnant.

There are also some obvious cons though - exhaustion, nausea, blah blah blah all while I'm trying to do some intense work.

So I could really use some first-hand knowledge of the situation as I've never done this before! Although, now that I think about it, my mom told me that I was a bit of a mistake baby while she was finishing up her master's degree and I've turned out ok.

(asked anonymously as I would like to retain the option of surprise and also because this question would cause the above-mentioned heart attacks for some of the people I know who read AskMe)

Horrible timing or chance of lifetime?

FlamingBore — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:56:40 -0800

Dream job in the wrong place at the wrong time. Previously on FlamingBore's questions: You'll remember I was looking at relocating to Portland, OR for a lucrative job being tailor made for me. Then it fell through. After that I looked a bit at other companies I might like to work for. I took a shot in the dark at one of them and emailed the founder/CEO a bold letter of introduction with my resume attached. I didn't hear anything until yesterday.

I got an email from him asking me if I was still on the market and wanting to know if I was willing to come out to meet in person with him and the team. I spoke with him to find out what he had in mind. He's looking to be *much* less hands on and wants someone to take over his role and run the company.

My big concern is that he stated he's hesitant to hire someone from out of state because he's had some bad experiences with people upending their lives to move there and the person not working out and he has to let them go. He asked how I would feel about making a two month commitment, getting a short term rental and seeing how things went. I'm confident that I could make a big impact, but am semi-concerned by the tentative nature of such an arrangement.

Needless to say, I'm floored. Professionally this is just the thing I've been working for. The timing, however, is horrid. I've not even been back in Chicago for two months. I'm in a sublease until the end of March. He seems willing to work with my timeframe, but it's still overwhelming.

I'm still not thrilled with my current employment situation, but I'm getting a new boss in January that could either make things better or *much* worse. Making a jump like this is super risky to me, but with that amazing risk comes the possibility of amazing reward.

Is the short term commitment enough of a red flag to not take the chance or is my current displeasure at work enough of a reason to make the jump? Thoughts?

MatchFilter: match.com success stories!

softlord — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:31:58 -0800

MatchFilter: Those of you (and I've seen several mentions, so please don't be shy) who have used match.com in the past, how long did it take you to find someone worthwhile? I recently (two weeks ago) took the plunge and subscribed to match.com, as I finally feel like I'm getting to a place in my life where it'd be better with someone than without.

I was wondering about any particular anecdotes of what works and what doesn't work about the site (it seems to have a habit of recommending people who I'm not really into, and I can't tell if it learns from my behavior on the site), and how you managed to find someone who worked out for you.

Stoplight timing

hobbes103 — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 21:53:11 -0800

How does a stoplight know what time it is? Around my house, after midnight, a bunch of stoplights will start to blink yellow, instead of operating normally. Another example are lights at certain intersections that have different timings at different times during the day. Obviously, these stoplights have a clock of some sort, but how is it set? Do they receive a signal of some type, maybe from the power lines? Or are they set once and then forgotten? If so, how do stoplights deal with daylight savings?

it's over, it's over, it's over... is it?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2005 06:16:28 -0800

How do you know your relationship is worth fighting for? Or, how do you know when to call it quits? We've been dating a year. He's there, I'm here, about 1/2 of it has been long distance. We'd both been having thoughts that the relationship wasn't working that well, but with the distance and stress of finals, I just figured we'd work it out this summer when we'd be together, working in another city.

Then one night a few weeks ago, he pounced and said that we need to talk about our relationship before the summer. It was horrible timing: my own finals had just started, his were a few weeks away, and we had agreed that no relationship talks would happen over the phone. That night we broke up, but we've kind of peeled back to say that "we'll talk about it when I get up there." I'm going to see him soon. The shock of it all has settled down a bit, but I have been crying for most of the past two weeks, and I don't really want that to happen the entire time I'm with him.

I have a feeling that if one of us says that we want to work it out for the summer, the other will go for it, at least to see how it goes. I have no idea if he's going to say that, but I'm trying to figure out what I personally want to happen. So my question to you, dear MeFites, is: how do you know that it's over? If you have to ask that question, does that give you the answer? Or, is the first breakup of a long distance relationship something to work through, if a summer together might help things? This was my first serious relationship - the first one that I really cared deeply about and whether or not it ends. What advice can you give me? We both still really care about each other, but I'm unclear how to go from here. This is absolutely wrenching my heart around, and I think my finals have suffered already - if the relationship can be patched up, maybe it will be worth it. What do you ask yourself to figure out what you really want? I usually have a sense of intuition stronger than magnetic north, but this time I feel like I'm totally floundering.

Why does the first tick take so long?

Navek Rednam — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 05:20:30 -0800

When I look at an analogue clock the second hand seems to pause before racing off on its 360-degree journey, is there an explanation for this phenomenon?