Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with transfer

Anxyliotics for draconian drug laws in S E Asia?

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:06:02 -0800

Can I take my benzos in transit through KL international airport? I will be catching a connecting flight through Malaysia and want to know whether I will be able to bring prescription drugs safely. I am aware of arrests of drug smugglers who were just passing through Malaysian and Singaporean airports as well as the problems people such as Grooverider have experienced in similarly draconian countries such as Dubai. I also appreciate that, if in doubt, it's best not to take a risk.

Regardless, I want to know if there is a substantial difference between carrying illicit drugs and medicines through the airport. I have a flight connection at Malaysia and want to know whether am I actually allowed to bring my benzos with me. How risky actually is it? Will I need to bring a valid prescription or will that not help me. Or is it fine as long as I am bringing obviously legit medicine rather than unlabelled baggies of loose powder. For obvious reasons I'd rather avoid any run-in with the authorities but part of me has to believe that the drug laws are vaguely reasonable with respect to medicines.

Help me make my computer backup checklist

Elminster24 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:21:00 -0800

BackupFilter: My new replacement laptop arrives tomorrow--help me make sure I don't forget anything critical in my backup process when I transfer everything to the new computer because I have to ship the old one back to Dell (hard drive as well). So here's the situation...I have a Dell XPS m1730 that is being replaced by Dell with an Alienware m17x since my graphics cards fried. The m1730 runs Vista 32-bit and the new one (which arrives tomorrow!!!) will come with Vista 64-bit and a Windows 7 upgrade disc. After doing a little research I've decided I'd like to try doing a clean install of Windows 7 on the new machine (versus just the upgrade option) and I have a laplink cable which will hopefully help facilitate data transfer from the old machine to the new one, although if I need to I can temporarily move things to my 1Tb external Lacie drive.

Now on to the question...

I'd consider myself pretty good with computers but I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to making sure I have a backup of everything I need to and that I've transferred things over the right way. Below are a list of key things that I plan on backing up and the specifics that I think I've got covered in terms of how to transfer the data but I'd love some additional opinions to make sure I am not missing anything important that I wish I'll have later. The reason for this is that once I am completely finished, I need to do a complete HDD wipe and send the old machine (including the HDD) back to Dell to complete the exchange and thus will no longer have access to the machine or data. I considered making a disc image of the drive but I'm not sure how useful that would be for recovery purposes if I won't have a similarly configured machine available to load the image onto.

Also, just a general note...the vast majority of the software I have on there, unless specifically noted otherwise, was...*ahem* "acquired" via Bittorrent. So I will most likely have to redownload everything as I did not save the installers.

1. Web Development
Right now I build my websites in Dreamweaver and have several site profiles setup that I need to transfer...not quite sure how to do that. I also have a local server setup via XAMPP.

A. How do I backup my Dreamweaver sites properly so that all the site logins and file paths aren't completely messed up?

B. How do I properly transfer my XAMPP server which houses several several databases from Wordpress installs and multiple sites?

2. Design
I have Photoshop CS3 installed currently. Since I need to redownload it I'll most likely just grab CS4. However I have several brush packs, fonts, patterns, filters, etc. on the current machine. What is the best way to back this up?

3. Internet
I use Firefox 3.0.12 and have a TON of addons and themes. I successfully used FEBE to transfer my bookmarks, profile, addons, themes etc. between machines in the past but I'm worried that it won't work if I try to load the backup into a newer version of FF.

A. Anybody know if FEBE can load a backup from an older version of FF into a new one?

4. Media
I don't have any music I've purchased off of the ITMS or anything but I have a ton of MP3s and iTunes is music software of choice. My photos are stored in my documents and I use Picasa to manage them.

A. Do I need to do anything with my iPod and iTunes on my old machine like deauthorize or anything?

B. Is backing up photos as simple as copying them all and then putting them on the new machine and just importing them into Picasa again?

Aside from those four things, I think the rest of the files on there are fairly straightforward things to copy/transfer--mainly MS Office files and some user data/preferences from games like Savage 2 and Battlefield. Is there anything else I'm forgetting about here that is crucial? I feel like I'm forgetting some important things that I'm going to really be pissed about once I wipe the drive... And speaking of wiping the drive, I don't want anybody getting a refurbished machine with my old HDD in it and accessing my data. What is a FREE guaranteed way to completely wipe the drive?

I understand this is a pretty meaty AskMeFi question so if you're able to provide answers to all the parts you're a rockstar, and even if you can only provide some, I'll take any advice I can get on this as I only get one shot at this and need to do it right. Happy to answer any additional questions anybody has.

Most cost-effective way of transfering money from UK to US

moiraine — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:30:39 -0800

Need to transfer modest amounts of money from UK to a US bank account every 2-3 months. What would be the most cost-effective way to do so? I am working in the UK. I need to pay off study loans in the US, with the first loan installment due in a couple of months. I intend/ need to transfer between anywhere between $500 to $2000 to my US bank account regularly, say every 2-3 months.

The most cost-effective way that I know of would be to take out the money in the UK, change at the Post Office (with 0% commission rates), and physically the money to the US, and place it in my bank account there. This, of course, assumes my plane ticket is paid for and I am not robbed (I have done this before, and I was fine, but I don't want to do a regular basis).

Wire transfer appears to be the second cheapest method, and I am happy to pay the wire transfer fees (~20 pounds, depending on the bank). However, I understand that the bank have non-competitive exchange rates, which are hidden costs of the transfer (~50 pounds will be 'lost' in the exchange).

I considered making regular transfers from my Paypal UK to my Paypal US account. This would be extremely convenient, but there are hefty commissions -- about 5%, and I think more is taken off from the receiving end (?)

Anyway, I was wondering whether people had any personal experience with wire transfer and non-competitive fees. Any additional ideas are also appreciated. Would appreciate if there were no comments like, "But if you just paid a little more, you could save yourself the hassle!" as I am willing go through a fair amount of hassle just to pay less fees.

I have family in the US who are probably willing to cash in a check for me every month, if this makes any difference.

How to speed up a file transfer between two external hard drives?

matkline — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:11:13 -0800

Why is it that when I transfer files from an external hard drive to my laptop's hard drive via USB 2.0, the speeds are so much faster than transferring files from one external hard drive to another (5 mins vs. a few hours for 1.5 GB)? I think it might have to do with the fact that the external drives use different file systems (NTFS vs. FAT32). Is there any software that could speed things up?

backup --> iPod

Jaltcoh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:25 -0800

Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity. (Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.

Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.

I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).

I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.

But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)

So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.

So my questions are:

(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.

(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?

(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)

How likely is it that this would come back to haunt me?

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:59:11 -0800

If someone enters a scientific "Theoretical Challenge" under my name and wins the competition, would that come back to haunt me even though all intellectual property rights would be relinquished to the company running the challenge? I have a parent who is in the process of coming up with the financing for a new investment, and though it is doable, it will be very tight for them for the next several years. They are a researcher by profession, and have discovered a scientific competition in which they need to create a theoretical solution to a proposed challenge.

This presents a conflict of interest to their current workplace and they would not normally be allowed to accept the cash prize, should they win. Their theory is that since this particular challenge requires that the entrant/winner relinquish all intellectual property rights, they should be able to enter the contest under my name.

If they don't win, no harm done. If they do win, what implications would that have for me? Taxation is the obvious one, but is there a chance my name would be linked to this project somehow even after all the intellectual property rights are transferred?

I'm rather wary and skeptical of the whole situation, but I do know how tight things are for them right now and I'd like to be able to help out. If I refuse, I would like to have a more solid reason beyond "I don't feel comfortable with it". I'm aware that this is a perfectly legitimate point, but please humour me and come up with other concrete consequences.

I'm in Canada, and living away from home. Thanks in advance!

How do I safely move my iTunes library to a different HD?

valleys — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:50:47 -0800

How do I safely move my iTunes library from one hard drive to another? I've read numerous horror stories on here from people encountering all kinds of problems when moving iTunes libraries around, so would like to get advice on how to plan and execute it correctly!

I have about 50gb of files on my 110gb internal HD, which is pretty much out of free space.

I have a 500gb external HD (that I currently use mainly for backups of all my digital photos) that I would like to move the iTunes library to, then delete it from my internal HD to free up space for work on the internal drive, and have much more space for new music on the external drive.

This is on Windows XP SP3. iTunes version 8.1 (I think - not there at the moment, but I haven't installed the latest update that it asked me if I wanted...)

And yes, I have another backup (Mozy) in addition to the external drive.

So, how do I move that 50gb of files without confusing iTunes or risking losing anything?

Can I transfer "used" aps from a used iphone I bought to my other iphone?

rabbus — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:17:21 -0800

I just bought a used Iphone 3g, jailbroken. It has some applications on it. I want to either transfer them to another iphone or at least keep them and still be able to download new aps. But when I go to sync aps, it tells me it will erase the aps that came with the used phone, and add the aps I have in Itunes. Which sounds like I'm not supposed to be able to do this (I'm guessing because I'm supposed to buy the used aps new.) Is there a way of doing this? And, if so, is it legal? Note: I understand how to transfer applications I've bought new from the Itunes store to all of my iphones. This question has to do with aps bought by someone else, the person from whom I bought the used iphone. It appears that I can either keep and use the "used aps", and never get a new ap for that phone, or not keep the "used aps", and be able to get new ones plus transfer the old ones I've purchased. Thanks for any help.

Thanks for hiring me, I quit.

taojones — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:17:10 -0800

I started working at my current software engineering job in March. People have treated me well and been good to me, but the job is boring and has little chance for growth. Is it too early to apply for internal positions at the same employer (and will people be upset)? [more inside] I graduated after the dot com bubble and took the first job that I was offered. I stuck around for about 6 years with the expectation of "great things" that never seemed to materialize. For much of that time I was contracted out to a government lab for work on a small but very high-profile project.

The people at the government lab knew that I wasn't happy with my employer and managed to get me a job offer here after a year of efforts. I started as a government employee in March. This wasn't a favor to a friend - I can say with 100% certainty that I was essential to the success of this project, and they didn't want to lose me.

The people here have been good to me, but I feel like I'm dead-ended. They talk about giving me more managerial responsibilities on this small project, but I don't think much will happen, due to political factors unrelated to me or my performance. Further, they recently hired a new software engineer who seems to be working out very well so I wouldn't be leaving them completely swinging in the wind.

I just saw an internal posting for another division at this lab. It's technically in the same pay grade, but whomever gets this job will be eligible for a semi-automatic promotion to the next pay band in a few years (my current position is ineligible for that type of promotion). This promotion would result in a 20% boost in salary. Further, the new position is supervisory and looks to be more in line with my interests.

I'm really kind of sick of my current job - it's not intellectually stimulating (it's basically just more of the same) and I don't see much room for growth. I'm not a shoe-in for the new position and have no contacts in the other division, so I can't estimate the odds of being offered this new role. Given that word spreads quickly, I'm sure to generate some hurt feelings if I apply and don't get it.

Assuming it's not too early to apply for this position, what should I tell my current boss?

Out of state used car headache

zvs — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:44:26 -0800

I'm looking into buying a used car, and found a pretty good looking one from a colleague in New Jersey. I live in Brooklyn. How the heck does this work? Parking and title questions follow... I've never bought a car before, so it's all new to me. If I buy this car, the original owner has to take the plates off -- then I guess I'll need a NY in-state temporary plate to get it to my house.

Problem 1: Do I just leave it in NJ until I manage to get NY plates? Do I have to get title to get a transfer plate, or does that include title? The website is less than clear.

Problem 2: Where the heck do I keep it? Will I get ticketed if it's on the street? Will I get ticketed for moving an unplated car during street cleaning?

Problem 3: Where do I pay sales tax?

Anybody done this before?

Is going to school in the fall really that good? Dilemma [feeling rushed]

Nighthawk3729 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:04:27 -0800

Isolation but saving a few thousand dollars and some time but rushing the college experience and moving on before I can figure out what I want to do or take it slow? I'm going into my 4th year at a 2 year community school, I've been trying to figure out what I want to do, I didn't want to rush through school and get a degree without trying things, but I sit here now with a decision to make.

The gist of the decision is that I can do the second half of my 4th year, or I can save $6,000. I personally don't want to start school during the spring session, I've heard that so many more people come in during the fall semester and that is when most people begin to band together. My first semester at my current school I became really isolated and unhappy to say the least, I got straight C's, that has smashed my GPA from the beginning, I'm a good student, B+ all the way.

I don't even know what school I want to go to for sure, I was assuming I could look around for the next few months and then apply, but my financial backers don't want to give me money to stay another year of what they think is a waste. I'm caught, I don't know what to do, pay the 6,000 or try and figure out a school and become isolated again, again, really wanted to come in during the fall. I want that go into college for the fall feel, it just feels important to me. I'm also really worried of having a huge debt I've got to pay off for the next few year and having that over my head, I hate the idea.

I've had alot to deal with, my dad had a hemoragic stroke and we've all been pitching in to help, my grandmother lives with us, I've been taking care of them basically. On top of that, we've been doing renovations for my kitchen. I've had to deal with these for the past 2 and a half years, I've been less then focuses, I'm still trying t figure out what I can do for a career.

I'm really lost and hoping someone can offer some advice.

So, Isolation but saving a few thousand dollars and some time but rushing the college experience and moving on before I can figure out what I want to do or take it slow?

Should I register for classes in the fall?

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:56:03 -0800

So I'm about to start my 7th year of community college... Yeah, I've been going to community college for six years. God, I want to throw up. I'm just trying to figure out if I should register for fall, if I should take a single class, if I should take a full-time courseload, or what.

All the boring details follow:

My dad forced me into going to school at first; I really wanted to take off a year after high school, and in retrospect really wish I'd had the guts to do so. It would have been fine, but I was afraid of my dad at the time. I did badly that first year, and got a couple Fs and Ws.

After that, I got a job and moved out while going to school at night. I did okay for a while, but progress was very slow going. A couple years of that later, I moved back in with my parents, thinking that I would be able to deal with all the parental bullshit much better now that I'd proven myself by supporting myself for a while and being responsible.

Not so. Living with my parents is fraught with the threat of emotional, verbal and occasionally physical abuse at any time. Some people would be able to tolerate these occasional outbursts in exchange for the weeks of rent-free living in between them, but soon I fell into deep depression. There's a good 9-12 month period there after I moved back in of blankness, stagnation, depressive blackness. My grades steadily got worse, and much of that time was spent re-taking classes I'd failed my first year anyway.

So I got another job and moved out last year. I got over my depression. But goddamn it, I couldn't go back to taking a single class a semester while having so little time for a social life or my hobbies. I saved up a little money, I registered for a full-time course load last spring. I moved back in with my parents and promptly procrastinated my way into withdrawing from half my classes.

This past summer, I registered for a single, six-week English class. I told myself I would focus on just one class and grind it out. It started out okay, but a bunch of fighting erupted at home and I couldn't concentrate, even after the fighting ended. I couldn't go from fighting to sitting down with coffee and writing a paper about gender identity or whatever the fuck. So I failed that class.

The thing is, once I was able to actually turn a paper in on time in that English class, I got an A on it no problem. And I've gotten A's in the past. I know I am capable of good work, of hard work. But it's always one thing after another with my fucking family. There is just constant conflict and tension. I mean, we get along one on one, but when you get more than three of us together in a room there's going to be some yelling, so we usually avoid situations that put us together like that. I can't live like this. There are some people who can compromise on the day to day like this and deal; I'm not one of them. My dad is one of them, and he's usually the guy instigating the fights.

So basically where I'm at now is I have to move out, for good, and never ever come back here. But I don't want to give up on school. For one, it seems like a cruel joke that it's only in the last year or so that I know what I want to study whereas for years after I started college I had no idea. I want to get to a university where I can actually delve into this subject (since they don't teach it at community college). I have just over a year's worth of credits but the general ed requirements I have left will take me a year full-time. I just cannot imagine going to school full-time if I'm working to support myself, even with the financial aid I'm getting.

I really don't want to quit school. I've been going for a long time and I just don't have time to lose by taking a semester or year to "find myself" or "get situated." I know what I want to study now, and I know what the problem is: my family. What I don't know is how I'm going to pay for it. So I don't know what to do here. I'm really at a loss. Every time I think I'm coming to a decision I get pulled towards the other side.

If I take a single class this semester, I'm pushing back transferring to at least one and a half years from now, if not two, because of pre-requisites. If I take both the pre-reqs I need to, which add up to nine units, I don't see how I'll have enough time to work to save up any money to get the fuck out of here and I don't see how I can succeed when a fight can erupt at any moment.

What do I do?!?!

I have an email address, askmeaboutcommunitycollege@gmail.com , if you want to ask me a question or something. Thanks for reading! :)

How to handoff cell to land line

Thrillhouse — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:46:29 -0800

I have two new iPhones. I also have a land line in my house. My cell signal in my house is poor at best. I like my land line so I'm going to keep it. I would like my cell phone to transfer to my land line when I'm home so I can get cell calls at home. I can't seem to find a product that will hand off my cell calls to my land line. Does such a thing exist?

What is the fastest way to transfer money from one US bank account to another?

Eggbert42 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:43:22 -0800

I need to transfer a large some of money from a relative's bank account to my account at a different bank as fast as possible - how? A relative is giving me a large sum of money for mortgage purposes, and for various reasons I need it in my bank account as fast as possible (same day, ideally).

He banks at a large regional bank and I bank at a large national bank. From what I can tell, my options are wire transfer or withdrawing cash from his bank and depositing at my bank.

My understanding is that wire transfers are fast, but how long will it actually take to hit my account? Cash transfer would obviously be instant once I make the deposit, but I'm not keen to carry this much money on me, even just between banks.

UK check in US account?

sdn — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:23:14 -0800

I want to deposit a UK check (written for £) into my bank account. Will this be a problem? Will they hold it for a ridiculous period of time? I assume they'll charge me a conversion fee, but how much? (I searched my bank's website and found nothing, thus I ask Mefi.)

Has anyone successfully negotiated the Medallion Signature Guarantee process?

ackptui — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:40:29 -0800

What exactly is a Medallion Signature Guarantee, and how is it supposed to work? I have been working on transferring assets for an estate, and have been amazed at how complex and redundant all of this has become. Our bank supposedly offers this as a free service to their customers, but makes the process so onerous as to drive said customers away. The amount of copied paperwork generated by the bank manager (obvious ass covering for her and the bank) was staggering next even to that for the stock-transfer agents. She bitched and moaned the entire time about how much of her time we were taking, yet she obviously did not know what she was doing, and from my perspective that was the time-killer. I tried my best to make sure that the i's were dotted and the t's crossed in the right places, but I have no confidence that it will not all come back again with requests for scads more documentation and signoffs. Is there any way to make this a little more foolproof?

Word Document Transfer Advice Needed!

goalyeehah — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:27:46 -0800

How do I transfer a word document to a jpg, gif, or pdf file? I need to send document online to an organization that will only accept these files.

How can I fix slow network speeds?

mithiirym — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:07:42 -0800

What is making the connection between my two computers so slow? Computer A runs Windows XP Professional; Computer B runs Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit. No matter which version of Windows Computer B has running, the connection between the two computers is very slow. A 1GB file taking 80 minutes seems very slow to me. Computer A's XP is pretty much untouched; I've made no network-related changed aside from installing NetBEUI which did nothing. Computer B is also untouched in regards to network settings on both Vista and Windows 7. I use a WRT54GL running Tomato in G mode; both network cards are set to use G mode and are connected at 54mbps with perfect signal strength. Any ideas on how to remedy the slowness?

How soon can I request a transfer?

Anonymous — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:36:09 -0800

How soon can I request a transfer? After many years away, I moved back to the small city where I grew up to take a very good job. The job is great, as jobs go. The office culture and my co-workers are, too. My bosses have been very good to me and have, I think, gone out of their way for me (raises and promotions). However, I still don't like this town and hope to transfer back to the city I moved from, where there's also an office. How long should I decently give it before I request this? I've been here over one year now, and I really don't want to screw over the people I work with. I'd like to move in the next year, while housing prices in my old city are good. Asking anonymously because I have no idea if my co-workers read MeFi, and if this is known, it will have the same effect as making the request already. Email at anonynony1@yahoo.com

Best way to transfer Chinese RMB (earned in China) to a US account as USD

duoshao — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:53:34 -0800

I'm a US citizen, and have lived in Beijing for just over a year. Right now I'm interviewing for jobs here. My salary will be paid in RMB, but I need to convert/transfer a portion of my monthly salary into USD in a US bank account as I still have some expenses in the USA and I would also like to save a bit of money for when I go back. So, I'm looking for advice from someone who has successfully done this: is it possible? what's involved? Whatever job I ultimately accept will be "legit" -- e.g. I'll have a legal work permit, etc, so I'll be able to prove that I paid taxes on the income, etc.

As nice as it would be, I'm not going to be setup with a sweet expat package, so any "wealth management" type solutions set-up for wealthy foreigners will likely not apply to me.

I've Googled around a bit, and I spoke with HSBC on the phone. It sounds like they can do it. Their "standard" account has a minimum balance of 100,000 RMB which is too much, but if I have to I can eat the 150RMB monthly below-balance fee. But if there's one thing I've learned from being in China is that there's always some wrinkle (or 10) that will make things much more complicated than they seem.

So I'm hoping that someone here has done this, or better yet is currently doing it and can let me in on some of the twists and turns.

Laser printing and inkjet techology filter

FauxScot — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:35:53 -0800

How do laser and inkjet printers work? I know the basics, of course, but I am looking for serious expertise at the level of the actual chemistry and physics... things like fuzer specs, toner chemistry, deposition, transfer, particle masses, exotic materials; in short... the stuff an actual expert would know. I have a friend who is a hot shot civil engineer who is doing some proposal work and who, for some reason, needs to locate some expertise in the area of inkjets and laser printer technology. (I've been beating him up for years to join Metafilter, and with a good answer here, might just push him over the edge. And Jessamyn NEEDS that $5!)

He's trying to get smart on the laser fuser and the details of toner chemistry, but transfer mechanism is important, too. Rasterization less so. For inkjet, the ink chemistry and fluid dynamics of transfer.

I know there are 20 mefites with PhDs in laser printing out there, fingers poised above keys awaiting this very question. All leads and info very much appreciated.

iPod/iTunes freezing on song transfer

tremspeed — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:32:26 -0800

Newish iPod freezing during transfer from computer. Also HDScan not appearing in the diagnostics. Anything (additional) I should try before taking advantage of the service plan? I got my girlfriend a 120GB Ipod Classic for her birthday 2 months ago. She's just acquired an external hard drive to use for her itunes library, and in the process of transferring the 80 GB (or so) library from the external drive to her iPod, there was a couple freezes that basically locked up itunes until a hard reset (or as we discovered, unplugging the ipod). The transfer would be going at a pretty normal clip, slow down drastically, and eventually stick on one file.

My first thought was that this was a problem with trying to automatically sync a Firewire external HD with the USB ipod. We reconfigured iTunes to use a 'test library' located on the internal HD with the same results. Also we tried just copying the offending song- that is, what it was transferring when it froze. The song transferred fine on a fresh drive.

Googling the problem came up with a check you can try with the iPod's built in config program, we tried that, but under I/O setup or whatever it is, there's supposed to be 4 options, including HDScan. It's not there, and there's only 2 options to try. Poking around, there seems to be no other option to scan the drive. Running OSX's Disk Utility on both the iPod drive and the internal HD Verify'ed both drives.

Alright so, just to rule out the computer, internal HD, and any corrupt mp3 files, we plugged in my iPhone and synced with her computer. The transfer went fine, not stopping where (in the library) previous transfers halted, and transferring just fine 2 of the songs that it got stuck on during previous attempts.

So, I'm thinking it's a glitch on the iPod's drive, a bad sector or something. I have the extended warranty from Best Buy, cause shit happens, so aside from having to explain all of this again, we should be good. Is there anything else I should try before giving in? Thanks!

How do I set up a computer to automatically copy files to any flash drive when it is plugged into the USB port?

dcams — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:25:06 -0800

How do I set up a computer to automatically copy files to any flash drive when it is plugged into the USB port? I'm having an album release party and I would like to set up a Macbook Pro so that people can plug in their flash drive and the files will automatically transfer to them. I also have a PC available if this is easier to accomplish in Windows XP.

How do I give the newspaper back their site?

Alec Loudenback — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:58:39 -0800

Best way to transfer WordPress site to new host without losing anything? I maintain the website for our high school newspaper (can be seen here) and as the year is ending, I need to get everything going for next year's staff.

The difficulty is that I built (when I say built I mean used WordPress and a template, then with some intermediate modifications) and hosted it on my own hosting provider (Dreamhost) using domains that I bought and generates revenue with my AdSense account and the stats are tracked using my Google Analytics account.

Had the process of doing all that been more thought through - I probably would have created accounts for the paper from the get-go, but the other editors and I just wanted to see something happen.

Alas, here I am and next year, the adviser wants to have the same setup - just under accounts that the newspaper itself will run (different hosting, different adsense, different google account, etc.).

Now, I am no fool - I know that transferring this all will take quite a bit of effort. I am asking for advice on how to make the process as streamlined and easy as possible. Advice MeFi?

(A little info on me - I already had all of those accounts, and they all have other information/data of my own on there, so I just want to transfer the newspaper stuff. I am skilled at CSS and HTML and can work my way though a less complicated Javascript and PHP code. I understand DNS servers, but am unsure of how to best transfer hosting and domains, having never done it before. If anyone can think of any other pertinent info that may help you help me, just ask!)

How to let someone borrow your car for an extended period?

txubergeek — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:37:57 -0800

Traveling overseas; how can my friend legally borrow my car for 9 months? I'm looking to travel overseas for 9 months later this year, and was wondering what I would have to do in order to allow my friend to legally borrow the car for that time. The car is paid for, there is no lien against it, it's insured and runs well. I just don't want to sell it, as I know I'll need a car when I return.

What would I have to do to ensure that, if he's pulled over, he wouldn't get carted off to jail? Also, what about insurance?