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So I've just come back from a meeting with a US Senator, and during the conversation, he went to great lengths to defend the US Patriot Act ... [more inside]
posted by silusGROK at 4:43 PM PST - 19 comments

Video Game blogs? Know any good ones? i can find listings just fine, but i'm looking for quality. (More inside) [more inside]
posted by Miles Long at 3:22 PM PST - 11 comments

I will be visiting Austin, TX soon and am looking for some fun places to see or fun things to do. Any ideas? Oh, they should also be fun for a seven year old boy.
posted by caddis at 2:25 PM PST - 15 comments

4thOfJulyFilter: I want to be a superhero and bust out some ice cream bars during our 4th of July car camping trip this weekend. If I pack them in dry ice in a cooler on Friday night, will the dry ice last til Sunday afternoon and will it be cold enough to keep the ice cream frozen? (It'll be in the mid 80's at the hottest where I'm going.) Is it OK if the cooler is a cheap styrofoam one (since my good cooler will be filled with beer and BBQ fodder)? Is there a better way I could be attempting this?
posted by badstone at 1:50 PM PST - 19 comments

What should I do if I'm developing a client's web site and the designer's design doesn't work? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:15 PM PST - 30 comments

The New House, part four: Help me set up my DSL. Please! [more inside, naturally enough] [more inside]
posted by jdroth at 11:15 AM PST - 14 comments

I want a new digital camera. Nothing fancy: 2+ megapixels, 3X optical zoom, in the $200 neighborhood. The most important thing is size; I want something I can easily slip into my pocket. Recommendations? [more inside]
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:07 AM PST - 24 comments

Anyone have a favorite hotel in Manhattan? Myself and a few mates are all meeting up in NYC for a getaway weekend and are looking for a cool place to stay, somewhere in the $150 - $300 / night range. We are all in our late 20's / early 30's, like to shop, party, eat, and chat up classy single women. Any places that might fit that bill?
posted by jasondigitized at 10:53 AM PST - 10 comments

Are there any sites/communities that rate individual courses in universities (specifically in Canadia)? [mo] [more inside]
posted by Raze2k at 10:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Did you have a nickname as a child? Was it embarrassing? [more inside]
posted by o2b at 10:40 AM PST - 48 comments

Does anyone here know the height of a year 1985 Mazda E2000 van? Google knows the height of current models, but I can't find a height for the older version. Correct answers rewarded with camping.
posted by skylar at 10:10 AM PST - 5 comments

4thOfJulyFilter: How do Pop-Its work? What are those little rocks inside of them made of?
posted by JeffK at 9:32 AM PST - 7 comments

I've recently moved into a new cubicle with new neighbours. The problem is, there are now 2 women in a very close vicinity to me who are constantly laughing all day long and it grates on my nerves. [mi]

These two women do not work in the same department as me (we share the office space with other unrelated business units) and I rarely have any interaction with them except an occasional "hi" and "bye" at the door. I've spoken with other people around me, and they feel much the same way as me but perhaps not as strongly.

I've taken the liberty of buying a set of headphones and listening to music while I work to try and drown them out. But their laughing is extremely high-pitched and even when I crank up the music, I can STILL hear them! It also makes me out to look like a slacker and I can't hear when people come up from behind me to ask me stuff.

Their laughing breaks my concentration and I can hear the other woman taking personal calls all day long and she speaks loud enough that I can hear her whole conversation.

That being said, how can I improve my office situation without coming off looking whiny or creating any enemies around me? [more inside]
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 9:05 AM PST - 24 comments

Are there any websites for coast-to-coast treat swapping? I'm looking for something that will let me exchange some east-coast goodies for Chocodiles and Mother's cookies.
posted by amarynth at 8:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Suggestions for keeping track of business expenses? I'm starting a business and I'm terrible at math. I would prefer something that's like a spreadsheet kind of, something I could plug numbers into and have the program lay it out nice and easy for me. I'm not very experienced in Excel - is there anything easier (and preferably free/cheap) out there for me?
posted by agregoli at 8:18 AM PST - 28 comments

Suggestions for getting and staying mentally focused? [mi] [more inside]
posted by vraxoin at 7:46 AM PST - 12 comments

So I'm 27 years old and taking the road test to get my (New Jersey) driver's license this week. Since most everyone I know took it, oh, about 10 years ago, I'm feeling a bit nervous when it comes to the little details of the test. If I mess up parallel parking, I can't make a single other error; so tell me, mefites, what did you screw up on while taking your driving test?
posted by bcwinters at 6:38 AM PST - 46 comments

GamblingFilter: Last week on The Casino, there was a big deal made about these two high-rollers mangling their cards while playing Baccarat. They kept pointing out that Baccarat was the only game where you can destroy the cards while playing. The casino's complaint was that they were mangling them too much, and the cameras and the dealer couldn't tell what the cards were anymore. But if you're mangling the cards because you're angry you lost, why do they need to see what the cards were anymore? And if you're able to mangle them, obviously they're not reusing them, right? And why can you destroy the cards anyway? All the sites I've found with the rules for Baccarat say nothing about destroying cards.
posted by emptybowl at 6:20 AM PST - 10 comments

A couple of days ago I bought a Monopoly board from a charity shop. It's age confuses me. Anyone any ideas about it? [go to the link, do not pass go, only collect £200 if you pass half to twine42] [more inside]
posted by twine42 at 4:07 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm looking for a weblogging system for an academic course. Unfortunately, MT and Blogger don't seem to meet my needs: it has to have multiple users, user groups, and posts need to have access control (certain posts can only be read by certain groups). LiveJournal offers this, but I don't want to have to set up an entire LJ server. Is there some kind of middle ground?
posted by bwerdmuller at 2:29 AM PST - 9 comments

Sorry for so many posts, but this is relevant: What do you do if you encounter child porn on the internet? What if it is a password only site, do you scout or immediately report? [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze at 12:39 AM PST - 23 comments

A friend of mine unyieldingly claims that Mary Kate and Ashley are in fact not identical but fraternal twins. I googled and found a lot of 13 year old girls with websites agree. A Wikipedia article says they are fraternal, an Encarta column is inconclusive. Any ideas?
posted by yevge at 12:03 AM PST - 21 comments

What is your favorite pop single (any era or genre, as long is it was released as a single)? I am searching for my new favorite song. [more inside]
posted by Quartermass at 10:32 PM PST - 62 comments

Who would you want to meet if you died, went to a heaven, and there was a great big Metafilter reunion in the sky, free drinks? Who would you beat up? Do you think it's best we don't know each other personally?
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:33 PM PST - 29 comments

BikeFilter: How does the gearing on tandem bikes work? (more inside) [more inside]
posted by LairBob at 9:28 PM PST - 8 comments

Hotmail... I need to recover some emails, specifically email header information, that was inadvertantly deleted more than one day ago (past the 'trash can' time limit). A list of what I've done so far is enclosed, so [MORE INSIDE] [more inside]
posted by sleslie at 9:25 PM PST - 3 comments

HomeBrewFilter. 7 days after bottling, I tapped one of the minikegs, just to see what it would taste like (I also tasted after the boil, and again at bottling time). I know the beer needs to be in the bottles for at least 2 weeks, preferably 3 or 4. But have I endangered it at all by opening it, tapping it, and putting it under forced CO2? Secondarily, how much is the flavor going to improve over the next 7 days? It's heady as hell, sweet, and actually not very beer-like right now. [more inside]
posted by scarabic at 9:05 PM PST - 14 comments

I'm trying to remember the name of an obscure (to me, at least) fantasy / adventure PC game from the mid 90's. I repeatedly played through the demo on one of those PC Gamer CD's, but wasn't financially secure enough to purchase the game back then. I'm sure it's floating around somewhere as abandonware now, but I cant for the life of me remember what it was called. [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by adamkempa at 9:03 PM PST - 10 comments

You know the stereotypical pirate and/or salty sailor accent? What is that? Where does it come from? It sounds like it must be some kind of bastardised English accent, but it's fairly distinctive. Or is it something created and perpetuated by film and television?
posted by picea at 8:13 PM PST - 9 comments

ASCII/Unicode conversions/importing into MT problems...[mi] [more inside]
posted by alidarbac at 8:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Where do you put your boogers?
posted by Stan Chin at 7:58 PM PST - 18 comments

OK, so there's this ice cream truck that's been around my block about a dozen or so times in the last hour. It's playing this really obnoxious song that starts/ends with a woman saying 'Hello' and there's a couple of breaks with a horn and a whistle doing 4 consecutive beats. What is this? [more inside]
posted by pieoverdone at 7:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Are there any sites more elitist than Mefi? By that I mean either more limited in membership, or more sought after and/or influential. The whole gmail / mefi swap, plus the periodic "expand the membership" pleas got me thinking about it, along with the occasional mentions of the site that is not to be named [more inside]
posted by leotrotsky at 6:52 PM PST - 43 comments

CanadaFilter. Please help educate this Canadaphile from south of the border. Martin, Chretien, Mulroney, and Trudeau all rose to political prominence from ridings in Quebec. What accounts for the lack of geographic diversity among recent occupants of Canada's top post? And why Quebec? I would think that the prominence of the sovereignist BQ and the relative cultural isolation of Montreal from the Anglophone cities would make it unlikely that mainstream Liberal and Tory politicians would thrive.
posted by PrinceValium at 6:46 PM PST - 11 comments

So I have some kind of color viewing impediment, but it seems rather nonstandard. [mi] [more inside]
posted by abcde at 6:32 PM PST - 14 comments

So… which weblogs are the in A-list?
posted by timeistight at 6:23 PM PST - 8 comments

What, exactly, does one do with an MBA? [more inside]
posted by togdon at 4:47 PM PST - 27 comments

I want to locate someone: but I only have flimsy search material.

The last address I have for him is from around 1970 in Naples,Italy. I know his full name & d.o.b. I know a few other random details about him (one of his sister's names, his fathers business, his job in 1970 etc.) He has a fairly unusual surname, but common first and middle names.

I've found an online Italian phone directory (pronto.it), he's not listed. He may be dead, he may have emigrated or he may just not be listed.

The geneaology websites appear to be (a scam and/or) dealing with details that are much older than I'm looking for. I've searched on familysearch.org for free but no luck there either.

Can any Italian speaking mefi users tell me if there are any newspapers with birth, death & marriage announcements for Napoli? I've tried using babelfish + "google translate" to read the paper's web sites that I can find, but I can't seem to see anything like that in them.
posted by selton at 3:53 PM PST - 1 comment

Does anyone here have political aspirations? If so, do you filter or censor your comments on MeFi (or other sites) for the sake of future Googlers?
posted by o2b at 2:36 PM PST - 25 comments

So I went to LensCrafters yesterday to get a new pair of glasses... [more] [more inside]
posted by jca at 2:02 PM PST - 16 comments

We have a stinky dog, and now we have a large stinky rug. Can we unstink the rug? It is about 12' x 10', wool, worn, and it sits atop a fitted carpet (the landlord's) in a bid to stop the latter getting stinky as well. The rug has seen several, uhm, accidents; and the products in supermarket aisle seem to promise so much and deliver so little. It would be a shame to get rid of the rug, seeing how it ties the room together, etc.
posted by carter at 1:41 PM PST - 11 comments

So, now that napster and audiogalaxy are long dead, where would you go online to find a really obscure song (like "Softcore" by Maurice and the Cliches, for example)?
posted by dogwelder at 1:23 PM PST - 10 comments

sed: How do I use it to do a general search/replace on a bunch of files? The docs seem to believe all I have to do is feed it s/regexp/replacetext/g and a list of files and I'm off to the races, but rather than getting the files changed... [exciting conclusion inside] [more inside]
posted by namespan at 12:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Soon after spilling half of a bottle of Rolling Rock into my keyboard, I ordered the cheapest USB hub multimedia one I could find. It arrived today, sans drivers: only the volume and mute work. Drivers I've downloaded either have no effect or only allow me to program a few of the buttons. If HP's own drivers don't work, am I SOL? Or might one of you know of a solution? [more inside]
posted by skryche at 11:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Yeargh, I stupidly hit "compress old files to save disk space" when the iTunes folder on my WinXP box got towards full. As a result, about half of my music is inacessible through iTunes. At this point, I'm clicking into each artist/album folder and uncompressing them one at a time, then re-adding to the library. I've been at this for three hours and now am up to "C." How do I uncompress these files in one fell swoop? I've been all over the "help" documentation for both WinXP and iTunes as well as Google.
posted by mimi at 11:14 AM PST - 12 comments

Where can I find good information about industrialized animal farming practices, mainly in the states but also worldwide, online? [more inside]
posted by chrisroberts at 10:23 AM PST - 7 comments

In Word, is there any way to set up autocorrect such that it automatically capitalises different combination? E.g., I want 'member State', 'Member state' and 'member state' to automatically be capitalised as 'Member State', but after putting in the first combination, autocorrect can't recognise the difference. Any ideas?
posted by biffa at 10:03 AM PST - 3 comments

Anyone have any suggestions about where I can find some kind of piano junkyard? I bought a piano at an auction but it's missing some wheels, and to get the correctly-fitting ones from the manufacturer costs almost as much as I paid for the piano itself.
posted by oissubke at 9:39 AM PST - 9 comments

Ack, I'm not vegan! But I've got a friend with three kids under 9 who is, and they're coming to stay a few days. This hapless carnivore and starchivore needs your culinary assistance to feed adults and kids. [more inside]
posted by majick at 8:41 AM PST - 34 comments

Leaving for North Carolina on Friday morning, and DC traffic has me scared. Rush hour is bad enough on a normal day, but the friday before 4th of July should be awful. I'm trying to think about the best way to go. If we take the outer loop, we'll run into the traffic at 270 and Northern Virginia, which can be pretty bad. If we take the inner loop and cut down 295, we'll have to go over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which, under the right cirumstances, can be a nightmare of Lovecraftian proportions. I live about 30 minutes from the beltway, so pretty much any time we leave will place us right in rush hour traffic, unless we leave at 6am, which I would be up for, but doubt my girlfriend would. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way to go, or know a roundabout, but potentially un-trafficky way to get around DC when coming from the north?
posted by emptybowl at 8:34 AM PST - 26 comments

I think someone is stealing my mail. I am a bit obssessed with finding out who is doing this. I suspect the mail lady. Each time I have asked her about missing items, like magazines, they have appeared in my mail in a few days. Is there any way to find out who is doing this? What can I do if it is the mail lady?
posted by renyoj at 8:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Ecological/environmental group games for kids ages 6-9, that work from personal experience? (More on the inside) [more inside]
posted by nelleish at 7:49 AM PST - 2 comments

Living in Philadelphia: my brother will be going to UPenn this fall, but he isnt eligible for on-campus housing. What are his options? Are there other off-campus dorms besides International House? What is a good (clean, safe, EASY to get to campus) area to live? What are some good resources to look for housing in Philly?
posted by TheIrreverend at 6:02 AM PST - 3 comments

I recorded a wav file from a MiniDisc onto my laptop - the MD player is getting crotchety and there's extended periods of silence throughout the recording. Is there any tool that can strip out these places where there's no signal recorded? Or do I need to do it by hand (using Audacity)?
posted by ao4047 at 6:01 AM PST - 1 comment

I need to make a web page that has 12 different languages, on one page (inc. some right-to-left languages). It's links to customer guides (PDFs) in the different languages - and rather than list them in English (Arabic, bengali, Hindi, Punjabi..) I'd like each language name to be written itn its own script. Can anyone point me to a list of langauge names as text not images, and give me a heads-up on the HTML code required?
posted by Pericles at 1:21 AM PST - 10 comments

Does anyone know of a Perl or PHP or Python script that can basically do the same thing that del.icio.us does? I also wonder whether the code of del.icio.us itself is for sale.
posted by hoder at 11:19 PM PST - 6 comments

MIDI Routing Question. I have: a Performa 6116, Digital Performer 1.6, a K2000R, and a CZ1, and to connect them, an Opcode MIDI Translator II (standard 3 in 1 out interface). I want: (a) signals from the computer to go to the CZ1 and K2000 and (b) signals from the CZ1 to go to the computer and the K2000. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by weston at 11:07 PM PST - 8 comments

I just did a Sherlock search for "Diner" in the 60662 zip code. One of the diners, "The Tasty Burger", had an address of "1000 Virtual Road", and Sherlock couldn't provide a map. I Googled the address, and got this -- tons of business that all have that address, many in different cities. What is this? [more inside]
posted by tweebiscuit at 10:22 PM PST - 14 comments

Can someone please point me to an old Metafilter FPP? It was about an annual test or exam given at a university (I believe in the UK) that was supposed to be extremely difficult. It was a general knowledge quiz, and 10 out of 10 is impossible, according to the professor who administers it. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:47 PM PST - 4 comments

How do I PERMANENTLY install a mail certificate in MacOS X 10.3? (more inside...) [more inside]
posted by 40 Watt at 8:05 PM PST - 6 comments

Cooking Without a Stove -- For a number of reasons, my best friend will be without a stove until September. Her family is getting tired of chicken and veggies cooked in her electric steamer. Not being a meat eater, I'm little help... [Step inside, walk this way...]
posted by Dreama at 7:53 PM PST - 25 comments

I'm looking for a a cms like phpnuke or postnuke that offers selective membership. something like a membership form is emailed and reviewed before membership is allowed. or maybe a field in the form has to be filled out correctly or something. I think i'm just being an idiot and not looking in the right places, but i can't seem to find what i so desire. send help
posted by bob sarabia at 7:52 PM PST - 6 comments

I've been considering getting a free-to-air satellite receiver, mainly because it's free but also because it seems to have a decent channel listing. Does anybody in Canada or the northern States have this, and if so, do you feel that it's worth it? More importantly, will free-to-air continue to be free or will it eventually be scrambled? Tell me your experiences. [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 7:12 PM PST - 9 comments

I'm in love with anything and everything that Aaron Sorkin has worked on, but I've run out of stuff to watch. Any suggestions for what else I might like? [more inside]
posted by o2b at 6:43 PM PST - 11 comments

How can I delete all the Calendar entries from my Dell Axim X5 without deleting anything else?
posted by punishinglemur at 4:43 PM PST - 3 comments

What are some ways to turn a RealPlayer streaming video file into a ripped, usable file on your hard drive? I've seen stuff for the audio part, but not so much video.
posted by inksyndicate at 3:00 PM PST - 4 comments

I'm failing miserably at brainstorming. Can anyone think of any famous security guards or security chiefs from popular literature? Google comes up with Inspector Gadget, various Star Trek series personnel, or Babylon 5, and I need something more on the mainstream or classic side.
posted by clever sheep at 2:59 PM PST - 37 comments

Staying on Captiva Island in Florida next week. We've been to Sanibel before, and know about all the shelling. Is there anything we should be sure to do, and any really great restaurants? We'll be on Andy Rosse Lane.

Also, does anyone know a good place to get "bubble tea" in the DC/VA/MD area?)
posted by onlyconnect at 2:43 PM PST - 5 comments

My Sig-O is making the big move to NYC this summer and needs to make a housing decision ASAP. Could any knowledgeable gothamefites comment on the safety/quality of this brooklyn neighborhood (with the red star)?
posted by atreyu at 2:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Question for carnivorous plant aficionados: I have a Sundew plant (drosera adelae) that seems quite healthy. It catches a lot of fruit flies, but seems unable to actually digest them. Often, dead flies just sit on the Sundew's leaves until the fly bodies eventually mold from the humidity of the terrarium. Is the plant overeating?
posted by arielmeadow at 2:35 PM PST - 0 comments

I've occasionally heard it said that "For a bacteria, moving through water is like a person trying to wade through liquid concrete" (or jello, or mud, or whatever...) What is a good layman's explanation for this scaling of viscosity? Is it simply that at the scale of a bacterium, the strength of the intermolecular forces in a fluid are more comparable to the strength that a bacterium has to push itself through the fluid, or is there something deeper to it?
posted by badstone at 2:27 PM PST - 3 comments

The rather rude Popdex bot has been bugging my referrer log every 5-10 minutes. I wish to block it via a "deny from" in my .htaccess, but the source address, http://h69-10-144-111.n-01.net, fails to resolve to an IP. How do I block this rather obnoxious crawler?
posted by brownpau at 1:25 PM PST - 3 comments

Doesn't it seem like I always have a question about my house or lawn? Well, here's another one: My Gladys-Cravitz neighbor just called to tell me that the guy who mows our lawn mowed it the other day when it was WET. Can you imagine the horror? Could anything actually result from mowing a wet lawn, other than clogged mower blades?
posted by LittleMissCranky at 1:15 PM PST - 6 comments

I'm convinced that until they figure out a way to make publishing a torrent file easier, bittorrent will never become completely popular. So I have torrentmaker. I have a valid announcement url. I can create the torrent file easily enough but I can't seem to find a reliable tracker to upload the file to to make it publically available. It seems like most tracker sites require people to log in in order to download the file, and that's just a pain in the ass. Short of setting up my own tracker, anyone know of good public trackers that don't require end-user logins? (And that don't have obnoxious popunders, like &$%#*&@ing Suprnova)?
posted by crunchland at 12:35 PM PST - 10 comments

SprawlFilter:

I'm driving to Vermont in a few weeks. I'll reach the NYC area around noon on a Saturday. I usually take the NJ Turnpike to the last exit at Ft. Lee, hit the Ft. Lee Starbucks and then the Palisades Parkway to the Tappen Zee, Saw Mill to 684, 684 to 84 to 91.

This does not work spectacularly well, but I've always figured it was as good as any. But maybe it isn't.
posted by mojohand at 12:21 PM PST - 9 comments

I lost my car keys Saturday. I remember walking out of the van, patting my pockets, and thinking "huh. Must have tossed them in my bag." Checked later and no keys.

What's your key-finding methodology?
posted by mecran01 at 11:20 AM PST - 26 comments

Say you really really really have to pee, and there isn't going to be a bathroom opportunity for at least 30-60 minutes. And you're a chick. Is there any way to trick your brain/bladder into thinking it's not all that bad?
posted by ferociouskitty at 11:04 AM PST - 27 comments

I rented an RV from Cruise America for a weekend in August. Me and 7 of my friends, along with about 80,000 other people, will be travelling to Coventry, VT for phish's last concert. I put a down payment on the RV and got a confirmation packet. I received a phone call this morning from a representative there telling me that I had exactly 24 hours to come up with the full amount of the rental (about $1700), or I would lose the reservation. I assume that the lost reservations of people who can't pay will be resold at a much higher rate, as the demand for that weekend is through the roof. Can they legally do that? What are my options?
posted by mfbridges at 10:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Have you been to Southeast Asia? What was your favorite country to visit? I'm in the early stages of planning a trip, and I'm trying to find out which country/ies people like best - both from a touristic/comfort-travel perspective (my parents), and an off-the-beaten-path perspective (myself).
posted by gottabefunky at 10:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Flash MX 2004 crashes on startup, suspect font issue, as the last thing the splash screen says is "initializing fonts". DreamWeaver, Fireworks and Freehand work fine,
I had been messing around with the fonts on my XP pro system lately, trying to get Extensis Suitcase working right, so I moved most of my fonts out of the windows/fonts folder (except the ones with a big red A, as suggested in suitcase's manual), but much wierdness ensued. A mess of 0 byte font files appeared in windows/fonts, which I managed to get rid of after removing windows/fonts special properties, and later restoring them. Have moved fonts back into windows/fonts, but Suitcase reports about 16 postscript fonts as "missing", but these same fonts don't show up either in windows/fonts, or under the font lists in The Font Thing or OT1 Font Manager. OT1 reports a "temp" font named "Sydnie" which doesn't show up anywhere else.
Have tried fixing registry, using OT1's tools and much else, to no avail. Have reinstalled Windows and Flash a number of times. Windows explorer is a little off, too, locks up, etc.
posted by signal at 10:09 AM PST - 0 comments

I am considering a career as a special education teacher. I have everything I need in order to become certified, but what I'm really looking for are honest "from the trenches" stories/advice/opinions/general tales of horror and/or bliss. I need to know what I'd really be getting myself into.
posted by Watsonne at 9:27 AM PST - 15 comments

Log homes: anyone here ever built one (either by hand or by kit)? What were your experiences - good, bad, indifferent. Similarly, anyone ever been to a log home building school? (examples: B. Allen Mackie School of Logbuilding, Moose Mountain, Great Lakes School of Logbuilding). [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 9:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Can you think of any children's albums by good adult artists? (more inside) [more inside]
posted by waxpancake at 8:55 AM PST - 37 comments

Here's a hard one: why can’t I copy my files? [More griping inside] [more inside]
posted by Termite at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

It's election day here in Canada, and I have still not made my mind up on who I am going to vote for. I am in Southern Alberta, so it is pretty much decided who is going to win here (last poll had the local Conservatives at 60%), Am I throwing my vote away by voting NDP? Or should I vote "strategically" with the second place party (the Liberal party, which I am not a huge fan of - mainly because of Paul Martin), as an "anyone but conservative" vote?
posted by Quartermass at 6:38 AM PST - 13 comments

There is a young adult bird (it's small but flies) trapped between my window grate and my window. It got it in, but doesn't seem to know how to get out. this freaks me out. What do I do? [more inside]
posted by dame at 5:24 AM PST - 9 comments

How to get through a day of work on *yawn* too little sleep? Copious cups of coffee already considered (and consumed).
posted by adampsyche at 4:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Is it a problem to have 7k handles, 290 threads and 27 processes on an AMD 2400+ in windows XP, 512mb RAM?
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Look for a versioning control system (like cvs) for art/design work [More inside] [more inside]
posted by X-00 at 8:56 PM PST - 8 comments

I've always heard conflicting things about Cuba's state (economy, government, quality of life, all of it) under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Can someone link me to some sites that tell of the positive and negative impacts he has had on Cuba in the last few decades. The less pro- and anti- Castro propaganda, the better. If anyone has any personal stories to share, I'd be very interested in those as well. Thanks.
posted by Slimemonster at 8:46 PM PST - 7 comments

My computer's fan just gave out completely. Is every second it stays on eminent danger or do I have a few hours?
posted by Tlogmer at 8:16 PM PST - 9 comments

VirtualEmployeeFilter: management made the receptionist position redundant. I have been set with the *fun* task to create a Digital Receptionist Installation that responds to events in the foyer as people approach the desk. [more inside room 101] [more inside]
posted by elphTeq at 7:40 PM PST - 10 comments

A garden defeat: Weeds, 1, Happydaz, 0. Today, I borrowed a friend's Weedwacker. I was happily mowing down the growth in my back yard (some of which had reached three feet in height) when all of a sudden one of the nylon strings disappeared! I stopped the contraption and tried to fix it, but all I ended up doing was making the other string disappear. So now I have a non-functional weedwacker, and 20 % of my yard still un-wacked. Anyone know how to make the string come out? [more inside]
posted by Happydaz at 6:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Why does Firefox insist on loading pages with Unicode character coding, when I prefer Western character coding? The former turns high-ASCII characters like § into question marks; the latter displays these normally. Does this happen to anyone else, and can I fix it?
posted by PrinceValium at 6:57 PM PST - 14 comments

Sometimes I need to access Mac-formatted CDs on my Win2K computer. I don't want to shell out $50 for MacDrive. Are there cheaper or even free alternatives?
posted by scarabic at 6:19 PM PST - 5 comments

i'm interested in reading and learning about the apocrypha and the gnostic gospels-- especially the books of judith and mary magdalene. any recommendations on texts and/ or analysis?
posted by ronv at 5:58 PM PST - 9 comments

AO-Hell. This person whose computer I'm fixing has a problem with AOL 9. Basically, every time he quits it, an 'updating AOL' dialog appears, the progress bar makes it about 2/3 of the way to the end and then the whole computer locks up. [details inside] [more inside]
posted by boaz at 4:38 PM PST - 10 comments

Where do you share links that you like, but don't think deserve a front page post? Like while this looks interesting to me, I'm not sure it's techy/cool/best of the web enough to go up as a post. Yet the link doesn't fit the feel of my own blog, and I still want to share it. Anyone know of sites for links that aren't FPP, but still sort of neat? (Also, the spell check seems to be hanging, so I'm posting this hoping nothing is too wrong.)
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:15 PM PST - 6 comments

Any way to disable sound from Flash? I'm running Mozilla 1.3.1.
posted by punishinglemur at 2:56 PM PST - 3 comments

Let's presume you just had to acquire the third season of, oh, Six Feet Under, as quickly as possible. How would you do it?
posted by blueshammer at 2:28 PM PST - 9 comments

I have a RAID 1 running on an Adaptec 1200A controller. I want to increase harddrive size from 50GB to 200GB. So I changed out one of the 50GB with the 200GB, copied and then changed out the remaining 50GB with the other 200GB. So I have everything running as 200GB but Windows (and the RAID BIOS configuration) shows me as only having 50GB. Please tell me I can do this without formatting the harddrives and without wasting $300+ on these expensive drives. [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 12:41 PM PST - 4 comments

Video formats confuse me. MPEG-1 to 4, DivX, XviD, DVD-Video, VCD, SVCD, .. help. What do they all mean? [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 11:09 AM PST - 9 comments

YellowColoredMonitorFilter: Something in my PC broke, and now everything's a yucky yellow tint. Anyone have this experience, and if so, how did you solve it? Google turns up one search that blames it on the monitor, but I'm praying it's the video card, or a short in a cord. File this also under ICan'tAffordAWholeNewFreakinMonitorFilter. [more inside]
posted by precocious at 9:32 AM PST - 11 comments

Favorite 70s/funk songs? Looking to shake up my MP3 collection.
posted by Aaorn at 9:14 AM PST - 17 comments

I have a cat who will not drink water. Recently he's been begging for food more often, probably for the moisture content. I say probably because I give him friskees in a pouch, which is largely water, and he will lick all the syrup/water up and leave the little bits of meat. But he won't drink his water. How do I get him to drink his water?
posted by Grod at 7:41 AM PST - 28 comments

Would installing a new (smallish) hard drive in my machine and dedicating it solely to the Windows swap file (i.e., instead of having it on C:) improve performance?
posted by oissubke at 11:34 PM PST - 13 comments

Is there such a thing as a disposable credit card? [more inside]
posted by RavinDave at 10:18 PM PST - 13 comments

GourmetFilter: Where in Manhattan might one purchase ostrich eggs?
I need them for Halloween an omlette recipe.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Is there a difference (other than spelling) between "normalcy" and "normality"?
posted by casarkos at 8:19 PM PST - 10 comments

How cold should my refrigerator be? I've been moving an instant-read thermometer sitting in glass of water around the various shelves, and they all read 40 degrees fahrenheit. But we still sometimes get ice crystals in the stuff we put on the top shelf (near the cooling element). Is this just too cold?
posted by scarabic at 7:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Should not Spiderman's web not shoot out his arse?
posted by kenaman at 6:49 PM PST - 26 comments

Ripping a CD that has tracks that lead into each other and then converting to MP3 has presented me with a problem. When I try to play the MP3s back in order there's a slight stagger when the next track starts (not a crossfade or optional pause), where on the audio CD the transition would not be noticeable. I'd like to either eliminate this error and keep the individual MP3s or rip the CD as one big audio file and convert that to one big MP3. Advice? [specs inside] [more inside]
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 5:06 PM PST - 11 comments

MetaNetowrkingGeek question.

I have an XP box behind a wireless Belkin -g router (it's hardwired to the router, my powerbook uses the G around the house).

I'm going to be away for a week.

I'm on a Dynamic IP via comcast.

How do I access my machine:
Optimally -
1) Windows Remote Access (There's a Mac client - I could control the PC)
2) SMB (or FTP if SMB is blocked/not secure enough)

I get the whole "dyndns" and it's variants (although I'm not sure it's set up right). It's just not working. Port mapping at the router? What? What? What to do?
posted by filmgeek at 3:50 PM PST - 6 comments

I'd like to build a door into a storage area that blends into the wall as much as possible. No visible hinges, no handle, painted to match the wall, etc. Has anyone tried this before? [more inside]
posted by kaefer at 12:41 PM PST - 5 comments

What windows app will allow me to take an AVI or MOV file and .SUB or .SSA or other subtitle file and burn it onto a DVD+R or -R with the subtitles either burnt-in or generated by the dvd player?
posted by signal at 9:01 AM PST - 3 comments

SpamFilter: I do some html stuff for friends who run an micro-business which involves lots of sales on eBay. The email address they use for their eBay sales is getting absoloutly flooded with spam - so much so that its nearly unusable. Given the restrictions on what kind of markup code you can put in eBay auctions and have work, can anyone suggest a way that we can somehow encode or camoflauge the address in the auction so that the spam decreases?
(I've already tried this to no avail - eBay's code turns it back into standard characters when we view the source code.)
posted by anastasiav at 8:28 AM PST - 18 comments

My wonderful Dell has a quirk: suddenly streaming media, antivirus updates, and MSN messenger are no longer able to connect. My netwrok settings 'seem' okey-dokey, so short of a long ass tech support call to India*, what gives?
*Not that I have any misgivings about that fabulous region.
posted by moonbird at 7:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Anyone here from south Jersey? I mean waaay south, like near Cape May. It looks like I may be relocating there, and I know zilch about the area. Which towns are especially cool/funky/arty and/or especially affordable on a librarian's salary? Which are especially uncool/scary or unaffordable on civil servant's wages (seems to be no shortage of the latter)? [more inside]
posted by willpie at 6:19 AM PST - 7 comments

Web tricks. This rather clever use of the "marquee" html tag made me wonder how I could code a really stupid and irritating effect : mousing over a link triggers a tiny, obnoxious audio clip.

" isn't there some way I could make a tiny little (2-3 sec) audio clip play when somebody mouses over a link?....Farts, shrieks, high pitched cartoon voices wailing "It's hopeless. I'll just crawl up my ass and die!", and so on."
posted by troutfishing at 6:14 AM PST - 6 comments

iPod emergency: I'm supposed to provide music for a wedding in two hours, but it appears that my iPod decided to croak. I reset the bastard by holding menu and play, and now I got a slowly blinking Apple icon, suspicious hard drive clicks, and nothing more. It won't connect to windows and the updater doesn't see it. Am I fcuked? [more inside]
posted by muckster at 3:50 AM PST - 5 comments

I'm using dual monitors on OSX 10.3, is there any way to add a menu bar to the second monitor so I don't have to traverse 2500+ pixels to use my file menus? [more inside]
posted by esch at 10:20 PM PST - 8 comments

Framed! I'm moving into a new apartment, and I have about three dozen pictures, posters, and prints that I'd like to frame. Has anybody discovered an inexpensive way to frame pictures? Is it possible to frame them yourself, by, say, getting glass cut at the hardware store? The last picture I got framed cost nearly $90, which was way too expensive.
posted by josh at 10:15 PM PST - 18 comments

iTunes trashed my library! Can XML save my sanity? [more inside]
posted by kjh at 7:48 PM PST - 9 comments

I've got a van with one of those chrome 3-sided luggage racks on the roof. How the heck do you use it? With no front bar, it seems it would be hard to secure anything against the wind. Rack bags all assume a 4-sided rack.
posted by Tubes at 7:21 PM PST - 1 comment

DVD Rewinder Is this a satricial website, a joke product, or are gullible people being duped somewhere along the line? I'm guessing it's the first, but I'd like to know your thoughts... [seen at Gizmodo] [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 4:46 PM PST - 10 comments

Followup question: Recommend some good protein (and other nutritional) supplements to compliment my weight-training. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 4:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Help, I'm barbecuing beef ribs without a clue! [more inside]
posted by TungstenChef at 3:22 PM PST - 5 comments

I'm in love with the FireFox .9 browser, especially with the amazing web developer extensions and the sharp looking Noia theme. Is there a way to repackage it with some of those extensions already installed? [more inside]
posted by TungstenChef at 2:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Where do I find English subtitle files for non-English films? If I have a Divx/xvid/whatever I can play a subtitle file along with it. This I already know. What I don't know is a good site to find these files. Any help?
posted by Grod at 1:16 PM PST - 6 comments

Connecting a Mac Powerbook (Panther) to a Windows 98 box. Help, please. --> [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 1:13 PM PST - 44 comments

HomeImprovementFilter: It's time to replace our aging oil-fired furnace (so old it's a converted coal furnace) in a great old house with radiators. Now we need to decide, do we stick with oil or switch to natural gas. After getting estimates, the price is pretty much a wash (including cutting up and removing the oil tank if we go with gas), so I'm trying to figure the pros and cons of both. The other wrinkle is that the new oil system would have a coil-heating system for hot water, rather than the traditional hot-water tank. Either way, the system should pay for itself in less than 10 years, as the service guy yesterday said our current system is running at 61% efficiency.

So. Any strongly-held feelings out there on oil vs. gas?
posted by baltimore at 12:34 PM PST - 15 comments

Help requested for translation of bit of German audio [mi]. [more inside]
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:22 AM PST - 7 comments

RE: Excel: I have an Excel spreadsheet where one column is filled with dates — but the dates aren't showing up properly in the spreadsheet. Instead of looking like a date, they are flat numbers (02/29/2004 is rendered "36584" in the display) — even though the proper date is revealed in the FORMULA BAR as I select each cell. I've set the text type to DATE in the FORMAT dialog... I've even tried setting the text type to PLAIN TEXT. No go. Strangely, the numbers increment with the date (03/07/2004 is "36591"), so I'm guessing there's some equation going on. Suggestions on getting the dates to render properly would be appreciated.
posted by silusGROK at 10:06 AM PST - 10 comments

Anyone have any peace core experiences they'd like to share? I have a friend who is thinking of joining and would like to hear if people think it's a worthwhile experience.
posted by puppy kuddles at 9:50 AM PST - 12 comments

What's the best software package for dealing with fonts on a OSX Macintosh?
posted by Macboy at 9:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Neighborhood parking etiquette. Details inside. [more inside]
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 8:57 AM PST - 29 comments

Is cheating in a relationship acceptable or unacceptable? How did you come to feel that way?
posted by KathyK at 7:51 AM PST - 90 comments

RSS Feeds: Why?
I like the idea of feeds, but I haven't found any partcular benefit to them over, say, just visiting their respective websites. Which feeds do you find to be most rewarding -- in and of themselves? And what makes them such a big deal, anyway?
posted by *burp* at 7:43 AM PST - 21 comments

There are some amazing old posts in the MetaFilter archives, but the sheer volume of material makes it a needle/haystack exercise to find them. Jimbob made an excellent comment in this thread where he suggested that the community could put together a collection of favourite old MetaFilter discussions. So how about it, what classic MetaFilter post do you think qualifies as a must-read thread?
posted by snarfodox at 6:47 AM PST - 8 comments

I would like to return to teaching after a five-year stint in the corporate world. Help? [Please open your browsers to more inside] [more inside]
posted by Otis at 6:04 AM PST - 6 comments

I can't, for the life of me, complete my enrollment to Paypal's "Expanded Use" program. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by kchristidis at 12:36 AM PST - 5 comments

Yesterday Scott Kurtz of PVPonline.com posted something about how another webcomic artist was basically stealing his work. Yet, he did not mention this artist by name, or what the actual webcomic is, so I could not make a judgement for myself. Anyone know what said webcomic is and where it can be found?
posted by geekhorde at 9:45 PM PST - 16 comments

I want some new friends (to add to my old ones), but I'm too busy to actually spend time with people, and I'm also shy and introverted. So I'm looking for email buddies. Fine, but how do I "meet" them? Are there any good sites where people can post personal ads for platonic relationships via email? I'm looking for someplace where I could post a really long, descriptive email about myself. I guess I'm looking for what was once called a "pen pal." (I'm not looking for forums or chat rooms. That's too interactive. I want something more slow-paced and long-winded. I.e letters.)
posted by grumblebee at 9:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Im taking a political science class, and the teacher wants us to cite political editorials and cartoons, and explain what ideology they represent. (mi) [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:25 PM PST - 23 comments

Getting eBay to cancel someone else's auction. Anyone had any luck doing that? In the past, I've tried to get eBay to shut down bootleggers of items that I was trying to sell legitimate copies of (they devalue my sale). Never had any luck.

Today, I was notified that someone is selling a bootleg release of a band I'm affiliated with as if it's a legit release. Unfortunately the auction ends in less than 20 hours so I'm doubting eBay will do squat about it in time but I'd like to be prepared for the next time this happens. eBay's official means of reporting bootlegs is, put simply, useless. (They don't write you back, they don't kill the auction, your email just flies into the ether.) Anyone with any inside dope on doing this effectively?
posted by dobbs at 2:57 PM PST - 15 comments

How you do you usually set font sizes in CSS? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:31 PM PST - 11 comments

I want to go buy some paint to do touch-ups on my walls. I need it to match what's on the walls. Anyone have any bright ideas on how I can accomplish this? I have managed to get a paint chip off the wall, about 1-inch by 1/2-inch. Is that enough for the Home Depot folks to computer-match? Should I just eyeball the paint samples and try to find a match myself?
posted by scarabic at 2:03 PM PST - 18 comments

Wifi networking question. My brother lives 1 mile away, nearly direct line of sight as I am up on a hill. I can get DSL, but his house cannot. Is there a cheap-ish way to get hi-speed into my house and create a secure wifi network to span to his house as well? (MI)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 2:02 PM PST - 12 comments

I'm considering buying a set of binoculars with built in Digital Camera. The Meade Capture View 1.3 has the features I think I want: Price < c$200; sd card expansion; 8-10 power; cheap & readily available batteries; at 1.3mp, better than vga resolution. i'm also considering the 2mp version. Pentax, Bushnell and Celestron are some other makers.

Anyone who has used these have any thoughts on "must have" or "avoid at all costs" features or manufactures? General recommendation?
posted by Mitheral at 1:44 PM PST - 0 comments

Can anyone recommend a good read on Modern Economics? Preferably on a macro stage and not a text-book. [more inside]
posted by Dr_Octavius at 1:22 PM PST - 6 comments

Actionscript: Is there any way for a SWF file to read the name and/or path of the XHTML file that loaded it?
posted by signal at 1:02 PM PST - 9 comments

T-shirt with the Zelda hearts on it -- where? (Google has proven no help)
posted by Tlogmer at 12:37 PM PST - 7 comments

How long would it take me to drive from Paramus, NJ to Portland, ME leaving between 6 and 7am tomorrow morning? I've been getting conflicting reports, everywhere from 5 hours to 12 hours, but none of the advice givers have ever driven there, so their estimate could hardly be considered accurate. Any traffic concerns I should be aware of?
posted by emptybowl at 12:22 PM PST - 16 comments

What's a good MMORPG to get started with? I don't want to pay a monthly fee, and I want something that is beginner-friendly. Star Wars Galaxies seemed like the way to go, but I won't be playing it enough to pay a monthly fee on top of the purchase price.
posted by quibx at 12:18 PM PST - 20 comments

I have a hairy anus (come on inside...) [more inside]
posted by gravelshoes at 11:18 AM PST - 41 comments

The Übersnack: I'm trying to find something small and dense, like a powerbar, but cheaper and tastier. It shouldn't be super-sweet, and as an added bonus it would be cool if it had some sort of buzz-factor, like ginseng or the like. This is for use in marathon writing sessions in the library, so I don't have to take breaks to eat. So it can't be messy. I could just load up on jerky and fig newtons, but was hoping the collective cleverness of the mefisphere might have better suggestions.
posted by mecran01 at 11:00 AM PST - 22 comments

Fasting. I'm healthy and have a normal weight, but I've been overindulging lately and thought of trying a two day fast. Can you juice fast without a juicer? What about just eating nothing but fruits, veggies, and water for a few days? I'm not considering it for spiritual reasons either, I just feel gross. Any experiences or advice?
posted by rainbaby at 10:54 AM PST - 22 comments

What are some common manly cocktails? [mi] [more inside]
posted by milovoo at 10:03 AM PST - 71 comments

Backpacking with a bad back. [more inside]
posted by badstone at 9:57 AM PST - 16 comments

[JavaFilter] Does anybody know how to deploy an EAR file to Websphere remotely using Ant [mi] [more inside]
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 8:54 AM PST - 1 comment

I'd like to find a good map/atlas on the web. [more inside]
posted by TurkishGolds at 8:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Is there a way to cut'n'paste charts from Excel into Word, without generating huge Word files? I've tried varieties of paste, 'paste special,' and so on, and I can't figure out why an Excel file of charts that's several hundred KB, always turns into a Word file that's at least several MB. I guess I'm missing something obvious, but have no idea what it is.
posted by carter at 8:45 AM PST - 8 comments

Is there an open source and/or free Windows software that will create encrypted, virtual drives? I'm looking for something equivalent to DriveCrypt that I and my clients can trust.
posted by johnnydark at 7:43 AM PST - 3 comments

I need to add a chat room to a website [more inside]
posted by ajbattrick at 7:40 AM PST - 5 comments

re: popups/popunders ... those wiley webmasters have apparently come up with a new version of code that thwarts my popup filters. Anyone know of a more recent popup filter that works on this new form?
posted by crunchland at 7:35 AM PST - 18 comments

Skunkfilter: Ewww. There's a skunk under my office (which is in a trailer-house). It stinks. How do I get rid of the thing? When I've done that, how do I get rid of the stench? (Or will it just go away in time?) Lord, this is nasty.
posted by jdroth at 7:15 AM PST - 5 comments

UrineFilter: What is the best place to aim in a standard wall-based men's urinal to minimize spray (on yourself)?
posted by pissfactory at 7:12 AM PST - 22 comments

Any experience or advice on relocating a cat interstate via air transport? [more inside]
posted by cyniczny at 7:10 AM PST - 15 comments

Monitor color shift causes? [more inside]
posted by donnagirl at 7:03 AM PST - 4 comments

Ok, since weblogs.com has sort of switched over to buzzword.com all my rpc pings to weblogs.com time out like no other. Did the way to ping weblogs change? I tried looking on the site, but then weblogs times out. Anyone know?
posted by thebwit at 7:01 AM PST - 4 comments

I'm studying for the New York bar exam (law), using BarBri, and I was wondering if there's anyone out there who's passed the bar and can give me any pointers on scrambling to learn all this material? I feel like a candle burning at both ends and I need some moral support. Thanks!
posted by adrober at 10:34 PM PST - 9 comments

I want to sync my Palm Tungsten C with Mozilla Calendar (running on Windows XP). I know there's no conduit for Mozilla Calendar, but since it stores stuff in ical format I figure there must be *some* way to do this. Any ideas? Alternately, can anyone recommend a good Windows PIM that can sync with my Palm AND publish an ical?
posted by sanitycheck at 7:54 PM PST - 0 comments

How can I deal with a frustrating situation at work? (More inside, natch.) [more inside]
posted by eilatan at 7:13 PM PST - 25 comments

Why do I usually feel inclined to pace around when talking on the phone? Even if I make a call while sitting comfortably, I end up walking all over the place when I'm using a phone.
posted by Nikolai at 6:23 PM PST - 18 comments

Rabbit fighting question. We have two rabbits, a female named Grendel and a male named Robocop. They're both altered. They've been living together happily since November until yesterday. Now they're fighting and need to be seperated lest the fur fly. What could be causing this change in behavior?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Privacy Laws: What kinds of information about my transactions can credit card companies sell or otherwise use commercially? What kinds of information can my landlord sell? A mortgage broker or lender? My insurers? Radio Shack?
posted by namespan at 5:08 PM PST - 3 comments

I have Apache 2.0 running. I can easily set stuff up like mod_perl and PHP. I want to start developing w/ Java and I want to run servlets and Tomcat scares me. Does it run under Apache? Seperate from Apache? Any info appreciated.
posted by xmutex at 3:51 PM PST - 5 comments

I'm looking for a site that will give me mapquest-like directions to a place that has no address, but that I do have the lat/lon for. [mi] [more inside]
posted by badstone at 2:30 PM PST - 5 comments

Anyone know of any stats showing the %age of the various versions of Acrobat Reader out there, so I can see how far versions "back" we need to make our PDFs compatible with? My google-fu has let me down.....
posted by Pericles at 1:41 PM PST - 6 comments

Web form etiquette: You have a commercial website containing a form that a customer uses to provide personal information. There's an optional "salutation" field from which they may make a selection or, if they prefer, simply leave blank. What combination from "Ms", "Miss" and "Mrs" would be least potentially offensive for female respondants, if any? [more inside]
posted by normy at 11:55 AM PST - 28 comments

My company retained a consulting firm to improve our search engine placement, but our web site is no longer showing up in Google searches that it definitely should. I believe the consulting firm screwed up royally by adding this line of HTML to our home page:

[the more, she is inside] [more inside]
posted by alphanerd at 11:46 AM PST - 18 comments

Neck pain. Sharp stabbing neck pain, you know the kind you get when you sleep in a odd postion and wake up with a "crick". I woke up this morning with such pain, and now I can't turn my head to the right at all. This has happened before, but never to this degree. I sneezed earlier and thought I was going to cry. What's the remedy? Wait it out? Heating pad? Ibuprofen?
posted by corpse at 11:29 AM PST - 17 comments

In the teach a man to fish cat., what's the best way to solve computer problems?[mi] [more inside]
posted by drezdn at 11:10 AM PST - 13 comments

A friend is looking for prints of a series of works by Georges Redon. She is not looking for Biscuits Brun, which seems to be his most popular work. What she does want is described inside. [more inside]
posted by littlegreenlights at 10:00 AM PST - 6 comments

HTML Help:
I want to post a link - then after the link has been visited by the reader and the reader returns back to my site - a message appears in the post. Is this possible? Using Blogger.
posted by thomcatspike at 9:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Can anyone recommend a free mail list manager? I'm looking for something that blogger can email my posts to, so they can go out to subscribers.

Here are my requirements:
-- admin can post via email
-- posts can be html templated
-- users can subscribe/unsubscribe via email
-- users can access a preferences page (or email) showing what lists are available, what lists are subscribed to, and enabling subs/unsubs
-- should be script based (perl or php) to sit on my sever. No Yahoo groups, topica, etc.


I've used phplist and it doesn't allow posting via email, but does everything else great.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:35 AM PST - 7 comments

I need new music. What I like doesn't follow any rule of thumb. I generally will not find indie cruft interesting, but hey, you never know. More or less what I'm looking for is what you think is better than good, not just better than "sucks".
posted by angry modem at 7:20 AM PST - 48 comments

You know Snake? The criminal character from The Simpsons? What is his accent - where's it from? It seems pretty highbrow for a lowbrow kind of guy. [more inside]
posted by ssmith at 6:26 AM PST - 21 comments

When I got home from work yesterday, my computer speakers were making an incredibly horrible noise. When I unplugged them, the transformer was hot to the touch. There were storms in the area yesterday, although the surge protector plugged into the same outlet wasn't tripped and nothing else in the house seems to have been damaged. (The speakers were plugged directly into the wall, not the surge protector, because I had run out of room.)

So my question: would it be dangerous to plug them back in tonight and see if they're a lost cause? Should I just buy some new speakers and be done with it? (The speakers were expensive, but about 6 years old.)
posted by JoanArkham at 5:55 AM PST - 4 comments

Which sporting event is the shortest on a per competitor basis? [more inside]
posted by jacquilynne at 5:41 AM PST - 28 comments

SickKittyFilter: more inside... [more inside]
posted by Soliloquy at 12:57 AM PST - 13 comments

This idea about not-quite-working-from-home is great. The problem is that I don't live in cali, and I'm looking for the practical aspects rather than the lifestyle. I've seen other setups where small firms share an office space, a receptionist, etc. -- how can I get in on something like that?
posted by oissubke at 10:34 PM PST - 4 comments

What's the comic-book font used in the movie American Splendor?
posted by signal at 9:57 PM PST - 9 comments

Where can one d/l a "legit" copy of kazaa lite++? The "official" home page on the 'About' screen of my instance of it appears to be dead (www.kazaalitekpp.com)
posted by luser at 9:48 PM PST - 3 comments

I stumbled across piPod today. Are there any other cool listings like this for stuff in the NYC area, or other outstanding uses of iPod's notes feature?
posted by alphanerd at 6:19 PM PST - 7 comments

My girlfriend is in the market for a new 17+" LCD flat-panel monitor for her Mac G5, and it occured to me that it might be nice to get something with two inputs, so that I could use it with my PC sometimes, leaving it connected and switching on the fly. Is this possible? Can anyone recommend a good product?
posted by sixfoot6 at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

Inside, there's a lengthy question about freelance writing and resumes. [more inside]
posted by COBRA! at 2:45 PM PST - 6 comments

The number one movie last week was a comedy about dodgeball that has a lot of people my age waxing nostalgic about elementary school. There also seems to be a new televised Extreme Dodgeball "league". There's just one problem: None of these people are playing or talking about the game I remember as "dodgeball" from my childhood. [more inside]
posted by jjg at 1:54 PM PST - 47 comments

Are you tall? Do you slouch? Do you think it's because you feel higher up in the air than other people? Do objects like desks and chairs often feel too low for you? Do you think maybe even doorknobs might be a little more comfortable if they were a few inches higher? Have you ever wasted time thinking of these things? Have you ever hit your head on windchimes at a short person's house? Did you consider suing, or at least tell them they were callous and insensitive towards tallish folk?

Do you have any tips for remembering to keep good posture, or exercizes that tend to keep your spine erect?
Yes or No answers are acceptible for the first para's questions. Also, there's no more inside.
posted by Shane at 1:03 PM PST - 29 comments

Help for my burgeoning interest in electronica/ambient? [Nope. There's no more inside. Don't even bother looking.] [more inside]
posted by scody at 12:46 PM PST - 41 comments

HomeBrewFilter. I bottled last night and took great precautions to sterilize everything effectively. Then I found myself with the siphon hose in hand, the fermenting bucket up on the table and the bottling bucket down on the floor, and realized I had no idea how to accomplish the siphon without putting my mouth on the hose and sucking. This seems incredibly un-sterile but I couldn't recall ever doing it any other way. I was using a glass racking tube with about 5' of hose attached. Is there some better way to do this? Or should I not worry too much about it? [more inside]
posted by scarabic at 11:41 AM PST - 29 comments

Mac OS X:
I have an Emac in the office, running OS X 10.3, it boots, gets to the OS X loading screen, then hangs on "Waiting for Apple File Services", I'm perplexed, offering real gifts for a solution that works... More Inside... [more inside]
posted by Divine_Wino at 10:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Where can I get rid of extra Gmail invites? (More inside...) [more inside]
posted by crazy finger at 10:36 AM PST - 49 comments

I love the DHTML navbar menu thing available at Mishoo, but I'm loathe to spend £25 on it. Does anyone know if there's a decent OS/Freeware version of it around?
posted by twine42 at 10:32 AM PST - 6 comments

Am I overestimating Adobe by saying that their PostScript/EPS/PDF axis is one of the most unbreakable semi-monopolies in modern computing? Does it have any serious competitors in that regard?
posted by blueshammer at 9:21 AM PST - 17 comments

Prog Rockers? It's safe to come out... even if only for a couple minutes. That's it, c'mon. I'm looking for people's opinions when it comes to "desert island" must-have progressive rock album classics from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Can you recommend a few?
posted by Witty at 9:16 AM PST - 35 comments

UK Mefi'ers: I'll be visiting relatives in London next month, and have managed to unlock my Nokia phone so I can use it while overseas, and need help understanding the local market[MI] [more inside]
posted by smcniven at 8:49 AM PST - 6 comments

For mpt: Can anyone point to an https site that still works in Netscape Navigator 2.02? ("I’m interested in what the interface looked like, for something I’m going to be posting here after my exams.")
posted by aaronsw at 8:44 AM PST - 2 comments

For anyone who works in HR, does interviews, hires people, etc. What computer skills do you require applicants to have in order to get a job? I'm talking any job. What do you consider base level skills in order to be employed? [more inside]
posted by pieoverdone at 8:33 AM PST - 9 comments

Stupid newbie web "development" question, please help! How do I get windows not to ask me for a filename (as opposed to just the extension) when I try to create a .htaccess or .htpasswd file? Am I missing something really simple? Google assumes that anyone fooling around with this would, you know, actually sort of know what they were doing. [more inside]
posted by loquax at 8:30 AM PST - 8 comments

I've been assigned to develop a plan to convert everything on my unsupported Novell 3.12 server to a shiny new Windows box. Is there any way to get SYSCON to spit out a list of users in a particular group? I don't want to have to transcribe all this crap by hand (one of the groups in question has 300+ users). [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 8:21 AM PST - 5 comments

What's the oldest modern rock song by The Beatles? Something in the vein of "The End". "Glass Onion", "Come Together", or "I Want You So Heavy". I don't know why I think it's Sgt. Pepper's. I'm trying to figure out the first song by them that features contemporary rock styling.
posted by riffola at 7:46 AM PST - 9 comments

I like to code my PHP scripts on my Windows machine in TextPad, then upload them to the server to test/debug them. But constantly FTPing files while debugging is the pits. What's the answer? Install PHP locally? Break down and learn to use vi? What's a programmer to do? What would you do?
posted by vraxoin at 7:34 AM PST - 31 comments

How can I get Microsoft word to paste things as plain text by default? Why would I want the formatting of the website I'm copying my homework from anyway?
posted by Orange Goblin at 7:12 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm not sure whether this topic is a comfortable or appropriate one for us to discuss and I hope I'm not commiting a faux-pas by asking, but here goes:

I've noticed that a lot of my friends who used to smoke and enjoy marijuana stopped doing so in their early thirties. I've asked them why they stopped and they have said it just doesn't make them feel good anymore. It seems to stop making them feel relaxed and start making them more nervous and paranoid. What are some possible reasons for this?
posted by hazyjane at 2:34 AM PST - 47 comments

Are there any intelligent, cool celebrities (specially women, gays and intellectuals) who are conservative, quiet-spoken and traditionally-minded (and preferably non-religious) in a soft-spoken, non-libertarian, non-gung-ho, non-gun-totin' sense? Here's a list and here's another - but they both seem full of loud-mouthed, unthinking yobs or evangelists. Many thanks for any help with a list I've been asked to compile.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:04 AM PST - 26 comments

I've got a Flash file banner, and an HTML equivalent, with the requirement that people without Flash don't get asked to install it and just get the HTML version... [more inside]
posted by holloway at 11:30 PM PST - 7 comments

ok, I really like WS-FTP, but am looking for a free alternative. (mo-mo) [more inside]
posted by bob sarabia at 10:59 PM PST - 16 comments

How do I view .avi files on a Mac running OSX?
posted by ColdChef at 10:09 PM PST - 10 comments

Music playback optimization help desired. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 9:12 PM PST - 10 comments

One of my beloved Paradigm 7se stereo speakers (circa 1985) has gone south. Woofer and tweeter are distorting, leading me to think it's a crossover issue. Should I get it fixed or start looking for new? Any suggestions for a good speaker under 400.00 per pair?
posted by davebush at 9:01 PM PST - 3 comments

I'm just getting into Bit Torrent with the official Mac OS X client. Although I've had little problem finding good torrents, I am still unaware of proper torrent etiquette (torrent training?) (more inside). [more inside]
posted by themadjuggler at 8:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Looking for a nice looking desk clock to countdown to specific dates/times. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by rorycberger at 8:31 PM PST - 3 comments

Are there any good-quality "MeFi" or "AskMe" or even general net-community sites for teenagers?, he asks, hoping that asking several questions in the space of a week isn't considered overuse of AskMe.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:11 PM PST - 10 comments

What text-manipulation language to teach myself some of, and what book to do it with? [more inside]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:57 PM PST - 13 comments

So, our noisy basement suite tenants have moved out, and before new ones move in, I'd like to do a little soundproofing. I've found a fair amount of material on the web, (like this, this, etc.) but they're all trying to sell me something, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Our house has original hardwood flooring, so carpeting/underlay is out. Any tips to cut down on voice, music, and "intimate" noise transmission from people who've done this before? [more inside]
posted by kaefer at 6:58 PM PST - 8 comments

I want to register a domain, which I've never done before. Is it best to register a domain by proxy? Also, is Godaddy.com good for this kind of thing?
posted by Prospero at 5:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Early this morning I was woken up to my computer speakers making a very loud, awful static noise. I got out of bed, shut them off, turned on the monitor, found that my computer was restarting itself, and went back to bed. This afternoon when I got home from work I turned the speakers back on and they were still making the static noise AND I discovered that my second hard drive was no longer being recognized. So I restarted the computer and now everything is fine -- what's going on here? (Windows XP Home) [more inside]
posted by TurkishGolds at 3:39 PM PST - 2 comments

Does anyone know where I can find a Super Nintendo ROM Dumper? I've tried eBay and Google, but I can't find anywhere to actually purchase one. I want to play Secret of Mana 2 and Final Fantasy V for real on my SNES.
posted by hughbot at 3:26 PM PST - 1 comment

What are your favorite news sources, the most consistently rewarding ones?

Mainstream, alternative, blogs, news aggregation sites, and so on.

Don't be shy.
posted by troutfishing at 3:08 PM PST - 22 comments

Is there help for my poor little snowglobe? I have a Fargo snowglobe (car tipped over, Marge in the snow, etc.) that's seen better days. The water (or some vaguely oily approximation thereof) has slowly leaked over the years to the point that it's about half full, and what's left is yellowy and horrible. Can I fix it?
posted by scody at 2:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Ugh..after holding my breath to see the iPod integration with BMWs, only to find out that it's a "cable securely integrated into your BMW’s glovebox", and by "securely integrated" they mean 12" of loose cable so my iPod can fly freely around the glovebox. Why can't someone make a car stereo that lets you slide in your iPod (or other device) as if it were an 8 track tape?

Is there some reason that car stereo's seem to lag so far behind other consumer devices in quality and features?
posted by freshgroundpepper at 2:29 PM PST - 14 comments

Need help creating Windows ICO files! I seem to be able to get nice anti-aliasing or transparency -- but not both (the problem one often sees with webgifs). Yet I've seen really nice transparent windows icons. There must be a way, right? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by weston at 2:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Assuming I'm moving to a different work computer (possibly at a new job, heh): What would be the easiest, most compact way to save a list of the hundreds of links on My Favorites to access on the new computer?
posted by Shane at 1:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Does it ever make sense, if you live in a place where you can't afford to buy a house, to buy a place and rent it out, while still continuing to rent yourself, to save up money to buy your own place down the line?
posted by gottabefunky at 1:07 PM PST - 16 comments

Apropos of Matt checking out FCKEditor, and the typical Mac experience of non-functionality, are there any decent WYSIWYG web editors out there that work with Safari? I'm talking about true formatting a CEO can deal with, not a button that subs in the HTML tags for you. [more inside]
posted by mkultra at 12:20 PM PST - 11 comments

Why is there such a seething hysteric hatred from Republicans over Bill Clinton? I've never read or seen anything like it in modern political history.
posted by the fire you left me at 12:07 PM PST - 51 comments

If humans were marsupials, would pouches be erotic?
posted by Grod at 11:45 AM PST - 21 comments

My wife and I moved into our new (old) house over the weekend. It's a great place, but already the list of projects is ballooning out of control. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions regarding these at a later date, but first an easy one (I hope):

Our dwelling has "old house smell". Now, I generally quite like old house smell, but ours is actually too strong at times. I can't tell if it's from mold and mildew in the cellar/crawlspace or from old carpeting in the utility room.

In any event: what can one do to elminate/reduce strong odors in an old house?
posted by jdroth at 11:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Heading to the Raleigh/Durham area for 4th of July weekend to visit my brother. To (hopefully) avoid traffic, we'll be leaving pretty early in the morning, but it's a relatively short drive, and both my brother and my sister-in-law have to work that day, so we'll have a good 6 hours to kill before they get home. Any suggestions for a) a good place to get some lunch once we arrive and b) interesting places to visit, either in Raleigh/Durham or along the way? (I'd ask my brother, but he just moved there himself about 2 months ago.)
posted by emptybowl at 11:19 AM PST - 9 comments

My girlfriend and I are going to be traveling to Alaska in mid-September, and it looks like we've picked one of the worst times of year to visit. We could use some travel advice! [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by neurodoc at 10:43 AM PST - 14 comments

I want to get a new domain name that is cool but also sensible enough to go on CV's. However my imaginative skills aren't too great so I thought about using an expired domains list. However I am having difficulty finding a useful one [more inside...] [more inside]
posted by ralawrence at 10:25 AM PST - 5 comments

What are the ethical consequences of "raping" a lifeless planet like Mercury or Venus of its natural resources. Assuming there's a way to establish with absolute certainty that there is no life on, above, or inside the planet, and with the understanding that we won't remove more than .001 percent (or some reasonable number) of its total mass, what's the problem?
posted by crumbly at 9:54 AM PST - 46 comments

Camping with dogs - I've been looking for a good campground somewhere in the NJ/NY/PA area (I'm in northern Jersey) that allows dogs. [More inside...] [more inside]
posted by MsVader at 9:30 AM PST - 11 comments

After spending most of the morning trying to get decent web coverage of the space launch, I must ask: what are some reliable Internet news radio stations?
posted by casarkos at 8:30 AM PST - 2 comments

I have a sand pool filter that is made out of fiberglass. It has sprung a couple pinhole leeks. Is there any easy way to patch it up? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by jasonspaceman at 8:06 AM PST - 7 comments

What do you know about herpes? I was reading some blog somewhere and in a comment somebody said condoms don't do a great job protecting against herpes. That didn't sound right to me since that's pretty much the only reason I was wearing the things, so off I go to dig up some research. And, I found some statistics that curdled my blood. Hypochondriacs may want to stop reading now, because after reading some of this, I'm afraid to even touch myself. It seems that:

* More than 45 million people in the US have genital herpes
* One in five people in the US over the age of 12 has genital herpes
* One in four women in the US over the age of 12 has genital herpes
* One in two African American women over the age of 12 has genital herpes

What?!

Seriously, as you might imagine, that raises many, many questions, not the least of which is -- could that possibly be true and how is it that I and my circle of friends had never heard those statistics before? Because that's just insane and I would expect a lot of people to be shouting that from the treetops and wearing ribbons and running marathons for the cure. [more inside]
posted by willnot at 7:51 AM PST - 23 comments

A question below made me realize that I abandoned a bank account in the UK in 1995. It was with Barclay's, and had 52p in it when I left the country. Does it still exist, or do British banking laws allow Barclays to just take my hard-earned pence after a period of inactivity? It was a savings account that returned standard interest for the time and was opened at a local branch in Llandrindod Wells, Wales. The only evidence I have that it is exists is a bank card buried under books in my folks' basement.

Or perhaps my account will grow and when I'm about 80, I will own my ancestral homeland? Or will Barclay's sue my estate for £300,00 in unpaid maintenance fees? I don't remember any fees being associated with it, but that might have been just for the first year.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Why have kids?
posted by dame at 7:27 AM PST - 65 comments

Several years ago, I bought two huge boxes of standard envelopes from Costco, thinking “Isn’t this great? I’ll never run out!” I stuck them in my basement and completely forgot about them. I found them the other day, but now they are all sealed (due, I suppose, to humidity and time). Is there any way I can unseal 5,000+ empty envelopes?
posted by grateful at 6:18 AM PST - 13 comments

How to live in the U.K? [birmingham]. Tips and Tricks for a Canuck crossing the pond please... [more inside]
posted by srboisvert at 6:11 AM PST - 25 comments

A friend of mine from Madrid, who has been living in the States for 10 years, has been offered a promotion / transfer to Dubai UAE. Anyone lived in Dubai, know someone who has lived there, or have any interesting anecdotes to share??? Any info / leads / advice would be greatly appreciated.
posted by jasondigitized at 5:08 AM PST - 8 comments

A friend of mine was offered a flat screen at his place of work to use in conjunction with his laptop computer. He declined because he is quite happy to use his laptop, and his desk space is at a premium. Later, he was given a piece of paper to sign waiving all rights to sue the company for an injury that might occur as a result of using his laptop. Would such a document actually carry any legal authority? [more inside]
posted by nthdegx at 3:44 AM PST - 16 comments

Three of my favorite bands (and three of the best live bands I've ever seen): Shotmaker [mp3s: 1 2 3], Sweep the Leg Johnny [1 2 3] and Rockets Red Glare [1 2 3]. What else would I like in this vein?
posted by dobbs at 12:51 AM PST - 16 comments

GolfFilter: I'm a very amature golfer and have been looking at different brands of golf equipment. I really can't afford to buy a nice set of clubs, but it's nice to look. But what are the nicest brands? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? [more inside]
posted by MrAnonymous at 9:23 PM PST - 7 comments

I can go all day without smoking a cigarette if my mind is on something else, but when I have them I go through half a pack to three quarters of a pack a day. Is this normal? I know that some people lack a way to properly break down nicotine in their bodies, requiring less smoking per day. Does this have something to do with it?
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:11 PM PST - 24 comments

Making tarragon vinegar, your experiences? [more inside]
posted by gimonca at 8:09 PM PST - 8 comments

Well, my family is moving from sunny NJ to Fort Lauderdale, FL (or to be more accurate, the suburbs of it) later this year, and I'll soon be spending a week or so there scoping the area out to see if I want to join them. Is there anything in particular I should keep an eye out for or try out, both for this area specifically and when looking at a potential move in general? Is there anything different or particular that a NJ boy might not know about, good or bad?
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Never lived outside of California, but here I am moving to Albuquerque in a few weeks... I've visited a few times and like it enough there to be happy about the move (I'll be a grad student at UNM, living in a studio apartment north of campus), but what can I expect as far as actually living there goes? What are the people like? The climate? The culture? Any New Mexican MeFites willing to give me their views and advice about the place?
posted by wanderingmind at 7:15 PM PST - 10 comments

How much do caddies for professional golfers make? Do they make a percentage of the purse?
posted by o2b at 6:14 PM PST - 3 comments

Sleep Apnea... some, ooh, let's say about 5% of the population has it. I'm starting to think I might, too: not feeling rested in the morning, snoring at night, breathing stops irregularly, etcetera. Anyone got personal experiences, stories, or advice to offer? I'm not running to the doctor yet... unless y'all scare me into it! [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish at 6:00 PM PST - 34 comments

I would like to totally rid myself of VHS tapes. But I have about 40 of them that I'd like to transfer onto DVDs before I trash them. After that, I will never use a VHS tape again. What's the best route to go in my situation? Buy a VHS-to-DVD converter? Pay to have this done?

Most of it is stuff I taped off of TV years ago. Episodes of TV shows that have never come out on DVD, etc. Is it legal for me to do the transfer? It's not stuff that's for sale. I assume that it was legal (or in some legal gray area) for me to tape the stuff in the first place, so is it legal for me to make backups? I have no plan to sell them to anyone else. The quality is horrible, anyway. But I want to save them before they totally disintegrate.
posted by grumblebee at 5:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Quick beginner PHP question. I'm messing around with loops. If I run an infinite loop, will it terminate when my session ends (when I close the browser)? Or will the server continue to process it forever, becoming a zombie process and overload the memory or something? I really don't want to mess anything up.
posted by banished at 5:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Free internet telephony? (More inside) [more inside]
posted by loquacious at 3:58 PM PST - 5 comments

Logo/web design needed: my small software startup will go out of stealth soon, and I'd like some nice professional-looking logos, letterhead, possibly a web-site design. How do I go about finding someone to do it, and what should I be looking for? (more, of course, inside) [more inside]
posted by costas at 12:03 PM PST - 24 comments

Playing PS2 on PC? I'd like to be able to see my ps2 games on my swanky monitor. Would a tv card with s-video in do it? Also, if I pick up a tv card, what do people recommend as a good show recorder (I have a good pc)?
posted by Mossy at 11:08 AM PST - 13 comments

i'm reading gibson's pattern recognition. i'd like something the same, but better. more inside. [more inside]
posted by andrew cooke at 10:26 AM PST - 28 comments

Three (well, five, really) short technical questions about voice recording and ADSL Internet connections in Australia [included inside]. [more inside]
posted by LeLiLo at 10:24 AM PST - 8 comments

Best way to jump-start an expired domain name? [more inside]
posted by inksyndicate at 9:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Did anyone else notice Google search behaving oddly yesterday? (more inside) [more inside]
posted by jester69 at 9:04 AM PST - 17 comments

Question about mental health and the developing world. More inside. [more inside]
posted by plep at 7:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Is there something like Project Gutenberg for public domain sheet music? I'm specifically interested in classical, particularly orchestral scores. Dover Books do some very cheap ones, but I'm a big fan of free whenever possible!
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Everyone has heard of mules, a cross between a donkey and a horse. I've even heard of ligers, a cross between a tiger and a lion. My question is, is it possible for an African elephant to cross breed with an Asian elephant?
posted by geekhorde at 10:30 PM PST - 11 comments

OK, look. In the course of discussing the recent canonization of Reagan, a friend of mine swore there was an honest-to-god photo op of the guy, as president, smashing the windshield of a Toyota to show his derision for the Japanese car manufacturers in the face of the fall of the dollar. Does anyone know what he's thinking of? After intense questioning, he allows that Reagan may not have been physically doing the smashing himself, but at least was presiding over it.
posted by soyjoy at 10:00 PM PST - 7 comments

"Photoblogging" software written in perl? [more inside]
posted by cmonkey at 9:06 PM PST - 7 comments

There exist cell phones (or plug-in headsets, maybe) that you put on your hand and use just by making the international "talking on the phone" sign. When I asked a friend who's been to Japan about them today, he said he'd seen them on the streets several times, and not just by children or the like. What're they called?
posted by abcde at 8:42 PM PST - 1 comment

Does Hugh Hefner sleep with the playmates?
posted by Kwantsar at 8:41 PM PST - 14 comments

My microsoft natural keyboard broke last night for the last time. I am very sad because it was the full sized model with the USB ports integrated on the back and not the pussy elite version. Can you still find these models?
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:39 PM PST - 3 comments

Shareaza-- What's wrong with it? There must be a catch. I read about it a week ago, finally got around to researching it tonight, and couldn't find anything insidious about it. So I installed it. I just downloaded a file at over 600 k/s. Did I sign my soul over to the devil in the fine print of the EULA?

I'm not sharing anything likely to get me noticed, I ran spybot and ad-aware and they both came back negative and I'm finding lots of stuff I want at great speeds. Again, what's the catch? I'm too cynical to think that anything works that well right out the gate.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Networkimpairedfilter; Inspired by this thread http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/8071 , I would like to make some portion of my bandwidth available to others. My question is not how do I make the internet access available, but how do I prevent someone from getting to my files? My access point is connected to a switch and then to my modem, which is behind a NAT (not sure exactly what that means, but I thought I would throw it in.) My desktop is connected to the switch and while I wouldn’t mind people using bandwidth, I do not want them snooping through my hard drive. While I'm here how do you guys make regular words links?
posted by busboy789 at 7:33 PM PST - 9 comments

I work on a fan-based website for a video game series. We have a somewhat large (~15-20) group of fanartists who draw pretty pictures. We want to set up a gallery in which we can display these pictures.

I'm looking for a PHP gallery system. What can you suggest/what have you had good experiences with?
posted by billybunny at 7:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Just a real quickie: what does this news article actually mean? Live rock? Huh?
posted by five fresh fish at 7:12 PM PST - 5 comments

Why is it that a place like, e.g., the AM/PM can sell gasoline for $0.20 less than other places around my city? Is it the legendary wash gas? Does such a thing exist? And... what does octane rating actually entail? And does it really matter?
posted by xmutex at 7:03 PM PST - 7 comments

I'm looking for software that can draw a kind of "network diagram", showing the all the links between entities, and arranging the entities/lines automatically on the page. For instance, I've always wanted to draw a big diagram showing everyone I know, then draw lines between the people I know who know each other. Ideally, I'd like to be able to enter, simply, each persons name, and a list of all the people they know, and have it generate the diagram from that. I see this kind of thing all the time on the web - diagrams of what sites link to each other, or what bands sound like each other - but is there a simple Windows program that will do the same thing? [more inside]
posted by Jimbob at 5:41 PM PST - 13 comments

My Bro-in-law installed my new car stereo for me, and all was good except every time I turned the car off, all of the settings reset. I figured out that it was because the memory (or constant) wire wasn't connected right, and I believe that he got it mixed up with the power antenna connection (which wasn't being used.) I switched it, and I think it is good now (it doesn't reset anymore), but how can I be absolutely sure I have done this properly? What can happen if this is messed up somehow? I have no experience with this kind of thing at all.
posted by Quartermass at 5:23 PM PST - 4 comments

Can anyone help me find photo organization software with some specific characteristics? I use WinXP. I want to be able to place each photo in multiple categories, and I'd like to be able to output the categories as simple .html files, as that is my archival system of choice. I don't care about uploading to the web. Free is better, but I am willing to shell out a few bucks for the right software. [more inside]
posted by beth at 3:06 PM PST - 12 comments

I need to create venn diagrams, in color, in sizes corresponding to data. I don't know what software to use. [MI2] [more inside]
posted by bingo at 2:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Kissing. Did people really kiss in that closed-mouth head-shaking style so popular in 1940s movies (and Bond films) or was it one of those self-censorship things? And if they did, when did french kissing become de rigeur?
posted by bonaldi at 2:37 PM PST - 5 comments

How did Captain Barbossa and his men satisfy the curse of the heathen gods? [mi] [more inside]
posted by SPrintF at 12:34 PM PST - 31 comments

I need some kind of remedial primer for transfering music off my cds and onto my computer, then off my computer and onto cds. Every music cd I burn is full of pops and weird scratch artifacts. I'm realizing that I don't really know much about audio formats and that I'm probably doing something wrong. Can MeFi help? [more inside]
posted by anastasiav at 11:13 AM PST - 11 comments

I just downloaded Mozilla's Sunbird calendar. I cannot figure out how to share the calendar so that I can view and make changes at work and at home.

I set up a free account here as suggested here but it doesn't seem to work. I realize it's buggy but I'd like to give it a whirl.
posted by BentPenguin at 10:17 AM PST - 4 comments

Ethics and dangers of tapping into your neighbor's wireless net access. [more inside]
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:08 AM PST - 52 comments

I just finished "Life of Pi" and I don't get it. I think I'm suffering from reading for the sake of reading and missed something along the way. Anyone care to share their take on this novel?
posted by grefo at 9:11 AM PST - 21 comments

So I locked myself out... [more inside, now I'm finally here] [more inside]
posted by humuhumu at 4:31 AM PST - 13 comments

I was going to post in my original posts regarding my stupid HP computer but they have been archived. Has anybody ever heard of a computer having "too much" power? We resolved the problem to a power supply issue but now I'm being told that the new power supply I purchased was too much for the motherboard.

True? False? Wishful thinking?
posted by ajpresto at 3:50 AM PST - 7 comments

Can someone at Web Site B tell that I came to them from Web Site A? When I leave, can they tell that I went to Web Site C? (Assume I get to each of these sites by typing the URL's directly into my browser's address bar or by clicking on a bookmark. )
posted by Jaybo at 2:00 AM PST - 9 comments

Why are there no nicotene beverages? Wouldn't this be a good way to eliminate lung cancer? Why is no one selling "Nico-Tea"?
posted by interrobang at 11:50 PM PST - 13 comments

Why do traffic jams happen? [mi] [more inside]
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 11:44 PM PST - 11 comments

Do we negotiate with terrorists? [more inside]
posted by MrAnonymous at 11:37 PM PST - 9 comments

Is there a record store somewhere in downtown L.A., near the 7th St. metro stop? For various complicated reasons, I'm stuck in downtown and desperately need CDs! [more inside]
posted by josh at 10:12 PM PST - 9 comments

How safe and useful are 1010 dial arounds for international phone calls? [more inside]
posted by werty at 9:39 PM PST - 4 comments

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you're in the market for a new office computer. The complicating factor is that you are constrained to buy only either an Apple or a Dell. (This is nonnegotiable, apparently.) You're thinking you'll go for a laptop since you travel a fair bit, and possibly a nice monitor on your office desk. The range of options and customizations on both sides is a bit baffling to you: what do you go for? [more inside]
posted by gleuschk at 8:23 PM PST - 22 comments

If you rented office space only to discover that no cell phones work inside at all, are you totally out of luck or is there some sort of antenna or repeater or tin-can system that could be used to feed cell reception into the building?
posted by GriffX at 5:18 PM PST - 4 comments

Client vs. web designer problem [need I even say it?]. [more inside]
posted by cedar at 1:21 PM PST - 34 comments

I really like the common browser feature of auto completing a URL request as I'm typing it. But it drives me crazy that, when I'm trying to go to Amazon.com, it auto-completes with http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060557540/qid%3D1087167862/sr%3D2-1/ref%3Dsr%5F2%5F1/103-9997594-7563029, which is the most recent sub-page I've visited at amazon's site. Is there a browser out there that will always auto complete with a site's home page -- maybe when you use a keyboard shortcut or something?
posted by grumblebee at 1:13 PM PST - 8 comments

DentureFilter: I need gift ideas for my elderly grandad. For father's day i am going to visit him. He's 90 years old and starting to feel like it, i try to give him stuff to make his life easier when i visit (things like a portable phone, new space heater). [more inside]
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 10:53 AM PST - 16 comments

My parents were getting tired of the clutter on their computer, so I reformatted the hard drive for them and installed Windows XP and (among other things) Symantec AntiVirus 9. Seemingly randomly, and fairly often, they now get a yellow pop-up warning that "Symantec auto-protect is disabled" - even though auto-protect is enabled in preferences and shows up in the system tray. I have a laptop with SAV9 on WinXP, and it doesn't do this. What's going on? [more inside]
posted by kickingtheground at 10:37 AM PST - 9 comments

10D or D70?
posted by Aaorn at 10:21 AM PST - 17 comments

BBQFilter: I'm going to make some burgers tonight to throw on the BBQ, but every time I have done it in the past it has been a failure (either fall-apart burgers, or less than satisfactory in the taste department). I have googled, and tried many recipes, so that is where you wonderful people come in. What are your tried and tested burger recipes and tips? I have some ground beef for me and some ground turkey for the missus thawing as we speak... make my mouth water!
posted by sonicgeeza at 10:21 AM PST - 39 comments

Imac alert question for a newbie. I've received and am enjoying an older Imac (G3, 400) and am getting alerts. How in the hell do I tell what I'm being alerted to? The beeping is getting quite irritating.
posted by damnitkage at 9:57 AM PST - 8 comments

I've recently realized that Crystal Ball is incredibly powerful and cool. Unfortunately, it isn't available on a mac. Anybody know of equivalent software/plugins for the Mac version of Excel?
posted by rorycberger at 8:51 AM PST - 4 comments

At work we use Red Hat linux and I've used Shoutcast to stream music. Today, I tried it on a different computer than normal and got an error reading something along the lines of "digital rights conflict with mpeg1/mpeg2/mpeg3 and Red Hat will now allow you to stream music." Thinking it would still stream (silly me), I clicked the "Do not show me this again" box and now I can't stream anything off any website and can't see that error message to give better details. I also use xmms. Anyone heard of this or know what's up? Also, my normal computer is in use so can't test that one out.
posted by jmd82 at 8:41 AM PST - 10 comments

Where does She-Ra get her power from? [more inside]
posted by falconred at 8:31 AM PST - 13 comments

A job in hand... I graduated from Portland State University's School of Business a week ago, and I've had a healthy number of interviews since I graduated. I interviewed on Monday for a position I'm really interested in -- and unfortunately, they told me today that they wouldn't get back to me until after next week, since they're still talking to candidates as of today and the hiring manager is taking a vacation next week. In the meantime, I have accept/decline decisions that need to be in *before* then for other jobs that will pay just as much, but won't be as challenging, interesting, or use all of my skills. So, is a job offer in hand really worth two that are still off in the aether, or should I hold out for the one I really like? [more inside]
posted by SpecialK at 7:54 AM PST - 8 comments

Does anyone have any experience with "greens plus"? Is it a waste of money, or can one really absorb 7 servings of vegetables with three tablespoons of powder? Google seems to be biased as to that question, and I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the other health and nutrition questions on here. Help?
posted by loquax at 7:49 AM PST - 22 comments

Anybody know where I can find a good, modern, innovative computer desk? I'd kind of like something modular and flexible, if that makes sense, but all I can find are traditional office desks. UK stockists are preferred, but I'm interested in US ones too, for research as much as anything else.
posted by ascullion at 7:06 AM PST - 16 comments

People often talk about politicians getting a boost in the polls after the death of a well-known politician, the most recent example being a jump in Bush's approval ratings after the death of Reagan. Why does this happen?
posted by punishinglemur at 7:06 AM PST - 7 comments

Turn the clock back, gentlemen! I need to defrag a Windows 98 system. Defrag keeps restarting because something else is writing to the hard drive. My problem: I can't figure out what it is. I've tried process-monitoring programs like WinKey to kill all non-integral processes, to no avail. Suggestions? Perhaps a DOS defragger that supports long filenames and FAT32?
posted by DrJohnEvans at 6:52 AM PST - 14 comments

I have a few different types of Polysporin lying around the medicine cabinet, but I'm under strict instructions not to use steroids on my cut. Does anybody know if any of the varieties of Polysporin contain steroids?
posted by jon_kill at 6:40 AM PST - 4 comments

Problems getting the text from a pdf . . . (mo' inside) [more inside]
posted by lazywhinerkid at 5:59 AM PST - 11 comments

A couple of times recently I have heard a quotation that goes something like "whenever a man offers me a flyer in the street I always take one, because when he's given them all out he can go home." Once I heard it attributed to George Orwell, and the other time to Somerset Maugham. I've googled to the best of my ability and can't find the quote or the speaker. Any ideas?
posted by hazyjane at 5:49 AM PST - 14 comments

Shave your head? What do you put on your scalp afterwards? [more inside]
posted by kjh at 12:00 AM PST - 18 comments

I recently signed up for Peerflix, a DVD tradeing service. So far my confidence level is low, seems like a lot of DVDs are listed but not available. Some DVDs (the better ones) require huge amounts of peerbuxs making them dogs for tradeing and difficult to earn enough peerbuxs. Activity level seems low and theres no one home at support and no community support group. Anyone have any experience with it?
posted by stbalbach at 10:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Are there any really, truly great bands? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by LittleMissCranky at 6:54 PM PST - 88 comments

I find myself in a Run Lola Run-esque situation: I can get a piano free (and it's pretty nice, and (!!!) well-tuned) if I can transport it. I have, however, (1) a small japanese car and (2) no money and (3) a cool liberal nonconformist circle of friends with nary a pickup truck among them. If I don't take the piano before the next-week deadline it gets destroyed. (No, really. That's not a Lola embellishment .) Brainstorms?
posted by Tlogmer at 6:50 PM PST - 22 comments

I'd like to make a presidential campaign contribution, but I want to avoid being put on any kind of list. Should I mail cash? I'm afraid to use a check or credit card. It will be under $200, the threshold above which the law requires the campaign to report my info. I guess I could do a money order. But are completely anonymous donations okay? If so, what's to stop someone from making 1,000 different anonymous donations of $150, and skirting the $200 law?
posted by scarabic at 6:42 PM PST - 23 comments

Does anybody know how to make a backup copy of the latest copy controlled Beta Band cd? When I put it in the computer, I was asked to install a player that I assume would play the cd "safely".
posted by ashbury at 6:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Firefox on OS X keeps crashing...help! (more inside) [more inside]
posted by eilatan at 5:34 PM PST - 15 comments

So I installed XP Pro - and I want to set Mozilla as my default browser instead of IE (because, well ... duh) - but Evil Bill's software won't play nice. Oh no. What am I to do AskMe, what am I to do? [furthered within] [more inside]
posted by Blue Stone at 5:12 PM PST - 11 comments

Is there a name for the logical fallacy that goes like this - "Since position/philosophy A cannot solve the problem, its oppposite position/philosophy A' must be able to solve our problem." (E.g. - A Republican cannot fix the economy, therefore a Democrat can.) It's sort of like False Dilemna, but not quite.
posted by badstone at 4:54 PM PST - 19 comments

I'm in need of putting a somewhat nonstandard 3.5" floppy drive -- this one, a combo floppy plus flash memory reader -- into a Dell Dimension 4600 case. The problem is that there are only two options for faceplates for the 3.5" bay in the Dimension 4600, one that's solid and one that is solid save for the slim slot for the floppy drive (meaning that it will cover up the flash slots, and probably won't line up with the floppy slot at that). (You can see this here.)

Anyone have any ideas? I've already called Dell, and they don't offer any other solutions.
posted by delfuego at 4:31 PM PST - 9 comments

HoneymoonFilter. I'm getting married at the end of July, and I'm in charge of the honeymoon. I've been thinking of a nice, week-long getaway for us, one that involves cycling and good food and is within a day's drive of SoCal. I've thought about Napa and Sonoma, but my initial research made my bank account scream in terror. Any of you frugal and romantic MeFites got any suggestions?
posted by RakDaddy at 4:10 PM PST - 7 comments

Cycling in Cuba. (Lots more inside!) [more inside]
posted by lumiere at 3:12 PM PST - 11 comments

My hard drive is full. Can anyone recommend a (free?) utility or technique for clearing out all the waste on my computer (iBook running OS X 10.3.4)? (overflowing inside) [more inside]
posted by rorycberger at 2:42 PM PST - 22 comments

I'm considering trying Dance Dance Revolution as a way of tricking myself into exercising more. I have two specific questions that I am having difficulty finding answers to:

1) Can you play it in a second floor apartment without being a bad upstairs neighbor? If yes, any specific techniques or tips?

2) Assuming yes to 1, anything I should know about using a pad on top of carpet? I've seen recommendations to duct tape it down, etc., but this sounds a little extreme (not to mention ugly).
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:32 PM PST - 27 comments

Win2K: When a file cannot be moved or deleted because it is "in use," but you have no idea what application is using it, what can you do?
posted by scarabic at 12:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Translating technical certifications (Network+ and A+) in to an MCP. Is this possible? I've scoured forums and newsgroups related
to technical certification, and found items that alluded to this possibility, but with no specifics as to the process. Where could I research this more? Has anyone experienced this process? How would one go about doing this?
posted by mnology at 11:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Let's say that someone was leaving their job. They're leaving amicably and of their own volition. They wish no ill will on their soon-to-be former employer, but they would like to leave their workstation as clean as the day they first arrived. We should note here that this person does not have Admin access to this machine, so installable options (like Window Washer) are probably out of the question. Any suggestions?
posted by grabbingsand at 10:56 AM PST - 9 comments

Dumb little OS 9 question. I had to do a system reinstall, and ever since, the OS has decided to inform me when I'm clicking or holding the mouse button via a small down arrow in the upper right corner of the screen. I don't want this. It annoys me. How do I turn it off?
posted by hijinx at 10:02 AM PST - 4 comments

Does anyone have experience with schools that offer holistic/alternative health degrees? I'd like to begin taking a few courses, but am not sure where to begin. I'm looking at Distance Learning for now as I would be unable to relocate for at least a year. I've researched and found many schools that offer these courses, but if anyone has any insider information or advice on reputable places, I'd be grateful.
posted by Zosia Blue at 9:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Playstation 2 fans: I have just invested in a Playstation 2 for a game room in my house. Now I am trying to put together a library of games that has something for everyone, from little kids to psychotic bikers; what titles do I need? Also, what are some useful accessories? I have found a lot of review sites on the net and are taking them into account, but I often find that the collective wisdom of AskMeFi gets to the point a lot better for these type of questions. Thanks in advance for your help.
posted by TedW at 8:01 AM PST - 47 comments

I want to be a better writer, but I don't like laboring over every sentence until what I was trying to communicate is dead, dead, dead. How do you self-edit for your website, memos, or letters?
posted by pomegranate at 7:57 AM PST - 45 comments

Getting out of a cell phone contract (US) - is there any hope? In this case, the usual story: Verizon, crappy service (roaming in the center of town), atrocious customer service (phone dies after three months, it's discontinued, they'll only replace it with used ones that also crap out). Do you know anyone who has tried to quit a cell phone contract? What did they/you do (file complaints, document, etc)? What were the consequences (credit, etc.)? [more inside]
posted by gottabefunky at 7:46 AM PST - 10 comments

How can I create graphical text with ColdFusion? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by tcp at 12:54 AM PST - 9 comments

I love to read and am always in the middle of a book. Which is the problem. For as much as I read, I'm quite a slow reader. What is an effective technique for increasing your reading speed? [more inside]
posted by MrAnonymous at 12:46 AM PST - 18 comments

This is for the biologists. Humans tend to be very symmetrical, either having one thing often in the middle (nose, genitals, mouth), or two things evenly placed (eyes, nostrils, legs). That said, do humans have three of anything? (We have three ear bones, but in each ear.. totalling 6, so that fails!)
posted by wackybrit at 10:38 PM PST - 23 comments

Who can explain the evolution of the martini and "martini"? [leave your thoughts inside, where you'll find more of mine]. [more inside]
posted by kenko at 7:54 PM PST - 32 comments

I have a Canon Digital Rebel camera and I want to take it kayaking with me (along with other wet activities if possible). Any suggestions on products that will keep this thing dry and still usable? Or should I just keep it in a bag and take it out when I need it? Anything is welcome!
posted by crazy finger at 7:50 PM PST - 7 comments

I have an iMac from the Summer of 2000, currently running OS 10.2.8. I do not have Classic installed (and for complicated reasons, it would be extremely bothersome to install it now). In order to upgrade to 10.3, I'm told I must "update my firmware". This page offers firmgrade updates, but are OS 9-only. Are there any alternatives for an OS X user?
posted by Marquis at 5:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Why do the Japanese versions of albulms always seem to have bonus tracks not available in North America? [more inside]
posted by hughbot at 2:32 PM PST - 15 comments

My digital camera is frozen. (more inside, of course.) [more inside]
posted by Vidiot at 2:19 PM PST - 7 comments

What do you call the scraggly stuff on the edge of a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook? (surely not knowledge that will help me cure cancer, but I really want to know)
posted by msacheson at 1:19 PM PST - 17 comments

I didn't get it until I was 17. Now I'm 21 and it's driving me mad. I've tried nasal spray, over the counter pills, prescription stuff, but all they offer is a day or two of respite before this goddamn hayfever comes back again, full force. My current pack of Clarityn has also (scarily) caused an unrelenting twitch in my right lower eyelid. Which I don't like. So, does anyone have any surefire, solid gold remedies for hayfever? IS this injection I've heard about any cop? And who do I have to sleep with in the UK to get it?
posted by armoured-ant at 11:50 AM PST - 20 comments

Hairfilter. I've been growing out my hair for a few years but have generally lived with it quite short. Now I have trouble keeping it out of my face, food, etc., comfortably. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by ungratefulninja at 11:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Recording calls. I sometimes need to record interviews on my computer, and I've been using CallCorder for the last years. Now I've upgraded my system and I was wondering: is there any free software to do this? I need to grab the sound directly from the modem or via TAPI.

I know there's a program called Coaster, but it only works on Apple machines.

Also: is there a way to test if my modem supports voice (if not, I'll have to use my old modem)? [more inside]
posted by NekulturnY at 11:17 AM PST - 4 comments

Housingfilter: My girlfriend and I are going to be "stuck" in London for two weeks (waiting for a flight layover). Does anyone have any cheap suggestions OR interest in a housing swap (we live in Copenhagen)? (MI) [more inside]
posted by AwkwardPause at 11:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Given a couple of encrypted hash strings, I need to identify the algorithm used to generate the hashes so that I can brute-force decrypt them. More inside.. [more inside]
posted by mrbill at 10:42 AM PST - 17 comments

What are the differences between hand soap, face soap, body wash, shampoo and dish soap (among others)? Is it pure marketing BS? If I (uh, theoretically) was out of face and hand soap, could I substitute, say, shampoo in a pinch? Yes, I understand that what with free will and all, I "could" use fruit punch or pretty much anything, but I'm talking about products that will actually function as passable replacements.
posted by Sinner at 10:27 AM PST - 28 comments

I've just received some odd emails perporting to be from MSN Hotmail regarding abuse and I was wondering what I should do about them [more inside] [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 10:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Back Pain. How do I get rid of it? I've tried changing my chair, the level of my keyboard, what side of the bed I sleep on. I've been stretching. Nothing works. I am in agony. I've never had back pain like this before. I've always had back discomfort, aches -- that sort of thing -- but never debilitating pain. I'm only 22. What should I do?
posted by Grod at 10:04 AM PST - 33 comments

AOL comapatibility filter...I have a client that uses AOL. He says that the site isn't working on his computer. I suspect it's an old junker, but is there anyway that I can check this? My google fu is not working today apparently.
posted by damnitkage at 10:02 AM PST - 3 comments

What are you personal suggestions for starting a beginner aquarium? Freshwater vs. Saltwater, fish selection, tank size, books to read, etc.? [mi] [more inside]
posted by drezdn at 9:44 AM PST - 16 comments

Emacs or Vi ...or pico? Throw down, people. I'm moving myself to more command-line stuff, and I'm trying to pick an editor. For reference, most of the folks I know say Vi is evil. [more inside]
posted by leotrotsky at 9:43 AM PST - 41 comments

A friend without a Metafilter account asks, "I have an ibook. It is white, but is slowly turning gray from use. Any suggestions on how to clean dirt off the surface?"
posted by UKnowForKids at 8:04 AM PST - 5 comments

IANAMDFilter: My wife is in her 25th week of pregnancy and has developed costal chondritis -- that is, her last rib on the righthand side is being displaced a little bit by her uterus, making it inflamed, swollen and very tender. It was recommended to her by an OB doctor at her clinic that she take 600mg of ibuprofen (an anti-inflammatory) every six hours for a few days, and to repeat this if the pain returned. Wanting a second opinion, another doctor at the same clinic said this would be OK for a few weeks, but that during the third trimester, ibuprofen should not be taken because it contains prostoglandin, and during the third trimester, the baby is sufficiently developed to react to the increased prostoglandin levels, which can cause one of its heart valves to shut prematurely, resulting in, well, unpleasantness. Specifically, the second doctor said that the baby was sufficiently developed to have this reaction by week 32, and recommended taking ibuprofen no later than week 28. But my wife is a nurse from a family of nurses, and still thinks that taking a course of ibuprofen even at this stage is too much of a risk because, apparently, not a lot of research has been done with fetuses and ibuprofen. So, rather than medical advice, I'd like to ask: Does anyone have any resources they'd like to recommend that we consult? The pain is intense enough to make tasks like traveling by car or picking up our 19-month-old pretty unpleasant, so we'd like to be able to take something (besides percocet) to make things more bearable, but there's something ominous-sounding about a prematurely closed heart valve. Any pointers?
posted by blueshammer at 8:02 AM PST - 14 comments

I need help waking up! I sleep so soundly that I do not hear my alarm clock. This has been a problem for years. Currently, I use both the buzzer and radio options on my clock, plus I have a wake up service that calls twice in the morning. I don't hear any of it unless I've been sleeping at least six hours. I know that the obvious answer is to go to bed earlier, but that's not always an option for me. Can anyone recommend a really loud and obnoxious alarm clock?
posted by Juicylicious at 7:42 AM PST - 28 comments

How do you track the (U.S.) economy? There are, in addition to the old stalwart indicators (GDP, interest rates, unemployment), all sorts of more specialized ones (new home owners, CEO confidence, etc.). So I ask you, ye Armchair Economists- what do you follow? What are the numbers that make you go "Oh, the economy's doing better/worse"?
posted by mkultra at 7:12 AM PST - 12 comments

I'll be graduating next August with a Computer Science degree and will be looking for an entry-level programming job. I am very comfortable with Java and reasonably comfortable with C++ and Visual Basic. I do not have any work experience in programming and won't have the chance to gain any before graduation(the unconventional schedule of my current job is what is allowing me to finish my degree in the first place). What can I do over the course of the next year to boost my employability? What other skills should I try to pick up over the next year?
posted by ttrendel at 6:56 AM PST - 11 comments

Is it possible to get a lower interest rate on my student loans? I began paying off my loans in 1999. In mid-2001, I refinanced them through the government and got a slightly lower interest rate (5.7%). Since then, of course, interest rates have gone way down, but the government won't let me refinance more than once. Occasionally I get offers in the mail from companies offering student loan refinancing, but my instinct is not to trust them. Are there any advantages/disadvantages of refinancing through a private bank? Any other ideas?
posted by Tin Man at 6:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Does anyone know of any good search engines that search the "invisible" Web? I'm bored with google and it's like, and I am particularly interested in search engines that can offer me something a little more scholarly to chomp on. (Not that I don't love google anymore.)
posted by archimago at 6:33 AM PST - 12 comments

Spending a weekend in New York City with a bright 7-year-old. Will be visiting various areas of the city for shopping and eating pursuits, and have identified stuff that will engage the kid in each area, except Chinatown. Any recs? (M.I.) [more inside]
posted by sacre_bleu at 5:31 AM PST - 16 comments

I've always been plagued with extremely vivid dreams, and incredibly efficient dream recall. I say plagued because I don't like these abilities. Is there anything one can do to lessen the vividity of dreams, or keep from remembering them upon awakening? [a little more inside] [more inside]
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:28 AM PST - 25 comments

MovieFilter? - When a film shows a couple kissing, she often lifts her left leg up to make a right angle at the knee. Why? Does anyone actually do this in real life? Part of me expects it originally had some kind of euphamistic purpose, but my limited googling skills tell me nothing. Thoughts?
posted by twine42 at 4:15 AM PST - 9 comments

How do I execute a string in flashMX2004?

say ive got the following code (simplified):
for(x=0;x<3 00;x++){br> "mc"+x+".gotoAndPlay(10)"; // this is the string i want to execute
}

eval() does not do the trick
google doesn't help now can ask.metafilter? [more inside]
posted by FidelDonson at 3:36 AM PST - 5 comments

So I was blessed this past week with a gift of a mint plant and a basil plant. They're both potted and on my windowsill now. Let's say I want to make something with basil. Do I just pluck the leaves off? Is there some sort of special pruning I need do?
posted by pieoverdone at 10:18 PM PST - 17 comments

Is email in old now unused free web accounts such as Lycos etc.. lost or is there a way to suck it off the server without paying for a upgrade to POP capabiliites?
posted by mary8nne at 10:07 PM PST - 4 comments

Do we have any evidence outside of Plato that Socrates existed? Is it at all possible that Socrates was a literary construct?
posted by quarantine at 8:34 PM PST - 3 comments

Is there a term for a person who is prejudiced against racists or bigots? And is the term a non sequitur?
posted by the biscuit man at 6:32 PM PST - 22 comments

With the proper amount of cash, what is the best alternative if I want a flat panel television? [more inside]
posted by benjh at 6:02 PM PST - 12 comments

DVD-R media.. archival quality that will last as long as possible.. what is the best brand or type? Or should I stick with acid-free paper.
posted by stbalbach at 5:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Should I buy a motorcycle? (More, as they say, inside.) [more inside]
posted by cdavis at 3:43 PM PST - 39 comments

Is there a single-word noun that means "things that relate to blogs/are in the manner of blogs?" If not, any ideas for a made-up one?
posted by Nikolai at 3:42 PM PST - 28 comments

Something is royally screwed with my PC (Windows XP). I had some kind of spyware involving the file "bridge.dll", I found instructions online to get rid of it, but I still have problems. When I reboot, my Quick Launch toolbar is no longer there, and when I use the "Email", "WWW" and other buttons on my Logitech keyboard, it opens up 3 instances of the programs. Adaware and Norton Antivirus turn up nothing. Anything I can do?
posted by Orange Goblin at 3:19 PM PST - 9 comments

Do we have any travel writers in the house? Is it really the life of glamour and ease that thetravelwriterslife.com claims?

Since I suspect it's not as easy as one might suppose after digesting that page, I have more questions: Can you tell me what it's like? How you got started? What kind of money you pull in? [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 3:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Does anybody have one of the newest model PowerBooks? Is the screen as susceptible to damage from the keyboard as the early TiBooks were? I got one of the first TiBooks, and my screen got trashed almost instantly. Now I have a new PowerBook, and I'd really like to keep this screen from getting all marked up. I know some people were keeping cloth between the keyboard and the screen. That seems like a royal pain though, so I don't want to do it if there isn't any need. Is there a need?
posted by willnot at 1:46 PM PST - 19 comments

My container plant, a Bougainvillea, has been overwatered. Severely. And now almost all the leaves have fallen off and the soil isn't drying fast enough to save it. What can I do? I'm watching it die, which is heartbreaking, because it went from being 2 inches tall to 17 inches tall. The container has a tiny hole on the bottom, the size of a medium sized nail. The bottom of the pot is very heavy because it's full of water.
posted by BlueTrain at 12:57 PM PST - 5 comments

eBay hell. I haven't sold many items through eBay, so I was startled to wade through all the associated fine print to discover - after I had concluded a sale, received a payment via Paypal, and was ready to ship my item - that as a seller I get absolutely ZERO protection from buyer scams if I ship my item from the US to Canada. [ further, buyer supplied phone # tracks to address different from shipping address provided which is, as well, "unconfirmed" ] So, I'm considering 1) calling off the sale, refunding the $ and taking an eBay rep. hit or 2) eBay's escrow service. Any opinions?
posted by troutfishing at 11:45 AM PST - 9 comments

A geek with an internet connection, time to kill, and money to burn: it's a Good Thing. So I've spent the morning looking at cool maps, interesting posters, and timelines. I'd love to look at more. Can you recommend sites with cool, geeky, information-packed maps and.or posters that would look good on a wall? I'd love to find a good historical timeline, for example. Help me fritter my life away!
posted by jdroth at 11:01 AM PST - 17 comments

Mostly an Excel question (though maybe crossover to PDF). [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 10:38 AM PST - 4 comments

I'm going to be taking a trip from Chicago to Massachusetts next week - I get antsy in the car. There are lots of games and coloring pages and whatnot on the internet for children - but what about adults? Can anyone give some suggestions of things to occupy me and the driver?
posted by agregoli at 9:36 AM PST - 36 comments

Anybody have any experience with University of Phoenix? I'm considering their MBA/e-business program, but given it's a $25K investment, I'd like to hear more about how this particular piece of paper is valued in the marketplace, if at all.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:11 AM PST - 13 comments

Finding housing for a disabled person? [more inside]
posted by cmonkey at 9:09 AM PST - 5 comments

I was thinking of signing up for the new Yahoo Mail Plus, but I want to know if I can check another pop3 account through it. Yahoo says you can send as another email, but says nothing about receiving. Has anyone tried this?
posted by quibx at 8:35 AM PST - 7 comments

What would be the best way to convert the speed of an mp3 so that it emulates slowing from 45rpm to 33rpm? The speed change would be around 0.733. SoX doesn't seem to work very well.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:39 AM PST - 2 comments

Is there a plug-in FM tuner for Windows? Some of my local stations are not web-based and I would like to use my PC as a complete replacement for my stereo. It seems like there should be a USB plug-in tuner/antenna, but I can't find one.
posted by rtimmel at 7:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Anyone have any experience creating a photo mosaic from lots of other small images that looks from a distance like another? Wondering if there's any good PC software (or Photoshop plugins)....
posted by brettski at 2:53 AM PST - 8 comments

I've got a few questions regarding ditching a landline for VoIP. [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by riffola at 12:03 AM PST - 18 comments

The last time I had to set up a search engine for a basic web site, swish-E was the free indexer of choice. However, its relevance sorting and other features (as I remember them) leave much to be desired in today's world, where everyone expects every search engine to be as good as Google. What's the LAMP favorite nowadays? Where is the interesting development happening in open-source search index and query service?
posted by scarabic at 11:27 PM PST - 10 comments

Can anyone recommend some good environmental blogs? I know about the Sierra Club's Daily Scoop and the Daily Grist, but what else should I slap in my bookmarks?
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:38 PM PST - 7 comments

I'm graduating next May with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. I have NO desire to go to grad school right now and am consequently considering joining the Peace Corps or something of the equivalent upon graduation. Does anyone have any experience in Peace/AmeriCorps or any experience in lengthy mission trips through other resources? Do any of these degrees allow me to offer what I've learned in my field?
The longest I've been on a mission trip is a month and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I would prefer an organization where I work with a set team and get to know the people beforehand (I've had bad experiences otherwise).
posted by jmd82 at 7:56 PM PST - 5 comments

Fantasy afficionados: I read a series of four fantasy books when I was in high school, and I only have a basic memory of what they were about. Help? (mi) [more inside]
posted by precocious at 7:29 PM PST - 6 comments

MT-Blacklist question. I find it to be an incredibly great tool. So far, I've only ever gotten MT spam from one source. The email address is always the same: "hrie@yahoo.com," but because of MT-Blacklist's focus on using the linked-to content as the badge of spam, it only catches about half of these. Is there any way I can configure MT-Blacklist to refuse all comments submitted with this email address? It would seem simple enough... but I can't figure out how.
posted by scarabic at 6:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Is it possible to eat too much fiber? And no, I don't mean fiber cabling.
posted by adampsyche at 6:27 PM PST - 7 comments

Can anyone recommend a TV tuner for a Mac? I have an iBook, so it has to be either a firewire or USB model (not a PC card), and i'm hoping to spend under a hundred bucks. I have no real interest in any TVR functions, as my hard drive is maxed out already and I have a TiVo at home. I'm at Dartmouth for a month - which is in the middle of nowhere - so it must be available online to be shipped immediately, preferably with expedited shipping.
posted by rorycberger at 6:18 PM PST - 4 comments

On which Chinese website should I advertise? Average Chinese websites are thought to have at least ten times bigger audience, but maybe their advertising prices are not very different. So does anyone have any idea about the most popular Chinese websites and their ad prices?
posted by hoder at 5:08 PM PST - 1 comment

Which Mac OS X Files let Safari securely connect to sites?

I'd accidentally lost some of my System (my fault) and had to reinstall, etc. to get it back. Looks like everything is working... EXCEPT when I try to connect to https:// sites. gmail, hotmail, whatever.

I have other Macs here, so if anyone knows what frameworks or whatever likely make that work, I can easily copy them over and correct the permissions. But WHICH files? (minimally more inside) [more inside]
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 4:38 PM PST - 13 comments

My wife's Dell Inspiron 3000 (200 Mhz, 96Mb) does not play well with Windows ME, crashes, slows down, etc.
What OS would work on this old but trusty laptop?
posted by signal at 3:05 PM PST - 16 comments

I've got a bunch of email in MH format that I would like to get into Entourage on OS X. Anything around that does this directlly or indirectly? [mi] [more inside]
posted by tommasz at 2:54 PM PST - 3 comments

America! Show us your wikis! After hearing how many of you (2) are using wikis for personal content, is anybody willing to show off what they've done on their own wikis? Any cool wikis you'd link to as good examples? [more inside]
posted by daver at 2:43 PM PST - 13 comments

what is the simplest video editing program for the pc? with a minimal amount of effects such as dissolves etc?
posted by specialk420 at 2:32 PM PST - 4 comments

Recommendations of what to see/do when visiting Washington D.C.? We're going next week, and have a list of a few touristy spots to visit, but I'd like to see what Mefites recommend. Locals advice also highly appreciated, i.e. dance clubs and restaurants to visit. Finally, all over the web it says you must arrange a White House tour with one of your congressional representatives. We can't do that (group of two), someone said we can join a tour at a kiosk. Anyone agree with this? Please be kind if the question has been posted before, I searched.
posted by vignettist at 2:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Can I send a couple bottles of beer in the mail? Are there problems with potential carbonationexplosion? "I'll take my answer offline" --back tomorrow morning.
posted by Shane at 2:09 PM PST - 14 comments

My web host has been making some changes to the control panel and AWstats package. I've used Eudora for a year to send a receive pop3 emails via my site's mail server. Today, I can receive emails, but when I try to send them, Eudora tells me "550 Dynamic IP Address, see http://dnsbl.sorbs.net/cgi-bin/lookup?IP=82.36.30.80" - which goes here and baffles me. I've made no changes to my email account either on the site or in Eudora. They say they can't help. Can anyone?
posted by Pericles at 1:29 PM PST - 9 comments

Tips on getting a summer job as a private tutor? [mi] [more inside]
posted by eyebeam at 1:23 PM PST - 3 comments

Canvas 9 question. Why won't Canvas 9 use the fonts in my c:\Windows\fonts directory and how can I fix this and/or get fonts for Canvas? The particular font is "Gautami".
posted by pissfactory at 12:50 PM PST - 2 comments

OS X: cURL help... [more inside]
posted by o2b at 12:42 PM PST - 7 comments

Our cat just had a seizure about an hour ago scaring the almighty shit out of us. Spasms, frothing at the mouth, paddling paws and dilated pupils - not fun. While this appeared to be the first time it's happened, I remember being woken by similar noises a year ago but just dismissed it as chasing an insect / nightmares / high jinks. Anyway, I wonder if the feline friends on 'filter would care to share their experiences in this area
posted by dodgygeezer at 12:41 PM PST - 12 comments

What are some good debating tactics to use when appearing on an AM radio show?
posted by inksyndicate at 10:50 AM PST - 18 comments

[MusicRecommendationFilter] I'm looking for some new groups to listen to. I'm looking for bands that play "live" techno music. That is, music that sounds like techno but is played on live instruments. I know some bands dabble in this, but I'm looking for others. More description inside. [more inside]
posted by zpousman at 10:04 AM PST - 35 comments

Religionfilter: what percentage of Jews in the US observe the Sabbath every week? (or how many out of the total). Thanks!
posted by amberglow at 8:59 AM PST - 8 comments

I would like to fence in my back yard, but my neighbors would prefer that I didn't. (more inside) [more inside]
posted by boomchicka at 8:00 AM PST - 36 comments

Is there a resource out there that handicaps the various Christian demoninations, or provides a matrix summary of the various tenets of each? [more inside]
posted by psmealey at 7:14 AM PST - 20 comments

so i'm cleaning up the HD after another school year and i know that i have a lot of duplicate file names on this computer. is there an easy, automated windows program that will allow me to scan for these duplicates and erase them?
posted by ronv at 7:13 AM PST - 3 comments

I am trying to photograph several hundred pieces of color and grayscale artwork. I will be using a digital camera. Any pointers or resources that I can look to?
posted by the biscuit man at 7:02 AM PST - 11 comments

What's the best way to fight a ticket for a noise complaint? [mi] [more inside]
posted by drezdn at 11:18 PM PST - 15 comments

I'm helping someone trying to start up a small business. He's got a list of 50,000 opt-in email addresses and wants to send out an ad. Any idea how he can do that? (Is this even ethical? He purchsed the list from people who CHOSE to opt in for this particualr industry?)
posted by phyrewerx at 9:58 PM PST - 13 comments

Seems like I ran across a website a long time ago that you could enter someone's email address, and it would send them a billion emails. Anyone know of a site like that? I feel like getting some revenge against some very persistent spammers.
posted by maceo at 9:53 PM PST - 13 comments

I recall seeing a comedian on TV, in the 70's, that went by the stage name of 'Nick Hitler' but cannot find anything on the web. Anyone heard of him?
posted by clavdivs at 7:05 PM PST - 6 comments

This one is simple. Do you (have you) used a dating service. Which ones sucked? Which ones rocked? I'm currently using one - and yeah, I'm looking for someone long term, not just for this week. Anyone get married from this?
posted by filmgeek at 6:55 PM PST - 49 comments

Suppose you killed somebody...

How would you dispose of the body without getting caught? Would you dump it somewhere? Bury it in the backyard or basement? Dissolve it in lime? What? What would your master plan be that would allow you to get away with it?

And no, I haven't killed anybody and I'm not planning to - I was just curious.
posted by ashbury at 5:48 PM PST - 74 comments

electro convulsive therapy (ECT): My brother has been diagonized with major depression. He no longer responds to the standard anti-depressants. Doctors are considering ECT for him. Have any meta filter members had experience with ECT? How effective? Side effects? Relapses?
posted by TimeFactor at 5:37 PM PST - 13 comments

What happens if you sit in the first class cabin with a coach class ticket? I got on a plane a couple of days ago, near the end of the line. First class passengers had already boarded. A nervous, but respectably dressed man in front of me sat down in a spare, first class seat. I don't know if he had a first-class ticket or not - if he was lying, what risk was he running? Does anyone, for example, check first class tickets after boarding?
posted by andrew cooke at 5:02 PM PST - 20 comments

What's the best way to sell a baseball card collection? [mi] [more inside]
posted by Hegemonic at 3:04 PM PST - 3 comments

I've been saying goodbye to caffeine; the final step is my morning cup o' joe. But many decaffeinated coffees just taste awful. Can anyone recommend a brand of decaffeinated coffee that truly doesn't suck? And maybe even a place online to buy it? Bonus points given for coffee makers that support fair trade, equal exchange, or other organizations that support coffee farmers rather than exploit them.
posted by .kobayashi. at 1:16 PM PST - 26 comments

So I was thinking of starting a charitable blog project wherein I participate in every "Move for a cause" marathon event local to me (ie. walk for the cure, terry fox run, etc.).

What I need to know is this: [More Inside, obviously] [more inside]
posted by Evstar at 12:52 PM PST - 5 comments

This is driving me crazy - how to code a Flash file so that the user can manipulate it and then save the manipulated version? [more inside]
posted by soyjoy at 12:38 PM PST - 11 comments

[MusicFilter] Three questions on opera and piano music inside. [more inside]
posted by sailoreagle at 11:49 AM PST - 5 comments

I mentioned this in interrobang's big "Who wants a gmail account" thread, but got no response. Does anyone have any thoughts on, or knowledge of, the criteria google is using to select which users receive referrals? After around a week of pretty heavy use I received three (which I gave to family) significantly before friends who had had accounts for much longer, but who had used theirs' less.
posted by Sinner at 11:32 AM PST - 31 comments

Owl identification assistance. [more inside]
posted by abcde at 9:58 AM PST - 4 comments

I'm looking for recommendations, advice, and anecdotes regarding Canadian moving companies, as I will be relocating from Winnipeg to Toronto this summer. Can anyone refer me to a good, reliable company?
posted by theNonsuch at 9:35 AM PST - 2 comments

Has anyone had any good success with using one of those pay for traffic sites? I have read horror stories where you pay some amount of money to then realize that the 10,000 visitors you just paid to have visit your site are all from a small farm in China when my site is designated for people from the US? Is it really worth it?
posted by thebwit at 6:57 AM PST - 8 comments

Does anyone have experience with FM transmitters? [more inside]
posted by graventy at 6:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Can anyone recommend something which will monitor web pages and then post changes into an RSS feed. I've tried using things like MyRSS but they don't seem to work very well on pages were the content is non-linear. A Google search offers some results but it would be lovely to know about the good ones.
posted by feelinglistless at 3:27 AM PST - 2 comments

Is there any way to take a quicktimeVR panoramic image found on the web and output a regular JPEG, PNG, etc. ? (I know I could screen capture, but I want the whole thing as one image and don't want to mess with the distortion of qtvr).
posted by signal at 11:21 PM PST - 0 comments

ObscureNewsResearchFilter: Does anyone remember a fairly recent news story regarding a performing arts academy (possibly a music school, specifically) being destroyed by a fire? I want to go even further and say that it happened in Salzburg, Austria, but I may have hallucinated that particular detail. I've googled to no avail.
posted by scody at 10:52 PM PST - 2 comments

I miss my Palm Vx. I need a new PDA to act as an ebook reader (my mpx200 handles my multimedia/organisational needs). Good battery life, decent screen required - lightness would be a definate plus. As would student-wallet friendliness (I'm not scared of ebay either). [more inside]
posted by Mossy at 7:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Why don't CDs in the US have copy protection? [mi] [more inside]
posted by punishinglemur at 5:42 PM PST - 9 comments

Keeping lists of things at hand: For example, I want to buy music. Not just any music, some specific music. But I don't always keep all of it in my brain at any one time. What's the best site or app for keeping lists of things. Not necessarily to-do things, just... things.
posted by daver at 4:32 PM PST - 27 comments

What are the essential reference works for someone interested in typography, especially the aspects dealing with layout? I have and adore "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst, an amazingly useful, well designed book. I also am fond of "The Non-Designers Design Book," by Robin Williams but I'm looking for things like the Bringhurst rather than the more general advice in Williams's books.
posted by Grod at 3:37 PM PST - 8 comments

I need a new vehicle and have been looking at payment option. I figure my current car is worth $6000 and I can effectively put another $5000 down in cash. The car I'm looking at (Land Rover Discovery) will be $20,000 total (including taxes). This means a $9000 loan. Since I am a student I qualify for student loans. Can I use a student loan to do this? What's the best student loan for doing this with? I'd take out a traditional loan but I figure seeing as how I'm a student that this would get me the best rates. And if anyone has Land Rover horror stories feel free to add. [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 1:53 PM PST - 45 comments

What are some good treatments for eczema? [somewhat gross details inside] [more inside]
posted by TurkishGolds at 12:24 PM PST - 15 comments

So - and this will out me as the newbie of newbies - how does one navigate New York City?
posted by casarkos at 8:53 AM PST - 19 comments

Saw a post here yesterday that referred to percentages in the form of %100 instead of 100%, that is, moving the percentage sign in front of the number.

I've never come across that usage; any leads on whether it's a cultural/language issue? [more inside]
posted by Jeff Howard at 8:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Weird music question: In The Rasmus' "In the Shadows," the song begins with a recurring siren that initially seems to set the rhythm of the song. When the guitars come in, they very strongly take over the rhythm, relegating the siren to background syncopation. This produces a very strange "about-face" sensation when listening to the song. [more inside]
posted by precocious at 6:13 AM PST - 13 comments

SommelierFilter - Having never eaten gumbo before, I'm at a loss as to which wine to bring to dinner tonight. Various Google results say anything from white wine with seafood gumbo to a red wine to go with spicy food. Er, right. Complicating matters ever so slightly is my current location: which Italian wine should I bring?
posted by romakimmy at 5:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Can anyone help me identify some form of pond-based insect life from what may be a pretty bad description? [MI] [more inside]
posted by biffa at 4:14 AM PST - 7 comments

What do I do with a .rar file? [more inside]
posted by salmacis at 2:05 AM PST - 13 comments

I drive a truck which is great for long distance, car camping and off-roading and hauling stuff but I estimate about %70 of the miles are done within a 30-mile range of home. As I recently switched home electricity to a Wind Powered utility provider (delivered via Pepco the incumbant local utility) I could now theoretically charge an electric car and be %100 pollution free. But I know nothing about electric cars reliability, maintaince, cold weather, etc... Does anyone have any experience or suggestions to offer? Ideally I'd like a car that can go 50+ mph for 40+ miles and cost under $10,000.
posted by stbalbach at 11:10 PM PST - 9 comments

Keeping a daily task list on my Windows computer: is it possible? I don't need anything fancy, just a piece of software or a hack that lets me mark tasks as complete when I'm done with them, that brings yesterday's uncompleted tasks forward to today, and that doesn't bother me with tomorrow's tasks before tomorrow. Can anyone suggest a way to accomplish this? [more inside]
posted by gd779 at 8:42 PM PST - 8 comments

Those of you who have gotten way into Bit Torrent: have you found yourself wishing your internet connection had a fatter upstream pipe? According to this FAQ: "Sometimes, limiting your upload rate will increase your download rate ... If you are seeing very high upload rates and low download rates, this is probably the case. The reason this happens is due to the nature of TCP/IP -- every packet received must be acknowledged with a small outbound packet. If the outbound link is saturated with BitTorrent data, the latency of these TCP/IP ACKs will rise, causing poor efficiency." [MI] [more inside]
posted by scarabic at 8:42 PM PST - 34 comments

In the most under-appreciated of the Lethal Weapon movies, - number 2 - Mel Gibson passionately explains to a hot South African Patsy Kensit that you you should always choose fruit from the back of the stack, since supermarkets stack the oldest fruit up front. In Twins, Arnold Schwarzenegger explains that lifting an alarming car above 45 degrees will disable the alarm (discredited here) What "useful" trivia have you learned from the movies? [more inside]
posted by Sinner at 5:30 PM PST - 37 comments

Cooking for Dummies: How do you "simmer" something? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by gyc at 4:39 PM PST - 19 comments

UK elections: looking at this thread I was wondering how elections work in the UK. From that post it sounds like not all MPs are elected at the same time, but this page on the Electoral Commission isn't very helpful. [MI] [more inside]
posted by rhyax at 11:05 AM PST - 8 comments

How hard (or easy) is it to transistion from having two kids to three? Anyone have any experience? I do not know of anyone personally that has gone through this. Nothing on the way...yet. Currently two toddlers with stay at home mom. Appreciate any thoughts.
posted by repoman at 10:28 AM PST - 13 comments

Pharmacists, medical professionals: I take methylphenidate for ADD. A month ago my regular pharmacy was out so I went to a different one. The pill looked different but I'm used to generics varying in appearance. So I thougt nothing of it. Today I refilled the prescription and the pill looked so different that I got worried and looked it up. My perscribed dosage is 20mg 3 times daily. It seems that for the last month I'd been unknowingly taking 20mg extended release 3 times daily (occasionaly four when I had to work late). I honestly didn't notice a difference, but now I'm worried. This shit is dangerous and I don't like to mess around with my mind. What dangers are there to the increased syrum levels I'd been experiencing? Considering that that the ER plateaus at something like 10mg for about 8 hours, I could have had as much as 30mg active in my body for several hours a day for 30 days. This is scary. Note, no information given will be treated as advice. If you guys scare me I'll reconfirm with a doctor and persue an appropriate course of action. So please, be honest. Is this a problem, or no big deal? [more inside]
posted by Grod at 10:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Are mosquitos going to kill me? (More inside.) [more inside]
posted by katieinshoes at 8:55 AM PST - 15 comments

my poor brother is trapped by local talk radio. can you help? (m.i.) [more inside]
posted by callicles at 8:54 AM PST - 4 comments

My fiancée is having a get-together for her bridesmaids next weekend. I've been tasked with preparing food and drinks for the occasion. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by jmevius at 8:13 AM PST - 14 comments

Do you know of a free internet notepad service like Yahoo Notepad, but with https and maybe a few more bells and whistles? 2nd question: If I did find such a service, how stupid would it be to use it as my password repository?
posted by skryche at 5:20 AM PST - 6 comments

Mac-feline interaction: Can I get my PowerMac G4 to ignore the monitor power button while running? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:38 PM PST - 11 comments

[RealityTVFilter] Just finished watching an episode of WB Superstars. Is this show for real? Are they actors? What's the deal?
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 8:32 PM PST - 8 comments

Movable Type help! I've been running into this error for the past few weeks; have tried everything short of complete reinstall without success:
Writing to '/home/httpd/vhosts/[host name]/httpdocs/[account name]/rsd.xml.new' failed: Opening local file
'/home/httpd/vhosts/[host name]/httpdocs/[account name]/rsd.xml.new' failed: Permission denied

What's going on and how do I fix it?
posted by casarkos at 8:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Campingfilter.

My wife is off to a five day festival out of state soon. She'll be taking ye olden greyhound bust there. It's at a camp ground with limited facilities. She's gotten her tent ready, but is pondering what to bring along. Since she's going via the bus, she's rather limited as to packing space. Basically, a duffel bag, a rubber maid tub, and a personal bag.

Suggestions as to what a person should pack for a week away from home? We've found some lists, but they tend to literally have everything but the kitchen sink on them.
posted by jeribus at 8:05 PM PST - 9 comments

So, I want to run away from home. No, I'm not a disaffected teenager, I'm a disaffected twenty-something who needs to decide My Future. (More is to be found on the inside for your convenience.) [more inside]
posted by lychee at 7:31 PM PST - 55 comments

I am trying to download Processing, but after I put in my Email it gives me a server error message. Does anybody know of an alternate download location (or would be nice enough to send me the installer)?
posted by signal at 7:12 PM PST - 3 comments

Secure WiFi: given one's ability to find free wifi access in any reasonable downtown core, how does one go about using said access securely? [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish at 6:50 PM PST - 13 comments

I recall an application for the Treo 600 phone which allowed me to dump pictures from my phone directly to my Mac bypassing the built in route which only allows you to transfer images by emailing them. I think I saw it on Gizmodo or Boing Boing a while back, but can't find it now when I search. Anyone know what the name of this Palm application is?
posted by sharksandwich at 6:08 PM PST - 1 comment

I'm moving to Germany from the U.S. in six weeks, and I'm looking for advice from anyone who has done something similar. This thread has been somewhat helpful, but a little too focused on immigration issues (I don't expect a problem with this). [more inside] [more inside]
posted by moonbiter at 6:05 PM PST - 20 comments

I've got a .mac account, and I'm attempting to put some MP3s in my Public folder (via iDisk Utility)--but they show up on the page with a .mp3-binhex.hqx suffix. How do I get them to be downloadable as straight-up .mp3 files, or at least .mp3-link.mp3 files? Thanks.
posted by 88robots at 5:46 PM PST - 4 comments

I need to mass download a chunk of a website. It's about 15000 pages, with identical urls except for one portion with a sequential numerical indicator for each page. I don't need to spider any links, I just need it to work through the list of pages. I know there's got to be an easy script-y way of doing this, but you know, I'm a lawyer. Please help!
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:57 PM PST - 10 comments

I'd like to know which applications on my computer are using how much of my internet connection's bandwidth. Something like Task Manager for bandwidth. Any recommendations for something free for Win2K that's easy to install, use, and uninstall? Or is there a built-in utility I'm missing?
posted by scarabic at 11:54 AM PST - 9 comments

Where is this globalization one hears so much about? [More inside.] [more inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:50 AM PST - 20 comments

I'm contemplating the Switch. It's been 10 years since I've used a Mac, is it time to go back? Looking for advice from longtime Windows users who switched to Mac, and no I'm really not trying to make a commercial... [mi] [more inside]
posted by badstone at 11:43 AM PST - 32 comments

What's the deal with Shareexp.us? I keep getting emails that someone is trying to share an experience with me, but they won't send it to the listed email, and instead post to this site?
posted by drezdn at 11:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Who can recommend some good time travel fiction? (Yes, I'm a geek)
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:01 AM PST - 46 comments

How many TV stations are there nationwide? ABC, NBC, FOX etc. have different listings for each market and would therefore be a seperate station to work for. Bonus for who has the best looking news anchor in your market.
posted by brent at 10:33 AM PST - 7 comments

SpamFilter (literally): When setting up an email account for my own domain, I'm setting up a catch-all for any spam or emails that might go to *@mydomain.com. Is it a bad idea, especially with spammers, to have an automated response be sent back saying that address does not exist? [MoIn] [more inside]
posted by MrAnonymous at 10:16 AM PST - 18 comments

I just bought a new car stereo that plays MP3/WMA cds. My question: which format is better in the car?
posted by Quartermass at 9:04 AM PST - 5 comments

My truck failed an emissions test for the first time (in No. Virginia). It's a 1993 Toyota pick-up, 2x4, 2.4L - 4cyl. (ext. cab). I just turned 200,000 miles on it last month and replaced the muffler and tailpipe the day before the inspection. The failure is with the NO ppm test. It failed at both 15 MPH and 25, but not by much. Am I looking at a converter problem for sure or is there something I can do first before replacing it? What's the best way to approch this problem?
posted by Witty at 9:03 AM PST - 5 comments

FreeLegalAdviceFilter: What's the difference between a "contract" and a "letter agreement"? [more inside]
posted by ook at 8:55 AM PST - 7 comments

[BoredAtWorkthoughselfemployedFilter] Ok, this poker thing: everybody's doing it, so why ain't I? I'd like to learn how to play a little poker, online, for free, no cash (otherwise we'll have an AddictionFilter question soon), newbie-friendly environment.
posted by NekulturnY at 8:07 AM PST - 9 comments

Tough pedals- A bike-mechanical question in two parts. [more inside]
posted by COBRA! at 7:20 AM PST - 14 comments

How does a member of the US military get picked to carry the casket of a former president? [more inside]
posted by bondcliff at 6:55 AM PST - 6 comments

My girlfriend bought some purses at an estate sale. She put them through the wash (They were the washable variety, I guess - I don't know much about purses...) and when she went to take them out, she found a hypodermic needle, which must have been in a remote pocket somewhere. The cap is on. Does she have anything to worry about?
posted by adamkempa at 6:14 AM PST - 11 comments

I was trying to install Linux (the latest version of that damned Mandrake), and I seem to have screwed my partition table. Neither Mandrake nor Windows XP will boot -- I'm posting this message from a Knoppix livecd. Mandrake just goes to a blank screen and hangs but Windows gives a message about a missing dll. What can I do to fix this? I'm in over my head here.
posted by reklaw at 3:15 AM PST - 8 comments

Is it true that it's illegal for an employer to give an employee a reference beyond confirming that the person worked for the company over a certain period of time? [more inside]
posted by bonheur at 10:54 PM PST - 26 comments

A friend has some raw skin. (more inside) [more inside]
posted by Kwantsar at 6:53 PM PST - 16 comments

Desperate Mac question: My iBook won't let me erase & reinstall Panther because computer is now running 10.3.3. [mi] [more inside]
posted by dame at 6:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Since I can't get through at Cartalk, here I am: '94 Geo Metro (no power steering), manual trans. When making a turn, an unbearable grinding noise ovetakes my senses and absconds with my driving pleasure. It continues for a few seconds after the turn. Thanks in advance, and be brutally honest if you think it's a pricey fix.
posted by moonbird at 5:19 PM PST - 11 comments

Ok, so I want to make the move over to linux from xp pro and would like some pointers [mi].. [more inside]
posted by Mossy at 4:41 PM PST - 32 comments

Anyone own a Tivoli PAL portable radio? Or have another lightweight, portable radio with audio-in they'd like to recommend? I'm looking for a small little gadget to take on a long trip, to the beach, and other places. [more inside]
posted by josh at 4:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Who is Tom Vilsack?
I mean, all of the possible Kerry choices for VP (Richardson, Kerrey, Edwards, etc) are pretty well known -- except the Iowa governor. Iowa MeFites? MeFi politics junkies? What's the skinny? [more inside]
posted by matteo at 4:00 PM PST - 15 comments

PronunciationFilter: I've noticed that there's two ways to render the "L" sound. One is the standard palatal way, and the other is to draw the back of your tongue back, close to a french "r". I find my self using it occasionally, and though I'm not sure if I've heard other use it it sounds pretty close to the normal way. Is this a documented thing?
posted by abcde at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

CarAccidentFilter: My beloved Nissan Sentra, the car that had never given me a single problem in the 5-1/2 years since I bought it new, was brutally killed by a cellphone wielding SUV driver. The car is totalled. I need advice (more...you know where) [more inside]
posted by contessa at 3:34 PM PST - 32 comments

An embarrassing question: why can't I get to Live Journal from my home computer? [MI] [more inside]
posted by JoanArkham at 2:51 PM PST - 13 comments

Mac OS 10.2.8. Pressing shift a couple of times turns on caps lock (and also lets me accidentally go into option-lock or command-lock). Pressing it some more turns all this off. I hate this functionality and want to kill it. How do I do this? (And for future reference, if anyone finds useful google search terms, what are they?) Thank-you!
posted by Marquis at 1:21 PM PST - 3 comments

I'm trying to get a bunch of webcams running on the same page. I found a Javascript refresh script, and tried to adapt it to work for more than one cam. Of course, if I had any knowledge of Javascript, I might have succeded, but I don't, so take a look inside and lend me a hand, if you please. [more inside]
posted by Orange Goblin at 12:43 PM PST - 3 comments

Anyone have a great herbal/home remedy for a serious cough? [more inside]
posted by donnagirl at 12:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Does anyone here have experience with a bit of shopping cart software called MivaMerchant? I'm trying to integrate it into an existing website, but with mixed results, and I've been unable to find a quality, free support forum on the web (although I have read that they exist).
posted by anastasiav at 12:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Selling used books online. Is amazon (terms of sale) the way to go? Ebay? Am I better off taking books to local used booksellers? No collectibles or rare books, just your standard hodgepodge lit, theory, and what not.
posted by pinto at 12:13 PM PST - 19 comments

CareerFilter: What do I want to be when I grow up? (more--->) [more inside]
posted by Jonasio at 11:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Has anyone in Boston seen the "Woo! Woo!" tricycle guy? I usually expect to see or hear him in spring, and here it is June and I haven't seen him. Obviously, I don't know the guy, but he adds a lot of character to the town and I hope that he's okay and continuing to do his thing. [more inside]
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Hey, look at this awesome bed. I want one, but sadly they cost a million euros each. Approximately. So: the pdf brochure on the site basically has enough information to build the bed yourself - it's just a simple wood frame and a couple cushions. How much would it cost to have someone built that for me, and who would I ask? I live in LA, if it matters.
posted by lbergstr at 11:13 AM PST - 20 comments

OK -- Regan does at roughly 3:00pm Saturday. Monday at roughly 2:00, the obituary issue of Time magazine arrives in my mailbox. Question: How in god's name did they do that? Even if if they had the issue sitting on pallets waiting to go (which they didn't because there was non-Regan material in there) how did they get the USPS to deliver it on the next business day? [more inside]
posted by rtimmel at 10:12 AM PST - 21 comments

Is there a reputable site that reviews health insurance plans for the self-employed? Everything I've Googled that appears to offer comparison shopping set off my scamdar. Who's the trusted source for this kind info? And who are the key players in this market?
posted by vraxoin at 9:22 AM PST - 9 comments

My sister has come into some bulk items that she thinks she can sell at a profit on eBay. Are there any good primers out there about starting a quasi-small business like this on eBay? She has basically no eBay experience.
posted by blueshammer at 9:13 AM PST - 1 comment

What's the website that is set up to dole out free magazine subscriptions- and isn't a scam?
posted by drezdn at 11:26 PM PST - 2 comments

I'm trapped in a maze of twisty little cables, all alike. (Well, not exactly all alike...) Any hints on organizing the rat's nest of USB, power, audio, etc., cables lurking behind my computer?
posted by arto at 10:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Who wants a gmail account? [more inside]
posted by interrobang at 9:12 PM PST - 402 comments

Tattoo care: On Thursday I'm getting another tattoo, on the "outside" part of my arm. On Friday I'm going to a crowded concert. Do I risk damaging the tattoo if it gets sweaty and repeatedly bumped over the course of a few hours?
posted by cmonkey at 8:51 PM PST - 12 comments

I was listening to sound recordings of Theodore Roosevelt's voice, circa 1912, and was struck by TR's accent. It's nasal and aristocratic, and there are hints of both modern British and American dialects. I couldn't quite pin down TR's accent to a stereotypical New York, New England, or Long Island dialect. Which got me wondering:

At what point did the vocal style of American and Canadian English become distinct from British and Scottish English? I know that regional dialects are shaped by the immigrant communities that populated that region. But there is a fundamental difference between accents on either side of the Atlantic.

Put another way, what did Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin "sound" like? And how did the generic Midwest voice that we call "American" - Mr. Game Show Host and Ms. Voicemail - develop from the milieu of voices of Puritans, German/Irish immigrants, and slaves?
posted by PrinceValium at 8:30 PM PST - 14 comments

Well this will get a lot of flack, but what's the deal with this ' How to Avoid a DUI''? It's the latest local news sensationalist reporting fad, and I'm really curious. Personally, I will never have more than one drink and drive (yeah, yeah even one is apparently bad), but I can't think of what would be on the video that's so bad. I realize that sensationalist local news reporting is just that, but they have some truth in them. I mean .08 is a .08 no matter where you are? [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 7:05 PM PST - 11 comments

How can I troubleshoot my Mac's ADSL connection? A few weeks ago my download speed suddenly dropped to about 4kilobits/sec after I tried to set up a firewall. I then turned off the firewall, but the speed hasn't returned. I'm running Mac OSX 10.3.4 on an eMac with 1GHz processor and 1GB RAM (confirmed intact by profiler) on a simple ADSL router (YahooBB, the leader in Japan) with an ethernet hub. Interestingly, upload is fine at 500 kbps, and my older slot-loading iMac 350MHz is zooming along fine on the same connection at 1150kbps download speed. TCP/IP settings are simple, DHCP auto-assigns the IP.
posted by planetkyoto at 5:29 PM PST - 11 comments

There's a certain kind of very fast but largely unrhythmic IDM beat. I've heard it for example in Aphex Twin - Girl Boy song, and some µ-Ziq. It's a kind of highly cut up, apid, sometimes somewhat tonal skittering drum programming that sounds like it would be unbelievably slow to put together in a sequencer. I get the sense think such a distinct sound is associated with certain equipment or techique, anyone have any ideas?
posted by abcde at 5:13 PM PST - 9 comments

MortgageFilter: Does anyone have any experience with prepayment penalties for a variable rate mortgage? Our mortgage broker is strongly recommending a mortgage with a 10% payment limit per year, but I've heard rumors that it can turn out to be a bad thing. Any advice appreciated.
posted by gokart4xmas at 4:51 PM PST - 10 comments

anyone know where one might find a visual index of the linotype gold collection? meaning a list of each of the 3,000 fonts rendered? tall order i know. (more inside) [more inside]
posted by specialk420 at 4:41 PM PST - 3 comments

Elephant Riders, by Clutch. I've been trying to figure out the meaning of the lyrics. I think it has to do with the King of Siam donating elephants to Abe Lincoln (a la The King and I), but I could be mistaken on that, and I have no idea where the trains come in.
posted by oissubke at 4:19 PM PST - 1 comment

Official Wedding Vows. My google-fu is no match for the frenzied hothouse that is the online wedding industry. I'm trying to find the official wedding vows of the city of New York--or whatever the text is called they read you when you get married at City Hall. Thanks.
posted by muckster at 2:43 PM PST - 9 comments

I am thoroughly freaked out. I just saw the movie "The Long Kiss Goodnight". In it, the following dialogue takes place: Mitch Henessey: "You're telling me that you're going to fake some terrorist thing just to scare some money out of Congress?"
Corrupt politician: "Well, unfortunately Mr. Henessey, I have no idea how to fake killing 4,000 people, so we're just going to have to do it for real. We'll blame it on the Muslims, naturally. Then, I'll get my funding." [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by banished at 1:00 PM PST - 26 comments

Travelling with high speed internet? [more inside]
posted by Jaybo at 12:17 PM PST - 13 comments

EtiquetteFilter: An hour removed from the salon now, I can see that I have just been on the receiving end of a bad spa treatment at a local salon. I've called, explained the problem and asked for a refund. What's the etiquette on tips? I left the appropriate tip for the amount of the service, and charged the rest on credit card.
posted by jerseygirl at 11:48 AM PST - 6 comments

I'm 27, it's the hottest day in England so far, and I've just been diagnosed with chicken pox. Help?
posted by Katemonkey at 10:54 AM PST - 24 comments

YuckHabitFilter/NeedMoreToWorryAboutFilter: Say you tend to chew on plastic pens while working, despite efforts to stop. Aside from the obvious Googleable dental detriments (tooth wear) and, um, choking risk I guess, are there any other dangers, esp. ones not grounded in Freudian analysis? Are you ingesting scary levels of leeching plasticizers and resins? If so, can you litigate? Kidding...
posted by tss at 10:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Why do woodpeckers peck at things other than trees? I have one that constantly pecks at my window, and it is incredibly annoying. I thought that woodpeckers peck to find/store food, but there clearly isn't anywhere to store food in the glass of my window, so does it just love to peck things? So far it hasn't done any damage to the window, but i'm a little worried it might break through the glass one of these days. Most importantly, how do I get rid of it? Yelling/throwing things at the window scares it away temporarily, but it always comes back.
posted by rorycberger at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Just applied last week for a job I'd really like that I believe I'm well-qualified for. It is in Phoenix AZ (with America West Airlines, if that info helps) and I am in Orem UT. What kind of follow up can I do to make sure that HR and whoever is really making hiring decisions at least notices me and knows I'm genuinely interested, without being annoying?
posted by weston at 10:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Slashdot is a hellhole. Can anyone recommend any decent and at least semipopular tech news sites with insightful comments, and ones that won't ban my ip after two unjust downmods?
posted by angry modem at 9:25 AM PST - 9 comments

To all the architects and designers in here, re: Proportions; do you use the geometric proportion systems we were taught in school (Golden Mean, Harmonic Mean, etc.), or do you just use eyeball based intuitive proportions?
I have been recently developing a house using a Modulor-ish system (based on 320cm) and wonder what the rest of you people use.
posted by signal at 9:12 AM PST - 16 comments

We've got a bunch of users in a Windows domain (using Active Directory) who will be renamed to a letters-and-numbers parent-company username standard in about a week. Instead of using "jsmith" or "janedoe", they'll now be known as "ABC1234" etc. (not my decision, BTW).

Is there a way to make a table or username mapping on our print server so that things sent to networked printers (all running from a common printserver host) come out with a full name or recognizable name on the cover/banner page?
posted by mrbill at 8:23 AM PST - 1 comment

gmail: i've been using it for a few weeks now and have made it my primary e-mail repository. The only thing it lacks for me, though, is the ability to be notified (on the Windows desktop) when new mail comes in. Anyone aware of software to handle this task?
posted by vraxoin at 8:16 AM PST - 9 comments

Collective culture-jamming (for a poster-esque thingy I want to put up in my room) . (MI) [more inside]
posted by Tlogmer at 2:39 AM PST - 6 comments

Can cats get high from eating frogs? My mom just moved to a new house by a fishpond where a family of frogs also lives. Her cat seems to have grown addicted to the frogs - he eats one and then gets lethargic and glassy-eyed and just generally weird. Is this dangerous for him or just harmless fun? Well, not harmless for the frogs, of course.
posted by hazyjane at 2:12 AM PST - 13 comments

Windows XP firewall + Zone Alarm = problem?
I've just upgraded to Windows XP and I have three questions (so far...). [more inside]
posted by Termite at 11:43 PM PST - 9 comments

What is your preferred method for googling or otherwise searching for guitar tabs?

(I will be buying some as well, but not everything I want is officially published). [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 9:50 PM PST - 19 comments

What's the best way to sell a car that doesn't run? [more inside]
posted by lnicole at 9:45 PM PST - 7 comments

My infant daughter has cloth toys that make a "crinkle" sound and I want to know what the material is inside it that causes the crinkle..does anyone know what it's called? Where can I find it? Is it separate (two different pieces of material-one inside the other) from the outside material (which is soft cotton) or all one piece? I want to make her some toys that crinkle...
posted by aacheson at 8:28 PM PST - 9 comments

Alzheimer's.

Tonight I found out that my dad most likely has Alzheimer's (he's 71). My stepmom is bringing me up to speed in regards to his condition - depression, mood changes, forgetfulness, neurological and psychological workup. I've seen it - and attributed (*wishfully*) to his past heart surgery (3 years ago) and depression.

Supports groups, Good information, Medical advances. I want to be an expert and fast, fast, fast. Yes, I'm doing my google work. Yes, I'm going to talk to the physician(s) involved.

But MeFi is too big - someone else must be going through this; have gone through it, knows what to do, what mistakes they made. This is what the green is about, right?
posted by filmgeek at 7:15 PM PST - 10 comments

My roommate and I adopted a dog about two weeks ago. He's a submissive/excited urinator. When I get home from school, if I so much as look at him, there's pee everywhere. Same thing with scolding--he does something bad, I'm all "no, that was bad," and he's all "okay, have some of my urine!"

I've been told that the best way to deal with this is just to wait, but if there's something to expedite the process, I'm all ears. (More about our training methods inside.) [more inside]
posted by billybunny at 6:51 PM PST - 12 comments

Anyone have any experience with setting up the Web stats program AW stats? My website uses it, and it seems pretty good, except that when I ask for specific categories I get this error message: sh: /home/cgi-bin/awstats.pl: /usr/bin/perl: bad interpreter: Permission denied
posted by inksyndicate at 6:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Road warriors: what do you do when you're staying at hotels and their network blocks traffic on port 25? It's frustrating to not be able to send email, and SquirrelMail as an alternative to Mail.app in OS X isn't quite good enough for me.
posted by redshifter at 5:36 PM PST - 13 comments

Buying a mini-van, and with the help of Ask Mefi, Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book, I know I want a Toyota Sienna LE. Got all the cash. Want to minimize the notorious hassle of running the car dealer gantlet. (More inside.) [more inside]
posted by sacre_bleu at 5:12 PM PST - 13 comments

HousingFilter: I'm desperately seeking to sublet/rent a room in the D.C. area, where I'll be interning from June 14th through August 6th. I've hit up Craig's List, Roll Call, The Hill, Roomates.com, Sabbaticalhomes.com, and the Weekly Paper. I've tried the various universities, but I don't relish the idea of sharing a bunk bed. Anyone got any other bright ideas about where I might look on such short notice without actually having to be in D.C.? Barring that, anyone got a room for rent that's even slightly accessible to Dupont Circle? [more inside]
posted by schoolgirl report at 4:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Inspired by the quirky genius of Alton Brown, and a long postponed sense of adulthood, I'm delving into the world of cooking. Can anyone recommend freeware for managing recipes for either Win XP or Palm OS, or both?
posted by keswick at 4:29 PM PST - 8 comments

Microsoft Word for the Mac: does anyone know a keyboard shortcut for cycling through open windows? I'm thinking of something like the apple+tab to go through open applications on OS 10.3.1. I tried Googling for an answer with no luck.
posted by rio at 3:47 PM PST - 9 comments

I just spent a lot of money to get stood up on meeting a guy about an apartment. (more) [more inside]
posted by ArsncHeart at 3:45 PM PST - 16 comments

I have a job in azerbaijan for the summer. supposed to be pretty sweet, but my employer suddenly has left it to me to get there, with a pretty rediculous budget to do it on. anyone know of amazing last minute flight deals from the west coast to london? (like REALLY last minute and REALLy cheap?)
posted by milkman at 3:41 PM PST - 7 comments

KittyFilter: I was wondering if any other MeFites could give me some advice about kitty litter. I've been using a generic scoop-it brand, but today I ended looking at these weird crystals that promised increased freshness and less odor. Has anyone used the crystals? Has anyone used the clumping clay or some other "bio-friendly" litter?
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Is there a partisan-agnostic email alert for the US Congress available? [m-to-the-i] [more inside]
posted by plemeljr at 2:29 PM PST - 5 comments

Extracting Wisdom: I've been putting it dodging it for years, but it's looking (and feeling) like I'm going to have to get my wisdom teeth pulled. I do have insurance, but I have to go to a specific provider - a provider I've never actually been to before. Any advice on questions I should ask or things I should look for? Is one oral surgeon as good as another or should I shop around and/or pay extra if needed?
posted by aladfar at 2:26 PM PST - 24 comments

BodyShopFilter: I managed to put a big ol' dent in the fender of my 88 Saab. I'm not too upset (anymore) about the dent, but it did put a bulge in the track that my hood runs along. I want to pound the dent out. How do I do it? Do I need a special hammer? Any precautions/tips/tricks? Should I just pay the autobody guy to do it right?
posted by daver at 1:57 PM PST - 5 comments

Candles. Recently I've discovered the joy of using mainly candles at night to light my house, especially when I'm just relaxing watching TV or on the computer. I use mainly pillar and votive candles. I have two problems with candles.

1) The flame flickers heavily (I've been told to trim my wicks to alleviate this)
2) The candles constantly go out, because there is huge concave shape in the candle as the candle burns. Should I trim the candle somehow?
posted by patrickje at 1:11 PM PST - 13 comments

Based on this post in The Blue, I'm looking for CD recommendations on the late 70's New York CBGB's sound. I'm familiar with Lou Reed, The New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground, Television and (pre-disco) Blondie. Oh, and I'm a huge Talking Heads fan. Any suggestions?
posted by JoanArkham at 10:35 AM PST - 29 comments

Any advice out there for introducing a wiki into a workplace? Currently, I've found these success stories and this article describes a similar situation. But there's an additional complication: I am a powerless drone. Any anecdotes from either side of the fence?
posted by sleslie at 8:48 AM PST - 12 comments

Over the weekend my basement flooded due to my sump pump not turning on. Should I place a home owners insurance claim? [mi] [more inside]
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Boxes, I need boxes. What is the best (cheapest) place to buy boxes for moving? I'd like a step above liquor store/grocery store boxes, the ones that don't need to be taped, and are easily formed. I've looked at theboxcompany.com, and they seem reasonable.
posted by corpse at 6:46 AM PST - 35 comments

On my last birthday, my girlfriend presented me a parachute jump which will take place on friday. Who has done this so far, what are your experiences?
posted by tcp at 4:06 AM PST - 20 comments

BodilyFunctionFilter: Five weeks smoke free - huzzah! - however, I am worried that I am not hacking up any lung hommous from 8+ years of a reasonably rastafarian rock n roll lifestyle. I am breathing great, but i *know* there should be stuff coming out ... is my worry justifed?
posted by elphTeq at 11:54 PM PST - 26 comments

Something I've always wondered: in "Monkey Wrench" by the Foo Fighers, how does Dave Grohl do the whole yelling-speech thing? [more inside]
posted by Monster_Zero at 10:48 PM PST - 14 comments

Does anybody have a mirror to the ubercool Transformers video posted in the blue? The original seems to have gone down.

Much thanks.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 10:22 PM PST - 8 comments

I have a collections agency calling my phone number in an attempt to get in touch with my next-door neighbor. I've asked them twice to stop calling me; they keep apologizing but don't seem concerned. I was just tipped off that this is a new game collections agents are playing: call nearby and have the neighbors do a little vigilante justice to get to the target. My question: do all the calls I've received fall under Do Not Call Registry protection? [more inside]
posted by werty at 8:47 PM PST - 13 comments

Trying to convert a PDF file to plain text, but the result is hieroglyphics. [more inside] [more inside]
posted by kchristidis at 8:33 PM PST - 12 comments

What do utilities cost in Seattle? [more inside]
posted by Hildago at 7:02 PM PST - 8 comments

I was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As part of the ongoing diagnostic process, I was asked to take the MMPI, the results of which took a long time to return to me. Turns out that I scored 'invalid' on the test, with the implication by my doctor that I was trying to throw the results, even though I answered the sometimes insipid questions completely honestly. Now doctor and family alike are looking askance at me, and I feel a bit paranoid over where treatment options will go next due to this (I've already had some very bad reactions to alleged "low side effect" medications). Should I change doctors, re-take the test, or just let it pass?
posted by WolfDaddy at 6:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Whilst whittling away on a book within the confines of InDesign, I've come upon a question which is purely subjective in nature: If I wish to present this tome in as nice a fashion as possible, which font should I set the text in? I am looking for a beautiful serif, one which harkens back to the Victorian era, yet is easily readable in a smallish size (12pt).

In other words, friends, what is your favorite serif font? [more inside]
posted by tenseone at 6:25 PM PST - 14 comments

I have this HTML:



How can I convert this to XHTML 1.1 Strict? There's no onChange attribute, so it seems like I'd have to do everything in a in the , but I'm at a loss as to how.
posted by reklaw at 4:12 PM PST - 11 comments

My mom gets sick when she watches videogames. She has had this since Wolfenstein 3D. Side scroller games and fixed view games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon do not affect her.

I picked up Prince of Persia, the new one, and I would really like for her to be able to play. Refresh rate is 85hz, vertical sync on, what else can I do to help?
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:03 PM PST - 12 comments

How and when did World War II get its name?
posted by jjg at 3:27 PM PST - 10 comments

Being young and foolish, a friend from #mefi is considering relocating to the US. Being also poor and uneducated, He will be in need of a moderately priced education, so he is looking at community colleges. [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by riffola at 3:11 PM PST - 15 comments

Trying to decide whether or not to keep some old sheet music. Based on the composer, is it at all valuable? [more] [more inside]
posted by emelenjr at 2:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Why is it that freelance type creative people, like say musicians, artists, photographers, actors etc. tend to spend years between projects? Unless you're say a high-end music artist, it's economically infeasable. Signed bands usually have 2 or 3 years between albums. Yes, that's often to build up new material, but just as often that's not the case. What's the deal? Is there that much potential for burnout?
posted by abcde at 1:25 PM PST - 12 comments

Golf question. I am in a position where I will be playing golf quiet a bit and I bought a good starter set based on what my boss recomended. What is the difference between all the clubs?
posted by thebwit at 12:56 PM PST - 5 comments

Okay three gifts. (inside). But first, could you help me find a very basic language program that will allow me to ..........10 Print"kill" 20 Goto 10 on my pc xp pro machine. [more inside]
posted by JohnR at 11:54 AM PST - 16 comments

Does anyone know where I can find a copy of Mr. Roger's speech to Congress (?) defending the funds allocated to public television? A transcription is fine, but I'd also love a movie of it. [more inside]
posted by o2b at 9:39 AM PST - 6 comments

My grandmother is nearing 90 years old and experiencing increasing effects of dementia. She's been forgetful for a while, but only lately has she started mistaking individuals for others - typically, she thinks I'm a niece of hers, instead of her granddaughter. As her confusion increases, so does my discomfort. I want to spend as much time with her as I can while she's still here, but when entire conversations are filled with misinformation and paranoia (she can't remember where she "hides" money and important objects, so she thinks people steal from her), it's difficult to witness. Any suggestions on how I can get over myself?
posted by ferociouskitty at 8:14 AM PST - 9 comments

I find myself uploading pictures to my blog an awful lot, which means sampling, cropping, resaving, and then uploading. Is there a light program that can do all these things at once? ImageWell looks perfect, but it's Mac-only (I use Windows). What do you recommend?
posted by skryche at 7:48 AM PST - 7 comments

How should I rip the audio from a video DVD? For free, please.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:19 AM PST - 9 comments

How did we evolve separate genders? I assume it happened pretty early on, since most animals have a male and female, but wouldn't it have had to happen to lots of things at once for it to actually work?
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:41 AM PST - 7 comments

What's the difference between "gray" and "grey"?
posted by cohappy at 1:53 AM PST - 21 comments

Apple don't sell what I want. Please hope me choose a new laptop. [ /\/\ | ] [more inside]
posted by bonaldi at 10:03 PM PST - 19 comments

Help with Final Cut Pro 3 application migration from a tower drive (Jag) to a G4 Powerbook (Panther). [more] [more inside]
posted by squirrel at 1:02 PM PST - 8 comments

PhilosophyFilter--I have a question about the work of Michael Dummett, specifically his book Truth and the Past. [more inside]
posted by Prospero at 11:53 AM PST - 3 comments

What's wrong with this XML file? Why won't it validate at that precise link? Thanks!
posted by Masi at 11:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Two XP questions in a row! Does anybody know how to remove the "Windows cannot open this file" dialog box that offers a web service? I'd like this to act like it did in previous versions of Windows, just going directly to the "Choose the program you want to use to open this file" dialog. Google has failed me.
posted by ajpresto at 9:52 AM PST - 1 comment

I'd like to change the way Windows XP handles an external device (mp3 player). My RCA Lyra is dealt with as an external hard drive, so that I can only add files to it by copy-pasting (or drag and dropping) but not through the iTunes "export" feature. How do I change how Windows treats this device? [more inside]
posted by nprigoda at 8:47 AM PST - 13 comments

I have a Hollywood Plus DVD-player card, PCI. It uses the EM8300 Mpeg 2 decoder. Are there any hacks or mods for this card to do cool things, or should I throw it away? [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:50 PM PST - 4 comments

I recall seeing a page about making a slipstreamed installation cd for xp similar to these. 1 2 The difference is that the one I'm looking for also showed you how to include applications with it as well as updates and service packs. I think it was linked to off of AskMe, MeFi, or Slashdot. Sadly, my Google-fu was not strong enough to find the page. Anybody know the page I'm talking about or know how to do what I'm talking about?
posted by mindless progress at 11:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Yay Hooray. I've been reading the site for a long while, but I have no idea how to get the "points" needed to post. Is it an invitation-only type thing? How can I be down?
posted by oissubke at 11:14 PM PST - 7 comments

I'll be on a team next year, putting together a year book. We want to know how we could automate the creation of the mugshots section.
[Plenty More Inside] [more inside]
posted by Evstar at 5:08 PM PST - 11 comments

Can we do cool shit with lasers yet? This is a two-part question, actually: can the military blow up the moon with a laser by now? Or something like that? And are there consumer lasers that I could mount on my car and destroy things with?
posted by lbergstr at 4:36 PM PST - 36 comments

What should one do if one has a free day in Dublin? [details within] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Today is the 60th aniversary of the D-Day invasion. George W. Bush will be giving a speech at Normandy Beach today in which he will compare the need for WW2 to the need for our current Iraq War. This seems a distinct overstatement and not historically accurate. (Not to mention philosophically accurate) I am no history scholar, but would not mind a clear, concise response to this comparison to use in mixed conversation. My question is this, 'Why is the Iraq War NOTHING like WW2?" Please avoid personal anecdotal responses. A historical and political overview is desired.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 10:54 AM PST - 25 comments

What does "taking some time" typically mean in a long-term relationship, and what should I do (or not do) during that period? [More inside] [more inside]
posted by subgenius at 10:43 AM PST - 47 comments

Would Expression Engine (or maybe pMachine) be a good backend for a MetaFilter-type site?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:53 AM PST - 14 comments

Is there such a thing as a good electric shaver? [more inside]
posted by xmutex at 8:36 AM PST - 32 comments

How does one pronounce "leading," the term in printing for space between lines of type? "Leeee," or "Leh?"
posted by brownpau at 7:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Calendar synchronization question. I keep all my appointments, work and personal (and those in the "gray area") on Outlook at work. My wife keeps all family appointments (soccer games, dentist, parties) on a paper calendar at home. We'd like all these in one place. More inside, if you please. [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:00 AM PST - 4 comments

[MacWorldFilter] So, I finally decided to buy a 40 gig iPod after my last posting. However I've now found out that Toshiba have announced a 60 gig drive and are shipping insane numbers of them to Apple. Oh, and now it turns out that MacWorld is happening in Boston next month. My question is: What is the chance that Steve will announce a new iPod at this show? Do you think he will announce the same 4th Gen iPod with a bigger HD or that they'll go for a 5th Gen? If it would be launched, how long would it take to get to market in the USA (and then UK)? I understand that technology always moves on, but the last thing I want to do is buy something and then one month later it gets superceeded by something dramatically better.
posted by ralawrence at 1:08 AM PST - 17 comments

OS X goes nuts (more inside) [more inside]
posted by inksyndicate at 12:47 AM PST - 13 comments

In many movies, criminals will invest large sums of money into a scheme (technology, gear, etc.) in order to steal more money. Does this happen in real life?
posted by drezdn at 12:12 AM PST - 7 comments

I have this weird problem: I installed Battlefield 1942, patched it, and after a few days it wouldnt work. Double clicking on the icon cause a loading sign next to the mouse icon for about 2 seconds, nothing happened. Latest version of Direct X and ATI display. Friends machine has no such problems. [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:45 PM PST - 8 comments

What's the best Pocket PC 2003 software out there that will let me sync my Lotus Notes email/contacts/calendar with my Dell Axim X3i?? [more inside]
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 11:37 PM PST - 5 comments

I've decided to enter the 21st century and finally get a cellphone. Any recommendations on service and brands? I just read a Consumer Report that was beyond inconclusive. Can anyone tell me what service they have and why they like it...? [more inside]
posted by Slimemonster at 11:11 PM PST - 12 comments

[MusicTheoryFilter] I listen to techno music quite a bit and a little while back I realized that every techno song had some sort of change every 32 beats (or some multiple of 32 beats) [MI] [more inside]
posted by freshgroundpepper at 10:48 PM PST - 15 comments

Any good exercise/weight-loss diaries out there? I'm working out these days, and would like to track my progress (if any!) both in terms of weight loss, endurance training and weight lifting. Any suggestions? Online services or downloaded software are both fine.
posted by dagny at 10:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Triplets of Belleville. I recently bought it and have not watched it yet. My brother is coming this weekend with his two daughters aged 5 and 8. They normally like Shreck and Nemo. Is this film appropriate recommendation for a family viewing? I don't want to the be a dirty uncle.
posted by stbalbach at 9:48 PM PST - 23 comments

I've heard this musical motif in at least two songs, and I'm pretty sure elsewhere (doesn't sound new to me). [mi] [more inside]
posted by abcde at 9:46 PM PST - 9 comments

I picked up the latest version of knoppix, and since this being my first time using Linux, I love it. Something sparked in my mind, and I wanted to ask anybody if corporate hackers use knoppix to do work, then reboot to wipe any data? Is knoppix known to be evidence friendly? I am not asking if it is or not, I am asking if it is known to be.
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:33 PM PST - 8 comments

PHP Application Frameworks. Google and the other usual suspects seem to be pointing me toward the big guys, but I'm not looking for an enterprise-level framework, rather a smallish, lightweight tool that will--given some kind of definition information--render a reasonably simple administrative interface; i.e., the kind my grandma could use. I've been working on a homegrown version as a stopgap, but does anyone have any recommendations for something like this? [more inside]
posted by oissubke at 9:33 PM PST - 7 comments

Interstate moving companies: a den of thieves? I'm planning a move, and the web is giving me some confusing information about moving companies. I'd appreciate any experiences or expert advice... [more inside]
posted by mr_roboto at 8:39 PM PST - 9 comments

I just installed a SoundBlaster external soundcard on my Dell laptop. everything seems to be working great, including my midi applications. but when i try to play media through realplayer, i don't get any sound. i'm running XP.

anyone know what's up?
posted by milkman at 7:55 PM PST - 2 comments

Does anyone know of a program available for Mac OS X that can read the Media ID of a DVD-R? I have tried MissingMediaBurner and even DVDINFOPro under Virtual PC, but neither one gives any info.
posted by the biscuit man at 7:52 PM PST - 2 comments

ENRON: They were making money hand over fist. How is it that they went bankrupt?
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 7:29 PM PST - 9 comments

Does anyone know of a free service like Google News alerts, only for Usenet? Filtering in newsreaders won't do: I need alerts from across all available groups; I can't very well subscribe to 40,000 newsgroups and then filter on the client side. If the results came in RSS form, that would be fine, too. Right now, my best option seems to be to save searches at Google Groups to a browser bookmark group.
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Electronic Drumkits: anyone have any recommendations or experience with buying? Are the rubber-pad sets in the $1000 range worth a damn, or should I save up for one of the $4K mesh-pad sets? The use of my prospective drumkit will be strictly recreation/practice playing, not stage or studio use.
posted by yalestar at 4:52 PM PST - 2 comments

I have a friend (shh) who failed to show up at court for driving on suspended permit. She's never gotten this taken care of because she's stupid, and 8 years have passed. She now lives in a new state, attends college, is really nice (despite being stupid) and is about to get a corporate position that involves drug test + background check. Advice needed. [MI] [more inside]
posted by precocious at 4:34 PM PST - 18 comments

[HomeworkFilter, I guess...] Ok... I have a problem. Quite a big problem, in fact.

I was just told by my university that the exam format for a course I'm taking, "Political image management" (don't look at me - it's a compulsory course, if I had a choice I wouldn't be taking it), has changed. Now, rather than taking an exam based on the material we studied, we have to write an essay.
This essay will be worth 80% of the final grade, and the actual exam, worth the other 20%, will be based on the essay itself. The essay subject is: "An examination of the impact of the proposal European Constitution on the political image management of Europe". And I have a week to do it. And I cannot afford to fail this exam.

The problem is that I don't know anything about the subject of the essay. I can't reach the professor to ask for explanations or help, and everybody else who's taking the course is as clueless as I am.

I'm not asking you to write the essay for me - just, can you help me find some material I can look at to get an idea of the subject? My tiny, tiny local library has nothing of worth, Google didn't help much at all... if you could find some online material for me I'd very much appreciate it.

Help?
posted by sailoreagle at 3:27 PM PST - 19 comments

Here's an interesting one: a few weeks ago, my apartment was broken into and my laptop, my girlfriends laptop, a stereo and a few other pieces of electronics were stolen. My renters insurance covered most all of it (USAA is the best, if you don't already have it get renters insurance now) so I'm not too worried about getting the actual hardware back. But today I get a call from Apple corporate security telling me that my laptop has turned up. I got in touch with a woman who bought it off eBay. I don't really need to get the machine back from this woman as she would then be out the $1100 that she paid and all I really need are the files. It appears the whoever sold the computer to her did a complete reinstall and the machine appears to be blank. So first question: Can someone suggest some software that can recover my deleted files? I'm mostly hurt that I lost ~3 years of digital photographs. And the second and more interesting question: what can we do to track down the criminals? I have the ebay sellers ID: j.a.z.california and the original auction for my stolen powerbook here. This guy seems to be selling a lot of used electronics which fits exactly with the type of stuff that was stolen from my apartment. Anyone interested in scamming the scammers a la this previous post on the blue?

on spellcheck: not in dictionary: j.a.z.callifornia, change to: rapscallion how great is that?
posted by garethspor at 3:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Can I export my firefox bookmarks to OPML? If so, how? [more inside]
posted by Grod at 3:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 problem: I just installed around 3000 fonts on my Windows XP system, and now photoshop won't start. It starts loading the reading font part of setup and then craps out saying: "Unable to continue because of a hardware or system error. Sorry, but this error is unrecoverable." What can I do besides deleting all the fonts I installed?
posted by Stynxno at 2:33 PM PST - 8 comments

If I run my TV cable (for cable TV) into my VCR first, then into the television, will I (noticeably) lose signal/picture quality? [more inside]
posted by Shane at 12:43 PM PST - 22 comments

If I get about 200 pageviews/day, how much can I expect to take to the bank using Google AdSense? [more inside]
posted by TurkishGolds at 12:32 PM PST - 13 comments

I'm running Outlook 2003 (I have to! Not a choice!) and I need to now convert from POP3 to IMAP seamlessly. It seems like whenever I try to do it my old e-mail is in the Personal Folder section and it creates a new IMAP folder. This is unacceptable! I want everything to look generally like it is, and do it without exporting a PST and reimporting and all such nonsense. [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 12:27 PM PST - 4 comments

Waterboys question: What the heck is a "bang on the ear"?
posted by luser at 11:59 AM PST - 6 comments

StupidRouterFilter: Suppose you have a DSL modem with a computer running XP coming out of it, with a printer attached. Two other machines coming out of the DSL modem can of course see the printer just fine. However, there is also a router coming out of the modem (don't ask), and none of the machines coming out of the router can see the printer. Is there any way to make them able to use that printer?
posted by GriffX at 10:35 AM PST - 7 comments

Suppose that you're at a party, or wandering down the street in a small town, or in your local coffee shop, and you run across someone you've briefly met before several months ago, but whose name you don't remember. However, he or she remembers yours, and greets you effusively. In this circumstance you'd rather not say, "You'll have to forgive me, but even though you apparently remember me quite well, I don't have a clue what your name is." Is there a way to get the person to say his or her first name to you without you admitting to him or her that you've forgotten it? Assume that there are no other people involved in your conversation, that you have fifteen minutes to get their name from them, and that you have a reasonable ability to direct the conversation topic to whatever subject you wish.
posted by Prospero at 10:05 AM PST - 31 comments

Is there an easy way to find out what companies provide their employees with a pension and medical benefits after a certain period of time working there? I am looking for a centralized list or such that would tell me all those companies that are local-as I want to look at working at a company like that. A centralized list probably doesn't exist. How do you find out if there isn't a centralized place?
posted by aacheson at 8:55 AM PST - 2 comments

Does anybody have a link to the site which displayed photos of people from different Asian nations and cultures - and the viewer is supposed to figure out which nation or culture, based on looks alone? I'm sure we've talked about it here, but I can't for the life of me find it.
posted by JollyWanker at 8:23 AM PST - 3 comments

I've just planted my summer garden. Anyone have any organic pest control tips? I'm thinking more insects as I have pretty much secured the garden from entrance by bunnies/deer and other critters. [more inside]
posted by archimago at 8:11 AM PST - 13 comments

What should I have my friend bring back for me from Japan? [mi] [more inside]
posted by codger at 7:52 AM PST - 38 comments

I've recently moved to a dual-monitor set up, one CRT and one LCD, and I've discovered that I have a strange problem with Photoshop. If I open photos I've shot, on the LCD, they appear brighter and oversaturated -- when I open the same photo to the CRT, the colour is darker. If I open a photo on the LCD and then move it to the CRT, the photo will contain rectangles of colour that match either the appearance on the LCD or CRT. Is this some kind of colour profile issue that I don't understand? I've installed the LCD calibration software and that's about all I can think of doing to solve the problem. Help?! [more inside]
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 7:30 AM PST - 8 comments

Has anyone heard anything about what's up with Saddam Hussein since the beginning of the year? Where are they holding him? Has the interrogation yielded any results? Did I totally miss something since they captured him?
posted by danOstuporStar at 7:16 AM PST - 10 comments

Multipart question: Scumware, spyware, adware, it's all malware, I say. Currently using both Spybot and Adaware to catch and kill most of this crap.
1. Looking for feedback on the best spyware killers for home and work.
2. Are Norton and Macafee working on adding spware killers to their anti-virus packages?
3. Some of this stuff launches using svchost.exe. Where in the registry, besides
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and its relatives, do services launch?
[Inside, there is more] [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 6:26 AM PST - 13 comments

I broke Photoshop! [color-related madness inside] [more inside]
posted by Hankins at 6:14 AM PST - 4 comments

ExcelFilter: I want to determine if a given value is in a range of cells. A simple true/false evaluation would be sufficient, though returning a reference to the cell might be nice.
posted by namespan at 3:17 AM PST - 4 comments

Fresh juice overload? I just bought a juicer the other day and this morning I made up a delicious blend of 3 granny smith apples, 3 carrots and about 2 cups of orange juice. I blended in Spirulina and enjoyed every drop. Later, I felt bloated, hot, and a little light headed. Another blend in the afternoon did pretty much the same thing to me again, as well as my gf. Nothing dire, but I'm wondering if I should be taking more precautions with this, or educating myself more, etc. Are we taxing our livers or something? [more inside]
posted by scarabic at 1:10 AM PST - 17 comments

This is a weird question that just popped in my head. Crude oil is usually made from the ancient biomass, which may include both plant and animal material. Let's say that in the crude oil that was used to create the gas for my car was made of all dinosaurs -- specifically, a mass grave of thousands of raptors. On my typical daily commute (30km, or 18.64 miles), how many raptors have I burnt? Let's use a conservative 20 miles per gallon, round up, and say I used a gallon of gasoline. I've done some preliminary analysis, so [More Inside]
posted by sleslie at 8:53 PM PST - 22 comments

We have two Tonkinese cats, ages 2 and 1.5, both with dark fur on their faces. About a month ago, we took them in for their rabies booster shots. Shortly thereafter, one developed a bad cold, which cleared up. Now, within the space of a few days, their dark "masks" have started to turn salt-and-peppery. Otherwise, they seem perky and normal. They have had a minor change in diet, and have had some time in the spring sun after a long winter inside. Any ideas?
posted by stonerose at 8:04 PM PST - 2 comments

I'm replacing a phone jack. Or rather, I'm trying to replace one. I've done same before, but this time I can't get it working and I think some troubleshooting is required. There are more details, and too many wires, inside. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 7:58 PM PST - 6 comments

Aaaaack! Translucent pink lizards attack! How can I defend my house? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by LittleMissCranky at 7:32 PM PST - 23 comments

How do you get work as a stringer? [more inside]
posted by drezdn at 7:17 PM PST - 2 comments

I am looking for a way, on Mac OS X, to create libraries of digital video clips, and arrange them in various ways into movies which can be burned to DVD. I'm thinking iMovie+iDVD does everything I want, but I'm looking for something that can handle many (hundreds?) large, full resolution files. Anyone have experience with this kind of video cataloging and editing? Is iMovie enough, or do I need a high-end product? It will be used by a relative non-techie (not me).
posted by icetaco at 6:42 PM PST - 6 comments

GourmetFilter: Anyone know of a store in San Jose/SF Bay Area that sells Quail Eggs and/or Flying Fish Caviar? Also, is Flying Fish Roe the same thing as Flying Fish Caviar?
posted by rorycberger at 6:10 PM PST - 5 comments

Someone has been letting himself into my apartment when I’m not there. What can I do to prove it? [much more inside] [more inside]
posted by ambrosia at 4:53 PM PST - 54 comments

I find that I use a lot of semicolons when I write. Is this okay, or frowned upon stylistically? Strunk & White don't say much about the subject; they recommend semicolons when needed to replace awkward commas and the words while and though. ("Connecticut has a long shoreline; Wyoming is entirely land-locked.") FWIW, my writing pretty much entirely consists of legal memos and blogging. [more inside]
posted by PrinceValium at 2:38 PM PST - 38 comments

Does anyone know of a good place to take a broken SLR camera to be fixed in NYC? [more inside]
posted by o2b at 2:10 PM PST - 4 comments

travelfilter: I'm going to a conference in Hawaii, in Honolulu, and I'll be staying in a hotel around Waikiki. I've been looking for cool things to do on my free day, but I keep coming across some really frightening touristy stuff, like short cruises that include Ukulele lessons and Lei (sp?) construction.

Everyone recommends the Polynesian Cultural Studies Center, and a visit to Pearl Harbor, but what else is there to do that is somewhat off the beaten path, fun and not too expensive? Any good bands out there?

additional variables: I can't really swim that well. I'm a doughy white guy approaching his 40s. I'd like to avoid activities that would piss off my wife, and I don't drink. Yes, Hawaii is wasted on me.
posted by mecran01 at 1:17 PM PST - 16 comments

Why aren't there any gases with nutritional value?
posted by Orange Goblin at 12:33 PM PST - 27 comments

I'm a big fan of college radio and alternative music - even though I live in London I listen to the morning music show on LA's KCRW almost every day. Does anyone know of other such stations who have good, solid, music shows, possibly featuring live sets, and crucially - that broadcast on a broadband stream?
posted by ascullion at 11:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Anyone have experience with pay-as-you-go cell phones in the US? Recommendations? [MI] [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 10:56 AM PST - 18 comments

If you were writing a new p2p application -- leaving ethical and legal issues aside for a moment -- which programming language would you use? I know Visual Basic and PHP, but neither is really any good for this purpose. I dislike things that require the user to install a big VM (.NET, Java) and find C++ a complete nightmare. [more inside]
posted by reklaw at 9:29 AM PST - 37 comments

Anyone know of a nice, quiet (not seedy) bar in NYC where people can sit and talk and actually hear each other?
posted by grumblebee at 8:37 AM PST - 30 comments

In the film 'Courage under Fire' one character suggests a treatment for athlete's foot which can be applied in the shower (but may be nsfw). Does it really work? [MI] [more inside]
posted by biffa at 2:47 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm planning a ski trip (North American) for myself and 3 friends for the week before Christmas. Problem: we know nothing about skiing. Help! [MI] [more inside]
posted by gatorae at 11:51 PM PST - 21 comments

Are there external wifi-receiver devices I can plug into an iPod? If so, can you please direct me to some choices?
posted by timyang at 10:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Any favorite sites with examples of visually interesting but still good and effective business cards? Trying to design one myself, need some inspiration. Kind of like this.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:40 PM PST - 7 comments

I saw an internet benchmark-type site a while back, but I am having trouble finding it... [more inside]
posted by lkc at 7:14 PM PST - 2 comments

Graphics card question - I have a decentish Dell laptop, and I occasionally like to play games on it. It has in it a ATI Mobility 9000 card which seems to do pretty well for games that are about a year old, but not so good with games like, well, the demo that just came out for Thief 3. [MI] [more inside]
posted by GriffX at 5:37 PM PST - 8 comments

What are the academic options for a self-taught graphic designer who wants to become more "cross-trained" in the field? [more inside]
posted by dhoyt at 3:25 PM PST - 10 comments

I have one hard drive installed in my computer, and it shows up as E: . There is no C:. How can I tell the computer that the installed hard drive E: should be C:?
posted by alball at 2:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Games for OS X: I'm looking for a good Scrabble clone and a poker game with quality AI. I've Googled and rooted around, but am now looking for trusted recommendations. Anyone? Will I get best results simply playing online? [more inside]
posted by blueshammer at 1:17 PM PST - 4 comments

MacFilter -- I have an iBook that is close to dead. I'm wondering if there are steps I can take to try to bring it back to life on my own or whether it's time to call in the pros... [Need I say that there's more inside?] [more inside]
posted by Dreama at 12:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Help upgrading my 2 year-old PC's motherboard firmware. [mi] [more inside]
posted by signal at 10:33 AM PST - 8 comments

I need to stock a home workshop. What basic power tools should I acquire? Which tools aren't really needed? What about good books on maintaining and improving an older home? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by jdroth at 10:22 AM PST - 37 comments

SpamAssassin is, like, not working. I am dying under the weight of spam. I lie awake at night, crying, wounded. I love my e-mail address. I run my own e-mail server (using qmail and vpopmail). What's a boy to do?
posted by xmutex at 10:02 AM PST - 24 comments

Ok, I've blown up another hard drive...even knoppix can't help me get the data because the first few sectors are hosed and knoppix can't determine what the file structure is/was. Do anyone of you godlike system gurus have any suggestions that can help me pull data off this poor, corrupted drive?
posted by dejah420 at 9:05 AM PST - 11 comments

I've got a friend from Chicago unexpectedly laid up at George Washington University Hospital in D.C. I'd like to get her something besides flowers, and have it delivered. Any suggestions? While I'll entertain suggestions about interesting gifts, what I'm really wondering about is the delivery aspect. Is there a Kozmo-like service still running in DC? Is there a, I don't know, bookstore that makes house calls? etc. I know I could try to use a taxi/courier service, but that seems like more trouble than it's worth to do remotely.
posted by blueshammer at 9:02 AM PST - 6 comments

Does anyone know of a USA-based alternative to this website
posted by ascullion at 8:59 AM PST - 2 comments

I've got a 120GB external firewire hard drive (EZQuest Cobra) and the fan has started making a loud noise. Thing is, the fan was pretty loud to begin with so I'm thinking maybe I should just replace the entire enclosure with a top of the line super quiet one. Suggestions?
posted by gwint at 8:46 AM PST - 2 comments

HELP, I'm stuck in meatspace. My home PC, on start-up,
1. Goes to the "Windows was not properly shut down" type screen...
2. ...where it gives me the choices of "Last Known Good Configuration" or "Start Windows Normally" etc, then...
3. ...no matter what choice I make, it eventually gives me a flash of blue screen with white print that is gone too quickly to read but starts with "STOP" and contains the word "registry."
4. Then it starts over at step 1 above. Repeat again and again.
5. Am I screwed? ...a little more inside. [more inside]
posted by Shane at 8:29 AM PST - 10 comments

PC news sites: I'm looking for some good "daily read" sites that cover Windows based computers. Suggestions? [More...] [more inside]
posted by jazon at 7:51 AM PST - 7 comments

I'm looking for a way to convert some fairly visually complicated HTML to image or PDF. I've tried HTMLDOC, pdfcreator and Adobe Acrobat Pro but they all have HTML rendering glitches that are hard to troubleshoot. I'd love to be able to use the Mozilla renderer for this. Any ideas?
posted by frenetic at 6:55 AM PST - 17 comments

Okay here's a question. The other day I stepped on the bathroom scales and the number displayed was a tad on the high side, by about 15-20lbs, so my first thought was 'Yeesh, I should join a gym'. However on further reflection, having never set foot in a gym since my traumatizing school days joining one seems like quite a scary prospect. So my question is.. What's the deal with gyms? What's the ettiquette, what do you need, will all these fit gym types be chuckling at my pathetic flabby assed efforts, are the showers still those bloody communal type affairs I shudder to remember back in school?
posted by zeoslap at 6:34 AM PST - 37 comments

Needed: Reliable software that will automatically respond to email sales leads, send those sales leads to our dealers in the customer's particular region, and follow up with an email to the customer a week later to see if the dealer has contacted him or her, or if a sale has been made. [more inside...] [more inside]
posted by lotsofno at 5:53 AM PST - 5 comments

In light of my ever mounting pile of music, and after much deliberation and review of the options, I've decided to buy a 40 gig iPod (Windows version). I have the PC (complete with firewire), I have the music software (iTunes, Anapod Explorer, CDex) and I have the music. However, does anyone have any suggestions on essential accessories (hardware or software) that I should buy at the same time as the iPod to save me a world of pain later on?
posted by ralawrence at 4:51 AM PST - 18 comments

I'm compiling a list of good, decent, honest men and women who aren't saintly, moralistic or freakish and do their jobs in a professional, hard-hitting and yet fundamentally human and gregarious way. The best example of the kind of person I'm looking for is Tim Russert. [More inside.] [more inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:33 AM PST - 53 comments