I haven't done it yet mostly because I have no idea what to fill out on the form.

This is why God invented the HR department. Use them. They will have MUCH better info than you will ever get here, because what you get here will be largely speculation about your particular situation and company's benefits package:

You definitely want to participate in the 401k, at least enough to take advantage of any company match.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:29 AM on July 1, 2008

they think it's a flash drive.

And this is a problem, why? Just open a new Explorer window (Windows key + E) and drag the files over. Easy Peasy. Why even bother with Olympus's silly software? It's just one more thing running in the background all the time hogging memory.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:13 AM on July 1, 2008

I wouldn't bother turning off the engine to save gas at idling. We're talking a gallon or two per year, at the most.

Nonsense. All hybrids do this automatically, and with marked results.

Apples and oranges, obviously, but still.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 1:07 PM on June 30, 2008

Just so we're all clear: Cab Sav is a red wine. HTH.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 8:50 AM on June 26, 2008

This plan is a bit suspect; I'm not sure how things are system-wide, but parking at train stations is all but impossible for the commuter trains into NYC, at least around me in Connecticut. At the Fairfield Metro-North station, for instance, there is a 1,200 spot parking lot and a 1,500 person waiting list. I can't imagine any of the other lines are any better.

I suppose it is possible that things are better up the Danbury or Waterbury branches, but each of those require... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 8:42 AM on June 26, 2008

Treasuries are money-good as long as the United States exists. The money in your bank account is only money-good so long as your bank exists.

For decades this wasn't really an issue, but given events of the past few months, t-bills are starting to look more attractive every day...
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 9:37 AM on June 25, 2008

Um, was it a tails tuxedo jacket?
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 12:10 PM on May 30, 2008

Generally proposition ("prop") bets ("like so-and-so will win the match" or "so-and-so will win the match by pin") are given in a +/- format, based upon a standard $100 bet. A "+" line is what you win with a $100 bet, a "-" line is what it you must bet in order to win $100. Thus, the favorite (in a one-v-one event) is always given on the minus line, which can be a bit confusing to beginners.

So at any rate, you might see... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:16 AM on May 23, 2008 marked best answer

How we always did it is we put a big jar up front and labeled it the "Donations for Decorations" jar. Cops can bust you pretty hard for selling cups, b/c you are essentially selling booze [probably to minors] w/o a license. They can't bust you for asking for donations to cover decorations.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:24 AM on May 23, 2008

It's somewhat tricky, as I remember, because you need to be able to use conditional statements in your templates, which aren't, as such, built into MediaWiki (or at least weren't when I did this.)

Right, so then you'll need a couple templates to handle those... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 6:34 AM on May 23, 2008 marked best answer

The only truly legitimate reason I've ever heard (there are, frankly, perfectly reasonable work-arounds for just about every other conceivable issue) is that Mac graphics hardware has a wider spectrum response envelope and a larger dynamic range. Specifically, Macs are capable of displaying certain deep shades of blue, certain bright yellows, etc., that on a PC simply get clipped to black, yellow, white, or whatever.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:01 PM on May 8, 2008

You don't need to turn it down at most places, you can just defer for a year.

I'd be super careful about just assuming that this is the case. It is the stated policy of many grad programs (especially the more selective ones) that you may not defer.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 10:57 AM on May 8, 2008 marked best answer

Ok, I didn't want to influence things, but since nobody else has brought it up, but what about the fact that the plural of "attorney general" is "attorneys general" and the plural of "court marshal" is "courts marshal"?

In the noun phrase "print out" isn't "print" the noun and "out" the (prepositional) adjective? And since you can't pluralize an adjective (see previous paragraph) shouldn't the plural... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:05 PM on May 7, 2008

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,200,000 for printouts

Results 1 - 10 of about 698,000 for irregardless
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:07 PM on May 7, 2008

I think printout is one word and so printouts is also one word.

Source? Because I'm not sure it is.

I'm not trying to be a "douchebag" or threadmod or anything, here, I just feel like there must be a more satisfying answer to this than "common usage."
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:13 PM on May 7, 2008

I don't know. The OED's reasoning pretty much seems to be "common usage," too, and I just wish there was something more satisfying as an answer. Whatever, it's pretty trivial.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:31 PM on May 7, 2008

Memo's translation is closer to your original sentence, but from my understanding "las está matando" can mean "it's killing them" but also "you are killing them".

This could be avoided by just making it one sentence:

Por favor, no riegue estas plantas (las está matando).

Or even better, clarify that implied pronoun:

Por favor, no riegue estas plantas. Las está matando tanto agua.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 8:14 AM on May 6, 2008

OMG I'm an idiot.

Anyway, I did it like I did because I like using the gerund "is killing" form and putting "the water" at the end of the sentence for emphasis on the verb in the beginning. And "Tanta agua las mata" could read "All this water has killed them" (not really, but you know what I mean, the death has already happened, not in the process of).

Whatever.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 8:25 AM on May 6, 2008

Vagabond has it, but at the heart of the OP's Q there are some concurrency issues, aren't there? For instance, if this is a new record, as in the example screenshot, the original Data table entry form hasn't been submitted, and so has no associated id PK for use as the FK index in the Documentation table. So use flow is user hits "new record" button, starts entering data, hits "new documentation" button, submits, more "new documentation" and submit, then finally... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 9:33 PM on April 27, 2008

wouldn't be able to do without a car ... take a trip to Ikea

Ikea runs a free shuttle to the Elizabeth, NJ store on weekends; it leaves from the Port Authority bus terminal.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:55 PM on April 20, 2008

Whatever you get, make sure it has an oil- and grease-resistant sole. Just about any sole material that isn't specifically designed to be so (and I'm especially thinking here about rubber) will become a serious hazard if you get oil or grease on it.

Personally, when I was in the biz, I wouldn't let appropriately shod people in the wait station, let alone the kitchen, and if that meant you didn't work that night, well then you could just come back... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:45 PM on April 19, 2008 marked best answer

re: danhon

Wow, yeah, see Crocs are exactly what you shouldn't wear. They're all rubber!
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:48 PM on April 19, 2008

Why do elephants wear green shoes?
(dunno.)
To hide on pool tables.

Why do elephants wear pink shoes?
(dunno.)
To hide in cherry trees.

Ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
(no.)
Works pretty good, doesn't it?

PS For years "What's brown and sticky?" has been my acid test for measuring a new acquaintance's sense of humor. Some day I will... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 11:36 AM on April 17, 2008

Reproducing (small) portions of a copyrighted work for the purpose of critique or review is perfectly legal in the U.S. under the fair use doctrine.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:00 PM on April 16, 2008

Towards the end of each fiscal year I decide how much I can give that year, and then divide that amount between the charities I like. Swag doesn't enter much into it, and frankly I tend to choose charities that don't waste their money on such things; low administrative overhead is a big selling point for me. The last thing I'd like my money to be doing is going to bumper-stickers for other donors.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 1:52 PM on April 16, 2008

The route that many follow (as I'm sure you're aware) is studying to become a paralegal while doing secretarial work. You might even consider law school, but that's going to be real hard while holding down a full-time job.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:22 PM on April 14, 2008

Wills are executed in your state of primary residence, regardless of both where you die and where it was written.

That said, each state has different guidelines that documents must meet in order to meet the legal standard of what compromises a will, so that while a will written in Delaware might be executed in Maine if the person moves there, but Maine might have more stringent standards than Delaware, such that the document, which meets the Delaware standard of a will... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:58 PM on April 14, 2008 marked best answer

Yes, if it's a non-Apple DVI adapter that could definitely be it. I understand that Apple's does some non-standard things to their DVI output.

You must be joking me. That means the DVI output the laptop is sending must itself be doing something non-standard, if something else non-standard is required by the adapter to get it to work. So I am forced to buy the Apple product that fixes my other, broken Apple product.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:39 PM on April 13, 2008

You want this to work, or are you looking to move every zig for Great Justice?

1) As you can probably guess, if I had a choice I'd rather not run an Apple, and its experiences like this that are exactly why. I could go on for pages about how absurd this experience has been, how Wrong it is from just about every angle (to implement your own, fancy standard just so people have to buy your kinds of cable, and then to violate that standard in order to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 4:32 PM on April 13, 2008

Given that lots of other video cards (e.g. Matrox, NVidia, etc) also only work properly with certain DVI-analogue adaptors

Yeah, listen, that's all valid, and such, but as I mentioned to someone IRL while venting about this, we're talking about a laptop.

For a desktop to require special stuff to get it to work with other special desktop stuff, I can understand that. If a particular high-end video card... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 5:22 PM on April 13, 2008

Its my experience that almost all product categories fall along a roughly inverse-exponential price-to-quality curve, wherein spending more over the bare minimum gets you pretty drastically increased quality but after about the median those returns in quality start diminishing rather quickly. Extremely price-sensitive markets where quality is easily quantifiable (the computer processor market is a pretty much perfect example) exhibit this behavior most obviously. I'm sure there's an economic... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:58 PM on April 13, 2008

I've never played it myself, but The Getaway was advertised as featuring an extremely meticulous model of London, like down to the level of using digital photographs of the actual walls of specific buildings being used as the textures for those buildings in-game, etc. Its a GTA clone rather than a racer, but like GTA I'm sure you could probably just get in a car and drive around.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 2:38 PM on April 13, 2008

I love many of the ones already posted here, but am aghast that nobody so far has mentioned The Summit Racing Catalog.

Its possible, but extremely contra-indicated, to attempt to tune your car or bike without it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 8:41 PM on April 11, 2008

In every state I'm aware of you can file for an extension, and as others have said, so long as you let them know, its usually not a big deal. There may be a small penalty associated, but oftentimes there's not even that.

That said, if you don't tell them or even worse bounce a check you send them, they will be VERY unhappy and the white-hot wrath of a thousand burning suns will descend upon you. For real. Don't even THINK about getting cute with ANY tax agency. It's how... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:33 PM on April 11, 2008

My advice would be stick with what you know. With only $25k, you can't afford much of a learning curve, nor very many unprofitable months.

So that said, what I would do were I you is start a specialty car-rental joint. You're never going to compete with Hertz and Avis, but then they are forced to rent crappy cars. What if your rental shop had a bunch of old convertibles and Vespa scooters and dune buggies or whatever? Some dude wants to impress his date with by picking... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 12:01 PM on April 11, 2008

TurboTax offers (most of) their Federal Edition online for free. Because he's in something of an unusual filing category, he may have to pay in order to get the features he needs. But even if he doesn't want to pay for the extra features, he should at least, if he ever does get to the "Oh, damn, you're in Special Category Q and you'll need to pay to get access to the TPS-847G form," well, then at least he knows he's a Category Q and therefore needs the TPS-847G form.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 10:46 AM on April 9, 2008

It wouldn't take you ten years to get your Master's. It will take you two. Then "Tell me about what you've been up to recently" can get answered with "Well I got my BA in '08, and I've been working on my Master's since then. During that time I had internship x and worked on research project y." rather than with "Well, I'm finishing up my BA, and it took me some time, and I kinda farted around a bit, and now I'm just kinda looking to make some money.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 10:32 AM on April 9, 2008

Assuming you are happy with the position, culture, environment, responsibilities, and all that (which you probably are if you're at the place of talking about an offer) then the next questions to ask are probably the hardest but also some of the most important for you personally. Never be ashamed of protecting yourself.

So ask the same kinds of things you should ask when considering any job offer: When do the benefits kick in? If they kick in over a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:33 AM on April 9, 2008

I have a relative who worked for Campbell's, and I can assure you that while the Quality Control gets to a very high level indeed, the idea that it can get precisely the same number of noodles in each can is absurd. When you are producing literally billions of cans of soup per year, the law of large numbers all but guarantees that not only will you have some variation, but somewhere out there is a can of chicken noodle soup with no noodles in it.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:22 PM on April 6, 2008

Relevant recent NYT article about all this nonsense.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 12:24 PM on March 31, 2008

I worked at my college's help desk. Constant demand for competent people, and never enough of them (CS majors would NEVER stoop so low.) Ditto computer lab admins, techs in the libraries, etc. etc. etc. Obviously they are very accommodating to college schedules, and you can defray the cost of your education more effectively with work study than with cash (they tend to pay you at a higher wage for work-study credits than for cash). That said, I just took the cash. :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 11:53 AM on March 28, 2008

I'm going to counter others' suggestion, and propose not bothering with the student jobs at all.

BTW, for anyone who thinks along these lines, studies conclusively show that students who have jobs do better in school than those who don't.

Even if you don't directly apply your skills, even if you are "just" waiting tables or pumping gas, having a job teaches you many, many things that will make... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 12:00 PM on March 28, 2008

e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0.

One formula that describes the relationship between all the important numbers in math. Suddenly, the entire course of mathematical study that they've been on for 10-odd years is summed up in one equation. (arithmetic to geometry to algebra to [statistics and probability] to trigonometry to calculus. And you need ALL of them to truly grok the significance of the above.)

And the neat thing is that what at first seems like... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 10:30 AM on March 27, 2008

huh. no idea why I didn't take that approach. it makes a lot of sense. the only trouble is if there are a myraid of params getting passed that are essential to the flash app, but i guess that's their bad if they need that.

See Jon Postel's Robustness Principle ("Be liberal with what you accept, be conservative with what you send"). See Joel Splosky's critique, which though compelling is annoyingly incomplete.

The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 4:07 PM on March 20, 2008

W3C-valid code

On immediate second thought that's a pretty major stretch, but likely ignoring things other than the most basic PARAMs, especially given that its coming from non-standard code, is ok.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 4:11 PM on March 20, 2008

I had problems getting some of XAMPP's features that I needed to go on my setup, so I switched to Apache2Triad, which offers everything (I needed) that XAMPP does, and for me was a bit more flexible.

That said, a quick search on sourceforge will reveal LOTS of them.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:49 PM on March 20, 2008

Welcome to Java, The Kingdom of Nouns.

Now its been some time since I've dealt with Java, so some of this may be old and therefore no longer true, and I don't anything approaching a handle on the syntax any more, so forgive the English language psuedo-code.

Basically I think we're looking at two problems here.

Number one is how to make a class that implements the Stat interface but uses a different (and user contributed,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 3:29 PM on March 20, 2008 marked best answer

pompomtom: thanks, that VB is pretty much exactly what I was thinking about in the OP, and that what really helpful for translating my psuedo-code. I'm just a bit rusty with my VB syntax.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 12:00 AM on February 2, 2008

Here's what I ended up doing, thanks in part to pompomtom's help:


Sub Format_By_Row()
Dim Firstrow As Long
Dim Lastrow As Long
Dim Lrow As Long
Dim CalcMode As Long
Dim ViewMode As Long

With Application
CalcMode = .Calculation
.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
.ScreenUpdating =... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:27 AM on February 2, 2008

Though my solution is probably not the cleanest (again, what n00b-ish VBA skills I ever once had are pretty rusty) solution, note, however, that pompomtom's cleaner quicker solution - for me, at least, formatted every cell on the spreadsheet, including the unused/blank ones down in row 64,000, leading to long execution times for the script and quite large files. Hence my use of the UsedRange object, and also the counting backwards (rather than forwards toward and possibly into... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by ChasFile at 7:47 AM on February 2, 2008