I'm ready to trade in my 13-yr-old Civic, but it has a bunch of little problems. Hard starts, occasional (though rare) stalls, buzzy speakers, rust, a couple small dents, and some moron recently ran into my side mirror and broke it. Is it worth fixing any of these things in order to get a better trade-in value?
posted to Ask Metafilter by booth at 8:03 PM on February 16, 2006 (14 comments)

My house still has some knob and tube wiring. I am concerned, in particular, with the ceiling light fixture in my home office where I just installed a new light. Neither wire was marked as hot or neutral, and my voltmeter read the same thing no matter which way I touched the wires. So I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. Will anything bad happen if I got the lamp wires connected to the wrong source wires? How can I tell which wire is which in the future?
posted to Ask Metafilter by booth at 12:54 PM on March 12, 2005 (12 comments)

I am editing a technical document that contains figures. One of these figures is referred to twice (on pages 13 and 33). What is the accepted way of dealing with this?

I want to show the figure twice, with different figure numbers. I think this will make it easy for the reader to see what's being referenced in both places. It doesn't bother me if the same picture has different figure numbers associated with it on different pages. It does, however, bother my boss, who wants to either show the figure only once and refer back to it in the second reference, or show it twice and use the same figure number in both places. (Have I explained that clearly enough?) (Chicago Manual of Style doesn't seem to address this.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by booth at 8:19 AM on January 4, 2005 (16 comments)

When I plug my iBook into my home stereo, it sounds horrible. Way bass-y and mumbly. I can tweak it - setting the iBook volume way low and messing with bass and treble on the stereo - so it's passable, but I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong. (I plug it from the headphones jack into the Phono input.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by booth at 8:20 AM on December 21, 2004 (13 comments)