Executive summary, as some people may be put off by the length:

A woman approaching her fifties needs advice on preparing for examinations in Software Function and Use and Financial Services that are in one week.

She needs this because she needs the security of a government job, as she has had to take over the breadwinner role in her house (a four-person household, with she, her husband, and two kids; there are adult children) after her husband... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 10:00 PM on November 24, 2009 marked best answer

BeBrave, here are my thoughts on your responses:

First, can your husband’s adult children assist you at all?

Second, you say your unemployment is about to run out. HR 3548 was signed into law by President Obama on November 6. Your profile shows you to be in Colorado (click on the little planet next to ‘location’), which has a 6.6% unemployment rate. That means you should have about 14 weeks of new unemployment benefits coming to you as a... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 10:18 PM on November 24, 2009 marked best answer

You know, rather than repeating all the praise that's already been heaped, I'll just say that holy hell has America needed something to cheer itself up, and thank God we still have the Muppets.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:56 PM on November 24, 2009

By the way, RSS feed for the Muppets YouTube channel. Just sayin'.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 1:12 PM on November 24, 2009

WCityMike: By the way, RSS feed for the Muppets YouTube channel. Just sayin'.

Hm. Or at least, it used to be.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 1:13 PM on November 24, 2009

grouse: Can we talk about French toast now? Because I had some amazing challah French toast on Sunday. Man, it was good

As I don't have a recipe to contribute, I will merely say that my favorite pronounciation of "French toast" is in 40-Year-Old Virgin, where the drunk girl who later vomits strawberry (or rasberry?) daquiri all over Andy says, "Man, I could really... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 12:40 PM on November 24, 2009

I have found long lost photographs of eamondaly brushing his teeth (via). Seriously, Eamon, looks like you have a doppelgänger ...
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 7:03 PM on November 21, 2009

Saw it on Reddit, actually. :)
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 7:07 AM on November 23, 2009

Calvinism?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 9:04 PM on November 22, 2009

I had no idea it was this much work. I suppose that's a sign of good work: when it's made to look effortless.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 5:38 PM on November 22, 2009

Odinsdream, I really appreciate the kindness of the offer, but it'd probably cost a few hundred dollars in postage to send you the paper. :)

I think I may just need to bite the bullet and buy one when it becomes a financially wise move, and stick with my paper filing in the meantime.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 5:32 PM on November 22, 2009

It sounds like you're just assuming Chase won't. Have you tried?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:24 AM on November 20, 2009

Yeah, I'll take their Psalm 109:8 and raise them Matthew 25:41-46:

"Then [God] will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not invite me in,
I needed clothes and you did not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 3:26 PM on November 19, 2009

lsemel: Specifically, I want the folders in a window at the top, and the files in a window below, like this. TextMate and Komodo mix them all up into a single tree

It is most likely not that TextMate and Komodo (or any other application) choose to do so, but that they are merely adopting the Mac operating system's way of doing things – which is mixed up into a single tree. I'm not wild about... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 2:09 PM on November 19, 2009

jrengreen: Cheque please.

Don't you mean "Chex please"?
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 1:05 PM on November 19, 2009

When I went on the Internet for the very first time, I went to AltaVista and typed my name, "Mike Harris", into its search box.

The results were as follows: "The Anti-Mike Harris Page", "Mike Harris Sucks!", etc.

I called the computer lab technician and said, "Do you guys do this to everybody?"

It turns out that Mike Harris was not the most popular of Ontario... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 9:33 AM on November 19, 2009

"Understand", by Ted Chiang. It's relevant.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:09 PM on November 17, 2009

And, yes, even Marc is amongst the Shatners. (Or should that be "Kaj, jes, egale Marc estas inter la Shatners"?)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 10:29 PM on November 16, 2009

No One Takes Your Freedom, by DJ Earworm. "For No One" (The Beatles), "Take Your Mama" (Scissor Sisters), "Freedom '90" (George Michael), and "Think" (Aretha Franklin). Truly amazing.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:50 AM on November 15, 2009

Well, as you seem to have liked that, you might want to try out Walter Murphy's Fifth of Beethoven (Soulwax Remix) (the original of which is, in fact, what's in the background of the Golddigger mashup) or Robin Thicke's When I Get You Alone (and, oddly enough, Robin is Growing Pains Alan Thicke's kid). Both are variants on the same theme.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:21 PM on November 15, 2009

The inestimable wisdom of Leo McGarry, from the pilot:LEO: The President's gonna read this W.B.O. revenue analysis and say- that his Council of Economic Advisors were put on the planet to make astrologers look good.

ECONOMIST #1: Talk to the man at Treasury.

LEO: Luther. Ball park. One year from today. Where's the Dow?

ECONOMIST #2: Tremendous. Up a thousand points.

LEO: Fred.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:47 PM on November 14, 2009

Danf: It had me at the pith-helmeted cop!

Well, I am amused that his line was pure Han Solo from Star Wars.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:30 AM on November 13, 2009

Well, just sat through the 63-minute video.

It was one hell of a lot better than I expected, given the comments here. Just out of curiousity, did those who commented negatively on it watch the whole thing? In our short-attention-span culture, I think we tend to not give things time to develop: we want instant quality now, damn it! And if you gave time to this to let it bake, it really turned out to be pretty damn decent by film's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 11:28 PM on November 13, 2009

You've been the conduit for a lot of good to enter this world, via this website you crafted and built. The universe better pay attention and pay some of that back to you. Add me to the list of people sending good vibes in your direction, Matt.
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 7:55 PM on November 12, 2009

Yeah, you can accomplish this using A Better Finder Rename and "Advanced & Special > Rename from File List".
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:54 PM on November 12, 2009 marked best answer

Companion FPP to this one.
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 3:20 PM on November 11, 2009

quin: while it's called a "pilot", it deals with events after the conclusion of the events of the first season and was clearly a if-we-don't-get-picked-up-this-will-give-closure effort.

"Epitaph One" wasn't either of the two pilots. It was a thirteenth episode produced because ... well, Wikipedia: "20th Century Fox needed thirteen episodes for the first season's DVD... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 3:33 PM on November 11, 2009

Ask Metafilter has an inherent policy: if it isn't responsive to the question, and if it challenges the actual initial scenario of the question, it doesn't belong there.

I.e., if a woman is going to have an abortion and wants advice as to safe providers in her city, a response challenging the abortion itself doesn't belong in that thread, and will be deleted.

That's not because the admins censor viewpoints they disagree with; it's because admins... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:31 AM on November 11, 2009

Just, by the way, as a case study of this principle: there was an Ask Mefi thread where the posted mentioned that they'd just fallen into rather delirious love and they were wondering why this motivated them to do things like write poetry.

I posted a message saying something to the effect of "I don't have much to answer your question, but: awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! I'm so happy for you! Congratulations!"

It was deleted.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:45 AM on November 11, 2009

Let's look at the problem from the perspective of looking after your own self-interests.

From that perspective, this has the power to massively affect your life for the worse – and I'm talking on a scale of not only your current job, but your ability to be an employable human being.

You are never going to become pale. You are never going to get sick. You are never going to have your hair fall out from chemotherapy. When you show almost... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 9:29 AM on November 11, 2009

churl: Just to throw out my two cents: Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is a charity I endorse very heavily.

I gotta second that, deeply. When I was researching a FPP about a particularly heinous crime against humanity, those folks were part of who were doing what they could to repair the damage. I think most of them are doing the work of the saints.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 3:42 PM on November 9, 2009

You know, I don't know if this'll land with a huzzah or with a resounding thud, but I have to admit, I'm a bit enamored of Wikipedia's watchlist ... it would be quite nice to be able to 'watch' and 'unwatch' various threads, even if we have not participated in them.

For example, let's say I see an Ask Mefi hit the RSS feed about a really interesting topic -- but I go and there's no answer there yet. Well, I definitely can manually check back. I can even add the RSS... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 1:55 PM on November 9, 2009

Just out of curiosity, aside from installing User Agent Switcher on Firefox, any way to manually switch to this view in a non-iPhone browser?
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 8:50 PM on November 8, 2009

pb: But if you want to get close to the iPhone version you could install the current iPhone stylesheet as a local user-defined style. You would lose some additional page-level formatting, but using that stylesheet would be very close to the iPhone experience.

Well, I tried setting that up as a Stylish userstyle, which pretty much got it near there, but some of the UI differences that I was looking... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:53 PM on November 8, 2009

Favorites are searchable?!?! That makes them about 40 times more useful than I had thought them ...
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 9:09 PM on November 8, 2009

as HTML
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:47 PM on November 8, 2009

I'd strongly, strongly echo those who suggest you need to have your doctor verify you didn't have a ministroke.

An extended family member had a stroke. They described it in similar terms to what you just described, except for them, they couldn't process numbers. They were working a register at the time, and suddenly, it just went a bit off. When they punched out, the timeclock required number entry in order for them to punch out properly, and they couldn't do it.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 8:20 PM on November 8, 2009

Haven't tried it, but Restore Window Focus After Flash. It sounds like it may not be a good solution, since it sounds as if it would disable keyboard usage inside Flash.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:51 PM on November 8, 2009

By the way, this is Bug #78414, which has been around since before 9/11.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:53 PM on November 8, 2009

Sorry to have spread this over three messages – there's a Greasemonkey user script cited in the comments of #78414. I installed it on my machine. Grooveshark still grabs the Ctrl-PgUp/Ctrl-PgDwn keystroke as I'm traversing my tabs, but I can do Cmd-T to get out of that keyboard-grab, or Cmd-L to go to the address bar. (See this.)

Also, there's this: Plugins: Advanced Key Handling: "Status: Accepted, ready for implementation. Assigned NPAPI version 25.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 7:27 PM on November 8, 2009

Amanda, I think that the problem lies in the cognitive dissonance between how FOX News viewers perceive FOX News, and how the rest of the world does. If you are a FOX News viewer, you buy into what the channel is selling: that they present fair and balanced reporting, that any Democrat is the most evil person in the world, and that every Democratic proposal will destroy the Earth's iosphere.

What you're essentially asking us is how one might convert a FOX News viewer... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:13 PM on November 8, 2009

Also, just as an FYI, this might be useful. Quite literally, and with no hyperbole nor bias whatsoever, it is FOX News suing for the right to broadcast false information.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:17 PM on November 8, 2009

Hey, listen, I don't want to sound like I'm Pepsi Blue-ing my FPP, but if you're looking to counter-introduce some positive news sources into her life, I put together a FPP for that purpose (basically, because of the same thing Meg_Murry says: I found my own news sources to be really overwhelming in their pessimism, and I needed some counterprogramming to convince me the world wasn't truly going to crap).

They're not particularly liberally biased, either, so I think your... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 12:20 PM on November 8, 2009

Rupert Murdoch owns not only FOX News, but the paper that printed the article to which you linked. The Wall Street Journal is most definitely not an unbiased source. And while I'm not personally familiar with Ms. McCaughey's work, I note she's a Republican, so her position isn't exactly likely to be unbiased either.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 5:09 PM on November 8, 2009

Yes, it's a gross violation. See American Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Association: The Principles of Medical Ethics, With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry:

Section 1, Annotation 1: "A psychiatrist shall not gratify his or her own needs by exploiting the patient. The psychiatrist shall be ever vigilant about the impact that his or her conduct has upon the boundaries of the doctor–patient... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:55 PM on November 7, 2009

> it seems like section 2 is there to prevent psychiatrists from being invested at
> all in their position as social/political actors.

Psychiatrists, in their role as people who are supposed to help, both therapeutically and pharmaceutically, aid the patient in the healing of mental problems and aberrations from the norm, should not be social/political actors. A psychiatrist should not be acting on their beliefs about abortion when treating a daughter... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 7:29 AM on November 8, 2009

Relevant, I think:Joining Gold’s Gym is a lot like sitting down and negotiating a deal at a used car lot — it’s high pressure and the first dollar figures presented to you, um, don’t really matter a whole lot. They originally wanted me to pay $249 as an “initial investment” (what exactly is that?) and $59.95 a month. After telling both the salesman, assistant manager, and then the manager that I didn’t want to pay more than $39.95 with no “initial investment,” I got my way.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:29 PM on November 6, 2009

dates prices
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 6:29 PM on November 6, 2009

Rectum? I nearly killed 'em!
posted to MetaTalk by WCityMike at 5:04 PM on November 6, 2009

While it's not an automatic adjustment, browser.zoom.sitespecific would remember on a site-by-site basis any adjustments you make. There's also NoSquint, which amps up zooming abilities.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WCityMike at 4:59 PM on November 6, 2009