I don't think it fits your criteria exactly, but my mind wanders to that show Real People that used to be on one of the Big Three. It was sort of the same principle as YouTube: normal everyday people who had some odd talent they wanted to show off to others.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 2:57 PM on July 25, 2008

I'd strongly advocate against the Acquisition and xTorrent suggestions. It's wonderful software, but the software's author is known to be highly mercurial and many have had unpleasant experiences with him. Mind you, I've not had nearly any experience with him. But given the existence of perfectly acceptable freeware alternatives, I think such alternatives are a safer bet.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 7:34 AM on July 25, 2008

Transmission and Acqlite are the specific alternatives I'm thinking of; didn't include that in the post.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 7:42 AM on July 25, 2008

To answer the other part of your question regarding how to shave your sacrococcygeal area, it's a solution that some people prone to pilonidal cysts pursue. (Not I, but it was one of the things I read about people doing prior to an excision.) I have no idea how to effectively go about doing it, but investigating how those people do it would probably give you your answer as to how to go about it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 5:22 AM on July 25, 2008

Thanks for the confirmation on that — but just to clarify, I already figured out it's a welcome-home gesture. What I can't figure out is what he thinks he's doing via the gesture.

It could be that it's just an entirely senseless gesture even to him, and I know he doesn't have human thoughts, but I'm just curious as to what it's supposed to be.

Is he marking that corner with his scent for me? (I am very often on the computer when home, so... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 12:15 PM on July 23, 2008

verisimilitude: Perhaps he is shit scared of you.

Nope. I can read his expressions fairly well, and he's got his friendly/blissed look on his face when he does this.

a feline propensity to perform routinized behaviour. It doesnt really matter what the content of that behaviour is, because the evolutionary advantage confered on the little chap is his propensity to keep doing it. Cats seem to spend a great deal of time... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 12:49 PM on July 23, 2008

Thanks, everybody!
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 7:07 AM on July 24, 2008

From your profile's lat/lon it looks like you're in NYC near Greenwich Village. Your landlord is required to keep your apartment free of vermin and you are entitled to live in a sanitary apartment. You've got a city bureaucracy on your side (for all that's worth) if your landlord's refusing to help, including possibly suing for rent reduction. Linkage.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 12:22 PM on July 23, 2008 marked best answer

> slow enough for a first dance, but still with a "happy" vibe.

I have weird tastes, but: "Luna," by Alessandro Safina; "God Only Knows," by the Beach Boys; "Songbird," by Eva Cassidy; "All You Need is Love," by Lynden David Hall (it's a very nice cover) (these last three were heard in the movie "Love Actually"); "Someone Like You," by Doris Day; "Crazy... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 5:51 PM on July 22, 2008

I think you have to have the lyric at least partially wrong -- there's, highly oddly enough, only 12 Google hits for the phrase "Mulder finally saw." If this was a Internet-famous MP3, then at the very least one or two fans here and there would've stuck it in their sigs.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:29 AM on July 22, 2008

The character of Simon says this in an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I think people who answer you above are accurate and Sorkin probably misused it, but in that context Simon used it with a "alright! woo-hoo! yes!" meaning.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:24 AM on July 22, 2008

Gorman Bechard's The Second Greatest Story Ever Told has, as its main protagonist, the Daughter of God. And it is a great book.

The short story "Understand" in Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others involves someone taking a smart drug and receiving godlike abilities. It is one of my favorite short stories ever on this theme, because it is told in the first person, which is very hard to do convincingly with this... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:02 AM on July 18, 2008

Investigate these Google results.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 7:53 AM on July 18, 2008

One of the little one-line thingies that always stuck with me: Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 9:15 AM on July 16, 2008

There's also something currently on the Web with the same plot. Can't quite put my finger on it. But it's the same concept.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:24 AM on July 14, 2008

This is a skill you can learn in a class, too. Look at adult education classes offered at your local colleges. Also you might want to invest $15 and get The Complete Tightwad Gazette.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 2:33 PM on July 11, 2008

> I wish I knew where that thread was or who that poster was, because I bought it and love it and would love to thank them.

This, this, this, or someone on this?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2008

The problem is that thanks to T, you have a subroutine running in the back of your skull. It takes all of your incoming input, distorts it to fit the principles he installed in your head about yourself, and thus warps reality to a worldview created by a bastard.

The solution is to start to dismantle that subroutine. Therapy helps very much with that, as do most of the texts recommended by people here. But what also will help you is to challenge self-denigrating... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:45 AM on July 11, 2008 marked best answer

I renovated a Shaker cemetery for my Eagle project (cleared out brush, put planters up, righted gravestones, etc.) ... if memory serves the religion is fairly rare nowadays because Shakerism requires them to be celibate, meaning that new Shakers are almost always converts.

I don't think much of Wikipedia but its article on Shakers has a great deal of references, links, and "for further reading" suggestions.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:05 AM on July 10, 2008

Don't tell your girlfriend.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:50 AM on July 10, 2008

nthing the Chicago delivery observation. Any time you've heard about some postal employee caught and disciplined for having five years' worth of mailbags in his house, it's been one from Chicago.

I had a very drawn out fight with my local branch that ended up with me having to write and call multiple times to the Consumer Advocate Office of the USPS. In the end, however, it did help. Perhaps that's your solution.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 1:59 PM on July 9, 2008

amro: "And now the first hit is this question!"

You know, I'm tempted to start an Ask Mefi question with the title "WCityMike has a very large penis", just so that becomes the first Google hit ...
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 1:56 PM on July 9, 2008

I ended up having the superintendent move the toilet paper roll. Worked like a charm. :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:50 AM on July 8, 2008

Also, just to clarify (it's probably already obvious), by repeating tasks I mean "empty the litterbox" every such-and-such days, "check the smoke detector battery" every such-and-such days, etc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:47 AM on July 7, 2008

Tomorrowful, Flunkie, a few questions regarding your methodology:

(1) do you just do the "cat [file that has to-do] >> to-do-list" thing? If so, do you keep a separate file for each of your repeating tasks?

(2) I know how to have cron run at certain times/days of the week, but how do you tell cron "every 42 days" or "every 3 weeks", etc.?

(3) You might not know this, but is there a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:05 AM on July 7, 2008

Thanks for your input, everyone.

The answer I've liked the best thus far is swapspace's, to do it like:

Backup my thumb drive.
         (4/5, 4/12, 4/19, 4/26, ... )

And then remove dates as I accomplish them. I whipped up a quick spreadsheet to generate the intervals.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:25 AM on July 8, 2008

Swapspace's response marked as best answer, but honestly, thanks, everyone.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:27 AM on July 8, 2008

I wouldn't venture a medical diagnosis, and I hope no one else would. But I think a gastroenterologist would be a good person to start with. And I imagine they'll send you for some sort of X-ray/CAT/MRI thing so they can get a picture of what's going on.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:44 AM on July 7, 2008

If you follow others' suggestions here and continue with the CPAP machine (which I too recommend you do), you might want to do what I did; I knew right off the bat I breathed through my mouth while sleeping and would most likely not change that. So I got a mask that covers both my nose and my mouth. I never had to learn how to change my breathing habits while sleeping.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:35 AM on July 7, 2008

A lot of people have given you good advice. I'll echo the "avoid manslaughter charges" trend. :-) Also, in the meantime, this might be of at least some use.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:03 AM on July 3, 2008

What you're looking for, exactly, is Taply. Linkage in a moment.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 1:15 PM on July 2, 2008

Here you go.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 1:15 PM on July 2, 2008

This is very much not the book you're looking for, but if you enjoyed that, you might like Diane Duane's So You Want to be a Wizard series of novels, which is thematically similar.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:25 AM on July 2, 2008

Rocket City.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:56 AM on June 30, 2008

CookiePie.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 9:17 PM on June 27, 2008

MadMage, I don't have much to suggest to you, except for this: when you feel feelings of anxiety or sadness or fear during this time, don't try to suppress them, push them down, or rigidly control them. Just say to yourself, "This feeling is a normal human reaction to what happened, and it's perfectly normal to feel it," and let it run its course.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the story has a happy ending. If it doesn't, this unfortunately has happened... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 4:02 AM on June 26, 2008

I firmly believe you'll see him again someday. And I'm so very sorry for your loss. As a cat owner (or perhaps better said as one in reality owned by a cat), I can imagine how deeply in pain I would be should my cat die as yours did. The fact that he was a different species doesn't change the fact that you've lost a good friend in a very horrible way. Let yourself grieve and mourn as long as you need to.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:13 PM on June 26, 2008

Forgive yourself and forgive your partner no matter what is said. As much as possible, do not let it negatively affect your relationship with your partner.

Know that there are children out there whose literal idea of heaven would be to have a mother and a father who treated them kindly and with love. My uncle and aunt are raising children that aren't genetically related to them. They love them deeply, and the kids, they couldn't be in better hands. This fate does not... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 5:23 PM on June 26, 2008

Hmmm. I responded as if the poster was one of the parents of the child. Not quite clear which way to go on this one.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 5:35 PM on June 26, 2008

Seconding Regina Spektor — link goes to a Mefi post I did on her which has some investigative links.

I've also got a song fragment in the back of my head of someone who I think has a distinctive voice — if I can tease it fully out, I'll post the name here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:41 AM on June 24, 2008

WCityMike: "I've also got a song fragment in the back of my head of someone who I think has a distinctive voice — if I can tease it fully out, I'll post the name here."

I was thinking of Leslie Feist; the song fragment was from "Mushaboom."
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 9:46 AM on June 25, 2008

I would imagine it would be in the liner notes of the CD. Have you checked there?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:54 AM on June 24, 2008

A Google Books result: "Defiant and confident, Yella even disclosed the in-joke, scratching in a female voice, 'Hoping all you sophisticated motherfuckers hear what I have to say.'" I'm not sure of the wording there, though. Does that mean "scratching in" as in "placing into the song"? Or did he alter his own voice, in which case that's the answer to your question?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:02 AM on June 24, 2008

If you look at my track record, you'll see I'm a fairly anti-DTMFA advocate, since I'm a soppy idealist at heart and I hate to see romance fizzling.

DTMFA.

Except. I'd make sure someone is on-hand to take over your role as "observer of her for possible suicidal tendencies." Not that you would be responsible if she did kill herself, but if that possibility is rustling around in the tall weeds, it's best to be careful.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:50 AM on June 24, 2008

For that matter, annoying blonde girl in Lost in Translation is supposed to be very thinly disguised Cameron Diaz, and mopey husband is Spike Jonze (Coppola's husband at time).
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:22 PM on June 20, 2008

Hey, guys, it's up.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:29 AM on June 19, 2008

Thanks to the originator(s) of the two legit ideas posted. Looks like this concept is crashing and burning, not only because of the deletion but also because the site only allows five designs, and we've got enough pranksters that empty slots are filling up with hardy-har-har stuff. Ah well. My thanks to everyone who did anything well-meant.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 11:48 AM on June 19, 2008

(It looks like it's easier to rotate than I thought. If an object is selected (you just dragged it somewhere or something), then if you hover over an edge, you'll see a little "rotate" icon come up. When you see that, you can spin it right in place.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:40 AM on June 19, 2008

veedubya: "All Lords, Temporal and Spiritual, are excluded from there, and have been since the re-establishment of the monarchy under Charles II."

And Spiritual? Assuming for a moment that God exists, how exactly would they be enforcing this?
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 8:49 AM on June 19, 2008

This isn't a situation where you don't want to have legal assistance. Wrongful eviction can be quite costly to you. Like many (but not all) things in life, you can do it cheap or you can do it safe.
posted to Ask Metafilter by WCityMike at 10:04 AM on June 18, 2008