I'm a believer in 0 debt and actually think you CAN live w/o CCs just fine, though some things are harder or require having more of a fiscal cushion (ie, car rental). But that's neither here nor there with regards to this question - here the question is "should I charge things that I cannot pay off immediately?"

There's plenty of answer up above, I'd offer just this one suggestion: remember that when you're doing this, you're not paying $1 when you charge $1.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:11 AM on July 15, 2008

My darling fiancée and I sell things at craft fairs as well, and Alison hits almost all the important points in my opinion.

Take it with a grain of salt - my darling and I have other unrelated full time careers, and for us this is a cash-positive hobby. When you factor in travel time, show fees, materials, production time and sales time, there's a decent chance a McDs worker earns more per hour than we do. So perhaps we're not the people you want to model yourself after.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:55 PM on July 14, 2008

Jeez, why leave Annapolis? They're from Kansas - what about all the stuff to see/do on the water? Look for a boat rental. Rent some kayaks. Go have dinner at one of the seafood places on Kent Island.

If you really want to bring them into DC, the 930 club is all ages all the time. Unfortunately the shows at the end of the month are not at all hip-hop (though Old 97s sounds kinda cool... I might go myself) but I know when I was 16 the number of live music venues I could... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 6:57 PM on July 10, 2008

I think most (small claims) courts would find an implied contract between you and your roommate to each cover half the utils. So yes unless you can find a suitable sublettor or something he could likely recover your half if he really wanted to.

More accurately, he has legal resources he could engage in order to attempt to recover that money, and might succeed in doing so. But realistically, for 50% of 2 months worth of bills? It hardly seems likely,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 7:35 AM on July 3, 2008

Nthing Amazon. While iTunes does have some DRM-free stuff, the bitrate on it is too low for the price and the default of AAC puts me off.

Amazon has recently been running some sales of MP3 albums; Syncronicity and Morrisey's Greatest Hits were both under $5, I am sure if those did well we'll see a lot more back catalog discounts.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:36 AM on July 1, 2008

I dunno where else you can find the list, but Amazon's daily deals are put into their twitter feed here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:54 AM on July 1, 2008

What a train wreck this thread is. Way to piss all over snarfois' question, guys.

My advice, snarf, is to back up anything the toddler can get hir hands on and anything you can't buy on Amazon or that seems obscure. Everything else - if this backing up is a pain for you - just take your chances on.

A far more likely solution - and less likely to get you legal trouble - would be to sign up for NetFlix and rent the DVDs that have been damaged... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:16 AM on July 1, 2008

Don't let it bother you. In fifteen years of off-and-on yoga I can't think of a single class where the women didn't outnumber the men by at least 5 to 1. Consequently nobody notices. The only thing that I have ever seen get people's notice in a yoga class is being excessively loud. Refrain from grunting at the top of your lungs and nobody is going to pay the slightest bit of attention to you, paired chromosomes or not.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 10:46 AM on June 25, 2008

It's not even an issue of living beyond my means (I've done the math), I'm just awful at organizing all this garbage.

If you owe money you cannot pay right now, and are paying interest on a balance, you are living above your means, or did at one point. You can choose to pay a premium in order to buy things before you have the money for them if you like, but do not fool yourself into thinking that's not exactly what you're doing.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:10 AM on June 20, 2008

Free or not?

For free, Perl has free implementations on any platform the students are on and a metric asston of modules to use.

This was the first result when I googled 'perl wav' and it seems like a great starting point. 'perl sound frequency' turned this up.

Non free, this is exactly what MATLAB excels at, and it'll happily bring in an audio file for you to do analysis on.

That said, this... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:53 AM on June 16, 2008

Yeah, I don't know these students, and I told him this is pretty involved stuff, but he thought they were pretty bright high school students and could handle some scripting.

I'm sure they can - I think for the most parts students rise to the level of expectation set for them. I'd just suggest to him he not think of it in terms of what they're capable of learning but rather what he chooses to spend his limited time with them doing - explaining signal... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 7:43 AM on June 17, 2008

The problem with ripping to WAV and later converting to MP3 is that it usually complicates tagging and potentially even naming.

I'm partial to Poikosoft's Easy CDDA Extractor. I can't remember the last time it failed to identify a disc, no matter how obscure. Rip speeds on even older machines are usually about 10x realtime, or 10 CDs ripped an house.

It's configurable to eject the disc when it's done, so you can just keep slapping discs in and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:14 PM on June 6, 2008

At 20 CDs per batch this may not be up to snuff for you but it might be of interest to someone else.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:17 PM on June 16, 2008

I also want you to tell me what else I can do to save my job

After that description your question is "how can I be sure I get to stay here?" Really?

Another employee stands to lose 6 weeks of vacation, which is the maximum she was previously allowed to carry. We work ~50-60 hour weeks with a minimum of support and have been told by this boss that, regardless of our vacation or other work schedules, if we... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:32 PM on June 16, 2008

What would have been wrong with "that's an interesting shirt, did you get it here at the market?"

By which I mean to answer - you sure they didn't just buy these garments there and have an epiphany that wearing was easier than carrying?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:55 AM on June 16, 2008

Apple's complete neglect of the notes application is near-criminal.

On my jailbroken iPhone I use RemoteNote to keep things synced up and edited.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:08 PM on June 10, 2008

Just to clarify, the only thing that makes a punch block ideal is that it's easier to deal with - particularly with a short amount of slack - than putting heads on the cables. Beyond that there's really nothing superior about the nature of the connection.

If you don't already own the gear to put heads on cable then you might be just as well off going with the punch, however, since you can buy cheap disposable punchdowns.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:17 AM on June 10, 2008

Your scanner will only partially be a part of your bottleneck. Whatever scanner you grab, I highly recommend VueScan. It'll handle a lot of the pain in the ass aspects that manufacturer software never seems to deal with well. I'd hazard a blanket statement that no matter what scanner you buy, you'll get better results more quickly by adding Vuescan.

No, I am not the maker of the software. However I have been very happy with the results.

You might... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:38 PM on June 6, 2008 marked best answer

As parmanparman says, don't overlook the Y. Rates are here[pdf], and I personally think $70 a month and $72 a year for locker -and- laundry service is pretty sweet.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:45 PM on June 6, 2008

She has absolutely no desire to be touched or "massaged" in any way. Meaning, if I wanted to rub her downtown she'd get very angry. Cunnilingus is out of the question.

Outright anger at intimate touching isn't a disinterest in sex, it's an extreme reaction in someone who is otherwise currently engaged in intimate activity with you. I'm assuming that this is in context, not that you go leaping for her crotch to give it a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:39 AM on June 5, 2008

This often ends in her not getting "aroused" enough and once things start happening, it gets painful for her.

Jeez, get to a drugstore already. There's a dozen brands and styles of lube to choose from and no reason in the world for anyone to suffer from inadequate lubrication.

If this falls into the same category as your girlfriend's thing about wanting things "to happen naturally" then she needs to get... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:23 AM on June 5, 2008

The more I think about this question, the more concern I feel for the GF's actively negative reaction to being touched.

Precisely. The reality here is that when you take all of the OP's statements together as a whole they don't quite add up right. That's perfectly reasonable - interpersonal relationships are rarely equations that you can balance perfectly, both because of people not knowing their own minds and our inability to perfectly know the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:23 PM on June 6, 2008

Anyhow, lest this devolve into a pile-up of purely "that happens to us too" answers from straight people (no matter how well-meant), I'm more curious about how to address it when it happens than whom it happens to.

"Really? I don't see it. So, how about that local sports franchise, huh?"
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:41 AM on June 5, 2008

Your question is light on actual question. The only thing I can discern is "I just need hard facts on what I'll be facing when I can finally get the car into the shop or what will happen if I don't."

If you're getting that much slipage - and have been for so long - you're almost certainly going to have to replace the flywheel too, so figure that into your cost estimations.

You really should find a way to prioritize this. Forktine points... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:26 AM on June 5, 2008

A Toyota Camry or Honda Accord would seem like the standard choice.

Keep in mind as you look for these cars (or others) that many vehicles are available with different engine choices. Looking at the 2005 Accord I see there was a 4 cylinder engine as well as a V6 option, with a difference in MPG of 5mpg city, 4mpg highway. So if fuel economy is important to you, you'll want to verify you're checking cars that have the lower powered engine.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:16 AM on June 5, 2008

The most important thing, if you have really reached a decision about what you want, is to stop engaging in negotiation. Negotiation about Why you want what you want and how you feel, about whether you did the right or wrong thing in when and how you revealed what you did, and even your own internal negotiations about what he can and cannot financially handle, or what's yours and how that will make his life inconvenient.

As the decision maker in this - since you're the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:34 PM on June 4, 2008

It's impossible to give a good "why" without seeing your exact credit score and even then it's not completely possible. FICO is a trade secret and the best any of us can do it guess. There's some pretty good guesses to be had but it's largely beside the point - Fair Isaac acknowledges in general what components work in.

The big ones for you are going to be credit history, as others have mentioned, age of credit, and utilization.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2008

Here's the FICO breakdown, though you need to click the "About FICO® scores" tab to see it.

Note that "amounts owed"(utilization) at 30% is way larger than "types of accounts" (your lack of a past mortgage or car loan would be reflected in there) at 10%, and even length of history at 15% is larger.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:43 PM on May 28, 2008

Each individual actually has three different credit scores per credit agency: creditworthiness for home loan, auto loan, and consumer credit.

Citation, please? People may apply different standard requirements for FICO scoring but I have never heard anything about multiple scoring models.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 6:45 PM on May 28, 2008

Aha. The BNI - the Bankruptcy Navigator - is an Equifax-owned and Equifax-only offering, unlike FICO which Fair Isaac will compute based on any of the big three's credit reports. If you're going to worry about that - which most people would say you shouldn't, I think you'll find - there's other credit scoring models besides FICO too, some of which are mentioned in that wikipedia article.

As far as the multiple ways of computing FICO numbers, the wikipedia article... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:05 PM on May 29, 2008

Take the money. Why shouldn't you?

Because the terms of an early return of the deposit is signing a release agreeing to new terms... which are unknown and potentially unfavorable.

And if they decide to charge you that awful "administrative fee" when you renew, well, you're not going to get out of it by having refused to take your security deposit back.

Except we don't... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 7:42 PM on May 16, 2008 marked best answer

Astrochimp has beaten me to it - it's actually hard to sign away your rights - you can find some information here that talks about liability waivers. If there was language in there indicating you would waive your right to sue and agree to engage in arbitration instead that's much more iron-clad. The above link does, however, list Illinois as one of the states that is more inclined to let waivers stand.

All that said, there's little no good reason in life to sign... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:32 AM on May 19, 2008

If you look at http://www.arpel.org/ex/data.txt you'll find that's some fairly unpleasant looking code. It's trying to determine the base system and then run some arbitrary code and it's hoping to find somewhere in your install a script doing something stupid.... like loading offsite code and just running it.

Happily it looks like it's just some douchbag in Montreal smacking up against your system pointlessly, though it's possibly your older-than-dirt wordpress install... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:56 AM on May 13, 2008 marked best answer

I don't recall what the verdict was on posting ads for one-off projects like this on Metafilter Jobs, but I imagine there's no shortage of people with php/Wordpress skill hanging around here who'd be willing to do a few hours work for a few bucks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:01 PM on May 13, 2008

This upper and lower limit table for concentrations might help you. As others have said, there's a point where there's insufficient air (there's a reason these are called fuel-air explosions) to allow combustion. I think stovetops use primarily methane, which that table claims tops out at 15%.

However, you also would need to keep in mind that at some point - past 15% I am fairly certain - there's not enough O2 to breathe, which is a whole other kind of problem...... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:53 PM on May 7, 2008

Another good source for cheaper Keurig cups is eBay.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:58 AM on May 7, 2008

If they're not glossy paper you can shred them and put them in the compost bin, though you need to keep the balance of materials in it appropriate.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:14 PM on April 30, 2008

I like the book safe idea and there's a plethora of instructables on how to do it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 1:15 PM on April 30, 2008

But thanks for the holier-than-thou effort to stifle my intellectual curiosity and desire to do something better, albeit not perfectly. If you think the question is stupid, or pointless, why bother answering? Comments like yours are why I'm increasingly cautious about asking anything here. Filtering through the snark gets old.

You owe mkultra an apology. As Judith points out, unless you're canning that stuff yourself the transport once you... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:07 PM on April 25, 2008

While I and others may put them to an environmentally positive use, they never the less exit the soda production system and are not re-used.

You have no idea whether that's true, so why claim it is?

I'm not saying that they're never re-used anywhere for anything - I'm saying strictly with regards to soda manufacture they're not re-used. So while every single one they sell off at a nominal cost (as all three of the closest... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:52 PM on April 26, 2008

My mother no longer asks me what I want for my birthday or christmas because I always answer "peace on earth, and goodwill towards men."

While I am sad to not be able to deliver the joke anymore (not that she got the reference...) it IS the desired effect....
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:13 PM on April 25, 2008

They do not have to pay fees, but there are civil penalties for violating the FDCPA and they are privately actionable.

Privately actionable means that a private citizen who has been wronged can file suit themselves over the matter. Something like assault is not privately actionable, for example, which means the district attorney needs to (choose to) file suit.

The short version is that yes, you only get this amount if you sue.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:44 AM on April 24, 2008

You might search there for a thread titled "ITS for violating telephone C&D, critique please" to give you an idea of the kind of "do this or I will sue and win" strategy people use in these cases.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 9:45 AM on April 24, 2008

Employment law is variable by state, but a few things that would make a big difference are (a) when you say it's a recent addition, is is since they committed to send you to SXSW? Since they bought your ticket and/or plane fare? (b) did you sign for receipt of this new manual?

I am not sure that you're going to find anyone that knows this answer firmly, or at least not someone who will tell you - after all it's the deep pockets (employers) who would pay to research this... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:54 PM on April 22, 2008

As a response to phearlez, at least in my experience, such policies are pretty much universal - employers who're willing to pay for outside training want to make sure you're not going to take advantage of that policy and immediately bolt. It's not super-nice to employees, but it doesn't strike me as "negative and counter-productive" in any noteworthy way.

I dispute that it's anywhere close to universal, but I have nothing beyond anecdotal... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 7:28 PM on April 22, 2008

You are not reading that link you pasted carefully enough.

Your employer is, however, required to honor any established policy or agreement relating to the payment of benefits such as accrued vacation or severance pay upon termination. If you qualify for payment of benefits under the employer´s policy, you should be paid for these upon termination. For more information, contact the Wage and Hour Division.

So they can do... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 11:21 AM on April 23, 2008

UltraEdit, my preferred editor, will find in files. There's a free trial.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 5:18 AM on April 23, 2008

AT&T has little motivation to do anything for someone who wants an iPhone. I'd suggest you just buy one of the billion old Nokias on ebay to tide you over. Genial may or may not be right - I didn't think contracts ran concurrently, but rather back to back - but why risk it for a free phone that you can have for $20 on ebay?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 2:43 PM on April 22, 2008

My understanding is that Jailbreaking is completely safe, because you can always remove it by just restoring the firmware in iTunes.

Sorta. I just last weekend decided I'd finally move mine up from 1.1.1 and use the much-vaunted ZiPhone to re-activate/jailbreak it once I was at 1.1.4.

Two hours later, I was done.

My experience may differ from people who went through the legitimate activation process... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:41 AM on April 4, 2008

Does it have to be drag and drop? The VNC variant I use - TightVNC - has file transfer support. I'd never used it before now to verify that it works but it seemed to have moved this file over pretty painlessly.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 8:36 AM on April 4, 2008