Argh, hadn't thought about it getting into the sheetrock but since she peed on the baseboards I guess that's a possibility too. How did you tell that it had gotten into the walls? I don't know that just checking for smell would work since the whole basement smells so bad I doubt we could distinguish smell from the floor from smell from the walls. Any other signs to look for?
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 2:24 PM on December 1, 2007

It's possible that your local profile for your user has become corrupted or otherwise unusable and so Windows has created a temporary user profile. If you look in C:\Documents and Settings as noloveforned mentioned do you see a folder named TEMP? If that's the case then it's the My Documents folder in that TEMP user directory that you're seeing and your documents are still all in the user directory for your actual user. When this happened on my wife's laptop recently, logging off and logging... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 11:19 AM on May 16, 2007

If you use Backpack at all (it's from the same people that did TadaLists and has pretty similar checklist functionality), there's a widget for Yahoo Widgets called UbiqMemo that provides access to view, create, reorder, and check off items on your various Backpack pages, in addition to creating notes. I've found it pretty useful.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 7:02 PM on September 12, 2006

I'm not sure what kind of spider that is, but I believe the site mentioned before for bug identification was What's That Bug?
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 7:43 AM on September 3, 2006 marked best answer

Since you indicated that you watch TV mostly in your bedroom, one thing you might want to consider if you haven't already is the noise factor. If you would be leaving it running all the time so it could record at night the power supply + cpu fan + hard drive noise might get old after a while. On the other hand, if you're planning to turn it on and off then waiting for a computer to boot up every time you want to watch TV might be a little annoying too. You could invest in a quieter power... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 5:53 AM on June 20, 2006 marked best answer

I'd recommend the excellent Neon Genesis Evangelion. The first few episodes seem like your standard "young-teenagers-have-to-save-the-world-using-giant-fighting-robots" plot, but it quickly gets much weirder/deeper/philosophical from there. You've really got to see both the series and the movie "End of Evangelion"

I'll second FLCL, which is really more style than substance I think, but man has it got style.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 1:34 PM on February 25, 2006

The Album Cover Art Downloader that seanyboy mentions is indeed helpful. It can get the album cover art from a number of sources such as Amazon, Walmart, Buy.com, and also just a Yahoo image search (which has been surprisingly helpful in getting the cover art for some more obscure albums that didn't turn up at the online stores). In theory you're supposed to be able to turn it loose on a whole directory structure of mp3s and have it get images for them all at once. In practice it's got a few... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 3:32 PM on January 24, 2006

Black Mesa
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2006

The one thing I want most in an mp3 player is one of the things fief mentioned earlier. The ability to temporarily alter playlists on the fly, so that if I hear an artist I want to hear more of while listening to a several thousand song shuffled playlist, there's a quick way to have the playlist play more songs from that artist/album next, and then switch back to random when I've heard enough. And the UI to do it has to be simple enough that I can do it without killing myself in rush hour... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 2:06 PM on January 11, 2006

I'm not sure of a proper way to do that, but something close would be to enable the option to empty the items from the deleted items folder on exit, and then always keep at least one item in there. Then when you close Outlook, it will ask you if you really want to remove the deleted items. Unfortunately, this wouldn't give you the option to cancel out of the shutdown, but at least it would tip you off that Outlook was actually closing as opposed to just being minimized to the system tray.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2006 marked best answer

Thanks meehawl, Media Center is pretty close to what I'm looking for at least for getting a "raw" view of the ID3v2 tags. Its File Type Info window shows each of the fields in the tag, including the POPM field for ratings. However for some reason it's not able to read what is in that field, and it seems that it stores its own ratings in a comment (COMM) field instead. There doesn't seem to be an easy way that I could bring my ratings in the POPM field of the tag into the format it... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 2:34 PM on January 2, 2006

Ah, yes I see your point about misbehaving software. After using MediaMonkey for a little while I caught on to the fact that it was actually replacing the ratings that WMP had added to the tags with it's own rating string ("no@email") and was also using a slightly different scale for ratings so the values were a little off. Bad MediaMonkey. Fortunately, I'd only been testing it out with a couple albums and I had a back up. I can definitely see the value of "hiding" it,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 10:27 PM on January 2, 2006

I have no idea if it works or not but the Sleeptracker is an alarm wristwatch with a motion sensor that supposedly can wake you up within a window of time when you are sleeping the most lightly (determined by your body movement). They claim that it reduces the sense of grogginess that comes from being woken up in the middle of deep sleep. It seems to have gotten generally positive reviews on Amazon and I've been pondering getting one myself.

Alternately, this article... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 1:14 PM on December 1, 2005

Another easy way to set that quick search for dictionary.com again is to go to dictionary.com and then right click in the search text box on the page and choose "Add a keyword for this search" and then fill out the dialog that pops up. This can also be used to set up similar keyword quick searches for any search text box on any site.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 9:40 PM on November 29, 2005

Oops, should have previewed. That's exactly what misterbrandt linked to.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 9:42 PM on November 29, 2005

I've only got a level 35 warlock and I mainly do a lot of PvE soloing, but I really like the Affliction talent tree. I toss on some DoT's and then keep the aggro on me while I Drain Life/Siphon Life and my succubus provides some extra damage. It's been working pretty well so far. I definitely recommend putting at least the 5 points in Affliction needed to make Corruption instant cast. I plan to go up to at least 31 in the Affliction tree and then use my imp as a walking mana battery with... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 12:59 PM on November 29, 2005

Though I should point out that an Affliction build would probably not be too great for the end game raid instances since it relies a lot on Drain Life and the shorter range of that spell would probably get you killed by boss AoE in no time. That's fine with me though, since I have no real interest in running Timesink Cavern

(On preview: jedicus has already pointed this out)
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 1:10 PM on November 29, 2005

This post unassailably proved not only that God exists but also that he can in fact change the past and also contained a simple yet comprehensive explanation of the exact mechanics behind the act and several noteworthy examples of its use. It also had an awesome recipe for portobello mushroom burgers. Unfortunately, God changed the text of this post in the past to what you are now reading. Sorry.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 3:23 PM on November 21, 2005

Of course not, because Google is God. But seriously, God takes offense at you trying to catch him on the Google cache thing. Like he'd miss that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 3:35 PM on November 21, 2005

I also use OneNote at work and I find it very useful. It has some cool functionality where you can "tag" the little note snippets with things called "note flags" (you can define your own but the defaults are things like "to do", "remember for later" "question", "important date" etc). You can then have it produce a summary view where you can view all the items with a particular flag in one place. Kind of hard to explain, but I find it... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 8:36 AM on November 16, 2005

Well, if you've got firmware 1.50 or earlier it makes an awesome SNES/Genesis/MAME/NES emulation system. At this point that's all I'm planning on using mine for. It would take a bunch of seriously awesome games to convince me to upgrade my firmware and lose the ability to run emulators, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 7:35 AM on October 31, 2005

Dirty Three - I Really Should Have Gone Out Last Night
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 8:48 AM on September 22, 2005

It's not so much that TextDrive was lacking any features, I just wanted to get some other comparisons and recommendations. Their lifetime hosting plan does sound like an awesome deal but I'm not sure if I'm looking for something that long term right now. Well, that and that I don't have $400.

A Small Orange has some really great prices, but it didn't seem that they offered any kind of versioning software like Subversion/CVS. Also, it looks like they've temporarily... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 11:40 AM on September 10, 2005

I use Photoshop Elements 3, which pretty much combined all the organization tools of Photoshop Album with the image editing of Elements. I have several thousand images and it works well for me. I know it supports raw files, though I haven't used that functionality myself. It doesn't have to move the files anywhere, so you could just leave them in your existing directory structure. As far as the database goes, I don't think it's XML and is probably something proprietary so that's something of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 10:40 AM on August 26, 2005

I'm happy with Sprint's data plan, which as diastematic mentioned just adds $10 a month to your plan. I think they call it PCS Vision. That gives you unlimited data both through the phone's webbrowser and also when using the phone as a modem for a laptop/handheld. The only problem for me is Sprint's lack of supported Bluetooth phones which means that you'll have to carry around a cable to connect the phone to the laptop. I've been doing that for a couple years with a Samsung A500 and it's... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 9:56 AM on August 26, 2005

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. However, it would appear that the cat wins this round. We tried placing her in the clean new litterbox (without the hood even), and while I can certainly see the humor in watching a rather overweight cat streak down the hallway at top speed to get away and almost wipe out rounding the corner I think it may have been somewhat counterproductive. We tried putting her old litterbox out next to the new one (again, even without the hood on it) and moving some of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 10:36 AM on June 21, 2005

Loose Park is a really good place to talk a walk. It's huge and located just southeast of the Plaza area. It has a great rose garden and really nice walkways.

Union Station is a pretty cool place to check out. It's a nicely restored old train station that is now home to a movie theater (it's not Imax, but something Imax-like), several restaurants, and a couple museums (one small free museum about the history of the station and its restoration, and one larger not-free... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 8:45 AM on May 25, 2005

Oh, and Plaza III is a great place for a romantic dinner and has easily the best steak in a city with quite a few quality steakhouses.

On preview:

And for BBQ, I prefer Gates.
posted by dnash at 8:53 AM PST on May 25

Blasphemer! ;)
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 9:17 AM on May 25, 2005

I'll second the recommendation for using a PC with a TV tuner card and running BeyondTV. I've never actually had a Tivo, but I love this approach for the same reasons that pasd mentioned above. I never have to delete stuff because I can just drop another ridiculously inexpensive harddrive in there, or burn stuff off to DVD. Using WMV compression, a 160 GB drive can easily hold about 250 hours of TV with no apparent loss of quality. One other thing I'd recommend with going this route is to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 11:24 AM on May 11, 2005

Yeah, the tricky part is that the tinting is kind of blotchy rather than uniform so if I lasso the whole affected area, the less tinted spots start to look funny by the time I've lowered the red channel enough for the more tinted regions. If I try to break up the tinted areas and do each separately, I run into the problem of matching the colors of each of those areas to each other and the rest of the image. Otherwise it looks very obviously edited as there are many areas that are closer to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 5:33 AM on April 4, 2005

I lived in Dayton from jr high through high school, specifically Huber Heights, and I would advise against residing there. (Unless you really really like brick homes, as it proudly proclaims to be "America's Largest Community of Brick Homes") Huber Heights is the most boring, banal, suburban hell I have ever experienced. No good parks, the poorly equipped library was in a strip mall, and in fact the whole town was pretty much houses and strip malls. Granted, my view may be a bit... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 1:59 PM on March 18, 2005

I'm a big fan of ToDoList for keeping track of tasks, because it's simple and its free. Although I do use a slightly older version that the current one because I think the interface has gotten a little crowded in newer versions. I believe the latest version does have automatic time tracking, but no remote access.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 11:37 AM on February 11, 2005

I've been trying to keep a desktop PC with a Netgear WG311v2 (802.11g) PCI card connected to my Linksys WRT54G (also 802.11g) router with no success. It was connected for about a day to the router with a connection using WEP (128 bit), but then for no apparent reason dropped the connection and won't reestablish it. It can see my network SSID in both the Windows wireless utility and the Netgear software with decent signal, but won't connect. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 6:28 PM on February 8, 2005

Yeah, I have another desktop connected to the router with an ethernet cable and that works just fine. Same for other wireless devices like my laptop. It looks like it's not connecting at all. The Windows wireless network connection icon always says the connection is unavailable, and the Netgear software shows no connection either. It looks like a newer version of the WRT54G firmware just came out in January so I'll give that a shot and hope it works.
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 8:40 PM on February 8, 2005

I found this method to be the most useful in running Instiki as a service. It requires the win32-service Ruby library. However, I've found that while running it as a service I'll frequently encounter errors when loading pages. Sometimes its nothing more than the CSS not being applied but sometimes its an error page that says something about a "bad file descriptor" That's especially annoying if you've just gone to post something and lose it when it errors out. Never happens at... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 12:32 PM on September 23, 2004

To answer question #1, I've been playing for about 2 weeks now and I live in a 2nd floor apartment. As long as you make an effort to do so, you don't really have to come down full force on the jumps to hit them so you can do it semi-quietly. I also try to keep my playing to the early evening hours (6-8pm) and I haven't gotten any complaints so far. Either it's quiet enough or I have very tolerant neighbors. It'd be nice to be able to do it in the morning but I guess that'll have to wait... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by shinji_ikari at 6:19 PM on June 17, 2004