I'm not sure about the multi-millionaire angle, but murders over business disputes are relatively common. These two Google News searches turn up tons of articles about them.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 9:36 AM on August 7, 2008

I think dressing them up as Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato to form a BLT would be hilarious. Then again I have a weird sense of humor.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:53 AM on August 7, 2008 marked best answer

I tend to do the same thing, I'm pretty organized but I'm also pretty absent-minded. My two biggest strategies are routines and sanity checks.

Routines help you in ways like the one taojones mentioned, if you always put things in exactly the same place, there is always exactly one place to look for them. Teach yourself to stick to the routine no matter what, so that if you see something where it shouldn't be (like your wallet next to the computer instead of by the door)... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 6:32 AM on August 6, 2008

I'm a poker player but not a pro or a tax expert. As far as I know you need to declare your gambling income in the same way that everyone does, and in addition to that you need to file as a self-employed professional gambler. A good guide for all of that is here.

Also, one part of the guide that is especially important:

The catch is that the IRS holds professional gamblers to a very high standard. If you have other sources of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 2:24 PM on August 5, 2008

She probably needs to establish credit for her future plans

One option is to cosign for the credit card with her, have the statements sent to you, and agree that she will only use it for emergencies and will be responsible for paying it off if she does use it. She will still improve her credit rating by having the account open, but if you're getting the statements she will be less likely to spend it on something she doesn't need or can't afford.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:03 AM on August 5, 2008

This sounds like a perfect situation for a nice bottle of whiskey

Second alcohol as manly gift. Figure out his drink of choice and buy him a reasonable amount of some high quality booze.

I also think the phrase "I owe you one" is a good manly phrase for thanking a dude for something, because it completely ignores any kind of emotional territory.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 11:51 AM on August 4, 2008

It's really difficult to understand what's offensive and what's not, when I'm really hard to offend, myself

That's the hard part about not being offensive, what is or isn't offensive varies from person to person. Avoiding being an offensive jerk mostly involves knowing your audience, and what is or isn't off limits.

I really offended someone (person A) by telling another person (B) that they should apply to person A's... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2008 marked best answer

Based on your description, I would say hard drive failure. I had similar issues when one of my hard drives failed once, where parts of songs would be out of order and some parts would be random noise.

Either restore from backups, or if you haven't backed up your data, buy a new hard drive and back everything up immediately. If you have anything important on that drive that is not backed up, in my opinion there is a higher than normal chance that you will lose it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 6:34 AM on August 1, 2008

Specifically, foreign interests such as OPEC have the power to cripple our economy and potentially our military capability by lowering production, raising prices, or withholding oil.

For a concrete example of how OPEC has used their power over the world's oil supply as a foreign policy weapon, see the oil crisis of the 1970s.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:48 AM on July 31, 2008

One option is to try listing on Prosper or a similar p2p lending site. It will still be a hard sell on those sites, but they tend to lend at lower than normal rates to high risk borrowers. I've used Prosper as a lender and when I did there were people with your credit rating getting loans for lower than the interest rate you have now.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 2:16 PM on July 30, 2008

Nthing poker. Poker is a fun, social game, and most of the time experienced players and/or the dealer will help inexperienced players learn the basics. Poker is seen as a very male dominated activity but really anyone can play.

My school's main CS club had an annual casino night where the CS professors would be the dealers at all of the tables. Anyone with a school ID that showed up was given a certain amount of chips, and there were prizes at the end of the night... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 12:32 PM on July 30, 2008 marked best answer

In my experience, cable provides faster speeds, but cable services are generally provided by slightly more evil companies than the ones that offer DSL service. Having said that, DSL speeds vary based on how far away from the central office you are, and cable speeds vary based on how many people use it in your neighborhood, so it's somewhat random.

I have a Netgear RP614 router. Does it provide me with a firewall, or do I still need a software firewall in... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 11:10 AM on July 30, 2008

Does the mouse entry in your Device manager look okay? It might be your mouse drivers. Someone had a similar issue here, but I'm not sure if it was resolved.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:53 AM on July 30, 2008

So, has anyone tried it? Did it work?

Yes on both counts. Sometimes it can't find a good time to wake me up in the window of time that it checks, and has to wake me up at the last minute, but around 95% of the time it works exactly as expected. I have the original version by the way, but I've heard the new version is better.

I can get away with not wearing it most of the time if I go to sleep around the same time every night,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:56 AM on July 29, 2008

The flashpoint of oil seems to be about 100F less, but the same probably holds true.

One thing worth adding is that both gas and oil ignite much more easily if contaminates are added. For example, the King's Cross fire was caused by a lit match igniting grease that had become contaminated with debry over time. Trying to light gas or oil by itself is similar to trying to light candle wax by itself, whereas if other materials are present they can act... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 9:11 AM on July 29, 2008

You could open a Roth IRA for her

There are several big reasons why this isn't a good idea. One is that the money in her Roth IRA will count against her when applying for student loans and scholarships if she does go to college. Another is that it is illegal to put anything other than earned income into the account, so you would not be allowed to use gift money for it. More details here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:49 AM on July 28, 2008 marked best answer

Somehow my link to the article got mangled. Here's the correct one.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:51 AM on July 28, 2008

My concern is that having a young twerp like me trying to investigate his web development skills could be seriously insulting

If he is insulted by a person with less experience than him being part of the interview process, he's probably not a good fit for your team anyway. As long as you are professional when conducting the interview he won't have any reason to be offended.

One way to prevent any kind of friction in the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:41 AM on July 28, 2008

Michael Bay's sci-fi clunker The Island was a blatant ripoff of an equally terrible b-movie called Parts: The Clonus Horror. The creators of the original movie sued DreamWorks and apparently were paid a relatively large settlement.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 9:09 AM on July 25, 2008

Mostly I just want them to know that using tags like this has will alienate some customers. I'm a huge fan of their bags and would hate to see them lose customers. I'm not really looking for anything from them, as the damage is already done, I just want to be sure my letter actually gets through.

Like unixrat said, they almost certainly have already thought of this. You sending them a letter will most likely not change anything.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:56 AM on July 23, 2008

Nthing print, sign, scan, send (pdf). I'm not a lawyer, but I've done it a lot and everyone accepts it as a valid signature (including lawyers).
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:13 AM on July 23, 2008

Is the person you are talking to male or female? Not to be sexist, but in my experience this is a specific type of conversation that functions entirely differently depending on the gender of the participants.

Men will generally want to "talk shop" in these sorts of situations, talking about what kind of exercises they do and whatnot. Women tend to expect more supportive/commiserative responses, such as personal anecdotes about having your own problems.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 11:17 AM on July 21, 2008

Although it doesn't get to the level of individual picks, you might want to read this analysis of various stock market gurus.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:23 AM on July 21, 2008

You can pick up large quantities of felt at any fabric store.

The problem with that is that craps has a complicated layout of bets on the table, unlike say a poker table which is just a normal table covered with felt. I would suggest buying an actual craps table covering. I don't know anything about Dallas, Texas, but look around for a store that sells board games and/or poker chips, that's where I've usually seen them.

The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:40 AM on July 17, 2008

Other than just getting good grades and learning from the classes you are in, I would say the best thing you can do is show that you've done some sort of programming work outside of class.

The knowledge that you get from coursework is useful, but if you've never really put that knowledge into practice it's hard for anyone to tell if you really know it well enough to use it in the real world. If you work on an outside of class project, you'll gain a lot of concrete... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 3:23 PM on July 15, 2008

In my experience, people use the "Works For Me" test to explain why they believe in un-scientific things and disbelieve scientific things.

For example, if someone plays their lucky slot machine in Vegas and wins, their explanation works for them. Although not accurate, believing that they are in fact lucky and can in fact control how much they win is a more comfortable explanation than the real one (that they are playing a losing game). Similarly, someone who... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 1:43 PM on July 15, 2008

I've interviewed at MSFT many a time (2 summers of prospective internships, 1 full-time attempt...yet never worked there) and have never had to take a coding test

I've also interviewed with them and I also didn't need to take a coding test. In my experience, the interview questions were in the same vein as the ones bitdamaged linked to. Most of them were in the form of solving a puzzle or writing code to implement some relatively basic algorithms.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:42 AM on July 14, 2008

You obviously didn't read the linked pages, the first returned link from the google search has these

I think the point was that those are questions that a guy asks you, and you both go through the problem on the fly. It's less about your ability to actually write the code (most of the problems are pretty simple) and more about how you explain yourself, and how you answer the interviewer's questions about why you wrote it the way you did and what kinds... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 1:19 PM on July 14, 2008

I've noticed that if I and someone else starts talking at the same time, the other person usually surges ahead without so much as a "Do you mind if I go first?" This and the fact that I feel that people take a dismissive attitude of my opinions is very hurtful to me and I want to take steps to change this situation.

I know that this is not answering your question, and becoming a better speaker is a good idea in general, but it's possible that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 12:45 PM on July 14, 2008

This is a tough one, because as far as I know the kind of emotional support you're talking about doesn't really show up in too many films. There are probably a lot more examples of films that show the kind of situation you're in (lack of emotional support), and of those I think the best one is Short Cuts. It's based on a collection of short stories, most of which revolve around relationships that are somehow broken.

I would describe Lost In Translation as being about... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 12:30 PM on July 14, 2008

Arcade Fire - In the Backseat
Cake Like - Lorraine's Car
The Cardigans - Daddy's Car
Dresden Dolls - The Jeep Song
Heavenly - Escort Crash on Marston Street

Many of the songs mentioned are not about cars.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 11:50 AM on July 12, 2008

Nthing moxiedoll, all of her advice is 100% right on. On the personal anecdote side, I was the Worst Driver In The History Of Driving when I first started taking driving lessons in high school, and I was extremely anxious and nervous about driving in general until a while after I got my license.

Driving some place with my parents back then was way more stressful than the driving lessons, for the same kinds of reasons that moxiedoll mentioned. And that was driving out... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:35 PM on July 11, 2008

Just how bad is it that I stare at this screen for 4-6 hours a day or more?
This article talks about Computer Vision Syndrome, and it says that no one has proven that it can cause any kind of permanent damage. It does have a few very annoying short term symptoms though, so it's worth trying to avoid.

how can i lessen the strain on my eyes
I second the ClearType suggestion and the dark high-contrast suggestion.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 5:59 AM on July 11, 2008

Similar to Survivorman, the I Shouldn't Be Alive documentary series had two shows about people who got lost in the rainforest and had to find their way back to civilization. The dramatic recreations probably aren't 100% accurate but the shows do a very good job of describing the details of the problems faced trying to survive in a rainforest without proper equipment and supplies.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 2:31 PM on July 9, 2008

Fanboy?
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 4:14 PM on July 7, 2008

It sounds like you have mostly explored resources for improving writing in general, whereas the kinds of skills you are looking for are closer to editing. Most writing classes, books, etc. assume that you are competent in the basics and focus on content.

For an aspiring novelist, focusing on how to craft a story rather than how to correctly place punctuation is probably a good idea, which is why a lot of resources for those kinds of writers will not be very helpful to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 7:10 AM on July 7, 2008 marked best answer

I did a closer inspection of software engineering & became somewhat suspiscious that it might entail management and business along with the actual software design. In the gap between CS degrees I took an accounting diploma at vocational college & I've had my fill of management theory & commerce.

Software Engineering is not a really well defined term, but tends to cover all of the things that are important for programming in the real world.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:46 PM on July 5, 2008

1234 is also a common user lock code default on phones.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:55 AM on June 27, 2008

I had this randomly start happening about a year ago. I figured out that the problem was that I was awkwardly bending my wrist and hand to push the arrow keys with my right pinky finger. I remapped my arrow keys to the right-side Alt, Windows, Apps, and Ctrl keys using AutoHotKey, and I haven't had any problems with it since.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 6:10 AM on June 27, 2008

Somebody might say "Hey how ya doing?" and I'll reply, mumbled "good morning"-- and its 3pm. Or I'll say something unintelligible to myself.

For common phrases like this, pick a few standard responses that work in any situation and always use them. For "Hey how ya doing" say "Good, how are you?". You don't actually need to be "doing good" for this to work, you can even completely not answer their... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 1:37 PM on June 26, 2008

Are you setting up all of your streams as read only (ie using FileShare.Read and FileAccess.Read)?
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 8:10 AM on June 26, 2008

You might want to check out the suggestions in this previous thread.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 2:58 PM on June 25, 2008

One positive not mentioned yet is that t-bill earnings are exempt from state and local income taxes. Depending on where you live, that might bump up the rate enough to edge out other options. Here's a calculator that will help you figure it out.

Back when t-bill rates were better and high-yield online savings accounts weren't as common, t-bills were often a smart move. For most people today though, a high-yield savings account will give you better rates and more... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:14 AM on June 25, 2008

Even if you have less than the FDIC minimum in your account, a bank failure would tie that money up for months to years, during which time it will earn no interest and will not be available to you.

Not necessarily. When NetBank failed last year, ING Direct took control all of the existing customers' FDIC insured money immediately, so that there was absolutely no disruption in service. The customers were free to take the money out and close the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 12:11 PM on June 25, 2008

Although I think a degree in Computer Science does show a knowledge of important fundamentals, and that nearly all professional programmers would benefit from CS coursework, I agree with the people who have said a degree isn't particularly helpful in landing freelance gigs.

Have you done any coding at all yet? If not, I would suggest picking a language and working through a book or set of online tutorials and see if you like programming. Some people love programming... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 11:50 AM on June 25, 2008

1. Is it legal? I've heard yes, but reassure me please?

I am not a lawyer, but it's complicated and it depends on where you live. You live in California (I think), which is great because the state law there considers poker to be a skill game. You may be breaking federal laws created to stop illegal sports betting, but it's not clear if poker actually falls under any of those laws. Also, you are supposed to declare any winnings on your taxes.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 2:20 PM on June 23, 2008

The experience of playing online is fundamentally different from the experience of playing in person. If you want to improve your home game, read some of the "classic" books and I think that will help you a good bit more than online poker will.

I agree, in that a lot of the things that are very important in real life poker, such as physical tells, are completely absent in online poker. But you can't really learn poker from reading a book.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 6:26 PM on June 23, 2008

I would say do 2 but add some sort of incentive for everyone to do well. For example, have the person who does the least amount of pushups pay some amount of money to the person who does the most. Or give everyone one "ticket" for each baseline pushup they do, and randomly draw a ticket out of the group to get some prize. That way there is a competition for everyone to do as many as possible when setting their baseline.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:03 AM on June 23, 2008

Second LED Throwies. You can also buy them premade.
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 5:52 AM on June 20, 2008

I would find a different financial adviser, one who doesn't promote the idea of the maximum mortgage size. Look how poorly his advice has been for those people today who are going into foreclosure because their mortgages are upside down with negative equity.

Although I'm not a big fan of doing this either, to be fair the vast majority of the people who are going into foreclosure did not get there by investing in the stock market. If you invested in... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by burnmp3s at 10:37 AM on June 19, 2008