Thanks, all! (This is the girlfriend.) These are fantastic suggestions, and have helped quite a bit. No God But God was already on my short list, but it's been moved to a must-read. I also expect the 30 Days episode to be useful--it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, since it directly addresses the conflicts between Muslim and the dominant American cultures. I may or may not have time to delve into the blogs, but I'm grateful to know of them, and if I'm able to spend... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 8:17 PM on September 3, 2008

Hmm. Well, there's Cat and Girl, but that's not exactly xkcd style. You should be able to tell pretty quickly, though.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 10:55 AM on September 3, 2008

Man, this is an eye-popping list. I can't believe nobody has mentioned Neko Case yet, though. Her voice is more eccentric the further back you go: really bizarre in Maow, a lot smoother on Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. I think Furnace Room Lullaby and Blacklisted are the happiest medium... mediums... media. Um, I like them the best.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 12:11 AM on June 23, 2008

Hey everyone, thanks for all the great input. This is exactly what I was looking for. Just as a side note: we're not living right on Colfax - we're two buildings off, and our apartment faces north. I really get what Octoparrot was saying about about the rapid differences - if all I looked out of was my apartment window, I'd think I was in some quiet suburb. If the apartment was on the south side, I would see McDonald's and a gun shop. Craziness.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 4:14 PM on June 22, 2008

Um... I'm not really contributing much, but I'd like to point out that the whole reason that backpacks remind people of high school and seem inappropriate for proper adults is because most people also believe that bikes are inappropriate for proper adults, who ought to drive to work, dammit. Briefcases make plenty of sense when you only have to walk from a parking lot to an office. They are totally insane for any other kind of transportation. So if you're throwing out the whole "kids... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 4:16 PM on May 15, 2008

I haven't read all of these comments that thoroughly, but I've seen lots of mention about getting to play retro games and only a couple of passing remarks on what is actually required to play those games.

There's a helpful chart on Wikipedia, but since you say you've got the budget, I would recommend getting two Classic Controllers, two Gamecube controllers, and a Gamecube memory card (required to save anything from Gamecube games... lame, I know). That way, you can... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 10:15 AM on May 11, 2008 marked best answer

Seconding mhum, MillMan and sophist - people are hard. I'm a sociology grad student, and I sometimes feel like we're just entering the period that physics and chemistry did, oh, 150+ years ago. We're finally developing tools that don't consist of just various forms of asking people questions (we're getting into some great experimentation that I would actually consider experimentation, there's the increasing ease of neuro-measurement, agent-based modeling on beefy computers)..... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 4:59 PM on May 6, 2008

Thanks, everyone. This is exactly what makes Ask MeFi so great. I could have spent hours last night trolling the Internet to scrape up every little anecdote I could get. Instead, I got a good night's sleep and a bunch of great comments, and I feel halfway decent today.

You rock.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 12:42 PM on April 1, 2008

"Since you are dealing with the best and brightest here, it only makes sense that someone else may want to snatch them up."

Ha. I hope so. That would be the first time in my life that being in the second-tier has actually worked to my advantage.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 3:02 PM on April 1, 2008

Soc MS student here. I recently started using and am insanely in love with Zotero. It's a plugin for Firefox - which you should be using by now, anyway - that basically lives in your statusbar. Click the Z, and it pops up. It really has more features than I care to get into, but here are some highlights:

1. Automatically saves citations from most major research sites. When I'm browsing JSTOR, Zotero puts a little icon up in the address bar. If I see an article I... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 8:26 PM on January 30, 2008 marked best answer

This is a great question. Here are mine below - I think most of these still play well today. I still crack them out every now and then, actually.

I've definitely got to recommend Grim Fandango - it's the only serious PC game my girlfriend has ever enjoyed, and it's one of my all-time favorites. In a similar vein, the King's Quest games (especially 6) and the Monkey Island games rock.

Myst is essential, but I can't explain... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 9:58 PM on January 8, 2008

Seconding DJWeezy - I instantly thought of meraki.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 3:10 PM on December 31, 2007

Nthing both Dave's Insanity and El Yucateco. They're two of my all-time favorites.

I also like Iguana XXX, and Valentina - while not especially hot - is great for Mexican food. In the three months I spent in Mexico, I don't think I ate in a single home that didn't have Valentina somewhere.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 3:23 PM on December 27, 2007

I have the exact same problem, and numerous attempts to reset by getting up earlier have done approximately jack for me. The only thing that's ever worked for me is, as flabdablet suggested, camping.

As an alternative diagnosis to sleep apnea and all that, you might want to check out Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. I match the criteria perfectly, and I'm finally buckling down to go in to see a professional. Samizdata, I'd be interested in hearing more about the sleep... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 4:52 PM on December 15, 2007

Hm. Interesting. When my dad died while I was 14, one of the worst parts of it was going back to school and having people say "I'm sorry" all day. It made me feel like a monster, honestly - like I was going to break down at any moment. Conversely, one of my casual acquaintances asked me why I chose to come back to school so soon. Weird question, right? But then we talked about how I couldn't stand being cooped up in the house, how my mom was doing, etc.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 10:38 PM on December 9, 2007

Seconding pravit. I borrowed the GRE for Dummies book from my adviser and used it primarily for the math stuff, and it was really useful, particularly because it emphasized the patterns that turn up in the math problems. For example, there are a few "How long is the side of this triangle?" questions that you really don't want to waste time calculating; the Dummies book had a list of common triangles to memorize. I smoked the math section (760) with time to spare, thanks in no small... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 4:54 PM on December 7, 2007

The diversity of responses here is probably your best answer. I'm in grad school with a research focus on the economy and labor, and decreasing job tenure seems to one of the trends popping up economy-wide (even in Japanese companies, which have traditionally been hardcore job-for-life employers).

But economy-wide statistics don't mean anything to you, because you just one person. Could you let us know more about what field you're in? sfkiddo, crazycanuck and kaseijin... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 11:18 PM on December 6, 2007

Seconding rhizome - be very careful about hanging on to your control of the company.

If your site is profitable enough to invest in, it's also too profitable to leave in the control of the idea guy. Make sure it doesn't slip away from you.
posted to Ask Metafilter by McBearclaw at 3:58 PM on December 2, 2007