The Ballad of Robin Home: "O he'll steal from the fridge and jizz to the porn..."
posted to Ask Metafilter by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:05 PM on July 7, 2008

This looks promising.

I'm not using it currently, but I might be now :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by tomierna at 9:15 AM on June 26, 2008

Knock knock

Who's there?

Control freak, now you say "Control freak who?"
posted to Ask Metafilter by Meatbomb at 12:33 PM on November 23, 2007

Q: How many kids with ADD does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
posted to Ask Metafilter by kandinski at 3:17 PM on November 23, 2007 marked best answer

Cool post, thanks hadjiboy.

I understand that there will always be poverty, but seriously, send over a few thousand shovels, a few tens of thousands of feet of pipe, and some blueprints, and let them at least have some dignity. Christ.

Pasta, you're brilliant as ever.

I moved to South Africa last year to do some pro-bono work with one of the biggest NGOs doing relief and development work in the third... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by allkindsoftime at 1:40 AM on February 29, 2008

My husband (an 80s BBS afficiando) says that one of the most active boards is Roughnecks (telnet to theroughnecks.net).

He says, if you're really old-skool, you might try TELNETing to a Commodore BBS. (Yes, such a thing really exists.) In fact, he's jumped on my account to tell you the following in his own words:

http://cottonwood.servebbs.com/cbm-bbs-list.txt

This is maintained (and is current) by a guy named Andrew... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by parilous at 7:00 PM on February 20, 2008

Don't anthropamorphize computers.

They hate that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Wild_Eep at 9:08 PM on February 17, 2008

Parents have first dibs on their child's extra kidney, should they ever need a kidney replacement. Same goes for free access to their bone marrow, platelets, blood, and other biological products.
posted to Ask Metafilter by HotPatatta at 12:26 AM on January 30, 2008

The correct way to eat durian is as ice-cream. A normal durian looks like shit, smells like shit and tastes like shit. Durian ice cream smells and tastes like shit, but it looks like ice-cream. A vast improvement.
posted to Ask Metafilter by markr at 10:17 PM on January 29, 2008

Perhaps the finest satirical take on this phenomenon.
posted to Ask Metafilter by EarBucket at 4:03 PM on January 22, 2008

Ok - first I'm going to *just a little bit* suggest that some of your problem could be psychosomatic. I totally buy that you can smell the smoke... and maybe that you are breathing a tiny little bit of it. But this:

I feel like I am living on borrowed time here, as my breathing is not normal and I have been having weird symptoms such as waking up with a dry mouth, jitteriness, and loss of sense of smell.

Coupled with two of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by moxiedoll at 8:24 PM on January 13, 2008

I combined a modified logistic curve (the overall trend of the graph) and a normal distribution curve (the spike in the graph).

The gnuplot equation is: 1-1/(1+exp(-(x-6)))*.5 + exp(-abs(x-10)**2*10)

The peak at x=10 is because of the term (x-10) in the second part of the equation. The height of the peak can be changed by multiplying the whole term, and its tightness by changing the "*10" inside the term.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jepler at 10:40 AM on November 22, 2007

Your table structure is jacked up (technical term), but if you just want to be able to do this in one query and move along:

SELECT Tooltip FROM tbl
WHERE Path in ('Articles-1.0.4', 'Articles-1.0', 'Articles')
ORDER BY
CASE WHEN Path = 'Articles-1.0.4' THEN 0
ELSE
CASE WHEN PATH = 'Articles-1.0' THEN 1 ELSE 2 END
END
LIMIT 1;

Check what explain says... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by moift at 12:00 PM on November 12, 2007 marked best answer

um, if you could provide a sample export, it'd probably be easier to assist -- it's pretty difficult to discern the table structure from what you've posted. As others have mentioned, you may have some issues with your database design that, whether or not they are contributing to the success of this query, should be fixed.

if that's a single table, the easiest thing to do is get the entire row and get the non-NULL value in your programming logic.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by fishfucker at 11:42 AM on November 12, 2007 marked best answer

What version of MySQL are you using? If you're using V.5, you could write a stored procedure, and then it'd be easy.

You'd do something like

--------------------
CREATE PROCEDURE spGetTip (@Article nvarchar(50))
AS

DECLARE @Result nvarchar(50);

//query for specific tooltip
SELECT @Result=Tooltip FROM Knowledgebase WHERE... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jeffxl at 10:24 AM on November 12, 2007 marked best answer

Having seen this movie, it is a pleasant character study kind of film. My wife enjoyed it very much, I felt there were not enough explosions and trucks that turn into robots.
posted to Ask Metafilter by GuyZero at 1:02 PM on November 2, 2007