Ask MetaFilter posts by Sinner

Bad head. Doggy style.

Sinner — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:38:54 -0800

A tick dug its foul way into my dog's belly yesterday. We found it dug in but not yet engorged in the middle of an irritated red patch of skin. I tugged 2/3 of of it out of my dog's skin, but despite my best efforts, the head's still in there. What now? I'll preface this by saying that I grew up with the same old wives' tales that many of you did about how I should have used a match, acetone, petroleum jelly, etc. It's pretty clear from even the briefest google search that the appropriate course of action is to pull the tick out, taking care not to leave the head in. What's less clear, however, is what to do if that care is taken, but the head and body still separate. This article states that :

"If the mouthparts break off in the skin - should I dig them out?

We have heard two competing opinions about this.

One viewpoint states that the mouthparts can cause a secondary infection, and should be removed as if it was a splinter.

Another viewpoint was shared with us by a pediatrician in a hyperendemic area. He states that parents can do more harm by trying to hold down a child and dig out the mouthparts with a needle. He instructs his families to leave the mouthparts, and that they will come out on their own as the skin sloughs off."

Can anyone do better than that?

Floppies have given up the ghost, but Ghost won't give up the floppies?!

Sinner — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:48:07 -0800

Floppy disks? Are you kidding me? I haven't used Symantec Ghost in a long time, but am forced to at the moment. Even back then, floppies were on the way out, and now they're flat-out gone. But as far as I can tell, Ghost still absolutely flat-out requires you to use floppies (which can then be transferred on to CDs) in order to function. Am I right? And if I am, isn't this absolutely insane?

Lions and tigers and not dogs? Oh, why?

Sinner — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:02:35 -0800

Why are there no canine equivalents to lions, tigers, leopards, and panthers (etc.)? Wikipedia says that an average domestic housecat weighs 5.5–16 pounds. It doesn't give an average for dogs, but anecdotally, 5-200 pounds pretty much covers the spectrum. Now, "the average weight for male lions is 350-530 pounds," but wolves seem to top out around 200 pounds.

Can anyone speculate as to why canines don't seem to have a vastly bigger relative in this sense? I realize that the logic behind "domestic dogs are usually bigger than domestic cats, so wild 'dogs' should be bigger than wild 'cats'" is deeply flawed, but I'm amazed at the breadth of the gap between the two.

Insurance flawed?

Sinner — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:33:15 -0800

If the (small) company I work for goes bankrupt, am I still eligible for COBRA, or is COBRA predicated on the continued existence of the company? I live in California.

Designer Imposter!

Sinner — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:11:11 -0800

Help me impersonate a graphic designer! I know it’s kind of insane, but as early as this afternoon I may receive the proverbial offer (well, assignment) that I can’t refuse, and I’m wondering if anyone might be able to offer some fake-it-till-you-make-it tips for this sort of project (a short catalogue for a half-dozen or so boutique products). See, the thing is, I'm not a designer, although I have some experience with Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. I’m most interested in a list of ten or fifteen things that you talented designer folks do over and over again that seem impressive to the uninitiated, but that are simpler than they appear to we of the untrained eyes. Books are also fine, but due to the potential immediacy of this, the shorter the tutorial, the better. Here’s the big picture: I’m the editor at a small start-up. Freelancers of varying skill levels handle most of our design work, but they only come around when needed. Due to budget constraints, over the past year or two I’ve taken on an increasing amount of lower-level design work (in Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop) to help cut costs. Still, I know my limits and am always the first to try to farm out work that I’m not able to do. Today, however, my boss’s boss (the owner of the company and someone with whom I have virtually no day-to-day interaction -- he barely knows my name) asked me for help on an out-of-the-office project. Someone of some relation to him, blood or otherwise, is going to be selling a boutique retail product, for which a logo already exists and which he thinks requires a sort of portfolio. This is not something I would normally feel comfortable doing. Nevertheless, my discomfort is outweighed by my fear that telling him that I’m not qualified to do this will make him question whether I’m suited to remain in my role at the company. So I said I’d give it a shot, but hedged my bets by telling him that 1) there are “really sophisticated people out there” who will charge well up into the hundreds, 2) my work for our company doesn’t require me to have that "really sophisticiated" level of expertise, 3) I will do something on spec, with no up-front financial commitment from him. Again, I have some practical experience and know how to use the tools on a basic level, but my job rarely requires me to make anything with any real aesthetic appeal. I’m looking for quick-and-dirty tips from pros ("use a lot of radial gradients" or "don't use a lot of radial gradients" more than “take a class at a local college.” (I should also reiterate that I’m keenly aware of the fact that design is a difficult field that one doesn’t pick up overnight – if I’m able to squeak by on this one project, it’ll be by luck and/or the grace of God, but it won’t magically make me a designer.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Sinner — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:44:15 -0800

How often do you you change your sheets? (I'm specifically interested in single apartment-dwellers - if you're married, please feel free to contribute, but make a note of your marital status ... or ideally, note the difference between you as part of a married couple and as a single person). Thanks!

Why don't (some, at least) service dog owners seem to like their dogs?

Sinner — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:05:14 -0800

On several occasions, I've noticed people with service dogs treating them in a manner that seemed surprisingly ... "dismissive," let's say. Why is that? I've noticed this most frequently on buses and in coffee shops and that sort of thing, where various owners seem to treat the dog in an almost cruel way. Not abusing the dog so much as pushing it around or really just tolerating its presence, but little more. There seems to be no emotional bond between owner and dog.

Is this just pattern recognition - a simple matter of me noticing these interactions more because my attention is called to the "spectacle" of a dog on a bus - or is there something else here? The explanations I can think of are 1) When receiving a service dog people are told not to relate to their dog in certain ways so as to avoid confusing the animal; 2) The owner is so accustomed to having the dog around that s/he really does see it as just a tool; or 3) The owner is lashing out at their condition by proxy, since the animal is a prominent reminder thereof.

I'm not saying there couldn't be a lot more to it, those are just some guesses.

The Tour De Chance

Sinner — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 08:08:22 -0800

BikeFilter: I live in a small but bustling city outside of a much larger one. For minor errands, I prefer biking over driving (when possible). So why do I have to bike on the road instead of on the sidewalk (it's a ticketable offense here)? When I try to bike in the road, I always find myself squeezed by reckless drivers of buses and cars who can easily kill me. So I chance it a lot and risk a ticket for biking on the sidewalk. It seems like it would make more sense if bike-riders were allowed to bike on the sidewalk - sure, if I were going at a good clip, I could certainly do some harm to a pedestrian, but the likelihood of severe injury to either of us is much less than SUV-on-me. Oh, and yes, there are bike lanes here ... they're overrun with cars making turns and/or pulling in and out of parking spots.

Note: this would be different if I were talking about real cycling at high speeds. I'm not: I'm just a guy on a bike trying to do the occasional errand.

No more synchronicity!

Sinner — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:45:34 -0800

Windows Synchronization Catastrophe! Due to office policy, a former colleague was using an office server as the location for the "My Documents" folder of her personal laptop, then using the synchronize folders feature to provide her with a crude backup. It worked too well. The server was decommissioned a year or two ago and no one ever told her. She just continued to work using the offiline cache. Today, not knowing what she was doing, she went into the "synchronize files" menu and unchecked the box. Suddenly her "My Documents" folder is very, very empty. Those files have to be stored somewhere on that machine, don't they? Can they be restored? Easily, even? Thanks in advance.

What fits you to a tee?

Sinner — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:13:03 -0800

I’ll be launching a new t-shirt site over the next several months and am looking for insight into what makes a good shirt (our fearless leader, for example, likes American Apparel shirts and the designs from Protoculture, nerdnyc and glarkware). So what do you look for? Comfort (cotton? cotton-poly blends?)? Funny or clever slogans (you bet your ass there’s a difference between funny and clever (and witty, too))? Artistic value? Originality? Retro styling (or do you think retro's going back to the grave)? What’s your favorite t-shirt? Where and how did you find the shirt/seller? Please don't get all riled up about "self-linking": I emailed #1 twice for an OK and got no response and of course am not including any link (here or in my profile).