Ask MetaFilter posts by jeb

How to get from Newport, RI to JFK without driving?

jeb — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:11:48 -0800

Is there any practical way for an individual to get from Newport, Rhode Island to JFK airport for an 11:30am flight on Monday, September 2nd, 2008 without driving? Something like LimoLiner or a bus or something?

Does art.com suck?

jeb — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:48:59 -0800

What is the deal with sites like allposters.com, art.com, etc.? Have you ever bought anything from allposters.com or art.com? It seems like there's a slew of these sites and they sell basically the same things for the same prices and have the same pretty budget web design. Sets off my scam alarm, like a magazine subscription on eBay. There's a 'print' I want to buy [1] from them but its like $250 on all the sites, plus framing is another $250. $250 seems like a hell of a lot of money for anything from a site called "All Posters Dot Com", certainly for a poster. Also, $250 sounds like a lot of money for a frame, but I vaguely remember hearing from people who have lived lives that have included the need to frame things that "holy crap, framing is way more expensive than you'd think."

What's the story with the product quality? $250 for a actual nice print of something seems cheap. $250 for some crappy poorly-registered cmyk-process on normal glossy poster paper sounds like I don't want to buy that poster any more. Any advice or experience would be appreciated.

[1] Note: I do not know the definiton of this word in this context. Aren't all posters 'prints'? I do not believe there's a huge warehouse in Mountain View where the allposters.com staff meticulously hand-screens your order when it spits out of the shopping cart software. But how cool would that be?

Where can I buy Orange Flower Water in New York City?

jeb — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:30:59 -0800

Where can I buy orange flower water in New York City?

How do I buy a reserved train ticket from Paris (CDG) to Épernay using this 'World Wide Web'?

jeb — Thu, 17 May 2007 09:43:38 -0800

How do I buy a reserved train ticket from Paris (CDG) to Épernay using this 'World Wide Web'? I'm trying to buy a reserved train ticket to get myself and my brother from the Charles De Gaulle airport to Épernay. Due to a series of tragic misfortunes visited upon me as a child, I lack the mental capacity to puzzle this out on my own. I can't even figure out which stations are involved. Like I'm pretty well convinced that Charles de Gaulle — Étoile is not the same as Aéroport Charles de Gaulle 1, which is what I think I need. Or is it A-CDG 2? Anyway, you see what I'm talking about. Combine this with the fact that every ticket-selling site seems to be designed by the geniuses behind punch the monkey and I'm having a hard time buying the tickets.

All the google results I could find, as well as archived Qs, are about buying railpasses or similar. I don't want a pass. I want to buy one ticket from one place to another on a specific day (May 24th), along with a guaranteed seat.

Thanks in advance. If you help me out, I promise to send you a postcard provided you fwd your address to my profile'd gmail, and it won't be some dumb Robert Doisneau thing either.

Best Hotel-Locale for a Copenhagen Tourist?

jeb — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:44:28 -0800

What's the best part of Copenhagen to stay in for a long weekend? I don't know anything about Copenhagen. I'm going there for a long weekend and I realized while looking at kayak today that I had no idea how to decide where to book a hotel. I kept thinking, "close to the train station, that sounds convenient" and then thinking, "wait a second, that could be like staying near Penn Station in New York and that would suck." So basically, in New York terms (like I said, I don't know anything about Copenhagen), I want to stay below 14th but above say Reade. Really Canal. I don't want to be like one of those people who ends up in Times Square or at that Marriot in Brooklyn Heights. What part of Copenhagen should I look for? Specific hotels or other Copenhagen-centric recommendations are also very welcome. I've heard that they have a special way with the Hot Dog over there, as well as a particular faculty for open-faced sandwiches. NEEDLESS TO SAY I AM THRILLED!

What is the deal with renewing a passport with a visa stapled in already?

jeb — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:55:07 -0800

"Papers Please" Part II. Readers of my previous question may be glad to know my gf finally got her visa. My new question is, what's the deal with getting a new passport, now that the visa's already attached to this old ('damaged') passport? As usual, there's So after some crazy hijinks involving international overnight deliveries, a three-hour trip to the UPS in Queens, frantic calls to various highly-placed Italians, and mostly, waiting in line, my girlfriend got her student visa from the Italian consulate in New York. Unfortunately, we just got back from JFK, where she was turned back at check-in by the agent for having a 'mutilated' passport (awful gory choice of words given we're talking about some glue here, no?). Now, as far as I can tell, our system of international security is mostly based on the assumption that the bad guys, for all the shadowy power of their international crime networks, can't get their hands on the really nice printers, and that's why we glue a piece of festively-colored paper inside our passports when we travel.

If she gets her new passport turned around, possibly by an expediter, what's the deal with transferring the visa? Does she have to go back to the consulate? Do they take care of visa-transferring at the passport office? Am I the only person who thinks this whole system's rationality lies somewhere between trial by ordeal and cargo cults? Will the people at the Italian consulate have any record of her visa being issued, or will she have to go through the whole process again with the new passport, assuming the US passport office keeps the old one?

Also, any post-9/11 NYC speedy passport renewal stories and tips would be greatly appreciated.

How is a reasonable person supposed to deal with the Italian Consulate?

jeb — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:02:04 -0800

How is a reasonable person supposed to deal with the Italian Consulate? My (US Citizen) girlfriend is doing a one-year graduate program in Italy. She needs to get a student visa to study there (in fact, the school seems to require them). [snipping out months of complications with the Consulate here]. So she went to the Italian Consulate last week to get her Visa with all of her other stuff in order ('other stuff' literally involving wax stamps and seals) and they told her it was no problem, except she didn't have proof with her that she was a New York Resident. Ah, one tiny detail. So she dutifully goes back with a gas bill or something and now they tell her that there is absolutely no way they can issue this visa because her undergrad experience is not appropriate. Wtf? Then they said, "If it was a four-year program, sure, but a one-year program, no." (Bear in mind this whole conversation is actually being conducted in Spanish, the only language both parties are strong in). Then they said, "Maybe at one of the other US cities' Italian Consulates, but not this one. We'd never let that fly in the Consolato Generale di New York City!"

Now, I have a couple questions:

This just doesn't make any sense at all. Could it possibly be the case that if she had taken different undergrad courses they'd have stapled the requisite baroque slip of paper to her passport? If she was in San Francisco? This is absurd.

Is this this guy's way of demanding a bribe or something and we are just thick? Seriously, should she be passing $100 bills through that dumb slot with her passport?

Is there anyway to make these people get their heads out of their asses and issue the damn visa, save violence?

What is the Dell equivalent of a Thinkpad T-Series?

jeb — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 19:04:57 -0800

What is the Dell equivalent of a T-series Thinkpad? I need to replace my T41 and I can't make sense of the offerings on Dell.com. Inspiron is "Versatile", Latitude is "Professional". What I want is the super-small-but-not-X-series-small, ~14" super high-res screen. Most Dells I see around are either huge "desktop replacements" or the really, really small ones. Are any basically like a T-series?

Should I upgrade my Sawtooth G4's CPU for Logic?

jeb — Mon, 15 May 2006 18:20:07 -0800

Does it make sense to do a CPU upgrade to a Sawtooth G4 for Logic? I have a Sawtooth G4 (500MHz iirc) that is CPU-bound running Logic Express, which is all I use this machine for. I've read the other threads about upgrading old macs, and there seems to be a split of opinions, but somewhere on the internet, I came across a forum post that said that upgrade CPUs of similar MHz will beat G5s in Logic/PT CPU-bound tasks because of greater L(n) cache. Apparently audio apps are big cache users. Seeing as how 2GHz upgrade CPUs are around $250, do you think it makes sense to give this a go, or do you think its better to save the time and money and get a low-end newer Mac? Currently, the machine can handle recording about six simultaneous audio tracks, but adding a software instrument, plugins, or more than a couple playback tracks gets spotty.

Who do I call for office security in Manhattan?

jeb — Tue, 02 May 2006 06:44:56 -0800

Who should I call for an office burglar alarm system in Manhattan? We want to put a burglar alarm system in our office in Manhattan. I called ADT and got a quote from them, Brinks' local dealer is too flakey. I don't want to go with ADT on only one quote, but if I look up 'alarm system' in yp.yahoo.com, there are a few hundred matches, and I have no idea where to start. Any specific recommendations?