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Great posts, Tim. One thing that always annoys me is when people talk about public transportation as if only lepers ride it. For what it's worth, I like the idea of being able to mingle with others when I'm traveling. Who knows, I may even meet my future wife on my next subway ride. Stranger...

In other words, it's the journey that matters more than the destination. So why not when you finally complete the game, start a new,even harder one? I'll admit I do share those sentiments somewhat. I don't really play games, but when I'm involved trying to get a circuit or other project to work...

Along those lines of thought here's a nice article: Subsidizing Big Oil

I submit that this was a big mistake for two reasons. First, enforcement is pretty much not practical. Traffic will move at its own pace based on the road, traffic conditions, a whole bunch of other factors. The only way to get comliance is with saturation enforcement. However, this costs a...

That's the point I'm trying to make. The average person isn't going to bother doing kW-hr per mile calculations or anything else an engineering type like me or Clocker might. They're simply going to see (using my proposal) gas=expensive, electric=cheaper. I'm also surprised nobody addressed...

Now this is something I totally don't understand. You seem like a fairly intelligent person. Merc is definitely an intelligent person, more so than probably anyone else here. I'd find it incredible if you two couldn't think of things to keep you occupied for millenia, nevermind just the...

Classic Cougtek. :diablo:

Bush might be dumber than a potato chip but at least I knew what I was voting for. Gore I just don't trust, especially given who he served under as VP. Next election should be even more interesting. It's looking like it might be Hillary versus Rudy.

First, to clarify what I was proposing, it is merely an example of manipulating the market towards electrics. A $5 or even $10 gas tax will only make driving less affordable if you insist on driving a gas car. Even then many will still be able to afford it. An electric will of course be cheaper...

Show me where in any of my posts I said one damned thing about "eliminating" automobiles. I feel they're not the best choice in many cases, but that doesn't mean they don't have valid uses. I feel if we had a system where each mode was used for what it does best autos would be used a lot less...

While I feel increasing gas taxes is worth a try, I also somehow feel even $100/gallon gasoline won't get Detroit to start making EVs. EVs will cost Detroit a good part of their spare parts business as they break down far less frequently. And then you'll have the mechanics unions and service...

Um, that's what we have now in most of the country. I hardly call a transportation system where the auto is the sole means of getting around in many places a system with many choices. Suppose you can't drive, or maybe just don't want to, don't want the hassle of owning a car, can't afford a car...

I agree with you 100% here. If we really want to reduce fossil fuel usage, the goal of policy should be to create a more balanced transportation network. This basically means greatly reducing car travel and car ownership, not the reverse. CAFE standards really do nothing in that regard. Even an...

Even color lasers are relatively affordable these days. I've been using a Samsung CLP-510 since last December. It cost me $200 after sales tax and a $70 rebate. Probably not much more than a decent inkjet but far less problems. The toner cartridges last for 2000 pages (probably more if the...

Toshiba says they won't be debuting the new technology for another 5 years. Given the way flash RAM capacity is at least doubling each year we'll probably have 1 TB thumb drives by then. For me personally I'm more than happy with current drive capacities. They've well outpaced my storage needs...

I've noticed the same thing. I went to Newegg to buy another 1GB for my mom's machine. The cheapest DDR400 1GB sticks are in the $63.99 area but DDR2 1GB is going for as little as $33.99. If someone has a machine capable of using DDR2 now is obviously a great time to add RAM. I guess it's still...

Very interesting article which I can definitely relate to. I had a long commute to both high school and college. High school was about an hour and a half each way. College was roughly two hours each way. I remember each commute in detail. Funny thing was I started both at roughly the same time...

Actually if you have a heat pump system you can get 2 or 3 times the heat per unit of energy used compared to resistance heating. And electric heating can be more efficient regardless if you only have one or two people in a home, and they just heat whatever rooms they're in rather than the whole...

Today I noticed that my temporary internet files folder was well over 1GB. Also, when I went to disk cleanup it told me I would only gain 1700KB by deleting my temporary internet files. Figuring that something was wrong, I went to my file manager and deleted all the folders and files in my...

Correct, the LAN settings are all blank. Anyway, downloads do work OK in Opera so I would imagine this is an IE specific problem rather than something having to do with my LAN setup. I should note that a while back I had to set my LAN TCP/IP properties to access specific DNS addresses in order...

:cry: My condolences on Booker. Sad thing to lose a pet.

Shift-clicking doesn't work either. :(

I laughed when I read the following line in that link: I'm pretty much a slob except maybe in my workroom where I'm just plain messy. :bglaugh: Not the symptoms of someone with a pervasive pattern of orderliness at all. If anything, my messiness sometimes hurts my efficiency. I know what the...

Absolutely. I'm quite capable of being self-sufficient for months, even years if need be, with little face-to-face social contact with non-family members if need be. My hobbies and other things I do keep me occupied for often weeks at a time. As for any potential partners, what you wrote about...

Privacy and security settings are at medium. I tried turning everything way down with no effect. I just tried the restore defaults with no effect, either. This is a weird problem in that maybe two weeks ago things were fine, and now they're not for no apparent reason. I tried doing a Google...

Here's the add-ons currently loaded: Here's all the add-on used at one time or another (I had to scroll down and make 3 screen captures):

Most of the people I know haven't dated hundreds or even dozens of people. My sister married the second guy she ever dated, really the first since her other boyfriend was one of my brother's friends who actually kept hinting at him to go out with my sister. He was a complete asshole by the way...

I've noticed this problem about two weeks ago. Whenever I try to do a download in IE7, no matter from where, I get the message "Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later." Any ideas of what can...

I have to take issue with the idea of being "too tentative". A lot of that may depend upon the individual. For someone like me I need to know a person many months and feel very comfortable with them before I would even want to hold hands, let alone kiss or do anything further. It just takes that...

Yes, pretty much that's what I would do if I were redesigning the lighting in a room from scratch. Note though that a single 4x32W fixture in the center of the ceiling of a small room (10'x10') creates nearly as good lighting as the distributed scheme. For a larger room two or more fixtures...

I agree. I've already said several times on CPF that an ideal interior lighting source would be an entire ceiling with a variable illumination level from perhaps 1 to several hundred lumens per square foot. Even at maximum intensity the panels would be no brighter than an average sky. And you...

Except that putting yourself out there doesn't necessarily work if neither you nor the girl can summon up the courage to make the first move. Given that I live in the largest, most densely populated city in the country you would think it would be fairly easy to at least meet potential partners...

From what I understand about the way these actuarial tables work, they tell you statistically if you're a given age now, then you can expect to live a certain amount of years. There is no simple equation. It's just a table based on statistics. Interestingly, the average lifespan is NOT how long...

While I can personally vouch for the fact that exercise increases my energy level, and probably also kept me from committing suicide during the worst period of my life (from about age 19 up to my late 20s), I'll also say that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Merc is...

I can understand where Chewy is coming from. I have nothing against fat people. In fact, since I'm 25 or so pounds overweight I'm technically fat myself. :crap: Yes, I'm trying to lose it, and yes, it's not easy to do if you lead a mostly sedentary life. That being said, I'm still in decent...

Thanks, CityK. Very interesting read. I'm wondering how much cheaper LEDs can get at this point, at least the 5mm indicator ones. Whites are under $0.10 in quantity while red, amber and orange can be had for as little as a penny. If this process can bring greater efficiencies, greater...

I put one on the machine I made last year and I'm putting one on the machine I'm building for my mom. In both cases the only reason is because I happen to have some spare floppies I bought on eBay a few years ago for something like $1 each. If not for that, I certainly wouldn't even have...

Go with the aluminum gutter. If something overheats there's no chance of igniting it like the PVC. Here's some full-spectrum T5 tubes. I'll see if I can find T6s later. You'll probably need to custom rig something to hold the sockets. Overall if you do this with switches it'll cost only a...

Thanks for reminding me about the IceCap ballasts and T6s, udaman. I think I've even seen full-spectrum T6s somewhere a while back. This might be another viable solution to Dave's lighting project. Also, I haven't gotten around to answering your latest emails but I'll try to find time this...

If you go with T5 tubes instead of T8 then I think 4 sets in parallel could be made to fit into a rain gutter. T5 tubes are a different length that T8s, and use a different ballast. They cost more also, but not prohibitively more. Anyway, since the tube is 5/8" in diameter instead of 1" then...

I saw this thread yesterday but haven't had time to give it a decent response. I'll try now. First off, yes, you can indeed dim flourescent lighting. The downside is that dimming ballasts for a pair of lamps run at upwards of $75 (when you can even find them). For the size room you mentioned...

I only changed the GPU frequency. The card voltage was already at 1.5V in the BIOS and that was the lowest setting. It's not heat-related, BTW. The GPU temperature is at most 70°C. The limit is 145°C and the card will automatically clock down as it approaches this. On another strange note...

I'm periodically experiencing the exact same thing on the new PC I set up about a year ago. I think it might be video card related since it occurred very infrequently only after I purchased a new card (it's an EVGA 128 MB Geforce 6200). It mainly occurs when playing 3D games after a few minutes...

It may not be a drive problem at all. About two or three years ago my main PC was exhibiting similar symptoms. First one of the drives was periodically spinning down. Eventually all three of them started to. The number of reallocated sectors started climbing on two out of the three. As things...

From an indestructibility standpoint the stuff made with metal tubes and mesh can't be beat. It's also very light plus easily disassembles in case you move often. The only thing is either you like it or you don't. If you like high-tech decor then you'll probably like it, otherwise you won't. I'm...

I guess the consensus then is that Bose is the best. :rofl: :bglaugh: That old thread also made me LMAO. Talk about not giving up a hopeless argument. :x I was also reminded of yet again of the reasons why Merc holds Prof. Wizard in so much, umm, esteem. On the subject of headphones and...

They should be able to. As udaman mentioned, tire sizes are never exact. The car has to have some adjustment (at least 10% in either direction) to account for this. Maybe there's even some procedure in the service manual for your car to do this, assuming you have it. My brother gets the service...

Well, at least here it saves a good amount of time over doing 70 or whatever the speed limit is since it's a long commute and he's doing it often. In one day 100 versus 70 on a 100 miles each way commute you save 51 minutes. In a week you save over 4 hours. In a year you save the equivalent of...

Increasing tire size is a common way to effectively get "overdrive" without going through the expense of a new transmission. You would drop your RPM from around 5000 to about 4675 @ 100 mph according to the info you gave. As for affecting the accuracy of your speedometer/odometer I believe any...

Your equation seems right. I'm not sure about the examples though. Where does the minus sign come in? (edit-never mind- you were just using the minus sign in between the tread width/sidewall height and wheel diameter numbers. Your math seems correct). Interestingly, bicycle tires are actually...