Stupid/Small Questions Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Stupid/Small Questions Megathread

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

The best thing to do is take apart the lock, clean it, and apply some lubricant, but you could probably get away with just spraying some in there. Check with your hardware store for the best kind to use on a lock.

The best lubricant for a lock, hands down, is dry graphite powder.

E: Wow, I'm slow. Just like the site currently.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2013 17:08

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Very Strange Things posted:

Am I missing something? What, if anything, makes the wired Beats set worth 100+ dollars more?

It's been a while since I was sixteen, but I'm guessing brand image and looks might matter more to him than getting the best sounding headphones. Headphones are worn outside and might function like a fashion accessory.

Maybe. I don't have kids though.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2013 02:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

No, but I'm not using Chrome, either.

If you're on Firefox, there's a discontinued addon called OptimizeGoogle that can still be used for this. You'd have to paste sites you want to block manually in the addon's settings page, so it's not really all that convenient, but it's the only thing of the kind that still sort of works.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 02:16

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I think the most obvious option everyone is overlooking is that she's setting him up with the other guy that got the body butter.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2013 04:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Manslaughter posted:

Again not sure if this is a forums upgrade feature or not.

Search is part of the Platinum package, which you can see Manslaughter has because he/she has a "message" button below their post. Without platinum you can't see someone's post history, because it piggybacks on search.

Anyway, another, not in any way more convenient method is going to the forums index, clicking the Search The Forums link and on the screen you get, you have a username filter. You can then search for something that is likely to show up in a post, like a space.

This could be useful if you can remember someone's handle but have no clue where to find a post from this person to link you to their profile to extract their userid.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2013 18:51

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Motronic posted:

Why they aren't mixed down differently for home distribution is beyond me.

Well, cost, obviously. Even if the re-mixing could be done automatically, it's an extra thing to check and verify come mastering and pressing.

Namarrgon posted:

And if I am missing something, is there an obvious solution to this?

Software has solutions for this, so if it's more or less equally convenient to you to play your video through a laptop connected to the tv, that'd be the way to go, at least late at night.

Otherwise an obvious solution would be headphones. v :shobon:

hooah posted:

Is there a way to disable the auto-play videos on Facebook? I looked around through the settings, but couldn't find anything.

Working as intended, sadly. Though I've been able to block a lot of unwanted stuff on Facebook with the AdBlock Plus and ABP Element Hiding Helper Firefox addons. I can't verify it works for this, because the autoplay videos haven't rolled out here yet.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2013 21:57

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Motronic posted:

"Better" from an audio reproduction standpoint should INCREASE the dynamic range over "worse" gear, not lower it.

"Better" from a feature standpoint of having a compressor/limiter would allow you to.....well....compress and limit the dynamic range of the audio as previously mentioned.

If you've got a poo poo system with a muddy subwoofer and some tiny satellites, you won't have any midrange and you'd have to turn the volume up a lot to hear dialogue. A better system might help in that situation, because it might be more intelligible at lower volumes.

A better system might also not necessarily try to boost bass to the max in the way some cheaper systems would, which can help out with the neighbors.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 00:32

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Nessa posted:

I have a printer with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks. I don't think that's the problem. :/

I can't give you an idea of the prevalence of the phenomenon, but I've had a couple of printers that would only use black ink for text and vectorized stuff. Anything with a color gradient in it, like a photo or any bitmap picture really, would force the printer into photo mode where black is made up from a mix of other colors.

In the olden days, this would always look like poo poo. Today, on a properly aligned printer, you wouldn't even know if it did it that way.

Also, not all black inks are pigmented and thus most of them will start to fade (to green indeed) over time with exposure to sunlight, just like the other colors.

Baking something in an oven is actually a reasonable simulation of accelerated aging for a lot of stuff, so maybe that's what you're seeing.

It isn't likely that there is a solution for you with your current setup.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 12:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

muike posted:

Is it possible to get a decent pocket knife for a low price that doesn't come with TACTICAL COOL BADASS MILITARY printed on the side of it so I feel like a real navy seal when i'm trying to open a box

Opinel?

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 22:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Rhizoid posted:

Can anyone identify this odd symbol Linux is using instead of a space?

I've had free and free for personal use fonts use weird symbols for spaces and periods, in sort of a nagware fashion.

Maybe due to some sort of filesystem hell, it's not an actual space, but something that would otherwise show up as a space. Except that in the font now used it's some sort of maker's mark.

Can you add a space to that shortcut name and have it show up as a space?

Can you copy the symbol into a word processing program and see if it shows up as a space when set to other fonts?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2013 00:12

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Nighthand posted:

Is there a way in excel for it to calculate the number of non-weekend days remaining?

code:

=NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(),EOMONTH(TODAY(),0))

This will include the current day. If you don't want that, you can do this:

code:

=NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(),EOMONTH(TODAY(),0))-1

EDIT: the latter may result in -1 when it is the last day of the month and it's not a weekday. If that bothers you, try:

code:

=IF(TODAY()=EOMONTH(TODAY(),0),0,NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(),EOMONTH(TODAY(),0))-1)

Of course, whether you do that or not, you'll have to prepare for the contingency that you're going to divide by a number that could be 0.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 2, 2014

# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 19:18

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Nighthand posted:

Looks like I'll have to install the analysis toolpack addon, which the program yells at me to find the original installation source, so I'll have to dig that out. Otherwise, thanks!

Jesus. I know when they made this poo poo optional the two megabytes or whatever that saved on your harddrive were significant, but there hasn't been an excuse not to include it in the default install for over fifteen years.

Anyway, if you can't find the install media and you're not too dependent on vbs scripting otherwise, LibreOffice Calc is pretty much the same thing as Excel 2003. It even uses the exact same formulas. Also writes xls files. It's only a lot more annoying when it comes to conditionally formatting cells with colors.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2014 01:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Nighthand posted:

My spreadsheet is incredibly basic, with only a couple of =SUMs, and I'm not incredibly invested in office 2003. I'm just invested in not having the stupid office 2010 control ribbon.

Let's be clear here, Excel is still going to be your most painless solution if you can find the install media.

Mescal posted:

Is Libreoffice Calc actually good? Free software is usually great when it's original and independent, but terrible when it's an ersatz version of a specific popular commercial product. I'd like to download it if it really works well and similarly to Excel.

It really depends on your expectations. If you're hardcore into Excel, you might get annoyed that stuff is in different places or works ever so slightly differently. Some of the more advanced stuff might even be missing still.

But if you've got to manipulate a couple of sheets with dates, numbers and strings with the built-in formulas and not depend on scripts or fancy graphs too much, you're gonna be ok and end up with files that can be exchanged with an Excel user (fingers crossed).

It's hard to give a blanket statement, because opinions may vary on what exactly is basic functionality. It's pretty good and fairly feature complete for being free. It's like 85% there, even in emulating some of Excel's quirks. Since Excel is such a complicated program, that's actually really good. It's not crashy or anything. For all its shortcomings it's also the only free alternative that's somewhat recommendable. Apart from Google Docs, which misses some other functionality, but offers the convenience of being easy to share online. But if you can miss the money for the Microsoft package, there's no point because that's such a strong standard that any deviation is going to be problematic.

If you just want to keep track of your spending or calculate solar eclipses or whatever, Calc is fine, in any case.

The Write package is something else entirely and I wouldn't recommend it for anything besides writing a letter or maybe an essay. Mostly because you're more likely to send the file to someone with Word and end up with layout problems.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2014 12:42

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Hummingbirds posted:

I don't think lions are descended from smilodon, and I know humans aren't descended from Neanderthals (mostly) so the traits weren't "reduced," those animals just went extinct and other similar animals are currently more successful at making babies.

Plus it assumes evolution has some sort of plan or general direction - that spans more than one generation no less. That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 18:13

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Da Monk posted:

what is the easiest way to transfer many gigabytes from my windows 8.1 laptop to my windows 7? I guess its by using cable, but does any software ease the process?

I've done ok with Teracopy.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2014 15:40

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

TaurusTorus posted:

Is soap-on-a-rope a thing in countries where the primary language makes it not a rhyming phrase? It always struck me that the only reason for its existence was that it rhymed.

I think I saw a bar of soap that had a rope in it, maybe twenty, twenty five years ago. I'm sure you can buy it somewhere in Belgium, if you really, really wanted it, but it's definitely not A Thing^TM here.

Bars of soap in general are a slightly dwindling affair here, in favor of stuff that comes in dispensers.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 21:11

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Manslaughter posted:

Every action a person takes is for their own benefit. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it.

That's naive.

Plenty of people act against their own interests all the time without even the benefit of feeling better, superior or more secure because of it, for one.

You might be caught in some sort of just world fallacy where everything needs to make rational sense inside a simple dichotomy. This makes the discussion whether altruism exists a discussion on semantics divorced from reality.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 23:36

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Schweinhund posted:

Would you say being altruistic is irrational then?

Neato strawman, very creative.

Manslaughter posted:

I would like an example.

Any number of things a depressed person does.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 01:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I have a computer technical support question that isn't large enough to warrant its own thread. I recently purchased a new USB wireless adapter to replace one that broke. It works fine but my PC recognizes the connection as "Wireless Network Connection 2." I tried renaming it to "1" but it forbids me because apparently the other network connection, the one used by the old USB adapter, still exists. How the hell do I delete it? Its not anywhere in the Network and Sharing Center in my Control Panel.

If this still works anything like it did in XP, you should be able to go to the device manager and find an option there to show hidden devices and uninstall it from there. Or maybe Nirsoft's USBDeview is needed if you can't reconnect the old adapter, I'm not sure.

The latter should work in any case. You may have to uninstall and re-install the new adapter as well to get it to change its name.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2014 12:41

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

In device manager are they the ISATAP Adapters? Should I delete those?

I don't know what those are, so in good conscience I can't really recommend doing that.

Try the USBDeview program, it should show you stuff under a user friendly name; you might remember what your previous wireless adapter was called, or what brand it was or something. You may have to enable viewing disconnected stuff there too.

If you feel lost, I wouldn't start randomly deleting stuff you don't recognise. Maybe, try the Windows thread in SH/SC with a relevant screenshot or something.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2014 21:51

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

alnilam posted:

I sort of want to call it "size inflation." Is this a recognized thing?

Yes.

Actually googling size inflation would also have gotten you on the same page first hit.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 23:41

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

KoB posted:

LogMeIn has decided that I have to pay for service now but I use it so infrequently that its just not worth it to me. Is there another site that has simple/easy remote desktop stuff?

Teamviewer is supposedly good.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 21:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Xandu posted:

Maybe there's a better thread to ask this in, but if I wanted to set up something to automatically scrape a website for data (to throw into a .csv file), how would I do that?

For example, I want to download all the data on this page:

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=5

But I want to do it for all the major airports. Presumably there's a way to program something to do it automatically, but I don't know how.

Try here.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 00:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

tuyop posted:

Is there a name for that strange type of dread/anxiety/stress that comes after a huge project is finished and you're left with a relatively light workload?

It feels like a very uncomfortable sense of guilt or loss like there's a hole in your life where the project tasks used to be.

In Dutch it's called "een zwart gat", which simply means a black hole.

e.: As in: "After the project I fell into a (or the) black hole." That would convey the idea completely to someone speaking Dutch.

I'm not seeing where guilt really fits in, but the term definitely qualifies for all the rest.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Feb 9, 2014

# ¿ Feb 9, 2014 20:29

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Directly above is pretty good. I guess it's also possible to concoct something with either a pivot table or VLOOKUP.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 22:18

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

KoB posted:

You think way too highly of humanity. We dont have it because we havent got the technology down yet.

And we haven't got the technology yet because there's no money in making something you can only sell to a customer once.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2014 01:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

RebBrownies posted:

I was reading an interview with actress Lea Seydoux and she said "n'a pas froid aux yeux" and that it means "I am not cold in my eyes". What does this mean?

Apparently it's an expression meaning something like to not be afraid, to be brave, to be hardened.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2014 01:13

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Nighthand posted:

What is the scam happening here, if any? My girlfriend relates me these stories from her cashiering at Office Max

There's a guy who comes in every couple of weeks and buys a new tablet, using various prepaid cards which keep being declined until one works. There's a woman who comes in and buys like a candy bar and a $200 prepaid card, again using a bunch of prepaid cards that keep being declined until one works. Since they're prepaid, they don't have ID requirements or anything, and even though it's suspicious, they can't red flag deny them service or call over a manager when they show up or anything. Apparently they do this at a couple of different stores.

Are they somehow laundering money? Reselling new tablets for some kind of profit? Just rich and addicted to owning a stack of tablets?

My guess:
1. steal bundles of non-activated cards
2. overwrite the magnetic strip at home with (not entirely) random codes
3. hope one of them matches an activated card someone else bought (and hasn't used up yet)

Something like that. If you semi-understand how the system works, you can probably somewhat figure out what are likely to be valid codes and write some sort of keygen for it. Maybe with an inside man somewhere who pre-scans cards in his own reader and passes along what cards are about to be sold. I don't know.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2014 23:52

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Irish Joe posted:

Can someone explain the mechanics of putting on and taking off the catsuits pictured below? I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why the zipper would go all the way under your body to the small of your back.

If I tell you the zipper can open up starting at the back as well, does that help you figure out in what sort of scenarios that extra bit comes into play?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2014 00:46

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Irish Joe posted:

I guess, but even unzipped, pooping in a catsuit doesn't seem like a good idea.

I see I have to spell out that you'd open the zipper exactly to prevent pooping in the catsuit.

e. to prevent getting lost in layers of being willfully obtuse, let me add that from a certain point of view the anus, as well as an exit, is a point of entry. The zipper helps expose that.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Mar 17, 2014

# ¿ Mar 17, 2014 00:51

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Infamous Sphere posted:

Yeah, I know it's a TV show - but it's safe to assume that it's at least vaguely based off reality.

That's not a safe assumption at all and you deserve ridicule for writing this sincerely.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2014 15:17

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

^^^^^Or that, depends on what you want to do with it afterwards.

DrBouvenstein posted:

Two questions about Excel:

How do I combine both the TODAY() and NOW() function so I get the current time AND date the spreadsheet is ran/opened in a cell?

And secondly, is there a way in Excel to take that time and date, AND have those values then be converted to a format that can be accepted as part of a valid email address? Something like:

"03-19-14-15.00" or,

"Mar19-2014.15.00"

Or really any sort of format that isn't the default one using slashes and colons.

code:

=YEAR(NOW())&"."&MONTH(NOW())&"."&DAY(NOW())&"-"&HOUR(NOW())&"h"&MINUTE(NOW())

Ampersand to concatenate strings. Rearrange to you heart's content.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 20:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

DrBouvenstein posted:

Awesome, thanks guys.

Now...is there a way to get it to have quotation marks around it? Like:

"[current time and date here]"

Would it require making some random cell that actually used by the end result program generating the time and date in the format I want, and then the cell I'm actually using just referencing the time and date as pure text, and then adding the " to the beginning and end of it?

Confusingly:

code:

=""""&YEAR(NOW())&"."&MONTH(NOW())&"."&DAY(NOW())&"-"&HOUR(NOW())&"h"&MINUTE(NOW())&""""

Edit: So, double double quotes within a string are interpreted as double quotes. Since they are a string, they need to be enclosed in double quotes in a formula.

EDIT 2: Use the TEXT function to pad numbers with leading zeroes to the desired length for more consistency:

code:

=""""&TEXT(YEAR(NOW()),"0000")&"-"&TEXT(MONTH(NOW()),"00")&"-"&TEXT(DAY(NOW()),"00")&"_"&TEXT(HOUR(NOW()),"00")&"h"&TEXT(MINUTE(NOW()),"00"&"""")

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 19, 2014

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 20:46

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

kedo posted:

Functional fixedness is actually a really important evolutionary trait and is an all around Good Thing 99.99% of the time.

Maybe you should look up what it means first.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 19:05

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

kedo posted:

I know exactly what it means. Some* cognitive biases exist for reasons like the one I mentioned and have benefits in addition to their downsides.

e: * added for clarity

Listen, I get what you mean, but the term functional fixedness seems to be used exclusively for situations where the assumption prevents you from solving problems, ie. negative scenarios. If you had used the more general term cognitive bias in the first place, I wouldn't have had a problem with it.

If I'm totally wrong, I urge you to update or amend the Wikipedia page on the subject.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2014 00:08

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

dokmo posted:

I think in the video he has a prophet 10.

Looks like it.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 00:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Taeke posted:

My mom asked me to figure out what kind of flowers these are growing in her garden

Clematis Armandii "Snowdrift"

I think.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 14:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There are waterproof pants you put over your normal pants for cycling and trekking if you don't mind looking like a dork.

e. was answered already

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 21:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Top up li-ions whenever you want/need. Just don't leave them on the charger 100% of the time like some people do with their laptops, because that's bad. The battery needs to be used from time to time (like once a month at least) or it 'unlearns' how to hold a charge. And you wouldn't want to do deep discharging, but then your device shouldn't allow you to anyway.

In a phone, either extreme scenario is unlikely if you actually use it.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 16:18

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

EricBauman posted:

What's the deal with the random sliver of non-Italy coloured territory in the Anglican archdeaconry of Italy on this map?

San Marino, is that what you're talking about?

# ¿ Apr 12, 2014 21:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Stupid/Small Questions Megathread

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