October 18, 2007

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 6:21 am

I am soooo sore. First day back at the gym after an embarrassingly long hiatus yesterday.

QOTD: Do you have a hot tip to share? A useful tidbit of information?

This one came up at work yesterday (although I suspect many already know about this one):

If you want to hasten the ripening of fruit, put it inside a brown paper bag with a banana. Bananas produce lots of ethylene, which speeds the ripening process along.

What you got for us?

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:34 am

Is this question too much of a dud? I thought fer sher people would have some exciting advice jto share with the world. Feel free to disregard this query if it's toooooo laaaaaaame!

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:46 am

In honor of TOPOFF4, Put your gas mask on before you shout "Gas!" 'Cause what's the first thing you do before you yell as loud as you can, kids? Yup, a big ol' lungful of air. Mmmm, tasty.

j$ · Post by j$ » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:49 am

But surely, if you have your gas mask on, no-one would hear you yell 'Gas!' It would be a muffled bwasasgh! at best. Also if the gas was close enough to affect your inhalation, probably everyone you are trying to warn in hearing distance would have already been affected. Sheesh, where is the bigger picture, people!

EDIT: Then again, the very act of putting on your gas mask would be warning enough to those who could see you. That and the big cloud of noxious gas. So, carry on!

j$ · Post by j$ » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:54 am

My top titbit comes from Viz's top tip

"HOUSEWIVES. Make the normally mundane task of switching the central heating on a little more exciting by singing 'The heating's on' to the tune of 80s hit The Heat is On by Glen Frey as you are doing it. "

jimtyrrell · Post by **jimtyrrell** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:04 am

Roll Call: It's a work day. I might go to a local open mic tonight, or I might stay in and watch some movies. Haven't decided.

QotD: Here's a potentially helpful little tip I've never had to use. I heard it from a guy called Dumpster at the Rainbow Gathering many years ago. He told me Dunkin' Donuts tosses out their donuts about every six hours, so if you need to scavenge food, DD is a good place to do it. I've made no effort to corroborate his claim.

LMNOP · Post by **LMNOP** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:07 am

Stuff you should know:

When building stairs, the height of the riser plus the length of the tread should total about seventeen and a half inches.

If you hold your hand in front of you at arm's length with your fingers horizontal, every finger between the horizon and the bottom of the sun represents about fifteen minutes until sunset.

These are among the things I remember from a book called "Rules of Thumb" or something like that which I read as, I don't know, probably a college student, 20-25 years ago. I think I own the book - I wonder where it is.

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:08 am

jimtyrrell wrote:Roll Call: It's a work day. I might go to a local open mic tonight, or I might stay in and watch some movies. Haven't decided.

QotD: Here's a potentially helpful little tip I've never had to use. I heard it from a guy called Dumpster at the Rainbow Gathering many years ago. He told me Dunkin' Donuts tosses out their donuts about every six hours, so if you need to scavenge food, DD is a good place to do it. I've made no effort to corroborate his claim.

That is actually completely true! In high school we used to liberate giant bags of the perfectly good donuts.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who need to help a small child with a gas mask , may I recommend this festive model:

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:14 am

Here's some tips.

Hang your art at 57" on center.

Rolling limes before you cut them up makes it easier to juice them.

A dollar bill is almost exactly 6 inches long.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:22 am

anti-m wrote:
jimtyrrell wrote:QotD: Dunkin' Donuts tosses out their donuts about every six hours, so if you need to scavenge food, DD is a good place to do it. I've made no effort to corroborate his claim.
That is actually completely true! In high school we used to liberate giant bags of the perfectly good donuts.

Very interesting. I had heard something similar about McDonalds from a homeless guy in Marietta GA. Not that they threw food out every 6 hours but that if you waited to a little after lunch that they would throw out food that was made for the rush but didn't get bought up. A few fish sandwiches and some burgers and a basket of fries. He said that it was always good to invest time at various Pizza joints near closing time. Hit or miss on that but it was the jackpot on good nights.

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:27 am

QOTD: The sky is actually blue. There is a big tarp covering our atmosphere to protect us from the stars/aliens.

... actually I'm too brain-fried to come up with something smart right now. I just had an English midterm. I'm eating some lunch, and then I have my philosophy mid-term (epistemology and metaphysics - yeeeesh...)

Wish me luck!

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:30 am

jolly roger wrote:QOTD: The sky is actually blue. There is a big tarp covering our atmosphere to protect us from the stars/aliens.

... actually I'm too brain-fried to come up with something smart right now. I just had an English midterm. I'm eating some lunch, and then I have my philosophy mid-term (epistemology and metaphysics - yeeeesh...)

Wish me luck!

Wait -- JR, didn't I read that you were in High School? What kind of crazy high schools are they operating in Canada?? Epistemology and Metaphysics?? Zowee!

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:48 am

When starting a fire in the rain, remove the wet bark and carve small strips from the dry wood within rather than attempt to use small sticks, which are simply too wet. Dipping matches in wax makes them waterproof, but this only really works if you do it before being caught in the rain needing a fire.

Albatross · Post by **Albatross** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:17 am

If you haven't tried the "drinking upside down" trick as a cure for hiccups, you should. Whereas normally you would put your mouth on the front rim of the glass and tilt your head back, put it on the back rim and tilt forward.

For me at least, that has a 100% success rate.

Heather. Redmon. · Post by **Heather. Redmon.** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:20 am

Today my son Spencer turns 5! We are going to Chuck E. Cheese tonight to celebrate! I haven't been there since I was probably 8 or 9. Fun! Phil and I are getting him this!

I have no tidbits right now, but I'll think about it.

Post by **Spud** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:55 am

Back when Octothorpe was doing cultural diversity Fridays, I took the crew to Chuck's place. Mad Dog wouldn't go in.

SPUD

TIP: If you need to print the contents of a folder, press START, then RUN, then type COMMAND in the box. Since we are now at a command prompt, we can call things by their real names. Navigate to the directory in question using CD commands (for example CD\AFOLDER), then type DIR > LIST.TXT (LIST.TXT is a file name), then type EXIT and get out of there. Now back in Windows, navigate to the folder in question, and open up the file LIST.TXT. You can print this. Wouldn't this be a nice feature to put on the FUCKING FILE MENU? Write your congressman.

jimtyrrell · Post by **jimtyrrell** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:11 pm

Spud, I am in your debt. Fantastic tip!

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:15 pm

jimtyrrell wrote:Spud, I am in your debt. Fantastic tip!

That is indeed a fantastic hot tip!

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:33 pm

If you wanna do even less work, instead of typing COMMAND type cmd ... you save 4 whole keystrokes! Also windows doesn't care about capital letters.
-bill

Post by **Spud** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:46 pm

I use caps stylistically to indicate what you are actually typing, party pooper.

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:17 pm

Using acrobat on windows, I have yet to discover a simple command to take a directory full of image files and turn them into one .pdf file. However, this works: open the first image in the previewer, click on the printer icon, do "select all" to select all the images in the directory, and then set the printer to "distiller." It will "print" all your image files into a single .pdf file, which is just about the size of the original collection of images. Previewer is also an easy way to force a single image to print "full page" size...

Also: I don't have the magic with me right now, but there IS a way to force a page break when printing an HTML page in a modern browser. I'll post that later when I'm home where the info is.

Charles (KA)

WeaselSlayer · Post by **WeaselSlayer** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:22 pm

Don't use your teeth. Ever.