Last update, I have a can of tomato soup, a can of "98% fat-free" cream of chicken soup, some frozen cheese tortellinis (enough for one, not for two), some grated parmesan, a bear of honey, worschesteshier sauce, lowry's seasoned salt, white rice, mustard mayo relish ketchup grey poupon.

Oh, um uh, update, it only has to serve one :blush: sorry for dominating the thread.

Chicken and broccoli over pasta. Use the cream of chicken as your base throw the chicken, broccoli, cream cheese, and mushrooms into a pyrex cook covered for a while then uncovered for a while.

Use Audacity. Free & open source. Only problem is you need to do it in real time as the DVD plays. I've actually never done it from a DVD in the drive, so that might be a problem, but hooking up the audio-out from a DVD player into your audio-in on the PC would certainly work.

UT - are you serious? Order a pizza.

glatt:

Thank you. I'll track down Audacity. I would prefer to avoid the audio out to audio in, if possible. I'm no audio snob, but that does sound like a lot of (possibly, hopefully) unnecessary digital-analog-digital conversions.

Thanks again.

c-man: hahahahaha

I don't know what the fuck is living in my dryer that keeps eating my socks, but I'm not amused...

Another possibility is Total Recorder. There's a long Cellar thread here about it. It would probably work straight from the DVD drive, but I have virtually no experience with it. There is a freeware version with limited capabilities, and a cheap full version.

DVDDecrypter will do it... do it in stream processing mode & uncheck all the video streams. There's one more step that you have to do to get it to save as an audio file, but I forget what that is. I'll look it up when I have a chance.

IFO mode.... enable stream processing.... uncheck all streams except the soundtrack.... go to Tools > Settings, then the Stream Processing tab... check Convert PCM to WAV. Use your favorite converter to make the WAV an MP3.

Ten grams of dry mushrooms is considered an heroic dose. I'm not sure of the conversion to fresh though.

Tell god I said hi!

Bill Hicks lives!

Ha!

He hasn't posted for a while.

Awhile? 10pm late night. :eyebrow:
Or are you speaking of God?

I don't know why I expect people to be brighter than I expect of myself.

Do you guys know why I do that? That's annoying...

I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but that looks like a loaded question to me. I'll pass.

I mean God. You know, God.

because you have an inflated sense of...someone?

I don't know why IE scripts asks me if I want to display the 'non secure' information over the internet.

I really don't know:confused:

Sure you do, you really want to, doncha? doncha? :D

"Secure" means the information is sliced and diced in a way that it can't be reconstructed if somebody happens to intercept it between the web site and your computer.

Let's say somebody sets up a page for you to order their widgets from. And the make it secure. If their logo is sitting on a different, non-secure area, and they put that logo onto the page, the logo itself will not be encoded, even though the rest of the page still will be.

What I want to know is why the hell Yahoo has suddenly (in just the last few days) started displaying nonsecure items on their basic mail login page. I don't want to click an extra dialog box every damn time I check my email.

How would I find out the average lease price paid per acre by gas companies looking for natural gas (in NE PA specifically), how much would be a fair price/% of any gas found, and how much impact these activities would have on the land/trees/water.

Ask your local business bureau

Here's something else I don't know:

When the weatherman makes a prediction about the rain or the temperature, and it turns out to be wrong, we say the weatherman was wrong. He loses some credibility as a forecaster because of this failing.

When I make a bet on the baseball game, and I'm wrong, I have to pay up for my wrong guess. I lose.

When someone makes an estimate or a forecast and subsequently the facts turn out to be different, we say the forecast(er) was wrong.

Except in one case.

I frequently hear on the news that a company XYZ Widgets, Inc, has "missed forecasters' projections". The company is usually punished for this "failure". Why is this a special exemption from what seems to be the normal case where the *forecast* is revealed to be wrong. How is it that the facts are "wrong" in cases like this?

tia

the company isn't penalized, the shareholders are. The shareholders were holding stock set at a price felt it be appropriate for the earnings forecast. When the actual earnings beat the forecast then shareholders are usually rewarded by seeing their stock value rise to meet new valuations. When earnings fail to meet expectations then the stock price must fall to come in line with the real earnings, thus penalizing the shareholder.

At least that is the theory. Quite often you'll see share prices rise with bad news and fall with good news. The news reported by the journalists on tv and radio should be taken with a grain of salt as it is usually the news behind the news that really moves share values.

Oh, and BTW while you don't see any immediate penalty for the incorrect forecaster it is important to note that their jobs and income rely on their accuracy. If they are consistently wrong they'll be looking for a new job soon.

Pleasantly unsurprised to see you reply, l123. Thank you.

I recognized some of the pieces of the puzzle but not all, and I didn't know how they all fit together. But on the surface, this seemed inexplicably contradictory. I think it was the wording that snagged my attention: company misses expectations. Duh. Perhaps the expectations were inappropriate.

I'm glad you threw in the part about the hidden effects of wrong forecasts. Because the forecasters (in the news feeds I consume) are never identified, I can never distinguish one from the other. Your explanation makes (satisfying) sense.

Here's another one:

I went on a long hike recently, and after the second day, my toes were numb. All day. All night. Even still, a week after the end of the hike, the tips of my great toe and the tips of the next two are numb. I can move them ok, they respond to pressure, but not to light touch. The range of the unsettling effect seems to be shrinking, but very slowly.

I was kind of alarmed when this happened. The hiking was rigorous, and wet. My feet were wet during the day but managed to dry out overnight. There is some family history of diabetes, and I am overweight, but nothing like that was revealed in my July physical.

I'm trying to polish the shine on my shield of denial here... can anyone help?

Perhaps your shoes are too small and were pressing on your toes. Or, you could have a pinched nerve in your lower back (perhaps the sciatic nerve?).

What's additionally confusing - and l123 correct me on this - is that the companies themselves have a take on the number, and can send their stock down before the forecast by just saying something like "uh... that's a pretty high number... uh... the bosses' auntie says we could have trouble in our international markets...."

My ex was a very strong accountant and would talk about the pressure to "make" the number, where the companies push things around the books in order to have a bigger earnings number. Fuckin' accountants.

I do have a pair of hiking boots that crowd my toes. I left those at home for this trip though. The ones I took have plenty of room. There were many elevation changes and I could feel my feet moving forward in my boots on the longer downhills. No more than usual, though. And here we are a week later...

As for a pinched nerve. perhaps. I don't know. I'll add that to my list of possibilities.

Yeah, that happens way too much, that's why I should have stressed the "in theory part". The truth is that companies frequently downgrade their own forecasts simply so they can beat them with the real numbers. Straight shooting has gone away as a consequence of the rise of the trader (rather than investor). Traders are looking for action and are simply buying and selling numbers rather than companies they believe in. Because of that the numbers games are constantly being pushed farther and farther. or is it further and further? hmmm.

some companies refuse to issue an earnings 'guidance' (forecast) report to reduce the speculative pricing of their equity.

yes, but any company with larger earnings than our tip mug has at least one analyst watching them and forecasting numbers.

no internal forecast; external is always up for spec.

I wonder how many CEOs/COOs, are making decisions harmful to the company long term, to satisfy the forecasters/traders, and keeping their own compensation maximized? :eyebrow:

Re: Big V's toes

Some possible causes:
pinched nerve
poor circulation caused by: (a) cold) (b) tight shoes/socks (c) diabetes? (d) smoking (e) interactive combination of the above.
The lingering numbness sounds a bit like mild frostbite (which I have never had).

My best guess is the combination of cold and perhaps tight socks caused lessened blood flow which may have caused localised nerve damage. I don't know if they'll recover on their own.

How are they going?

The numbness has receded considerably, but it is not gone completely. Thank you for asking. I think I injured them with too loose boots on the downhills from the hike. I will be much more careful in the future.

********

I'm not clear on what is meant by "the fed pumping billions into..." or in foreign markets, the national government pouring money into the system (?).

Yeah... I have a big ignorant spot on this particular news topic. Any help is appreciated.

I have another request. I recently saw a lolcat post with the text "o death where is thy sting" but... I can't find it now. Li'l help, please?

tia

Total Information Awareness???

thanks in advance

It's on this page.

Thank you, dar. [tips cap]

How do I adjust my browser (firefox) settings to enable 3rd party cookies?

tool/options/cookies

Yeah, I found it, thanks... I had to use my laptop cause I guess the version on my pc is too old to have that option. Saved $14 in shipping though...

The Meaning of Life. How do you find it on my browser?

I don't know how to post via Opera.


and
I don't know alot but I don't know what i'm missing either.

Click on this link.

You can supposedly find not only the meaning of life; but, an Easter egg as well by following these instructions:

http://www.eggheaven.com/eggs/games/en407

Why do we rake leaves?

why does flint rake leaves?

and why do rakes leave?

If you have a lot of leaves, they will kill the grass. Also, even if you don't have that many leaves, some people find them unsightly.

Leaves fall in the autumn, which is followed by winter, during which the grass is in a dormant state. If anything, the ground covering of fallen leaves should provide insulation against the cold weather. By the time the growing season begins anew, the leaves should have decomposed and will be able to function as fertilizer. One might even say that eons of evolutionary processes have designed the leaves and the ground-covering vegetation to interact in this manner. So why do we rake leaves?

But in reality, the leaves have not decomposed, and they kill the grass.

Have you ever seen grass growing in the woods? No. You haven't.

Only humans are dumb enough to plant trees over grass. But we like the carpet that grass provides and the shade that trees provide. The downside is we have to rake.

Edit: Depending on the quantity of leaves, you can also sometimes mulch them into the grass with your lawn mower. YMMV.

Don't tell me what I haven't seen!