I dropped my cheapo digital camera in the toilet. (Coat pocket of pullover in front and had to pee real bad. Don't ask.) Where can I get a good -- well, OK, or almost acceptable -- digital camera for under $25 American?

I wan it for the double standard on on-line personals, cheap pictures of birthday parties and this http://home.earthlink.net/~castlelong

What picture resolution do you need? You can go to cnet.com to get an overview.

Wait two years.......

Hello,

maybe somebody here can help me. I earned some money on the internet and they sent me a check in US dollars. Now, if I cash the check in Germany, the german bank will take a huge amount of expenses (thieving blood-suckers). Is it possible to send a check with my name + adress on it to an American business to pay for sth. I ordered via the Web, or will the business not be able to cash a check made out in my name?

Is it possible to open an US bank account if I am not a resident of the US and do not have an US social security number?

What other solutions are there that you can think off? (I have trouble thinking about where to start asking the questions, as most german banks I know about do not have US branches, and though I do know the basics of german banking, I have no idea of the US banking system. Thanks for your help.)

You should be able to sign the check over to the US company (to pay for the thing you ordered). On the back where you typically sign the check, sign it, and also write "Pay to the order of (company's name)"
Then they, and only they, should be able to cash that check. Note that you'll be signing over the full amount of the check to them.

thanks very much, NS, I'll go and try that.

Hello all. As you may notice I was absent for a time due to some personal problems you might say. Well things are slightly better I guess. I am glad to say that although I am still not fully employed I do have a little bit of income. Enough to keep my nose above water. I would say head but its not that much. My wife and I have managed to work things out to enough of a degree that divorce is not going to happen, at least not yet. I am still fighting depression and anger about how things are around here but I am trying to pull it together enough to keep going. And that is all that matters.

Congratulations, R. Hope things continue to improve for you. I've just recently gotten a full time job myself. Good luck!

R or anyone else, How is that face above made?

It's so cute!

\clipart{smile} =

Other cliparts (mostly smileys) are found here

You don't want my opinion, (I'm divorced) trust me.

Congrats

All,

"?" has a computer problem. He posted on the rants board. I'm copying it here.

By ? on Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - 12:07 pm:


Say does anyone on Xp have a Newdot program? Mine says it needs 2.dll and I dont even know what is that program.. help please

It's spyware. Try to get rid of it.

Is there a name for a 3D diamond shape? Basically 2 pyramids joined together at their bases.

It's for a school project I'm working on where I need to create a planet of any shape and come up with a society to live on it. My group, a bunch of people who don't really care about the constraints of mass, centripetal acceleration, and the like, overruled me and chose to make it the shape I mentioned above. Needless to say, I can't logically use the word hemisphere in the report since it is not a sphere...

Any help would be welcomed.
ScottN, I'm looking in your direction...

If the pyramids have square bases, so that the complete figure has eight faces, it is an octahedron. If all of the faces are eqilateral triangles, and the diagonals are all equal, it is a regular octahedron. A regular octahedron is one of the five "Platonic Solids" -- the only "perfect polyhedrons. The other four are (place the word "regular" before each, except the cube, which is definedso as to be regular): the tetrahedron (a pyramid whose faces and base are all equilateral tringles), the cube, the dodecahedron (a 12-faced solid whose faces are regular pentagons), and the
icosohedron (20-faced/equilateral triangles).

If you have ever seen the unusually shaped dice often used in role-playing games (sometimes called Dragon Dice because of Dragons and Dungeons), you have seen the Platonic Solids. You can also see them here

Yeah, what TomM said...

A picture's worth a thousand words, or several dozen really big ones. Cool, link, Tom!

Thanks

I knew there must be some name, but people tend to use a common name such as pyramid or box-shaped or the like. Because of that, the name escaped me.

I guess I should have thought outside the cube.

Is there a board for military comments or questions regarding ships, aircraft, tanks, things of that sort. It doesn't have to be limited to mechanical things.

Like the one for space missions under science related. I'm looking for something non-politcal.

Don't think so, Polls, why don't you go for it under Science Related as well!

Sure, Polls, good idea. Go right ahead, either there or here in Questions, Questions, Questions; just make sure that you indicate the 'non-political' part strongly somewhere, OK?

(And just for future reference: There's a few places to ask for new threads in NitCentralia.)

Sounds interesting, Polls. (Is it OK to call you that?) Looking forward to the new board!

CR, you can call me Torque, Son of Keplar
I also go by that name.

Polls. (Is it OK to call you that?)

uh... hang on... yeah, 9 out of 10 people say that that is okay. I chose the name Polls Voice from the NES game of Zelda with the intention of using it to post on message boards where there might be something controversial.

I keep forgetting that you're also Torque. Anyway, I've been to the new board... some interesting posts so far!

[The next few posts were originally the contents of the Need Help With a Fish Problem thread. I just didn't have the heart to delete them outright.]-Mod

I was referred here by a friend... don't know if this will work out, but here goes.
I have a pet fish of unknown species and origin, which I purchased at wal-mart. the employee there told me it was a "river dragon" but apparently that was just a nickname, because subsequent searches have failed for info on such a fish. no other pet stores, including wal-mart, knew what it was exactly. it has a head like a catfish, and a body like an eel. it is a freshwater fish.
The only definate hint I got is a dumb one: it looks just like a pokemon called "barboach" except of course not insanely cutesy or deformed. it is brown with spots.
Though it is a happy-go-lucky and extremely hardy fish, knowing at least its name would help me to take care of it better, and perhaps get more in the future if possible. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Sounds vaguely like a young salamander but I doubt I'm on the right track there.
How large is this creature? Do you know how old it is (or at least how long you've had it)?
And, by saying "head like a catfish," does that include the "whiskers," or is that just the general shape of the head itself?

First off, I'm pretty positive it isn't a salamander, because I have had it for about four years, and it hasn't grown arms or legs or anything: it is the same size and configuration as whenI first bought it, so I am pretty sure it is in its mature stage. Also, unfortunately I have no idea what actual age it is. The head does have whiskers, three short whiskers on either side of its mouth. its size is about 8 inches long, and about a big around as a magic marker (kinda hard to measure their diameter.) It has a small rounded dorsal fin and similar pectoral fins.

David, check this site out. You do not have a fish, you have a waterdog (or mudpuppy). These salamanders generally remain in the larval stage their entire lives.

http://www.caudata.org/caudatecentral/

This might help!

I have a pet fish...

Is its name "Eric"? And do you have a fish license?

Could someone fill me in on whats happened since the last time I was here? Besides LOTS


Any structural changes I should be aware of at this site?

Well, Polls is now spelled Poles.

Its a combo of a creature in the Legand of Zelda and Politics.

And I take it that nothing has changed. I mainly posted on Enterprise and such and since it went quiet for a while, I decided to do some other activities.

It's been a long time since I've been here, so this may have been asked and I don't remember.

Anyway, is there a way to link to specific thread on this site? I have a friend I was wanting to share a particular topic thread with.

but the entire site is discus...

What I do is right-click on the link in the "last day" window and choose to open the thread in a new window. You get only the thread, and not the frames. The url in the address window is that of the thread. Also -- in some browsers right-clicking on a "dead" spot in a frame gives you the option to "Open This Frame in a New Window."

For example, this thread is http://64.33.77.146/discus/messages/110/20103.html?1111376457#POST288709

I used the "newurl" tag, rather than the "url" tag here, so even simply (left)-clicking on this link will open a new window without the frame.

Is there a math discussion board? If so, I'll take my question there.

This is an advice question that belongs more in the Sci-Fi novels board, but the "create new discussion" buttons have been removed and I'm under a bit of a deadline, so I thought we could at least start here and move if it becomes necessary/mandated.

To wit: Yesterday I had a job interview at a local bookstore. This is a locally owned outfit, mind you, not a chain. Anyway, the interviewer and I chatted for a while and got it pretty well hashed out that I wouldn't be a good fit there, but over the course of this discussion we talked about my sci-fi leanings, and she said that there wasn't anyone currently on-staff who was an avid sci-fi/fantasy buff. Furthermore, she said, this had an effect on their sci/fan section; as it stands, it's rather poor. Thus she offered me the opportunity to spend four hours one day looking over their shelves and making some suggestions on what titles they absolutely must be stocking. I accepted.

I've already got some ideas, which I'll be laying out below, but I thought I'd throw it out to NitCentral at large- what books should a good sci-fi/fantasy section never be without (aside from The Son, The Wind, and the Reign)? I'm especially interested to hear what people have to say on the fantasy side, as I am most certainly not a fantasy buff.

Things I'm already thinking about include:
Orson Scott Card: get a few of the Ender/Bean titles in there, plus the Alvin Maker series.
Phillip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Anne McCaffery: The Dragonriders of Pern series and perhaps some of her sci-fi work.
Star Trek Books (?): There's a million of them; I thought I'd reccomend the DS9 relaunch series.
Star Wars Books (?): There's also a million of these... any reccomendations?

So I need to have some good ideas by Tuesday. Any NitC help will be greatly appreciated.

1) Science Fiction:

Hard-core classics by the "big three" Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein.

Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson


2) Fantasy:

J R R Tolkein

Katherine Kurtz: the various Gwynedd/Camber (Deryni) series, the Adept series (plus Lammas Night), and the Templar series, but not so much the secret histories.

Piers Anthony: especially his Xanth books, but also some of his more "adult" work.

Robert Aspirin: The "Myth" series (featuring The Great Skeeve and his Pervert Pervect master Aahz); Theives World

Stephen Donaldson: Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

3) Celtic Myths Retold (King Arthur, Welsh mythology, Irish mythology):

Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Mercedes Lackey, T H White, Marion Zimmer Bradley

4) Fairy Tales retold:

Tanith Lee, Gregory Maguire

----------

This only scratches the surface. We could add Andre Norton, Jody-Lynn Nye, Fred Saberhagen, Philip Jose Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Vance, and for historical completeness, Jules Verne, H G Wells, C S Lewis, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Orwell, etc. and still find more to add.

I'll have to concur on the Holy Trinity of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov.

Vernes, Orwell, Wells, Andre Norton all helped define and create the genre as it stands.

Especially Verne. I mean you say steampunk to any rpg fan and you automatically think of a Verne novel/movie.

A selection without the rings trilogy is definately anemic in high fantasy.

I wanna add two authors to the already excellent list TomM has: Douglas Addams and Peter David. Both have very imaginative, visual and downright humorous storytelling skills.

Not to forget Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - good selling, and the Douglas Adams of fantasy.

As a teenager, I had enjoyed some of Gordon R. Dickson's sf adventures. Oh, and Lester Del Rey, too. Their work may seem a bit dated by today's standards, but it's fairly accessible reading. (Sometimes, it was the adventure angle that sparked my imagination as much as the sf angle.)
I suppose the Star Trek & Star Wars series of books would fall under the "adventure sf" angle, too, but aren't they available just about everywhere? In other words, if trying to get a wider variety of sf & fantasy in the store, one might not want to stock too many of those titles at the expense of non-ST & SW titles. Just a thought.

I don't know how you (or the store) thinks about "children's" fantasy lit., but there are some that adults would like to read, too, I think - esp. since "Harry Potter" has made it more fashionable:

C.S. Lewis was already mentioned; "Narnia" is a classic of course

There's also Michael Ende, who wrote "Momo" and "Neverending story" (don't let the terrible movies fool you - he withdrew his approval for them. If you get a chance, see the Momo movie, it's much better!) - though I don't know if they've been translated into english?

Polls Voice, you might try the "Science Nightstand" boards.

Re:SF Book Selection
General - Iain M Banks (The Culture series), John Brunner (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, & The Shockwave Rider are probably his best known works)
Cyberpunk - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling are almost default choices, though Noel Stephenson is equally good IMO...
SF/Fantasy - Michael Moorcock is perhaps
the definitive Sf/Fantasy writer IMO...
(The Elric, Hawkmoon, & The Dancers at the End of Time novel series would perhaps be the best known of his works, though Jerry Cornelius gets a honourable mention..).
Wild Card - Stanislaw Lem (Polish S.F Writer whose works include Solaris, The Futurlogical Congress, The Star Diaries, Memoirs of a Space Traveller (The Ijon Tichy series) & The Cyberiad...).

Well, thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I went to the bookstore today and spent three hours corralling everything down to a stack of order slips. Hopefully they'll sell!

Let us know how things turn out!

I'm probably in the wrong section... it's been ages. But is it possible to change the white background to something else other than white? Staring at a white screen is rather hard on the eyes and its one reason why I stopped checking the site and reading things. (The main reason was college started taking more of my non-existant free time) Anyway, when I use Microsoft Word, I usually have it set to blue background so its easier on the eyes. Seeing how this site is built around using a previously made topic thread, the threads can get quite long and take a bit to read.

Perhaps a light gray or some textured combination of colors? Or even a dark color and change the default font color? Again, I'm probably in the wrong topic section, but I wanted to share an idea.

Unfortunately, PV, that would need to be a change made by The Chief Nitpicker, whose time here is limited. There are instructions for mailing him on the front page of the forum.

...Staring at a white screen is rather hard on the eyes and its one reason why I stopped checking the site and reading things. ...

That surprises me. From all tips on ergonomic studies done about computer work, I've always heard that black letters on white background are easiest to read (compared to white letters on black, which is the worst, and green letters, which aren't good, either.)

I use the view function to increase the letter size from normal one step up (shortcut Ctrl+ in my Netscape) when reading a lot.

I haven't seen any actual studies, although there are several guidelines related to contrast and disabilities I've skimmed before. Black letters on a white background are generally considered the best, although Edward Tufte made a deliberate effort to design his website to have a similar color to paper. The color he chose works better on Windows gamma than the Mac.

When I first came to NitC my browser displayed the pages as a light blue. IIRC it was something that was controlled in the browser's Preferences file.

Yes it is in Preferences (for Firefox, anyway). It's under Fonts & Colors. you can change the Background color, just be sure to check the "Always use my colors" box.

Is it possible to determine someone's name or location from a post, even when you've only put in your screenname? My name is only on this site in the Nitpicker's guild membership directory, and is not linked to my SN, but someone replied to one of my recent posts by using my name. Just curious, and maybe a tad concerned.

Moderators and The Chief have access to IP numbers, so if someone happened to know where you really lived and did a reverse IP lookup because they were the Chief or a mod...


...then they could figure it out. But they'd almost have to know you anyway.

It is possible that your "style" is similar to another regular here, and that the post that addressed you by your real name was addressing you by the other person's screenname, thinking that you were a "sock-puppet" of the other person. Some people do that to show that they are not fooled by the change of name. Sometimes, though, they are wrong. In your case they might have been both wrong and wierdly "lucky" that the other person's screenname is the same as or similar to your real name.

On the other hand, it is possible that over the course of many posts you let enough personal information slip so that someone who knows you well from somewhere else was able to figure out who you are.

In any case, it would have a simple, natural explanation. It is not likely that someone is trying to get to you. ...But it wouldn't hurt to line your hat with tin foil, just in case.

What is a Zod?

One of the villains in Superman II?

From: Mark Morgan
To: Minions
Re: I am your new Kitchen Sink moderator

Kneel before Zod!


I guess I was curious how I became a minion and how I'm supposed to kneel before Zod if I don't know what a zod is.

I mean, is there some all powerful creature also guarding my laundry basket?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Zod

Wow, there's a picture of Mark!!

Thanks for the info on the screennames, the only way they could have identified me that way was if they had worked at the same KFC I did and been there for some of the incidents I mentioned, there is another person on here who uses his name and has my same initials but hadn't been posting to that board, but I'm just not going to worry about it.

Is it appropriate to use email to...

There's a person I know in real life who I occasionally chit chat with. It used to be around 3 times a week for 2min or so... But our class schedules have changed this semester so it’s hard to chat so to speak. I know she likes ice cream (well she talks like it’s an obsession) and I've teased her about it almost every time I've seen her. Unfortunately, I don't see her as much because of schedule differences. I don't know if she's picked up on the fact that I like her. Right now it’s at a level of friends you don’t see you outside of work, but I’d like it to be more than that, but I don’t see her where I used to see her (in the computer lab) much these days. How do people view flirting or trying to continue a friendship through email; with the intention of changing the friendship to one that’s outside of school? I’d like to tell her I like her, but in different words, but I don’t see her much this semester. I don’t want to drift apart waiting till next semester, but I’m not sure how polite it is to use email and the like as a means to continue the friendship.


(and yes, I know this is written with very poor grammar, I wasn't sure the best way to ask what I was wanting to ask, plus I can just blame it on love.)

Well, if it's the only way to contact her... Besides people used to use an archaic form of communication called "writing letters". ;-)

Send her an email telling her you miss seeing & talking to her as much as before & see how she reacts.

Though I would keep the email very neutral - don't tell her that you like her, because you don't want to give her the impression you're stalking her, or otherwise make her overcautious. Just an offer to eat ice-cream during the day in the cafeteria or similar, harmless all around (see the other thread where a harmless comment in email was mis-interpreted.)

There goes Polls Voice, always interfering with what I'm up to... sigh...

Well at least make her happy, don't buy her a flavor of ice cream that she doesn't like.

If anyone has any advice on phone services let me know. I'm getting a little tired of living in Verizon's backwater. At the apartment where I'm staying I can listen to the phone go to service and no service and back again all night long. Without the phone moving an inch. The last couple of weekends I tried to make a call from my friends' condo and I couldn't get three seconds into the call without it dropping the call.

I'm liking having a mobile phone, but I think I'm going to get a landline now that I've secured an apartment of my own. (No more couch surfing! Yay!) What are some opinions out there? Keep both? Find another more reliable cell phone service? The phone is older (a gift from the ex-girlfriend) but it's been great and there's nothing wrong with the phone I don't think. I have prepaid service (dang student loans!) but am willing to pay a deposit for a good solid postpaid service.

Is it a good idea to have both a landline and a cell? Or just a cell? Or just a landline? And should I go with a different provider? I'm in the Portland, OR metro area and will be for the forseeable future.

Some advice would be really appreciated.

Try At and T, Mark, or T mobile go ahead Talkitup

Didn't R work for a cell company? Why don't you ask him?

If you buy a watch (I've bought five in the past four years, and I now own 10. Plus, I gave my mom and dad one each this year) and you have to have links removed for them to fit, don't throw the links away. Save them; you may need them. I had to have one link put back on one of my watches to make it fit. I'd gained a bit of weight, and the watch band got too tight for my wrist. The Fossil store in the Woodbury Common shopping center in New York keeps a bin where (foolish) people deposit the links that have been removed. Don't do that. Save them. They don't take up a lot of space.

Malt-O-Meal used to include 75 cent coupons in their packages of Mini-Spooners. I would use the coupons, and the supermarket checkout scanner would double their value (even though "Do Not Double" was printed on the coupon). As a result, I would get a $2 bag of cereal for 50 cents. I guess they got wise, because the coupons are now gone.
On a JC Penney receipt is a URL to take a survey. It's well worth it, as you get a 15% off coupon for your next trip to Penney at the end of the survey. The real trick is to make multiple copies of the coupon (it's good for 30 days after you take the survey) and save them. You're only supposed to use one coupon every 30 days, but how can they check? I've gotten some sale stuff (shirts, jeans, belts) even cheaper that way. (Thanks to those coupons and others, I've gotten a dress shirt for $4, jeans for $5 and a great belt for $8)