Zombie Protestor wrote:

quetzalcoatlus wrote:I went out to the movies with this girl I have a crush on - it wasn't exactly a date but I think it was a positive step in the process of getting to know her enough to ask her out officially.

She doesn't look like this, does she?

Beat me to it. Make your move soon!

Maybe this is what is wrong with my at the moment, precisely, but I tend to assume that going to the movies alone with a guy that is not my brother or a long-time-ago stablished friend, constitutes a date.

It's been a while since I've had a class that deals with this, and I'm quite sleep deprived, so take this with a grain of salt:

Zombie Protestor wrote:1) If I drop two items of different mass, they fall at the same rate, blah blah blah. I got that. But if I connect those two objects, say, by putting a ball of putty on the end of a pencil, does the ball of putty end hit the ground first? I seem to from all the archival footage of bombs dropping that they are dropped horizontally and rotate so that they are vertical.

It will depend on the surface area of each, and where the center of mass is. The orientation which causes the least air resistance should be the one that you end up with. This doesn't directly answer your question, but looks like it might be an interesting read: http://www.hnsa.org/doc/missile/index.htm
also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29

Zombie Protestor wrote:2) What if I put two items of different mass on an incline? Say, I have a full minecart and an empty one and let them go at the top of different 45 degree inclines. Will the heavier one reach the bottom first? If so, is this simply a function of its ability to better overcome friction rather than it falling faster?

They should both go at the same speed, assuming all things are equal (including air resistance, so if you piled your extra load up higher, it would slow it down. here's an interesting wiki:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Bui ... ar/Physics
and, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclined_plane and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction

jvcc wrote:Tech-savvy people: I have received an iPod nano as a birthday/Christmas gift and want to be able to listen to it in my car. Should I get an adapter or an iPod dock? If possible, use the specific names of products so I can find them on eBay. Thank you.

One option is to get a stereo replacement for your car, with a built-in aux or ipod jack.
If you don't mind poor sound quality, one of those radio transmitters should work. I found that I got listening fatigue after about 1/2 hour, but if you have listened to overly compressed mp3s without a problem, that might be your best solution.

I bought a Belkin iPod tune FM transmitter (F8Z075-BLK), but did not realize I need some sort of thing to plug into my cigarette lighter. This is tedious. I hate machines.

Edit: Wait, that may just be the optional power cord. I still hate this thing.

It's optional, it can act as a power supply or batter extension as well.

Yesss. So it's just a matter of finding the right radio station, I guess. Maybe I'll get one of my friends to do it.

jvcc wrote:I hate machines.

My father was a machine you festering hag

ntw3001 wrote:Does your car have a jack socket? If so, you can be dealin' with a male-to-male jack lead. Here. I don't know if that's the best jack lead in the world, but it was the first one to come up on Google.

I have no idea what any of this means, but I suppose the fact that I find the phrase "male-to-male-jack" amusing, and maybe even slightly dirty, means that I am juvenile despite my advanced age.

fanelian wrote:Maybe this is what is wrong with my at the moment, precisely, but I tend to assume that going to the movies alone with a guy that is not my brother or a long-time-ago stablished friend, constitutes a date.

I agree for the most part, but sometimes that "long-time-ago stablished friend" wants the friendship to be more and doesn't realize s/he has already been forever friendzoned.

ntw3001 wrote:

jvcc wrote:I hate machines.

My father was a machine you festering hag

LOL

giantsfan97 wrote:

fanelian wrote:Maybe this is what is wrong with my at the moment, precisely, but I tend to assume that going to the movies alone with a guy that is not my brother or a long-time-ago stablished friend, constitutes a date.

I agree for the most part, but sometimes that "long-time-ago stablished friend" wants the friendship to be more and doesn't realize s/he has already been forever friendzoned.

Oh, yeah, You are right. In fact, I don't think I've ever gone alone with a guy-friend to the movies. Actually, the couple of times this friend invited me to go out, just the two of us, I felt alarm and declined. So I guess Ido think going alone with any guy that is not your brother is a date.

Oh coffee you're so good to me mmmmmmmmcofffeeeeeee

"Today is gonna be a glass-half-full day," declares the paper cup.

I created a bookmark folder called "Words I frequently forget" a while back in order to help me remember the words' meanings, which I frequently forget; these are words I feel I should already know. It hasn't helped so far so I've decided to do a "word a day" sort of thing where I learn a new word each day by using it correctly in at least ten different sentences. It has just now become January 8 in my timezone and today's word is...

ESOTERIC

Fun fact: I cannot stop confusing this word with "erudite," which will be tomorrow's word of the day.
Sentence: "Michael Field scholarship remains an esoteric area of study, despite a resurgence of interest in the poets in the late twentieth century."

Let me assuage your fears by saying that not all ten sentences will necessarily be posted here. Some of them will be spoken to people I interact with in the actual world.

So if you had broadband internet access and a plug-in VoIP device (such as a Magic Jack), and you plugged a phone line from a dial-up modem to the Magic Jack and tried to connect to a dial-up ISP...what happens?

Zombie Protestor wrote:So if you had broadband internet access and a plug-in VoIP device (such as a Magic Jack), and you plugged a phone line from a dial-up modem to the Magic Jack and tried to connect to a dial-up ISP...what happens?

Uh, it works, but slowly? Why would you do that?

loofah wrote:

Zombie Protestor wrote:So if you had broadband internet access and a plug-in VoIP device (such as a Magic Jack), and you plugged a phone line from a dial-up modem to the Magic Jack and tried to connect to a dial-up ISP...what happens?

Uh, it works, but slowly? Why would you do that?

He wants to relive the nineties?

If Japan is famous for its cherry blossoms, and hence a large number of cherry trees, then why aren't cherries a larger part of Japanese cuisine?

Apparently the ones they've cultivated for ornamental purposes do not really produce the fruit you know. They do use the flowers and leaves, in some candies and teas, though.

Wildflower honey - why are you so good? I put you in my tea, yet my fingers are sticky.

In windows 7, each of the buttons for an open program in the taskbar is highlighted a different color when you hover. I wonder how it knows what color to use. I've noticed the color is similar to one in the program's particular icon, but how does it chose a color when the icon has several colors in it?

Windows' Color Hot-Track feature works by "dynamically abstracting the color values of the application icon to find the most dominant RGB value."

Whoa, I should go to bed.

I don't really know what thread this should go in, but does anyone have advice for how to cope with a family member having serious medical issues?

Without going too much into detail, for a few years now my mom has been dealing with a disease (on different medications, seeing different doctors, in and out of surgeries, etc.) When the seriousness of her illness began to hit me I responded by trying to withdraw from her in order to avoid dealing with how difficult it is to see her in pain/unhappy. That worked okay for a while because my brother was still living at home, and in addition to being emotionally open (like her) he's also good at cheering people up by making light of a serious situation. He moved out a few months ago and now that it's just my mom and me at home and she talks to me about her problems, medical and otherwise, which I know she needs to do but I'm not good at offering people sympathy, particularly people I actually care about. So lately it's become our regular exercise in futility for her to vent to me and for me to not know how to respond. I know that she has every right to and that I should be able to respond in a comforting manner, but I need to figure out how.

I should mention, I'm good at helping her deal with work-related problems because you can usually offer advice to solve those, but there's nothing I can do if her medications aren't working or her disease hasn't gone into remission. It's also difficult because we can't do the activities we used to do for fun since she has difficult walking and has very little energy. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, I really don't. I just need advice because I'm sure other people have dealt with similar issues.

I'm fairly worthless with advice so feel free to ignore, but at this point what I'd suggest is that you put aside yourself and shore up your mother and her ideas as much as you can. Even if you disagree, nod anyway and let her feel that she's making a large impact on you and your world. I mean, not to sound harsh and uncaring, but it doesn't sound like she's got a lot of time left, and I apologize for being blunt, but let her viewpoint run free. Let her go happy.

Apologies in advance if this isn't what you've sought.