Marc

I work at a residential medical facility on a 20-acre ranch. Last week, a beautiful, black, female cat showed up at the door. She appears to be fairly young (1-2 years) and has a beautiful, shiny coat and appears to have been well taken care of. We noticed that she had been declawed (all 4 paws). A couple of hours ago we were petting her and she grabbed onto a finger with her mouth...no teeth!

I understand the reasons for declawing. I understand the medical necessity for extracting teeth. Is there a medical reason to extract ALL of a cat's teeth? We are stunned at the thought of this poor cat having been outside with no claws or teeth...completely defenseless.

We are in Texas. My wife's insurance through her employer is almost doubling next year (starting in October). They are currently in open enrollment. Her crappy HMO will cost as much as a gold-level private plan. The HR company that handles their benefits claims that she can't decline coverage during open enrollment unless she is enrolled in another plan. Is this true? Can you not decline coverage and opt to be uninsured? She wouldn't be eligible for a marketplace plan until January 1. It seems like she is being trapped into a lesser, more expensive policy by the employer.

They are freshwater combos with 5/6 weight components. The Scientific Angler Trout package is $60 and the Okuma Cascade package is $66 and some change. He's currently looking at a $30 combo from Walmart, but I would like to get him something a step up from those. He's a beginner and would only use it infrequently. He wants to pack it on the back of his ATV to some small streams he recently discovered. Anything more expensive would be overkill. Feel free to recommend other combos in or below the $60 price range, but I would really like to know if anybody has any experience with either of these two combos.

We recently moved into a 1987 Fleetwood mobile home with a Coleman electric furnace. The filter was completely clogged and the furnace has a burning-plastic smell. We replaced the filter, but the furnace is still producing the odor. I have read that the blower motors are easy to replace, but I also know that there are multiple parts such as the capacitor. Are these parts separate from the motor? Is it possible that it is another part causing the odor? I have tried to do a visual inspection and can only see a small portion of the fan itself at the opening on the side of the casing. I would like to try to fix this myself for obvious $$ issues. Is there any advice to be had or resources recommended besides the typical "call a professional"?

Windows XP Pro on a Dell D600 with a Pentium M 1.6 processor.

In system properties the computer information shows:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) M

processor 1600MHz

599 MHz, 1.00 GB of RAM

I don't quite understand the 599 MHz. I'm assuming this is the actual CPU speed of the Pentium M.

The reason for the question is that I am having problems with the software bogging down and running sluggish. I checked another laptop in the department with the same specs and it shows 1.2 GHz. Why is mine showing 599? Could this be the problem? How do I fix it?

The helpdesk told me that I just had a slower CPU. I know this is incorrect, but don't know what to do.

Any ideas, please.

My wife asked me a question that I had never really thought about before. In the U.S. we refer to different ethnic groups born in the U.S. as being African-American, Asian-American, Muslim-American, etc.

How do other countries refer to ethnic groups? I never here about Korean-French or African-Koreans.

I'm not trying to be political, religious, devisive, or even ethnocentric, I just really don't know and would be interested to get an answer from people in other countries.

I want to design a page similar to this:

http://ezinearticles.com/?cat=Business:Careers-Emp...

I want to know how to have the source articles appear on the page without having a completely different page for each article.

My concern is that if I have 100 articles in 100 individual .html files and I need to update a link in the header or sidebar, I then have to edit all 100 pages. Can I have 1 article list page that, when an article is selected, the contents will populate in a master template page.

I'm pretty good at finding these answers on Google, but I'm not sure exactly what to search for. So I'm not necessarily looking for a tutorial, but rather some terms/phrases that I can search on that will help me find what I'm looking for.

Which one should be the more important political topic?

Just for kicks, I decided to look up some statistics about firearm related deaths in the US and compare them to alcohol related deaths in the US.

According to the CDC, alcohol was the contributing factor in almost 76,000 deaths in 2001. 35,000 of those deaths were caused by chronic health related conditions associated with alcohol. That still leaves 41,000 deaths such as DUI related, suicide, and accidents. The Brady Campaign website statistics for 2004 attributed close to 30,000 deaths to firearms.

If alcohol is killing more Americans than guns are, then why don't we hear an outcry for stiffer alcohol laws and enforcement? Why is it that teenagers (or adults, for that matter) can walk in and buy alcohol with little more than a glance at an ID, but I have to have a background check, go through a waiting period, and fill out all kinds of paperwork to purchase a gun?

Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in this?

If I ask the question...

Are there any good restaurants in Zimbabwe?

Why do people feel the need to answer...

Maybe OR

Why? Are you going to Zimbabwe? OR

I've never been there, but I hear it's nice?

If you don't have an answer...this is where I open the can of worms...why do you answer?

When I financed my last car, I directly asked the finance guy about principal payments and if he knew the proper procedures for the lender we were using. He stated that I could just make the monthly payment whatever I wanted and anything over the normal payment would be applied to the principal. I'm not a whiz-kid at these things, but I was pretty sure that this wasn't a "standard procedure" for most lenders. Sure enough, when I received my first bill, the special instructions for principal payments clearly stated that payments should be made separately and should include special instructions to apply the payment to the principal.

If I knew better, I would expect the finance guy to know better. So does the dealer lose any money on the deal if I make principal payments and pay the loan off early. I just assumed they received a straight upfront commission on the deal.

I understand that there is a cultural difference in personal space between Americans and Indians, but an Indian contractor working in the U.S. is making physical contact with me on a regular basis. The contact is subtle such as: leaning over my shoulder, pulling his chair close to me, standing behind me with hands on my shoulders, etc. I have not noticed this when he is working with others in the same room. In American culture, I would consider his contact to be flirtatious and bordering on unacceptable. I don't want to make a fool of myself or make things more uncomfortable if this is just a cultural difference.