almintaka

I rec'd a message from another Yahoo Answers user. It was not abusive, just a request for genealogy information on her family.

There was a link in the email that said "Reply to this message".

When I clicked on the link, I was connected to the user's Yahoo Answers profile page. On that page there was no option to reply to the message or to send another message to the user.

Why?

I'm working with the "basic" view because the "newest Yahoo email" is junk.

Unfortunately it seems that the "basic" view has no formatting controls (bold, italic, underline, hyperlink) when a new message is being composed - or at least, I haven't been able to find any.

Has anyone using the "basic" view been able to access the formatting controls that were available in the previous Yahoo email version?

PS: in an earlier post I reported that Outlook.com was one of the free webmail services whose developers were smart enough to retain a design similar to the previous Yahoo email. I thought that I could open an account there and enable access to my Yahoo email account.

It turns out that you can only access your Yahoo email account from Outlook.com if you're using Yahoo Plus email - in other words, the paid version. If you have a gmail account, you won't have this problem with accessing your account from Outlook.com.

Yahoo marches on.

Lately when I've tried to use Yahoo People Search (as well as many other "direct-link" searches) I get interrupted by the asinine Axis demo page. Trying to use People Search from that page results in the Axis demo page again.

I don't want an Axis demo. I want to do direct-link searches, like the Yahoo People Search. Even when I try to access the People Search via the Yahoo Directory or the "All Search Services" option (IOW, the link Yahoo's own Directory Search provides for the People Search) I get the Axis demo page.

A search on "People Search" (without the word "Yahoo") gives Whitepages,com as the first hit. Unfortunately I've found that Whitepages.com is not as good as Yahoo People Search was. I've verified this by searching for some of the same names I had previously searched using the Yahoo service. The results have not been as complete - mostly there are links for more information via fee paid search services. Other hits in the list include Yahoo People Search, but... once again the Axis demo page appears instead.

So where is Yahoo People Search? How do I get it back?

Today I noticed that when I logged into Yahoo Mail and went to my Inbox, I was receiving instant messages from someone I didn't know. I also noticed that I had been logged into Yahoo Messenger without permission. So I logged out of Messenger. Then I went into the "Hi, User" options menu in the upper left of the display and clicked on Invisible to Everyone.

As soon as I did this, I was logged back into Messenger without permission and started receiving those unwanted messages again. Guess I wasn't so invisible after all.

I want nothing to do with Messenger. I don't want to be automatically logged into Messenger when I log into Yahoo Mail and I don't want to be logged into Messenger when I select "Invisible to Everyone" in that "Hi, User" options menu.

I looked through the mail and profile settings. There is a Messenger settings menu but does not include the option to disable it entirely. Likewise, there is nothing in the Mail settings or Profile settings (not even in the Privacy section) that includes the option to get rid of Messenger entirely.

Is there a way to do that besides logging off every time it arbitrarily logs me on?

I am getting flooded with "connect" requests from Yahoo Pulse. How can I keep this from happening?

Like a lot of other Yahoo email users, I started getting a large number unsolicited email invitations to "connect" on Yahoo. I thought it was pure SPAM. Then I looked a little closer and realized I had a "Pulse" profile I didn't know I had, and that my privacy settings had been set to make me visible to all the idiots trying to connect to me. This was done without my approval or permission. This was a violation of my privacy. I am outraged. I have already gone to this fool "Pulse" account and made my profile there invisible. But I want to do more. I want to get rid of the Pulse profile altogether while keeping my Yahoo email profile. I want to be able to set my email profile settings without making the same changes in some inane Pulse profile that I did not want in the first place. Is there a way to delete the Pulse profile but keep the email profile?

Yahoo had no business doing this to me or anyone else without asking permission. I hope the fools who sanctioned this "service" are summarily terminated for exposing us to identity thieves this way.

Hi Everyone,

In the past few weeks Spamguard has been letting more and more spam get into my inbox. I keep flagging those messages as spam but the next day I get another 6 or 7 spam messages that are very similar to the ones I flagged.

Does Spamguard pay any attention at all to message content? It seems to be completely ignoring it now.

Has anyone else noticed recent increases in spam?

Have a good one,

Big Al Mintaka

Hi Everyone,

A few of us have been having problems with an "Invalid URL" when we try to access our Yahoo email accounts.

In another thread that was deleted by the originator, I saw a suggestion to add "us." (without quotes) to the start of the URL.

***Credit the user "Erik" with this answer; unfortunately it was deleted along with that thread:***

If the invalid URL starts with

http://mg1.mail.yahoo.com/...

do this at the beginning

http://us.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/...

URL's containing mg2 instead of mg1 don't have the same problem, at least for me.

I've seen this happen with two different browsers: IE7 and Firefox. It happens when Yahoo redirects the URL

http://mail.yahoo.com/

To the wrong one, such as

http://mg1.mail.yahoo.com/

I doubt this is a browser problem.

Good luck and thanks again to "Erik" for this solution,

Big Al Mintaka

Sen. Virgil Goode recently criticized Sen. Keith Ellison's intention to be sworn in using the Quran. Goode also wrote a letter to his constituents saying

"The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration **there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office** and demanding the use of the Quran ... **I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies** "

In addition to ignoring the fact that freedom of religious belief is guaranteed by the First Amendment, Goode overlooked the two Buddhists in Congress: Reps. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Hank Johnson of Georgia.

Why didn't he complain about them? Isn't he worried that in the next century we will have many more Buddhists in the United States and in office if we do not adopt the "Virgil Goode position on immigration"?

Today the president said he has the authority to send more troops to Iraq even if the Congress disallows the "surge" (i.e. escalation).

Do you think he really has the authority to do this?

When you answer, bear in mind that the Constitution gives exclusive authority to wage war to Congress - not to the president.

Also bear in mind that "Commander in Chief" is a civilian position, not a military one. It was made that way by the founding fathers to ensure that the actions of the President in wartime were subject to approval by the representatives of the people in Congress.

Please - no hatred or intolerance of other people's views. Try, if you can, to give a reasoned response one way or the other. I am interested in reading informed opinions, not venomous diatribes from EITHER side.

That's EITHER side. Let's keep it fair and balanced, OK?

Hello Everyone,

Recently my vet put my big male cat on phenobarbitol to control seizures. It works as far as that goes, but he's clearly hammered all the time and doesn't really like it much. The vet says this will clear up "in time", when eventually the cat's system gets used to it. He wouldn't be more specific than that, saying that it varies from cat to cat.

I was wondering if anyone else out there has had to dope their cat like this, and how long the lethargic stage lasted.

PS: he's an indoor cat, so he's not going to wander into traffic in a daze or anything like that.

Best wishes to everyone and their cats,

Big Al Mintaka

Hi Everyone,

I have some 4 X 8 sheets of 1" foam insulation that I'd like to use as a roadbed for a model train layout. The problem is that this is the type of foam board that has a metallic backing sheet glued to it. I'd like to remove this backing so I don't have to worry about shorts on the table.

Tearing and scraping don't work every well. Is there some sort solvent I can use to remove the backing without dissolving the foam in the process?

Thanks to all for taking the time to read this. Have a good day!

Big Al Mintaka

Manufacturers guarantee their blank DVD media for upwards of 75 years in some cases. Do home-recorded DVD's really last that long? I'm starting to hear reports of disc failure only one year after recording, particularly for some of the dual-layer discs sold by Memorex and Verbatim. I don't hear much about single-layer discs.

Thanks for taking the time to read my question, and have a good day!!

Big Al Mintaka

What's the point? We've never learned anything useful beyond the fact that we're just self-centered animals who prefer killing to being killed. We're social animals, so we can be lazy and let the society do our killing for us (most of the time), but that's as complicated as it gets.

Why waste time trying to glorify carniverous apes? Learning for its own sake? No such thing. We learn to be better than other learners because we're just big, egotistical baboons flexing our pects at each other. Everything we do is just the activity of animals fighting each other. We glorify it because it makes what we're doing seem more glorious than what other fighters are doing.

This is a waste of time. We are a waste of time. The universe will get along fine without us because we mean literally nothing compared to the rest of it.

The sooner the better. I hate all of it. It's complete and utter bullshit.

I don't know why, but I've just recently realized that I can't imagine a future beyond one or two days.

I suffer from the usual hopelessness of severely depressed people. But when I was advised by my pdoc to try to think and plan more for the future, I couldn't even force myself to do it. Everything I do, think, and feel assumes that I will be dead within a day, two at the most. This would be OK if I were a New Age "in the moment" type, but I'm not. I'm morbidly depressed and am terrified of dying.

It seemed to my pdoc that the solution would be to train myself to think more about the future and anticipate positive things.

I just can't do it. I literally cannot imagine myself doing even mundane things by the weekend.

To me there simply is no future. It's something I seem to know and so can't think about. It just isn't there.

I don't like it here. I'm afraid to do anything about it because I'm a coward. There is no afterlife, of course. That's not what I'm worried about.

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to find NIQUET family ancestors in the St Jean-d'Angely, Brizambourg, St-Loup area of France (Charente-Maritime).

I have some information placing families in St-Loup and Brizambourg circa 1600 - 1666, but I can't find any info earlier than that. The few church and notary records I have don't link them to any parents or other ancestors.

I can provide details as needed, but I wanted to throw out a general teaser just to find out if anyone out there knows anything about NIQUET in that area and time, and/or what resources/researchers I might be able to access to learn more.

Thanks to all,

Big Al Mintaka

Hi Everyone,

I have a Lexmark C510 color laserjet. When it works, it produces higher quality, more durable prints than inkjets. The colors don't fade, and they resist smearing because they're not water soluble like the inks used in inkjet cartridges.

The problem, at least with the C510, involves high maintenance costs in order to keep getting quality printouts. I'm frequently replacing toner cartridges, photodeveloper cartridges, fusers, and even waste toner bottles (!!!) to remove color banding and streaks from the printouts. Lexmark hasn't been able to give me satisfactory reasons for all this maintenance other than "replace this, replace that," etc.

Needless to say, these color cartridges are a lot more expensive than ink cartridges.

What's your take on this? Are color laserjets worth the high maintenance costs in order to get higher quality output than inkjets?

Thanks to all for taking the time to read this lengthy question.

Have a good day!!!

Big Al Mintaka

Hi Everyone,

I have a number of passive A/V switch boxes I use to route audio/video signals from my various DVRs, DVDs, VCRs, etc, to TVs around the house.

The problem with these switch boxes is that they tend to get pulled off the backs of their shelves by the attached cables. Even if I use strain releases on the shelves, the switches still bob around a lot because they're so much lighter than the cables. More info:

1. They're sealed units. I can't get them apart to drill through the bottoms into the shelves.

2. I tried strong two-sided tape but it gives way after only a day or two.

3. I don't think Hot Glue will work very well on the smooth wood surfaces of the shelves.

4. Magnets probably aren't a good idea (g).

So, does anyone have any advice on how to attach the switch boxes firmly to the shelves of the entertainment centers?

Thanks to all for taking the time to read this.

Have a good day!

Big Al Mintaka

Hi, I'm trying fasten a deadbolt strikeplate to metal door with a wooden core. One of the woodscrews threaded OK, but the top one acted as though the wood inside the door was stripped. I tried a larger wood screw but it just pushed in by hand!

I took the deadbolt assembly out of the door and looked inside. It looks as though most of the wood behind the top of the strikeplate is broken away.

What can I do to fasten the top of the strikeplate to the door? There's no metal behind it and the visible wood is only about 1/4 thick; after that it's cracked away. I don't think it'll hold a nut-and-bolt....

I know, that was clear as mud. Sorry about that. Any ideas on fastening that strikeplate with no metal or wood to tie it to?

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Have a good day!