Mike W

Obviously its legal to possess and use there but must it be purchased there or can it be purchased somewhere else (legally or not) and brought in? If so is there a limit to how much you can bring in, like with alcohol?

In the United States. I have hidden camera footage of my landlord bringing a police officer into my apartment and going through some of my belongings. When questioned I didn't tell him I had it on camera, just that somebody had seen them and told me (which was also true) the landlord denied it.

I got a speeding ticket a few weeks ago (I am licensed in and the ticket was in Indiana if it makes a difference). If I plead or am found guilty it would be a 4 point violation. Obviously the ideal result for me would be to contest the ticket and win. Unfortunately the research I've done so far on the judge and the deputy suggests that he will appear and I will be found guilty if I go to court. I have a few other options though. The prosecutors office has offered a deferral agreement. Basically I admit to the charge, pay the fine plus a program fee and as long as I don't get another ticket for 12 months I don't get any points and the violation won't go on my record. My other option is to just plead guilty or no contest and pay the fine and take the points. I can then voluntarily complete a driver safety course (traffic school) and the state will take 4 points off my license, which would get me back to 0. The cost of the course is a fraction of the deferral program fee. When it comes to my insurance, do they look at points, violations, or some combination of the two? As far as my rate with my current (or potentially future if I change) insurer is concerned is there a difference between no violation and having the violation but 0 points?

I'm in the early planning stages of building my first PC. I know in terms of making the computer work, too much power is better than too little. But in terms of energy efficiency, is the power supply going to constantly draw its maximum wattage from the power outlet, or just what it needs at any given time to power the various hardware components up to its maximum?

My wife and I will be visiting from Indianapolis next week. We're both big Blackhawks fans and we have tickets to Game 4 on the 21st. We will be staying in the Loop. We are taking Amtrak so we won't have our car with us. To save on cab fare and avoid traffic we were thinking of just taking the L to and from the United Center. Are we going to get robbed/stabbed/shot if we try to take the L back to our hotel after the game? Specifically we'd take the blue line from Illinois Medical District to Monroe Street. Reasonable plan, or should we budget for a cab instead?

Does it count as an incomplete pass, does it have it's own category, or is it not tracked at all?

Say Team A is on the power play and there's about a minute left on that when Team B commits another penalty and is about to go 2 men down. Its a delayed penalty because Team A has possession of the puck and they bring out an extra skater. Before Team B can get possession and a whistle, Team A scores. How does it work? Scoring a goal typically ends a power play or delayed penalty. Does the first penalty end and the second player still go to the box? Does the second penalty get nullified and the first power play continue? Or do both penalties end, making it 5-on-5 again?

Just ordered a Dell XPS 8700 and plan to upgrade the graphics card immediately when it arrives. The two cards I'm looking at are the EVGA GeForce GTX 650 2GB and the EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB. Both are about the same price. I'm having trouble finding benchmarks for the 2GB 650; most of what I'm finding is for the 1GB version. So will I be better off with the slightly more advanced 650 Ti, or the additional 1GB of memory on the regular 650?

I've been having some problems with my computer. Its an HP Pavilion d5100t. Running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Within the last week or so, whenever I boot it up, Windows either takes a very long time (10+ minutes) to start, or doesn't start at all. Or at least the signal to the monitor shuts off during startup. The little green LED next to the power button on the CPU tower that signifies the computer is "thinking" sometimes continues to come on after the monitor loses signal, but obviously I can't see whether the computer is actually doing anything or not. There is a screen with the HP logo that appears immediately after turning the power on and it seems to stay there a lot longer than it used to. Then it goes to a black screen and a little flashing text cursor pops up in the top left corner of the screen. It used to breeze past this screen in a matter of seconds, but this seems to be where it is really hanging up. It will spend several minutes on this screen with the flashing cursor; then when the monitor signal fails it is usually at that point, or it will continue booting, but still go much slower than it should. My initial thought was that it was some sort of virus/malware or a system file had become corrupted. It had been a long time since I had done a clean format and I had already kind of been thinking about doing that anyway just to get rid of the junk that naturally builds up over time. So I went ahead and after making sure the important stuff was backed up, I ran the built in HP system recovery application, which wipes the C: and does a clean Windows installation from the recovery partition. But that didn't seem to help at all. So now I'm thinking its a hardware issue of some sort. btw... Once Windows actually starts there are no apparent problems. It runs just as I'd expect a clean computer with a fresh Windows installation to run. It just takes forever and sometimes multiple attempts to get there. Anybody experienced this before or have any ideas of what could be causing it? Probably going to take it in to my computer guy next week, but it would be nice to have some idea of what I'm looking at beforehand.

I'm taking Amtrak to visit a friend and have a 7 hour layover at Union Station. I haven't been to Chicago in almost 20 years and I'd like to explore the city a little bit while I'm there. I will have a small duffel- small enough to qualify as a carry on, but too big to lug around downtown Chicago all day. Are there any storage lockers available at Union Station or in any nearby public buildings where I can store my bag for the day?

Lots of empty seats tonight, like every other game at the Joe that I've seen on TV recently. I know they are officially sellouts, but lots of seats in the first few rows are always empty.

I recently switched from an iPhone to a Galaxy S3. While I don't regret the change in the slightest, my one disappointment has been the inability to run a USB cable directly from my phone to my car's stereo to play mp3s, Pandora and iHeart Radio. I have read that there are some round-a-bout ways of accomplishing this through an external digital-analog converter, but as far as I'm concerned the additional cables and equipment defeat the purpose. I know that Jelly Bean includes support for USB audio, but I'm not really a techie and have had a hard time understanding exactly what level of support it provides. Most of the people discussing this on various Android forums use terms/concepts I don't completely understand and/or contradict each other. Basically what I want to know is, once Jelly Bean rolls out to the GS3, will I be able to plug the device directly into the car stereo via USB like I could with my iPhone or will I still have to go through an external DAC? I really don't care too much about the ability to control the device through the stereo head unit. Support for this would be nice, but not necessary.

Some friends and I are going to Cedar Point on Thursday and basically what we want to know is how busy we should expect it to be. I really hate waiting in lines, but since we're going in the middle of the week and most schools have started already, are the lines going to be long enough to justify the additional cost?

Thinking about visiting Universal with a friend on 2/20 (Monday) and just curious how busy it typically is during the week in February. Is it worth it to spend extra for the Express Pass?

When I try to connect, it asks for my WEP code. My network uses WPA2 encryption, not WEP. I tried using my WPA2 passcode but that doesn't work. Changing my network encryption to less secure WEP is not an option.

Traveling through Chicago on 6/19, which is a Sunday, on my way up to Racine. Will be coming into Chicago on I-94 from Indiana. I should hit Chicago around mid-morning. Will it be easier to take 94 through Chicago or should I go around on the toll road? On a weekday I'd definitely go around but will traffic be bad on a Sunday morning?

So my girlfriend picked Mother's Day to tell me that she's pregnant. This will be the first for both of us and we're both excited. But immediately after telling me, she asks where I'm taking her to celebrate Mother's Day. First, she's not a mother yet. Second, we live in a relatively small college town and between Mother's Day and graduation (which was also Sunday) all the restaurants were completely booked. Since then she's been all pissed off with me because she's a mother to be and I didn't buy her flowers or take her out to celebrate Mother's Day. I might have tried to set something up, but like I said I only found out on Sunday and it was too late. If anybody out there (females in particular) can tell me WTF I could/should have done differently, I'd appreciate it.