chonudi

Perhaps someone can help me understand my condition after excessive sweating. I'm a 50 year old male of average build, lean, and in good health. However, I sweat a lot in hot and humid conditions. Much more so than my wife. When I rest at the end of a day of hiking or touring or working in the garden I'm exhausted, and it sometimes takes a couple days to recover. I drink vitamin fortified water as well as plain water, but perspiring, not the activity, just wears me out. Any advice on how to quickly recover from this condition?

I live in the NE and often take 2 or 3 week vacations in the winter, and the water pipes for one shower are prone to freezing when the temperature dips below freezing because its pipes run through the garage ceiling. Any down sides to draining the pipes?

Cold air drafts through my recessed lights and into my family room. Unfortunately, I cannot access the attic space above the recessed fixture. The recessed fixtures are Juno 5" IC rated high-hat cans with gold colored conical trim rings. I believe the bulbs are BR30 spot/flood lights. The bulbs are recessed 3" into the fixture and not flush with the ceiling.

I'd like to seal the 1/8" gap between the trim ring and the bulb with some kind of high temperature gasket. I'd like suggestions for something that's easy to find or make and inexpensive. It should be able to withstand incandescent bulb temperatures.

What I envision is installing the bulb through the gasket, so that when the bulb is tightened it will press against the gasket and seal the gap with the trim ring.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

My desktop server is failing, and I want to replace it with a budget laptop that uses minimal power and can be left on all of the time or perhaps have a wake-up-on-LAN feature. I will connect several external 2 TB drives via USB for data storage, and I intend to install Windows Home Server 2011 on it. My processing needs on the server are minimal. It will primarily be a file server and backup server for all of my client computers. What is a suitable laptop or a suitable laptop configuration?

My daughter is 18 years old and has a job on her college campus, thus giving her earned income. I doubt she will earn enough to maximize ($5K) her IRA contribution. Can I give her the remaining balance?

My wife and I will be visiting Maui in a few weeks, and we'd like to take a snorkeling/sailing/whale watching excursion on a small and fast catamaran. So far I've only found excursions on large catamarans. We like a little adventure without being reckless. I took such an excursion about 15 years ago but can't recall the name of the operator. (Can't find a general Hawaii category, so I'm posting this in Honolulu.)

I'm planning a 5-day vacation during the Thanksgiving weekend (Nov 25-29) to visit a resort in La Romano in the Dominican Republic.

Now, that hurricane Tomas will be sweeping through Haiti and inevitably affect DR will the southern shore of DR be affected much? Should I postpone this trip?

One security in my portfolio spunoff another company in July 2010. By using Quicken's spinoff action, it caused the creation of many new transactions for the initial purchase and the subsequent dividends. Each transaction's share quantity was a fraction of the original as per the spinoff's share ratio.

Shouldn't a spinoff be recorded as a single transaction on the total number of shares on the date of the spinoff?

Quicken's way of doing it seems unecessarily messy and inaccurate because the spinoff company didn't exist on the past dates.

I have an old bike computer and can't remember its brand or how to configure it. The logo on it is a black triangle (like a pyramid) with the symbol of a man on a bicycle in the center but slanted upwards to the right.

It has an LCD screen with 2 large round black buttons below the screen, and the logo between the buttons. It uses a thick but small button sized battery with number L1142.

It's a basic bike computer bought from Target about 6 years ago. I accidentally reset it while preparing for a ride and now can't remember exactly how to re-configure it. The specific piece of information that I need to enter is something like the wheel size in centimeters or something like that, or else it won't accurately measure speed and distance.

I need this information tonight because the NYC 5 boro bike tour is tomorrow!!!

Thanks very much.

Original question:

I'm 46 years old and I have a traditional IRA which is invested in the stock market. Some of the investments incurred losses. Just for example, I invested $5000 into a stock that went out of business and is no longer trading.

If possible can this $5000 loss be written off against the $3000 per year limit? If so, when? ....at retirement when I start withdrawing from the IRA?

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Follow-up question:

An answer from "David Z" said that because no taxes were paid on the traditional IRA contributions, losses could not be deducted.

In my situation, my traditional IRA contributions were not tax deductible because my income exceeded the IRS threshold. So, all of my traditional IRA contributions were paid with after-tax money. Does this change anything?

I'm 46 years old and I have a traditional IRA which is invested in the stock market. Some of the investments incurred losses. Just for example, I invested $5000 into a stock that went out of business and is no longer trading.

If possible can this $5000 loss be written off against the $3000 per year limit? If so, when? ....at retirement when I start withdrawing from the IRA?

I have an old Dell XPS-T 500MHz P3 computer that still works, but even with 750MB RAM it isn't powerful enough for Win XP Pro.

Is it cost effective to replace the motherboard, RAM, CPU, video card, etc. with new components? The new configuration doesn't have to be a high-end machine, just good enough to run Win Vista.

My iinstincts say it isn't worth it when a reasonably configured kit with case, powersupply, motherboard, cpu, RAM, hard disk, video card, etc. can be bought for about $300.

A couple years ago I was camping somewhere near Stroudsburg, PA. On my way back to Central NJ, but still in PA, I came to a place where there were farms with hundreds of acres of rolling hills of sunflower fields along the county road. The sunflowers were about 8 feet tall with large blossoms. It was very picturesque because all of them were facing the sun.

Can someone please tell me where this place is or where a similar place is in NJ or PA? I want to go back and take photographs if they are still in bloom.

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 and writing a VB.NET test program. This program uses a DLL as a resource. The DLL was written in C and compiled with VS2008 with the /clr (Common Language Runtime) switch.

Will Visual Studio's intellisense automatically display the DLL's API, or must I manually type code to prototype the DLL's API with DECLARE statements and/or SYSTEM.RUNTIME.INTEROP.DLLATTRIBUTES statements?

So far, intellisense has not picked up the DLL's API, and I have to manually enter the API function prototypes.

Also, is a default namespace automatically assigned to C DLL functions compiled with the /clr switch? If so, what is it, and how is it specified for the VB.NET "imports" command?

I'll be in Puerto Rico (San Juan, Fajardo, Vieques, and Aguadilla) during the Xmas break, and I'd like to buy small gifts for my 8 colleagues (mostly family men and women and a couple swinging singles).

What can I buy for them that is uniquely Puerto Rican and within $5?

Thanks.

How can I get my teenage daughters (ages 14 and 15) to understand and identify THEIR style of clothing? They are slim and dress modestly but have no guidance as to what will look good on them.

They are transitioning from tee-shirts and jeans to tops/blouses and dresses.

They are following their friends and trying to buy clothes that are too stylish and inappropriate for their ages and school. They have visions of being fashionable and don't realize that they aren't old enough, don't have that kind of money, and look slutty in sheer and low-cut tops.

Because no rental cars are available for the Christmas weekend, we will have to use public transportation and/or taxis when visiting Vieques.

How efficiently will publicos take us to the major tourist spots and beaches?

How easily can one be found to take us back to a major town like Isabella or Esperanza during the day and around 10pm?

I live in a well built condo and rarely hear my neighbors above, below, and next to me. I want to replace my carpet with laminated flooring (Pergo or similar). This is allowed by my condo association.

What kind of and how much underlayment should be used to make the laminated flooring as quiet as carpeting, so my neighbors below won't hear any noise?

Pergo has a very thin plastic underlayment, about 1mm thick, attached to the bottom of each slat. The stores also sell additional plastic underlayment that is about 2mm thick. I've also seen a fibrous yarn-like underlayment that is about 1cm thick, but I suspect this will make the floor feel soft when walked upon. And lastly, I've seen a 5mm thick compressed cardboard-like underlayment.

Which of these is sufficient to block the sound of a chair rolling on the floor, a dining table chair sliding, and normal walking? I'll also tighten the subfloor to get rid of squeaks before laying the laminate flooring.