LeMat

If there are going to be villagers added in the 1.9 patch, is it foolish of me to build up an NPC village I found and store all my materials there? Will they destroy my stuff or bar my access?

Hi everyone,

This isn't a homework problem; I'm way too old to be doing math assignments. :)

I'm doing a kind of mini-investigation. Say somebody wanted to arrive at the final figure $3,269.23, and they had to add two numbers together to do it.

If that person chose $2,043.27 and $1,225.96, what process did he use to come up with that result? Neither number is a nice, round percentage of the final figure, but $1,225.96 IS 60% of $2,043.27.

What process or calculation did this guy use to decide on these two numbers? If $1,225.96 is 60% of $2,043.27, what relationship do these numbers have with $3,269.23 (other than that number is their sum)?

Hi all,

Law student here, knowing nothing about economics. I need to come up with a formula that will let me demonstrate the difference between different multipliers in costs awards. (I'm not asking you to do my homework! I can make my point just by saying that 2.5 is greater than 1.5, but I'd really like some real numbers for emotional effect.)

The question:

Suppose there is a law firm that does $100,000 worth of work on a case every year for ten years. At the end of that ten years, there is a 75% chance that they will win the case. If they win, they will have those costs reimbursed (suppose a 3% annual interest rate). Furthermore, the judge might order that that reimbursement be multiplied by 1.5, 2.0, or 2.5. (Jackpot!)

What I'm looking for is the net present value of that ten-year investment of $100,000 annually if the judge:

a) does not make any multiplier order

b) orders a 1.5x multiplier

c) orders a 2.0x multiplier

d) orders a 2.5x multiplier

If you can just provide me with the appropriate formula, I'm happy to do this myself --- it's just that having to base the value of these orders on an investment that is itself compounding over ten years is well beyond my capacity to figure out!

Thanks in advance!

Our cat is a rescue, and we've had her for about a year and a half. She's seven (or so) and in good health. She's a sweetheart, and we love her. But there's a problem.

She loves people. Loves them! But when we're gone, she gets upset. And when she gets upset, she vomits and defecates in hard-to-spot areas that we can never find until they stink.

So now, every time I'm out of town on business, my wife wakes up to find poop and vomit all over the place. Her litter box is cleaned twice daily, and she's in great health. We've tried everything, and it either has no effect or the steps we take make her upset, so she poops and vomits all over everything.

Apart from this, she's a great cat. We're not giving any thought to confining her or giving her away. But do we have to live like this? Help!

The wife and I found a cheap plastic mirror that has the perfect frame for an old map of ours. We figured we would either:

a) Remove the plastic "glass" and just use the frame, or

b) Peel off the mirror silver in the back, leaving the transparent plastic "glass" to cover our map.

I managed to get all the paint off the back of it, but the mirror silver itself just won't come off.

So! Two questions, good folks of the Answers community!

a) What kind of material can I get to act like "glass" over the map if we just remove the mirror altogether? Some kind of lucite or plexiglass that I can cut to the right size? Where could I find something like that?

b) Can anything remove mirror silver from the back of a cheap plastic mirror? Super-strength paint stripper doesn't seem to do anything but clean it.

I'm Canadian.

How weird is it that OUR politicians get in huge trouble for suggesting that there should be a private option in health care, but Obama gets in huge trouble for suggesting a public one?

Seems to me like a pretty good situation. I've had socialized health care all my life, and it's been pretty good. I get sick, I go to the doctor, I swipe a card and go home. When my life was in jeopardy, I went straight to the ER, surgery, and stayed in hospital as long as I had to. Swiped my card, went home. Didn't pay a dime, never will. (Apart from tax, of course.) With a socialized system, the costs go down because everyone's insured together, just like a big corporate plan. Of course, it would go down even more if we had a private option, TOO, which sounds like the system you might be having.

The only problem with the Canadian system is the middle-of-the-road stuff, like, my knee hurts but it's not a huge deal. Then you might be in for a six-month wait for an MRI. Times like that, I'd want a private option to just pony up for some private coverage and get right in to the tube.

So... I guess I'm jealous of you guys for having an option. Although I gather that about 40% of you would rather stab yourself in the eye than have the stuff I've got at present, so more power to you.

I'm just glad that you're keeping the private option both ways --- whether Obama's plan succeeds or not --- so that I can come down to New York, stay in a hotel, have a nice dinner, spend some money and get my knee scanned.

Okay, so my stud finder was proving pretty much useless against my office wall. I measured out a spot far away from any electrical wires, etc. and started to drill. I got about an inch in, and I just can't get any farther. It SOUNDS a little bit like this might be a metal plate, but I am now running into it everywhere. (I'm in an apartment building.) Now I've set the stud finder to "metal", and it seems to be working better.

Is there any way I can install a shelf into such a shallow hole, or punch through it without something like a hammer drill and some heavy construction I'll get evicted for? The shelves are the wife's IKEA "Lack" shelves: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/6010375... so they're going to need some serious support.

Am I, pardon the pun, screwed?

My cat is very smart and easily bored; her favourite thing in the world is trying to figure out how the humidifier works. We've tried getting her toys -- balls, little mice, what have you -- but unless it's really stimulating, she's not interested. She only likes playing with people, people with string, or that humidifier, because to her the people, string and bubbles are unpredictable. What can I get her to keep her occupied and engaged while I'm at work?

Hi there! We're a young couple looking for the best places in Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario or New York to look for original art on the cheap-ish side. Student galleries would be perfect. Does anyone know if there's some kind of magazine or website that has a list of galleries we can check out?

Hi there!

I've got to be doing something wrong here -- I'm always having a hassle when flipping whole poultry over in its pot. There I'll be, just basting a turkey, chicken, cornish game hen, you name it... and then I'll have to turn it over. I usually wind up doing it with carving utensils, which utterly destroys the skin and makes a huge mess.

How do you flip a bird over in a pot without damaging it?

I just installed a 512 MB ATI Radeon X1650 Pro AGP, a big upgrade over the 128 MB model I was using before. My drivers are all upgraded to their latest versions.

Thing is, if anything, my performance has decreased, which makes me suspect I'm overtaxing my RAM, and that the card isn't working at all.

How can I check?

I'm a bit math-impaired, so here goes. Which is the better financial decision:

- putting $5000 towards a $35,000 student loan debt growing at 8.5% monthly,

- or using that money to buy into a no-load mutual fund with a $5000 minimum investment that would make my weekly retirement contributions ($150) grow in the high teens (instead of 0.5% if not invested)? I'm 24.

I'm 24, and I've just got my first job out of college. I'm running a small business on the side as well, and am expecting to make roughly $65,000 CAD a year between the two. I live in a city where a good condo in a desirable location goes for about $250-300k, and my wife and I are paying $1600 a month for our apartment.

Now, if I dump all the savings I'll have over the next few years into a home, it won't be in growth stock -- something I can easily afford to invest in, as I won't need my savings for 10+ years.

So, should I keep losing $1600 a month in rent, and throw the extra in equities, or put together a down payment and turn that $1600 a month into equity in a condo? Is one DEFINITELY a wiser financial decision than the other? (The housing market here is expected to grow steadily over the next 10 years.)

Stupid question, but I have to ask. I wanted to close a tab in my spreadsheet and accidentally closed the entire sheet -- and clicked 'no' to saving changes. (Yay!)

Can ANYTHING be done to get it back?

My printer needs to know the gradation specification and PMS colour I've used for a logo in Photoshop. I think I've found the latter, but I have no idea what a gradation specification looks like. Any help?

Hi! I need a .jpg in my side frame to attach directly to one in the title frame above. The problem is, some background shows above the sidebar image, which breaks the flow from one image into the other.

Think of it as a picture of a person, split into two frames. Above the waist in one frame, below the waist in another. Right now, there's a space between the top and bottom image - like the person's been cut in half.

I'm using FrontPage at the moment - how can I eliminate the margin above the .jpg and connect the two? Is there any way to program a site with an image flush at the top of the page - no background pixel buffer involved at all?

I've lost about 40 pounds over the last eight months, and now none of my suits fit me at all anymore; I could fit a balloon between my stomach and the buttoned jacket. How much is too much to pay for a nice, smart alteration of pants, jacket, and shirt down to my slimmer size?

I've always focussed on macroeconomics, so I've got a newbie question. How can I find out how much a single share of a company is trading for?

Heh - feel kind of dumb starting off this whole category with such a mundane question, but does anyone know a stylist for men in Toronto that doesn't either suck or charge an exorbitant amount of money?

Thanks!

I've been in downtown Toronto for about a year now, and I've tried four different stylists already; they're either terrible, or terribly expensive (but good).

Anyone know a good stylist in the city that won't cost me an arm and a leg?