poohba

It's hard to narrow my favorite characters down, but I'm thinking I'd like to spend time with John of Gaunt and Katherine from Anya Seton's "Katherine", and the whole gang from Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" novels.

Which order would make the most sense? I understand there's some overlap between The Illiad and The Odyssey (or at least one expects you to know events that happened in the other).

Will reading them in the "wrong" order cause mass confusion? Or at least more confusion than I would have the other way?

I bought a new computer last year, so I haven't been using my old laptop - and thus haven't had it plugged in - in almost a year. A few nights ago, I went to start it up, thinking I might want to wipe the memory to give it away or recycle it or something, but it wouldn't start up, even with the power cord plugged in.

The battery was completely drained. So was my spare. I tried charging one for an hour or two, but it didn't show any signs of life.

So what do you do in a situation like this? I don't want to get rid of it before I've made sure there's no personal information on the hard drive, but I'm not going to buy a new battery for a six-year-old computer!

Anyone ever purchase a new book and find a small (probably one inch by one inch) thing that looks like a gold metallic sticker with the paper backing still on, in between some random page halfway through?

They have a raised pattern on them, and almost remind me of a computer chip, although I don't think they're sturdy enough to be that.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? What's the purpose of those things and what are they called?

Why did Jell-O ever stop making them? They were the best thing about summer when I was a kid.

I've tried freezing pudding on a stick to get the same effect, but it's just not quite the same.

Does anyone have a recipe for Jell-O Pudding Pops or an explanation for why the company stopped making them?

I usually like to send thank you notes after interviewing for a job, but I recently had a company spring a four-person interview team on me. I had only been in contact with one of the team members previously - so her name is the only one I have.

Do I write a note just to her? It seems like I should make some mention of the other three.

What's the etiquette in a situation like this?

Using his celebrity to do good works is a bad thing? Trying to alieve the poverty and suffering of our fellow human beings is wrong? What kind of small-hearted people are you?

Yes, he's a bit of a ham, but from what I can tell he's sincere about what he's doing.

I'm one of those people who wants to go and find out the "true story" after reading a good piece of historical fiction. So, it usually drives me nuts to learn that the author has taken huge leaps of literary license.

Little stuff is one thing. No one can know what historical figures really thought or did on a day-to-day basis. But for a while, it seemed every book I was reading was throwing improbable romantic pairings at me - and that every future king or queen of England was actually someone else's bastard.

Your thoughts?

It's a great movie with some of my favorite movie lines.

I think the best is, "You've lost ANOTHER submarine?" But I'm also partial to "the thing about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch" and "give me a ping, Vasily. One ping only please."

So what do you think? Feel free to mention ones I didn't.

What do you think - Big Red, Orange Crush or something else entirely? (Keep it clean, folks!)

How would a French-speaking palace servant in my fantasy story refer to her queen (or for that matter, her king) when speaking to someone else?

I'm looking for some French version of "Her/His Majesty." I thought about just using "la reine," but wasn't sure if that was correct or not.

Why, oh why, do they keep making the same bonehead mistakes over and over again? WHY???

I just got a phone call at work that sounded like it was from overseas. The caller was "confirming" our company's "free yellow pages business listing." He already knew our company name and contact info and I said "correct" as he read it back.

Then the call got weird. He got me to spell out my name and then asked for my job title. When I answered, he said that title wasn't in their system and I should just say I was a "supervisor" when he transfered me to someone who was going to confirm our listing.

A second guy came on and said his call was being timed, so to please not interrupt him because he had to complete it in so many seconds. Then he said to interrupt him if the info was wrong. He repeated this mumbo-jumbo several times.

When this caller asked me my job title, I gave my original answer. He said, "A supervisor?" When I answered, "Not really," he hung up.

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm afraid I said "yes" at one point and they'll be able to scam me.

How long do you think Sydney has known Vaughn is really alive? Do you think she helped Jack fake Vaughn's death?

I admit it. I bought a bunch of Christmas music from iTunes music store last December. And now that those songs are in my computer's music library, they keep popping up when I use the Party Shuffle function.

Is there a way to set a rule to keep certain songs out of that rotation? I don't want to be listening to "Joy to the World" in April!

I have all of these songs labeled as "holiday" genre - and would love to just be able to tell my computer not to include "holiday" songs when it's selecting what to play next.

Does anyone know how to do this? I'm running OSX Tiger with the latest version of iTunes.

I can remember hearing a quote that went something like "All writers are actually readers who have been awed into imitation" but I can't remember the exact wording or who said it. Does anyone know this one? I'd love to put this up on my wall.

I asked this question on the Books & Authors board a couple of days ago and haven't had much of a response. Maybe someone here can help me.

I can remember hearing a quote that went something like "All writers are actually readers who have been awed into imitation" but I can't remember the exact wording or who said it. Does anyone know this one? I'd love to put this up on my wall.