dsgrieve

We're taking care of a neighbor's parakeets while they are away. I've noticed a couple of things that make me wonder. One is that they peck at their food tray. What I mean is that they bite at the edges of it with their beaks. Another is that they keep pulling little feathers out. Should I be concerned?

They don't have anything in their cage for entertainment. I'm not going to go out and spend any money on them (they aren't my birds), but I was wondering if there is something I can put in their cage to give them something to do.

I'm looking for internet access filtering and virus protection for my home network. I'm looking for a HARDWARE solution, not a software solution. So far, I've been able to find Phantom Technologies iBoss and Zort Lab's netblox. Are there others out there? Does anyone know how these compare?

I'm a parent having a (good natured) disagreement with a teacher over this. Its a question of order of precedence. I say the answer is 6. She says the answer is 24.

Her logic:

36/3(7-5) = 36/3(2) then apply operators left to right since they are all the same precedence

My logic:

36/3(7-5) = 36/(21-15) since you first need to distribute the three.

Weigh in!

I have an old Minolta SRT-202 SLR. Ok, I know its 35 years old, but it is still in excellent condition. Anyway, rather than putting in 35mm film, I was wondering if there is some kind of digital attachment that could take the film's place. I don't even know what to call it.

I'm not looking for a lens adapter. I just want to use this old SLR to take digital photos. Why? Because I'm cheap and don't want to pay for film processing.

I keep hearing this scratching noise in my wall. It is pretty constant and doesn't stop if I approach the wall and pound on it a couple of times (if it was mice, they'd stop for a minute or two). I don't see any evidence of mice in the basement and haven't trapped anything.

So, my question is this. Could carpenter ants make enough noise for me to hear them through the wall? We had a section of sill replaced a few years ago due to carpenter ant damage and I'm wondering if they are back.

I have a "Quick&Hot" water dispenser. When I fill a cup with hot water, there are little flecks of something floating around in the water. I assume this is scale from the tank.

Is there a way to get rid of the scale in one of these units? Or, does anyone know of a tankless hot water dispenser that wouldn't suffer from this?

If I want to run just my boiler, well pump and refrigerator?

If a friend of mine (wink, wink) were to quit his current job and should his ask him where he is going, should my friend tell him? Could that somehow endanger the new job? If my friend witholds the information, how should he respond?

A friend is having trouble. She has code that has lines that begin with //# and she is claiming that the compiler is reading those lines. It has something to do with properties, she says.

This is J2ME with jdk 1.5.

I'm doing a little research on front-load washers. Our top-load died last night, may it rust in peace. I saw a comment that said there is a lot of maintenance that you need to do; that you have to clean out monthly to prevent a funk from growing inside it.

Is this true?

I know there are studies on converting farm waste to methane to electricity. What about my septic tank? Is there a way I can generate electricity as a biproduct of the processes there? Any reference to published studies would be welcomed!

I want to build a deck with curved stairs leading from a upper deck to a lower deck. The deck itself will be about 16 feet wide and the I envision the center of the stairs being 2 or 3 feet further out than the ends of the stairs, giving a radius of roughly 8.5 feet to the circle inscribed by each tread.

Is it possible to bend the wood across its width? If so, how? Or do I need to simply lay the boards parallel to the deck and then trim the ends?