Pearls Before Swine

1. If you edit your answer, all the line breaks get lost and you can't add them back.

2. For some reason now whenever I try to answer any question, I just get the error "Answer post failed". Maybe I've hit my maximum for the day? But if so, it's not telling me that.

Are these happening to anyone else?

Is there a way in Yahoo! account settings to disable my ability to answer questions, without messing up any other features in my Yahoo account? I'm addicted to Y!A (seriously) and I think this would maybe help me kick the habit.

I have Comcast and I'm paying extra every month for HBO. If I drop HBO, can I still pay to watch individual HBO shows when I want to, using on demand? I can do that now and the shows are free; obviously I'll have to start to pay to watch them each time if it works at all.

I'm about to hit 100,000 points on Yahoo! Answers.

Do I get a prize?

Without also deleting my accounts on other Yahoo! stuff like mail and Flickr?

This is about someone I know well who has an odd set of symptoms (I swear it's not me!). I know he needs to see a doctor but I'm wondering if anyone could shed any light on this in the meantime...

He's a big guy (over 6' and over 200lbs but not really fat) 60 years old, is an avid bike rider (rides sometimes 10, 20 miles per day), eats a huge amount of healthy food and vitamins (but all that exercise keeps his weight off), and his body is in good shape of course.

But here are the symptoms:

- If he has even one glass of wine, he gets seemingly drunk, unsteady on his feet, etc.

- He sometimes trips and falls; it's happened 3-4 times in the past year.

- He often falls asleep watching TV, etc. and can be hard to wake up (dog barking right in his face and he just keeps snoring - and his hearing is OK).

- He often has mood swings, sometimes gets really hyper and won't shut up, talking until 3-4AM.

Any ideas?

I'm in the USA and I just got tickets for riding the train from Rome to Venice next month. I'm looking at the tickets and some things aren't clear:

1. My name isn't on the ticket anywhere, but it does have a seat number - is that enough/OK?

2. There's a line that says

TRAIN 9422 ESI COACH 01

- I guess 9422 is the number of that train for that day (like a flight number), and the big board at the station will list that number and what track it's on, right? But what is "ESI" and what is "COACH 01"? Is "COACH 01" the car of the train that my seat is on?

3. The next lines I don't understand say:

TO USE ON THIS TRAIN

COACH 02WINDOW

- I'm not sure how this info fits in or conflicts with the "COACH 01" and seat number info that appeared above it, any explanation?

P.S. They did include a sheet titled "reading train tickets" but the layout of the example tickets don't match my ticket.

We have a plum tree, the main trunk split near the top because of branches overloaded with fruit. The split is about a foot long and goes right through the center of the trunk, where the trunk is about 5" across.

It most of the instructions for repairing it that I've found online say that you first pull the split together using rope etc. above the split, then drill holes and put a couple of bolts through the trunk to hold the split closed, then it's OK to remove the rope.

But some sites also say that before you bolt the split together, that you should apply outdoor wood glue inside the split to strengthen it.

Is using glue like this OK? It seems like a good idea, but I'm wondering if there are any chemicals in the glue that would harm the tree? Even if the glue is labeled "non-toxic"?

When I sell my car to someone, do I need to make sure they have insurance? When I bought a new car, the car dealer checked to see if I had auto insurance, but on my state's web page about selling a car (Oregon), there is no mention of anything about insurance. I also haven't seen this issue mentioned on various sites that tell you how to sell your car.

If you have an Italian street address like:

via Antonio Allegri da Correggio n. 14, int. 10

00195 Roma

I know that "n. 14" means the building number (address), but what does the "int. 10" stand for? The 10th floor? Or the apartment number? If it helps, I know this is for a building that has more than one apartment on each floor.

If someone writes me a check from an account at a specific bank, can I bring it to any nearby branch of that same bank and ask them to verify, right then, that there are sufficient funds in that account to cover the check?

I'm asking because I'm going to be selling my car and I would like to avoid being ripped off!

I'm getting a new car soon, and I'm probably going to sell my 2007 Scion tC instead of trading it in. I'm trying to figure out what to sell it for, and that's what's confusing me, because the prices I'm seeing are all over the place.

- The dealer offered me $4800 as a trade in (I know that will be a lot less than I can sell it for).

- Edmunds.com said to sell it for $7500.

- KBB.com said to sell it for $8400 to $10400 depending on condition and options.

- Local ads for the same model, similar year and/or mileage are $10000 and up (used car dealers).

So what price should I advertise it for? And what should I reasonably be able to expect to get for it?

Car details:

Make & model: Scion tC base.

Year: 2007

Miles: 90,000

Options: Automatic, side air bags

Upgrades I added later: heated seats, bluetooth+iPod stereo, custom (non-factory) wheels.

Condition: Very clean, one owner. Was in a fender-bender at about 20mph that required repairs to the bumper, grill, headlights, hood.

We just brought in our cat for a regular checkup, and the vet told us she has round worms.

The thing is, she's an indoor cat (and we don't have other pets), and except for a half pound weight loss over the past year, she is otherwise perfectly healthy - both according to the vet and according to what we see.

So how could she have caught them, and why isn't she having the typical symptoms I found online for round worms (vomiting, diarrhea, dull coat, etc.)?

I know that if you have epilepsy or are otherwise prone to seizures, that you can be prescribed an anti-seizure medication like Dilantin or Keppra to take regularly.

But are there any medications you can take at the onset of a seizure to stop it before it really gets going?

P.S. This is specifically for seizures occurring months after a hematoma - the hematoma is healed but it's not unusual to get seizures for months/years after.

It seems like there are many steps and it's hard to do. Could someone explain it to me in clear, detailed steps because I am just too busy to worry about how to do it myself?

Our gas water heater is probably 11 years old, and it's working fine. But today I noticed today that it has some kind of whitish/brownish mineral encrustations where some of the pipes come out of the top. Here's a picture:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/815/201106151...

When I touch these they are kind of flakey and crunchy, and some are a bit damp.

Is this a sign that the water heater isn't working as well as it should, and/or that it will soon break down?

Here's a link to the photo of this thing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashazur/5681292074/

Anybody have any clue what it is? We are NOT brave enough to plug it in!

I currently have an original Motorola Droid with Verizon and I'm paying $15/month for 150MB data.

I'm tired of the Droid, so today I went to a Verizon store and wanted to buy a new smart phone at full price (Incredible 2) without restarting my contract, but the rep told me I would have to upgrade to the $30/month unlimited data plan if I switched, because my $15/month data plan was a promotion that's not available anymore.

So here's my question - if I buy a new phone on eBay instead of from Verizon, would I be able to switch over to it without having to increase my data plan? I've gotten phones on eBay before and had no trouble switching, but I wonder if this is different - even though technically the phone I have, and the phone I want to switch to, are both smart phones.

Whenever my friend (yes, really my friend, not me) eats anything with storebought mayo (like from a jar or at a restaurant), he invariably ends up getting diarrhea. It happens without fail, so it's probably not because the mayo has gone bad (also, I don't think commercial mayo goes bad that easily).

He gets a similar problem when he eats storebought pickles.

But homemade mayo and homemade pickles are fine.

So... my theory is it's some kind of preservative that he's sensitive to, that mostly is only used in mayo and pickles.

But he has a different theory for the mayo anyway - which is that in restaurants they may be substituting sandwich spread for mayo, which has egg substitute that he could be reacting to.

Anyone know what that could be, or have any other ideas?

A while ago (almost a year) I bought a pot of honey. Apparently after I first opened it the lid wasn't tight, because today I opened the lid and saw a dozen or two tiny dead ants on the surface (these are the same ants that sometimes maraud our kitchen).

So... if I somehow get the ants off the top layer of honey, is the honey safe to eat? Will it taste OK?

I know that theoretically ants may walk on gross stuff, but they aren't known for carrying diseases as far as I know, and honey is antimicrobial. And these are really tiny ants, and they are only on the surface, not mixed into the honey.