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My 4 years old Dell dimension started to shut itself down due to thermal events about a year ago. The fans are working and I clean the air intake regularly. It did not happen again for a while but about a few months ago these events became regular. Now they are occuring everytime I run the computer for 2 or 3 hours, sometimes even less. I read about fixing the heat sink but I am no expert in technical matters and I do not want to open the case and make the computer totally unusable. Any ideas on how to fix this issue?

My wife's employer has changed and so we are changing our health insurance at the moment. Her new employer offers several plans and I have narrowed it down to Empire's EPO and PPO plans. The EPO costs about $15 per month less and it has significantly lower copay and deductible compared to the PPO. As we have no strong preferences over which hospital or doctor we use and because Empire's network is very extensive I was happy to go with the EPO until a coworker of my wife warned against it. What happened to her with another insurer's EPO plan is that, when she went to an in-network hospital for some reason, the doctor recommended her to go through certain tests. However the devices that they used on her belonged to a "legal entity" which was not part of the network! So the insurance company did not pay a dime for the costs of the tests. I think this is a very lousy business practice and the hospital and the insurance company are together in it. However, I would not be surprised if it is something very wide spread. So my question is is anyone else aware of such practices or any other reasons why one should definitely go with the PPO rather than the EPO when the monthly costs are comparable? Thanks.

I am filling out immigration forms and I need to fill in the my last entry date to US. Well it is a little complicated issue. A few years ago I traveled to Canada for a short visit on an expired F-1 visa and came back using the automatic revalidation rule. When you do that, you do not surrender your I-94 so you do not receive a new one, and hence the travel is not recorded on your passport, though I know the actual date with 90% certainty. I checked old documents and saw that upon an immigration counselor's advice I did not mention that trip, that is I used the date from my previous entry, when I applied for OPT, and that was approved without a glitch. However there will be more scrutiny with a green card application and I really want to make sure that I put the correct date. Yet I called the USCIS with this question and instead of a meaningful answer I got a lesson on importance of being honest in my application. So do I use the actual last reentry date or the date on my passport?

Hi,

I am living and legally working at US with a non-immigrant visa right now and my employer decided to apply for a green card for me. Already the labor certification part of my application is complete. However my employer is not paying for the attorney fees for the rest of application which amount to several thousand dollars. I understand that the forms I-140 and I-485 and may be a few other things need to be filed by the employer. Those do not seem so challenging to fill in and I have access to a lawyer for consultation, but I am not quite sure about what else needs to be done. My question is, do I really need a lawyer to complete my application or is it something that I can manage with consultation. If you think I definitely need a lawyer, can you please explain at what stage the professional help is essential. Thanks.

We have an HVAC unit in our apartment for cooling and heating. When we turn it on, there is such a loud noise coming from it that I can not hear what my wife says at the other end of the room. I know it is expected that these things make some noise but some other we have seen in our building seem to work much more silently. My guess is that we have an especially loud fan. I am wondering if someone can suggest a quick fix for this. Thanks.

I use one of those 2 in 1 detergent-shine shield combos in my dishwasher but no matter how clean the dishes I put in the machine I get a few silverware covered in rust like brown spots. There is nothing wrong inside the washer as far as I can see. Any ideas for the cause or cure?

There is some doubt on whether 1=0.999... (continues). I would like to hear people's opinions about the following proof. If 1>0.9999..., then 1-0.99... is a number greater than zero, let

a=1-0.999..

Then we see that a must be smaller than 1/10, because 1/10= 0.1 and

0.999... + 0.1=1.09999 >1. Similarly a<1/100 as

0.999...+0.01=1.00999..>1,

and so on... So we see that a<1/10, a<1/100, a<1/1000,.... . On the other hand we also see that as a is non-zero we can perfectly talk about 1/a which must be greater than 10, 100, 1000,... (just by inverting) and therefore any whole number. But there is no such real number which is greater than any other number, hence we get a contradiction. Therefore a can't be anything other than zero and so 0.9999.... has to be equal to 1 although it looks funny and different.

BTW I am not wondering if this proof or the statement is correct or not. There is no real controversy among mathematicians about this at all. Just wondering how difficult it is.