Alan S

If Trump and Pence both die, Speaker Pelosi becomes president.  Whoever dies last can't appoint a replacement vice president, because he or she has to be confirmed by majorities in the House and Senate, and that won't happen in the House.  So if Pelosi is president, and Trump wins but he and Pence are both dead, does that mean that Pelosi is President for 4 years until 01/20/2025?  Does the date they die make a difference?  Is there a cutoff date where the Republicans can't put in a replacement candidate?

The horrible greedy company I work for fired a substantial number of workers and cut non-exempt workers to 4 days/week with a 20% pay cut.  But for exempt workers like me, our pay was cut by 8%-25% based on salary (mine was towards the lower end), but we are still expected to work a full 40 hour week.

I know there are laws against cutting the pay of exempt employees, and I also have an employment contract, and those are separate matters that I will be looking into and not asking about here (or maybe I'll ask as a separate question).

I know that the people whose wages and hours were cut can collect unemployment, but if my wages were cut but not my hours, would I be able to collect?  I am in NY in case it matters.

I'm watching a college softball game and one of the pitchers looks like she's twice the size of the other players. I was curious to see what she weighed, I was guessing 200 minimum, maybe 250 or more. So I went to the team's roster page, and they list heights only, not weights. But if I go to the men's baseball roster page for the same school, they list heights and weights. I'm all for equality, and I think if they list the men's weights they should also list the women's weights. I'm not trying to be sexist. If I saw a male baseball player who looked like that, I would look up his weight as well.

My bank supposedly improved their website. All of the work I previously did to set up external bank accounts for transfers was wiped out and now has to be redone. I have a recurring monthly payment set up, and wanted to edit the amount for just one month. In the previous version I could do that, in the new version, I have to add it as an extra payment, then adjust my recurring payment to skip this month and start a month later. I had a hard time figuring out what to do because the interface is confusing and doesn't explain things, and the customer support person was of no help either, I basically had to figure this out on my own. My recurring payment is mailed, and previously was set up to "pay by" a certain date. With the bank's changes, now that payment is going to be "sent on" that date. No one told me of the change, and if I didn't catch it today, my payment would probably have been late.

The same thing is typical of not just banks, but every organization that makes changes to their website. They give it a more "modern look", but typically remove functionality and make things more confusing and difficult to use. It's as if they figure out what to do from "experts" who make a lot of money but don't actually use these websites, as opposed to listening to feedback from users. I think that most people care about how easy it is to use a website and what features it has, as opposed to the way the screen looks.

I ordered something on eBay. Fedex says they delivered it, but I never received the package. I requested either a refund or another shipment from the seller. I don't know if Fedex delivered to the wrong address, or if the package was stolen. All I can say is that I was home and Fedex didn't ring my doorbell. I went downstairs to get my regular mail 2 hours after the alleged delivery time, and the package was not there.

If seller refuses to issue a refund, is it better to try to collect under eBay's money back guarantee, or should I instead file a credit card dispute? Ebay's policy says that if I attempt to collect under their option, I have to accept their decision as final. From what I've read on the website and elsewhere, it seems like eBay could reject my claim because Fedex says that they delivered it. I called eBay and spoke to someone, and she told me that I should be able to get a refund if they step in. But I'm not sure that she knew what she was talking about.

What happens if I file a claim with eBay, they reject it, and I file a credit card dispute anyway? Is that definitely against the rules? If so, what is the penalty?

I am renting a storage space on a month to month basis. Normally you pay the rent monthly, but there is a sign in their office stating that if you pay for 6 months, you get the 7th month free. I ended up doing that, but my question is, what happens if for some reason I want to leave the storage space before the 6 months I paid for is up. Obviously I wouldn't get the free 7th month, but for example, if I paid for 6 months and moved out after 3 months, am I entitled to get back what I paid for the remaining 3 months.

I signed a contract, but I don't think that the contract addresses this. The contract mentions nothing about the offer to pay for 6 months and getting the 7th month free. I do have to give a certain amount of advance notice before moving out, but for the purpose of this question, assume that I would give proper notice.

I asked the people who work in the storage facility office about this, and they didn't know. I'm not sure their answer matters anyway, as I think this is a contract law issue. If the contract doesn't address this, and I paid for months that I didn't use, I would think I should be entitled to a refund of the extra months. But I'm not sure and would like some opinions on this.

I put in a question and I don't think it was put into the best category possible. I haven't used this in awhile, but last time it suggested a category but made it easy to change if I didn't agree.

Now it doesn't even suggest a category, I just click "Submit" and it puts it wherever their algorithms think is best. In the interest of simplifying things they make things more difficult. This seems to be true of anything using the internet, not just Yahoo or Yahoo Answers. But Yahoo is worse because it's impossible to get in touch with anyone.

Does anyone know how I can select the category?

Anyone know how to contact a real person at Yahoo? (That's for an email issue, not this.)

We are taking a long road trip and need to rent a car. I don't think my sister-in-law wants to use her van because it might break along the way, and they don't want to use my car because it is a long trip and my car is too small and uncomfortable for them. Instead of renting where we live in the NY area, we will take my car to Philadelphia where it is a lot cheaper and rent the car there.

My reservation is for the Philadelphia International Airport, and I'm not sure we can get a car at any other locations in the area. I did this before, but rented from a place where I could park on the road across the street. It doesn't look like I can do this at the airport location. Since we have an extra car, I don't have to park my car within walking distance of the car rental facility and can park a few miles away if necessary.

I'm just looking for a safe and free place to park my car nearby. I need to leave it there for either 5 or 6 days. Preferably a place that is easy to find, but as long as I can figure out the address I can store it in my GPS.

I currently have an antique flip phone. I'm considering getting a smart phone soon.

I would like to have an app that allows the phone to ring only when certain people call. Now, I turn off my phones before I go to bed, but for my job, I have to be on call roughly 1 week out of 8. Although I rarely get called, I need to keep the phone on overnight when I'm on call. I want to make sure I don't get unwanted calls from others while I'm sleeping and have to keep the phone on. Also, I want to be able to allow the phone to ring anytime for certain close family members in case there is an emergency.

Is there an app that would do this? If so, do I need a certain type of smart phone or a certain service provider? I intend to go on one of those lower cost plans, no more than $40-$45/month, where I can save money by using a cheaper model instead of getting the latest device with all sorts of fancy features.

I have a lot of spreadsheets where I custom format the dates as mm/dd/yyyy. This is not one of the custom formats that comes as a default with Excel 2000, you have to add it.

I purchased a new PC and re-installed Excel 2000. When I open the Excel files that I copied over from my old PC, all of the custom date formatting is lost. My custom date format of mm/dd/yyyy is not in the list of custom format options. All of my dates are now formatted as m/d/yyyy. If I want to fix my dates, I have to add back the custom format for each file, then reformat all of the dates. And I guess if I want to use these files on a different PC I'll have the same problem.

Is there any way to have my dates in the desired format without having to go through all of my spreadsheets and reformatting all the dates? If necessary, I can go back to my old PC and recopy the Excel files.

There was a power outage in my neighborhood last week, and my apartment was partially without power. A digital clock was damaged when the power was restored, and it is no longer working. This is a N.Y. Mets scoreboard clock that displays the time, date (month and day), and temperature, and sells for about $45.

I called my electric company, Con Edison (Queens, NY), and they told me that they have no process for filing a claim for anything other than losses of perishable food. I didn't have any problem with food because except for 30 minutes when I had no power at all, I had power in about half the outlets including the refrigerator.

I'm trying to figure out if Con Edison is responsible. If the power outage (or improperly restoring power) caused the problem, I'll sue them in small claims court. My question is, is this Con Edison's fault? I don't want to go to court and waste my time and gas and lose the lawsuit and the $15 filing fee if it wasn't their fault. Was my clock a defective piece of junk, and would the same thing have happened simply by unplugging the clock and plugging it back in? Or could there have been some sort of extra power surge that shouldn't have happened and it is really there fault. I have surge suppressors on my televisions and computer, but not on my other clock, phones, microwave, air conditioners, or refrigerators, and nothing else was damaged.

There was a tie for the gold medal in the Olympics in the women's downhill skiing event. Times are to the 1/100th of a second. The bronze medalist was 0.10 seconds behind, which the announcer said translated to 8' 9". So that means that 0.01 seconds would cover about 10.5", and it is possible that one of the tied gold medalists could have won the race by as much as 10.5", since these times are not exact and in increments of 0.01 seconds. If this was a track and field event like the 100m dash, if 2 runners had the same time the difference can be up to about 4 inches, and they would have no problem determining who was won. In swimming, they have to touch a sensor, and the controversial race that Michael Phelps won was much closer than 0.01 seconds (personally I think he lost).

I understand that you can't have a photo finish because the skiers don't ski at the same time, but I would think that the technology exists to get the times much more accurately, at least to 0.001 seconds, maybe to 0.0001 seconds. If you want to be nice and say that if the times were the same to the 1/100th of a second, it was so close that both athletes deserve to win, then they should do this in all timed events. I've never seen anything like this before. You can have ties in weightlifting when both people lift the same weight, and you can have ties in the high jump if both people jump over the bar at the same height because we don't take into account how far over the bar they went. You can also have ties in a judged event like gymnastics or figure skating, because the judges can give 2 people the same scores. But for anything that is timed, someone has to finish faster, even if it is by a billionth of a second.

The only reason I can see for a tie is if the timing equipment is limited in accuracy. If someone is standing at the bottom of the hill with a stopwatch, it would be unreasonable to expect accuracy of more than 0.1 seconds due to human reaction time, and that's what they did up until about 40-50 years ago before they had sophisticated electronic timing. I also understand why sports use official times to the 1/100th of a second, because going any further than that isn't really important for most people and is very rarely necessary to determine who won. And two people can share a world record for finishing at the same time (in different races), even though in reality if you went to more decimal places, someone had to have a faster time.

Is it possible that the timing equipment really is only capable of going to the 1/100th of a second? When there is a tie in a track and field or swimming event and they get the time to more decimal places, is that the actual time, or are they really just calculating the time difference based on a photo? In that case a tie would make sense, but I thought that the equipment was more accurate than that. My other thought was that they were able to go to 3 or 4 decimal places and the times were still tied, but if that happened, I think the announcers would have discussed it.

Please let me know why this race was declared a tie and why nothing more was done to figure out who really won.

She is just blaming the President for the problems caused solely by her party. Then she spouts a bunch of meaningless garbage about how the Republicans have some magical plan to make things better, when they have nothing other than a plan to stop everything good that the President and the Democrats want to do. And of course, she ends with a prayer, as if that will do anything. As Paul Krugman just said, "lovely personal story, but absolutely zero policy content".

Anyone who can tell me something that the Republicans are trying to do to make our country better - and I mean something major and real that will help the poor and middle class - will get the 10 points. Since that won't happen, whoever best criticizes the garbage on the right wins.

I bought $200 Visa and MasterCard prepaid gift cards at Staples ($400 total). They had a deal with a $15 rebate on each card, and the fees were $6.95 each, so I'm making a profit, plus I get 5% cash back on the credit card I used for the purchase.

I want to know if there is a way to get cash back from these cards. I would rather pay by credit card where I usually get at least 2% cash back (depending on the card used and what I buy with it). I don't want to get the cash back at an ATM or bank, because even if it was allowed, I'm sure there would be a large fee. If I have to I'll just use it on purchases and bills that I would pay anyway.

I know at Target when I use my Red Card (which is a Target debit card linked to my checking account), I can get cash back up to $40 with my purchase. Would that work with one of these prepaid cards? Then I could go to the supermarket and spend 20 cents or so on a banana and get $40 cash back. The customer service desk at my local supermarket (Pathmark) said that I wouldn't be able to do that. Would this work at any other supermarkets, Target, Walmart, anywhere else?

My apartment is so cluttered and overflowing with stuff I don't need, and I'm trying to clean up. I have a lot of clothing that I no longer need, mostly because I'm too fat and they no longer fit, and some items are out of style or I just don't like them. I also gamble a lot and have swiped towels from the casinos' hotel rooms. I realized that I have a lot of bath towels that I don't need. For the most part they are probably in decent enough condition, and I know that Goodwill accepts towels.

I don't really have too much of a problem with what I did, because the casinos are a bunch of crooks anyway. I'm not talking about the machines, they are legitimate, and I'm not complaining about losing. But they frequently have poorly worded promotions and don't award what they promise, change the rules after the fact, charge fees on so called complimentary rooms that they try to lump in as taxes where they pocket the money themselves, and many other unscrupulous practices that have cost me money in the past.

While I don't have that much of a problem with what I did (and I would never take towels from a hotel that is not part of a casino), I'm not sure I should donate what could be considered "stolen property" to a charity and have them sell it to customers. On the other hand, I'd hate to be wasteful and throw them away. My other thought was that instead of donating the towels to Goodwill, I can donate them to the Salvation Army. They are an immoral organization that accepts government funding and uses it to try to convert people to Christianity, which is illegal and unconstitutional. So it isn't like having them accept and sell stolen towels really goes against their values.

I was told that I would be offered a job on Monday, and received the offer letter via email on Thursday. He brought up the salary issue first during the interview, and I indicated that I was hoping to get $5k more, but I thought that the amount he was offering was reasonable and that I would consider it and was willing to be flexible.

I spoke to him on Thursday after receiving the offer (the amount he mentioned at the interview), with some questions related to issues not mentioned in the offer letter or that were unclear. I didn't discuss anything about the salary, and said I would return the signed offer letter either later that evening or on Friday.

I've been unemployed for quite a while, and my future employer is aware of this and knows I'm in no position to make demands. While the offer is withing the realm of reasonableness, it is on the low end of the pay scale. My initial plan was to just sign it and take the job, but after speaking to my brother, he thought it would be reasonable to request an initial 6 month review prior to the annual review. I was also thinking maybe I could see if he had any flexibility and could up his offer a little bit, or perhaps instead offer an extra week of vacation (it is only 2 weeks). I don't want to risk losing the offer under the circumstances, but I thought that it couldn't hurt to ask politely rather than making it adversarial, and accept the job no matter what.

I called Friday afternoon (on his cell phone, which is the only number I have) and said that I was ready to send him the offer letter, but I just had a few more questions first. After not being called back by the end of the work day, I emailed him back essentially saying the same thing. I said that I'm not trying to hold up the process, and I would send back the offer letter as soon as I was able to ask him a few more brief questions. In the email, I said that I did not want to call and disturb him over the weekend, but that he could call me, otherwise, we could talk on Monday.

I want to make sure that I didn't do anything to mess myself up. He had to interrupt the call on Thursday, and he told me that his grandfather was having surgery, so I'm wondering if perhaps it had anything to do with that.

One friend suggested that I just email back the signed offer letter now, and negotiate after the fact. However, I don't think this is really possible, although I don't expect to be able to get any more, and the review period isn't in the offer letter to begin with, so conceivably I could ask after the fact.

This offer is $1k less than my last job, but I'd be expected to put in a lot more hours. If I still had my last job, I wouldn't take this one unless it was $15k higher, and wouldn't be concerned about making demands and causing the offer to be revoked. But I'm very panicky and want to make sure I get this, even if things are not nearly as good as I'd like.

I am going to cancel my Verizon FIOS service (cable, home phone, and internet) and switch to another service provider. I'm not under contract and don't have to pay an early termination fee. I just want to make sure that Verizon cancels my service and stops charging me on the day I cancel. I had this problem before with another provider and was charged for 3 extra days, and I don't want that to happen with Verizon.

I would also like to know the procedure for returning the equipment. When I upgraded my service and returned defective equipment in the past, they sent the replacement by UPS, and I had to use the same box with the prepaid shipping label they provided, and take it to a UPS approved facility to send it back. Are they going to send me empty boxes and shipping labels for this? There is a large power supply unit and a backup battery unit screwed into the wall inside my closet, as well as a smaller power supply unit screwed into the wall just outside this closet. I don't want to have to start trying to take this apart and figure out how to unscrew it. Do they expect me to do that, or will they send a technician over to take back all of their equipment?

As a second question, does anyone know if there is a waiting period (and how long, if any) before I would qualify as a new Verizon customer? One of their ads says their offer is for "new Verizon FIOS TV residential customers". I would think this is meant to exclude people who already have Verizon FIOS service. Once I cancel and am no longer a Verizon FIOS customer, wouldn't that immediately make me a new customer if I wanted to get Verizon FIOS again?

I have a 1996 Pontiac Grand Am (6 cylinder 3.1 liter engine). I know that the owner's manual says that the tank holds 15.2 gallons, but this isn't really what I'm asking. I understand that the tank is supposed to be full when the pump automatically shuts off when you're refilling the tank, but from what I've read, the shutoff point can vary between gas stations, and even between different pumps in the same station.

You can always add more gas to the car after the pump stops, and on my car I might be able to add well over another gallon before it starts to spill. I try not to do that, but when you live in NY and don't leave the state very often, you're driving from NJ and close to getting back to NY, and gas is about 40¢/gallon cheaper in NJ, you want to stuff as much of that cheap NJ gas into the tank as possible before you cross the bridge or tunnel back into NY.

For example, if you have a 7 ounce. plastic cup and you're pouring water into the cup, I find it hard to believe that you would have to fill it to the top of the rim, just before it overflows, to put in 7 ounces. The 7 ounce point is probably somewhere near the rim but slightly below, but exactly where I have no clue. I'm thinking that a gas tank has a similar concept. I can't imagine that I have to get it to the very top to the point of overflow to put in 15.2 gallons, so if I did put in that much, how much gas is in my tank? Is it 15.5, 16, 17, 18, etc.? Another point is that when some gas spilled and I stopped pumping, that tank wasn't really full to the brim, since the space that the nozzle takes up displaces some of the gas. So if I pulled the nozzle most of the way out, maybe I'd get a little more gas in there. I'm not that nuts and would never try it though, just to save a few extra pennies.

The reason I'm asking is because I usually get about 20-21 mpg, maybe a little more if a lot of driving is on the highway. I filled it up to the point of overflow, and I drove 319.0 miles and I'm guessing I probably had about 2 gallons left in the car, maybe even 3 (the gauge is inaccurate but I know approximately how much from experience). So based in that, my gas mileage was 319 / (15.2-2.0) = 319 / 13.2 = 24.167 mpg, or if I had 3 gallons left, 26.148 mpg. The first number is possible but pretty high, especially because a lot of those miles were city driving. The second number would be pretty much impossible (when the car was new that would have been about right). So I think there had to be a decent amount of extra gas in the tank after I filled up. I'm guessing somewhere between 16.5 and 17 gallons, but I don't know for sure. Does anyone know the actual answer?

I am just very upset at how stupid and moronic Lawon and Kalia are. I think that Lawon is more of a moron for volunteering for certain eviction, but Kalia isn't much better because she agreed to this moronic idea, and I think she might be the most weak minded houseguest in history.

I would like people to let me know which one of them is the worst player and why. I'm leaning towards Kalia but will consider arguments in favor of Lawon. Also, I'd like to know if anyone can think of a worse player in Big Brother history. I think they are the top two, but maybe I forgot something. I don't think Marcellus is a valid answer, because not takling yourself off with POV is not as stupid as putting yourself up for a guaranteed eviction. Plus, Marcellus made a very bad decision, but he was not a moron like these two.