PW

I was just in the washroom at work, and the person in the stall next to me had what sounded like the worst, most disgusting, most appalling bowel movement I've ever heard. It hardly finished splashing into the bowl when they flushed and went out to wash their hands... I'm talking seconds later. Didn't even hear any toilet paper come off the roll.

Is this even possible? Is there any sanitary way that they can possibly be keeping clean?

I am researching how to install an electrical sub-panel in my garage. In looking around the hardware store's website, the number of breakers/circuits that the panel can physically hold is listed as 2/4, or 12/24, or 30/60 etc. I'm not sure what this means? I would like to be able to install 3 breakers total, 1 for interior lighting/outlets, 1 for exterior lighting/outlets, and 1 2-pole breaker for my radial arm saw that needs more juice.

I'm not getting into all the specific electrical details like wire sizing, breaker sizes etc. here, I have done that elsewhere and understand how that all works, and I don't want it to confuse anything else here. I just want to know if a panel is capable of handling 2/4 circuits, does that mean it physically has enough space to install 4 total breaker switches (say 2x20's and 1 x double 40). Google is not being very helpful with this one. Thanks for any help you can provide!

I have a vinyl window at the front of my house that is made up of 4 parts, a large fixed glazing at the top (4' high by about 6' wide) and a 1' high strip at the bottom, composed of a 3 2' wide sections, (1 fixed in the middle, 2 sliding at each end.

There is no caulking in between these sections. In fact, there is a groove between all of them that looks like it SHOULD be sealed but is not. The perimeter of the entire window is however sealed up nicely.

Should I be worried about caulking between the sections? I have tried searching for the answer online but everything leads to caulking around the perimeter.

I have an old unheated garage/shed that I intend to tear down and rebuild... the framing is all rotted out and the roof is collapsing. It is supported on a block foundation wall that I intend to reuse. The interior slab is a mess though, all cracked up, somewhat settled in some areas but nothing more than a couple of inches. I want to pour a new concrete slab directly over the old one without having to dig everything up.

Is this an acceptable practice?

I have a mid-year review in a few days, and I am going to ask for a profile update. Right now I am an EIT 1 (Engineer in Training) and I am doing everything that meets the requirements of EIT 2 (the next level up in progression to becoming a full engineer). With the profile update, my chargeout rate increases, and subsequently my salary increases. Let's say its a 5% increase, the standard difference between EIT 1 and EIT 2. Now at the end of the year, lets say I would have got a 3% increase in salary to account for inflation of the cost of living, regardless if my profile is updated or not.

Should I be looking for a 3% increase at the end of the year on top of my 5% increase, or just leave it and take the 2% more than I would have had without the profile change?

The reason I am questioning it is because if I do ask for 3% beyond that 5%, I feel like I'm appearing greedy and I don't want that. But at the same time, I don't want to be making only 2% more than the EIT 1 sitting beside me, when I should technically be making 5% more than them.

Any advice would be great, thanks!

I have a fairly old computer, bought it in late 2005... it has a 75 GB hard drive and has been trucking along pretty decently for many years. I have a 200 GB external hard-drive that I keep most of my stuff on, but any programs I have and music is kept on my C drive. I have checked, and my music is about 25 gigs and "windows files" is about another 17 gigs. There are a few gigs worth of other things here and there, but not enough to total to the 75 limit. A few months ago, I started getting messages that my hard drive was at capacity and that I needed to delete stuff to keep windows running efficiently. So, I deleted some stuff, kept a few gigs free and moved on. Eventually it would tell me it was full again, and I would delete a few more things. It's gotten to the point now that all I have is word , excel, media monkey and VLC on my computer, and my music. Just last night I removed a bunch of files and left about 3 gigs of free space. This morning it was back to about 175 MB of free space, with the wonderful message flashing at me again. I run windows XP, not vista. I have cleared my temporary files, compressed old files, deleted my browser cache, and yes, even emptied my recycle bin to try and conserve space, but it seems to fill back up again with something that I can't find. I've run virus checks and come up empty.

Is there something that I am forgetting to delete, somewhere that I have missed checking? I'm pretty sure I've gone over everything with a fine toothed comb. Or do hard-drives just start to lose capacity over time?

I'd like to keep this computer running until boxing day, get a new one on sale, but it seems that it might not last that long at the rate it's going.

Hope someone can provide some advice, thanks in advance.

Youtube has ads, we all know this. There is always the little box that pops up about 10% of the way through a video, or the TV ad that runs for 15 seconds every 10 videos or so. Today however youtube sunk to a new low: I was watching a music video and about 1 minute in, the video cut out, a "RedflagDeals.com" ad played for 15 seconds, and then my music video came back, starting from the point where it left off. I hope that this was a fluke... because if it happens again I will not be using youtube anymore. Anyone else seen this happen?

I am having trouble with youtube right now. In the past, I was able to watch videos unencumbered by ads. Now I have to watch a 15 second commercial every 6 videos or so it seems. I can deal with that. But right now youtube is crashing on this damn Kia Forte ad about half a second in, and won't load it up past that point. Every time I try and go to a new video or refresh or delete my cookies or anything, it wants me to watch that ad first and because it can't complete, I can't get to any videos! Any suggestions?

I would like to determine the temperature of my basement. I have no thermometer and it is very cold down here. I can get an ice cube, measure its volume, and determine how long it takes to melt completely into water. Assuming the ice cube was at 0 to -4 degrees celcius, how would I determine the ambiant air temperature of my basement? I realise that the changing surface area of the ice cube would change the rate of melting, but lets assume an overall average here.

I was at the movies last night to see Inception, great movie by the way... but before the movie starts they have this "Fredo the Magician" guy do a trick. He had a glass maybe 5 inches tall with an opening at the top maybe 3 inches in diameter filled about halfway with ice. He then poured some pink liquid into the glass, one can only assume that it was juice, up to the level of the ice, or halfway up the glass. He then put a card over the top of the glass, turned the glass upside down, and removed the card. The juice did not fall! then he moved his finger near the top of the glass and the juice and ice fell.

I have seen it done before where the card remains in place, and does not fall, and i understand why that happens. However, with no card, I can see no reason why the juice would stay in the glass. My friends believe that it is capillary action but i disagree because i feel that the ratio of the area of the glass to the mass of fluid being held is not high enough. Some even say that you can get more cappillary action because of the ice, but even there i do not agree, especially because the ice is not fixed to the glass in any way and would only be an internal force in the whole matter.

The only thing I can think of is that the magician placed some sort of a membrane over the top of the glass using the card, and upon removing the card, the membrane remained in place. Then he removed his finger from the (hole at the top of the glass?) and enough pressure pushed the membrane down.

Let me know your thoughts on this matter.

I heard a song on the radio on my way home the other night, it sounded like Eminem and there was some chick singing in the background at times. It was a pretty good song but I don't know what it was called. The only line I remember from it was something to the effect of "She pretended it"

Let me know if you know what this song is.