Ramon D

My company was bought by a Canadian company and I was essentially let go, with the intention of them rehiring me as a subcontractor (with the understanding that I could then pursue other clients, etc.)

I'm also, however, going to school part-time, and the idea of just taking unemployment until I finish school and find a job (probably sometime in the fall) is alluring,

Could I form an LLC, bill my Canadian client, train my wife to do most of the work, pay her out of the LLC (most of he amount), pay myself for the time spent managing her (every husbands dream), and then still collect unemployment for myself?

My understanding is that if the amount I make doesn't exceed 20% of the amount I would receive in unemployment, I would still be eligible for the full amount from unemployment.

I KNOW this sounds super sketchy, and an obvious attempt to work around getting paid for work and collecting unemployment at the same time, but I'm being earnest in the way I'm describing the framework here. I'm still in school, I have one more semester to go, and I have a board exam at the end. If I can train my wife to do the work that doesn't specifically require my brain, and then focus on school, but work a couple hours here and there on the items that DO require my help, and then report my earnings for those hours, is that all okay?

My rationale is if I take unemployment, my wife would have to get a second job while I'm in school. Why not make the second job working at my own consulting firm?

The S-corp factor is that the company would exist on its own, paying my wife and I our salaries.

Thanks in advance.

My company was bought out by a Canadian company (I'm American). I was basically let go, with the intention of the Canadian company rehiring me as a 1099. But long story short, the topic of whether this is actually legal has come up, and we're now talking about hiring me on, salaried part time as a W2.

How does a Canadian company manage this? Do they pay American SE taxes? Do they need to form an American branch, or incorporate?

I'm looking for someone to point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

So my boss sold his company to a guy in Canada. I was originally salaried part-time, 20 hrs a week, paying into unemployment. But now I'm going to be subcontracted, needing to get a check from the guy in Canada every two weeks.

My question is - the Canadian guy obviously doesn't report anything to the IRS, since he's, you know, Canadian. If I claim unemployment, and work for the Canadian company on the side, am I gonna get caught by the Department of Labor (and more importantly, the IRS)?

I know it's bad to cheat unemployment, but really, I'm hurting financially and it would help a lot. Also, this guy has a history of not being the most timely person when it comes to payment.

Is this not worth it?

A friend of mine was going to get ride of his microwave (he's moving) and I decided to save it, in case it was more powerful than mine (mine is only 700 watts).

The problem is, I can't figure out how many watts this other microwave is. It's not written anywhere on the entire machine - I've checked all the stickers, and there are absolutely no clues. I then googled the model, which is a Sharp R-320AK, but I can't find an definitive information on it. The closest thing I found was a R-320H, which is 1200 watts. But I want to be SURE. 10 points to first person who can find a link to some definitive info. By definitive I want the SPECIFIC model number, R-320AK and some info with wattage. I'm not interested in anything with "similar" model numbers, since I already have that.

Some guy wants to buy a knife off me, but when I went to go see how much it would cost to ship it says the shipping of "weapons" are prohibited.

Typically when I've seen something like that it just applies to guns and ammo, but does anyone know where I stand here? Also, if it gets held up at customs, what will happen? Do I have to give him back his money, does he have to just pay to claim it, etc?

Thanks!

I'm thinking of buying Platypus water bladder, but I wasn't sure what capacity to get. So my question is if any of you have one, is it possible to just fill it halfway? Obviously I'm sure this is physically possible, but I mean like if a bag's compartment is too small to fit the bag when completely full, will filling it partway and then "crumpling" it a little bit to fit still work, or do you think it would mess up the flow at all?

I have a project where I need to turn something at roughly .7 RPM (yes, that is "point 7"). Some torque required, I have no idea how to judge it, lets say about the same amount of torque required to turn a doorknob.

So, in theory, I understand this perfectly. I can take some motor, use the proper gears to reduce the RPM down to what I need, maybe tweak the speed if its a DC motor, and bam, done.

The problem is I have no idea how to do this in actual practice. I can figure out how to get a motor, but the gear box issue is ridiculous. How do I order a gearbox, for example, that reduces my random motor down to what I need? Do I have to match the motor to the gearbox when ordering? On what website can I enter, "1 DC motor, 1 Gearbox to reduce it down to about .7 RPM"?

I googled how to make gearboxes, and similarly, I understand the theory of it, but in practice it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

In case it helps, the application is I need to turn a stupid crank .7 RPM. The knob to turn is about an inch wide.

Thanks in advance for your help.

My wife and I had been sponsoring a child when the agency suddenly ended their program in our child's country. We were not allowed to send him a letter or email saying goodbye or offering encouragement. Nothing.

Since we had become attached to the child we were pretty upset, and haven't sponsored a child since, for fear of forming a bond that would just get split up again.

However, it's been awhile and I was wondering if anyone knew of a good, stable agency for sponsoring a child. We are looking for one that would let us send a gift.

Thanks in advance.

PS - The agency we used last time was Children's Hope International. Very much recommend against using them.

I'm trying to get rid of a Tivo unit (Series 2, dual-tuner). We had a three year subscription on it.

Do I have to reset it or delete it before I send it out? I just want to make sure they don't have access to any financial information or will be able to renew the subscription on my card.

Maybe some audio or physics person can help me. Just for fun, I was trying to do a noise cancelling experiment and opened a song in an audio program (Audacity) and inverted it to its exact 180 degree phase. According to science, if I then play this inverted song along with the original, I should get some noise cancellation.

Trying to combine the two files in audacity supports this, and when you play both tracks together Audacity does the math and you get silence.

But when I try to do it in practice, playing the inverse out of one set of speakers and then playing the original exactly synced up from another set of speakers, I just hear both versions at the same time. I know this is physically impossible, so what gives?

I figured maybe the sounds has to be *exactly* right, so like, exactly same speakers, exact same base/treble balance, etc. But then how do noise-cancelling headphones work? Obviously the original noise source and the headphones should have different qualities, why does the noise cancellation work there. Also, shouldn't I get *something* noticeable? I mean it really just sounds like two sources playing simultaneously. I'm not getting *any* noise cancellation artifacts at all.

Thanks for your help!

I was working full-time (40 hours a week) for a company for 3 years before I decided to get a Nursing degree. They were fine with this, and let me decrease my hours from 40 hrs a week to 20 (we also negotiated a pay increase).

My spring semester is ending and I am going to have some time in the summer to work a second job (without going into boring details, picking more hours up at my current job is not an option). One thing I'm concerned about, though, is that my current job isn't really doing that well financially, and there's a decent chance they are going to go out of business. My 2 questions are:

1) Can I collect unemployment from a part-time job?

2) If I pick up a second job in the summer (like being a waiter, for example) and my main company goes out of business, am I still eligible for unemployment, or does having the second job as a waiter stop that? If I quit being a waiter before the main company closes, does that help?

The big thing is that I make a decent amount of money at my current job. To lose out on unemployment at that rate because I'm a waiter would be awful, especially since waitering would be a seasonal job only.

I'm trying to train for a marathon, and am getting really frustrated trying to keep my heartrate between 150-165, the recommended zone for my marathon training based on age, resting heart rate, max, etc.

Anyway, the annoying thing is I'm running unbearably slow and it still ticks past 165 and into the 170s. I can keep it under 165 for maybe a mile, but eventually no matter how slow I run, it will keep trending upwards. On my last run, I ran 3.5 mph and my heart rate kept going about 165, but then I WALKED at 3.6 mph and my heart rate goes down and will keep going down into the 130s.

I figured it must be my form, but I've tried to work on that for months now and it's still not improving. Chirunning, running midfoot, like a gazelle, long strides, short strides, you name it I've tried it for at least a couple runs. Each time, my heart rate just goes up. Why is it that I can walk faster than I run, but my heart rate goes down while walking and up while running?

I'm putting in the miles, but at this rate I'll walk more than half of my marathon, which is just not how I envisioned it. Any thoughts?

I have a polar heart rate monitor that I've been using for runs. I recently decided to do more treadmill running to avoid the icy roads, and accidentally wore my heart rate monitor's watch, even though most treadmills (including the one I was on) will read the monitor for you and display on the screen.

While I was running I noticed that my watch the and the treadmill had different readings. At one point my watch said my HR was 167 and the treadmill read 140 or so. If you're trying to stay in certain zones this is a relatively big discrepancy. On some of the tempo runs I noticed they both seemed to agree what 175 bpm was, but anything lower than 170 and there appears to be a discrepancy. Is this normal?

I have a Polar HR monitor.

Thanks!

I feel like I've gotten into decent shape; I've been exercising since about the spring and dropped 40 pounds and went from a RHR of 74 to 53. I did mostly HIIT training because I wanted to focus on total calorie expenditure.

Now I'm trying to transition into long-distance running, but I'm not sure the right way to train for it. Long story short, I've determined that I should train between 60-70% of my MHR, and that comes out to a zone of about 137 to 151 bpm.

Problem 1: Running at this heart rate seems agonizingly slow. My stride rate is abysmal, and my mile time is something like 15 min. I can't push harder, because then I go over 150 bpm. Can someone reassure me that I'll eventually go faster at the same heart rate, or am I doing this wrong?

Problem 2: I've also read that I should increase my cadence to about 180 steps per minute. If I do this, once again, my heart rate goes over the 150 bpm mark. Which training requirement takes precedence?

Am I doing something wrong? It's really frustrating because it's not like I can just "try harder" - most of the time I'm trying to run slower to keep the heart rate in the proper zone.

Is it possible to over train for fat loss if your only goal is to burn fat? I understand I can lose muscle, but I'm honestly okay with that - I got halfway through a workout regimen that involved muscle gain in the first half and fat loss in the second, so I'm willing to sacrifice some of that muscle to get rid of this stubborn blubber. I just want to get a sanity check on it.

For the past two weeks I've been consuming 600-1000 calories a day and doing jumprope for half an hour every day (save you the effort of lookup and tell you its about 430 calories based on my effort), no rest days. I've been really good about icing my legs down afterwards and warming them up properly before workouts, and am staying very well hydrated. I've also been taking multi-vitamin and calcium supplements to make up for some of the nutritional deficits of the diet.

Is this still a bad idea? What are the drawbacks besides muscle loss?

If I have a 10-22mm EF-S lens, do I still multiply by the crop factor of 1.6 to get the "net" focal length, or is the fact that it is an EF-S lens factor in the sensor size?

So basically in the end, is my 10mm pic 10mm or 16?

What's the funniest clean joke you know? 10 points to my favorite one of the bunch.

I will define a clean joke as one without curse words, body fluids, sex, or anything you would feel comfortable telling a 5 year old.

I have nothing against dirty jokes, I just want to see some really funny clean ones.

Does any know where I can buy Charms SUPER Blow Pops (Super, not regular) in specific flavors and in bulk online? I'm looking specifically for watermelon, cherry, and strawberry.

First answer matching criteria (Bulk, Super Blow Pops, Specific Flavors (not assorted) wins!

I'm looking at the same list, and they all say "0 answers" when some of them have 34 answers on them. I don't want to bother reading it if everyone's already helped that person.

Is it just me, or is anyone else having this issue?