stan j

About 10 years ago I signed up as an online language tutor.

It rapidly became apparent what they really wanted were 'human anatomy' tutors. So I wrote it off to experience and forgot about it. Last week I recived a cheque for $15 for work done in January I can't even remmber my log in details and I'm not about to waste more than I'll get on a transatlantic call to find out why they have paid me, so should I just accept I'm owed it for some reason and cash it or ignor it as it must be a mistake?

I've just given my dog a tablet to control fleas, I'm reasonably new at having to look after a dog so I didn't know you could do this.

So fleas are a blood sucking insect as are head lice, dogs are mamals so are humans. So why can't I give the kidsa tablet to stop head lice, or for that matter is one available?

I've had a weather loach for about 3 years its grown to about 9" long by 3/4" diameter which I believe is fully grown. I've recently moved it to a larger tank with 10-15mm pea shingle as substrate same as the tank it came from, but in the new tank it has decided this is suitable to burrow into, which I know is normal but I'm worried it is too large, I think I ought to provide it with an area of smaller substrate but am unsure what to use and how fine the grains should be

Cheap laminate flooring is going to cost me £15/m the next grade up is almost twice the price and doesn't look any better, so I thought about varnishing the cheap stuff would it improve its durability or could it adversely effect it?

If you read GV262 freely down loadable from www.dft.gov.uk (and if you are unfamiliar with drivers hours regulations please read them before answering.)

At the bottom of page 22 it states:- in any 2 consecutive fixed weeks a driver must take either two regular weekly rests ( 45 hours) or one regular and one reduced weekly rest.

My manager claims that following a full 45 hour weekly rest period I can legally work 6 days take 37 hours off work another 6 days take another 37 hours off then work 5 days and take 61 hours off. All daily rests in between have been off 11 hour or less so no compensation for the reduced rest has been possible before the third weekly rest period.

If you think my manager is correct could you pleas explain how.

Please note I drive for a major international company so I don't want any comments along the lines of drive for somebody decent.

On seeing the British flag (union flag) being paraded past you you should come to attention and put your hand on your heart.

I'm not sure where this suggestion has come from but I'm pretty certain its not historically a British thing to do, come to attention maybe especially if you are military, but the hand on the heart bit I've never seen in Britain and never done. It is something I've seen on the news being done by americans but Britain is not america, is someone trying to americanise us?

Since microsoft 'upgraded' me from hotmail to outlook I've noticed when ever an email is loading a string of little blue dots runs across the screen just below the address bar sometimes they stop in the middle and move of one at a time sometimes they don't and often it happens several times before the email opens it doesn't seem to matter what account name I'm using hotmail.com, hotmail.co.uk or live.co.uk it happens with them all any serious suggestions to what is causing this?

Generally speaking my 1960's brewing recipe book works fine, but last time I used a recipe that called for the juice of 3 lemons it turned out far too acidic and one that called for the juice of three oranges was far too strongly flavoured.

I've also previously used a recipe from my mums old cook book(first published in the 1930's) that called for the juice of a lemon and then had to double the rest of the dry ingredients to absorb it but that turned our fine.

My own recollection and the above evidence suggests that lemons in the 1970's were smaller than to days that are roughly tennis ball sized on average and they weren't as fresh either as the road net work were not as good, lorries were smaller and slower and no one would air freight lemons in the 70's but how big were they?

A wood working router seems to be just a hand held milling machine for wood, does any one make a stand to convert a router into a metal working vertical milling machine

Inside a CD drive(well the ones I've dismantled) there is a small square cut thread about 3mm dia & about 50mm long that drives the reader head across the CD (and a gear train and motor that might be utilisable for CNC) the drive nut is only plastic so needs replacing I was considering casting pot metal in delft clay (as used for casting silver charms) or filing a half nut in steel with swiss files and a Dremel or would I be better of using commercially available studding and tapping a hole to suit in the base of my tool-post

I need a surface plate and can't afford one. So if I take two pieces of 1/4 (or possibly 1/2") plate each about a foot square fix them to sections of 1&1/2" work surface using counter sunk screws then lap them together using grinding paste (coarse then fine same as grinding car valves) would this produce two true flat surfaces? If so will I need to make even finer grinding paste using jewellers rouge?

My wife's dog (actually its a she yahoo doesn't like the B word) is about 13 and has been living with us now for 3 years I think she is about to come into season and has suddenly decided she wants to hump my leg this is apparently something she has never done before and I thought it was something only males did is she trying to prove she is dominant to me or is it just her season is due? and should I stop her doing it and how? she is a medium sized dog about 18" at the shoulder and about 15kg

when my wife makes a risotto she splits it into portions in china bowls a leaves them in the fridge, we re heat it in the micro wave when each of us gets in from work I tend to eat mine straight from the bowl (a bachelor habit that saves washing up) if my wife catches me doing this she get annoyed and insists I put it on a plate but won't explain why it is wrong?

The claim that we should be able to see a 50m diameter rock passing inside the orbits of geostationary satellites with good binoculars makes me wonder if it is possible to see the geostationary satellites them selves after all the 3 axis stable ones have solar panels about 40 to 50m long but edge on they are very thin and the box its self is at best 10m x 3m so how powerful would a telescope need to be to see one?

My favoured leg wear is cord trousers, I find them to be quite warm, I brought some thermals when I went to Russia a few years back my legs felt a little cold then but it was -25 to -30 so I was glad I had them or so I thought at the time. since then I've worn them a couple of times in the UK when its been -7 ish and have felt colder than I normally do with out them, today I was nagged into wearing them by my polish wife when we went for a walk it was +5 and my legs were colder than they have been at any time so far this year. additional information my legs are rather hairy and I suspect this may have something to do with it

25g of sugar dissolved in 250Ml of water gives SG 1.040 for Beet sugar, and a SG 1.048 for cane sugar.

This equates to about a 1% difference in alcohol yield when fermented.

this is based on experiments with granulated Tate &lyle (cane sugar) and silver spoon (beet sugar) the two main brands available here in the UK fair trade cane comes in at SG1.046. I have established from research that cane sugar is refined to a transport grade then again to retail quality whilst beet sugar is refined straight to retail quality. I am aware that they are meant to be chemically identical and as such should give equal yields but the fact is they don't. anecdotaly my grandmother called beet sugar wet sugar and wouldn't use it for jam making. was she on to something is it down to a higher water of crystallisation in beet sugar compared to cane?

If you were asked to account for your movements could you? I thought I could but on close inspection there are big gaps when I was alone and 'out' and whilst I know I was at home and my wife could confirm it after 20:00 the tracker app on my phone claims I went out twice for 15 min and covered 1.2 miles each time. How sound would your alibi be?

Had the Israelis treated the population of Gaza, the West bank and the Golan heights as full Israeli citizens after they occupied these territories, Given them the same health care education housing projects charged the same taxes etc as jewish Israelis instead of treating them as 'Untermensch' would there now be the same troubles in these territories

It seems that the Syrian rebels are affiliated to the islamic brother hood and supported to some extent by Iran. Considering the US and Nato are fighting against a similar alignment in Afghanistan, why are they not supporting the Syrian government?

I brought a cheap FreeView+ box it's storage media is a perfectly standard hitachi 320Gb SATA HDD. I'm not worried about opening and modifying the case and there is a spare SATA port on the mother board of my PC. So could I A) Connect the HDD to my pc and copy the recorded programs to transfer them to a smart phone to watch. B) modify the SATA cable in the free view box and install a SATA port on the back of the box so I don't have to keep disturbing the HDD connection to access it? Please note I am quite technically adept I've previously scavenged an IDE HDD from an old sky + box and used it in a PC as the main drive I'm just uncertain about what you can do with a SATA cable and what format the recordings are in on the Freeview+ box I think it is Mpeg 1 and 2