JohnJ79

Ok so, I have a dripping noise apparently coming from 2 pipes that are going down inside the wall and have an elbow where the wall meets the floor and come inward to the room about 8" and just about 1/2 an inch under the carpet to another elbow where they turn down again and apparently just drain onto the ground under the house. I have went under the house to try to see this but by the crawlspace there is a big sewer tube that prevents me from going to that side of the house in the crawlspace. It seems like right after someone runs water in the house, there's a quick dripping noise coming from the first elbow in each pipe then it tapers off and stops. I pulled up the carpet and water doesn't seem to be leaking around the pipes, i'm pretty sure the noise is coming from inside the pipes, they are PVC Flomax plastic pipes so the noise is pretty loud. Any ideas what these pipes are for and if I need to do anything about them?

So my brother needs ideas for a job, he has a high school diploma and some computer skills, and an injured back so he can't load trucks or anything, but he could probably do a standing job like at a counter or something. So far he was thinking like a computer help desk job or call center tech support, perhaps a security guard, any other ideas?

People keep asking me if I'm democrat or republican or conservative or liberal or right or left and I don't know? I've googled the different terms and I tend to agree with some policies of one side and some policies of the other, is there an unbiased online survey I can take that will give me like a pie chart or graph of some sort to show where i'm at? similar to the survey you can take to see how evil you are or what kind of celebrity you should marry etc...

My wife and I have a significant credit card debt that we are trying to pay down, but we also want to add to our savings in case we get laid off or something. Right now I pay about $500 a month to our credit cards, and put about $100 - $200 into savings. My wife wants me to not pay so much on the credit card, and to put more in savings. I see the value in savings, but I want to pay the credit card down because it charges interest just for having the debt. So should I focus on the credit card, focus on the savings? or just split it down the middle?

my wife and i have been butting heads on this for a while. I keep leaving at least 1 light on downstairs all night, partially for home safety, partially so if you go downstairs for a snack in the middle of the night you don't sprain an ankle stepping on dog bone, or a dog. but i also think burglars are less likely to try to break into a house if lights are on. my wife says they are less likely to break in with the lights off because it is dark, and she cites the obvious power savings. I always thought darkness was a criminal's friend, which is why we have streetlights outside etc...

I was looking at Sci-Fi books, and found "Condition Red: Area 51". It had an interesting cover, so I clicked the "Google Preview" link to read a little bit of it, but the continuity, grammar, and spelling errors were so numerous it was very distracting. I'm no writer, and I'm full of spelling and grammar mistakes too, but this book got published and landed a price tag of $40 but no one proofread or spellchecked it? Can anyone explain this? Here's the link to the book I'm talking about:

http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sk...

Basically I left my computer running, went downstairs for about 20 minutes. When I came back upstairs, the computer was off, and the room smelled like melting plastic. Like a smart person I turned the computer back on, hehe and it worked. I checked the temperature gauges and it was not overheating, the temps were staying normal. And there was no smell. then after about 10 minutes the room filled again with the hot plastic smell and the computer turned off.

I haven't taken it apart to check for burn marks yet, but I'm wondering if this is most likely the power supply or if it could be anything else? its not crashing, just turning off, and its not overheating so I don't think its the cpu. I have a 9800GT graphics card so a new power supply that can power it will be $80 to $100 I think.

so my wife has an OK laptop, its a 1.6ghz dual-core AMD CPU, HP brand, 2GB RAM, 120gb hard drive. The problem is she has collected too much music, and the hard drive is almost full. She has a desktop computer with a 400GB hard drive but she says she can't move her music to it because iTunes will see the music is not on her laptop and will wipe it from her iPod the next time she syncs up. She wants to just get a whole new laptop with a 500GB hard drive and store all her music on it. Is there any way she can use the hard drive on her desktop computer for storage but not wipe out her ipod when it syncs up to her laptop?

p.s. i use a generic folder-based mp3 player so i don't have these problems.

Last August I got that chain letter that says "mars will be as big as the moon!" etc.. which i knew was phony, but I got curious to see if mars will be closer than normal anytime soon. I have an astronomy program called Stellarium that tracks stars and planets and stuff. I used it to track Mars and fast forward through time, it showed that mars is getting closer to earth and continues getting closer until the week of January 25 2010, then it stays about 0.67AU away for that week and then starts heading away again. Is this normal? will mars be any more viewable than normal during this time? Would it still be a tiny red dot through a telescope or would you be able to see more detail at that time?

I have 2 computers, both have a SATA3.0GB/S hard drive in it. Both computers are connected via a Gigabit Ethernet Switch. But when I transfer files the fastest it goes is about 30 megabytes per second. In bits per second thats about 240megabits per second, or 0.24 gigabits per second. So since the switch is 1 gigabit and the hard drives claim to be 3.0 gigabits (or gigabytes which would be even faster) should I be limited to the 1 gigabit per second (125 megabytes per second) of the gigabit ethernet switch? The file transfer speeds are the same inside the drive as well. If i try to transfer from one partition to another on the same drive it is still about 30 megabytes per second.

I run XP Pro with TightVNC. In order to VNC into the computer i have to go to it and login as the TightVNC server is not started until a user is logged in. How do I make it so I can just power the computer on and VNC into it while it is at the XP Welcome screen?

I'm trying to build a computer for my dad, he has 4 IDE devices he'd rather not get rid of (2 HD's, 2 DVDRW's) I'd like to find a motherboard that can support recent processors (preferably AMD) as well as support his IDE devices. I found a couple XFX boards that would work but they seem more geared for gaming, whereas he mostly does web surfing and some audio recording. I've also researched the idea of external enclosures but he would rather them be internal.

I have a bunch of Dell computers with XP Pro OEM COAs on them, my retail version of XP Pro wouldn't install so I bought a copy of XP Pro OEM for Dells, and it installed correctly and passes WGA Authenticity. My question is when I go to sell them on Craigslist, can I include a burned copy of the XP Pro OEM? or do I have to say "XP installed but no disk?"

I am looking at buying a wholesale lot of computers on ebay (~20 HP's). They don't have Windows installed on them, but they have a Windows XP Pro Certificate of Authenticity on them. I have a pirated copy of XP Pro (and a legal copy of XP Home) I was wondering can I install the pirated XP pro on these computers using each PC's COA that is attached to it and have them all be legit?

If not I will install Ubuntu on them.

I just transferred $12,000 on to a 0% interest credit card. I intend to pay it down as much as I can before the 0% interest period is up. I'm just wondering what to expect for the minimum payment requirement. It will be very nice not to have to keep track of multiple cards though!

this is wierd, i have serveral pairs of slacks that I wear to work. I have a pair of black ones that seem to be a magnet for lint and fuzzies. they were extremely linty this morning so i hit them with the sticky roller thing and got all the lint off, 10 minutes later I looked like i rolled in a pile of lint. so i took the sticky roller to them again. then 10 mins later the same thing. I'm in an office setting with not much lint or dust, yet i collect a fine white lint in a thick layer minutes after cleaning. also this happens whether i am at home or at the office. what gives?

K here's the deal: I got home from work and hit the power button on my computer. it turned on for about 5 seconds and turned off. Then the power button wouldn't turn it on again, I waited 5 minutes, still nothing. I flipped the switch off at the back of the power supply and flipped it back on, the computer turned on (without me hitting the power button on the front) and stayed on for about 5 seconds then turned off again. I unplugged everything except the video card and 1 ram chip and the cpu, still nothing (still powers on then off when i cycle the power switch on the back). so i changed the ram stick, same thing, i pulled out the video card (hoping for a video error beep) nope same thing, pulled out the ram (hoping for a ram error beep) nope still nothing. the cpu fan does spin up when the system powers up, so i unplug the cpu fan but that doesn't change the symptoms at all. I have unplugged the power switch and shorted the 2 pins to see if it powered on but it did not work. so even with just the cpu and power supply it still doesn't try to boot. so it would have to be a bad power supply, cpu, or motherboard, or something got loose and is shorting it somewhere right? any ideas?

oh yeah system specs:

amd 64 4800+ dual core

2x1gb OCZ memory

2x512mb PNY gamer memory

asus m2n32sli deluxe mobo

nvidia 7900gs

liteon dvdrw

ibm desk star 400gb sata 1

wd 320gb sata 2

1x 120mb case fan

4x 80mm case fan

1x ~70mm slot fan

BFG Tech 650w PSU

I have a Cisco router/switch lab, and right now if i want to console into one of my routers from work I have to VNC into my computer only to run Putty and connect over the serial port. The work computer i use is a 866mhz celeron running on a partial T1, so VNC taxes both the connection and the memory. I'm running Ubuntu, isn't there a utility i could use that I could just telnet or SSH to my home computer, then run it to connect over the console port via line command?

I have the helicopter at the link below, what I want to do is mount some sort of video or still photo camera on it. I was thinking of putting my cell phone in record mode and strapping it on with some rubber bands, but as my cell phone cost $234, I'd rather not. Is there some camera that is very small and light and records to like an onboard flash drive or beams it to a laptop wirelessly?

http://www.thinkrc.com/apache-ah64-feral-beast-4ch...

I have 2 computers that have 2 network cards. so I made the 1st network cards on each use DHCP and connect to my router to the internet. I got a 2nd router and connected the 2nd network cards to it using all static IPs and connected the 2nd router to the first router so it could route out as well (there are single NIC computers on each router as well so they both need to route out). but my problem is my computer's with the double NICs seem to prefer the 2nd connection which has an extra hop in the mix. i get about a 2mb speed decrease going through the extra router? i like the redundancy but how to i get them to try the primary connection first and only use the 2nd connection if the primary connection is unusable?