bwalker5

My family has carried almost 40-50 thousand (yes thousand) dollars across multiple cards ever since my medical problems. I just came into a bunch of money and am going to get rid of all that debt but ran in to a question.

Will it hurt my credit score if I mysteriously (from their point of view) pay off 40-50k of debt in the same month?

We got 2 Guinea Pigs and we LOVE THEM!!!!

tiny bit of background: We bought the absolute biggest cage there is and it takes almost a full bag bedding for every cage cleaning ($20 a pop :-S). In the information I can find online, it seems like people have little or no bedding at all and have chosen blankets, astroturf, linoleum(sp) and etc which I can't imagine be good for the entire cage.

the question: Is it possible to provide bedding in one area for a potty spot and other flooring for play\food\etc? If so, would they like they igloo house on the bedding (since it seems they like to potty in one corner of it too)?

Please watch the video of the noise at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R5NSEaK7Gc

All of the Guinea pig noises are so similar.. We can't tell if this is a happy purr (Our guess since he is still eating) or a harning rumble.

Any opinions are welcome since we are Guinea novices.

A quick poll to see how terrible I am becoming.

I was at a function today and as I usually do, I retreated to the kids area to play with my kid and her friends all around 6-8ish. In any group there is 'that one kid' who just bulldozes their way through life and you can see they are going to be a terror when they get older.

Option one is set your boundaries such as: "we aren't playing the game that way because that is against the rules" and ignore them.

Option two is to actually try and fix the kid by explaining how playing their way isn't fun for everyone and in life we should . . . yadda yadda

Which do you usually pick? I usually try to fix the kid but I am beginning to loose hope. I am starting to feel like the energy is wasted and that no one can fix a problem that another parent breaks every day.

I am always answering in this section but thought I would stir up a can of worms.

Does anyone else find it sad that father\son relationships have gone so far downhill that a kid would turn to yahoo answers when he is worried about something.

I understand why you wouldn't ask your dad if you should worry your girlfriend is pregnant but it makes me so sad when I see kids asking us if their wedding-tackle looks right or of they are worried about this or that.

We sometimes pop off a cute answers now and then but I really like that there are folks on this section who seem to answer honestly and with care the majority of the time.

I just wish the kids felt comfortable getting this info from a real live male role model.

Not sure why my question keeps getting removed so I will be as vague as possible.

A friend of my daughter has lost her father approximately 4 weeks ago. We haven't told my daughter (7 years old) any of this and the friend hasn't mentioned it either though they play together every day.

When the PTA asked what they could do, the family replied that it was a family matter and to please not ask again. We def. will respect the mom's wishes but wish there was something we could do to help our young friend.

The family moved here from india a few years ago and we know they don't have family in the country except the mom's father.

It sure would ease our mind if someone familiar with the culture in India could tell us how a death is handled. We can not imagine 'not talking' about a death esp. for a child so young but they probably can't imagine talking to strangers about it. It would help my wife and I to know the little kid is getting support in some other way.

Not sure why my question keeps getting removed so I will be as vague as possible.

A friend of my daughter has lost her father approximately 4 weeks ago. We haven't told my daughter (7 years old) any of this and the friend hasn't mentioned it either though they play together every day.

When the PTA asked what they could do, the family replied that it was a family matter and to please not ask again. We def. will respect the mom's wishes but wish there was something we could do to help our young friend.

The family moved here from india a few years ago and we know they don't have family in the country except the mom's father.

It sure would ease our mind if someone familiar with the culture in India could tell us how a death is handled. We can not imagine 'not talking' about a death esp. for a child so young so it would help my wife and I to know the little kid is getting support in some other way.

At the risk of getting all the joke answers, I really need to know.. I am sure they don't start an IV on a gerbil.. Do they give it a shot or just put gas on it's nose until the end or what? We are going to have to put down our first pet due to a tumor and don't know what to expect.

Any help would be appreciated.

The wife and I got 2 gerbils from a friend in Apr of 2007 when they were 8 weeks old. We have thought all along that they were both girls but now we have reason to worry that one of them might have only been pretending to be a girl.

Pumpkin is the possibly male gerbil who looks exactly like he\she has for 1.5 years. Blondie on the other hand is now about twice her sister(?)s size and it is all in her belly. When she stands on 4 feet, her tummy is only a couple of hairs from touching the ground and she is having a little trouble fitting through the tubes.

Is it possible that after almost 2 years together, blondie has become pregnant for the first time or is something else wrong? I thought if they were boy\girl that we would have had babies by now.

They did the thumping and chasing each other around the cage but we read that same-sex couples did that occasionally as sort of 'horsing around' type play.

Also, they eat the same food and the weight gain has only been for 1-2 months at max so it leads me to believe it isn't just fat for winter. Plus, the fact that her sister\brother is still the same size . .

We looked underneath them but couldn't tell the sex of either so we don't know what is going to happen. Is there a way to know for sure or if I sent pictures, could someone with more gerbil experience give me an opinion?

Please help us know what our next step should be.

Thanks gang.

You guys were so helpful on my other "space" question:

Jan 2000, my wife and I took a trip to London. I had been dying to go to the royal observatory in Greenwich (where GMT is based (cool)) but couldn't talk the wife into it.

One night we were taking a dinner cruise on the Thames when I saw an odd sight. A single green laser was tracking across the sky. It appeared to originate from the observatory and moved in one straight path across the sky. It was not the Millenium dome, was only 1 light (as opposed to a laser show) and took 15-30 minutes to track (much longer than a human pointing into the sky).

What was that? My guess was Satellite tracking or the moon distancing program but I would be surprised if they used visible light.

THANKS.. If I get this answered, the only one left will be the meaning of life..

Question 1..

In reading an article about space debris (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2833/is-a... I began to wonder: when two objects collide and scatter more debris that will need to be tracked, How do they detect all of it? I assume they can't figure out the trajectories of millions of pieces of a spacecraft using crash simulations so is it radar or what? and once they find it on radar, how do they create an orbital pattern to add for tracking since radar is kind of 2 dimensional?

possibly the same answer . . Question #2

I have read that a glove lost by one of the astronauts is being tracked.. I guess what does 'being tracked' mean? Are they guessing where it 'should' be or do we have a way of spotting tiny items in space other than finding them with a telescope?

Howdy folks.. I feel that for some reason I should already know the answer to this but I don't so . . .

I hear about the great numbers of people with aids in places like Africa and it brings to mind a question. Why is it still so rampant?

The options I could come up with were:

1. I can't imagine ignorance so lets just say 'unprotected sex by choice'.

2. Drugs with needles (I don't think so)

3. poor sanitation (body fluids in drinking water)

4. almost half the numbers are children that keep being born from people who know they have aids?

Is it one of these or is there a #5?

Thanks guys and gals..

What is the best and cheap or free daily diary that encrypts the information? Thanks guys.

I say semi-hypothetical because the first part actually happened.

Situation: a while back, AOL accidentally released the "google type" search strings of a bunch of users.. It's a funny story and there were some interesting ones but for this example, we will use this.. One of the users repeatedly searched for information on how to kill a person's wife, how to dispose of bodies, etc.

If AOL had noticed that and told the police\fbi\whoever, should law enforcement be able to arrest the man? Or should they maybe just warn his wife? or should they just put him under surveillance until he breaks the law? etc.

Just wondering what the general opinion was.

Do you think there are more atrocities in the world now (both large and small scale) or is technology just improving until now we see EVERY terrible thing that happens even on the other side of the planet?

I keep switching answers.. I think people are getting more mean and heartless leading to kids killing kids, etc etc.. But then again.. Would my grandparents have thought that if they got to watch a blow-by-blow of WWI? So maybe with the internet and satellite. news, we just SEE the terrible things that were already happening anyway.

What do you think?

I am sorry to admit that I am this out of touch but I would like to get a semi-neutral synopsis of what the heck happened in Georgia. Also, why people are beating up fox news and pulling out their media-censorship flags again.

My initial impressions that I would like help figuring out: South Georgia has been trying to claim it's independance, that ticked off a neighboring land and their hostilities escelated into war. Russia comes in to help the neighboring land but eventually South Georgia does get to claim independance.

the media side - fox news specifically: My impression is that the media is painting this as a david vs. goliath situation and censors anything to the contrary. Example, they cut off a little girl who thanked the Russian forces and stated that the Georgian forces were the ones being reckless with civillians.

Please help me form\reform my initial impressions and try to get my brain around what all has been happening in the world related to Georgia lately.

Thanks!

On the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw92E2RQahI&eurl=ht... at time 1:35 Jimbok is pointing to his touchscreen which is showing a "trip records" screen.

How do you get to that?

I am dying to show my wife an old episode of cops (or a cops type show) that I saw a long time ago.

The situation was this. In Florida, vice cops are setting up massage parlors that allegedly offer "extra services" for an added price. They had male officers pose as potential customers to document the crime and then after a code word the rest of the team would storm in.

For this scene, the code was Daytona beach. The cop stripped for his massage and you hear him asking what she would be willing to do for a larger tip and it sounds like the deal is about to go down. Then . . . the radio goes dead. There is a mad scramble in the van and when communications have been restored we hear some moans intertwined with random comments about Daytona Beach. The moans\comments are becoming more urgent as the team fights off bouts of laughter to rush in and 'help' their fellow officer.

PLEASE tell me where to find a copy OR at least let me know if you saw this one too and if it was on cop.

is it normal for the hybrid battery to drop a few bars overnight and is it normal for it to stay in the blue zone most of the time(2-3 bars gone)? brand new 2008 prius with less than 400 miles on it so I'm not sure if my hybrid pack is normal.. 41.3 mpg so far.. thanks!

We are thinking about getting a toyota prius. Of the people who own one, do you hate it\love it\would you buy it again given the choice and have you had any problems with it?