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I'm going to go against the crowd here and say that I don't think this guy's position is a case of total and pure assholery. There never is a good time to break up with someone, but there certainly are better and worse times, and just before a long-planned trip is probably one of the worst times, especially if there is a good deal of financial investment and involvement of friends and family. How humiliating for her to have to go on such a trip alone and explain to all her friends and family… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:49 AM on July 29, 2013

Why not try out John Barth's The Sot-weed Factor.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:19 AM on July 20, 2013

You can roast it like any other roast. I'd suggest marinating it in wine, celery, carrots and onions overnight, searing it in a bit of oil on the rangetop and then sticking it in the oven for about 2 hours at 250 or so in a covered casserole dish. Yum. You'll get a gravy out of it that way, too, and a really tasty one depending on how fatty the cut is.

Another way: here
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:19 PM on July 12, 2013 marked best answer

Forget about GreekKeys. If your OS X is up to date, you just have to add "Greek Polytonic" to your Input Sources (just search Input Sources in Spotlight) and like the servant of Odysseus, you'll see by the scar that what you thought of as an ASCII world was Unicode all along. Helvetica comes loaded with a good Greek typeface, Minion's is pretty nice, too. Times New Roman on OS X has a full set of polytonic Greek glyphs as well.

If you want really nice Greek… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:23 AM on May 20, 2013 marked best answer

Nobody has mentioned Marilyn Robinson's Housekeeping. I also have infinitely good things to say about Zadie Smith, whose fiction keeps changing and never for the worse. Toni Morrison should be in the running for greatest American novelist of the second half of the twentieth century. If the subcontinent counts as non-white, then Vikram Seth is a dude you shouldn't ignore. The recently departed Chinua Achebe cannot help but move you, unless you are dumb and deaf to the world.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:46 AM on May 7, 2013 marked best answer

There is absolutely, positively, nothing at all wrong with asking one or both of the professors directly: How do you feel about writing a letter of recommendation for me? And you should also ask this: If you write a letter, will it be a strong one? Don't feel self-conscious about this at all. Trust me, unless you're our star student, we don't think about you very often, and we also find the interaction as awkward as you do. So directness is appreciated.

Different profs… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:29 PM on May 3, 2013

Ditto to the smarty pants above. I score remarkably high on all sorts of tests (including a perfect score on the GRE) and all I seem to get from it is bad life decisions (like graduate school) and the uncanny ability to be marked almost immediately by average joes and janes as Mr Professor, the walking encyclopedia. And I don't even try to be a know it all. I'd give up 20 iq points for some charm, social grace, or at least emotional stability.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:22 PM on March 14, 2013

The beaches are better slightly north, in Clearwater, and you can stay right on the beach there, too. But being a (former) native I wouldn't know what hotels are good or bad. If you're looking for a quiet beach you just won't find one where there are also places to stay, but you can walk to some less crowded spots on the north side of clearwater beach (the south is the meat market / tourist side of things), especially if you're there in the late spring and early summer (winter is the worst time… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:57 AM on March 11, 2013

Oh and you can also walk to caladesi "island" from the north side of clearwater beach, but its a decent hike, especially with a five year old in tow.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:05 AM on March 11, 2013

I do the exact recipe that EmpressCallipygos mentions, and it works wonderfully. And once you've got your own yogurt, you can start straining it in cheesecloth for your very own wonderful (and cheap!) "greek" yogurt
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:19 AM on June 19, 2012 marked best answer

My suggestion is to get a SIM from StraightTalk, which is a pay-per-month carrier that piggybacks on AT&T's network in the States. A month of "unlimited" data (really 2GB of data) and voice will set you back $45. But unlike most US carriers, you don't need to sign up for a 2-year contract. (www.straighttalk.com)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:48 PM on June 8, 2012

pace Sidhedevil, I'd just like to chime in in favor of the iSi. I drink about two full iSi siphons a day. It's not at all inconvenient if you keep a large amount of cold water in the fridge at all times. (the problem is that only cold water really carbonates well). Just fill it back up with cold water, charge it, shake and wait about a half hour, and you've got another quart of sparkling water. And the chargers are not at all expensive if you buy them in bulk on Amazon (I… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:18 AM on June 3, 2012

Lulu and Blurb won't produce the quality of book you're looking for (canvas or leather covers, sewn binding, fine paper). My guess is that either you'll want to find someone who binds books by hand. Or, if you're willing to pay for a relatively large run (a few hundred books?) you might have luck finding a vanity press. Vanity presses seem surprisingly difficult to find from a simple google search but they surely exist.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:22 PM on June 2, 2012

Also, 15,000 words is really rather small, about 40 normal print pages at 12pt. This puts it in the pamphlet category more than book category (of course, you could typeset it at 14 or 16pt, but even then it won't break 60 or 70 pages). It will be difficult to have it fine bound with so few pages, I think.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:28 PM on June 2, 2012

For your budget, you may be able to get a Solid State Drive to put in your existing laptop. SSD's have no moving parts, and so are basically impervious to falls (unless you drop it so hard as to dent it). They are expensive for the storage space, but worth it if your storage needs are not great. They are also a bazillion times faster than traditional hard drives.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:53 PM on March 4, 2012

You are going to Florida. Floridians don't understand public transit. The top four most dangerous cities in the nation for pedestrians are in the sunshine state. Someone walking around is considered suspicious, or eccentric. In short, I can't imagine flying into Orlando and not renting a car unless I was only going to Disney.

You can probably find a long distance bus to Indian River County, but once you get there, don't expect sensible public transit. You might have to… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:19 AM on March 4, 2012

Oh, and generally, one way rentals are much more expensive than rentals where you return it to the place you rented it. You can probably get the car for $200-300 for the whole two weeks. I would expect two one-way rentals to be the same. And in any case, you'll want the car the whole time unless you plan on never leaving your hotel or wherever else you're sleeping or unless you're meeting up there with someone with a car.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:20 AM on March 4, 2012

You can also create a circle on Google+ limited to yourself and post just to that circle.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:51 AM on February 3, 2012

I know that MeFi is a place full of anti-amazon.com angst, but if you happen to be a student, you might be able to get a Prime membership for free, or really cheap ($40). Then you can order any dry or canned foods you want at a major discount (both a bulk discount and then 15% off for a "subscription" which you can cancel immediately). They'll come right to your door, which makes it easy to not have a car. All you need then is to pick up produce and things like milk.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:34 AM on January 28, 2012

nthing what people say about speaking as much French as you can to shop keepers etc, as well as dressing well. If you wear a fanny pack pick-pockets will stock you across the city. Also the advice to get cash, although if you have a VISA debit card it will work at any ATM (or any one that I encountered).

Beware the girls (mostly girls) who will attempt to get you to donate to UNESCO causes around the touristy sites. They're trying to scam you. People are pushier in Paris… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:52 PM on November 14, 2011

Yogurt with live cultures is very much still alive, as others have said. If you really want to find out just how alive, put a few tablespoons of that Brown Cow or Stonyfield in a few quarts of milk in a pot, cover, and stick in an oven at 120F. 8 hours later you've got a few quarts more yogurt than you had before.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:15 AM on November 13, 2011

First word of advice: Germany is basically the 0th world. Expect everything to go very smoothly. See if your bank has a no fees debit account that lets you make international ATM transactions. Sometimes they will.charge a monthly fee for this but it is worth it. I use cash mostly in Europe because of the chip and pin issue. You can book hotels online through the same places you do in the states. Also, everyone will speak English and be very helpful. Have fun and don't tell them the awful truth:… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:02 PM on November 12, 2011

Just say no to the overpriced BookArc. Nothing is more fantastic than using a Ikea FANTASTIK napkin holder as a macbook stand. I'm using one right now, and I've never had a problem with it. Save $50, and I think it actually looks better, too.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:27 AM on November 12, 2011

empath: There's almost no chance your mac has a virus.

This is changing today. The popularity of the mac in recent years has made it a target, and malware is being discovered in the wild with payloads for OS X vulnerabilities. This is made even easier for hax0rs since Apple moved from PPC to Intel (no need to learn totally new shellcode techniques).

You could see if it's a false positive by hooking up a different computer to the same internet… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:10 AM on November 11, 2011

Zamyatin's "We" is one of the earliest (if not the earliest?) of the dystopia genre, and really very good. Nothing more hyper-rationalized than the russians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:59 AM on November 11, 2011

I have a similar situation, although different. I'm an academic and need to write papers and study often, while she works a regular job. Doing good work in my field requires a lot of time alone, quietly reading and writing (which is really why I went into it, because I cherish my alone time.) It makes things hard because the time when I'm "working" is rather nebulous and changes and so it's hard to know when I'm free to be disturbed or not.

We worked out like… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:51 AM on November 6, 2011

It is likely impossible to recover the precise magic of 19th century American prose, of which James is one of the greatest exemplars. But there are great writers today, who simply write in a different register. If you want learned material, I'd recommend Stephen Jay Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny. David Foster Wallace's non fiction is of a high caliber. I can't really think of much more, since I'm pretty well steeped in the technical side of things these days, but a further… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:54 AM on November 5, 2011 marked best answer

I second lalocheezia's amazon links and would like to add one more: Shamos's Great Experiments in Physics. It has the advantage of being (edited) reproductions of the actual descriptions of the experiments made by the experimenters themselves, which can help remind you just how crazy science was (in order to be wary to just how crazy science still is).

I'm a particular fan of the Faraday effect experiment described in it.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:22 AM on November 1, 2011