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I considered the permanent footers, but haven't yet done the research on what that would do to the "status" of the shed. As it stands, it made it probably 20 years on the old blocks, and I'm going to pop the floor in a couple of weekends and drop some deck blocks down with 4x4 to attach to the lower joists. I'm not really worried about it.

I'm battling the fact that every rock place around here is French, and they seem to have different terms for everything,… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:09 AM on August 12, 2010

Live your life in a way that honours the Buddha's teachings; set a great example for your daughter.

There is no better portrait.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:54 AM on August 6, 2010

You want the bulk store located on a side street (Place du Marche du Nord) just outside the Jean-Talon market. The name escapes me, but you can buy ground almonds/almond flour there -- my wife did a few months ago to take a shot at making some macarons.

It's literally next door to the Marché des Saveurs du Québec, which is a pretty kick-ass store in its own right.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:44 AM on August 2, 2010

Following up on leslies' statement, above: my wife has lived with me while going through the permanent residency process, and we opted to get her private health insurance coverage from a company in Canada. Companies like ETFS provide insurance coverage for visitors to Canada as well as for Canadians leaving the country, and it's (apparently) far easier to arrange for decent coverage in the event of a problem if you're insured by an in-country company as opposed to a U.S. company.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:42 AM on July 30, 2010

(as portability goes: I'm currently working with a leather crafter on Etsy to find a way to make a pad + keyboard sleeve that I can slip both the iPad and the keyboard into and out of for transport).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:36 AM on July 16, 2010

Quick follow-up: I went for it! And it's going very, very well after Week One: the chief problem I have isn't that the iPad + keyboard isn't good for writing, but that the iPad is the ultimate distraction device. But it's turning into a great five-minutes-free tool for filling time with writing -- especially a project that's composed of a lot of microchapters that I've been meaning to get around to for years but hadn't yet.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:47 AM on July 26, 2010

Kitteh and I are married and both live in Sherbrooke; I'm glad you're already heading to St-Benoît, which is awesome this time of year. Arbre Sutton is also tons of fun.

The entire Wine Route is right in that neck of the woods, and if your group isn't huge on physical activities, there's a ton of different circuits you can check out. If your group is hiking-oriented, just plain hiking up Mount Orford is a (strenuous) blast, with a stellar view to reward you at the top.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:57 PM on July 20, 2010 marked best answer

This page might be helpful, especially given you're not a big meat eater: iron in the vegan diet. I'm not a vegan nor a nutritionist, but it seems pretty comprehensive (I found it by searching for "broccoli bok choi iron," with the two veggies I was sure had lots of iron in them.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:29 PM on July 13, 2010

Mark's Daily Apple is often recommended around these parts -- I'm not a fan of the whole Primal diet thing, but those that are really like his site.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:25 AM on July 12, 2010

Boom Blox Bash Party is our go-to game for co-op fun -- if by "causing havoc" you mean knock things over and blow things up, it can accomodate; it's also got competitive play where you can actually mess with each other.

In our home, it had a shelf life of about 8 weeks for my wife and I playing it regularly, and it still gets pulled out whenever we have game-friendly friends over. It's a game that really plays to the Wii's strengths (it's very physical and cartoonish).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:23 PM on July 9, 2010

If you want to control what you say, don't focus on words, focus on rhythm.

Talk slow.

In a past life running a community radio station, the best way to get profanity-laden 18-year-olds to stop swearing on-air -- which they were fuckin' used to fuckin' doing, because, shit, it's just part of regular fuckin' speech -- wasn't to tell them "don't swear," it was "talk at 66% of your normal speed."… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:47 AM on July 9, 2010

"What don't I know?" and then stare menacingly into the other person's eyes, leading to a prolonged state of elevated discomfort where they realize that their options are to either challenge your assertion that you know everything, which could lead to an escalating level of lunacy, or acknowledge that you are in fact omniscient, which could pose a parallel set of problems.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:44 AM on July 8, 2010

I have a great idea but it would require you to carry a nearly unlimited supply of Tootsie Pops on you at all times.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:02 AM on July 8, 2010

Well, I wound up going with the urine option -- human urine, that is. A flour ring around the entrance shows no tracks overnight, so I'm going to wait and see what happens during the day today.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:50 AM on July 8, 2010

- Eat a lot of protein, and mainly protein, for breakfast. I have the same problem if I have a bowl of cereal. Switched (back) to tofu-miso soup (with tiny peas, some corn, a little spinach, and some shiitake mushrooms) a couple of days ago, and my mornings are much much better.

I -- a guy, so obviously very different from your situation in many ways -- had that exact same "conking out" problem for years, and it all but vanished when I… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:20 AM on July 7, 2010

My wife, who is also looking forward to attempting macarons and has done lots of macaron homework, informs me that if things are humid, you'd be best to experiment with other things and wait for drier weather to attempt the macarons. Apparently having a very dry environment is super crucial.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:06 AM on July 7, 2010 marked best answer

I have the same problem, and am slowly coming to the realization that it's a time management issue, not any change in my ability to read itself; as I've gotten older, the amount of short-serve media options available to me have increased exponentially.

And you know what? I mostly like what I'm doing when I'm not reading.

I agonized for years about the amount of books I wasn't reading; I'm now married to a voracious reader,… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:02 PM on July 6, 2010

a) Interested in talking about lots of stuff they love.
b) Not interested in talking about themselves.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:12 PM on July 5, 2010

Hm! I sort of understand what artlung has done, in a kinda-sorta sort of way, but I get all the images displaying, one after the other, linearally. I've cut and pasted the whole thing into a file and named it index.html, uploading it directly to the root directory along with the images (named image001.png through image019.png).

I get the images side by side, when they fit, and then one after the other vertically when they don't fit next to each other.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:13 PM on June 28, 2010

Thanks for all the help -- I posted the result to Projects (with probable updates etc. to come).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:43 AM on July 5, 2010

My wife, who is a cookbook aficionado, thinks that Nigella Lawson might be your go-to person for this: recipes for 2 people and sometimes 4, lots of nice pictures, fairly healthy cooking, and not too "meaty."
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:19 PM on June 28, 2010

The "ignoring" thing is super important, especially the keeping it up part.

As far as ignoring goes, sometimes -- especially when your stalker is showing moments of lucidity -- you might think you can convince them to knock it off, either via angry confrontation or reasonable discourse or human appeal.

You cannot. The defining characteristic of somebody in this obsessive loop is they can't distinguish good noise… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:51 PM on June 23, 2010

Narbonic. It's even recommended and sold by Phil Foglio as the "Absolute Best Mad Scientist comic out there."

Narbonic.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:23 PM on June 21, 2010

Well, trying the squats and lunges hurts my ass like crazy. That must mean it's a good thing.

There is nothing more annoying than pulling your ass. Not only do you walk funny and have to deal with constant low-level pain, you also walk obviously funny which prompts funny looks and questions that you have to answer with "I pulled my ass." You can dress it up all macho and say "I strained a glute exercising,"… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:20 AM on June 18, 2010

A quick reminder: I need questions with answers.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:03 PM on June 17, 2010

EVERY INCH IRREVOCABLE

i.e. every little bit you move forward, that's yours. You've done it and nothing will ever take that away from you.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:53 PM on June 16, 2010

curb my midmorning hunger

As a semi-aside, I've discovered that my midmorning hunger is a direct result of not eating protein with/for breakfast. While I can scarf down a cup of cereal with milk or yogurt and be starving at 10:30, a single boiled egg will keep me rolling until noon no problem.

You can always hard-boil several eggs ahead of time, and have them with various condiments on toast. But (in my case, anyway) the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:25 AM on June 11, 2010

Thanks, all! For anyone still reading this, we booked a nice-looking flat in Notting Hill through New York Habitat, after come careful vetting of the company. Looks good so far. Thanks in particular to amusebuche -- we didn't wind up with either of your companies, but that knowledge fueled a deeper search that led us to NYH.

VERY much looking forward to this trip. Now it's just a matter of mapping all these recommendations!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:20 AM on June 10, 2010

10 PLAY LAIBACH'S MACBETH
20 GOTO 10
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:06 PM on June 9, 2010

A portable version of Opera/Tor, suitable for plug-and-play in school computer labs, Internet cafés, and elsewhere. Youthful indiscretion and non-anonymous browsing can land a feller in a lot of trouble.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:33 AM on June 9, 2010

My wife moved up here with two cats at around this time last year. She presented vet records (full-page receipts, on the vet's letterhead, of recent visits that also showed their "status," i.e. vaccines up to date, etc.) at the border and that was fine. It didn't occasion as much as a second glance or follow-up question: “Are the cats vaccinated?" "Yes, here's the paperwork," "Great, thank you."

Land crossing, Derby Line (Vermont/Quebec), 2009.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:54 PM on June 4, 2010

Wow, I missed the boat on this.

Other than Richter, no love for the moderns? Gavin Bryars' Sinking of the Titanic is gorgeous and heartrending: a simple musical motif revisited and revisited, but each time slightly differently, and with greater distance and distortion. You “hear” the ship sink, doomed musicians on board continuing to play, impossibly, as it disappears deeper and deeper into the dark and unforgiving ocean. Musical excerpt (and fanmade video) here.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:06 AM on June 4, 2010

Basement Jaxx -- most everything, really, but Good Luck is a good post-breakup jealousy song.

The Dragonettes' I Get Around is sexy as all hell.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on May 28, 2010

Not trying to steer my own thread, but since we're getting a fairly unanimous chorus of "learn PHP" here, can I broaden the question to recommended resources for picking up PHP?

Follow-up question: W3Schools says I need JavaScript before moving on to PHP: is that true, and is JavaScript relevant to my needs, or would I be better off looking elsewhere?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:55 AM on May 26, 2010

The golden rule of not being a stalker, is if you ask yourself "hey, I wonder if the person in question would consider this stalking?" the answer is always yes.

Even if you think the answer is "probably not," the answer is always yes.

I say this both as somebody who has been stalked, and as somebody whose behaviour could easily have gone over the line once if I hadn't been stalked, and didn't recognize… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:21 AM on May 3, 2010

But I don't know how to break it off, especially as I am not ready to come out to my family. (And may not be for years. I know I should, but I have to take this one step at a time, and much of my family is very conservative.)

I don't see why, if your current partner is not the right person for you, your idealized "right person" has to be part of the explanation. You're not obliged to stay with people you don't want to stay with, full stop.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:49 PM on April 30, 2010

I have terrible wiring in my brain where I don't do a very good job of managing small stressors -- the little things that don't even seem worth the bother of engaging in a minor argument about, versus the relative ease of just "putting up with it". The "why am I always the one that takes out the recycling?" kind of things -- rather than be an adult and sit down with my wife and map out who is responsible for what, and whether it's fair, and why, I'll just take out the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:01 AM on April 19, 2010 marked best answer

If your school has one, and if he or she is worth his or her salt, the school's ombudsperson should be able to answer your question regarding specific regulations, and possibly have some anecdotal data that can be of use about situations that have arisen in the past, within a context of total confidentiality.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:09 AM on April 8, 2010

Are free will and an omnipotent/omniscient God possible in the same universe?

I'm casting a vote for "no"; grumblebee lays most of my arguments out above better than I could, but here's my personal summary of the argument.

If an omniscient being exists, it has to know what I'm going to do by the definition of omnisicent. You can branch off into alternate dimensions or look at quantum possibilities or whatnot, but… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:58 PM on March 26, 2010

Not to state the obvious, but clean out the litterbox on a daily basis (use scoopable litter) and there will not be an issue with unpleasantness.

Except that you may well be releasing a significant amount of diatomaceous earth into the air (lots of kitty litters use it, and it is so light it just sort of hangs as a haze after you clean the boxes for a while), and that's also not so good for the breathin'.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:09 PM on March 26, 2010

Collating some of what I've learned and read so far, it looks like:
I should stick to "tested" recipes
There are very few "tested" recipes for mustard
The "tested" recipes, however, seem to have some wiggle room if I don't add things like flour or low-acid contentsThe heat of a pressure canner may affect the mustard's flavour profile 
I guess the holy grail for me would be some standard checklist of "if your food… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:58 AM on March 24, 2010

1. Yes, but see 2.

2. Totally depends on how the account was pitched for.

Did you collaborate with WTF on pitch materials? I work as a strategist at an ad agency, and we consider our work with freelancers to be collaborative -- the freelancer is hired and paid to work on the pitch, remunerated for that work, and the end result is "ours" (the agency's), even if the pitch is not the winning pitch. Our freelancers are bound by about eight… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:42 AM on March 23, 2010

I am in Canada (Sherbrooke, Quebec, just across the border from you) so obviously the laws aren't EXACTLY the same, but somebody here was arrested, refused to pay a fine, and was jailed in lieu of fine payment here. In other words, here, at least, not paying animal registration fees to our equivalent of the Humane Society (the Société de Protection des Animaux, or SPA) can have significant, criminal-record-affecting, jail-time-causing, effects. Don't take this lightly.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:13 PM on March 12, 2010

Call her psychiatrist.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:42 AM on March 11, 2010

I honestly and completely love the hell out of my WiiFit. I was a total skeptic going in -- to the point that we borrowed a friend's Wii and rented the board for a week, because I figured neither I nor my wife would be that interested in it after a couple of days.

Two months in, we've purchased both, and make a point of spending 45 minutes to an hour every night having fun with it. The games range from balance games (not strenuous) to aerobics games (medium to very… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:25 AM on March 10, 2010

ghostpony, I like jumping rope, but what about the persistent feeling that I am doing something absolutely horrible to my knees?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:15 PM on March 10, 2010

As the above said re. yes, they can actually become "too thin." Worth considering: if the floors are worn enough, a nice coat of varnish, applied correctly, can give them a sheen and what's called the "rustic look." I just finished working on a flooring company catalog where they were actually faking the 100-year-old scuffed hardwood look on new wood because it was so in demand; this was the centerpiece of their catalog. So, from some perspectives, what you have right now… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:05 AM on March 10, 2010

Additional info: just ended a ten year relationship and have experienced a ton of transition this year.

That is not "additional" info. That is key info.

I agree with the above re. therapy and probable burnout, but maybe you should talk to your boss about a shakeup at work. Something that's different enough that you have to develop new knowledge or skills; a challenge. "A change is as good as a rest," as… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:57 PM on March 5, 2010

Holding back to avoid steering my own thread -- thanks for the comments so far.

I'm a PA reader, and also bookmark the comic link, which is exactly why I'm afraid of that model -- the situation described above as "and having them on separate pages may just result in a blog, and a comic, instead of a comic + blog synergy".

I haven't read Ctrl-Alt-Del in years, and really like that design;… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:47 PM on March 5, 2010

Head over to Banjo Hangout, make an account, and post a message asking for contributions, offering to credit the chosen recording in the Legacy site. Banjo Hangout is full of awesome (and talented!) guys and I'm sure you'd get some free recordings from the Hangout members themselves to use as you see fit, as long as you confine use to the stated purpose.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:07 AM on March 5, 2010