If you’re on vacation, even if you have a car in your driveway, ask your neighbors to make tracks in and out if it snows while you are gone. There’s nothing like a couple inches of spotless snow after 4 days to indicate that no one is home.

Serious question - how do you set your TV on a timer? If the timer turns off, the TV turns off. When the timer turns back on, the TV is still off. Am I missing something? This is something I’ve wanted to do while on vacation, but haven’t been able to find a way.

Illness comes in multiple forms. With food, it’s bacterial or parasitic things that you should be worried about. And yes, they can live in your grimey towels.

I think there’s a happy medium. If you wait until things smell mildewy or just bad, it’s probably long-past time you washed it. Rotting fruit doesn’t smell until it’s had time to decompose a bit, but if you discovered a soft apple in your fridge before it started stinking, you’d probably toss it out, not decide to…

My family used a two-or-three towel system growing up. White flour sack cloths are only for drying dishes and drying freshly washed hands. As an adult, I try to let my dishes air-dry, which is the safest bet, practiced in professional kitchens.

Pattern may not be as secure because of greasy fingers, but I prefer it because I can swipe and it is easier to do than poking my phone 4 times while cradling its large size in my small hand. Even the swipe is getting more cumbersome because my thumb doesn’t reach across the screen very well.

More importantly, I believe, is that if your biometric data is stored by the phone, it can be stolen. Once your prints are stolen, there’s not a way to change them. A password/pin/etc. can be changed.

When looking for new jobs, ask about negotiating extra vacation. Some will be willing to give you an extra week for a small cut in pay. Others (like mine) will allow you to go “in the hole” on vacation. We are allowed to use 40 hours of unearned vacation - if you leave, you just pay back what you haven’t earned back.…

At some point, you will realize that your organization is fine without you, and that people have your back. When you get to the point where you can plan a vacation, just plan it, and hold firm on your dates. It’s completely necessary.

I listened to a Ted Radio Hour podcast recently on organization. One topic covered was the idea of the family “scrum”, stealing a concept from the agile development playbook. Basically, they recommended a weekly family meeting to review what went well and what did not go well each week, with some kind of agenda. The…

I’m in a similar boat - everyone says they can’t believe I weigh as much as I do. I work out somewhat regularly and have nice muscle tone, and the exercise has lowered my BP, even from the very healthy BP I had before. My BMI is around 32 and my cholesterol is high (my good cholesterol is really high, and my bad is in…

What are the options for investing in a college fund for a niece or nephew? As far as I understand, I can only invest in a 529 if it is my own kid. I’m not planning to have my own kids, and I’d like to help my siblings’ kids through college.

Here are the recommendations from SciFri: http://www.sciencefriday.com/blogs/04/03/20…

Steaming eggs was featured on Science Friday, just before Easter. According to the guest they had on the show, steaming is the best way to cook a hard ‘boiled’ egg for easy peeling.

Or you could be like me (Sarah), and likely just say, “with the ‘h’”, and the asker would still be clueless.

How badly do you want to retire well? Or to retire at all? Because you can have student loans, a decent job, and put money in your mattress, and you’ll work until you die because of your shortsightedness. Someone in a similar situation who invests intelligently can retire comfortably, if they plan it right.

While people may have a problem with English not being listed as the “official language”, that doesn’t make the article any more correct in listing it as the official language.

If it’s rooted, I think you just need to get the Play Books app from the Google Play store.

This is why I love travel. Isn't the world beautiful??

When you buy books from Google, you can choose to download them and use some Adobe software to put them on your device. Yes, this involves using your computer as an intermediary, but I typically transfer a number of books at the same time, so I don’t do it too often.