A useful tool I'd never heard of before. Thanks!

Yup, second everyone else: do practice tests, as many as you can stand, with a stopwatch. High scores are mainly a measure of how good you are at taking the test and only secondarily of how much you know. (As someone who generally tests out in the 99th percentile, but once called road service only to find out my…

(Draw red face here) Okay, I figured it out. I was making it harder than it needed to be. I didn't need to start by ssh'ing into the remote machine. Just start cygwin and type rsync at that prompt. My other problem was that I couldn't figure out what it wanted me to call the directory. The backup drive is…

As someone who was an eternal student, and then transmogrified into what felt like an eternity as a prof, I'd say most of the above are good tips. Doing well on exams depends on three things:

Public vs private space. This goes back three million years, and probably longer. We're hardwired to feel offended at being ignored if others are around. Think about it without a cell phone involved, and it's the classic putdown, like staring through someone as if they weren't there. The fact that we're supposed…

It's maybe a bit late to be commenting on this thread, but since I'm slow, I only just got rsync to the cusp of working.

Nothing to do with taking notes, but it will help you take much better ones. As with all these helpful hints, it takes time :-{

I don't own a shredder. As the writer says, too expensive, and I can just see a procrastinator like me actually getting around to using it. Not. So my workaround is to throw out old bills stubs and such with the wet garbage. Potato peels, fat cut off the steak before cooking, and that kind of thing. (Another…

By the way, easy houseplants that aren't too big: geraniums (don't overwater!) and—I know this is going to sound weird—some orchids, such as Phalaenopsis (sold at Home Depot, which is a terrible place to buy plants, Trader Joe's, which is okay. Walmart, for all I know). Definitely do NOT overwater Phalaenopsis. They…

Greenish thumber here. (Well, maybe kinda turquoise.) A lot more plants are killed by overwatering than underwatering, _especially_ the ones that can go without water for two weeks.

I was a college prof for more decades than I care to mention.

Powell's in Portland, OR, is on the web. No need to be lucky enough to live in Portland. And they have everything.

I assume you didn't mention OpenOffice specifically because it comes with Ubuntu (and other Linuxes) like Firefox. Still, it's worth mentioning. It'll do everything MSOffice does, without whispering to Bill. The MSWord analog is totally intercompatible with Word docs. You can open and save in Word format and never…

RiazM: Why switch? It depends what you care about. There's no question that Mac OS is the easiest to use, and WinXP is very easy. Ubuntu has made Linux a lot easier, but if Macs are a "10" and Windows a "9", Ubuntu is a 7 or 7.5. What you get for the added effort is that you control your computer rather than…

I grew up without TV, watched it off and on for some years as an adult, and then had my TV broken during a burglary many years ago (10?) and haven't watched it since. When I signed up for broadband, the only way to get it in my neighborhood was by signing up for cable TV at the same time. The installer nearly…

I second Michael and the others who suggested the cartalk mechanics files (cleverly—or not— called the Mechan-X files). I live northwest of LA, and found Tony's Transmission in Oxnard that way. An absolute gem. Competent, honest, and good prices. Completes the job when he says he'll complete it.