We have probably passed the point where for most applications more speed, memory, cores, etc does anything for users but I welcome the latest and greatest. I don't do much gaming and that which I do is mostly old games that would run fine on an old Pentium 166 MMX. There are other resource intensive computations for which this is useful. My personal example is I do some amateur cartography and GIS stuff and to do what I wanted with my last machine (Athalon 64 x2) was painful and sometimes would take days to complete a single operation, mostly due to being stuck at 4GB of physical RAM. That machine got replaced by an i7 3770k with 32GB ram and what use to take almost a week could be done in about 10 minutes. Now granted a use case like this is rare but there are probably others like it, but not everyone is doing dick measuring based off of frames per second.

Not new condition as in mint in box, but new as in still has plenty of useful life and functions just fine. The old CRT TVs are things that worked very well and tended to last for long times, much like the old model 500 phones. Granted you will find some that have been abused, dropped, had liquids spilled on them, etc but even if you get a dud you could always bring it back for recycling.

I have found that the county recycling center is a great mostly one stop shop for freecycling (another stupid term I hate but is useful). Granted things that aren't household chemicals, solvents, and paints, are shipped out weekly so there is a lot of turnover but it is a great place to get stuff. In addition to the above mentioned chain saw case I have gotten a few extra chainsaw bars and chains, a compressor that only had a bad starter cap that needed replacing, lots of unopened solvents, a couple of unopened gallons of the deck stain I use, paint primer, lots of wood finishes, many unopened quarts of motor oil, and even an unopened case of synthetic motor oil. The recycling center is entirely government operated and owned (unlike the one in my father's county) so if something is useful to you they will let you take it instead of not letting people take the profitable things.

This is the sole reason I still have a CRT. It is a bigger TV that was bought near the end of CRTs. It is much cheaper than paying for a few rounds of skeet at the range, and a hell of a lot warmer in the winter too. It is a fairly good way to stay reasonably good at shooting the shotgun since it does provide a fairly decent approximation.

Try a local government run recycling center. The one in my county lets you take stuff if you want it. I got my chain saw case that way, as well as a number of solvents that I use and a number of other things all for free.

Not in all states, in some cases they seem to mostly have a political ax to grind and act only based off of that regardless of weather they complaint is from a few citizens or "job creator".

Although if you get a default judgment there is usually some amount of time that the the defendant has to either pay or file for appeal. If you do not have to inform them of the judgment then (in my case I didn't) just stay quiet, wait out the period, and once expired raise a ruckus. Judges really don't like it when some entity doesn't do what they say, that whole contempt of court thing. Depending on the laws in your area you may be entitled to freeze or seize company assets. This is usually possible since it takes time and money for them to file an appeal usually requiring someone show up to do things in person at the court the next level up which would still be fairly local in most parts of the US unless you are in the north slope area of Alaska.

This a thousand times. It is amazing how well small claims court works if you can provide good clear evidence. It is nothing like you see on TV even with shows like Judge Judy, or the People's Court. Gather you evidence, have things in order, and present it clearly, and be sure to have tried to resolve the issue before hand. Also I can speak to Minnesota as being similar to Iowa in that if you win your case you get your filing fee back.

I had to do this with an insurance company that was didn't want to provide me the fair market value for my car that was totaled. They insisted that the vehicle was only worth about $1200 when every other thing indicated that it was in the $2900-$3100 range. I had attempted to work with them for several months but they refused to budge so eventually I had to sue them. I showed up with an independent appraisal, pictures of the car before the accident, sample vehicles that were for sale, the KBB valuation of the vehicle, the NADA value of the vehicle, and the insurance companies data points and method used for assessing the value of my vehicle. I presented my data showing that the vehicle was worth far more and then went through the insurance companies data points (2 vehicles with lots of unknowns) and method for calculating values. The biggest problem was that the 2 vehicles they chose as data points had no stated information about the mileage, options or condition so the insurance company assumed that for options and condition they matched my car which seems unlikely as min was a California car with all available options and the others were Minnesota cars. Additionally since the mileage wasn't stated on either of their data point cars they insurance companies method went like this:
1. Assume each vehicle in their set had the same amount of miles as my car as well as options and condition then subtract some value from each one for mileage
2. Average the 2 resulting values and then subtract mileage again
3. This is now the base value so subtract mileage yet again

Also as one of my data points for representative vehicles I found a similar vehicle to mine that was just over the value they were offering. The only problem was that it was a non running one that was really rusty and had over 750,000 miles on it. It was however the same year and model though. After presenting my evidence the judge went to the the representative from the insurance company and asked if my description of their valuation of the vehicle was correct, to which the responded yes. The judge then asked if they had anything else to add, to which they responded no. At this point the judge ruled in my favor and told the insurance company that there was no reason for this to have gone as far as it did any that everything I had requested was entirely reasonable and valid so they should have just settled 6 months previous (just after the accident) instead of dragging it out as it would have been far cheaper and it wouldn't have wasted everyone's time. In the end I got $3135 since I went for the highest justifiable value plus the $35 filing fee and the insurance company had 20 days to pay or appeal. The insurance company still didn't pay within in the required 20 days and it took a phone call to them informing them that I had a judgment against them and at this point I could legally get a court order to have their assets frozen and I would be doing so the next day if I didn't receive my check before the court opened on the following day. I got a hand delivered check 2 hours later.

For a 2x4 yes the finished ones are 3.5"x1.75" but if you get the rough ones they are actually 2"x4" the rest is removed by the planers they are sent through so you don't have the rough finish from sawing.

Sounds about right. Being raised in a fundamentalist baptist church I figure that if there is a god and it is the god of the Abrahamic religions I should have no problem getting into heaven for time already served. The fact that I didn't become a raging self loathing ass hole amazes me given the amount vitriol and hate that I was brought up with. In addition to the standard cruft that most are familiar with in that church there was a fair amount of how other races carried the Mark of Cain and this was in the early '80s.

Cataclysmic floods are commonly accepted as having happened now days and probably did influence early paleolithic cultures who would have been around to witness them. The ones that jumps out to me in the Americas are the various emptying of Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana. Other such events happened in Europe and Asia at the end of the last ice age so there would have been a number of flood stories of entire groups of people washed away.

Time to tell the wife that I have a few hypothesis that need testing when I get home.

Why don't they see about getting some really old movies that have passed into the public domain and cleaning them up. The first one that comes to mind is Nosferatu but there are a number of other old films that would qualify as well.

People should live in a desert.

Seriously why to people do water intensive farming in a desert in an effort to preserve their water rights? I am not all that sympathetic to farmers and ranchers that through our governments subsidy rules and their use it or lose it water rights are having a hard time in what normally is a desert. Guess what you live in a desert and if you can't get the water to grow your alfalfa, lettuce, grape, etc crops maybe you should be trying to grow those things there.

Basically they said if it can be interpreted that it looks like a duck then it is a duck, even if it is actually a goose. Specifically see pages 31 and 32 of the ruling for the reasoning spelled out based upon existing long standing precedent.