Question Master

Most conventional wood frame construction these days requires a double top plate with the second top plate offset so there is overlap.  And when joining two walls at the corner, there should similarly be overlap.

When one of the walls is a balloon framed gable end, however, the top plate is at an angle and will not overlap cleanly with that of the adjacent wall.  What is the correct way to frame the connection in this case?

Furthermore, how should the lap splice be for a wall that contains a gable end, but also extends flat beyond the gable part of the roof.  How should the top plates be spliced at the transition between flat and slanted?

I am a U.S. citizen but recently rented a car in Madrid, Spain. After investigating some extra charges on my card from the rental company, I discovered that I got some camera traffic violations, the charges were admin fees for the rental company to turn my info over to the authorities, and I should expect to receive tickets for them in the mail. The problem is, the representative at the rental company did not copy down my address correctly and, since I didn't find out in time, it looks like the tickets have been sent to the wrong place and I won't get them. There are a number of websites rumored to allow you to pay said violations, but they all require a violation reference number. Is there any way I can check for and pay any outstanding violations just with my passport number or other info? It sounds like in modern times, failing to pay foreign tickets can actually come back to bite you, unlike maybe 10 years ago.

I currently live in the USA but will be living abroad in Madrid, Spain this coming school year. During that time I plan to do a lot of hobby electronics/robotics/etc type projects for which I am currently using services like Amazon Prime to order many parts.

What will it be like trying to get the same items I would order here while in Spain?

Does Prime still offer free shipping to Spain? If not, how much would shipping be for some typical items?

How long would shipping typically take for such items? Does Amazon have stocking locations in Spain or would stuff be coming all the way over from the USA?

I didn't really get clear answers on this from the Amazon website. Looking for feedback from someone who lives in Spain currently and also orders a lot of stuff online.

I have (had) a brand new Mytouch 4G Slide phone (no warranty though). Everything was going fine and then one day I noticed a little headphone icon up at the top right. Later I discovered that this was due to the thing thinking that headphones were plugged in even though they were not. This is a particular problem because it will never play anything out of the normal speaker so I can't answer calls and stuff.

I tried factory resetting the phone, all combinations of cleaning and lubricating the plug, but nothing worked.

Eventually I figured out that if I jiggle a headphone plug around in there violently while inserting and removing it, it will trigger a different state where the headphone icon is gone, but now if I ever plug in headphones it switches into TV out mode. It stays in that mode until the next time I factory reset. When in this new mode I can take calls and hear them on the phone speaker, even if I have headphones plugged in. Youtube and other media stuff does not play through the speaker or the headphones regardless of what is plugged in.

What's the deal here?

Most nerf darts only stick to glass and other hard smooth surfaces. I suppose you could make one stick to some types of cloth with a velcro type tip. But I want to have one type of nerf dart that can stick to a variety of things, including skin and clothing so that it stays on your opponent when you hit them. What kind of tip would be able to stick to skin and clothing on impact? It still needs to be light enough that we can shoot them in the house without risking breaking stuff, and ideally would not leave residue.

The San Tomas Aquino Creek is a big drainage ditch that diverts rain water from the Santa Clara area (which is in a local minimum) into the San Francisco bay, so that the area does not flood. Normally the water is pretty clear or maybe sort of dirty in color, but I have never seen it foamy before. Today it is totally foamed over, like someone dumped a huge truck full of bubble bath in there or something. It's totally white on top in a lot of places with no actual water showing through the layer of foam on top. Today is the first time it has rained in several weeks, so is this something that accumulates in the area and then all gets washed down there on the first rain? Or was there some sort of industrial spill/dump upstream? Just curious, because the amount of foam looks very suspiciously unnatural.

I have an OBD2 car that I did a custom automatic to manual transmission swap on (1998 BMW 740i). I have not had a chance to hack up the computer so right now it's angry that the auto transmission is gone and throwing codes that all of the auto transmission sensors, solenoids, etc are bad. These are technically not related to the engine or emissions, so will I still be able to pass smog in california? Even though the codes are for transmission only, they are making the check engine light come on, which is what concerns me. Normally a check engine light is grounds for immediate failure, but maybe for OBD2 cars since the smog computer sees exactly which codes are being thrown, it won't fail me for the transmission ones? Anyone know? Thanks in advance.

Every time I do a search about this topic, I just get article upon article explaining what planned non-op is. I know what it is, I have a car that is registered as planned non-op. But, I want to start using it again so I need to re-register as normal. I tried putting its info in on the CA DMV website's registration renewal tool, but it said the vehicle was not eligible for online registration. Not sure if that's just because it was for renewal or what. I'd really rather not physically walk into the DMV though. Is there any way to do it online?

By short-term, I mean a week or so. Alright, so everyone knows that drinking regularly increases your tolerance and then you have to drink more to get drunk... in the long term. But what effects does this have over the course of just a week? For example, lets say I drink a couple of drinks a night on average and several on the weekends regularly for a few years. If I don't drink at all during the week one week, then when I drink on the subsequent weekend, will my apparent tolerance be higher or lower? What if I drink MORE than normal during that week? What effects will that have?

I'm looking to replace a pint glass that I broke. It was a Leinenkugel glass and I believe on the front it was specifically Leinenkugel red. On the back was a picture of a guy on a sled with a helmet on plowing through some oversized bowling balls and a brief description of human ice bowling. I can't seem to find this glass for sale anywhere. How can I find one?

I like moderately spicy food. I'm not one of those guys who eats the atomic chicken wings that you have to sign the waver for. Even the medium-to-low spicy chicken wings at most spicy wing places are too much for me. However, I do enjoy a certain amount of spicy-ness in my food sometimes. Thai restaurants take one look at me (and everyone else who does not look Thai as far as I can tell), and give me mild food no matter what I ask for.

Here is an example of a recent Thai food experience that pretty much sums up every other experience I've ever had at a Thai restaurant. My group ordered some food and the waitress asked how spicy we wanted it from 1 to 10. We said 6 and she looked at us and said "no, that is too spicy for you, I'll give you a 2". We told her that we like spicy food but she was having none of it, and eventually we convinced her to step it up to a level 3 but that was as high as she was willing to go, telling us it would be very spicy for us. A little while later, we get the food, and it is not very spicy. All Thai restaurants seem to think that their spicy-ness scale is different than a normal restaurant and everything is spicier than you would expect but that is simply not true. I've had this happen at numerous places around the U.S. How can I get them to admit that their spicy-ness scale is not special and actually give me the level I asked for short of showing up there regularly until they get to know me? On the other hand, a guy I know argued with a place for a while and told them to "bring it on" and they gave him a 10 and it was too spicy even for him (which he is one of those atomic chicken wing eating guys). So I don't want them to "bring it on", but I don't want them to tone it way down either. I just want the level I asked for. How do I get this?

Something like these guys come outside (in a city) and everyone is out there dancing for no apparent reason. They run into another non-dancing guy and he informs them of something to the effect that the people are like zombies and have caught something such that they cannot stop dancing so they attempt to quietly sneak their way across town but end up dancing as well. I don't know the name and web search is not being helpful.

This has happened to me a few times as well as someone I know. I bought a used car with high mileage (maybe around 180,000 miles or so). The original title still had an odometer recording and did not have any of the weird boxes checked like "odometer does not show actual mileage" or whatever. We signed the title over to me and I went to the DMV and filled everything out to get the new title in my name. When the new title arrived in the mail, instead of having an odometer reading it has an "odometer date", which I believe is supposed to indicate the last time the odometer was known to read correctly. So now the title makes it look like my odometer has been tampered with or broken, which it has not. Why does this happen? Do they consider the mileage to be irrelevant after a certain number of miles so when you transfer it they just write the date? Or does the DMV keep screwing up my car titles?

So I got a California "fix-it" ticket for no front license plate. From my experience in the past, you can correct the problem (attach front license plate), get a cop to sign this special part of the ticket verifying that the violation was corrected, and send that in with a check for $10 to get the ticket dismissed. It has just recently been brought to my attention that the fee was raised to $25. However, the ticket I got said $10, and the cop who signed it said $10. I followed the directions on the back of the ticket to a tee and mailed in the signed ticket with $10. Parking enforcement then cashed my check and I thought I was all set. Several weeks later, I got a delinquent payment notice in the mail. It acknowledged that I had paid $10, but listed that I owed the full amount on the ticket (the non fix-it fee) plus late fees minus the $10 I had paid already. When I went to try to get this straightened out, they told me the fee was now $25 so I didn't pay enough. So now they want me to pay some much larger fee and they do not want to dismiss the ticket from my record, because of a mistake on THEIR paperwork. The worst part is, I forgot to make a copy of the ticket before mailing it in, so I don't have any proof that it said $10 even though I'm sure it did.

If I take them to court on this, can I make them supply a copy of the original ticket along with the instructions on the back? What can I expect to get from them if I win in court? Just the fine dismissed? Compensation for legal fees? The violation removed from my record? I've never really been in this situation so I don't know what to expect here.

I'm planning on hiking up Mount Shasta (avalanche gulch route) this June. A lot of sources say you need fully on hard plastic mountaineering boots and crampons to make it up there, but a friend of mine who has done it a few times says he's not sure you really need those. I just have regular hiking boots and I don't want to have to buy/rent mountaineering boots unless I really have to. There are some less-hardcore things called MicroSpikes that will go onto the normal hiking boots which should still increase traction in snow/ice and have pretty good review, but are they good enough for Shasta? Apparently it gets up to as much as a 60% grade in some spots and is generally pretty steep the entire way. What is the steepest terrain that MicroSpikes are acceptable for?

I have constant swollen turbinates in my sinuses. I use a sinus rinse bottle twice daily to keep mucus from building up, but it does not help the swelling go down. My doctor is 100% sure that the root cause of this is allergies, even though my problem is not seasonal or set off by anything in particular, and I do not have any other symptoms like anyone I've ever known who had allergies (itchy/runny eye/nose, etc). So far he has tried prescribing me Zyrtec, fluticasone, and now Claratin, but nothing seems to have any effect. He says that EVERYONE has allergies especially where I live (in CA) due to dry air and that I need to get a humidifier, keep using the sinus rinse forever, and keep looking until I find the antihistamine that is right for me. The thing is, noone else I know (including my 3 friends who live in the same house and work in the same office as me) is relying on any regiment of sinus rinse, nasal sprays, daily pills, etc in order to keep their sinuses in order. I'm the only person I know that has to take a sinus rinse bottle and a bunch of rinse packets and stuff with me when we go on group trips and things. And outside of this sinus issue i am the least sensitive person to other discomforts, pain, etc. I'm the guy who gets all scraped up hiking and doesn't notice, and who gets a cold and just ignores it and powers through the day. So if there's nothing wrong with my sinuses other than the same allergies that everyone else has, why am I the only one having to do all this stuff? How many people are really having to go through this whole routine every day? Is my doctor crazy?

I mixed some V8 juice and vodka but I put in too much vodka and its a little too hard to drink. I don't have any more V8 to dilute it though. What else can I dilute it with that will still taste good?

I currently have a stable job and am not seeking other ones, but a certain software engineering company keeps hassling me and they have cornered me to the point where I pretty much have to fill out an application and interview, or tell them to get lost. I can't put anyone from my current job down as a reference because I still work there and I don't want anyone to know I am applying anywhere else. My references before that are college professors from several years ago and stuff like that who probably don't even remember who I am. Is it still OK to put them down? Is it acceptable to put them down without asking their permission?

I want to home brew a pumpkin ale for Halloween. It takes about one full month to brew, and I'd like to do one practice attempt first, so that means I need to obtain a pumpkin now even though Halloween is about two months away. I know that some recipes do not require actual pumpkin, but the one I want to use does. Also, canned pumpkin will not work. I want to somehow obtain a fresh whole pumpkin in late August/Early September.

I have an older bike frame that took the previous generation of 3-piece crank (where everything fit inside the frame). It's not the really old kind with a one-piece crankset. Will a new style external bottom bracket thread into this frame?