BBCodes Used On QnA

QnA uses only 3 BBCodes for formatting text. They are Bold, Underline, and Italic.

The codes used are b, u and i respectively.

[B]Text to be bolded[/B]
Text to be bolded

[U]Text to be underlined[/U]
Text to be underlined

[I]Text to be italicized[/I]
Text to be italicized

BBCodes can not be used in a Question's title, but you can use them in the question's comment or explanation box.

How To Make A Clickable Link

QnA does not use a BBCode to make a link hot but rather HTML. For simplicity you can also just copy or paste in the actual URL which will become hot when rendered.

Standard HTML for a link (an anchor in HTML speak) looks like this:
<a href="http://paulsadowski.com/">Paul's Home Page</a>
is rendered like this: Paul's Home Page

Instead of trying to explain the component parts, you only need to replace http://paulsadowski.com/ with the full URL you want to use (be sure to include the http:// part known as the protocol). And replace Paul's Home Page with whatever text you want displayed as the link text.

This works only with the HTTP protocol. Do not bother to try the file protocol, for example, as the text will not then be parsed as an anchor.

Use ALT Codes For Symbols

To use a symbol find the number of the symbol you want to use in the table below and then press and hold the ALT key and then the number or numbers of the symbol on the numeric keypad portion of your keyboard.

Searching QnA

The simplest search in QnA is a substring search. You type in a word or phrase and QnA will return all topics which contain the search term.

As a substring search 'st' returns matches on things such as steve, stun, start, stop, stipple, stifle, stagnate, worst, best

You can combine search terms with the AND keyword. For example, fish AND bake will return only those topics which include both words, fish and bake. You can refine searches using the AND operator. For example, rap AND music would return topics dealing with rap music but not country music.

Why not just search on rap music. You can! the AND operator is implied.

You can use the OR operator to search for multiple terms where all or some of the terms are present. For example, red OR purple will return result which contain red alone, purple alone, and purple and red together.

How might you use the OR operator? bowling OR golf would return topics that mention either or both sports.

(ham AND eggs) OR toast returns any posts that include both words ham and eggs, or the word toast. Ham and eggs are grouped together to be used as a single condition (ham and eggs) otherwise without the grouping the search would return all items containing eggs, ham or toast individually or collectively.

If your search string is enclosed in quotations then only the exact string match is returned. For example, "Chi Chi" returns only those items that mention chi chi and nit just chi.

The NOT operator is a negative operator that says do NOT return items. For example, apple NOT cake will return all posts with the word apple except for those posts that also contain the word cake.

You can search for topics with specific tags like this:
meta:Search.tag("beginTag searchtag endTag")

For example:
meta:Search.tag("beginTag Technology endTag")

Use the AND operator to search multiple tags:
meta:Search.tag("beginTag Technology endTag") AND meta:Search.tag("beginTag Optical endTag")

There are 4 searches that search questions or answers by/from specific users. Unfortunately the search doesn't support usernames but only user IDs, a long string of digits and letters unique to each user.

To find a given user's User ID find a post by them and click on their avator. In the address bar of your browser you will see a string that begins with ?uid= the string of numbers and letters following ?uid is the user's ID. Do not confuse this with qid which is the ID of a question.

Using uid's you can search for

• questions from a specific uid
      Meta:search.qauthor(userid)
• answers from a specific uid
      Meta:search.aauthor(userid)
• comments from a specific uid
      Meta:search.cauthor(userid)
• answer voted best answer for a specific uid
      Meta:search. bestaauthor(userid)

Replace the word userid with the uid string for a specific user.

You can search on the state of questions:

• questions that can still be answered
      Meta:search.qstate(0)
• questions that are closed but can be voted upon
      Meta:search.qstate(1)
• questions that are closed and can not be voted upon
      Meta:search.qstate(2)

Using these last two searches you can come up with some handy compound searches.

For example, to find all your closed questions that still can be voted upon use this:
Meta:search.qauthor(userid) AND Meta:search.qstate(1)

Replace userid above with your own userid or the userid of another user.

Happy QnA'ing!

© 2003-2007 by Paul R. Sadowski   
All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission. 

Speaking of tea, I tried the Lipton™ Cold Brew Tea bags.

The instructions are to use 1 tea bag per quart of water. Steep in cold water for 3 minutes (agitate to speed process, if desired) and then remove the tea bags. Serve with ice and sugar to taste.

If you follow those instructions you'll have water with a hint of brown. The bags do work but keep them in for at least 20 minutes if not more. In fact, let them sit in the pitcher with the tea all the time.

Even letting the bags sit in the tea, the resultant drink is fairly weak. Drinkable but weak.

I'd suggest it's a quick flavoured cold drink when needed but not something a tea drinker would appreciate or serve.

I drink iced tea. I'd say two quarts per day. The iced tea mixes are convenient but they really don't taste as tea should. So, I started brewing it myself. This produced a much better tea but it was a bit of chore to make as well.

• Put 2 quarts water in a 4 or 5 quart Dutch oven and boil with tea bags in the pot.
• Boil and pour hot water into pitcher. I keep the bags in the tea.
• Dump ice in and wait and wait till it's cool enough to drink.

So I decided to take a look at the iced tea makers. Only two that I could find. One from Mr. Coffee and one from Hamilton Beach.

I bought the Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker for $19.95 from Target.

I tried it first-time today. Worked well. Simple to use. Fast. No clean-up since the pitcher is used to serve the tea.

The machine wants 1 quart of cold water to brew the tea into about two cups of ice.

It works very much like a coffee maker. Pour in the water. Put ice in the pitcher. Put bags or loose tea into the holder in the top of the pitcher and press the button. That's it!

The hot water percolates through the tea into the ice. I didn't time it but I'd say the entire brew time was maybe 7 minutes, if even that.

The machine takes a lot of ice and you probably want a freezer with an ice maker if you plan to make tea with any frequency. The ice however does serve a purpose. Perhaps half or maybe a bit more of the ice melts and leaves the tea quite cold a minute after it's been brewed.

There are three strength settings. I tried medium. While acceptable I prefer my tea a bit stronger and will use the Strong setting next time. Incidentally, I used 6 regular Lipton™ tea bags.

The design is modern and it's only a few inches deep so it doesn't use much vertical counter space. It's all plastic, including the pitcher. The pitcher feels fine in the hand and pours without drips. The stabilizer for the pitcher ensures proper placement and is retractable if you plan to store the machine in a cupboard or closet between uses. 

(a fat cat's prayer)

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
You can blame it on the chocolate cake.

We've become so divorced from anything resembling realty as to believe that we can solve problems by making expensive television commercials about them. We advertise away drug addictions, tobacco usage, spousal abuse, and a whole pool of diseases and illness.

Every year hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent advertising away problems. Hundreds of millions of dollars going to advertising agencies, film producers and broadcast stations.

They even protest that they are a big success. Though I've yet to figure out how the numbers of smokers can decline while sales are up. Surely, it's not because they've demonized smoking so people just don't report their usage honestly anymore. No, thanks to advertising there are few smokers and smokers extant are for some reason just smoking a heck of a lot more than ever.

But it feels good, doesn't it, to think that a commercial here and a billboard there will solve the drugs problems; will stave off emergency; reverse famine and hunger and homelessness?

Yes, we don't need to do anything because television advertises the problem away. If by any chance some lingering bit of reality should pop through then there's big and bigger televisions with greater resolution to distract from any lingering doubts.

Technology, politics and capitalism all in perfect harmony.

Every day someone on television or radio is telling me how unless we or our children do as they say, believe as they do, act as they say that they do then we will die or become fat or depressed or intellectually deficient or  poverty-ridden unfulfilled unactualized social pariah.

It's only an amazing Darwinian fluke that has allowed mankind to survive so far without experts telling us what to do and whom to vote for.

I suppose it all started with open enrollments of the 1960's. It was indeed a good idea to allow anyone to prove themselves in college that they were capable of the demands of college, but as the college population grew, as dollars rolled into schools, the dollars became more important than the education. Standards were weakened and the degrees cheapened.

So, not long to follow was the need for everyone to go to college. No university was safe from high school diploma wielding sheephead. College was now an expectation, in fact, a presumption. Another step in the direction of diploma mills.

How could you as a sensitive socially aware institute of education not lower standards, not create insipid new programs for those who could not make it anywhere near the traditional academic fields. For you were keenly aware that every job, no matter how lowly, now required "some college" if not a full-blown diploma.

But that wasn't enough. The lake was full. The job market bloated with B.As and M.B.A.s and umpteen middle-managers. So the Mickey Mouse brigade with useless diplomas in sociology, rehabilitation therapy, history of statues and monuments, etc etc. created their own jobs. They pass themselves off as experts telling you when to eat (why are 90% of dieticians and nutritionists overweight?), how your kid must be suicidal if he watches 12 minutes more television than some average, buy floating mortgages -- no, fixed rate is the fad today! Seems expert knowledge changes based on whatever sells at the moment.

So, remember, next time you hear an expert tell you about how carrots will save you life, be sure to listen not only for your own good but for the good of the economy as well!