Natalie and Jason ask: How do I get my dog to stop barking the entire time (this is of course an assumption) that nobody is home with him?

Since you're referring to it only happening while you're gone, it's sounds to me like you're probably dealing with a case of separation anxiety. Separation anxiety happens when a dog does not like to be left alone, and it's a very common problem. According to the Dumb Friends League, dogs have separation anxiety when:

• The behavior occurs exclusively or primarily when he’s left alone.
• He follows you from room to room whenever you’re home.
• He displays effusive, frantic greeting behaviors.
• The behavior always occurs when he’s left alone, whether for a short or long period of time.
• He reacts with excitement, depression or anxiety to your preparations to leave the house.
• He dislikes spending time outdoors by himself.
  

Some suggestions on how to deal with dog separation anxiety:

• Keep arrivals and departures low-key.
• Make sure your dog is getting PLENTY of exercise. A tired dog is a happy and calm dog. Young dogs especially need A LOT of exercise.
• Leave your dog a piece of clothing that smells like you.
• Establish a "safety cue" that you use every time you leave. Do something every time you leave that lets the dog know you will be coming back. At first, only do this before you leave for short periods of time and then gradually increase it to longer periods of time. Some examples: give him a special toy or turn on the radio. This technique worked wonders for my parents' dog. They give him a ball with a treat in it (small Kong ball that fits a cracker in it) when they leave and now he actually looks forward to them leaving and has no more separation issues.
• The article from the Dumb Friends League also describes a technique for desensitization. Essentially, you SLOWLY work the dog up to being ok with staying alone. Please read the article for a full description.
  

NOTE: The Dumb Friends League also has a helpful list of things that won't help with separation anxiety:

• Punishment is not an effective way to treat separation anxiety. In fact, if you punish your dog after you return home it may actually increase his separation anxiety.
• Getting another pet. This usually doesn’t help an anxious dog as his anxiety is the result of his separation from you, his person, not merely the result of being alone.
• Crating your dog. Your dog will still engage in anxiety responses in the crate. He may urinate, defecate, howl or even injure himself in an attempt to escape from the crate. (NOTE: I personally disagree a bit with this one. In my opinion, a dog dealing with separation anxiety may not benefit from being in a crate, but it prevents him from destroying the house and hurting himself while destroying things. If you have no where else to leave the dog, crating seems like the only option to me.)
• Leave the radio on (unless the radio is used as a "safety cue" - see above).
• Obedience school. While obedience training is always a good idea, it won’t directly help a separation anxiety problem. Separation anxiety is not the result of disobedience or lack of training, it’s a panic response.

Sources:
http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/separtn.htm
http://www.wagntrain.com/SeparationAnx.htm
http://www.perfectpaws.com/sa.html

Forrest asks: three guys check into a hotel. the desk charges each 10 dollars after a while the guy thought he over charged them so he gave the bell-hop 5 dollars to take back and give the men . so he thought( the bell-hop) I am going to tip my self so he took 2 dollars that left he gave each man a dollar back . so now we have three times 9 which equals 27 and the 2 that the bell-hop took makes 29 so where did the other dollar go?

OK, this is simply a case of confusing arithmetic... let's follow the money:

FIRST:
hotel clerk has $10 from each guy or $30 total

NEXT:
hotel clerk has $25 or $8.33 from each guy
bell hop has $5

NEXT:
hotel clerk still has $25 or $8.33 from each guy
bell hop keeps $2
bell hop gives the men a total of $3 or $1 to each guy

FINAL:
Each guy gave 8.33 to the hotel = $25 total to the hotel
Bell hop kept $2 total
Each man had $1 back for a total of $3 back.
$25 + $2 + $3 = $30 total

The "extra dollar" was the $.33 each to the hotel since $25 is not evenly divisible by 3. "so now we have three times 9 which equals 27 and the 2 that the bell-hop took makes 29" should really be "3 times 9.33 equals 28 plus 2 for the bell hop makes 30".

Angi asks: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Thanks for asking! According to the Tootsie Roll Industries web site:

It depends on a variety of factors such as the size of your mouth, the amount of saliva, etc. Basically, the world may never know.

There have, however, been many people who have tried to solve the mystery. Their web site lists three scientific studies that have tried to answer the question. The results were between 144 and 411 licks to get to the center.

Sources:
http://www.tootsie.com/faq.html
http://www.tootsie.com/howmany.html

Erin asks: How do I post a video to my blog?

Well, Erin, that question has a pretty long answer. I'm going to refer you to someone else who has already written a nice tutorial on how to video blog (complete with instructional videos). The trickiest part about it is finding some place to host your video file (without spending a lot of money) but the tutorial points you to a place that will host media files for free!

Sources:
http://www.freevlog.org/
http://www.ourmedia.org/

Daun asks: How do I create links in my sidebar for things like “100 Things About Me” so that I don’t have to post a large item like that on my front page?

It's a little trick that I've been using on Cindy's Place for a while now... Here's how to do it:

• Write a post normally.
• At the bottom of the post, change the date to something old. I would suggest changing it to some date during the first month you posted on your blog. (If you put it in another month, you'll get another month in your archives and that'll look weird.) So, for you, change it to something like 10/1/05. (Mine are all date 9/1/04 because that was the first month for me.)
• Publish the post.
• Go find the post in your archives.
• Get the address of the individual post page. The easiest way to do this is to click on the time that the post was posted (next to where it says how many comments it has).
• Then just make a link to this page in your sidebar. It looks like you know how to do that because you have links to your "features" already. You might also want to write a post with a link to that page in it... to let people know it's there.

Let me know if it works!

Samantha asks: If you look at the very first set of links in my sidebar, you will notice that the same thing happened to my "books from 2005" link. I tried to apply the same advise to this one, but it doesn't seem to be working. Here is the code for that section:

<ul> <!--start top list-->

<li><h2 class="sidebar-title"><A HREF= http://www.witchywonderings.blogspot.com/2005/01/100-things-about-me.html>100 things</A></h2></li>

<li><h2 class="sidebar-title"><A HREF= http://girlandcamera.blogspot.com>My Photo Blog</A></h2></li>

<li><h2 class=sidebar-title"><A HREF= http://www.myspace.com/samanthasspot>My MySpace Page</A><h2></li>

<li><h2 class=sidebar-title"><A HREF= http://witchywonderings.blogspot.com/2005/10/books-from-2005.html>Books from 2005</A></h2></li>

</ul> <!--end top list-->

Samantha, I highlighted the problem...

You need to change that <h2> to a </h2>

(The one after myspace). That might solve a lot of your font problems, in your whole sidebar.

After you make that change, if that doesn't fix all the problems, hopefully it'll be easier to figure out what else is going on.

Samantha asks: What a great site! Erin from emptycerebrations sent me! I was wondering why the text on my sidebar became "smooshed" during my last template tweak. I didn't do anything to the font, just added a list of favorite posts. Not only could I not figure out how to seperate the list and avoid using the p tags, I can't figure out how to fix the text to make it legible again!

Ok, I *think* I see your problem. Your list of "the ones to remember" appears to be accidentally still part of your archive list above it. You need to end your archive list by moving the </ul> BEFORE the code that starts your "the ones to remember" list. Then, it would make more sense to make your "the ones to remember" list into an actual list instead of using all the p tags. So, when you're done the code should look something like this:

</ul> <!--end archives list-->

<h2 class="sidebar-title">The ones to remember</h2>

<ul> <!--start ones to remember list-->

<li><A HREF=http://witchywonderings.blogspot.com/2004/11/another-day.html>In the Beginning</A></li>

<li><A HREF=http://witchywonderings.blogspot.com/2004/12/words-unsaid.html>Words Unsaid</A></li>

....... (the rest of the links here).....

</ul> <!--end ones to remember list-->

Carol asks: What is the problem with my permalinks? (think this is the correct terminology).The html is showing instead of the comments.

Carol is asking about the comments on her individual post pages. They're showing up as a garbled mess instead of the comments.

Carol, unfortunately, I can't answer every question. This is a pretty tough one to figure out, especially since I don't have access to your template. But, I do have a solution for you that will probably work. Try replacing that code with the code from my blog (that I know works). I can't guarantee this will work, but I bet it'll be better than what's there now.

Here's what to do:

• Log into blogger and go to your template.
• Before you start making changes, make a back-up of your template. Copy the entire thing and paste it into Notepad (or another text editor - but don't use Word because it'll make a mess of it) and save it somewhere.
• Find this comment in your template: <!-- Begin comments -->
• Find this comment in your template: <!-- End comments -->
• Delete everything in between them.
• Paste the code below in between those two comments.
• Preview it to see if it works... if it looks bad, clear edits... if it looks good, save it... If it is saved and is messed up, restore everything using your back-up template (copy and paste it back in).
• Let me know if it works!!!

Here's the code to paste:

<ItemPage>

<div id="comments">

<BlogItemCommentsEnabled><a name="comments"></a>

<h4><$BlogItemCommentCount$> Comments:</h4>

<ul>
<BlogItemComments>
<li id="c<$BlogCommentNumber$>"><a name="c<$BlogCommentNumber$>"></a>
<div class="comment-body">
<p><$BlogCommentBody$></p>
</div>
<p class="comment-data">By <$BlogCommentAuthor$>, at <a href="#c<$BlogCommentNumber$>" title="comment permalink"><$BlogCommentDateTime$></a>
<$BlogCommentDeleteIcon$></p>
</li>
</BlogItemComments>
</ul>

<p class="comment-data">
<$BlogItemCreate$>
<br /><br />

</BlogItemCommentsEnabled>
<BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>
<a name="links"></a><h4>Links to this post:</h4>
<dl id="comments-block">
<BlogItemBacklinks>
<dt class="comment-title">
<$BlogBacklinkControl$>
<a href="<$BlogBacklinkURL$>" rel="nofollow"><$BlogBacklinkTitle$></a> <$BlogBacklinkDeleteIcon$>
</dt>
<dd class="comment-body"><$BlogBacklinkSnippet$>
<br />
<span class="comment-poster">
<em>posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @ <$BlogBacklinkDateTime$></em>
</span>
</dd>
</BlogItemBacklinks>
</dl>
<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$></p>
</BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>

<a href="<$BlogURL$>">&lt;< Home</a>
</p>
</div>

</ItemPage>

My momma asks: Are there any web sites that have interactive flashcards to learn addition and subtraction of integers?

Sure, momma!

http://www.aplusmath.com/Flashcards/
(choose "Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division with Negative Numbers")

http://www.edu4kids.com/index.php?TB=2&page=12
(be sure to set the minimum number to something negative)

Tallulah asks: Would I be able to see my baby's heartbeat on an ultraound on November 22nd? My last menstrual period was October 8th and my IVF egg retrieval and fertilization date was October 20th.

On November 22nd, you should be approximately 6 weeks, 5 days pregnant. The heartbeat is usually visible around 6 weeks, 0 days to 6 weeks, 2 days, so most likely, you should be able to see the heartbeat on November 22nd.

Sources:
http://www.intmed.mcw.edu/clincalc/pregnancy.html
http://www.ohiorepromed.com/hcg_levels.htm

Erin asks: Can you help me with the tag for my drop down links box. I've been working on it, but it keeps pushing all the other stuff for my sidebar over into the posts section and NOT creating a drop down box.


<h2 class="sidebar-title">Links</h2>

<ul>

<select name="linkmenu" onchange="document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;">

<option> Favorite Links </option>

<option value="http://cindylu322.blogspot.com">Cindy's Place</a></option>

<option value="http://moreangisstuff.blogspot.com">Angi's Musings</a></option>

</select>

</ul>

OK, I can't figure out a way to make the html show up as text and not as html... not sure if I can do that... So, on the top of Internet Explorer, go to "View" then "Source" and look at the source code for this post. You should be able to see how I made the drop down box above.

EDITED TO ADD: OK, nevermind.. that didn't work right. The code in the post looks all messed up. I'll send you an email with the code. I'll have to work on figuring out how to put code in my posts.

EDITED A 2ND TIME TO ADD: I got it! Had to use a tricky trick, but I figured out an easy way to make the code show up. I used Dreamweaver to convert it from code to text. Anyway, it works.

EDITED A 3RD TIME TO ADD: Note: The code above will only work as a page redirector in a blogger template, not in a post. I'm not sure why you'd want to make a drop down box in a post, but just letting you know.

Erin asks: I can't figure out how to allow people to email me back when I leave a comment for them. It says noreply-comment. Is there some way to fix this?

Yes, there is.

• Log into blogger.
• On the right side of the dashboard, click on "Edit Profile"
• Check the 3rd checkbox that says "Show my Email Address"
• Double check that you have entered the Email Address that you want the world to see.
• Click Save Profile at the bottom of the page.

Note: This will also make your email address show up as a link in your blogger profile. I don't think there is a a way to do one without the other.

Erin asks: Why don't some blogs 'comments' links work on RSS readers?

I believe Erin is referring to the badly designed Stardock Blog Navigator that I regrettably recommended in the past. When a link opens in a pop up window, as some comment windows do, it's hidden down in the bottom left corner of the Blog Navigator window. There are tiny images of the windows down there and you have to click on the one you want. Erin, I think you'll find that the comment windows do work, you just have to know where to find them.

Also, the search for the perfect RSS/blog reader continues, but my current recommendation is Blog Express.