Your Questions About Recycling

How do you convince a company you just began working for to be more environmentally responsible?

Just over a week ago I began working as a sales associate at a store (a national chain which shall remain nameless) which claims in its handbook that it has a strong commitment and respect for the environment….but I have witnessed none of this in the store itself. Lamp displays are left on all day, none of the garbage is recycled and ceiling lights are left on all over the premises despite the presence of anyone in a room. Would it be too much, as a new employee, to at least place a recycling bin in the staff lounge (I’d even buy it!)? I have several ideas on how they could save money, support the local economy, and recycle, but I don’t want to get fired or suspected of leaving because I disagree with the store’s disposal methods. What can I do? It just seems to me that if a company claims to be committed to the environment, they should at least have a couple recycling bins instead of shoving everything into a compactor.
Should I contact HQ about this?

How do I get my neighbor to stop posting stuff on my property?

For the last 4 months, my neighbor keeps holding yard sales across the street from my house. They’ve been selling the same junk and I haven’t seen one person buying anything. It not only looks really trashy, but they keep posting ads to their junk sale on my yard, and leaving it there. I asked them to stop once, but one of them is a cop and he left my dad a ticket for the dumbest reason the next day.

I don’t know what to do. It’s really annoying cause they also leave bottles around my yard. The other day I also caught one of them going through our recycle bin gathering cans and bottles.

Isn’t this trespassing???

Ad stuck on desktop?

Not sure how my boss’s laptop got this stuck onto it, but anyway –

On his desktop is some text, behind all the icons. The text says “your machine is infected with spyware” or something like that, and under it is a link to a website with anti-virus software for sale.

I moved all the icons out of the way but I can’t remove this text and link from the desktop, it won’t drag into the recycle bin, and right clicking doesn’t give an option to delete. It’s not on the “add/remove programs” list, so I don’t know what to do next.

Any help would be gratefully accepted! I’ve run the Norton Antivirus scan, but that didn’t do anything . . . . .

any lawyers out there for a landlord problem?

It all started like this; the landlord comes over whenever she pleases and pretends to do yard work about 3 times a week, but she’s really just being nosy.
The house is up for sale and she would come to our house and rearrange the way our furniture was set up in the living room for her showings without any notice.
She would drop by and say we need to remove the recycle bin for aluminum out of the garage.
We have a 6 month lease and on the 20th day of our 5th month we decided to go house hunting because one of our roommates lost his job)
And we pay 1,700 a month plus ut. And we used to split it 3 ways but now since he’s gone it would be too expensive to reside there, but we were going to eat it and finish our whole lease
And pay his share of the rent etc. till the contract was up. Well the landlord got a reference call from a perspective new landlord and she had lost it on us she said you have to finish your lease you can’t just leave, we had assured her we weren’t going anywhere until the lease is up, and that was a reference call it wasn’t set in stone. Ever since that day our landlord started harassing us saying we should move out the sooner the better, we were so shocked because we paid our rent on time every time and she had no just cause to verbally harass us and kick us out. So she would call us every 3 days and
Even come over to ask us when are we moving out, we had no house lined up so we said we will let you know, as of now we don’t know. So she listed the house in the paper and said she will have new renters and we need to give notice asap we said we aren’t finish with our lease yet then she said that’s fine jus pay half of the month and be out because I have new perspective renters so we took that as ok she wants us out and that “she broke our contract.It was an unhealthy living situation with her harassing us every day, so I hustled and found a place, we put down a deposit to hold it and we started packing and moving things out in to the new home that we didn’t even want but we had no choice. Then a week later she says you need to pay the full month’s rent for the last month I said what??? You kicked us out, we are only paying half of the month that we had agreed upon. She said “no the deal is off I lost the new tenants” and I don’t have renters and the economy is hard. I said you can’t just rescind the agreement you had made, she said yes I can and tried to twist it and say that “we were breaking the lease” because we’re leaving early wth? She kicked us out, so I said I was going to take her to court for what she was putting us through it just wasn’t right, so we paid half of the month’s rent for the last month because we weren’t staying there already everything was moved out and my two roommates gave the gate and house keys back to her. I insisted on holding on to mine until the lease was up because technically we were paid up. She kept demanding the key from me and I said no I need it for proof if she rents it out to someone and if she does she needs to prorate it. Well she refunded our check that we had paid for the last month and kept our security deposit 1,700.00 and said the house is nice and clean she will just keep the security deposit in lieu of rent. I went up to the house and noticed she had rented it to someone else and she had
Locked me out of my house, she had told me to leave the keys at the property which I did, and she said she rented out the place and we won’t be getting any prorated rent back because now she’s saying the keys are 175.00 which she said I never returned and I did I have witnesses, and then saying a room smelled like perfume thats another 175.00 and carpet was not cleaned that’s 275.00 so
Our prorated rent went to that, and she owes us zero. I can’t believe her! She’s ridiculous! My question is can she legally do this?

Why is my Laptop slow?

It is very slow at start up and takes like five minutes before I can use it. It freezes at least once everyday and my laptop “beeps” loudly afterward (so people say the beeping occurs due to the system overheating, but my laptop is very well ventilated). Sometimes when I delete minuscule files like 10 KB, a small window with a loading bar appears that tells how long it will take for that file to be deleted (similar to the one appearing when downloading a file from the internet). This is peculiar because I just erased a 5 MB file a few minutes ago in the Recycle Bin and it deleted it instantly; there was no bar.

Here are the details:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Toshiba Satellite (model A215)
Processor: AMD Turion ™ 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-56 1.80 GHz
RAM is 1.00 GB
System type: 32-bit
Was on sale for about $700, bought on Fall 2007.

I deleted plenty of unused files and uninstalled several programs (made 7 icons on my desktop disappear). My laptop defragments weekly. Now my hard drive has 130 GB free space out of 184 GB with 54 GB occupied (approximately 29.35%). I even checked the System configuration (typed msconfig in the Run bar on the Start menu) to get rid of unnecessary programs running during start up and deactivate several services from unused programs. After restarting, I checked the Task Manager and there are around 86 processes running (it is usually around 85 to 98). I don’t have any viruses nor is there any spyware.

Why is my laptop so slow if the hard drive is not even half full (just barely a quarter full). Is it the RAM or processor? Or the brand? Is there an appropriate “Hard-drive space:RAM” ratio that I am not aware of?

Hypothetically, if I were to buy another laptop, how can I tell if it will be fast?

Are Mac Books better? I never used a Mac, but I might have to learn to use one eventually (I’m a sophomore in college majoring in mechanical engineering and possibly double major with aerospace engineering).

Serious answers only, please!!!!

Hard-drive is running out of space?

I have a fairly old computer, bought it in late 2005… it has a 75 GB hard drive and has been trucking along pretty decently for many years. I have a 200 GB external hard-drive that I keep most of my stuff on, but any programs I have and music is kept on my C drive. I have checked, and my music is about 25 gigs and “windows files” is about another 17 gigs. There are a few gigs worth of other things here and there, but not enough to total to the 75 limit. A few months ago, I started getting messages that my hard drive was at capacity and that I needed to delete stuff to keep windows running efficiently. So, I deleted some stuff, kept a few gigs free and moved on. Eventually it would tell me it was full again, and I would delete a few more things. It’s gotten to the point now that all I have is word , excel, media monkey and VLC on my computer, and my music. Just last night I removed a bunch of files and left about 3 gigs of free space. This morning it was back to about 175 MB of free space, with the wonderful message flashing at me again. I run windows XP, not vista. I have cleared my temporary files, compressed old files, deleted my browser cache, and yes, even emptied my recycle bin to try and conserve space, but it seems to fill back up again with something that I can’t find. I’ve run virus checks and come up empty.

Is there something that I am forgetting to delete, somewhere that I have missed checking? I’m pretty sure I’ve gone over everything with a fine toothed comb. Or do hard-drives just start to lose capacity over time?

I’d like to keep this computer running until boxing day, get a new one on sale, but it seems that it might not last that long at the rate it’s going.

Hope someone can provide some advice, thanks in advance.

Accounting Homework Help?

Assume that a pet food manufacturer is considering adding two types of pet food to their existing product line. Research had determined that there is good demand for dog food in forty pound bags and cat food in one-half pound cans.
The company identified the following partial list of activities, costs, and activity drivers expected for the next year.

…………………………………Expected Cost………………….Cost Driver
Handling Materials……….$105,000…………………………# batches made
Storage Cost………………$820,000……………………….. Weight of Finished Product

…………………………………… Dog Food……………………Cat Food
Production Volume………….100,000 units……………..200,000 Units
Batches Made…………………200 batches………………150 batches

1. Refer to the data above. What are the overhead rates used to apply material handling (MH) and storage costs (SC) using activity-based costing?
A. MH $300/batch; SC $2.73/unit.
B. MH $300/batch; SC $.20/lb.
C. MH $525/batch; SC $.205/unit.
D. MH $700/batch; SC $.205/lb.
E. MH $700/batch; SC $8.20/lb.

2. Refer to the data above. How much overhead cost will be assigned to each product line using activity-based costing (ABC)?
A. Dog Food: $462,500; Cat Food: $462,500.
B. Dog Food: $860,000; Cat Food: $65,000.
C. Dog Food: $60,000; Cat Food: $45,000.
D. Dog Food: $800,000; Cat Food: $20,000.
E. Dog Food: $320; Cat Food: $320.

3. Refer to the data above. How much overhead cost will be assigned to each unit of product using activity-based costing (ABC)?
A. Dog Food: $4.62; Cat Food: $4.62.
B. Dog Food: $2.64; Cat Food: $2.64.
C. Dog Food: $8.60; Cat Food: $0.33.
D. Dog Food: $0.26; Cat Food: $8.60.
E. Dog Food: $0.12; Cat Food: $3.85.

Scavenger Company, a manufacturer of recycling bins, began operations on January 1 of the current year. During this time, the company produced 60,000 units and sold 55,000 units at a sales price of $15 per unit. Cost information for this year is shown below.

4. Given the Scavenger Company data, what is net income using absorption costing?
A. $201,250
B. $181,250
C. $150,000
D. $177,600
E. $276,250

5. Given the Scavenger Company data, what is net income using variable costing?
A. $201,250
B. $181,250
C. $150,000
D. $177,600
E. $276,250
Scavenger Company

Production Costs
Direct materials 2.50 per unit
Direct Labor 3.00 per unit
Variable Overhead $45,000 total
Fixed Overhead $240,000 total

Non-Production Cost
Variable Selling and Admin Exp $10,000 total
Fixed Selling and Admin Exp $50,000 total

Question about Compag Presario CQ56.?

I have had this laptop for about 2 months now. I originally bought it and was told by a sales clerk that it did have a webcam. I’ve tried to use it however and it tells me it is not turned on. I’ve found many people that tell me this laptop does not have a webcam but there is a distinctive camera looking piece in the top center. Could this be a sensor? I went through my recycle bin and also found a picture of my sister taken by the Youcam software the laptop comes with. And if the laptop comes with webcam software then why wouldn’t it have a webcam?

Neighborhood Newsletters: Useful or Trash?

Growing up, my dad started a neighborhood newsletter and it was a success. It got the people in the neighborhood from strangers living next door to a community who cared about cleaning up on Earth Day and starting a neighborhood watch program. The newsletter had space for local business advertisement (very limited) as well as personal ads (garage sales, babysitters wanted/available, etc.).

I’m thinking about starting a newsletter in my neighborhood, and was looking for feedback from “today’s market”. Would YOU percieve a neighborhood newsletter showing up on your door once/twice a month as something you would be interested in reading, or something that would immediately go into your recycle bin?

Also, any suggestions for content would be great. Thanks!