pileofcrapola

Cable adapters are great, but the things are so darn small and easy to lose. Here’s a neat hack to keep them together: all you need is some Sugru, that magical material for DIY miracles.

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In honor of Evil Week, we're switching up the Hive Five a bit. Instead of picking the five best in a category, this week we're choosing the five worst, specifically, the five worst wireless phone carriers, based on your nominations. Some carriers are great, but these ones earned your ire because of lax customer service, high prices, terrible contracts, and more. We're going to look at each of them, and offer some tips to get better service if we can.

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Good coffee tastes amazing, can be a great comfort, and is fun and easy to make well with the right tools. Coffee is also good for you, having been shown to make you smarter, help you lose weight, keep you alive longer and kickstart your exercise routine. Today we're going to knock down coffee's barrier to entry by telling you exactly which gear you need to get your hands on for a great brew.

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No, you can't just trash the squirmin' vermin. If you're the proud possessor of a mouse stuck to a sticky trap, then you're stuck with the problem of putting the creature out of its misery. The DIY guys at Stack Exchange are here to help.

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Meeting new people is always a bit tough, but if you're trying to build a quick rapport, psychology blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree points to an old FBI trick: ask open ended questions.

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Tying shoelaces is a tricky skill for little kids with little fingers to learn, but it's an essential milestone too. A great trick for teaching a child how to do it is to use a jump rope first.

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Companion planting is one of the best techniques to grow a better garden and naturally repel pests. Some plants thrive next to certain other plants, while being completely incompatible with others (much like humans!). This infographic tells you at a glance the combinations that work best.

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Many coffee drinkers roll out of bed and get their daily dose of java as soon as possible. Because of the way coffee affects our bodies, though, there may be more ideal times to drink it.

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At some point, you'll be caught without power. If you're lucky, it'll come back, but if you're stuck in a situation like last year's Hurricane Sandy, it might be a while, and you'll need another way to keep your gear powered. This deep-cycle battery, charged by a bicycle-powered generator, will do the trick.

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Some people call it their battlestation, others call it their command center. In honor of Evil Week, we're going to call your home office setup your secret lair, and here are some of the best DIY projects and gear you can use to keep it safe, secure, and stocked for whatever nefarious plan you may cook up next.

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Sales be damned, nothing saves you money like an old fashioned student discount. Here's how to continue making use of those golden markdowns long after graduation.

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Great discussions are par for the course here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Check out these discussions and add your own thoughts to make them even more wonderful!

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Gizmodo A Haunted House Filled With DIY Tricks From Disney's Haunted Mansion | Jalopnik The Ten Best Car-Stumes (Car Costumes) | Jezebel People Who Love Halloween Are the Best Kind of People | Kotaku Lazy Halloween Costume Ideas For Gamers

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Consumerist readers regale us with tales of Calphalon’s above-and-beyond customer service for their pots and pans, but the company is relatively new to the field of small appliances. How are they doing with that? The company has joined Vitamix and Frigidaire in having its blenders recalled because the blades sort of, um, blend themselves.

Consumer Reports told us all so this past summer when they reviewed blenders, giving this particular model a rating of Don’t Buy: Safety Risk.

We shared those two previous recalls in the September Recall Roundup. These aren’t cheap blenders: the Frigidaire and Calphalon models cost about $130, and the Vitamix cost as much as $750.

For more information or to find out how to get a replacement blade if your blender is affected, check out these official recall sites.

If you’ve been injured by these blenders (or by any other product) be sure to contact the CPSC. It could be one defective item, or a production problem that could hurt other consumers too.

Vitamix Container Blade Recall [Vitamix]

Some 14 million American families participate in employer-sponsored flexible spending accounts that let you put pre-tax money into an account to be used on medical expenses that aren’t covered by insurance. But millions of consumers elect not to have an FSA because of the “use it or lose it” requirement that forfeits unused funds at the end of the year. So in an effort to get people participating, the IRS will be allowing companies to offer FSAs that let employees roll over up to $500 in unused funds into the next year.

“An overwhelming majority of feedback from individuals, employers, and others requested that the use-or-lose rule for health FSAs be modified,” reads a statement from the Treasury Dept. “Comments pointed to the difficulty for employees of predicting future needs for medical expenditures, the need to make FSAs accessible to employees of all income levels, and the desire to minimize incentives for unnecessary spending at the end of the year.”

The rule change puts an end to three decades of use-or-lose, at least for those employers who choose to end that requirement. Some plans currently offer grace periods that allow employees to continue spending that unused money for a short period of time after the end of the year. Grace plans will be allowed to continue, however employers who want to allow rollovers will not be allowed to have grace periods. It’s one or the other, says the IRS.

The Treasury Dept. says that some employer-sponsored plans may be able to allow the rollover for 2013, allowing employees to carry that money over into their 2014 accounts.

Maybe this story was more appropriate yesterday, but since I’m still wearing my Batgirl costume while I write this, the Halloween spirit remains. Anyway. As you may know, there are plenty of airports abutting or very near cemeteries, but an airport in Georgia actually has two graves — complete with two grave markers — as part of one of its runways.

This may not be news to airport aficionados or frequent visitors to the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, but it was news to the travel-writing folks at Jaunted and to us, that embedded in Runway 10 at SAV are two grave markers for Richard and Catherine Dotson.

No, they were not the airport’s founders, nor did they donate a bunch of money to live out their eternity under the constant comings and goings of commercial air traffic.

According to this 2001 story on SavannahNow.com, The Dotson family used to own some the land upon which the airport now sits. There had once been a family cemetery containing dozens, maybe 100 or more graves, on the land.

Then with the outbreak of World War II, the military took over and expanded on a fledgling municipal airport, and created Chatham Field on the land. They needed to pave over the cemetery in order to create the east-west runway, and ultimately relocated almost all of the bodies buried on the old Dotson farmland.

That is, except for four people — the Dotson couple, and two men, John Dotson and Daniel Hueston, both of whom passed in 1857, 20 years before Catherine Dotson died. Richard Dotson passed away in 1884.

So now the Dotson graves are marked, not with headstones, but with slabs embedded in the pavement of the runway.

If you zoom in closely on Google Maps, you can see the markings:

A Virginia mother is defending her 7-year-old son's controversial Halloween costume.

Canada's border services agency says it has stumbled upon a different kind of Halloween surprise in some pumpkins.

Our country is deeply divided and polarized today. And the reason for this comes to a head this week.

The world's largest snack maker is widening its own market by mixing sweet with salty in its snacks -- and is rolling out chocolate-covered Lay's Wavy chips for the holidays.

With Black Friday right around the corner, you can easily cut your costs by 40% on countless items if you play your cards correctly

Millions of people fall prey every year

Company makes change to attract shoppers

Product can cause injury to mouth and teeth

It's an adorable baby animal kind of day.

Prince William County crime report Washington Post Prince William County. These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police. For information, call 703-792-7245. DUMFRIES AREA. WEAPONS. Wythe Ct., 2900 block, 3:30 a.m. Oct. 10. Several gunshots were heard. MANASSAS AREA.

The next time you're visiting the National Zoo, stop by the Andean bear exhibit and welcome Cisco.