Ambi valent

My PC has just been reconfigured (it was terminally ill). Now I can't access Twitter and it is behaving so oddly that I don't know where to start. When I go to www.twitter.com, I get a login page. I entered my details - but nothing happens. When I delete the password and click 'forgotten password' (just in case) it tells me I'm logged in and must first log out - but there is no way on the screen to do this. Lower down the screen there's a line of small writing saying "About Help Blog Status" etc If I click on 'Help', or anything else for that matter, it goes to a screen saying "Unauthorized!" and nothing I do can get me out of that screen. I've tried disabling add-ons (I'm working in Firefox), which doesn't help. I just can't think what else to do.

It doesn't help that the PC is networked to the laptop so now I have the same thing there. I can access Twitter on my iPhone but really want it back on PC and laptop.

I cannot navigate around it, but when I tried to find my Contacts answers, it told me no-one in my Contacts had answered any questions in the last week. And I can't find my Contacts list to try seeing what anyone HAS in fact answered (I know full fine they have answered questions because I could see them last night!).

In an idle moment, I answered a question in R&S even though it was nothing to do with R&S. Five minutes later, my answer had five thumbs down. The question (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApMTE... ) asked whether people preferred dogs or cats, and I answered it. It is quite beyond me to understand why my answer would attract such opprobrium but I'm curious. Anyone got any idea?

I'm curious as to whether you think the world will end all at once (so the time of day will depend on where you are on earth) or believe that as the sun rises on you (or some other solar-linked time), your world will end, or what?

Just thinking how weird it will be along the International Date Line if it's at sunrise or similar - presumably, shuffling to an island to the east will give you an extra day..... And wondering whether it will be possible to ensure that EVERYONE is experiencing the 21st, with no few people having the world end on the 20th or 22nd.

In my old Outlook and Word, I could simply highlight text in an e-mail and paste it into a Word document. With my new Microsoft Office 2010, this seems entirely hit and miss. Occasionally I find a way to get it to work (don't know what I do to make it possible) but mostly when I highlight, right-click 'copy' and then 'paste' in the Word document, I just get a black blob. I can't see any settings anywhere that relate to this. Any ideas would be very gratefully received.

And there I was, just wanting to post this brilliant pic I just accessed through Twitter...

http://yfrog.com/ntrwojrj

Thanks to Seb Sears for possibly the best BBC News caption ever.

She's in 'open ground' as it were, not a corner where she could spin a good web to catch things. As she's been there for at least four days, I had begun to think she was dead, but a gentle nudge proved me wrong. Her body is about half an inch long. I'm in the north of England, if that helps identify what sort this might be. I'd love to know what she's doing. She's directly above the bath and I really don't want her to drown. I am very fond of the spiders that live in my house, but ignorant. I don't think I've ever seen one behave like this before.

Obviously, Mitt Romney isn't Jewish, but a user called (at this moment, of course it can change) "Friends" seems convinced he is, and is a "Jewish supremacist". There was more, but it's hardly worth detailing. I have been wondering about the reason for the response to my answer pointing out that Romney isn't Jewish, i.e. the blocking within minutes, and can only assume this is someone so insecure that s/he can't cope with anyone with different views. What do other people think this is about?

Resigning usually indicates a severance of one's relationship with the company concerned. Murdoch's providing not only the £1.7m severance, but the use of a chauffeur-driven limousine and an office in central London. Corruption clearly pays. Or have I misunderstood something here?

If you put the hottest of hot chillies onto pineapple, you can eat it without screaming. Yogurt also makes a hot dish milder. And a friend recently noticed that adding lemon juice to something with chilli in it made it much milder. Is this something to do with pH (and if so, how does this work?) or is it something else?

I get pictures coming through fine and all sorts of layouts. But there are some e-mails which come through as pure rubbish (e.g. "30;mso-wrap-distance-left:2.88pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:2.88pt;mso-wrap-d=istance-right:2.88pt;mso-wrap-distance-bottom:2.88pt' = o:preferrelative=3D"t" or "zFpbTnKLgAiIgAiIgAjIjlEfEAEREAEREAERWCsB2TFrbTnJLQIiIAIiIAIiIDtGfUAEREAEREAE", going on for ages and ages). Apart from knowing that these various problematic e-mails contain some design element, I don't know what else they have in common. Why, and what can I do? Please give me simple instructions - I'm not computer software savvy.

NB I am using Outlook, NOT Outlook Express, with Windows 7 (and yes, I know there are incompatibility issues but I don't think they're connected with this).

When I discovered I was blocked from getting to the question: "What exactly is a 'Jewish Soul'? I often hear Jews say a certain Christian has a 'Jewish Soul'. Can you explain what a Jewish Soul is and can one lose it?", I was curious as to who might be asking such a question. I was even more surprised that it was a Level 1 user who'd been a member since May this year (not exactly an active account), and who I'd never heard of under the current user name. Sadly, the answers there are all nonsense (or were when I logged out to look) and I am reasonably sure all the usual Jewish answerers on here are also blocked.

Can anyone explain to me why someone does this? Should I assume the questioner isn't interested in the answer but only in spreading misinformation? It's certainly strange to be blocked by someone one's never knowingly encountered.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AvUDY...

I need a car that is economical (living in the middle of nowhere means high mileage, not to mention more expensive fuel); has good clearance (I live down a rough track); handles well on bendy rural roads.

I want a five-door hatchback, and reasonable adaptability (back seats that go down, etc) for loading big bits and pieces. Oh, and it needs to be reasonably cheap! I also insist on narrow tyres, none of those ghastly wide low-profile things that faint as soon as they look at snow (of which we nearly always get a fair bit).

All thoughts gratefully received - the more you can explain your answer, the more useful it will be to me.

I went to my activity page. I looked at a question I'd previously answered. I read some new answers. Then I clicked 'My Activity' again and was completely thrown - the whole layout had changed completely in those few brief moments!!

Given that TIRH (This Is Religion Here), surely we expect our sacred texts to stay the same forever, not suddenly alter in mid-stream?

And do you like the new look?

My nearly-four-month-old kitten knows perfectly well to use his litter tray or to go outdoors, which is what he does most of the time. And yet in the last 48 hours he has urinated on the bath mat, IN the clothes basket and in another corner of the bathroom. He's done similar things before, so it's not that he has an infection or that there's something frightening outdoors just now - just that these three episodes in 48 hours have made me despair.

Before anyone tries to tell me that I shouldn't be allowing him outside, I live in an isolated rural area, half a mile from the nearest (very minor) road and further than that from the next house. He's quite safe and I hope he will follow in the tradition of the other cats who have lived here and hunt the rabbits which are in plague numbers.

He is happy outside, climbs trees and caught his first shrew recently. When he's loving, he's the softest thing out; when he plays he can still (unsurprisingly) be a little violent as he hasn't yet learned to avoid clawing humans..... All in all, he's a delight apart from the urination problem. All help gratefully received!!

I have wooden internal doors and window frames that I have previously treated with linseed oil. It's quite a lot of work, keeping them oiled, and the smell is a bit grim for a while; apart from that, the bottoms of the windows do tend to get black (presumably from mould - this is a somewhat damp house in a very wet part of the UK). Could I treat them with a matt varnish (it's quite a while since they were oiled) or is this going to be problematic?

And would anyone want to try to persuade me to keep oiling, rather than varnishing?

I got my washing out of the machine and hung up a sheet. In the folds of the sheet, I found a live spider. I can't understand how it got there if it wasn't in the washing machine, as I went straight from the machine to hanging, and I am certain there was no spider in the basket before I pulled the washing out into it. The spider was absolutely fine, and headed off looking perfectly OK. I am very fond of spiders, so was glad to see it healthy, but quite amazed.

So, you spider experts - is this possible, or did it just get in among the sheet by pure fluke between machine and hanging?

For several days, at the top of the page where they now 'helpfully' provide one with suggested questions, there has been one saying "Rspca can anyone give advice or something?". It must have been deleted almost as soon as it was asked (when I first clicked on it) but it still comes up, every time, and is still deleted. What on earth is the point of this? Why does Yahoo insist on cluttering things up with their entirely pointless suggestions when they don't even exist?

A little accident with my washing machine means that trousers and jacket (of which I was particularly fond) got a dose of hotter water than intended. Now they're somewhat crinkled and ironing seems extremely difficult. Have I wrecked them forever, or is there a way to get them back to something resembling their former state? They are 63% nylon, 33% rayon and 4% spandex (but look like something much more 'natural'!!).

I can find a book called "Horse of Air" by Lucy Rees, but all the online references I've found say that it was published in 1980. The book I'm searching for was definitely around much earlier and featured a number of horses including one called Alaric and some others beginning with A. As far as I can remember, it was a fantasy of sorts. I loved it when I was about 9-13 and I'd like to read it again.