Datasets:

---

nreimers

/

reddit_question_best_answers

like 14

[ { "body": "When my mother in law learned she had cancer, she labeled everything in her house with who it was supposed to go to. When she died, husband's sister took everything... and nothing made it to the hands of the people that the mother wanted to see it go to. New year's day, right after the mother died, the sister in law's house burned down. She was left with nothing more than the shirt on her back. Story 1.\n\nStory 2. Friend of the husband was rooked by a crooked investor, lost everything that he and his wife had saved their entire life for. Even lost their home, ended up living in their vehicle, and having to sell shit at the flea market just for food to eat. Ended up hitting the AZ state lotto... and got to live their last couple of years in relative comfort, anyhow. So that is the happy karma story. Oh, and the crooked investor ended up in prison, and died there. Even happier karma story.", "score": 32 }, { "body": "* Early story p.s. I live in Chico, Ca. And soon intend on Joining up stalkkit, cuz I found one of my best friends/ex-roommate Squee69777. \n* So anyways I'm chilling at this local coffee shop(naked lounge) and I see a meter maid roll up and starting to give some guy a ticket for the meter, and I ask if I can save the car, Dude says is this your car, to which i reply no, he says no i may not, so i walk to the car in front of me who's meter ran out and drop a quarter in it. he comes up to me and asks me why I did that, I reply I dunno Karma. He reply's do you really believe that, I go well It really doesn't matter because i just saved someone a bullshit ticket for 25 cents. and I walk back to the coffee shop and sit down finish my cig and head to a neighboring shop called The Root Beer Factory I walk inside and grab me some Ramune (Japanese soda) and walk up to the counter and the lady working says, Aren't you the kid who just saved that car from a ticket. I'm like yeah. Turns out it was a family owned business and that was their car. So they tell me the sodas free (it was a good $2.50 for the soda) so I'm like hell yeah. i chill in there for a minute drink my soda and go grab a Leninade (communist lemons taste better) go back up to the counter and ask for a thing of popcorn (had just finished being POPPED) and one of their son's go this ones on me, So essentially got like 5 bucks worth of free soda and a bag of popcorn. SO FUCK YEAH METER MAID INSTANT FUCKING KARMA.\noh and p.s. I knew the meter thing was illegal, I just wanted that fucker to try and arrest me.\n", "score": 22 }, { "body": "Told this story a few times already; I cut my right middle finger tip off at work. My brother didn't get back until a week later and naturally he called me stumpy. Exactly one year after saying that, he cut his left middle finger tip off.\n\nNo bullshitting.\n\nI'll edit in some pictures if anybody wants to see them.\n\n[First a boring one](http://imgur.com/uiNJj.jpg)\n\n**EDIT** [Made sure those who asked got an orangered but for the brave](http://imgur.com/uiNJj.jpg)", "score": 17 }, { "body": "One of my Fraternity brothers, slept with a girl who had no thumb, and only had half an index finger. Another of my brothers decided it be funny to poke the brother that slept with the girl in the chest with a rolled over index finger going \"hey you, what you doing later?\". He did this for weeks. About a month after this all started he was chopping an onion and cut from just below his finger nail on his index finger off. Now he is left with a stubbed index finger.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Oh here's a lovely one from my old partying days:\n\nMy roommates and I often threw parties every weekend, and one particular weekend our one roommate was talking up this girl that was coming over. Apparently he fixed her computer at work and got to talking to her.\n\nHe was so excited for her to come over. So when she finally does, she's a total cunt muscle. I'm tapping the keg and pouring the foam in a pitcher. (after carrying it up 2 flights of stairs) She doesn't even introduce herself, first thing she says is, \"What are you retarded? Can't you pour a beer?!\"\n\nRight away It was taking everything inside of me from not kicking her out right then and there. I was just hoping against hope something awful would happen to her. \n\nSo a good 2 hours later she's about 3 or 4 beers deep and wasted somehow. We're watching her from the beer pong table and she was jumping the line to the bathroom; as she was being either a bitch or needed to go real bad. \n\nShe wound up getting to the front with two other girls. They all enter together. About a minute later one of those two BOLTS out of the house screaming and crying, not wearing pants. \n\nNow I'll try to describe the scene as accurately as possible, not sparing any details:\n\nWe walk up to the bathroom and she opens the door, a putrid wave of acidic poop air burns at our sinuses. The entire party literally stops in horror to see what happened. As the attention builds she tries blaming everything (we're not sure what) on the girl who left. Then realizes as she lifts up her skirt, that there is liquid shit running down her leg...\n\nWe enter the bathroom to find a pair of jeans in our sink filled with puke and the sink pouring over and shit literally splattered ALL OVER THE PLACE. \n\nAs it happened, she had to puke really bad as the other chick was pissing. She ran to the toilet and vomited all down that other girl's pants. As this was happening she let out a horrid shit storm that shot through her thong like tissue paper holding Niagra falls. It was quite the perfect storm. \n\nNow I'm not too sure if the Karma hit was on me or her, but I know she can never show her face to about 30-40 people again. haha\n\nTLDR: Girl is a bitch. Girl goes to bathroom with other girl. Pukes and shits all over herself and the other girl. \n\nThere is more, if you're interested, I'll give you part 2.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I worked for a restaurant manager who was so mean that she could make a rock cry. I quit after taking her bullshit for a year, then found out a couple of years later that she was fired because there was a LOT of turnover due to people quitting because of her!", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Last summer was my third year lifeguarding the beaches in my town. One day I had to do the heimlich maneuver on a woman. Next day I worked, I worked at the same beach. It was a crappy cold day out and I knew no one would be heading to the beach that day. I pulled my car in and parked. Stepped out of my car, looked at the ground, and there was a 1/4 of headies, not moldy, not dry, sealed in a baggie on the ground. Most likely some stoner dropped it out of the car accidentally the night before.\n\nSo this stoner got the bud. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "When I was younger, for whatever reason, I made my sister trip. She happened to do this at a spot where her front permanent tooth hit a doorknob and got chipped. It was small, but she had to go to the dentist to get it smoothed out.\n\nFast forward 10 years later, at a college swim meet. A 6'2'' male teammate jumps into the lane without looking. It just so happened that I was performing a flip-turn there. (I'm a 5'7'' female.)\n\nThe hit chipped my front tooth. I was a little shaken from the force, but I continued to swim.\n\nMy sister said she felt vindicated, and that now I had \"no future in the model business.\"\n\nI was just happy I didn't get my neck broken.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "A girl by the name of Anne Frank used to torture small animals, then throw them out of her apartment window.\n\nNeedless to say, she got what she deserved.\n\nEDIT: Not trying to be a dick here, just pointing out the absurdity that is karma. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I was returning some pants. I took a short cut in a subway tunnel and fell in some mud, ruining my pants. The very pants I was returning.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I had my friends children in the backseat of my car on a snowy day in Connecticut. On two lane highway that joins with I-95 I was driving in the SLOW lane going exactly the speed limit. \r\n\r\nDespite that, a limousine was tailgating me obnoxiously, flashing highbeams - honking the horn, as if I was doing something wrong. Which I wasn't. I stayed in my lane - had the cruise control on and tried to calm the children that were starting to freak out in the backseat. \r\n\r\nAt the first possible break in the traffic - the limo swerved around me, swung in front of my car by mere inches and then tamped on his brakes. I had to go into the emergency lane to not crash into him. Then he sped off. \r\n\r\nTwo miles later when the feeder highway turned into I-95 I saw the same limo in the process of being pulled over by a state trooper. Sometimes I love cops. This was one of those times.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I replied to someone's comment, \"I see what you did there.\" I received -15 comment karma, and deserved it.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "In middle school, I got picked on a lot. I was the new girl, as I'd moved across the country in the middle of 7th grade, and was picked on until our very last day.\n\nBut one day, during gym, some asshole threw a basketball at my head.\n\nHe was absent the next day, and came in a day later on crutches. Fucker.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "A guy I know was living in SanFrancisco. Somebody steals his car. 2 weeks later that large earthquake hits. One week after that, the police call him to report they have found his car---crushed almost flat---on the collapsed Nimitz freeway, with the body of a known car thief (also flat) inside. Sometimes earthquakes are vectors for karmic destiny.", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "I think you really have two concerns.\n\nHuman sexuality is a diverse and many faceted thing. Thinking one guy is cute doesn't mean that you lose all your \"lesbian cred.\" In fact, it reminds me of [DAR Comic](http://www.darcomic.org/). You still identify as queer and I think that the LGBTQ community as a whole is magnanimous enough to accept that. Moreover, we're still reshaping our identities at 25 as much as when we were 14 or 16 or 18. People change.\n\nThe real issue here is how you're worried this will affect your partner. If you've been together for 5 years, you've probably learned that the best glue in a relationship is communication. You need to talk to your partner; tell her about the dude, about the flirting. If she loves you, she'll listen to what you have to say. Maybe you just need a little time to sort this new attraction out. What you want is your partner to be understanding, and you're worried she might not be (and which might be why you haven't told her yet).\n\n\nSo, I'd recommend you talk with her. Do it now before shit blows up.\n\nAlso, you might check out and/or email Dan Savage. He seems to usually have good advice to offer people: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove", "score": 12 }, { "body": "first of all, let's realize some things. you messed up a bit. that's okay, everyone messes up.\n\nthe best thing to do here is be honest. you're still (probably) a lesbian, if that's how you feel. \n\nyou do have serious issues with your partner. you need to evaluate whether you want to make that work or not. if you want to make it work, be honest with her, say you met a guy and he's making you question yourself and your sexuality. repeat that you love her (if you do) and say that you want to make your relationship work with her. talk it out.\n\nfinally, i'm going to reiterate what someone above said. are you really sexually attracted to him? like you want to have sex with him, despite his nasty boy-parts? \n\nThis isn't an easy situation you're in. Tread carefully, think about your options, and be as honest as possible with everyone involved. Good luck!", "score": 5 }, { "body": "You're likely bisexual, not a lesbian. I thought I was straight until I was 21 or so. Preference often wanes one way or the other.. at this point in my life i'm rarely attracted to men (if I could even say i was at all) and I am very attracted to women.. whereas when I was younger I had no interest in women and plenty in men. \n\nThe bottom line though is that you cheated on your girlfriend. Unless you're ready to end your relationship with this woman (and should she find out she should dump you anyway) you need to end all contact with this man period. However, you should sit down with your girlfriend and let her know that you are having sexual thoughts about men and that you are bisexual rather than a lesbian- make it clear that you didn't lie to her about your orientation and that this is a new revelation. What you *should* also do is tell her that you cheated on her. That would be the right thing to do. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Great advice people below...\n\nI honestly am not the best person to ask but I'll try to give my 2 cents. First of all, what kind of attraction is it? That makes a huge difference. I know you said physically but do you really want to see him naked? Do you want his penis (I apologize for the vulgarity but it needs to be asked)? If you do then indeed you are in a situation because you are in a relationship already. You will have to ask yourself if you are willing to end the relationship for a chance to be closer to him. Also, does he know about you and your girlfriend?\n\nIf it were me (not saying you should do this), I would tell my girlfriend that a met a new friend who is really cool. I would say \"be honest\" but with a pinch of white lies. Tell her that you like him a lot as a friend and that's he's fun or something like that. Skip the part about the attraction. Perhaps keep him in your life for a little and see how that works as a friendship. I guess maybe it's a really crude way to test the water. If the feeling persists then consider changing your relationships. I hope that helps somewhat.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I was working on an offshore oil rig. I had been up for about 20 hours, a tropical storm was approaching, and I was on a crew boat loading equipment to send back to land. The waves got so bad that every time one hit the boat, all of the equipment slid around and I was underwater and not sure if I was still on the boat. The wave would recede and I would be lying on the deck looking around crazily. The loads they were lowering would be 12 feet in the air one second and slamming onto the deck the next because of the swells. Finally we gave up and went back onto the rig. we had to hammer approximately 90 3\" nuts tight in the wind and rain that had become so rough it was hard to stand up in to secure the well. Then we were told that we had waiting too long to evacuate and would have to ride out the storm. About that time, the boat we were working on flipped over in the swells and sank. We were holding onto the handrails watching as 8 crew members just floated away in the water (they had strobelights on their life-jackets so we could see them blinking and floating away). The Coast Guard came out in helicopters, managed to rescue all the crew members (beat the hell up but all alive), and flew us all back to land. The boat that sank was 120 feet long and had 3.5 million dollars of equipment on the back. The entire 30 minute flight we were zig-zagging around waterspouts (water tornadoes). We could see them all around us the entire way back. We were later told that by the time the C.G. arrived, the seas were 22-25 ft. To just make everything worse, I had just had my first son 2 weeks before. When the helicopter finally landed, I got off, looked at my boss, and quit my job right then and there. Drove 5 hours to get home, kissed the hell out of my son and wife, and slept for a day and a half. These days, they won't do anything in more than 10ft. seas. The rules are better now i would say.", "score": 92 }, { "body": "When I was 14, I was a freshman in high school and in Beta Club...it's a service based club in secondary schools in the US. Part of the requirements, apart from grades, was mandatory service and volunteer events.\n\nSo one day an opportunity came up to work at a football game selling cokes and sodas for four hours, and all of the proceeds would go to a non-profit in the area. I thought to myself, cool! I'd never been to a football game in an actual stadium, and standing around selling drinks didn't sound so hard.\n\nSo my parents drop me off, and I find the person I'm supposed to, and I find out things are a bit different than I'd thought. Instead of standing at a table and selling drinks, I was to be walking around with one of [these](http://www.rocketman.com/main.html) all day in the stands.\n\nAgain, remember I was a 14 year old girl. And while that backpack doesn't look huge, it was filled to the top with coke. I have no idea how heavy it was, but it felt like I was carrying a whole person on my back. In addition, I would be climbing up and down the steep stairs of the grandstands to sell this shit. Oh, and did I mention that I am terrified of heights and they put me in one of the highest sections? \n\nI was able to get through about 2 hours of it, and when I ran out of coke, I went back and gave them their money and tried to take of the backpack. My legs felt like jello beneath me, my back and shoulders hurt so much I could barely stand, and I had a headache that felt like it was going to burst through my eye at any second. When the guy tried to fill up my pack and give it to me, I told him that there was just no way I could do two more hours of this...I wasn't sure if I could even stay upright for very much longer.\n\nHe started shouting about spoiled kids, and I was so exhausted that instead of asking him how he could expect a 14 year old girl to do this, I just started bawling. He finally told me to just leave. So I spent the next two hours, crying outside the stadium, waiting for my mom. My body was hurting that day, but it was nothing compared to the next day. I woke up and was so sore I couldn't even get out of bed. \n\nTo this day, I wonder what the fuck they were thinking, telling us that we would just be \"selling drinks.\" Way to trick little kids into doing manual labor, assholes. ", "score": 31 }, { "body": "It wasn't me but when I first heard this story, I felt so bad for the girl.\n\nThere was a girl who worked at some sort of mill. She was in charge of hiring and firing. One day, her boss came into her office first thing in the morning with a list of people who were being laid off. IIRC, there were either 150 or 200 people on this list.\n\nIt was her job that day to call each and every one of those people and have them go to her office so she could give them the news. After she would tell people the news, she would then call for a taxi and they would drive the person home. The cab was payed for, of course.\n\nSo, she starts at 8am, and goes until 6 pm just calling these people and sending them home in cabs. When she finishes the entire list, she goes and tells her boss. Her boss said something like \"Good job, but you've got to call one more cab.\"\n\nShe asked, \"For who?\"\n\n\"It's for you.\"", "score": 22 }, { "body": "Well being prior military i have more stories than i can push out as far as working crazy hours and shifts without any incentive other than having no choice. I will just tell you about my flight to the desert and that should show you how bad a day can be. I was flying for about 25-30 hours including a stop In Germany and had a serious case of jetlag when i arrived at my final destination. I was a young E-3 at the time and was really suprised when they announced on the intercom that E-4's and below could get off the plane first. So i got off the plane and they handed me a bottle of water because it was about 2am local time and 100 degree's outside and humid (Persian Gulf) as hell outside. Then they told us to go stand by the big converyer belt beside the plane. The next thing i know we are told that we had to unload the ENTIRE fucking planes luggage by ourselves after i just got done flying and sitting in airports and had a rediculouss case of jetlag/exhaustion. So i spent the next 2 hours in this unbearable heat unloading the plane and getting peoples their bags and I went and met up with the guys I was going to be working with. They took me to my tent and showed me where i was staying and told me to be at work at 9am in the morning which is about 3 or 4 hours from the time i finally got settled and of course i can't sleep at this point. I get up and go to work and pull maybe a 10 hour shift that day and proceeded to spend the next four months working 12-18 hour shifts without a day off in a hot ass melting pot. :(. That was a ruff day followed by some ruff months and I didn't have it bad at all compared to alot of my military brethren. ", "score": 14 }, { "body": "There were a lot of bad days when I was a waitress in a restaurant downtown. Lots of times where we'd get a huge rush of people from an unknown event or convention at 11 PM when we weren't ready for it or something like that. I got used to this stuff and just dealt with it, and the challenge of having 20 tables at once kind of got fun. However, one day was the absolute worst day of waitressing I have ever lived through. The worst is we knew it was coming. It was the Circle City Classic...an event attended by a record breaking number of young african-americans each year, mainly teenagers. I was scheduled for a double, 10 AM - 10 PM I think. Instead of working for my normal $2/hr, the managers automatically clocked us in at our regular hourly rate when we were doing other tasks (minimum wage for most) because they said the waitresses never made tips on this event. If you don't make at least minimum wage in tips during a shift, the restaurant has to pay you the difference. I couldn't understand how I could work 12 hours and not make at least $5.15 an hour in tips when the place would be packed constantly. After 12 hours of being yelled at, having white racial slurs screamed at me, refilling water after water because they wanted a place to sit but not spend money, etc, I had made $25 in tips. The black waitress working with me had money falling out of her pocket. It was horrible to see all these racial stereotypes come to life right in front of me, work my ass off, make NO money, AND then walk home in huge crowds of these kids that were yelling shit at me because I was the only white blonde girl downtown. I don't even live in a shitty city, but this event is complete nonsense. It's the ONLY shift in 3 years of waiting tables that actually made me cry.\n\nOn the other hand, when Gencon is held in my city, I worked 6PM - 8 AM 3 days in a row and it was the best 3 days of waiting tables ever. Nerds with money know how to treat a girl. I made so much money that weekend. Only time I worked 14 hours + on my feet and walked home in a good mood.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I used to be a theoretical physicist at a lab out in New Mexico. The management team is a nightmare. It's basically one guy that no one can ever get a hold of. But anyway, I did have one particularly hard day. We were running some experiments when we suddenly had a malfunction. The result was a resonance cascade. For the amateurs out there, a resonance cascade rips seams in our dimension, opening up links to places you really don't want to go to. A ton of headcrabs start pouring out of the seams and we didn't know what to do. Management was no where to be found--or at least, he seemed to disappear every time someone caught up to him. Anyway, it was a pretty bad day in general but at least I had my crowbar to help me get through it.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "I worked on a farm for a week when I was younger and we stacked around 6000 30kg ( about 70 pounds ) square bails of hay into a barn over a 3 day period. My hands and forearms where completely shredded raw from the straw. \n\nI've never been as tired in my life, or worked as hard as I did that week.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "I work as a Care Aide with the elderly and a few years back the facility I was working at was suffering from a terrible Norwalk Virus outbreak (http://microbiology.mtsinai.on.ca/faq/norwalkfaq.shtml)\n\nAs I was helping one nice old lady back to her bed after a half hour stint of liquid shit (I kid you not) she said something about feeling nauseous. Well, she had fucking awful timing. Me and my partner were helping her get changed (she had shat her pants) and as I was holding her upright (she couldn't walk well when healthy) she puked all over me.\n\nNow, I was wearing a protective mask, gloves and gown like protocol required me to wear, but you ain't getting rid of that smell too fast. I was in the bathroom for nine hours that night at home. I was thanking everything holy for the fact that my toilet was next to my bathtub so I could shit and puke at the same time.\n\nWorst day at work ever.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Designing a website for some dude. Had a hangnail on my middle finger of left hand that weekend. Hurt when I'd pressed the d and e keys.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Even though I used to work for 12-13 hours per day washing huge pots and dishes in a restaurant when I was 15 I still think it was worse when I had to teach a really really dumb kid how equations work.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Longest night of my life... hmm.\n\nWhen I was in university, I used to do \"techincal labour\" for shows - ie: push cases, load trucks, etc. Hours were shitty but the money was good. Anyways, I got talked in to unloading a gala event; for those of you who've done the work, imagine how me and the other 20 guys felt when they pulled SIX full sized trucks up to start loading. Anyways, I spent the next 16 hours lifting 200lb sheets of staging, pushing cases up ramps, winding literally THOUSANDS of feet of (wet) cable, all the while wading through an inch of smashed flowers and foam (the decor company showed up late, so the table and chairs guys just tipped all their centrepieces onto the floor.) Anyways, it was work I was used to, so it wasn't wretched, but DEFINITELY tiring. Finished up at 7:30am, which gave me just enough time to run like hell to write a 4 hour physics final at 8am. Finished up the exam at 11:45, giving me 15 minutes to hoof it a few blocks to my OTHER job and work 12pm to 9:30pm closing the store. Got home around 10, at which point I got to start studying for my 8am art history final the next day.\n\nEvery time I say to myself \"I miss university,\" I think back on that day and feel better about it being over.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Bouncing at a club on New Year's eve. It had always been hectic, but this night, management had decided to just jam the place, and pocket as much money as they could before the police shut them down. This was my night job. I had spent the entire day working at a record shop, taking returns from people who had received crappy Nickleback CDs from their grandparents, and got to the bar just in time to move all the heavy, steel tables out of the restaurant, in order to make another dance floor. We already had a line waiting for us to open by 9pm. The night really started getting rough when two of our bigger bouncers went down in a fight with an anonymous drunk. They were Army reservists, and they got him out the door, but after that they needed some ice, and to be patched up. I am pretty sure it wasn't their blood on their faces, but they couldn't go back on the floor until they washed off, so I got pulled off the door, and put on the floor.\n\nWhich meant that some numb-nuts kid was put on the door. All the people that I had kept out, either because they were drunk, or underage, or clearly looking for trouble, decided to get back in line, and this time, they got in. (Stupid kid didn't even take any extra $$ from them!)\n\nAt this point, I am tossing people almost as fast as they are letting people in, and I no longer have the time or temperament to explain to people WHY they can't do lines of coke in the bathroom, or try to start a mosh pit (this is a dance club, not a rock venue). So I am tossing people, and simply saying to the doorman, 'no'. Eventually, the bigger guys get back out on the floor, and I get back to the door. We have been at capacity for hours, but people are still lined up, and the right ones are getting in (thanks, management!). This means that I am back out watching the door with all the angry people who haven't gotten in yet, and all the drunk idiots that I have tossed in the last hour.\n\nOh, and I also had to watch the door from the OUTSIDE, on a freezing/rainy/snowy Boston night, because even if I setup right inside the door, to check IDs, people would try to push past me. And you can't properly feel fake IDs through gloves, so I had to cut the tips of off my gloves to do my job.\n\nA few weeks later, the Pats won the superbowl, I worked that night, too, and it was almost as bad. Now, I work in IT and sit on my ass all day.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Substitute teaching third grade on my birthday. The little fuckers didn't behave even when I told them I had candy for them if they behaved.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I work in construction doing rough framing. We had this job out in El Centro California in the middle of the summer. This was when California was going through that breaking the hottest summer record on a daily basis thing. Let me tell you man, to be working that summer was brutal. I don't mean, \"fuck, today sucked lets have a beer.\" I mean Nathan Explosion saying \"That's Fucking BRUTAL\", brutal. \n\nThree hour drives on mondays to get to work, ten hour days and three hour drives on Friday to get home so you can just collapse in bed and weep till it doesn't hurt anymore. Then someone hits the fucking repeat button. That fucking job just wouldn't end.\n\nAs shitty as the job was, there was ONE DAY that stood out in particular. You see, to boost morale, we all decided to go partying in Mexicali. You would think this would be an awesome idea, but being dumbass construction workers, we don't really think to clearly when it comes to getting trashed and of course we picked a goddamn work night to go. \n\nTo get ready for this party night in the asshole of mexico, we decide to start drinking. Let me emphasize that. To get ready for a night of drinking, we started drinking. I don't even remember getting to the damn border. I just remember falling out of the car as someone opened up the door. \n\nI was 18 at the time and liked to consider myself a heavy drinker. Of course, I was drinking illegally, so when I got to Mexicali, where the legal age is 18, I fucking went nuts. I don't even recall half the night... just strippers and booze. There may have been a donkey show in there somewhere but I couldn't tell you for sure.\n\nSomehow we make it back to the hotel we are staying at. I manage to glance at the clock as I pass out somewhere in the room and the red digits scream at me with their angry eyes that it is 4 o clock. I have to be at work in one hour. \n\nFor those of you going, \"work at 5? what the fuck?\" You see when you work outside in the desert, the earlier you start the less sun you have to deal with. This isn't normal, but in places like El Centro where the fire rages with the strength of 10000 scorned women you do anything possible to get away. Which means we started work at 5 am. \n\nI don't remember arriving at work the next morning. I just remember I was too stupid to fill up my water bottle. I can't even explain to you the pain that I was going through as I tried to hammer nails into an A35. My only relief was when I missed and smashed my hand. This took the pain away from my raging hangover for a brief second. \n\nAs the day wore on things got worst. The other workers took the trip across the street to get Gatorade and water and fuel for everyone but no one could hold anything down. No one wanted to work, but we had a job to do and the only way to get out of this god forsaken hell hole was to finish the job. \n\nI was too tired to crawl under some shade when lunchtime hit. I jsut collapsed on the floor until someone kicked me and told me it was time to get back to work. I think that was where I got the sunburn. When the day finally ended and we could all thank the heavens and go home the foreman broke the news. We all had to pack up and head to a job in San Diego to work on Saturday because the hungover motherfuckers didn't finish the job. \n\nI was suffering from heatstroke, dehydration, and the mother of all hangovers but it took every fiber in my being not to claw that asshats face off.\n\nIt was the worst day of my life.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Working a booth at Ren Faires, after manufacturing our own product all week, 16 hr days grinding silver, casting pewter, etc. Then up at 4am on a Saturday, drive down to the Flint, MI area to set up shop in the freezing clammy morning, listen to the idiot neighbor's awful hippie music at full crank, lugging bins of heavy pewter figurines and silver rings with cracked fingertips and sore feet... down a coffee for good luck, change into costume in a smelly, cold, wet porta-john- i'm a girl so this included lacing up into a steel-boned bodice that restricted my movement (but gave me awfy nice cleavage!)... trot out to the booth front, halfheartedly try to put on a British accent while the first of the GM and Chrysler employees (back when they were making money) would come wandering into the booth with their credit cards and mullets and whatnot... Spend a day fitting rings to anyone from Goth kids to U of M professors to strippers to other Rennies, taking money from a crowd three deep, running credit cards over a hidden cell phone (had to keep up the appearance of the 1500s, you know) eating fast while standing up, getting ht on by icky guys and taking shit from the 'beautiful people' all the while trying to convince people that yes, I do make all of this, my family does, no it des not come from an importer in Asia- see my cracked and blistered fingertips- that's from a polish wheel you ass... count inventory constantly- nothing is priced or quantified in any way because of the way your dad does business, keep an eye out for thieves and shoplifters and drunk guys about to brawl or puke. Check ID for credit cards, turn down personal checks ALL DAY, haggle and barter and take insults about the designs you've vested your own time and lifeblood into.\n\nDo this for 10 hours during any weather you can survive, close up shop, making sure to lock every single piece of shit up because the drunk Rennies will come around steal anything not locked down.. count the cash, pay the stoned workers, get a bite to eat, shower off a day's worht of sweat, dust, and grime, crash in a cheap, smelly Red Roof Inn bed while trying not to hear some ghetto rat beating his girlfriend next door. Get up at 6 the next morning for a squalid breakfast from Dunkin' Donuts and repeat process from Saturday, driving home at midnight to begin the whole workweek again. \n\nRepeat ad nauseam for two decades, every summer, adding in a few other states' Ren Faires as they come and go.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Background: I'm a truck driver.\n\nI was heading down I-5 in California with a heavy load when the low coolant light came on. I pulled over, popped the hood, and saw the radiator pissing all over the shoulder. So we called a tow truck. The tow truck didn't show up for almost eight hours, then discovered he forgot a part he needed to pull me, so I had to wait another three hours for him to get that.\n\nBy the time we started heading south toward LA, it was two in the morning and I'd been awake for nearly 24 hours. I was in the passenger seat of the tow truck, dozing off, and woke up to the driver hollering \"I don't have any brakes!\" He'd burned them up going down a hill. The engine died shortly thereafter from being overreved; using the engine brake when it's well above redline is a bad combination. Ultimately he started driving off in the dirt and crashed it into another truck parked on the shoulder.\n\nThe damage? About half a million dollars. The tow truck was totaled, my trailer was wrecked, and the rig we crashed into was severely damaged. I was uninjured, thankfully, but I had to stay with the truck as the DOT had a crew come out to clean up the incident. The night turned into morning, then afternoon. It was almost 2PM before the mess was cleaned up enough for them to get another tow truck out and give me a ride down to the city. Two more hours passed before I got a hotel room. I slept until noon the next day.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I worked as a dishwasher for a Holiday Inn restaurant my last two years of high school-- and maybe off and on after that for a while too (I'm an old geezer now; that was my first major job; and in the decades since I've often dreamed I was back there again; and dreams and memories begin getting mixed up together after a while...). That restaurant was one of the most popular in my town, and had tremendous rushes of church folk on Sundays. We were also smack on an interstate exit to visit Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and the Smoky Mountain National Park, so we got tons of tourists and often tourist buses too, from the whole eastern USA. Besides the restaurant, we had a big conference room where local clubs, etc., could book major parties or meetings, and did. Those were worse than the restaurant, because you often wouldn't get the dirty dishes until late, like 11 PM or 12 AM, and you'd get them all at once, where you usually continuously got them from the restaurant part. So in terms of dirty dishes, the conference room was a like a small nuke going off.\n\n\nI got that job the summer I turned 15. It shocked the living hell out of me. I broke down one night and went to the hotel manager to tell him I was sorry, but I couldn't do it: it was too much for me. But he rolled up his shirt sleeves and came back and helped me with my backlog, and sort of gave me that line out of the Rocky movie: 'it ain't so bad'. And somehow that helped me transform into a much better worker after that, who could whip through backlogs better than anyone else. I've wrote about that time [here](http://www.jmooneyham.com/1969-ford-mustang-mach-1-how-one-struggling-teenager-met-one-wrecked-mustang.html).\n\n\nBut basically your work day difficulty is going to spike upwards quite a few times during your life-- just usually in different ways every time. For instance, several years later I would find myself working a very strenuous and dangerous construction job, inside maybe the biggest oil refinery in the world. I worked up high at times, and even witnessed a large explosion while on the job. And yet, I considered that the easy part: for during the nights, I had to catch cat naps when I could, [inbetween stints of running from the cops](http://www.jmooneyham.com/too-close-to-the-bone.html) (I was homeless for two weeks during that job, and the cops didn't like people sleeping in their cars ANYWHERE-- not even in the parking lot of the refinery).", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I worked for a major ski resort as a gondola mechanic. We had to bring some gondola cabins up to the top of the ski mountain so we could attach them to the haul rope. They were loaded onto a flatbed and VERY slowly driven up the mountain 2 at a time. My job was to lead the truck on a four wheeler and make sure there was no obstructions that could trip them up. It took about 2 hours per load, 3 loads that night. Oh wait, that was the best day of work ever. It was under a starry night at 10,000 feet and I stayed \"one curve ahead\" the whole time so I was just chillin in the dark on a starry mountain night on my own work-issued four wheeler. \n\nIt kind of sucks having a desk job now.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Worked a 20 hr. black Friday shift at Best Buy. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and and is considered the busiest shopping day of the year.\n\nIt is sheer madness.\n\nIt started at 4 AM and lasted until midnight. Then, I had to report to work at 8 am for another shift.\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "On call 24 hours as water damage tech, always stuck with sewage contamination claims due to seniority. Worst one was a site with about a foot of raw standing sewage in the basement. That was about 15 years ago, the good old days.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Getting paid.\n\nNothing else really matters. The only way to get paid is to make your clients happy. Of course, they're paying you for your opinion so give it often. There may be a few things that are just plain bad (flash intros, etc.) and you need to stand up for your clients and convince them they are bad.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "IANA Professional Web Designer, but I'd say usability. Don't care how pretty or cutting-edge it is, if I have to click through a Flash intro and three nested drop-down menus to get to the content I want, and then have to squint to read it, the design needs improvement.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Solving the original problem.\n\nIn other words, does it serve the purpose it was originally intended for and does it do that well? That's what matters.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Until recently, I would have said innovation. But recently, my focus is more and more on accessibility. Unfortunately, the two are often at odds with one another. The challenge is finding the balance.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I live in Texas. I was wearing t-shirts until mid December, when I switched to long sleeve because it started to get chilly. ", "score": 26 }, { "body": "I'll help you out here because that sounds silly. cute, but silly. Here's a link to Instructables that will let you use any pair of gloves with your touchscreen:\n\nhttp://www.instructables.com/id/Making-A-Glove-Work-With-A-Touch-Screen/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "I don't know much about the legal issues involved, but here's two pointers:\r\n\r\n- The sneaky thing to do would be to find out where/how the ex-husband is hiding his income and possibly his savings. If he wasn't hiding it somehow, the IRS would already have gotten it from him -- they aren't that stupid. You say you know what he has left after garnishings, so you seem to know more than the IRS. And then send a letter with that information to the IRS.\r\n\r\n- Your mom is not going to prison. You said it's a civil suit; one can't be convicted to prison in a civil suit. The worst that can happen in a civil suit is that the court confiscates her possessions and garnishes her wages. If she has no wages and no possessions, basically nothing can happen to her (except destruction of her credit rating).", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Check out the IRS information on [\"innocent spouses\"](http://www.irs.gov/individuals/content/0,,id=130302,00.html)", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I use to believe that if I worked hard and did the right thing I would get ahead in my job. Fast forward 4 jobs where I believe I got screwed and one day I am suddenly the only person left in my department after the other two guys bailed. I walked into the CFO's office and said, \"I would like a raise.\" \nHe raised one eyebrow and said, \"Well, I guess we can work something out.\" \nI said, \"Excellent.\" \nHe said, \"We'll give you a (X) raise.\" \nI replied, \"I was thinking more along the line of (X times 5).\" \n\"We don't have that in the budget\" ,he told me. \nMy retort, \"I am sorry to hear that. Here is my verbal two week notice.\" \nI had the X times 5 raise and a staying on bonus to boot.", "score": 20 }, { "body": "I broke up with a really terrible boyfriend. I had always credited him with \"teaching\" me a lot about life because he had this strange superiority over me for a good two years, but he was such a bully and a jerk. I learned far more when I left him. I learned how to have some self-respect, and I learned that I wasn't really in love with him at all. Love is so much better than that. I feel older and taller. And I feel like I deserve better.", "score": 18 }, { "body": "For me it was the day I realized that \"just be yourself\" was bullshit advice. \"Myself\" was a whiney little loser. I decided to be who I wanted to be. I wanted to be Han Solo at the time. Soon, I got laid, got better pay, and stood up to people that used to bully me. ", "score": 13 }, { "body": "Mine wasn't an event -it's a process, still ongoing, most of which occurred over my first three years learning to get and stay sober (I qualified for needing to). Somewhere towards the end of that first three years I noticed I was no longer actively fighting the addictions, and had actually not even thought about needing to 'fight' for some time. Just going on with trying to make a life, sorta normal like. That would be about 36 years ago.\n", "score": 9 }, { "body": "This is going to sound a little bit wierd, but I grew up with a lot of anxiety/depression about my height and appearance when I was younger. I was afraid to chase girls, meet friends, etc. because I couldn't figure out how people could like me. When I went to boarding school in MA when I was fifteen I started seeing live music, which introduced me to drugs like ketamine, LSD, DMT, MDMA, etc. While under the influence of drugs, I realized that I would act differently (more confidence, a greater sense of self worth, feelings of acceptance, etc.).\n\nI realized later that during this point in my life I was using drugs to feel like the person I wanted to be all of the time. I wanted to be as confident as I was on cocaine, as sociable as I was when I was using ketamine, etc. I came to realization that it was possible for me to feel like this without drugs. I drew from the drug experiences I had as a young kid to develop my personality the way I saw fit.\n\nDrugs didn't save my life or anything, but I would argue that they taught me what it was like to feel confident and enjoy myself - and that made a really big difference on my daily behavior and general outlook on life as I grew into an adult.\n\nP.S. I know drugs aren't good for you, mmkay?", "score": 6 }, { "body": "When I started to do things after my life fell apart. I realized that if what I'd been through hadn't completely beaten and broken me that anything else was smooth sailing.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "The summer after my junior year, I went on the school Europe trip with my two best friends. It consisted of 6 cities (London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Vienna) over the course of 15 days. We had guided tours in the mornings and had freedom to explore the cities during the afternoons and evenings. That's a lot of freedom for three 17 year old girls from Omaha, Nebraska. :)\n\nBeing away from my parents for the first time, in foreign countries really gave me confidence in myself. I was the leader of our group (held on to maps, paid attention to times and where we were, set the alarms for the morning, etc) and the fact that my friends trusted me enough with all of these things was, and still is, a great confidence booster.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "After my idiot ex-husband told me he was going to leave me and our kids, I got really depressed. He'd been putting me down for years, and then was going to leave me. So, come June of that year, I dressed up pretty and went to the Solstice parade and festival in Fremont, WA, with a female friend of mine. Not only did he start crying and ask why I never dressed up like that when we were together (he'd often made a point to tell me that women \"my age\" shouldn't wear ______), but not one single person made fun of me for dressing how I wanted to. After that, I started wearing jewelry I liked, growing my hair out and dyeing it red, wearing pretty lingerie and clothes, and talking to people outside his realm of influence. I lost weight, looked great, and people started to like me. Drove him crazy!", "score": 5 }, { "body": "strangely, it's in my now hard wired in my brain that helping other people somehow makes me a better person - thus creating self-esteem. i think the payback is much higher for those of us who have been through some tough times in our lives. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "In 2007, on my birthday, I gave birth to my second son with no drugs. I talked and laughed through the whole thing but didn't yelp or groan in pain even once. Amazing high.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Upmodded - I think this'll be a great thread. I don't have a story anywhere near as compelling as yours.\n\nI do think blogging has enabled me to be a lot more comfortable with discussing my field and getting people interested in it. I know that sounds corny, and it isn't an \"event.\" But I can safely say that a lot of things that bugged me before - \"why are you even bothering to write and publish yourself,\" or \"what good is political science anyway\" - I don't even think about now. I just think, \"I have a job to do,\" and I do it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I think that the best thing I did for my confidence was learning how to play the piano, or any instrument for that matter. It's such a great outlet for artistic expression, and when you sit down and start to learn a piece it's so frustrating, but when you realize that your hours of work have paid off after playing the piece perfectly the entire way through, it gives you a sense of hope and accomplishment.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "During my sophomore year of college, I was invited to go to a block party where a few bands would be playing. The headlining band was a local favorite, but I had never heard them before, so I was excited to finally have a chance. The other bands played and the last band set up, but they were stalling for what seemed like forever. It turned out that their drummer hadn't arrived yet, but his gear was in the equipment van. I'd been playing drums for a while, but hadn't played with a band since high school. In spite of this, I sauntered up on stage and played the whole set with them. I know for sure that the rhythms I played were totally different than what everyone was expecting, but the songs were pretty straightforward rock, so keeping it interesting wasn't very hard. In the end, the guys that threw the party were kissing my ass all night, the band was pretty surprised, and the crowd loved it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Backpacking in Central America for three months alone, unintentionally.\n\nI had traveled abroad with groups before, but never alone and never for more than 2 weeks. I was then invited by a lady I knew to join a group of people going to Guatemala to set up Silicon Valley millionaires with micro-loan organizers in-country. They were going to be there for a month. I figured I'd have the lay of the land by then so I booked my flights for a 3-month excursion hitting a bunch of language schools along La Ruta Maya. \n\nWell, five days before departure, the lady calls me and says she has to \"uninvite\" everybody because one of the eccentric (read: pussy) billionaires \"isn't comfortable traveling with others.\" (He was on the board of a company that everybody has heard of.) So I had this decision to make, cancel my trip or just dive in alone (I didn't speak much Spanish). I said 'fuck it' and went anyway.\n\nI remember sitting in the very nice marble and stainless steel bathroom stall in the Mexico City airport on layover to Guatemala City, realizing this might be my last non-scary bathroom for a while. \"What the fuck am I doing?\" went through my head.\n\nBy three months later, I had made dozens of friends, slept on a Mayan pyramid in the jungle (Tikal) on the summer solstice, shared a room with a gem smuggler, negotiated (in spanish) passage to the islands off Honduras on a banana boat, hitchhiked in pickup trucks full of guys with machetes, and probably nearly died from heat exhaustion & dehydration, and even met the original Old Man and the Sea in a fishing village in Cuba.\n\nOther than the first of ~4 language schools I attended and my return flight, none of it was planned. (I now kind of hate travel itineraries because they are so restrictive.)\n\nI came back to silicon valley with a whole new take on life, \"wealth\" (now defined as a hot shower at full pressure any time of the day), and in particular, risk. I co-founded a startup a few months later. People would ask me how I emotionally handled the risk of starting a company and I'd just sit there and blink, thinking... are you serious? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Everybody that I went to High School wiith considered me weird because I dressed like a punk from a pretty young age but was significantly a lot more well-read compared to everyone else. People talked about me a lot and called me a \"dyke\" and a \"weirdo\" because I had short hair and it was dyed. People started to talk to me more the more I spoke my mind in classes as time went by. This one day I said something in a creative writing class about not taking religion too seriously and one of the popular girls in my school (not cheerleader popular, but school counsel popular) turned around and said, \"Wow, you are really smart.\" It took me aback because I was used to being so insecure for so long. The teacher told the whole class he agreed. This sort of shifted my whole view of myself a bit at the time.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Much as clay is meaningless, life is meaningless. You can still shape it however you want though; consider that your consolation prize.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Alrighty.\n\nMake it a stylish evening for your very own. I propose you come home, get settled with a Miller or two while you cook yourself a nice dinner. Maybe chopped veal with a red wine sauce? Sure enough the rest of that bottle will be for yourself. Cooks are always thirsty.\nBaileys and Amaretto, huh? Sounds like a Tiramisù for Dessert to me. Alternatively, you could make a Vodka-Granité. You'll find recipes or just try something. The Tiramisù could go along with an improvised Sex-on-the-Beach-like drink (take Vodka/Peach/OJ 3/3/14).\nIf you're not hammered enough, finish the evening off listening to the Donauwalzer and kill some shots of Capt. Morgan in time with the music.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Here's to hoping you're kicking it at home right now.\r\n\r\nI myself like cap'n morgan neat... well, my favorite rum is Flor de Caña añejo, but the cap'n does as a substitute.\r\n\r\nAnd there's a jets game on tonight. Jay ee tee ess jets jets jets.\r\n\r\nHave I ever mentioned that this is my favorite subreddit? Dunno what the fuck circlejerk is doing with that \"best subreddit evar\" trophy. I mean, you know?", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Thyme & coconut is what you need to make rice and peas taste authentic (Jamaican).\n\nThis is pretty much how I do it:\n\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/riceandpeas_81543.shtml", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Penumbra. You can get all 3 games for about 10 bucks. The best horror game you've never played. http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1451/", "score": 11 }, { "body": "I got Trine yesterday and *love* it! The physics doesn't always work as it should and it has some frustrating moments where the controls are not accurate enough, but otherwise it's a very well polished, very beautiful and rewarding game. And I don't even usually like platformers all that much!\n\nI'm trying to purchase Braid at the moment, but it gives me an error message. Anyone else has problems currently?", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Besides the obvious, the eidos pack is 50 and comes\nwith batman. So of you've been wanting to play batman you can get it for it's regular price\nalong with some other awesome games as well - deus ex, thief, hitman, tomb raider, and some fruit farming game that I just started playing. ", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I'm a fan of Indie games, so going down the [Indie Genre](http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/) games, sorted by Top Rated, I've got:\n\n* Braid\n* World of Goo (previously owned)\n* AudioSurf\n* Machinarium\n* Darwinia (got on daily sale)\n* Time Gentlemen, Please! (looks like it was drawn in MS Paint, but one of the game's key features is *NAZI DINOSAURS*. At $2.50, I want to see how they pulled off such high review scores)\n* Mr. Robot (daily sale)\n* Trials 2 (daily sale)\n* Osmos (daily sale)\n* AI War\n* Gish\n\nalso, Indie games with no metascore, and thus not showing up on the above list:\n\n* Harvest\n* Madballs in... Babo:Invasion\n\nStill considering:\n\n* Trine. I've missed its daily sale. Undecided for now.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Not turn based, but Freedom Force was a very fun game, often overlooked. For less than $4 you can go wrong. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Torchlight is surprisingly good. Picked it up cause it was too cheap not too, now I can't put it down.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Grabbed:\n\n* Torchlight\n* Braid\n* Tropico Reloaded\n* Defense Grid\n* Lucasarts Adventure Pack\n* Oddworld Pack\n* Riddick\n\nContemplating:\n\n* World in Conflict\n* Ghostbusters\n* KOTOR\n* King's Quest Collection\n* Majesty Gold Edition\n\nI think these are all good to get but I need comments on the ones I'm contemplating. Thoughts?\n\nEDIT: Thanks all, what about Majesty Gold Edition (The 1st one) and King's Quest Collection?", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Since it hasn't been mentioned yet I'll recommend World of Goo. It has a unique and quirky atmosphere and it's surprisingly addictive. This is coming from someone who generally doesn't like puzzle games.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Machinarium\n\nIt's 10 bucks...and it's the coolest game you probably never heard of. It's got a unique art style, intelligent puzzles, absolutely no dialogue, and it's an indie game! You can't go wrong.\n\nPlus get the 'prequel' samorost for under 5 dollars", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Check out Zeno Clash if you want an outlandish FPS/fighter. The developers must have been smoking something when they made that game. And Yet It Moves is also worth looking into if you like puzzle platformers.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "[The Witcher: Directors Cut](http://store.steampowered.com/app/20900/) - $13.59\n\n[Warhammer 40k - Dawn of War : Platinum Ed.](http://store.steampowered.com/sub/447/) - $14.99 (Comes with Dawn of War, Dark Crusade, and Winter Assault)\n\n[redditor recommended](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ajomy/steam_holiday_sale_our_indie_game_is_also_75_off/) : [Harvest - Massive Encounter](http://store.steampowered.com/app/15400/) - $2.49\n\n[Killing Floor](http://store.steampowered.com/app/1250/) - $4.99\n\n[Titan Quest Gold](http://store.steampowered.com/sub/402/) - $9.99 (Titan Quest and Titan Quest - Immortal Throne)\n\n[Deus Ex - Game of the Year Ed.](http://store.steampowered.com/app/6910/) - $6.69\n\n[Audiosurf](http://store.steampowered.com/app/12900/) - $2.50\n\n[Civilization 3 Complete](http://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/) - $3.34\n\n[Star Wars - Jedi Knight Collection](http://store.steampowered.com/sub/2103/) - $9.99\n\nOff the top of my head. Some I already owned. Some I recommended. Some I purchased.\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I don't know why nobody has said this:\n\nGet all the Splinter Cell games if you're a fan of hi-tech espionage. One of my favorite series out there.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I'd second the above and throw in the following:\nOddworld Pack \nBen There Dan That & Time Gentlemen, Please (also a pack)\nDefense Grid (if tower defense is your thing)\nL4D2 (again, if it's your thing)\nFinally, the telltale complete pack (I like adventure games, okay?)\n\n\nAs far as RPGs go, I've heard nothing but good about Freedom Force, though I don't know if it's turn based. I just glanced through the rest of the list and there's not a whole lot of turn based stuff on the PC it seems. I suppose CIV4 is technically turn based but that's not very RPG.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "[Eschalon](http://store.steampowered.com/app/25600/) might be worth a look if you're after a turn-based RPG.\r\n\r\nIf you're into strategy, [AI War](http://store.steampowered.com/app/40400/), especially if you like larger scale games like SupCom.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Reposting from [an earlier thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/akwdv/what_are_some_games_to_get_during_the_steam_sale/):\n\nThere are quite a few indie games that are marked down:\n\n* [Defense Grid: Awakening](http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/) - $2.50 (tower defense)\n* [Audiosurf](http://store.steampowered.com/app/12900/) - $2.50 (rhythm game)\n* [Braid](http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/) - $2.50 (side-scrolling platformer with a few twists)\n* [World of Goo](http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/) - $5 (physics game)\n* [Madballs in Babo:Invasion](http://store.steampowered.com/app/25700/) - $5 (co-op is a blast if you have friends to play with)\n* [Altitude](http://store.steampowered.com/app/41300/) - $7.50 (2D aerial combat, [trailer](http://store.steampowered.com/app/5520/) sold me this)\n\nAll of the games listed above also have playable demos.\n\nAs for myself, in addition to those listed above, I'm also grabbing Indigo Prophesy and Might and Magic Dark Messiah.\n\nAside from those, there are the old mainstays like Orange Box and KOTOR that you probably have already (and certainly need to grab if you don't).", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Audiosurf! Get it! The game is amazingly fun. The ability to use your own music was the sell for me. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "because believe it or not, we are not just soulless bags of chemicals swimming in a sea of air on the surface of the earth. Some of us would like to connect some way with the souls who gave us life.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Inspiration. I have quite a few family stories that go back many generations (up to 9). For example, I had a great-great grandfather (9 back) that was on the second boat to Georgia. His father died within 3 months of landing. He and his brother were orphaned. His tavern in Savannah was used as the statehouse for Georgia until it burned. His name was Peter Tondee. \n\nWhenever life sucks, I think about all the shit he had to go through as an orphan. My life seems pretty sweet. \n\nNow, Peter was born in London, but his father Pierre Tondu (French version of the same name) was from the Alpine region of France -- and had been run out by the Huguenots. \n\nWhy is that important? I have a connection to the French -- as well as Welsh, Scotch, and Germans. I don't feel a blind \"tribal\" affiliation. But learning my ancestry has put some faces on real life experiences of those in the past. Most of the family stories are just about hard working folks trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. \n\nI do have some pride as to what those peoples have accomplished historically. \n\nBut if your point is blind cultural identify -- as more or less a way to hate other folks -- I don't see any good that can come from that.\n\n ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "It easy as long as your using the same account (it even works for other accounts just need to copy thing to the correct profile) just copy over the steamapps directory after installing steam. Shut it down, copy the needed directories restart steam, \"install\" the game if not already shown as installed. Works like a charm.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "You will likely need to connect once to the internet so steam can validate your games / account.\n\nThere is the backup feature in steam that will llet you burn them to CD (dvd?)", "score": 5 }, { "body": "You can copy them over that way but IT WON'T WORK without internet validation. If you have a single ethernet cable, then connect your MacBook to your pc. Since your MacBook has wireless, we can share it. Go into System Preferences / Sharing and enable Internet Sharing (setting it to share your connection from AirPort to computers using Ethernet.) Your PC should likely see the connection (requires DHCP) and work by tunneling through your Mac now.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I cant believe so many people are recommending just copying the steamapps dir when the backup option is there and easily used...", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Good Question. Let's look it up. I found [a copy of the bill here](http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/reid-unveils-text-of-senate-health-care-bill.php). If we check out section 3403, we find the following:\n\n>(3) LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THE BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS.\n>(A) IN GENERAL.—It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, or amendment, pursuant to this subsection or conference report thereon, that fails to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of sub-section (c)(2).\n\nSo if we look at sub-section (c)(2) \"Proposals\", and then at subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) we find the following:\n\n>\"(A) REQUIREMENTS.—Each proposal submitted under this section in a proposal year shall meet each of the following requirements: \"(i) If the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has made a determination under paragraph (7)(A) in the determination year, the proposal shall include recommendations so that the proposal as a whole (after taking into account recommendations under clause (v)) will result in a net reduction in total Medicare program spending in the implementation year that is at least equal to the applicable savings target established under paragraph (7)(B) for such implementation year. In determining whether a proposal meets the requirement of the preceding sentence, reductions in Medicare program spending during the 3-month period immediately preceding the implementation year shall be counted to the extent that such reductions are a result of the implementation of recommendations contained in the proposal for a change in the payment rate for an item or service that was effective during such period pursuant to subsection (e)(2)(A).\" \n\nand\n\n>\"(C) NO INCREASE IN TOTAL MEDICARE PROGRAM SPENDING. Each proposal submitted under this section shall be designed in such a manner that implementation of the recommendations contained in the proposal would not be expected to result, over the 10-year period starting with the implementation year, in any increase in the total amount of net Medicare program spending relative to the total amount of net Medicare program spending that would have occurred absent such implementation.\"\n\nSo basically what is being said is that congress can only pass future bills or amendments that either reduce or do not increase Medicare spending.\n\nIn other words, this is fear-mongering.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "This is probably all hypothetical since it's probably not in it.\n\nIt sounds really stupid. I am not a Constitutional scholar, but this doesn't make any sense at all. Who would enforce this? The point is that the legislature makes the rules. The only way it is binding is if said future lawmakers consider it to be binding. Do you think if the Republicans with a majority in both houses would yield to this little bit of language before repealing it? Of course not. They would simply ignore it and repeal it. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Accredited zoos play an important role in research, conservation and education, and they ensure the animals have good habitats, good nutrition and intellectual stimulation. Some places, like Ontario, allow roadside zoos with much lower standards, though. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "i believe the benefits of exposing people who would otherwise NEVER get to see/interact/learn for animals in zoos outweighs any negatives associated with keeping them in captivity.\n\nand modern zoos are making great strides in reproducing their environments and habitats accurately.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Fuck zoos. It's so depressing to see a beautiful tiger pacing dead eyed around a concrete enclosure.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I've been spit on by a camel. I've had shit thrown at me by monkeys, more than once. Zoos are the only place that animals can do that stuff and not get shot. Good for them.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I believe humans should not be such assholes that wild animals have to be kept in captivity and systematically bred just to keep their species alive. I feel like zoos do help sustain animals that would otherwise be extinct, and it's a great educational opportunity... but going to the zoo bums me out.\n\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I did an AMA since I worked at a zoo. See [my comment](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/airho/i_worked_at_a_zoo_ama/c0hs338) on this.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Wake up people, and don't be stupid. This guy is an obvious troll cyber-beggar. He's just going to take that blood and use it to buy himself a plasma tv. ", "score": 78 }, { "body": "I Live in Mexico city and I've forwarded this to most of my friends. Sadly Mazatlan is really far from here and its one of those places people only go for Vacations so their services aren't as good as in any mayor city here.\n\nAnyways, the correct translation for getting type-o negative blood should be:\nSe solicita sangre de tipo O Negativo para Felipe Pain. El es un estudiante de Inglaterra que acaba de sufrir una caida de siete pisos y necesita ayuda urgentemente. Si puede ayudar favor de contactar a : [Insert contact name here] al teléfono: [Insert Contact phone here] o en el correo [Insert contact email here]. Muchas Gracias.\n\nOh and btw, the redditors map could here come in handy, try to direct the nearest redditors there, with some luck they may know someone near.\n", "score": 69 }, { "body": "A friend of mine was recently stabbed 7 times in the back by a cab driver in Mexico when she was studying abroad there. She had similar difficulties while trying to receive proper medical care, but she finally got help. I hope your friend survives. \n\nMy advice: try smuggling O-negative blood across the border.", "score": 39 }, { "body": "Also, try asking a local radio station to broadcast for help -- in Mexico, people are very good at pulling together to help others.", "score": 20 }, { "body": "\"A lottery winner has said his millions cannot help his 21-year-old nephew, who is in a coma in hospital after falling from a seventh-floor balcony in Mexico.\"\n\nSure it can! Advertise this: \"A million dollars to the first person that walks into the hospital in Mazatlan and donates some O-negative blood\".", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Im currently in the states, but will be arriving at monterrey, México tomorrow afternoon.. I am o-neg and will donate as soon as I get there, hope it's not too late and wish your friend the best.. (I will also get my o neg friends to donate)", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Actually, to all of reddit that is O Negative: your blood can (particularly) save lives. O Negative is the universal donor; it lacks A, B, or Rh antibody antagonists, so no one's body will attack the blood. \n\nYour blood can be used to save anyone, anywhere. It will not be wasted. ", "score": 16 }, { "body": "I am 0Rh-, but I'm based in the UK. More people should make [donating their blood](http://www.blood.co.uk) a habit.\n\nAlso: I was approach by Jehovah’s Witness a while ago, and got into an argument about blood transfusion. They tried to convince me that my blood is getting sold to foreign countries and it is big business. I raged and told them to GTFO. ", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Screw the blood. Get your friend up to the states or out of Mexico STAT. I'm a nurse in San Diego at one of the ICUs that does \"border call\" every other month and I can tell you that he needs his surgery up here. While the doctors down there might be good, overall the facilities and the care TEND to be substandard and often result in a lot of complications. I say this because we get people all the time who had their primary ops down there and end up here for damage control. besides, up here they'll be enough blood. It's almost ridiculous how much blood we use even in totally hopeless cases. good luck to Mark. ", "score": 14 }, { "body": "I posted to the Mexico subreddit. Please upvote for visibility. \n\nIf anyone knows Spanish and can clean that translation up, I'd be grateful. \n\nhttp://www.reddit.com/r/mexico/comments/al5of/salva_una_vida_de_un_amigo_de_un_redditor_él/\n\nAlso thanks to jarxg for a much better translation. Give the (wo)man an upvote!", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I have O negative blood. I can't even donate in the United States... can someone please explain to me why they can't take a mostly full bag? The Red Cross has a smaller bag but the company here at school does not. I physically cannot donate into the normal person bag and I tend to pass out before completing it. However it is still like 90% full! I don't understand why they won't use it... I've been told it just gets thrown away. Also it makes me mad that my gay friends cannot donate... they are drug and disease free! All this wasted blood :(", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I cannot give blood because I slept with a girl who was born in the ivory coast. a close friend of mine cannot give blood because she has slept with a bisexual man. we have both had std screenings since. i fucking hate red tape.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "He should send out spam to all registered Mexican email accounts... something like\n\nGreetings dearest friend;\n\nI am a wealthy UK lottery winner. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up in the UK National Lottery computer system, £1m of my £11m winnings was not actually disbursed to holders of random Mexican email addressed, as intended. So, for a limited time you have become eligible to receive £1000 if you are one of the first 1000 residents in Mexico to donate type O negative blood at your local hospital. Please reference this email address and let them know that it is in support of my cousin Philip Pain, who is desperately in need of O negative blood in Mazatlan. \n\nIf the guy actually followed up on his promise there would be a flood of donations. Plus, it would be a big story because it would seem like such a scam email, but would in fact be legit.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "He feel off the building improving his Spanish? Alto was one of the first things we learned.\n\nHope you friend gets what he needs, good luck!", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Reading the article you posted, it seems his uncle is a millionaire and despairing that his money can't help here.\n\nMaybe those who've commented that Mazatlan is too far away could be compensated for a trip?", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I would seriously consider transferring your friend to an American hospital via Medevac helicopter if he is at all stable enough for such a transfer. Baylor's hospital in Houston is a great Level I trauma center. My hospital would accept such a transfer but it is a bit further away I am afraid.\n\nSpeaking as a physician myself, it is more than a bit odd to not be able to do surgery for lack of blood. I understand the hospital does not have blood, but how can they know ahead of time that they will need it? There are many times you do not need blood at all for an operation. And when someone does need surgery following a trauma, usually you do not have the luxury of waiting for donations. If you do have that time, I question whether or not the surgery is indicated in the first place.\n\nOne operation that is particularly bloody is liver surgery, but frankly speaking, they shouldn't really be mucking around the liver anyways. Liver injuries are commonly treated in a minimally invasive fashion, with engiography and embolization if necessary.\n\nI question whether or not this hospital is lacking in other ways if they don't have enough blood to make the surgeon's comfortable enough to proceed with a case.\n\nTransfer if you can.\n\nEdit: If you need some help with this or unofficial advice, you can message me and we can talk.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "In case anyone is wondering, O negative type can only safely receive blood from other O negatives. Every other blood type can receive O negative blood though, so they're known as \"universal donors\". ", "score": 5 }, { "body": ">He fell off a seven-storey building during his University placement year.\n\nYour friend is fucking *hardcore*.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "As a Mexican I'd suggest that you call the radio and tell them to ask for donors, it'd also help to ask the nurses to see if they have any relatives with that type of blood, they usually expect you to pay the donors though, $20-$30 dollars should be enough for each one.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "You can actually donate any kind of blood. The blood bank will take care of the rest. If they don't have it in Mazatlán, Culiacán has it for sure. \n\n[Blood banks in Mazatlán - Spanish](http://www.seccionamarilla.com.mx/listados.aspx?estado=Mazatl%C3%A1n,%20SIN&emp_prod=Bancos%20de%20Sangre)\nBlood banks in Culiacán:\nHospital General [Blood Bank](http://hgculiacan.com/banco%20sangre/xerviciosaux%20banco%20de%20sangre.htm) [Phone Contact](http://hgculiacan.com/contactos/laboratoriocont.htm)\nHospital Civil [Blood Bank and Contact](http://hospitalcivildeculiacan.org/?page_id=60)\n\nThe phone number for sharp hospital is incorrect. It should be: (669) 986-5678, country code is +52\n\nI live in Culiacán (2hrs away from Mazatlán) and donate my O+ blood frequently. In my experience, Blood Banks have no problem providing blood of any kind if you give them a substitute. \n\nAlso, the \"horror stories\" and \"services aren't as good\" stories are not as accurate. Sinaloa (Mazatlán's State) has all the medical services your friend might need. Mazatlán has \"US standards\" hospitals and generally caters to tourist.\n\nIf your friends are having a hard time communicating in Mazatlán, PM me and we can work through the issues.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Love the fact that this is going all over Twitter now. I've seen 8 retweets of this on my timeline in the last hour. Great social networking usage!", "score": 3 }, { "body": "To the OP: Not sure if this is a troll or not, but even if it is you've inspired many people to donate blood where they may not have otherwise, so either way.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "OK, here's one for you: must humiliating experience as an author?\n\n\nHere's one of mine. I'd just come off a panel at a writers' festival, and was seated next to Johnathan Franzen at the signing table (this was just after The Corrections / Oprah incident). So there he is at my right elbow with a queue of about 200 people. And there I am with my little pile of novels, and tumbleweeds a tumblin'. After three or four VERY long minutes this old guy came up to me. I put on my brightest smile. He asked me if I knew where the toilets were.\n\n\nLast year, I was in a little second-hand book store near my house, and there was a copy of one of mine with an excited \"Signed copy\" sign on it. I opened it out of curiosity. There on the inside cover was, \"Dear (close friend of mine), thanks for all your support over the years. Much love. . .\"\n\n\nHa :)\n\n\nEDIT: Not just for the OP if anyone else feels like playing.", "score": 61 }, { "body": "Who are you? I'd really love to read a book a redditor wrote!\n\n\nOtherwise, would you be willing to link to a book you've done under an assumed name?", "score": 29 }, { "body": "How long did it take to get your first book published? At what point (if ever) did you quit a day job to pursue novel writing full time? ", "score": 26 }, { "body": "How do you write? I suck at writing. For example, say that I'm trying to write about winter. I'd write: \"The weather is cold and the ground is covered with snow\". Exciting, huh? How do you get the creative juice flowing? What's the process of writing a single good sentence like? Do you write whatever's on your mind first, then come back to revise each sentence? In contrary, do you give a lot of thought on each sentence before writing it? I want to know how to write, but for the life of me I just can't.", "score": 17 }, { "body": "Thank you for writing this! I'm very interested.\n\n* What type of novels do you write? What type of \"life experience\" do you have on the subject?\n* Is there a subject that is in more demand? Fantasy, crime, romance? \n* How did you get started? \n* Did/do you use an agent? If yes, how did you find your agent?", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Hi, everybody. Apologies for taking so long on this....\n\nA lot of you asked for a list of tools/methods/software that I've found helpful in my writing over the years. Here's the list.\n\n* Contour (Software - Writing/plotting/organization) \n* StoryMill (Software - Writing/plotting/organization) \n* Storyist (Software - Writing/plotting/organization) \n* Storylines (from \"Writer's Cafe\") (Software - Writing/plotting/organization) \n* Scrivener (Software - Writing/plotting/organization) \n* MindNode (Software - Mindmapping/brainstorming) \n* NovaMind (Software - Mindmapping/brainstorming) \n* Evernote (Software/web app - Research Organization) \n* Curio (Software - Brainstorming/research organization) \n* My texts (Software - Distraction-free writing) \n* WriteRoom (Software - Distraction-free writing) \n* Personal Brain (Software - Mindmapping/brainstorming) \n* Power Structure (Software - Writing/plotting/organization)\n* SuperNotecard (Software - Brainstorming/research organization) \n* Temporis (Software - timeline creation) \n* Visual Thesaurus (Software/web app - Language usage) \n* Word Menu (Software - Language usage)\n\n * A note about mindmapping. I'm a big fan of mindmapping, both on paper and using software. I'd encourage you to explore both methods. Check Amazon for books on Mindmapping.\n", "score": 11 }, { "body": "what programs do you prefer to use on your computer to write? (if you use a computer at all) could you ever imagine writing the way that you do without technology. think back to the days of type writers and even worse doing it all by hand!", "score": 10 }, { "body": "how do you feel about the possibility of books going completely digital? with the emergence of e-books, kindle etc. do you think there will be a day when everybody's \"book shelf\" is a shiny device they can carry around with them filled with hundreds of books?", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I'm interested to learn more about how a book goes from being a manuscript to a finished publication on a store shelf.\n\nWhich steps are required, what do I have to do, what do I have to avoid?\n\nThank you for your insights.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "What was your background in English? Did you go to a better-than-public school and/or attend advanced English classes? Assuming yes, do you feel that foundation helped you develop a stronger talent for writing?\n\nI'll assume you're also an avid reader. Have you always read thriller novels, and is that why you write in the genre? Do you still read a lot of books in the same genre now that you feel accomplished in it? ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Have any of your books been made into movies? Are any of them being considered? \n\nWhere do you get your story ideas from?", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Is it me or is the thriller/adventure genre bad lately? Maybe it's just because I mostly read that stuff as a teenager but some of the latest books from my favorite authors (DeMille, Cussler) are really awful.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Hi, first of all thank you so much for doing this... I think there are more than a few of us budding writers on this site =)\n\nI'm not based in the States but I'm hoping to get an agent who is, because the local publishing scene in my country is really quite sad and very limited in terms of target audience. \n\nDo you have any recommendations on where I can start to look for an agent? Could you also maybe outline how it should generally go? I'm just worried of being taken advantage of since a bulk of my correspondence would be over the internet.\n\nDo you have any advice for someone in my position? What should I send in the query? A cover letter, first three chapters? A summary?\n\nBit more detail if it helps - English IS my first language oddly enough, and although I've never done a lit. or writing course, I've always been writing, I've got half finished manuscripts everywhere, I've got various blogs and I've done several articles, but nothing major.\n\n\n\n", "score": 5 }, { "body": "You've answered so many questions beautifully, it's been a joy to read. Can I ask one more? Your opinion on this: I make jewelry, and the website where we sell it is really picking up. I've been doing this (successfully) for 15 yrs, writing about it (fictional, mysteries all wrapped up in jewelry themes) for 4 yrs. I've not had the chutzpah to submit to more than a few agents, but I'm about to release my books, free, one chapter at a time, on my jewelry website. The bottom of the site will be split down the middle with our jeweler-family blog on the left: THE FACT, and the book on the right: THE FICTION. I figure I can tie in my two passions, and maybe tickle someone's interest that way. Once I get some feedback other than my own family's, I will either have the guts to submit to more agents, or the sense to stop writing.\n\nWhat do you think of this? Bad idea? Great idea? We'd copyright every page, of course.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Tell us about the process you went through to \"make it\". Finding a publisher, how many novels, how long, etc.\n\nThanks!", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I know that you have said you didn't want to reveal your name, but you have to realize probably everybody here is dying to know who you are. You say you want to help people, and it might help them gauge your experience and advice, etc. A lot of them just want to read your books, or at least one of them.\r\n\r\nYou don't need to worry about us thinking this is a shameless plug for your books or something like that. Even if it was, you are already a NYT best selling author. Any profit or attention you get from us knowing your name you still earned fairly. People will genuinely want to read your books just because you posted here. It's not like you are exploiting some system and making money you shouldn't. Word of mouth is a very powerful and legitimate vector. It doesn't really matter if the mouth belongs to the author. This is arguably what (or one of the things) the internet, especially places like this, are for.\r\n\r\nJust saying, it might be helpful if people knew who was giving them the advice and a lot of people are simply interested in your work.\r\n\r\nEDIT: I also have a question. I assume you would have mentioned if it were the case (although I guess it could be a hint as to your identity), but have any of your books been made into movies or had movies based on them? ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "* Did you go to college for writing? or MFA programs?\n* Did you write full time?\n* How long was your book?\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Do you use a pen name for publishing your books? I have a friend who is trying to break into writing and is contemplating using a pen name.\n\nWhat do you think the advantages/disadvantages to using a pen name are?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Do you write in a bubble, ie, do you not let people see it until it's done? or do you have someone that you bounce ideas off of? Do you edit while you write or do you just write and edit later? When you sit down to write, do you already know where it's going exactly, or do you discover it while you write?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "What do you know now that you wished you'd learned earlier as an aspiring writer? (Aside from the fact that you'd eventually be successful at it). ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "This is a general question, not a direct request.\n\nIf a first-time, not-yet published writer wants to be published, how much would knowing someone like you help? Could you get manuscripts in front of agents more quickly? Could you provide helpful guidance to accelerate the process?\n\nI've often wondered how much time I should spend developing relationships with people in the publishing industry versus going the traditional route of contact agents, sending out one manuscript at time, etc.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Can you describe the process you go through in writing a book?\n\nThe creating of the idea, the development, the actual writing, and whatever you go through with the publisher?\n\nI've always wondered what it's like to make a book from start to finish. =]", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Iama have to ask, while not attempting to be crass, what kind of coin is writing worth. I'm not a writer, but I'd love to know.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Hmm… using my super reverse osmosis analytical skills, I can devise your identity with the answer of one simple question. Team Edward or Team Jacob?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I'm an aspiring writer and one of the biggest hurdles I'm having is finding quality feedback for my work. Sure I have some friends and acquaintances of various literary levels who read and comment on it, but beyond basic copyediting, the quality and quantity of feedback varies greatly. More importantly, because they are amateurs with about the same amount of experience as myself, the feedback they give might not be helpful, even if it is constructive. Several books warn against taking too much feedback from non-professionals for just this reason, and that extends to (usually amateur) writing circles.\n\nMy question is, though, how do you find quality feedback to improve your writing? Editors are paid professionals and are difficult to approach; professional writers (who also have the skills to coach) are probably leery of ambitious wanna-bes trying to bust down their door. This is understandable, because people's time is valuable, and the more qualified you are, the more valuable your time is.\n\nHow, then, does one find their Forrester? Or any quality editor, for that matter, who can take decent work and make valuable suggestions that might make it exceptional.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Okay, could you sneak a reddit/AMA reference into your *next* book? Something that we could catch. Like having *Crab Balata* as a dish on a restaurant menu?", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Whatever you do, do **not** use Verio!\n\nSource: I worked there for years, worked my way up from the bottom to middle management, and left on good terms (not disgruntled, I just have an intimate knowledge of how unbelievably bad their products are).", "score": 26 }, { "body": "I've always liked [A Small Orange](http://asmallorange.com/hosting/shared/) for small-scale web hosting. It's cheap and great for low traffic sites.\n\nEDIT: Changed link to more relevant services.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "It sounds like you'd be fine with a small hostgator account.\n\n* HostGator for shared hosting.\n* Linode for VPS. \n* Rackspace for dedicated.\n\nPeriod.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "For shared or VPS hosting go with A Small Orange: http://www.asmallorange.com \nGreat support, great community, great servers. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I've tried several and stuck with hostgator. Very good support. They even found script errors and helped me configure my scripts ...on their shared hosting plans. ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "My website has been hosted on both Bluehost.com and Hostmonster.com, both of which are owned by the same company apparently. They are great for the money if you have a low bandwith site.\n\nHowever, I had to switch to Site5.com recently because Bluehost was throttling my site so much that traffic was dropping off due to no one wanting to visit a site that doesn't load.\n\nSo far I've been really happy with Site5. It is a little bit more than most shared hosting plans, but I've found coupons to use to make it a little more worthwhile. \n\nAlthough, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to go dedicated in a little while since our traffic and bandwith usage keeps going up. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Whatever you do, don't use 1&1. Their hosting couldn't even handle a basic drupal site for me (they limit the memory usage so low nothing ever works). If you must go shared hosting, hostmonster seems to be the only good shared hosting out there.. Although, shared hosting is a VERY bad idea for businesses.\n\nI now use prgmr.com.. Its a VPS thats MUCH cheaper than slicehost or Linode, and I think its great. In the past, I used Linode, and they were better than prgmr, but more expensive (both are xen based). \n\nBoth Prgmr and Linode have/had servers at the Hurricane electric datacentres, so both are likely candidates for native IPV6 too (in fact, some of prgmr's VPS's already have native IPV6). \n\nI'd STRONGLY recommend getting 2 Linode VPS's in 2 different locations and setting them up in a high availability configuration for your company. Never used Slicehost, however, Linode has a REALLY tight community, so support is REALLY good there.. Never met a company which offers its customers referral for each customer they refer, yet the customers REFUSE to pass on their referral numbers..", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I use A2hosting.com and they've been great so far. I have several low traffic domains hanging off the same account for less than $5 a month. I needed to contact support once, and they got back to me in an hour and resolved things in 2 hours.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I use webfaction, their control panel is custom but simple to use, but can be longer process to setup a website. Some things need to be done through ssh though, so more ideal for a technical person. pricing is monthly so its flexible. email scripts need to use smtp since email is hosting separately, which can be a pain. its a uk company with servers located at the planet in dallas. \n\nFor clients i use hostgator just to get a commission, but im not a fan of cpanel. you can only few statistics through the control panel. I like dreamhost control panel, but their hosting was slow to me. They once lost/deleted a clients entire website with no explanation and denied accountability. No backup was available.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I use lunarpages.com\n\nNot the biggest name out there, but their customer service is impeccable. I bought the $5/mo plan; comes with a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth, and the control panel is pretty robust and easy to use.\n\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I use SurpassHosting.com and SurpassDomains.com. Throughout the year they host various competitions (one being who has the best work station or something like that) that give you a chance to win free hosting for the following year.\n\nThe price might not be the cheapest available, but Iv always found them hassle-free with excellent customer service.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I was really happy with webhostingbuzz, but I switched to dreamhost when they were doing their 10 dollar for a year of hosting promotion.\n\nYou pretty much get what you pay for in this market.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I really like Hostgator for a basic website. They give you plenty of freedom.\n\nI am venturing into the world of VPS now, and I use http://vmhosts.co.uk/ for that.\n\nThey're quite cheap, and support has been very helpful so far.\n\n(Reason I didn't use Hostgator for that was price and ping times. Being from Europe, a UK VPS is way better for me)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I have to put in another vote for Dreamhost. I've been hosting several sites with them for a couple of years and it has been quite solid. \n\nThey seem to be run by real hosting geeks rather than biz people. It shows in some great features in the control panel such as easy video transcoding and site backups.\n\nHere's a Code for $45 off signup if anybody wants it.... 45BOFF\n\n \n\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "The only thing weird to me is that the TARDIS is freaking *huge*. Look at that thing!\n\n=edit=\n\n[Perhaps Tennant is just a lot taller than he looks?](http://www.genre-x.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/tardis-tennant1.jpg)", "score": 5 }, { "body": "ok, obligatory link to the comic relief short. IIRC Joanna Lumley was considered briefly for the role as Dr Who. Also one of the new writers worked on Black Adder. I'm full of hope for the new series. But this is an awesome laugh:\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Ding! Time for another story.\n\nPeople always say they are afraid of Google and how much information it has on them. The truth is: people shouldn't be afraid of Google. They should be afraid of credit card companies.\n\nI have access to your full order history. I know everything you ever bought with a credit card. And yes, there are a lot of studies done on credit card purchases.\n\nSome years ago, someone wrote a paper claiming he could get the age, gende and race only from the credit card purchase history. It worked very well. Today, with your full purchase information, we can even \"guess\" your income range, number of dependant and even weigh. We have a statistical profile of every customer. We can even calculate the odds you eat at McDonald's today, considering you ate there once every X day. In 98% of the time, this model is very accurate.\n\nOne drawback is that it requires a lot of information. That is why it takes a few years and then, we are fully able to track you. In many cases, we compare the profile calculated from your purchase history to who you really are (and you thought they asked your income for credit validation) to further improve our models, and track fraud, most of all. It's so sophisticated that if you order products a person in your group never ordered, your card will get automatically locked. \n\nEvery time you use your credit card, you leave tracks. And none of it is private. Any police officer can get every purchase you ever made - and it can be used against you. There are many, many cases where credit card purchase history were used to prove DUI (you took a large tab at a bar) indirectly. \n\nThe truth is that credit card dominate the world right now. I could talk about the VISA IPO in 2007 and how crazy our company was (EVERYONE had visa stocks/options!!). We were asked to work even harder to get our best post-IPO trimester because \"the first impression counts\". All I can say is that if I could, I would put 100% of my money in Visa/Mastercard. It's safe, reliable, and they now control the world. Don't think I'm pumping the stock though ;)\n\nThat being said, I can vouch for the fact Visa and other credit card companies, I suppose, use this data responsibility. It's not like they would use the fact you bought burgers to ruin your life. I do fear, however, history-based advertising, eventually. Once that border is crossed, there won't be any limit to what the credit cards will do to increase profits. Hello client of Visa: we noticed you ordered a lot of items from X. Did you know Y was actually cheaper, of better quality, and more affordable? You should go at Y!\n\nAgain, that's still conspiracy; I do not really think neither Google nor Visa are evil, or using your credit card or browsing history to ruin your life. I'm a huge fan of credit card (and Google) :)\n\n", "score": 68 }, { "body": "Okay here is a little story about credit cards.\n\nI used to have a female boss. One day we were all eating out, my team, and then came the time to pay. One guy in our team... got out an American Express.\n\nMy boss instantly flipped out. \"What? How could you do this. Destroy this card immediately!\" Understand that, when you work for Visa (I can tell, no big secret), you get one of the best cards on the market (unless you're a millionaire, we got cards with thousands of dollars of fees per year) for absolutely free. Actually, the company pays it for you. I have a platinum card usually reserved for people who earn hundreds of thousands. For free. It's an amazing cards with tons of benefits (travel insurance, guarantees, etc) and there is no way I would live without it.\n\nBut that guy... He got out an American Express.\n\nBoss: \"How can you do this to me? A Mastercard, I could have understood. But an American Express? Why?\nEmployee: \"Well, it's Costco, they only accept American Express. I get a nice cashback on it...\"\n\nUnderstand this: Visa would KILL* to get accepted at Costco. It represents hundreds of millions in profits. But American Express is too entrenched. It's an amazing business to them (exposure, usage, etc) and to Costco (less fees, cashback, etc). As long as the current CEO is in place, Visa being accepted at Costco won't happen. Anyway:\n\nBoss: Enough. You're fired.\nEmployee: What?\nBoss: That you were cheating on us with Mastercard, I could have accepted. But American Express? Really? It's like my husband cheated not with another woman, but with an entire harem. \nEmployee: Really? It's just a card!\nBoss: We have given you a job, a life, a career, possibilities of advancement, and a free card worth hundreds of dollars. What has American Express done for you?? Huh??\n\nIt took me a long time to understand the boss was just kidding. She was awesome. The employee was really starting to believe he was losing his job. Of course it was all a joke and we all laughed. Morale of the story: when you work for a company, support it.\n\n*It's a metaphor. Don't take this seriously. We wouldn't really kill just to get our cards accepted at some place.", "score": 56 }, { "body": "OK, hate to interject with some reality here, but I'm a Visa employee too. Gotta get a few things straight.\n\nFor starters, the OP is the definition of an organization man. The company that provides his livelihood is the the greatest company in the world , right? Well did s/he know there was talk of closing the Visa Canada office? The hundred or so people up there are not exactly crucial in an organization of about 8000. \n\nObviously, the OP makes no effort to hide his bias. CC companies rulez teh werld! How much do you know about the actual aggregation of data? More of that is done my the likes of Acxiom, Visa only maintains and monitors the network, we're not a marketing company so we have limited use for it. Advertisers are the ones that hold the power, and credit reporting agencies too, but Visa is neither of those. Also, the insurance companies carry just as much info on people, maybe more. Visa can't touch that though because of HIPAA . Visa is hardly the 'ministry of information' that the OP makes it out to be. And if it were, the 'world class talent' there wouldn't be able to find it let alone know what to do with it.\n\nSunny point number two: I've worked in other companies with people you can actually learn from. Visa isn't one of those companies and I've been here over 6 years. Most of Visa is totally pointless bureaucracy and politics, under the guise of \"seperation of duties.\" I have deployed systems at Visa and it takes an act of God or two. Once you get the resources you need, which no one wants to pay for despite their necessity, you have to jump through hoop after hoop from information security. Information security fuckin runs that company, only they are really terrible at doing their job. Total security through obscurity. But I won't go into details, I'd rather not be implicated in anything like that. Finally, once you get the dang system up, you have to fight petty little territoriality battles from some of the most passive aggressive people on the planet. Everyone is VERY territorial and as soon as you roll out something that cuts into their turf they dig in like a two year old, despite that what they're doing is essentially obsolete. And I could name so many people that are entirely unqualified to be in their position. One lady...her job is to pay the power bill for one of the data centers and gab on the phone about her divorce. At least that's all she does, dunno what she's supposed to do. So many people at Visa are there because they knew someone or just talked a good game but can't deliver. It is hardly a house of geniuses, more like an idiot factory or a house of cards. Some people I know often say the place is gets more like government work every day. One of my superiors worked in the military a while ago, and they think the bureaucracy here is just staggering and that at least in the military people got things done and are qualified.\n\nI'm not disgruntled, just a bit taken back by the company. It's almost surreal at times. I'm thankful I even have a job especially in this economy. But if I'm wrong, why have there been so many layoffs in the past few years? Too many unnecessary and/or unskilled people. The org needed some drastic trimming.\n\nMaybe it's because the OP is in Canada, but Visa is hardly untouchable and in the states they have been subjected to major, multi-billion dollar anti-trust lawsuits, which they have either lost or settled out of court. The CEO even had to go to the White Houe with some other major bank CEOs to answer for their business practices. In fact, the provision of funds in order to pay these was one of the major reasons for the IPO. That, and we wanted in on some of that Mastercard stock price action, only that has hardly panned out, now has it?\n\nI'm not willing to say who I am or what I do for Visa because HR actually frowns on this type of thing. The OP should be very careful. I've been told to not even give the address of my office building, let alone do an AMA. But to prove that I actually work for Visa without putting myself at risk, maybe to only the OP, check this: OCW is on the west coast, OCC is in a land locked state, OCX is a new center near the east coast and there is no data center in Canada.\n\n(And you don't have to 'support the company' that's kinda bull. I see people paying for things in the company cafe all the time with Visa's REAL enemy...cash. Sure I have a Visa card, but I also have 2 MCs and an Amex. Oh noes! Plz don't humiliate me boss man! Few even know and those who do don't care. I also use PayPal too mutha fucka!)", "score": 36 }, { "body": "As a merchant doing online transactions, I have found that Visa (and the other card companies) don't really care about online cc fraud. They care about making the customer feel protected. Why? Because in a case of fraud, 99.9% of the time the merchants have to give the money back to Visa. Even with a CVV2 match, billing address and zip match, and a signature on delivery. If it turns out to be fraud, the retailer eats it.\n\nAny comment?", "score": 26 }, { "body": "I'd just like to say thanks for your work, I've had someone get a hold of one of my credit card numbers twice, and it caught instantly by CC companies, or people like yourself and it cleared up with absolutely no hassle. \n\nAnyhow, I guess I'll ask a question. What was the most extreme case, say... dollar wise you ran into? If you can answer that is.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "I made several online purchases with my Shazam/MasterCard debit last month, it alarmed my bank and they called me the other day to verify the payments but I haven't had time to get back to them. Will I have trouble using the card when I go to Hawaii next week? I live in Iowa.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "On a technical level, what are the differences that you know of between Visa and Mastercard?\n\nAnything they do very differently overall, or specifically on the fraud prevention side?", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Thanks for your good work. One question...when I have to report my card stolen...they always ask in the end if I want to have their platinum or what-not protection plan for the card. Is this worth it? From my experience of working retail...the extra protection is usually a racket.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "No question, but I have to say you guys are awesome.\n\nI had a Canadian visa throughout my time as a student. After a graduated I got a job and went out to spend ~$3k on furniture.\n\nI got a call from a visa rep **while I was still in the store** asking if it was really me and if the card could have been stolen.\n\nA year or so later when I was buying home theatre stuff the same thing happened. I'm lucky enough that I've never had a card stolen, but I really appreciate how fast you guys are at identifying spending outside of my usual pattern.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "wortiall, thanks for your insights and for sharing your knowledge.\n\nI've wondered about this: I've patronized many many retailers, and a significant number of them, maybe 10%, will not take Visa. I've asked a few of them why, and the answer has always been the same: Visa charges too high a fee to the merchant for processing card transactions.\n\nCan you shed any light on this?", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I received a spam email offering to sell me 100000 credit card numbers. It included a link to a free sample of 10000. I grabbed the sample list, which contained credit card numbers, expiration dates, names, and, if I recall correctly, phone numbers.\n\nSome banks, if you try to check account status on a credit card but give incorrect account information, give different errors depending on whether the account was valid but you botched your PIN or password, or the account was not valid. I used that trick to check out several of the cards and find that they appeared to be real.\n\nThis was on a Friday night, if I recall correctly. I called Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, and none were interested. One of them said I should call back Monday morning.\n\nThe FBI said to try the Secret Service. The Secret Service said to try the credit card companies.\n\nWhy were the card companies, and the law enforcement agencies, uninterested in this?\n\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "My question pertains to the issuer, but you may be able to answer it.\n\nA few months ago, I spotted pending fraudulent transactions on my credit card (a large credit union). I called to report the fraud and asked that the pending transactions be rejected. However, the card issuer's fraud team claimed they had to let the transaction go through and would then issue a refund. This doesn't seem an ideal approach : The credit card issuer took the hit, refunded the account, and, I assume, challenged the charge to the merchant. Potentially, the merchant pays for the fraud if the product/service shipped and the fraudulent shopper may never be found anyway. Instead, I expected: I as a card holder reject the pending transaction with the issuer and the merchant's transaction never settles; for the merchant, any service may be redacted, product doesn't ship, or product immediately recalled.\n\nWhy would a credit card issuer not reject a pending charge claimed to be fraudulent?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Have you ever committed credit card fraud? ;)\n\nIs the industry corrupt (I only ask because I used to work for a motor claims department, of which seemingly the entire staff were suffering from whiplash having been rear-ended whilst in a friends car).", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I bought some stuff online and was asked to send a pic of my card, along with a valid photo ID, scanned via email. I never bought from that vendor and I'm not sure why they think this is secure, today's image editing software does wonders. Anyway I really need the stuff and they got the best price, should I send my information to them? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Can you give some insight into some of your investigations? Have you ever been involved in an ongoing investigator to catch a major fraudster? Can you give details about it? Or do you deal with only the 'immediate'? If you could please explain better, specifically what aspect of fraud prevention are you involved with? What type of work consumes most of your time? Also, how do you recommend someone gets into this line of work? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "How do I get my CC company (MC) to stop flagging/suspending my card when I travel? Every year I take a month off and travel abroad (different times of year, different destinations) and every time it seems my card gets suspended for suspicious/unusual activity and I have to spend a couple day navigating some foreign phone system to get my CC to reactivate my card. This last time, knowing that I was going to be in CH for a month, I called my CC and told them where I was traveling, and when. They made a note of it, said everything would be fine. Two days into my trip: card suspended. *Arghh*. I know that you're not with MC but *any* advice on how to preempt this cycle would be much welcome. Edited for clarity.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "This isn't a question about fraud, but I have a few probably naive questions about credit cards in general. There's a few things I just don't understand.\n\n1) My Visa card has some kind of no-interest-for-50-days rule. I pay off the whole card off every month after I get paid so this never kicks in. When I look at my statement, I don't see any fees, charges or interest other than some piddling international transaction fees (a few cents). Is Visa making any money at all from me? Am I missing something?\n\n2) I only have one credit card, with a reasonable limit that I've never really bumped up against (I have plenty of savings of large purchases). My primary motivation for having it at all is the convenience for ordering online. I get the impression many people have two, three or several cards. Why? Is it mainly to allow borrowing more money and moving shifting the due dates around? My bank is currently spamming me regularly trying to convince me to get an AMEX to supplement my Visa. I can't see the point. Their only argument seem to involve wacky \"rewards points\" schemes. What's the advantage of multiple cards?\n\n3) Speaking of which, are there banks or other institutions that offer credit cards without all the rewards/awards/frequent-flying/incentive-to-spend rubbish? Or is it a case of one-competitor-offers-it-so-they-all-have-to-offer-it. I can't see the point of these schemes. The vast majority of my correspondence from the bank are brochures of all the coffee machines and tropical holidays I can buy with my accumulated points. I'd rather just have the money. Again, am I missing something?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "So I go to the Bahamas, use my card at the casino and it's declined. They say, \"call the issuing bank\". I call them and I'm told I was blocked because I was out of the country so they thought it might be fraud. My night is ruined (no cell service in Bahamas, had to go back to my hotel to Skype). \n\nQ. Do I really need to tell you guys *before* I go anywhere? I go lots of places and this is a huge pain in my ass.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "When I was 15 my mom asked if I was still practicing abstinence.\r\n\r\nI responded with, \"Yeah, and I'm getting better too!\"\r\n\r\nI was grounded.", "score": 124 }, { "body": "This was around 12 years ago. My friend had a slow leak in one of the tires of his car. He walked into a party disgusted, shaking his head. \"I just had to pay 75 cents for AIR! I can't believe how expensive those things are getting.\" To which I quickly responded, \"Inflation's a bitch\".", "score": 119 }, { "body": "I was at a Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest once and the particular girl on the mike was asked \"what type of car best describes you as a person?\"\r\n\r\nFrom the crowd, I shouted \"a used one!\"\r\n\r\nLots of laughs from the crown; mean, mean stares from the girl and the other contestants.\r\n\r\nI've always wondered if I came up with that 100% on my own, of if I subconciously recalled it from a movie.", "score": 102 }, { "body": "I have a friend who doesn't like hot tea, his name is Luke. His girlfriend, Yasmin (though that name is unimportant for the sake of the joke) likes her tea hot. Now, I was sitting there as she was drinking her hot hot cup of tea. She left it on the side for a while, then sipped it, then went \"Eurgh, it's gone cold. Luke, it's your temperature now\" to which I said \"What? Is it lukewarm?\" which caused him to spit it on his laptop in amusement and disgust", "score": 69 }, { "body": "At lunch in school one day, a friend of mine asked if Michael J. Fox was dead or not. To this another friend replied, \"No, he's still alive and kicking.\" Almost before thinking, I blurted out \"Involuntarily.\"", "score": 60 }, { "body": "I have a really stuck-up friend, Dan, who hosts wine tastings. One night he was explaining what the next wine was supposed to taste like, and he said, \"This wine has fruity notes of pear and green apple, but not red apple. I'm not sure what the difference is there, exactly.\" \n\nI called out, \"It's the color, Dan!\"", "score": 45 }, { "body": "Ok, remember when that kid in the Dell commercials (\"Dude, you're getting a Dell..\") was busted for buying pot in NYC? My joke (at least I'm pretty sure I came up with this!!) was that I thought marijuana was a *Gateway* drug. hardy har har... I thought I was being pretty clever :) ", "score": 41 }, { "body": "Guy at work: \"I detect some tension between us, we're going to have to fight or fuck\" \n\nMe: \"Hah, well, either way your ass is going to hurt\"", "score": 41 }, { "body": "A joke that *I* thought was funny, or that *other people* thought funny?\n\nBecause I can think of plenty in category A, not so much category B.", "score": 37 }, { "body": "At a friend's place, his hipster room-mate had painted on the wall: \"Art is something you can get away with\".\n\nAdded a \"F\" to the start of that sentence.\n\nI got away with it.", "score": 28 }, { "body": "We were doing a lab report for school and we had to draw a picture of steel under a microscope we had seen a week ago. None of us really remembered too well what it looked like, so I said, \"Whatever, I'll just fake it\" and started drawing. One of my impatient group members said, \"Can't you fake it any faster?\" and I said, \"No, I'm not your girlfriend\"", "score": 26 }, { "body": "I was playing this game called Apples to Apples. Basically, a card is drawn that has an adjective on it (examples: beautiful, evil, patriotic). Everyone playing is dealt cards with nouns or noun phrases (examples: President Obama, emo kids, the Spanish Inquisition). Whenever an adjective card is dealt everyone puts down the noun card they think best goes with the answer. For example, the adjective \"bright\" is drawn and you have a noun card that says \"sun.\" Your card would likely be decided to be the best fit and you would get one point.\n\nWhen I was playing the word that was drawn was \"Hellen Keller.\" We all put our adjective cards face down once we had made the choice. People had put down \"reserved,\" \"noble,\" etcetera. I turned my card over last. \"Senseless.\" +1 Pt.", "score": 24 }, { "body": "A friend of mine has an japanese girlfriend now. Some time ago, right after their third date i asked him if he had placed his puppet emperor on her Manchuria. Sounds lame now, but it gave us huge amounts of laugh then.", "score": 22 }, { "body": "I was drunk at the bar and a band was starting their set. The lead singer did the standard \"How's everyone doing out there?\" and after the murmur of the response died down I yelled \"So-so!\" I really nailed the sing-songy intonation as well as being obnoxiously loud so I've always been very proud of it.\n\nAnother: at a Haunted House there was a part where they sliced some guy's neck. The performer asked, \"Should I do it? Should I slit his throat?\" The girls in our group obligingly screamed then I yelled, \"I don't think that would be morally right!\" The performer stumbled for a response, then as a tribute to his high school drama training I'm sure, continued with the trick and slit his throat.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "I was playing the game of things where you write things that satisfy a given prompt.\n\nThe prompt was `\"things astronauts complain about in outer space\"`.\n\nMy response was `\"bukkake is too hard\"`.", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Me: Do you want some pistachios?\n\nGF: No thank you.\n\nMe: Well then, I guess that's a pistachi-no!\n\nEdit: Spacing.", "score": 15 }, { "body": "I was getting out of a car on New Years Eve and was on crutches. Some girls saw me and asked what happened. My buddy said \"masturbation accident.\" The girls giggled, then one asked, \"do you need any help?\" ...Quick as a bastard, I asked her, \"what - with the masturbation?\"\r\n\r\nI didn't get laid that night.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "This is only funny to about four people, but I remain immensely proud.\n\nFriend 1: What's the Latin word for \"coffee\"?\n\nFriend 2: I don't think they had it so I'm gonna just go with \"amor.\"\n\nMe, immediately: Of course. Amor vincit somnia. Q.E. fucking D.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I'm a freshman RA for a tech focused school. Because of the type of school, everyone is at least somewhat nerdy/geeky and people embrace this.\n\nIt was orientation and all the freshmen in the residence hall I work for (about 300 in all) were put in an auditorium for a talk on sex by the school's health center. The presenter talked about condoms, making good choices, etc. Then she came to a slide that showed how in the past 6 or 7 years, less and less people have sex during their high school and college years. The presenter asked, \"What happened in the past few years that you think decreased the amount of sex people are having less sex nowadays?\" I immediately yelled as loud as I could \"World of Warcraft.\" The auditorium erupted in laughs as the presenter tried to remedy the situation by saying, \"Yes, some people may prefer computer games to sex.\" This was useless and just made the students laugh even more.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Not a joke, more a witty retort... When I was about 8, I was daydreaming in class as usual when suddenly I get a rude awakening from my teacher:\n\nMrs Middleton - KORGATHBLADEFIST YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION ALL LESSON!!\n\nBladefist (shaken up) - uh.. yeah I have\n\nMiddleton (sly bitch) - Can you please give the class an example of an adverb then?\n\nBladefist (smooth as jazz) - Undoubtedly.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "My friends and I were waiting at the bus stop to take us to our teacher's house for a halloween party. We are all exchange students in Japan, so you can imagine the stereotypical people are in my program. Weeaboo, kind of awkward.\n\nWhen we were chatting about how weird it was that we were heading to this dudes house in the boonies to stay over night, my friend Will said \"It is the perfect set up for a horror flick, and the next minute you know, there will be a mass sacrifice of virgins\"\n\nWithout skipping a beat, I said \"Man, most of our program is getting sacrificed tonight!\"\n\nThe virgins in the group actually laughed the loudest.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "While wandering through the cracker aisle at a grocery store, I noticed a peculiar product. \"Stoned wheat thins\". Not stone-ground, just stoned. I turned to my friend and pointed out, \"Dude! They're baked!\"", "score": 9 }, { "body": "My friend told me that he did this the other day.\n\nCashier: Would you like do donate a dollar to support breast cancer?\nFriend: No! Why would I want to support it? Breast cancer is something that we should find a way to prevent!", "score": 8 }, { "body": "In a Shakespeare class in college, the teacher was discussing the Elizabethan concept that each orgasm diminished one's lifespan. Then he asked the question \"do we have a similar concept now?\" and I replied \"Yeah: only the good die young.\"", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Some kids were standing around during break at a job site and one guy started talking about dating this homeless girl he knew - he jokingly said it was great 'cause he could drop her off anywhere - to which I unthinkingly replied \"yeah! and you don't even have to stop the car!\"", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I was driving with my brother in the car the other day when we passed an unfamiliar new business. I asked, \"what is that?\" The sign read: Deja Vu. My brother replied, \"a nail salon.\" I quickly responded with, \"hm...I feel like I've been there before.\" \n\nMaybe you had to be there, but I laughed for a solid five minutes. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Not me but my brother. He was in one in this matchmaking games at a nightclub. They had a girl separated from the 3 guys by a screen so she couldn't see them She got to ask 3 questions of them all and then pick a guy to go on a holiday with her. First question \"what would you do if a girl told you that you had bad breath?\". His answer \"turn her over\".\n\nShe didn't choose him.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I was explaining to my mother how to zoom in on the iPod touch:\n\n\"Just spread your fingers... like parting labia.\"", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Back in the Boy Scout days we were sitting around a camping table at some ungodly hour in the middle of the woods in Pennsylvania. It was **dark**. My buddy Chris tried to pass the blunt to me, but I couldn't see a damn thing. After fumbling in the darkness for a few seconds he grabbed my wrist and guided my hand to the blunt, to which I said without missing a beat \"Ah, just like Helen Keller.\" Still an oft-repeated inside joke to this day.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "So my best friend is having a house warming party. His kitchen overlooks the entryway of the house from the 2nd floor , where you could look down and see this huge pile of shoes. my girlfriend looks down, sees all these shoes and says \"looks like Auschwitz down there\". \n\n\nI lol'd", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I once referred to the most-bro-like person in our group as \"one popped collar away from date rape\" it's since become a common joke/expression", "score": 6 }, { "body": "In high school, I was the quiet kid who never really said much of anything. \n\nAt lunch, another kid at the table turned to me and asked, \"Do did get anything on my face?\" to which I responded, \"Yeah, you got ugly all over it.\"\n\nEveryone was stunned.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I was in the car with my friend's 16 year old son, and he was telling that joke about 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't, when I quipped, \"That's the thing about binary humor. It's either funny or it isn't.\" Probably lame, but...", "score": 5 }, { "body": "(This is a terribly distasteful joke)\nMe: Did anybody watch that stupid documentary last night?\n\nFriend: What about?\n\nMe: I for get the name, it had the guy from back to the future in it...\n\nFriend: Michael J Fox?\n\nMe: Yeah! It was called, Hope or optimism, or I don't know..It was about his disease...\n\nFriend: Was it called \"The side effects of time travel\"?", "score": 5 }, { "body": "My sister and I were driving around town and my sister spotted a huge cross on someone's lawn. She asked me if I knew why it was there. I then asked, \"Is it burning?\"\n\n\"...No\"\n\n\"Then I have no clue.\"", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Me and my friend were driving in Fargo, and we saw a restaurant called the Mexican Village. As soon as he saw it he said \"I wonder how they got an entire Mexican village across the border?\" Side splitting laughter ensued. Now I can't drive past it without thinking the same thing.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "One time I was eating dinner with my mom. I turned around to grab something and hit my funny bone. I told my mom I had hurt my funny bone. \nShe replied with \"wasn't so funny was it?\"\nI responded with \" neither was that joke.\"", "score": 4 }, { "body": "My friend was telling me about a gay friend of his who had never been with a woman. Curious about what a vagina felt like, he went out one weekend and had sex with a random girl. My immediate reply was 'For fuck's sake, even the gays are getting more pussy than I am.'\n\nMade my friend laugh at least.\n\nAnother time I had a discussion with my co-workers about Leaving Cert. results (final school exams for Irish students). For what's it worth, my result was very good so my co-workers asked 'How come you didn't do something like medicine?'\n\nMe:'I hate people'.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "We have these tags from the War Amps (charity to help amputees) that you can put on your keys and if you lose them people can put them in the mail and the War Amps will mail them back to you. I was explaining this system to my friend and he asked, \"Is it expensive to sign up for this?\" to which I replied, \"Yeah, it costs an arm and a leg\"", "score": 4 }, { "body": "My sister had just gotten her drivers license when she borrowed my moms car. It was parked in front of our garage and she tried to back up but forgot to check if it was in reverse. It wasnt, and she drove right through the garage door, ending up inside the garage and the metal garage door folded, still barely hanging on its hinges (those springy ones).\nI almost forgot about this story until my father reminded me, but i went in after making sure she was alright (my parents were both gone) and put a piece of paper on the door with \"Hooray! My sister has got her drivers license!\". On top of that, i called my dad, because we weren't really sure what to do. I told him about the damaged door and he asked me if it was still possible to enter the garage. My dad still recalls my answer: \"Oh yes, no problem at all!\". I think he kinda got the message. :)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "My friends Kyle and Gump were about to take a shot of Absinthe. This is Gump's first shot of Absinthe.\n \nKyle says \"Yes, Gump has experienced all his 'firsts' with me.\"\n\nAnd I say \"Gump had gay butt sex way before he ever met you, Kyle.\"", "score": 3 }, { "body": "at our school we had a disfigured child. very intelligent but very small with movement problems and a face bordering on the grotesque. he'd just scored high in another math olympic and our class teacher said:\n\n\"this kid has a bright future ahead of him\"\n\ni still don't know where it came from but i blurted out: \n\n\"yeah, pickled in formaldehyde in the museum of natural history.\"\n\nstill feel bad about it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "My friend had once gotten head from a girl and then was a total asshole to her. I was talking to the girl and she was saying how much she hated him now and ended up saying,\n\"At least I wasn't the dickface here\"\nthen I responded\n\"Actually you were\"\n\nkinda mean I know, but priceless.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I'm sitting watching TV with a girl I'm dating, and a KFC commercial comes on. It's one of the one that shows the whole family sitting down to a KFC bucket with all the trimmings for dinner.\n\nMe: You know, we never did that when I was a kid, get a bucket of KFC chicken for supper.\n\nHer: Why not?\n\nMe: We were middle class.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "One summer evening a friend and I were out dancing. We were at a bar where a local band was playing. Since the bars air conditioning was out we were soaked in sweat. During a break in sets I walked up to the bass player and said \"Have you ever made a girl this wet without touching her before?\"\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "A friend was breaking up with a girlfriend and he was explaining that she wanted to take the dining room chairs. I asked him 'did you tell her you wouldn't stand for it?'.\r\n\r\nHe lol'd.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I was sitting at dinner with my family one night and my brother was chewing with his mouth open (as usual) as he told us all about this date he had gone on the night before. He told us how he had explained his big college project to her in order to try and impress her - he used all these technical terms and tried to highlight how unique his project was or whatever. As soon as he finished relating the story to us, however, without missing a beat, I asked \"So did you also tell her how you were working on chewing with your mouth closed?\"\n\n\nI'm the youngest sibling and usually pretty quiet so they were all pretty surprised to hear that come from me. My sister actually fell off her chair from laughing.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I have a leatherman tool, which includes a wire cutter. I routinely steal those chained pens from banks. Just because. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Walked into Target one night with my loverly wife, clothing shopping (cool cheap shirts).. found a couple that I thought were interesting, along with one that was definitely a take-home - this one, I threw over my shoulder, the remainder in my hands to show the mrs.\n\nWell, long story short, I ended up walking around the big T for most of an hour with that shirt on my shoulder - we headed through checkout, paid for our merch, and were on our way.. halfway through the parking lot (big, as with most big T's), I realize that *i have a shirt on my shoulder and don't remember paying for it*.\n\nCue moment of panic, furtive glances for T security to come after me on their motorized Segway knock-offs.. and.. nothing.\n\nMrs. and I looked at one another, turned around, and started walking back to pay for the goods.. then the fascia lighting turned off, as did all the (non-safety-related) lighting.. they'd closed! I wasn't going to fight with someone to re-open the store to buy a shirt I was already in possession of, so we spun around and made our way home. XD\n\ntl;dr - accidentally stole a shirt from target by cunningly wearing it on my shoulder as I checked out, went to return it, they closed for the night, I went home. lol.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Never on purpose. I did forget to pay at a restaurant once. I remembered half an hour later and came back to pay. I think I made it worse though, because apparently the waitress who had served us \"forgot\" to mention it to her superior and got in trouble for it.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "While walking out of a mega store one night, the RFID(?) detector went bling bling. I initially thought the cashier forgot the remove one of the tags. The two security guards stood up. I rummaged through the bag but couldn't find anything. So I placed the bag on the ground and walked through the detector to show them that it was the bag and not me that had set it off.\n\nNot the case. The detector went bling bling.\n\nI emptied my pockets thinking something was setting it off. Nope. It was still going bling bling. I tried to figure out which part of my body the sneaky bastard was curious about. I started by flaying by arms between it, then my legs. Turns out it was right in center of my body. Sector weenie to be exact.\n\nAt this point, I told the guards in Arabic \"hadha jehaz sawee maskara\" - \"this equipment is fucking with me\". This was in Kuwait.\n\nI didn't look much like a shoplifter so they decided not to strip me and swing my underpants between it.\n\nTo this day, I don't know what happened. But everyone around had a good time seeing my dance around the detector.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "ive accidentally stolen soda/water/etc. a ton from grocery stores. anything that you put under the cart. so many times ive forgotten it's there. tbh ive probably left a ton under the cart too in the parking lot. any time i realize that ive done it though i go back in and pay.\n\nstrangely enough, ive had cashiers just wave me off with a \"don't worry about it\".", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "This is from a black friend of mine:\n\nHe thought white people pooped white based on the color of his own poop.\n\n*Most logical conclusion of all time.*", "score": 522 }, { "body": "I can usually see floating shapes in my eyes... as a kid, I thought that I was seeing amoebas or DNA helixes. It turned out that they were protein chunks in my eyeball called [floaters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater)", "score": 219 }, { "body": "I thought that the dial tone was actually just a very, very old man sitting on a chair and going, \"Buuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ..\"", "score": 202 }, { "body": "Now that there's a hundred comments, hopefully no one will see this. When I was younger, maybe six or so, I thought that everyone had interfamily marriages. We had six in our family, mom, dad, older sister, older brother, me, and my younger sister so it made sense that we would pair off and marry each other. Thinking about it now, that's fucked up incest right there.", "score": 194 }, { "body": "When I got on a plane for the first time, I assumed that the plane lifted itself up, waited for the earth to spin to the right spot, and then landed. I thought it was completely consistent with what I had learned about the world spinning...", "score": 191 }, { "body": "Things I believed:\n\n1) That ATM's dispensed free money. It was hard for me to understand poverty because I believed anyone could request and get free money at ATM's.\n\n2) That the moon was bigger than the earth\n\n3) I thought the grocery store kept all the money people paid for groceries. Consequently I also believed all products sold there were made at the store.\n\n4) That camels carried water in their humps.\n\n5) That one could poke a hole in a cactus and a whole spring of water would emerge. This was because people talked about how much water cacti contain.\n\n6) I believed the windows on airplanes could be opened to allow passengers to stick their hand out etc.\n\n7) That in the case of an emergency on a plane, the crew would supply passengers with parachutes. When my mother told me that was not the case I was horrified at the thought of such a death.\n\n8) I thought people of different countries spoke their languages at home and amongst themselves, but spoke perfect English most of the time. That little ethnocentric outlook came from all foreigners depicted on films spoke English.\n\n9) I also believed farmers kept all their crops and ate them throughout the year. I had not yet learned about commerce.\n\n10) That animals like pigs, cows, chickens etc. existed solely for the purpose of feeding humanity. So when they were slaughtered they felt no pain, because that was their whole role in nature.\n\n11) For the longest time I believed whales were hollow inside and a person could live in it and come out through the blowhole.\n\n12) I didn't understand the difference between fresh and salt water fish. I always wondered why there weren't more dolphins and whales in the rivers. ", "score": 150 }, { "body": "The second idea you had there is known as [solipsism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism).\n\nI thought that maybe everyone experienced different colors than I, that maybe what I saw as red was different to what others see when they see red.", "score": 140 }, { "body": "I used to think that my family was all monsters, and that they were raising me so that they could eventually eat me. Also, for some reason, I thought that my littlest brother was the leader, and they dropped in rank opposite to the normal family order (Dad -> Mom-> Oldest sibling ->...). I was afraid that when I went to bed, they all got together and smoked cigars and had a meeting about how they were going to continue raising me. This thought freaked me out quite a bit when I was little.", "score": 132 }, { "body": "I was digging around the metal swing set pole in the park, and I noticed that it didn't terminate at ground level, but continued underground. I proposed the hypothesis that everything that I saw above ground actually had a mirror image duplicate of itself underground.", "score": 131 }, { "body": "I used to think that ugly people were lucky, because they would end up finding someone who doesn't care about physical appearance. I now know that these people don't exist. ", "score": 108 }, { "body": "Turn signals on cars used to amaze me when I was little. I never noticed that my parents were actually turning them on. Instead I thought that the car was equipped to listen to or predict my parents plans for where they were going to go. I guess it was a somewhat primitive idea for GPS devices.", "score": 104 }, { "body": "I used to think as a kid that we maybe had two lifes, and when we were awake here, we were just sleeping in the other life and vice versa. My dreams tend to have continuity from one night to another even as a kid and it was only logical that, it meant that we all lived in two worlds.", "score": 90 }, { "body": "that all kids were treated like i was. . some families just hid their dysfunstion better. . .i was in high school before my i knew not all kids are beaten. . .some were never ever hit. . .IN THEIR LIVES!\n\nmy kids are now among those numbers.", "score": 84 }, { "body": "I thought that when I turned on the tv, that's when it was happening. Everything was live and only happening when my tv was on. When I turned my tv off, the actors would sit down in chairs and read magazines until I got ready to turn it on again. Oh, and I thought that the actors could see me, but acted like they couldn't. I'll have to say, tv became less entertaining when I found out the truth. ", "score": 67 }, { "body": "I thought that the Red Cross was a very evil cross that was constantly on fire and killed people including Jesus.", "score": 67 }, { "body": "I have a good one.\r\n\r\nYou know how when you bounce a basketball outside in the right place, it can make an echo in the distance?\r\n\r\nFor the longest time, I thought there was a kid living down the street, who was just mocking me and trying to fuck with me by bouncing right after I bounced each and every time. I even tried to bounce real fast or out of nowhere to suprise him. He was always able to keep up.\r\n\r\nI never could find where that bastard lived, but I was more than willing to kick his ass.", "score": 62 }, { "body": "For the longest time I thought (hoped) that my family was secretly a group of ninjas and when I turned a certain age they would tell me and include me as a ninja. That never happened...", "score": 59 }, { "body": "When I was a kid, my older cousin told me that women didn't have penises because they had little factories inside them where the pee was recycled by tiny men.\n\nI used to run up to girls and stick my head next to their crotches and listen for signs of their mysterious work.", "score": 59 }, { "body": "I used to read Dennis the Menace comic strips and they always had lines like \"See ya later\" - I used to think that \"Ya\" was another character that they never showed but everyone was going to go see ... I grew up in Africa, and nobody ever said \"ya\" ... took me a while to figure that one out.\n\n\n", "score": 57 }, { "body": "i watched the truman show when i was little and so i became paranoid thinking my life was a tv show. i remember searching my room for cameras", "score": 48 }, { "body": "I used to be the inquisitive kid - hte one who had a *million* questions about everything for his parents. My folks were good about it, and would almost always answer, or point me in the direction of the correct answer - if it was something they didn't know, they refused to make anything up, and would just point me to the Time-Life collection on the bookcase.\n\nThen there were the more touchy subjects - the ones that they felt their darling little eight year-old shouldn't really know too much about. \"Mum, what does 'fuck' mean?\", \"Mum, how come girls have a hole between their legs, and I have a stick-type thing?\", \"Mum, girls are icky, but all the older boys seem to like them. Why's that?\", and so on down the line.\n\nMy folks didn't want to explain all this stuff to me,and while I'm not exactly sure what their plan *was* for informing me of the working sof the world, when I was 7ish, they had the perfect answer, and just kept using it.\n\n \"That's a grown-up thing. You'll find out when you're older.\"\n\nNow, I wasn't entirely sure how that was meant to work, see. All my life, if I wanted to learn anything, I had to learn it from a book. None of the books I'd seen contained ANY information on this sort of thing (Well, there was that ONE book, it used robots. I can't find the image, but seriously, it was no help whatsoever, apart from getting across the basic science of sperm and eggs. It came from mailing Weetabix barcodes in, if anyone from the UK still has it and a scanner.) so I was left with only one logical conclusion.\n\nAt a certain age, all the information pertaining to these questions would magically enter my brain. One day, I'd know why boys liked girls, I'd know how parents do the 'special hug' that made babies and I'd figure out how girls could go the toilet if they couldn't aim their wee-wees. The age at which this happened was different for everyone, obviously, as some of the kids I knew had already reached that age, but me, I was willing to wait for my time.\n\nSo yeah, at about 13 I realised that I'd been horribly mistaken. Thankfully, that was also about the time I managed to reach the internet, so I caught up pretty quickly.\n\nAlso, I used to believe I was actually a robot, due to this. I figured that the information was obviously somewhere in my cybernetic brain already, and was just waiting for a switch to flip. That belief fell away when I was about 11, because I managed to walk through an airport metal detector without setting it off.\n\nAlso, [this](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/77531/is_there_anything_that_you_cant_believe_that_you/c05uyug), but everyone's already doing the religion-whining, so I won't post the full text.\n\nTL:DR I believed I was a robot. Oh, and some other stuff.", "score": 43 }, { "body": "When I was a little girl I noticed that tree branches were gone on the sides near power lines. I asked my mom why this was so, and she said, \"because of the power lines\" not explaining that PEOPLE cut the tree branches to protect the power lines. I assumed she meant that the power lines had some magical evil power to kill tree branches that got too close to them.", "score": 43 }, { "body": "I never really spiced my food, e.g. with salt and pepper, once it was served to me... I guess I just assumed it tasted as it was supposed to taste and that was good enough for me. \n\nHowever, for some reason, I was under the impression that salt and pepper were, well, opposites. As in, they canceled each other out. Add too much salt to your steak? Throw some pepper on it and remove some of the flavor. Too much pepper on the potatoes? Salt that shit.\n\nI'm still amazed that I thought this, and people frequently don't believe me when I admit it.", "score": 41 }, { "body": "When I was little little little I wanted to be a tooth fairy when I grew up. I always got super excited when the tooth fairy would come and leave me a gift under my pillow. I grew up within a clash of many cultures so I \"believed\" in the fairy and the mouse (Ratoncito Perez) so I would get money and a gift for every tooth that fell. The mouse freaked me out, but the thought of a beautiful fairy coming to leave me something was exciting! and I wanted to make kids as happy as she made me so that was in my head, the career path I wanted. After seeing a lot of Disney movies, seeing my \"friends\" play with Barbies, and watch movie after movie where the heroine is white, blonde, and with colored eyes I gave up (I was of indian descent so I was brown skinned and had black hair and eyes). I thought I wasn't pretty enough to be a fairy so I decided to be a doctor instead. \n\nI would also think that things had a secret life. I thought all living and non living things had a story and a life they transverse and that made every object inherently special. I started collecting many little old random things I found and when I came across them I thought of it as out lives converging. I collected discarded pens thinking they were lonely and that if I picked it up our friendship would begin and that they no longer would need to be alone. Old things with past mean a lot to me. When my grandfather died I didn't want any of his money, or his gold things or his old cameras (all of which were very monetarily valuable). Instead I wanted his razor, and his old cologne bottle. I fought to get an old shall he wore and the last pen he wrote with. I wanted the old chair he sat on and the spoon he ate with. My family of course told me I was stupid and threw everything of his away. \n\nI also thought that people always acted in good faith and took them treating me badly as something appropriate that I deserved somehow. Mom told me that if bad things happen to me is because I led a bad life my previous life that I had to come back and pay for. So I thought that bullies had a reason to hurt me and so I let them. I didn't want to get more bad karma from defending myself and disrupting the \"natural way\" so I allowed them to continue mistreating me and lead a life full of abuse for many many years. Religion hurts.", "score": 40 }, { "body": "My mom used to take me to church when I was very young, like 3 or 4 and I was scared right from the start. The pastor said \"we are all god's children\" which freaked me out, I didn't want to be god's child, I wanted to be my parents child. And for awhile I was afraid if god thought I was his child he would someday come and take me away from my parents. ", "score": 40 }, { "body": "I could not understand why anyone would speak in a foreign language. After all , you think in English and translating all the time didn't sound like fun.", "score": 38 }, { "body": "When my parents said that they had black and white T.V's I thought the world was black and white back when they grew up. ", "score": 36 }, { "body": "At one point I thought that when someone died in a movie, it was real. I figured that they used convicts for those roles. ", "score": 35 }, { "body": "I remember being really young and becoming aware of highways. I started making the comparison between them and races on TV since both seemed really fast. One day we were driving down the highway and I asked him who was winning since I thought the highway was one giant race. He had no idea what I was talking about.", "score": 32 }, { "body": "That you actually could dig all the way to China. And that China was literally on the other side of the earth.", "score": 32 }, { "body": "When I was little I believed the OP's second for a while, which eventually evolved into me thinking I was secretly retarded. The whole world was faked to keep me happy and believing that I was normal.", "score": 32 }, { "body": "Since my mom always told me she was making food, I always thought that she created it (i.e. she would literally create the chicken by mixing different ingredients). I would see my mom adding water, spices, etc. into a pot an several minutes later... boom! Chicken with rice.\n\nI didn't know I was eating animals until I was about 5 years old.", "score": 31 }, { "body": "I thought Miss Universe ruled above all other world leaders in matters of state. I mean, shit, she's Miss UNIVERSE. ", "score": 29 }, { "body": "I used to think that the first person that woke up in the morning picked the direction the streets would be driven in for that day. ", "score": 28 }, { "body": "I thought when you moved houses that you actually just picked up the house that you lived in and drove it over to another location and since we lived in an apartment I was very concerned that the other people living there wouldn't want to move.", "score": 27 }, { "body": "I used to always feel watched. In class I thought other kids could read my mind so when it got real quiet I'd shout in my mind, \"STOP READING MY MIND!\" Second grade.\r\nAlso, I always thought camera's were watching me and this would affect my habits when alone.\r\nI was very paranoid...", "score": 24 }, { "body": "I used the think the same as your latter thought. I was firm in my belief that everything around me was a creation of my subconsious. I thought that at anytime I could choose whether things existed or not, and I could create abilities for myself.", "score": 23 }, { "body": "I always assumed that as long as you were nice to others and treated people with respect, that nobody would ever do you wrong. There would simply be no reason for them to.\n\nBoy was I wrong.", "score": 23 }, { "body": "I was obsessed with perpetual motion. It made sense to me if you had an engine running you'd attach a generator to make power, then use that power to run the engine, and you'd never have to refuel again. It was my backup plan to be a millionaire.", "score": 20 }, { "body": "The tagline for Jurassic Park said \"65 Million years in the making.\"\n\nI thought that's how long they were filming.", "score": 20 }, { "body": "I read too many mystery stories as a kid so I used to think anything out of place was a clue to a puzzle that would eventually lead to treasure!\n\n\nWire in the tree? omg the angle of the wire is in the tree must point to the next clue!\n\n\nInitials carved into the concrete? Oh! The treasure hider's name!\n\n\ndoor of unknown purpose found at my friend's house? OMG what is IN HERE?!", "score": 19 }, { "body": "I used to think you could grow up to be an animal - a dog or cat, or whatever. Kind of like a career choice?", "score": 16 }, { "body": "This kid on the bus told me that a woman got pregnant \"by gettin' on her knees and suckin a man's penis\". \r\n\r\nIt really did seem logical... I thought \"Of course! That way the digestive system can transport the baby material to the abdominal area\". \r\n\r\nI think I believed that for at least a couple years.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "I thought that I invented division while I lay in bed on the morning of probably my 4th birthday. Although I didn't know it was called division. I'd got one of those talking computers and it really worked for teaching me maths.\n\nI also thought that the world was designed around me, and it was like a Truman Show type thing. Can't remember all the details but it was something like that. Everybody was watching, it doesn't make enough sense to me anymore that I can even explain what I thought.\n\nI also thought that you drove the car solely by placing your hands on the steering wheel. If you removed your hands for an instant the car would screech to a halt. I remember testing this theory by trying pull my mums hands off the wheel. I was astounded when the car didn't even slow down.\n\nAnd yeah when I worked out what indicators on a car did it was a revelation.\n\nI also thought that it was normal to have an angry, aggressive, violent, alcoholic father figure. So I was amazed when hanging out at my friends places I found relatively happy families where there were only very small \"issues\". I thought they were just extremely lucky to have one of the few families in the world like that. I also didn't understand why they didn't want to come stay over at my place.\n\nAlso couldn't comprehend the endlessness of space, and I just had this image in my head of a red brick and mortar wall at the end of it. But then what was behind the wall? This really blew my mind, still scares me a little to think of it.\n\nTo this day I have one last conundrum that I stumbled upon as a kid, I think how come I have my consciousness in this one body, I wonder how, out of the billions of other people, I ended up with this one body, at this one moment in time. Argh it's getting too complicated to voice now. I'll leave you lot with this rather large post as my first after months of reading. Cheers guys, you are a pack of legends.\n\nEdit: Two more, I thought adults were a completely different species to children. Got lots of reasons for this. I didn't understand how I would be able to grow so big when I couldn't even see any noticeable change in my size. Also, my parents exhibited some strange behaviour that I just could not fathom. They are pretty crazy though.\n\nI thought the words \"New Zealand\" and \"Museum\" were the same. I thought the museum was a building containing information and artifacts solely about New Zealand.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "I thought when flying over the states you could see the words on them, and that grocery store employees lived at the store.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "I was fat as long as I could remember. I also wanted to go to the moon so badly. So, I thought that if I kept pigging out, My stomach would get big enough that I could go to the moon.\n\n... well, I was 50lbs overweight when I was in High School. Now, I'm 20lbs overweight and I'm working out to bring it back down to normal. ", "score": 15 }, { "body": "After watching The Neverending Story, I thought that everything I did and said was recorded in my own life novel. I guess it's kind of like The Truman Show Delusion, except there were no cameras. When I got bored, I would sometimes say something really random so whoever reads the novel would be confused. For instance:\n\n\"Since the day was warm and bright, she went outside to play with her Skip It. \"Booger monkies!\" she yelled. She then decided to go for a bike ride with her sister...\"", "score": 15 }, { "body": "My uncle (not my memory) grew up in a Jewish neighborhood (himself Jewish, although not very religious). As a kid they went to barbers who were all survivors of the Holocaust, with corresponding tattoos. His conclusion was: All barbers are numbered. ", "score": 15 }, { "body": "I was terrified at that thought that I would never be able to recall very insignificant things again. Ex. food, songs, discontinued product packaging.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "Until about 7th grade I thought that Lamarck's theory was actually how evolution worked.\n\nWhen I found out about natural selection I was in total disbelief until I realized just how long a \"few billion years\" is.\n\nAnd just recently I found out about epigenetics and I'm still muttering to myself in the fetal position.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I thought that when you reached a certain age, you got a \"check book\" and pretty much had access to unlimited money by just writing checks. Was confused for a long time about my parents not being able to afford things.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "i used to think that there was a right-foot-sock and a left-foot-sock and i would always ask my dad if my socks were on the right feet.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "When I was a kid, I was sure that the world of my adulthood would be a sane, peaceful place. After all, no-one in *my* generation would be dumb enough to perpetuate anything like the Cold War, pollution, bigotry, etc.\r\n\r\nI'm 41 now.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I thought that my toys came to life and night and played with other toys that I didn't have. So I'd always try to wake up in the middle of the night because if you caught a toy you didn't have you'd get to keep it.\n\nAlso Bloody Mary. We'd heard that she was afraid of water so if you summoned her (Say her name while spinning in front of a mirror with the lights out at midnight) you could capture her. We all hid supersoakers behind our backs and one person hid in the shower. When she came we were going to open the medicine cabinet with the mirror on the front and shoot water from the showerhead at the back of the mirror. Then we'd shoot the front of the mirror with our supersoakers and trap her. Then she'd have to grant us wishes.\n\nWe learned that not all awesome plans work.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "My sister thought that our mom had given birth to everyone in the family, including dad and the dog.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "When I was really little I thought that the reflections in puddles and ponds, etc. were actually showing other worlds...and if I stepped into the puddle, I'd disappear into that other world. Scared the crap out of me.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "I didn't think there was any way people could tell which direction I was looking in. I was aware people moved their eyes (and wondered how actually), but never made the connection.\n\n", "score": 11 }, { "body": "I remember when I was small I thought, \"Wow, I'm really lucky to have been born in the US, because it's the best country in the world! I bet other kids in other countries really wish they could have been born here!\"\n\nNow I rather wish I'd been born somewhere a little more sensible.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Honest to God, I thought [Dopey](http://img2.allposters.com/images/ADVG/681.jpg) from [Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs](http://www.coloringweb.com/wp-content/uploads/snow-white-seven-dwarfs8.jpeg) was based on me. \r\n\r\nMy parents made a joke in passing to that effect, and I believed them. They didn't actually think I would take them seriously and went about whatever they were doing. I held onto the notion for about 4 years. \r\n\r\nSeriously, it's kind of cool thinking you're famous. I would see something about Snow White and think, \"Yeah, that one dwarf is me.\" I can remember telling some of my 2nd grade classmates about it with such conviction that they believed me. ", "score": 10 }, { "body": "My friend thought he had a superpower and could move the planet slightly left by closing his left eye and slightly right by closing his right eye. He kept his powers a secret so no one explained it to him. He believed this for way too long...", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I know a black girl who used to think that when there are no other black people in a shop, the white people don't have to pay.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I used to think cartoons on TV were just humans filming the day to day activities of all the cartoon characters.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "When I was younger, I lived in the Mojave Desert. I remembered hearing something about \"isolated showers\" all the time. When I walked home from school, I'd often get sprinkled with water. Unable to determine the source of the water, I figured that's what isolated showers were--rain with no clouds. Imagine my disappointment when I realized the water was coming from someone's sprinklers.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I had really curly hair as a child, and my mom used to tell me that eating my bread crusts would make it straight.\n\nI also believed that if you peed in a pool it would turn colors. Apparently this is a lie, and I only found out about a week ago from Reddit :\\", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I was absolutely positive that my dad was going to be the president of the United States, for no other reason than being my dad. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Mr. Roger's had an episode where he explained that boys grew up to be men and girls grew up to be women. Something about the way he said it made me strongly distrust him, so I thought my penis was going to shrink into my body cavity until it was a vagina. (Younger me didn't have a very strong grasp of female anatomy.) ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Having observed how batteries were needed to run Radio we had, and not sure what they were for, I used to think the batteries contained pre-recorded programs and **news**. I always used to wonder how they knew stuff before it happened. \n\nI used to think that planes emitted all the air around us, as exhaust from their jet enjines. It seemed reasonable because air moved leaves and trees, and I saw planes flying much faster. \n\nOn watching historical dramas on television, I used to think that the camera crew were actually *present* when the story/epic happened. \n\nThe same if I caught a movie on it; I used to think that the actors were acting out the movie in the studio right then.\n\n", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I used to think that the whole word was black and white till colour television was invented.\n\nI also used to think that if everyone on the world clapped their hands at the same time the world would explode.\n\nAnd I still beleive that the pyramids are landing sites for aliens.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "When I used to go to sleep, I could hear my heartbeat as my ear pressed on the pillow. I was convinced that there was a little man in the pillow walking through it to get up to my ear, at which point he would climb into my head and mess my shit up. I had to sleep facing up.\n\nI also used to think that, whenever I was in a car, the moon would follow us whereever we went. It did kindov look like that.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I suppose this might be kinda logical for a little kid, so it's not *entirely* my fault.\n\n\nMy father has a brother (my uncle) named Rick. My mother has a sister (my aunt) who married a guy named... Rick. Two different guys... just coincidence. We lived in New Orleans at the time and my dad's brother lived in Seattle (to this day I've never met him face-to-face). My mom's sister and her husband lived in New Orleans and we got together regularly.\n\n\nSo throughout my childhood my dad would talk about his brother (my uncle Rick) and my mom would talk about her sister's husband (my other uncle Rick). \n\n\nSo I just assumed that my mom had married my dad, and my mom's sister had married my dad's brother. So, my childhood logic assumed that once two people got married, their brothers and sisters had to marry each other. \n\n\n\nIt wasn't until one time my brother and I got in a fight. We were little kids; my mom broke us up and asked me why were fighting. My brother... all of 8 years old... had this girl he was friends with. I was pissed because I hated the girl's older sister and didn't want to have to marry her.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "As a child eating a slice of peppered ham I believed that the black spot of pepper were actually poisen from an evil pig that was always watching me and trying to kill me. I used to scream 'I'm not afraid of you!' out the window so that he could hear me. bad times. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Before all the bigots get to it: \"That there was a magical man in the sky that made the world! AHUR\"\nseriously though, I know the magic man doesn't have a gender now.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "You know how sometimes when you switch from really bright surroundings to dark ones, you can see these teeny tiny little specks, which everything seems to be made out of? Little coloured specks which makes it looks like the darkness is made out of every single bright colour in the world? Sometimes they morph into amazing fireworks. For the longest time I was pretty sure those were atoms. I only disbelieve it now because I've been told so many times that it's impossible to see atoms. Still don't know what those are. I've always spent a lot of time at night with my eyes shut just watching the firework display. I used to try and make the fireworks blue because the blue ones were the prettiest, but I couldn't control it very well. \r\nI also didn't realize that there was any world at all outside of places I had visited or where I lived. When people talked about holidays to places I'd never been, I thought they were all completely different places, like the moon, which didn't have trees or houses or other people already living in them. \r\nAdditionally I was pretty sure that people only pretended to have proper lives. I figured that as soon as I couldn't see people (and if they were on the phone to me, etc., then it was automated), they sort of went into stand-by mode and just stopped having the conversation they were in the middle of, and breathing and such, until I reappeared. Anything that had changed in a place (or somebody's appearance) since I was last there I was convinced just happened automatically. This lead me to thinking that I could trick people into going into 'stand-by' by pretending I was going up to my bedroom at night whilst secretly standing outside the living room door, waiting. I just figured that these people must have supersonic sensors which meant they could only switch off when I was /really/ gone. \r\nI was an odd kid.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I didn't understand how traffic lights work, and thought that all the lights were red at the same time, then all green together. Was always a bit frightening for me, since I thought that everyone went at once and just tried not to hit each other. ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I used to think that when people died in the movies they really died but they just used old people that were going to die soon anyway.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Me and my two brothers collected Micro Machines. For those of you that are ignorant of what they are, they are small toy cars, and there was about a million different types of Micro Machines. It was our unified undying quest to collect every single motherfucking Micro Machine on planet earth. But we had no cash flow and planned out each others birthday/Christmas/St.Patricks day gifts to get as many different Micro Machines as possible for 3 small human beings.\n\nOur quest had no end in site until one day - we buried the most favorite Micro Machine all 3 of us possessed, I can still picture it in our minds, it was a blue Porsche Boxer, we buried it about 4 feet in the ground with the concrete hopes of it sprouting a tree that would in turn give us all the Micro Machines the universe possessed. We watered the area for about a month straight and waited till the spring...nothing. \n\nDreams crushed, we lost our favorite Micro Machine, lesson learned.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I lived next to a really busy street and used to get really mad because cars would either completely run the stops signs or come no where near a full stop. I couldn't understand why it was so hard to come to a complete stop, or at least reasonably close to one, so I vowed to always do so when I was older. Now that I drive I don't think I have come to a full stop at a stop sign without being forced to for at least 5 years.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "i thought that if you broke your crt television and crawled inside, you would come out in disneyland. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I saw the movie Lost In Space and I remember being very frustrated while trying to understand it. Because I was not sure on how people could make a movie on something that has not happened yet... (also my age is showing..) Oddly enough when I watched Power Rangers I knew that to be fiction, I think I thought Lost In Space was real because my parents watched it and they did not watch cartoons with me, and thus kids watch fiction and adults watch non-fiction...", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Until age 4 or so I assumed that individual airplane passengers had to parachute out of the aircraft as they flew over their destination. After all, everyone wasn't going to the same place, right? ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I was 12 and I had a huge breakthrough in social studies class. War should be fought with rubber bullets.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I thought that the little table pizza comes with was for mice to have a nice family dinner while eating at the \"table\" ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "When I was about 6 or 7 years old I was told the story of Adam and Eve in Sunday school. I imagined that, since we were all made from dirt, we all has rocks and sticks and bugs and worms inside our skin.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Canada's only export was maple syrup. Infact, Canada could not manufacture anything but maple syrup, and had to import everything from elsewhere, including non-maple syrup food items.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I thought every inanimate object could feel. I would try to help the floor out by sitting on a chair, but I would quickly realize that the chair would be hurting. I would then jump up in the air to help it, but that would only hurt the floor more as I landed. Eventually, I simply gave up, and resigned myself to a world of hurt.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I used to believe there were people out there who were in charge and knew what they were doing. It's kind of scary when you suddenly realize no one is really driving this car. But also cool because you can step up and do it yourself.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "When I was younger, I was told by my school and parents that when I died it would actually be great because you would go to 'Heaven' and have snowball fights on clouds while eating caramel bars etc. \nFor a good month I lay in bed looking forward to my own death. When I realised that the whole thing was just a half hearted sham by my atheist parents and some bad schooling I was pretty devastated. I then spent the next few months quaking with fear all night, terrified at my impending death and the suffocating, eternal blackness of reality hit home.\n\nAlso, on the subject of death, when even younger still I thought that when people were buried, they could be contacted by say, lifting up the floorboards and shouting loudly.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "[I thought America was the land of opportunity](http://www.jmooneyham.com/is-there-anywhere-to-go-but-down-in-america.html), and [the best country in the world](http://www.my-wild-side.com/america-number-one.html), as well as [all of history](http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa.html).", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I used to think that when I saw my reflection in the bottom of a cup, it was really ET staring back at me from another dimension.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Oh and the first time I saw subtitles (closed-captioning I think you call it in the states), I thought it was my Mum typing instructions for the actors on TV.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I believes Racism didn't exist anymore, Sexism would never be a problem for me, and if you were working for the government (congressman/senator) you must have been smart.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I used to think there was a secret message written on the side-view mirror of our car that no one else noticed. I couldn't read yet, but didn't want to ask an adult what it said because then they would have the secret, too. Needless to say, once I learned to read I was very let down.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I use to think gushers would actually turn my head into a giant fruit so i never ate them. But now that i realize they don't, THEY ARE SO BOMB!", "score": 4 }, { "body": "You know the memorials you occasionally see on the side of the road where an accident has been? I used to assume that the accident was caused by running into the inconveniently placed white cross.\n\nI had a similar theory about those radio towers with lights on top--they are obviously there so that airplanes won't run into them.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I used to watch Bozo the Clown show on Chicago's WGN and at the end the audience would walk past a stationary camera and wave at the camera while looking into it. I was pretty sure they were looking and waving at me. I was having no part of this. I remember peeking out from behind the couch until this waving business ended.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "When I was little, I wasn't sure whether cars were driving on the roads, or the cars were stationary and the roads simply guided them to where they needed to go... when I tried picturing this on a larger scale I just thought of the world as a ball with lots of little conveyor belts spinning all around it to take people in their vehicles wherever they needed to go. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "-I thought one's poop was stored in one ass-cheek and pee was stored in the other.\n\n-I thought people who spoke languages other than English just had some sort of mental thing that translated their languages into English once they heard it.\n\n-I thought lesbians had sex by scissoring, but this was way before that South Park episode made this idea famous.\n\n-I thought that for certain countries which are on the other side of the world from the U.S., gravity caused the people there to touch the world with their heads instead of their feet, and their feet were up in the air. I don't know how they were supposed to move around though...", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I thought humans lived inside of the Earth, like inside of a snow globe, and planes were used to reach the top parts.\n\n\n\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I used to watch Johnny Quest, and James Bond movies, and thought it would only be a matter of time before I had my own Jet Pack. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "When I was little and my parents would talk about how there was no TV, electricity, etc etc in the \"old days\", I always thought there was some distinct time where we stopped living in black and white shacks and all moved into normal houses. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "When I was little, I thought of reincarnation all on my own. I used to think that people's souls would be born in a new body after their old body died, but they would have no recollection of their old body. I told my friend about this and he agreed with me. I thought it was strange, until years later, I had realized that he was Buddhist. Today, I am atheist and do not believe in reincarnation.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "when i was really young i though to get a girl pregnant you had to pee inside her. then when i got a bit older i thought that your balls came out of your urethra and grew into a baby inside a girls stomach.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I always wondered what would happen if you took a hollow sphere made of one-way glass, (with the reflective side on the inside surface) and shot a laser into it.\n\nI still wonder about it, except now I assume the mirror is \"perfect\" and has zero light loss.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I believed that if i would finish mario,the nintendo would drop off money as my older brother said...", "score": 3 }, { "body": "When I was in HS my physics teacher told us a story about his two sons. One of them was adopted, and was darker skinned than his adoptive family, and the other boy was a couple years older and his and his wife's biological child. When they were both under 5, the older brother apparently thought his younger brother was so dark because he drank so much chocolate milk. lol.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I thought I could get all the He-Man toys if I prayed hard enough. I just never prayed hard enough because I didn't want to share them with my brother.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I thought that when camera angles changed on TV shows that the actors stood really still while the camera was turned off, moved and turned on again. And when they made a mistake, they started the scene over from the mistake and the actors all got into the same positions again. I was amazed by their abilities to stand so still and considered this one of the more difficult parts of being an actor.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "One day, I believe I was in second grade, I asked my mother who \"Richard Stands\" was? And she said \"who?\" so I replied, \"You know, the guy from the Pledge of Allegiance.\" \n\n....ya know as in 'for which it stands'.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Not really me as a kid, but it reminded me of what my niece believed. Her pet duck she had died, and she thought that after they die, they then live on the moon. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I remember having heated arguments with my father when he tried to tell me how the Muppets on Sesame Street aren't alive. I refused to believe it, since such a nuanced character can't possibly be fake.\n\nMuppets are still more real to me than some people are :-)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I was dazzled about how they were able to put up powerlines without being killed doing it. So I thought they used old people who were going to die soon anyway for it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "i thought that everyone was born a certain age and never got older. like, i thought my mom was born \"mommy age\" and my grandma was born \"grandma age,\" and i just happened to be born a little kid (i was around 2 or 3)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "My parents took me to an Olympic training facility one time, then they got me a bike for my birthday (within a couple weeks of that trip) and I thought they wanted me to be an Olympic bicyclist, so I rode my bike up and down the street as fast as I could and was certain that they would tell people to come watch me so I would be famous. I was really disappointed when I learned that the Olympics doesn't work that way. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I expect that what really changes from era to era is only the trendiest top-40-type music. A song like \"Disco Duck\" comes and goes in weeks, but there are a dozen Billie Holiday songs that will survive forever.\n\nI'm almost 50, and all good music now just sounds like good music to me. I am aware of the vintage of older music, but it doesn't come with \"quaintness.\" Similarly, even though much of whatever music is currently trendy sounds cacophonous and vapid, not all of it is like that.\n\nMoreover, it's important to remember that most of the music of *all* eras sounds cacophonous and vapid. It is easier to pick out the truly great music of the past because we've had much longer to sift it through our cultural filters. This is not so with current music, which is all new. We simply haven't had time to determine whether it truly has enduring qualities or not.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I would like to introduce Cyndi Lauper to the high school girls here in China. I have no idea what their reaction to her would be.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Absolutely not! Many of the bands I listen to (Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, The Flower Kings, etc) were active in these decades, and even more contemporary bands have been influenced by these sounds.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "A lot of it you might attach to the progression of recording technology and the quality of the sound. This may impact your perception of the \"quaintness\" of sound.\n\nThere are a lot of bands now that are taking a lot of influences from old folk music, and sounds from the 70's and 80's as well.\n\nWithin the last 5 years or so there has been this resurgence of this taste for '80's music, a form of nostalgia i suppose from the 20 somethings generation. See hipsters, etc. Personally I cant stand it. I have been hearing 80's music on the radio since i was born in the 80's. I am so sick of it.\n\nWhy cant we play good new music from this generation, and play the older stuff when it fits, maybe on its own 'history' music station? Play some for context, when it fits, but please, stop playing music from the 80's cause its not relevant. Let this era be heard! What was so great about the 80's anyway that we need to stay there? Really?\n\nnew good music is out there, you just need to find it. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I've seen them live probably 6 times in the early 90's....Honestly, I was out after Ragnarok....But not I'm curious!", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm Muslim and I wear the headscarf. I think most airports would accomodate us and have a woman view us through the scanner. I think a lot of non-Muslim women would prefer a woman as well. This sucks though cause now not only will all Muslims get singled out and further questioned but now they'll get to see us naked too.", "score": 37 }, { "body": "I grew up as a Muslim, but I was never forced to wear my hijab (head scarf) by any of my family members. Although I no longer consider myself a Muslim, I can still say that Muslim women, like my mother for instance, would probably avoid traveling on airplanes for that very reason. Modesty is greatly stressed in Islam.\n\nHowever, I wouldn't doubt that that would be the case for many other people--merely because it impedes on any sort of privacy, whether being for religious reasons or not.", "score": 29 }, { "body": "Im Muslim.. Its a good thing we dont have those scanners anywhere near here (Middle East). The only requirement would be that the person should be a woman or else it would be completely forbidden.", "score": 15 }, { "body": "I feel like asking specifically muslim women is a little narrow minded. Im sure there are women (and men) of any religion who feel strongly about someone looking through their clothes.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Personally, I don't think they deserve any special treatment. If you want to travel, you should be treated the same way as everyone else. They should have the option to forego the scanner for a thorough pat-down, same as everyone else. ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "As long as the employees are women, they issues would be the same for Islam as everyone else. Women can see women naked in Islam.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "As with body pat downs and clothing checks in all western airports I have been through, men will check men and women will check women. This is normal for both Muslims and non Muslims, why would there be an issue?", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Make an open wireless network, turn leeching neighbor's internet upside down.\n\nhttp://www.ex-parrot.com/peter/upside-down-ternet.html", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "You can already manipulate it; by creating enough matter. With that said, gravity is the most interesting area of research at the moment (to me, anyway) and you may see that dark matter and dark energies are shown not to even exist.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "It might be possible, but it is such a weak force that i don't imagine it would be useful for us. Magnetic force and electric force have fields that can be directed, but gravity permeates everything omnidirectionally, we wouldn't be able to harness it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Actually, I have heard some [predictions](http://www.thechangelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/hover-board-bttf2.jpg) that we should be able to do this as early as 2015.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I would set the combination to [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiyZgXF1CDY&feature=related).", "score": 15 }, { "body": "There was a comic I saw on the Internet once about a pianist who had such a lock inside his vault to protect his most valuable items (as well as a normal keypad lock on the outside of his vault). Burglars broke into his home, and they broke his hand while torturing him for the password to the keypad. Then the piano lock flips down, and they ask for the password. To their dismay, he responded \"Moonlight Sonata.\"\n\nSadly, I've not been able to find this, or I would have posted it here.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "You... *kinda* can! If you have a keypad that makes regular dialtone sounds, 3212333 plays Mary Had a Little Lamb!", "score": 10 }, { "body": "That would be great until you come home trashed at 3 am and end up playing funky town instead of unlocking the door.", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "I don't know about favorite, but [Harrison Bergeron](http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html) by Kurt Vonnegut has to be up there.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Anything by Ray Bradbury or Phillip K. Dick - I just saw that they are publishing his complete early short stories in hardback.\n\nMy favorite short story by Ray Bradbury is [There Will Come Soft Rains](http://www.gladdemusic.com/raybradbury-there%20will%20come%20soft%20rains.htm) and collection of shorts would be The Martian Chronicles. A favorite of Philip K. Dick's would be [The Days of Perky Pat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Days_of_Perky_Pat)... We Can Remember It For You Wholesale... Roog... too many to mention actually. I have a moldy paperback of [The Best of Philip K. Dick](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Philip_K._Dick) that I have re-read dozens of times.\n\nHonorable mentions: Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, C. M. Kornbluth and John Brunner", "score": 9 }, { "body": "[I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html)\n\nSorry if that site's slow, it's the only copy I could find.\n\nThat story scared the shit out of me, but it's amazingly good.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Everything written by [Ted Chiang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang). You can find a few of the stories online and a most of them in [Stories of Your Life and Others](http://books.google.com/books?id=xa_wbcnyKXMC&dq=Stories+of+Your+Life+and+Others).", "score": 8 }, { "body": "[\"The Cold Equations\"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations) by Tom Godwin is one of the classics.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I am shocked that I am the first to mention it, but \n\"—All You Zombies—\" by Heinlein.  \n\nhttp://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html", "score": 7 }, { "body": "If you don't mind novella-length works, [True Names](http://web.archive.org/web/20051127010734/http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename.html) by Vernor Vinge is an absolute classic.\n\n[The collected works of Sam Hughes](http://qntm.org/?fiction), e.g, [\"Asteroid McAlmont\"](http://qntm.org/?mcalmont). Note that the first subsection, \"Fine Structure\", is still being serialized. (He also wrote the well-known [guide to destroying the earth](http://qntm.org/?destroy).)\n\n[The Seasons of the Ansarac](http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/seasons_of_ansarac.html) by Ursula K. Le Guin.\n\nPlus almost anything by Ted Chiang, Greg Egan, Clarke or Asimov, as already mentioned.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I have a lot of old SF short story books from the '50s -'80s and these are some of my favorites. Wikipedia or Amazon links where available, as I haven't found these online... or I'm too lazy to look too hard. Author links if nothing else.\n\n* [Riders of the Purple Wage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_of_the_Purple_Wage) by Philip José Farmer.\n\n* [Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Considered_as_a_Helix_of_Semi-Precious_Stones) by Samuel R. Delany\n\n* [Too Soon to Die](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Godwin) by Tom Godwin.\n\n* [Neutron Star](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_Star_%28short_story%29) by Larry Niven.\n\n* [Flowers for Algernon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon) by Daniel Keyes (it won a Hugo, so while not very science fiction-y when compared to some other stuff it is a great story) There is a full length novel as well. Everyone has probably already read it.\n\n* [The Big Front Yard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Front_Yard) by Clifford D. Simak\n\n* [The Star](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28short_story%29) by Arthur C Clarke.\n\n* [First Contact](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_%28novelette%29) by Murray Leinster\n\n* [Arena](http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/brown-f/arena10.html) - actual story link! - by Frederic Brown\n\n* [The Game of Rat and Dragon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Rat_and_Dragon) by Cordwainer Smith. Also worth checking out [Scanners Live in Vain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_live_in_vain)\n\n* [Twilight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell) (no, not THAT Twilight) by John W. Campbell\n\n* [Descending](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Disch) by Thomas Disch\n\n* [The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven and Other Lost Songs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Scholz) by Carter Scholz\n\n* [A Pail of Air](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Leiber) by Fritz Leiber. There is a short story collection of the same name; I'm referring to the actual story.\n\n* [Transstar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_E._Banks) by Raymond E. Banks\n\nThere's also a great old story called \"Long Shot\", but for the life of me I can't figure out which of my books has it. No luck with Google tracking it down. I'm thinking that if I enter something completley random in Cuil I'll have better luck finding it.\n\nI also like many of the stories in William Gibson's \"Burning Chrome\". \n\nEDIT - Formatting.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Every year I pick up the new [Year's Best Science Fiction](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312551053/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0312336608&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0DQ77XY251VGZJ60TKNP). I usually discover a new author whose novel work I can dive into. The most recent was Alastair Reynolds. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "[Microcosmic God](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God) by Theodore Sturgeon is one my favorites that is lesser known.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "\"And He Built a Crooked House,\" Heinlein\n\n\"The Last Question,\" Asimov\n\n\"The Nine Billion Names of God,\" Clarke ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "The Day the Saucers Came by Neil Gaiman is refreshing:\n\nhttp://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2009/01/day-saucers-came-neil-gaiman.html", "score": 3 }, { "body": "\"Bears Discover Fire\" Terry Bisson\r\n\r\n\"The Gentle Seduction\" Marc Stiegler\r\n\r\n\"The Man Who Traveled in Elephants\" Heinlein\r\n\r\n\"Fermi and Frost\" Fred Pohl\r\n\r\n\"All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past\" Howard Waldrop\r\n\r\n\"Grandpa\" James H Schimtz\r\n\r\n\"A Saucer Full of Loneliness\" Theodore Sturgeon\r\n\r\n\"The Man Who Rowed Columbus Ashore\" Harlan Ellison\r\n\r\n\"The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth\"\r\n\r\n\"The Last Defender of Camelot\" Roger Zelazney\r\n\r\n\"Troll Bridge\" Terry Pratchett\r\n\r\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Some normally forgotten stories when these things are discussed. \n\n* \"Day Million\" by Fred Pohl.\n* \"The Girl who was Plugged in\" by James Tiptree, Jr.\n* \"The Star\" by Arthur C. Clarke\n* \"The Bicentennial Man\" by Isaac Asimov. \n* \"Solution Unsatisfactory\" by Robert A. Heinlein.\n* \"Blood Music\" by Greg Bear.\n* \"Good News from the Vatican\" by Robert Silverberg.\n* \"Killdozer\" by Theodore Sturgeon.\n* \"Second Variety \" by Philip K. Dick. \n* '\"Repent, Harlequin!\" Said the Ticktockman' by Harlan Ellison.\n* \"Inconstant Moon\" by Larry Niven. \n* \"A Rose For Ecclesiastes\" by Roger Zelazny.\n* \"He Walked Around the Horses\" by H. Beam Piper\n* \"The Hemingway Hoax\" by Joe Haldeman. \n* \"Sidewise in Time\" by Murray Leinster.\n* \"The Meeting\" by Cyril M. Kornbluth and Fred Pohl. \n* \"The Men In The Walls\" by William Tenn. \n* \"The Highest Treason\" by Randall Garrett. \n* \"Nerves\" by Lester del Rey. \n* \"Black Destroyer\" by A.E. van Vogt.\n* \"Cloak of Aesir\" by Don A. Stuart (pen name of John W. Campbell, Jr). \n* \" The Totally Rich\" by John Brunner.\n* \" The Insane Ones\" by J. G. Ballard.\n* \" The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity\" by Fritz Leiber.\n* \" Fondly Fahrenheit\" by Alfred Bester.\n* \" Let's Be Frank\" by Brian W. Aldiss.\n* \"Aristotle and the Gun\" by L. Sprague de Camp.\n* \"Aye, and Gomorrah\" by Samuel R. Delany.\n* \"A Martian Odyssey\" by Stanley G. Weinbaum.\n\nI know there are a lot of others out there. But this was quick. (Oh, and I know \"The Star\" is a normal selection for such lists. I just couldn't think of another Clarke story that wasn't as equally as famous right now. So, I went with it.). \n\nEdit: Later I added a ~-dozen more stories. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Oh man JA had the best ctf mode in any game ever and a great pug community, but its dead now. \n\nThere's probably still a couple of servers left with 12 year olds saber dueling ad-nauseam, but forget it if you want anything remotely competitive or if you want to use anything other than a saber, those days are gone.", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Damn. Posts like this make me glad I'm British. We get more freaked out when we realise we're speaking to a *non*-atheist here.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Even better is when you find a well read Liberal Christian and you can discuss Joseph Campbell, and other religions. My neighbor is a pastor and he once told me over coffee, \"It didn't quite happen the way it's laid out in Genesis did it?\" That really gets my ears and mouth going whereas talking to another Atheist it's more often a contest of who has the better insult of the day about religion. But that's fun too!", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": ">Edit: Dammit, I didn't notice what sub this was posted under. -1 internet for me :-(\n\n\n>Edit 2: Wow, I wasn't expecting that response. Thanks everyone for the karma. If anyone is truly interested in getting more in-depth I am happy to help, just send me a message.\n\n\n\nOk, I am no engineer but I am a huge car geek and have done my share of work on cars not to mention tons of research to design and build my own mods for modern computer controlled engines. \n\nYour first step is to read and research. A LOT! Look at modern cars, look at project cars around the web and just get ideas. Also research what makes a good frame, how things like wheel base can effect cornering and safety. Also you will want to do a good bit of research on combustion engines (if that is what you plan to use for a power plant) and the physics surrounding them. There is a lot more things you will come across and will want to research and SHOULD research I am just covering a few basics. \n\nA couple good sites I like are:\n[GrapeApe Racing](http://www.grapeaperacing.com/) - A collection of decent technical articles\n\n[60degreev6](http://60degreev6.com) - a site dedicated to GM 60 degree oriented engines. While not likely what you may be interested in for a power plant the members of this community go to a level of detail in their discussions about these engines that you will rarely see. Even if you could care less about using a GM 660 engine there is a ton of good general tech info you can find here. \n\nOne of your biggest choices will be the frame. Do you build one (some people do) or do you buy a kit (there are many available)? Think about what size car you want, what conditions you will be driving it under and what your needs are for both making it street-able as well as safe in a crash (we never like to have them but you need to be prepared).\n\nFinally be prepared for way more work, effort and cost than you anticipate. You are at a slight disadvantage in this project as you are a relative noob to the scene. As you research you will want to also make some friends at local performance shops, mechanics, machine shops and auto parts stores. Many of the people that work at these places have been working on cars for many years (in some cases many decades) and their knowledge (and hook-ups if they like you) can be invaluable. \n\nI would also recommend hitting your local drag track, race or SCCA event during times when the regular public can run their stuff. You will find a great deal of experienced professionals and shade-tree mechanics that you can get ideas from not to mention most of these people are nice folks and are big about community. Play your cards right and you might find you have free or discount parts coming your way as well as a number of pro/semi-pro folks that are willing to spend a day with you for some pizza, beer and car talk.\n\nI would love to get into more detail but I could ramble on in any direction and it would be best if I had a better idea as to what your goals are and some of your ideas. \n\nYou are welcome to contact me privately if you wish and I would be happy to provide information based on more details.\n\nBest of luck.\n\n", "score": 497 }, { "body": "I'd like you to build me a car. I'm sure it's very easy (you just need to put together some junk, how hard can that be?), so I give you one hour. If you don't have completed it by then I'll tell everyone you suck at engineering.\n\nI want my car to have four wheels, or \"steering wheels\" as you techies call them. Maybe three. It may not consume more than 10 windshields. That's important, my 3 year old cousin who knows more about cars than you do says so. I already have a pile of wood and I insist you use that as your only material. \n\nWhen you actually manage to meet these goals I'll get angry, say that I wanted a motorcycle and show you a picture of an umbrella.", "score": 108 }, { "body": "Honda sells a good robust framework. You can engineer whether there's AC or AT, as well as the interior and exterior colors. Of course some people will say this isn't really engineering or even design, but some quick work replacing the default Honda logo with one of your own should convince many. HTH!", "score": 50 }, { "body": "Use the principles of Agile Car Design(tm). \n\n1. First, create robots to test all of the functions that your car will have. \n2. Then, attach four bicycle wheels to an old bed frame. This may not have all the features you wanted from your car, but it's important to have \"rolling metal\" as fast as possible. This gives you something to show to your customers. \n3. Now, set loose your testing robots on your car. Note which tests fail. \n4. Now you know which features you need to build. \n5. Find a partner, and handcuff your right wrists together. He is your car building buddy. You will work together by alternating one person building with his left hand, and the other telling him what to do. This is a cheaper and better substitute for designs and CAD models. \n6. Now, working with your partner, improvise ways to make your car pass all your robot tests. At no point in this process should your car be undriveable. \n\n\n\n", "score": 29 }, { "body": "Dear sirs I am also interested in building a car if you solve this problem pls send me the drivetrains", "score": 24 }, { "body": "Dear sir, \n\nI am represent team of best Indian car builders. We having over 300 years of experience build car. We are making for you best car and to your exact specification. ", "score": 22 }, { "body": "It would really be better to build separate pieces that can fit together, in case you later want to make it a motorbike or a backup generator for your home.\n\nWhenever possible try to follow the UNIX philosophy of having each part do one thing well.\n\nHell, look how many cars (televisions, blenders, etc.) are thrown away each year when they could be seamlessly upgraded if the proper design was followed.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "Ok, so first, you have to decide if you're going to purchase a pre-existing chassis, or if you're going to build one from scratch. Since you're building a custom ride, not just modifying an existing car design, I'd scratch build. That said, buy a CAD program. It will save your life. \n\nNext, you need an engine and accompanying drivetrain. May I suggest purchasing a used Mercedes-Benz engine with a manual transmission? A diesel will give you superior mileage and power. Then, find a drivetrain. There are thousand of places you can find these. Hook it up to your engine.\n\nThen, place the first two components together. Now that your chassis and wheelbase have been combined, you have the basics down. Now we need to work on body, interior, exhaust, and paint.\n\nFor the body, I recommend purchasing sheet metal. Using the new soy-based plastics that Ford uses is complicated. Once again, we're going to use the CAD program. Do a couple designs on there. When you find one that you like, bring the pieces and file of each individual design to a CNC operator. Now that your body pieces have been cut out, put them all together. Weld and rejoice.\n\nThe interior is a bit tricky. You'll have to build around the frame that's already been constructed, so plan out the interior at the same time. This is also where you can have fun. Custom dashboards are relatively easy to construct. I've seen some have all digital, steampunk, LED, futuristic, even Greek style instruments and design. Get comfortable seats. A nice sound system. Sat Nav is expensive, but very nice. And since we want street legal/safe... airbags.\n\nYou'll probably be able to find a nice exhaust system at most junkyards. Find a legal chop-shop. They always have them. If these routes fail you, I suggest going to your local mechanic. Classic and Muscle car mechanics always have a few sets on hand. If they don't they can order or custom fabricate one for you.\n\nNow let's talk performance. That's always been my goal when I work on cars. For an engine, I suggested a used Merc-Benz diesel engine. I suggest using bio-diesel. This should help cut back the cost of building a car. The motor ought to be at least 350 cubic inches. My personal favorite, however, is a V8 427. When you get the engine, swap out its intake for a supercharger. Several reputable dealers sell these. I personally suggest a 2.4 Litre 16:3:1 compression ratio supercharger. This is the same type as the one used in the 2003 Ford GT. It kicks ass. Once you have these, you're looking at a car with roughly... 450 brake horsepower, if my crude napkin math is correct. This is more then enough to outpace anything you'll meet on the road. Of course, you'll have to determine the gearing ratio. You may want to maximize speed, or maybe you'll focus on torque and strength.\n\nAs for a paint job, I suggest black. Maybe with red racing stripes. Or reverse that. Of course, the paint scheme should play off the car's body and unique shaping. Make that decision on your own.\n\nWell, good luck. Please do post pictures when you're done.", "score": 19 }, { "body": " struct Car\r\n {\r\n Wheel m_wheels[4];\r\n Engine m_engine;\r\n Chassis m_chassis;\r\n };\r\n\r\nInstantiate one of these badboys on the heap and take it for a spin.", "score": 15 }, { "body": "For a generic street rod:\n\nMustang II rack and pinion steering\n\n9\" Ford rear end\n\nSmall block Chevy engine\n\nTurbo 400 or 350 transmission.\n\nGet lots of steel and a mig welder. You'll have to rig up something for the brakes.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Nobody builds cars nowadays. You should buy a car factory instead, though it will probably take longer to get it to make a car for you than building it yourself.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I have a chair. I know it can be useful because my cousin uses it all the time. \n\nYou can have it. You'll at least be closer to your goal. Good luck, Im sure you'll make it!", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I'm going to comment in the case this isn't a programming question.\n\nTo start, you're going to need to research your local kit car laws in order to determine what you need to make it road legal. I know NJ requires a windshield and heat guard on the exhaust.\n\nYou're not going to build a car from scratch in a month by yourself with no wrench experience. Also, there are no \"quick tutorials\" for building a car. I'm going to tell you stay away from building from scratch because it's far out of your time line requirement. You're talking about tearing apart a donor, welding your own frame and more. \n\nThere are kits that will cost you about $15,000-20,000 that take 200-300 hours of build depending on your skills and which kit you pick. You will have to dedicate at least 6 hours a day to complete it. You will need some fabrication skills to complete most kits in this price range. I feel this option is also out of your criteria. I can point you in the direction of a Lotus Seven replica kit with no body panels for around $7,000. You're going to need to source your own drive train.\n\nCaterham says 70-80 hours for your first build with one of their kits, I expect it to be at least 100 with no prior wrench experience and by yourself. Caterham kits require no fabrication skills and someone with no wrench experience on cars can supposedly easily complete one. The quality of their kits are reflected in the $30,000 price tag for their lowest end model. Plus you will still need to buy a complete drive train and accessories. Look to spend at least $35,000 minimum.\n\nI don't know much about hot rods. But, from what I understand, you're looking at 1,000 hours worth of build time.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Didn't your employer send you to a six week super duper boot-camp that teaches you all the engineering you need to build a safe, reliable and maintainable automobile?\n\n--\n*I can't belive how few people are missing your sarcasm here.*", "score": 8 }, { "body": "You should just first design a generic piece of metal that can be used for anything. You'll just need to refine this generic piece of metal into more precise pieces when you need something more specific. Assemble, and voila.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Most of building a car is just plugging things into other things. You used to play with Legos as a kid, so you'll probably be able to build simple cars in no time. No Ferraris, obviously, but just something for a small businessman to drive around in. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "This should get you started.\r\n\r\n public abstract class Vehicle\r\n {\r\n public abstract void Accelerate(float amount);\r\n public abstract void Decelerate(float amount);\r\n public abstract void Turn(float amount);\r\n public abstract void Honk(float duration);\r\n }", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Instantiate an automobile factory, of course, then take the first one to roll out the door, then destroy the factory.\r\n\r\nIf **new_car.type_of() == \"Trabant\"**, then garbage collect the car, too, and just take the bus.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Take your bicycle, put the steering wheel in place of the handlebars, go to an appliance store and get a refrigerator box, paint it the color you want your car to be, mount it on the bicycle and you're done. Then eat bacon.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "-Decide on an engine\n-decide on a drivetrain\n- locate mount points with drive train and engine assembled.\n- decide upon front or rear wheel drive\n-continue locating mount points\n-design a basic chassis that will hold the engine and drivetrain in place(preferably using a cad program, if you go to college, your college will possibly have a lab with a few loaded on, talk to a professor about getting a code to access said computers)\n- read up about suspensions, you may not have to identify wheel rate etc, since you will be scavenging parts.\n- check to see what shocks and springs you can get\n- see what wheels you can get (not tyre, wheel, the part the tyre goes on\n- now redesign chassis\n- did your engine come with a radiator? a fan? a fan belt? and alternator? \n-get those if it didn't, get ones that match your engine.\n- redesign chassis to mount all of those\n- now figure out how many people the car will seat? I say go for two\n- don't forget to check that the starter motor exists\n-get seats, break pedals, a clutch, and an accelerator pedal\n- oh did i mention breaks.\n-the list goes on, get back to me when you have all of this done. \n\n\n\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Why don't you just test drive a car from a dealership and download / print out some images of license plates so it appears you own the car?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Take a lookings at this (http://bytes.com/forums/lounge/766958-building-new-vessel-who-wants-help) for informations on how to completings this.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "First, try generating some kind of quantum vacuum fluctuation which expands over the course of billions of years to be a universe. Allow enough time for some of the matter to condense until it supernovas. Allow even more time for the result to cool. Next, start mining for the metals you will need, and forge them into the correct parts for building a car. Once you have done all this, the rest should be fairly straight-forward. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Just like with other people, you can get tired of yourself. What usually helps me is to bite the bullet, let the depression take over and have it tell me what's missing or what I want to miss. You should come out content with yourself and your life goals.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "If its deleted then you've won. You can do it if you feel like your words would be misinterpreted, but you're probably better served just dropping it.", "score": 12 } ]

[ { "body": "Piece of cake.\n\nHi you, I don't want to intrude but I really think that I am starting to like you and I really wonder (?) you like me too.\n\nOr something.\n\n**EDIT:** Got it this time:\n\nHey you. I don't want to intrude but I really think that I am starting to like you already and I (R-word) whether you like me too.\n\nAsk her if there's supposed to be a \"T\" after the last \"Y.\"", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Hello, yokel in drag. Want to immediately buy ingredients required to toast. Interestingly, am sailing tomorrow like Yoko and always I remember why you like my tomatoes. ", "score": 14 }, { "body": "Its an anagram dude.\nIt spells:\n\"my birthday list: wii, tail, dry twat\"\nIts a hint at what she wants for her birthday.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "i can tell you it **ain't** rotated:\n\n* ROT-0: hyidwtibirttiastlyaairwylmt\n* ROT-1: izjexujcjsuujbtumzbbjsxzmnu\n* ROT-2: jakfyvkdktvvkcuvnaccktyanov\n* ROT-3: kblgzwleluwwldvwobddluzbopw\n* ROT-4: lcmhaxmfmvxxmewxpceemvacpqx\n* ROT-5: mdnibyngnwyynfxyqdffnwbdqry\n* ROT-6: neojczohoxzzogyzreggoxcersz\n* ROT-7: ofpkdapipyaaphzasfhhpydfsta\n* ROT-8: pgqlebqjqzbbqiabtgiiqzegtub\n* ROT-9: qhrmfcrkraccrjbcuhjjrafhuvc\n* ROT-10: risngdslsbddskcdvikksbgivwd\n* ROT-11: sjtohetmtceetldewjlltchjwxe\n* ROT-12: tkupifunudffumefxkmmudikxyf\n* ROT-13: ulvqjgvoveggvnfgylnnvejlyzg\n* ROT-14: vmwrkhwpwfhhwoghzmoowfkmzah\n* ROT-15: wnxslixqxgiixphianppxglnabi\n* ROT-16: xoytmjyryhjjyqijboqqyhmobcj\n* ROT-17: ypzunkzszikkzrjkcprrzinpcdk\n* ROT-18: zqavolatajllaskldqssajoqdel\n* ROT-19: arbwpmbubkmmbtlmerttbkprefm\n* ROT-20: bscxqncvclnncumnfsuuclqsfgn\n* ROT-21: ctdyrodwdmoodvnogtvvdmrtgho\n* ROT-22: duezspexenppewophuwwensuhip\n* ROT-23: evfatqfyfoqqfxpqivxxfotvijq\n* ROT-24: fwgburgzgprrgyqrjwyygpuwjkr\n* ROT-25: gxhcvshahqsshzrskxzzhqvxkls", "score": 8 }, { "body": "It says 'I like killing people because it's so much fun, more fun than killing wild game...'. Then it just goes on like that for awhile, but at the bottom it's signed 'The Zodiac Killer', dunno what that's all about.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Hey you, I don't want to intrude, but I really think that I am starting to like you, and ask in return whether you like me too?\n\nEDIT: All the best!", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "sorry to tell you, but the truth is you probably will. i know 4 people that ride ( or rode ) motorcycles. 3 of them have been in bad wrecks. 1 ruined his knee forever.\n\nride a motorcycle long enough, some dumbass out there will do something stupid and you will get hurt or killed.\n\nthat being said, i love motorcycles. used to have a dirt bike as a kid and loved it", "score": 47 }, { "body": "Also, the problem isn't how safely you ride, it's the other drivers on the road. I've worked in public safety for 8 years. And I have picked up more than my fair share of body parts from motorcycle accidents. Road signs slice through arm bones, handlebars tear through femurs, tree limbs disembowel, asphalt opens skulls. Can car accidents be brutal? Sure. But the more violent accidents have always included motorcycles. The lack of restraints, airbags, and a steel cage make you more susceptible to multi system trauma in an accident. ", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Sorry, old bean. Mum sets the rules in mum's house. If you want to ride bikes without anyone bitching in your ear , pay your own way. ", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Here are a couple arguments that I used in the past. \n\n\n* On a motorcycle, there are no blind spots. You can see and hear absolutely everything that's going on around you. The more aware you are of your surroundings, the less likely you will find yourself in trouble.\n* Motorcycles, for the most part, can accelerate and stop faster than most cars. This greatly improves your chances of getting yourself out of dangerous situations.\n\n\nI'm not saying that these will give your mother any piece of mind, because it probably won't. I've been riding for about 3 years and my mom still worries. However, she realizes that I'm an adult, and capable of making my own decisions. \n\n\n**EDIT:** Formatting", "score": 9 }, { "body": "H'ok. I can help you out here. I got my motorcycle license when I was 16, rode a scooter in grade 11 (lame, but efficient), and a motorcycle in grade 12, which I still ride today. Mother was completely against it, Father was for it. So I got one. This last summer a buddy and I rode down to San Francisco and back together (from Canada).\n\nHere's a [document](http://www.icbc.com/road-safety/safety-research/traffic-coll-stats-2007.pdf#Variables._frag_ \"ICBC Traffic Collision Statistics for 2007\") I use for my statistics. \n\n* 44 motorcycle driver deaths. 186181 licensed drivers. **.023633% chance of dying on a motorcycle**.\n* 202 car driver deaths. 2 304 298 licensed car drivers. **.0087662% chance of dying in a car**\n\nSo, yes. Your chances of dying in a motorcycle are about 2.7 times higher than dying in a car. However:\n\n* about 96% of motorcycle driver fatalities, and 100% of motorcycle passenger fatalities occurred on a motorcycle that was speeding. (see figure 11.07)\n* about 97% of motorcycle driver injuries and 93% of motorcycle passenger injuries occurred on a speeding motorcycle. (see figure 11.06)\n* speeding, in this document, is defined as going 40 kph *over* the posted speed limit. E.G. if the speed limit is 60, the driver was going at least 100. \n\nSo, if you don't speed, you are quite safe on a motorcycle. \n\nAlso, motorcycles have a much shorter stopping distance, greater visibility (for the motorcycle driver), greater maneuverability, etc. \n\nMy tips to you:\n\n* Take a course! Driving a motorcycle is much different than a car, and there are like many more things you need to be aware of while riding, and many things you need to be able to do. \n* Everybody on the road is out to get you. Even if that's not technically true, ride like it is: NEVER ride in a vehicle's blind spot. Everybody is going to cut you off, slow down in advance and prepare for it. No, that person doesn't see you. Yes, the vehicle in front of you will slam on their brakes for no apparent reason. The guy next to you will pull into your lane, even though you're right beside him. \n* Get a really good Snell-approved full-face helmet. \n* Get (and wear) a motorcycle-specific **leather** jacket. Fashion jackets will tear and are useless. Motorcycle-specific. Leather. \n* Take a course!\n* Wear good motorcycle boots with ankle support. \n* Get some kevlar jeans, or leather pants. \n* Take a course!\n* Wear leather motorcycle-specific gloves.\n* **Don't speed**. \n* Take a course!\n* Don't buy a crotch rocket. These bikes are designed for a track, and that's all they are good for. They aren't comfortable, all they do well is go fast. They're suicide machines. Any motorcycle you buy with an engine >= 500cc will go more than fast enough for any legal driving. \n* To second [sampaulson](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/al47a/how_do_i_convince_my_mother_im_not_going_to_crash/c0i5dn5), read [Proficient Motorcycling](http://www.amazon.com/Proficient-Motorcycling-Ultimate-Guide-Riding/dp/1889540536), and its sequel. Excellent books. I found them in my library.\n\n", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I had a motorcycle for only 3 and 1/2 years before my accident. I'm glad I'm still alive. I don't ride anymore. My shoulder and elbow are still fucked up from it, I can't even throw a ball for my dog to fetch without my arm hurting.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Moto-rider here...\n\nand I think you guys have it all wrong.\n\nI get sick of hearing the negative comments that go along with, \"Whoa. You ride a motorcycle?!\" (cue story of 2nd cousin's gardener's astrologer that died in '72 on a bike)\n\nThe statistics will show you where people are messing up.\n\nFirst of all... a large number of deaths on a bike occur when the rider drinks and rides. Cut your odds down: don't fuckin' drink and ride. You MIGHT can get away with bein' a lil tipsy behind the wheel of a car/truck/etc (and i'm not advocating, allright? we've all \"been there\" cmon)... on a bike, its COMPLETELY different. It's not at ALL forgiving like a \"cage\" can be. (i said CAN be.)\n\nSecond, the stats from the dead bikers show another significant portion to NOT have been wearing a helmet. Don't be a dumbass; put yr brain-bucket on. Some states don't require them, so you get these jackasses that want their faces seen while they flaunt their wheels around town. Don't be a \"them\"...\n\nAs well... WEAR YOUR GEAR! I don't give a damn if it's 120 degrees out: you fall off that thing goin' any significant speed and you're basically throwing yourself onto a giant sander (the pavement). Protect yourself, even if it means you show up to the restaurant sweatin' like a whore in church. \n\nToo... don't show off your speed on the street. If you MUST be a Johnny BigBollocks, take it to the track. The riders there are better trained to watch out for you. People on the street? Yeah... you trust 'em about as much as I do, since you drove a lorry for that long. \n\nI've been riding with guys who've gone upwards of 30+ years without a serious accident. How's that?... follow the damn rules.\n\n", "score": 6 }, { "body": "You will crash your bike eventually. If you're lucky, you'll die. If you're REALLY lucky you'll walk away without an injury that reduces your quality of life forever. This is especially true since you seem to believe they are safe and you will not crash. That is the most dangerous attitude to ride with. Respect the danger, and if you think the thrill of the ride is worth the high risk of death or serious injury, go for it after you move out of your mum's place. If you know any hospital staff, ask them why they're called donorcycles. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I spent ages convincing my mother to let me ride bikes. She eventually backed down because my journey to college by bus was a daily nightmare. \n\nTrouble is though on a couple of occasions she was very nearly proved right and for my biker buddy Tappy, his mother was very unfortunately completely right.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Ever have a fender-bender on a motorcycle? Oh wait, that's not a fender, those are pieces of your femur. (Long-time motorcycle rider; gave it up as simply too dangerous in ways that you can't control...)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Excellent book on riding - Proficient Motorcycling\n\nhttp://tinyurl.com/y9wf5m6\n\nRead it yourself, make her read it. Might make her feel better. After you read it, give it to someone else who rides.\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I have been riding for a year now('06 GSXR600), 20 years old, never wrecked, but been in some close. The close calls were in deed, my fault, but could have been prevented if I wouldn't have been driving fast. Wrecking you bike is a very good possibility, but you can prevent it. Motorcycle riding is all about control and \"knowing what's going to happen before it happens.\" You have to be able to read the road ahead; obstacles, pot-holes, animals, traffic, brake lights, headlights. Don't let anyone talk you out of it if it's what you really want to do, I've never had to much fun in my life before I got my motorcycle. There's nothing like being in the open air, saving money on gas, and of course like you stated easier parking. Get a bike, always always always wear your protective gear, and show your mother that you are responsible enough to ride your motorcycle. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Seriously I had a scooter for 4 years and never had an accident ! If you drive cautiously nothing will happen to you ! Don't race, don't overspeed, don't drive on the sidewalk and don't overtake in a bus line. And wear protections : helmet, trousers, jacket and gloves, even if it's 40°C outside ! Oh, and don't drive under heavy rain/wind (far too dangerous).", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Good fucking luck; you'll never convince her. \r\n\r\nI've been riding for 35 years. Youngest of nine (7 boys) and everyone except one sister rides. My trauma surgeon brother is one of the most devoted. He's my second oldest brother so he's been riding for... lemmee think... fifty + years. \r\n\r\nThere have been a few serious crashes (mostly while off road. and racing) in all that riding but no deaths. None the less, my mother is still convinced we're going to crash and die. \r\n\r\n\r\nSo again, good fucking luck. \r\n\r\nPS - I have no idea what the licensing requirements are over there in terms of training and so on. Over here it's mostly Motorcycle Safety Foundation classes. If it's not required, I strongly suggest you get some good training anyway. I took the basic MSF course even though I'd been riding for over 25 years, and was glad I did. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "thanks for the great responses! here, have some more!\n\n[ass](http://imgur.com/Y4ZrY.jpg) |\n[all wet](http://imgur.com/Td7jM.jpg) |\n[top down](http://imgur.com/a4C1j.jpg)\n", "score": 171 }, { "body": "I don't throw this word around very often at all, but in [this shot](http://imgur.com/ZaP88.jpg), your tits look *perfect.*", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I find it hard to believe the response will be anything but positive! Thanks for the post, you're a bit lovely!", "score": 3 }, { "body": "[This shot](http://imgur.com/LEnYt.jpg) is just super duper hot. Such a nice butt!\n\nGreat first impression, lady :)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "The top down pic is absolutely stunning. Your breasts look amazing (as they are) and I love the way you can see your hips like that. Beautifull tummy as well!\n\nThank you very much for sharing!", "score": 3 }, { "body": "\"They're real, and they're spectacular\"\n\nIn a depressing note for those of us that are dirty old men, the OP was likely 3 when that Seinfeld episode aired.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Whatever it will be, it will feel too long.\n\nModeration, I have found, is key. When you return, keep pot to evening or weekend use. Spending all day high, waking and baking, etc is a sure fire way to become too accustomed to it, keep these events to special occasions only.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "3-4 days is probably a decent amount of time. **AFakeName** mentioned doing it on the weekends... that could probably work out too.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Here are my bookmarks from religion->documentaries\n\nHells's Angel: (on mother teresa)\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfKWwcd1pU\n\nScience and Islam:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-n2BoPE2GE\n\nThe Story of Marjoe (about corrupt evangelical pastors)\n\nhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-178629120699935619\n\nRoot of all Evil: \n\nhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9002284641446868316\n\nGod on the Brain (BBC):\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKbeLfhHvPY\n\nRageh inside iran (combats US media propaganda about Iran):\n\nhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9161934809152225169#\n\nMost hated family in America (BBC documentary on Westboro baptist church):\n\nhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7735501683185935638\n\nHistory of the Devil:\n\nhttp://www.wimp.com/thedevil/\n\nHistory of Disbelief - Shadows of Doubt (about history of atheism):\n\nhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2250104590805018608#\n\nKenn Miller (biologist) going off for 2 hours on ID/evolution:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg\n\n------------\n\nNot documentaries, but awesome videos *everyone* should watch:\n\nInstruction manual for life:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAIpRRZvnJg\n\nBest Optical Illusion in the world: \n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk6ILZAaAMI\n\nQualiaSoup's channel (watch ALL of them):\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/profile?user=QualiaSoup#g/u\n\nSpirituality as an atheist:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2nfXfTg92E\n\nSeries on a guy's de-conversion, good topics involved:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12rP8ybp13s\n\nFalsehoods of creationism series (especially like #10):\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=126AFB53A6F002CC\n\nUltimate Rube Goldberg machine:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf07e5h8474\n\n-------------\n\nOther videos, not incredible ones but still fun: \n\nDerren Brown on Cold Reading: \n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btP_vy5cQq4\n\nBBC exposes psychic frauds:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP7v6q5vH1Y\n\nParodying the \"traditional marriage\": \n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw\n\nOn the Tyranny of evidence (does science use dogma?):\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqznURlEWI0\n\nAbiogenesis: \n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg\n\nTyson on UFOs:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfAzaDyae-k&feature=popt00us0b\n\n\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Find and harass the people who make them. Make it plain that enabling the police/surveillance state is not a path to a long and happy life.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "maybe if enough people go to the airport with weird shit stuffed in their crotch, and submit themselves to a strip search, the whole system will become unusable. similar to the logic of a general strike.\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "That had to be pretty frightening!! Totally know what you mean about the mentally exhausted thing after wards, too. We went through something similar and after that we were so drained. \n\nJust FYI, you can't get in trouble for being taken to the hospital high or taking someone to the hospital when you're high. I'm not trying to make your friends any less awesome (because after all, they were willing to take the hit if there was one! Sound like quality peoples to me) but they should know that there would not be legal repercussions. \n\nMy husband and brother in law had to go to the emergency room while shrooming and smoked out and of course told them everything. Doctors can't get you in trouble like that. So don't hesitate to go if you need help. \n", "score": 6 }, { "body": "From what you've said, and this is merely speculation, it sounds like your smoking, and a lack of oxygen to the brain (as a result of inhaling the smoke), plus the lack of blood in your body, plus going from sitting down to standing up (blood falls into legs), resulted in some extreme light-headed type symptoms. It actually sounds like a lot of fun, so it's too bad that it turned into a dangerous situation, because falling and hitting your head is not awesome, however sitting on a couch dazed out of your mind can be quite a ride.\n\nBe careful!\n\nedit: on the note of standing and blood rushing into your legs, I have this happen sometimes. For example, if I squat down in front of my closet, where I keep my boxers/socks, and I'm digging around for about 30 seconds or so, then I stand up quickly, I will almost completely black out. I have to lean against the wall until my consciousness is fully restored. Makes me think of a centrifuge where they train fighter pilots.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I've had that happen before. It's called \"going vagal.\" If I even see needles my blood pressure drops so low I pass out. It's also happened after smoking good stuff. Nothing to worry about usually. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Did you apologize?\n\nAnd it is probably not only about the touching; I imagine you were being flirty and then touched the girl which caused the issue. Sit down and talk with your girlfriend about why she is upset (but don't phrase it as if you think she should not be upset. Ask it in a way that makes it clear you want to get it all out in the open), apologize, ask if she wants you to apologize to her friend, and then things should be fine.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Did only touch her leg? Doesn't sound like a big deal, you may have been so drunk you didn't even realize you were touching a leg.", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "> Once we get our CCs paid off we will have plenty of expendable income.\n\n\nThe Credit Card company can wait. Skip your payment for one month and use the money to consult a specialist. \n\nTOMORROW.\n\nIt may save your life, which will give you plenty of time to pay back the CC\n\nBest of Luck!", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I have to agree with the majority here ... bugger the CC's ... if you have to run up debt then run it up. You can always file a bankruptcy later if you are forced to (not something I advocate but I would prefer one more live Redditor whose a BC survivor than a dead one with excellent credit).\n\nGood luck on the journey and we will be here day and night for you.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Hey! Do whatever it takes to get checked out....even if it means running up more debt...at least you'll be alive and around to pay it off! I think you should start a blog somewhere (blogspot maybe?) and post the link here, I'd definitely follow along, and post whatever words of encouragement I can. Good luck to you, God bless.\n\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Thanks, everyone. \n\nI do intend to address this immediately. The financial concerns are in regards to the possibility that I do need further medical attention. I know how insurance companies deal with pre-existing conditions, and I worry that I will be in big trouble if I do get a diagnosis of cancer.\n\nReally appreciate all of the support, and I will blog about it if it does turn out to be something bad. Thanks for the great replies:)", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "For me personally I'd not be interested. It's not a matter of not wanting to settle down, or even a dislike of children because ultimately I'd quite like some of my own.\n\nThe issue I have are that I'm always going to come second to a parent. - for example we're not going to be able to randomly meet up and catch a film at short notice, or go out and have a short break, or other things together because she will need to schedule childcare.\n\nThere are lots of little issues like that which individually are pretty minor and shallow, but collectively I think there are enough people without children out there that I should pick one of _them_.\n\nHaving said that there are many people who are mothers/fathers who do meet partners. I think it sometimes depends upon the age of the children, and whether the father is still around/involved, and other times its just about finding the right person.", "score": 66 }, { "body": "I think most of it comes from a potential mate not knowing how you came to have these kids but he cannot ask yet. Women with kids can either be well adjusted and fun to be around or they can be fucked up in ways that most men cannot even fathom. \n\nThere are some single women with kids who just want a father for their children and someone to help with the burden, I think that's why men are typically hesitant. \n\nThere's also the matter of the father of the kids: separated, divorced, never married, random hookup, family tragedy. Then why you aren't with the father of your children, this person is going to be in your life and he'll be in your new beau's life as well.", "score": 30 }, { "body": "For me personally, dealbreaker city-- and that's how a lot of guys are going to feel. Think about it: the totally cliche stereotypical male fear of commitment is ultimately fear of losing your freedom because your life will revolve around children at some point. \n\nObviously this becomes important to many men at some point in their lives, else our species would not have propagated long enough for you to find yourself in this conundrum, but here's the thing: for any guy, having a relationship with you immediately entails that their lives are going to revolve in some way around your kids, because your life (presumably, hopefully) revolves around your kids. It's not just a question of (as others have pointed out) when they can spend time with you and what they can do with you (IE can't just pack up and have a random romantic weekend getaway), but also the fact that they have to spend lots of time interacting with your kids, and at some point they'll probably have to help you take care of them (watch them for a few hours, take them to the doctor, whatever have you).\n\nIt's not a totally insurmountable barrier, plenty of women with kids become happily re-coupled, but it does limit your dating pool because you're basically in a situation where potential suitors have to dive right into something that usually takes years to develop.\n\nSo, advice: why not throw up a profile on OKCupid, and make sure to mention your kids? A lot of guys will stop reading once they get to the \"I have kids\" part-- but those are the guys you presumably don't want to be involved with anyway. If you really are all the things you say you are, though, there's a damn fine chance that you'll meet someone who shares your values and doesn't mind sharing your life with your kids.\n\nYou can even think of it as practice dating: meet a few different guys, and learn how to fit dating/relationships into your family life. You can have lots of fun, and may even meet someone special in the process. Even if you don't, you'll gain experience in navigating this difficult issue in the future with guys you meet through other avenues, and when you do meet Mr. Right you'll have some idea of how to find a balance.", "score": 23 }, { "body": ">I've been hearing that a lot of you guys won't get into a serious relationship with a girl if she has kids. How much truth is there to that\n\nStraight answer: \n\n1. You've got the kids, so it doesn't matter what the answer to your question is. You're in the same situation regardless of what the answer is, so why sweat it? (Although I think you're asking because you want some validation that your love life is not over.)\n\n2. There's no golden rule for it. For some dudes it will be a deal breaker. For others it won't. That's really as simple as it is. \n\n3. I know many men and women who fell in love with and married people who already had kids. So it is possible. Don't worry about it. For those who kids aren't a deal breaker, it's just part of the whole package they need evaluate. \n\nNote: there's a zillion things like this for all guys. Some guys like large tits, so a girl with small tits may not be their ideal. But a lot of people date and fall in love with people who are not their ideal. This is what's known as \"the price of admission\". Watch this Dan Savage video and you'll understand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ObrFwjesno\n\n(It's a great relationship advice clip that explains the price of admission).\n\nAlso, if you're REALLY worried about this: There's lots of single dads out there. Would you date a single dad with kids they're taking care of?\n\n", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Personally, if I can find a hot girl who doesn't have kids, I don't see why I'd date one who does. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. I want my own kids someday, not someone else's, and I honestly wouldn't want to even take the risk of getting mixed up and becoming part of the \"family.\" I just have no desire to be a stepdad, or even a halfass sometimes stand-in stepdad. If I were going to date a girl with kids, she'd have to be pretty explicit up front about making sure that I never had to see or interact with them.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I have dated single women who have kids a few times. However, it is more challenging, because kids are obviously both a huge part of their lives, and their time. Some of the issues are:\n\n* She's less available for spontaneous dates, possible overnight dates, or going away for the weekend, than a woman without kids. Planning takes more energy.\n\n* You can't just get involved with her as an individual, at least not past a certain point; you're going to have to get involved with the kids in some way. More complexity, particularly in terms of being a good match: what if you and she like each other a lot but one of the kids doesn't like you?\n\n* Women with kids are, in general, more hesitant and protective, and justifiably so. She wants to screen more carefully who's going to spend time around her kids, which could mean a slower start to the relationship than would feel right otherwise - and the guy can feel that too. And she won't want to let guys become important in her kids lives if there's a high chance they'll leave - she may be willing to risk breakup/hearbreak for herself, but not for them. Again, quite understandable, but this also means even more hesitation before she'll let you do things like hang out with her at home often - the sorts of things you'd want to do in a relationship to get closer.\n\nSo, there's more complexity and more energy needs to be spent, and that starts before you know whether the connection you're going to get with her is going to work out well enough; it's a higher \"activation\" energy that can stand in the way of some relationships that might've started if she were single, but don't quite start because she's not.\n\nWhile it's true that there are some guys who *won't* get into a serious relationship with a woman with kids, I don't think that's the main issue. The bigger issue is that even though there are a lot of guys who, like me, have no problem with it, and *would* get into a relationship with a single mom, all these barriers are still there and, in combination, just make each potential maybe-going-to-date situation a little (or a lot) less likely to actually turn into a relationship.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I'd be up for a casual fling, but nothing serious. There's a reason I haven't had kids yet. If you want something serious you may have to find a guy who has kids as well.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "For men there are two thoughts to this:\n\n1) She doesn't care for me, and only wants to be with me because she wants a father.\n\n2) I don't want to have that kind of responsibility.\n\nI think the first one is a concern for myself. I don't mind responsibility, and I understand the obligations that a parent has to her children -- but I'm a skeptical person by nature. I wouldn't want to be any sort of substitute. I have to know that a woman really cares about me, and is not influenced by her circumstance.", "score": 7 }, { "body": ">\"...smart, friendly, thoughtful... pretty near perfect...\"\n\nYeah, no. Were it up to me, I'd pass on the ego, alone, thanks.\n\nOtherwise, it would depend on the guy. Instant families, that's something the guy would have to hold in serious consideration, given their own plans for the future. Consider an older crowd; perhaps in their 30s. Those in their 20-somethings, would probably balk at the prospect of getting involved with a mother, outside of one-time flings and similar, non-committal relationships.\n\nOtherwise, good luck.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "> I've been hearing that a lot of you guys won't get into a serious relationship with a girl if she has kids.\n\nIt's true, a lot guys won't. Luckily for you, you don't need a lot of guys, you only want one, right?", "score": 5 }, { "body": "30-year old newly-single guy here.\n\nThe problem, for many, would indeed be that you have kids and are less available and spontaneous. That goes without saying.\n\nBut there is another aspect: you're 27 and have two kids. Assuming you had them back to back you started reproducing at about 25. That, for us older folks, is way too early. The fact that you're a single mother only goes to show that it was far too early. You have neither the proper economy for it (you didn't mention you were rich) nor the intelligence to check out the to-be father.\n\nInstead you give out vibes of fucking, getting pregnant and then not having the common decency to your kids to not have any until (1) there is a father around and (2) you can take care of them properly and shit.\n\nSure, you may feed them and all that but no matter what you give them, you ain't giving them a male role model in their lives. The kids will grow up having to pretend that other dads, grandparents and dad-they-meet-once-a-week are acceptable substitutes to having an ass-kicking male around the house, putting shit in its place.\n\nYou may be smart, but you can't plan for shit. Apparently.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I think the bigger issue is the reverse, how quickly would you trust someone new around your kids? I was a single parent and I never had any difficulty finding chicks to play with, but dating was much more complex as I wouldn't take someone home very quickly which gives people the correct sense that they come second to the child. Myself personally it would not be a deal breaker except that my wife might not like it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I don't have a problem with a kid or... TWO?!?!!\n\nI mean, I adore the little rascals and have no problem with growing them as if they are my... OWN?!?!!\n\nAnd that's about where it begins to fall apart. Whose kids are they and to whose standards will they grow to?\nAs long as your expectation is that you grow your own kids to how you see them there will be no room for a man in that picture. Instead you will hang two separate pictures on the wall where the worlds never meet. Now how is that ever going to work? Are there any pictures of children that you share, or have you already decided not to have any more? If you just aim for any man that you like without regard to his needs as a father some day, how is that ever going to work? Is the guy independent somehow and flashy who has needs to be everywhere skydiving and exploding remote countries or something? If he is also supposed to be there for you, also, how is that ever going to work?\n\nThe moment you are able to put the separate pictures together as your singular dream... poof! There he is.\n\nI know... Don't remind me! I have tons of pictures. *cutting and pasting* It's just a theory anyway... *mumble* Maybe this hearr... noo...?... hmm... *mumbling*", "score": 3 }, { "body": "hot, smart and into food? what's your stance on a truffle oil dipped 3 some with me and my SO? jk.\n\nThere is truth to guys not wanting to be with a single mom. It's always going through your mind that she's looking for a sugar daddy, and you'll always come third to the child and the bio father. Two things that would make you more attractive would be being financially self sufficient and good at WoW. Wealth reduces the fear of being a sugar daddy, and WoW is a target rich environment.\n\nSerious relationships will be harder but that doesn't preclude fun relationships. You'll probably do ok with 35+ year old guys as they may be in a sympathetic position vs. 20 year olds. \n\nBest of luck.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I actually prefer it.\n\nAs a nearly full time single dad I need some one who understands the challenges and the importance parent hood.\n\nUnfortunately it's nearly impossible to get a second date because even ladies who have kids don't want to go out with me because 'I have kids'.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Perhaps I'm unique in this area, but I have never had a problem dating a women with kids. \nIn fact, I usually prefer it. Most (but not all) single mothers tend to have their priorities in order. \n\nSome qualifications however\n\n1. If she only has one kid and wants more: I don't have any of my own, and I don't plan it. I even got myself snipped.\n\n2. If she has three kids: I've had bad luck with women with three kids. I realize this is a generalization but it's just my experience.\n\n3. Kids have to take priority over romance, but this has often led to another problem: the actualy 'dating'. I'm long past the age where courting means lots of elaborate dates. You have a busy life ( presumably ) and so do. This means making time to get to know each other, and making that time count.\n\n</rant>\n\nWhat part of the world do you live in?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I know this has already been said but it adds another decision point into the mix. Personally, as a single dad, I've found it easier to date women who already have kids as they understand the demands of dating with those issues. \n\nWith that said, I've yet to get to the stage of introducing my kids to whomever I'm dating (it needs to be a serious relationship that I know is going somewhere before we get to that).\n\nSo, you'll do fine dating with kids, I'm sure.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Not to be rude, but your age is important here. I'm in my 40s and in love with a woman who has two kids because *I* have two kids. I've dated women who don't have kids and they just don't get it.\n\nIf you are 20-30 years old, try dating an older guy. \n\nSo find a guy who is divorced and also has kids. He will understand your priorities and he will understand yours. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "As everyone else has said, your age is a huge factor. When my dad was in his forties he married my current step-mother who had four kids, from two different previous husbands. It wasn't a big deal at all to him though, he loved her and he had me, so it fit his current situation. If I were you I would look for single fathers, and if you are a little younger (20's/early 30's) I would suggest looking for an older guy because to be honest, I'm in my early 20's and I would be a little freaked out dating a woman with kids because it would be like walking straight into a family. It wouldn't be a deal breaker if I earnestly liked you and we clicked, but it would be a little rough jumping right into being a father figure and not having the time to take it slow, get together, and slowly have the family grow. \n\nFear not though, if you are half as sweet and nice as you seem you'll be swept off your feet eventually. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I think that perception on the woman having kids really changes after you have a child yourself.\n\nIm a single dad... and I have a LOT of women who are initially interested in me backpedal like I just told them I have an airborne version of herpes when they find out I have a son.\n\nWhy? Because people think that means additional commitment and responsibility. That you are looking for a father for your child(ren) (or mother in my case) \n\nAnd to be honest, with a lot of single moms I have experienced they really DO need help raising a child... im not saying this to be a dick, but especially women with young male children deal with a more physical type of rebellion which they sometimes have difficulty handling.\n\nI don't really have any great advice for you... im a single parent myself and even *I* have a bit of a bias when I find out a woman has a child already. It doesnt detract from anything for me, but it puts me on alert, especially in the area I live there are a lot of women who really are just looking for a baby daddy/child support. ;-\\\n", "score": 3 }, { "body": ">I've been hearing that a lot of you guys won't get into a serious relationship with a girl if she has kids. How much truth is there to that? When I was newly single I didn't believe it, but now I'm beginning to wonder...\r\n\r\nHaving kids makes you less attractive from a dating perspective (except for pedophiles or maybe someone who always wanted kids but was infertile).\r\n\r\nYour kids will always come first (and rightly so) which means that you will not be as available for dates as often, if you want to go out you need to organise a baby sitter, if he comes to your place you can't have sex in the living room etc.\r\n\r\nIt's not that you are any less of a person or less attractive but getting involved with a single mother means getting involved with her kids who will probably hate anyone the see taking their mothers attention away, plus there can be hassles with the ex etc.\r\n\r\nI suspect that if you are as wonderful as your post suggests then you are probably setting your sights too high. The guys that you would never have considered before are now in your 'league'. Sorry for putting it so bluntly but it's the truth.\r\n\r\nImagine a millionaire who dates models and actresses but after the financial crash he loses most of his money can't afford 5 star restaurants, diamonds and trips to paris. Suddenly no one returns his calls any more.\r\n\r\nIf you are up front that you have children then it will weed out the guys that don't want a pre-made family. There are tons of lonely desperate nerds on reddit so don't give up hope.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I like this, especially with the lack of anti aliasing. Makes it seem more true to the original. Scratch the FFFFUUUU writing though, that's lame.", "score": 46 }, { "body": "wow it's like a time-warp back to [the last time we voted on the logo!](http://www.reddit.com/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu/comments/a5mi0/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuckers_choose_your_logo_again/)", "score": 24 } ]

[ { "body": "Yes. Seems like there's nothing you can do about it either. Try to criticize someones stupid, pointless, typo-ridden, meme-echoing, juvenile comment, and you're met with a flurry of downvotes. Seems like no one knows about [the reddiquette](http://www.reddit.com/help/reddiquette) any more. ", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I don't believe this is true, but it really does depend on where you frequent in reddit. I find that links to articles that are thoughtful often receive thoughtful well said comments and vice versa. It may be true that reddit is expanding and therefore there has been a slight increase in bullshit but I for one haven't noticed any drastic changes.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I turned my dad on to reddit. He asked me WTF was wrong with the tone of the site lately.\nI kinda think the bullshit comes in waves. We're in some type of bullshit tsunami right now.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "It's the end of the holiday season, everyone is going back to school, so we should see the site get back to normal over the next few weeks.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I've only been around for a while, but Reddit doesn't seem horrific to me. The users here are pretty refreshing, actually, compared to some other places I go that really ARE overrun with 15 year olds. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "My comments are generated by whipping 5 midgets in my basement until they say something funny. I give the rejected comments to P-Dub. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I accept the blame for this. It's only right. When I arrived here some months ago I was enchanted by the community's intelligence, civility of discourse and sense of humor to which I related. In the few months in which I've been an active user I've noticed a decline in all three of the qualities which drew me here day after day. This seems to happen wherever I go and to whatever I become a part of. Places of employment; bands I've played in; Earth; all have gone downhill in the wake of my involvement. Look no further in the quest to point your fingers. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. And I don't deserve forgiveness. \n\n* Edit - Because I can't even confess good.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I used to be a Digg user, but I realized how much it sucked, so I came to reddit. I've been a lurker for some time, but finally made an account. I like it a lot better here.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/mlas/\n\nhttp://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/ssdm/Home/Downloads/tabid/60/Default.aspx", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I work with an stats/ML-heavy startup in the bay area). The two of us working on the core of the tech are stats & game theory nerds at heart (and by training), also without formal training in ML, but rapidly building up our software tool kit and skills. I wouldn't go so far as to call either of us \"experts\"--we're both cut from the learn-from-doing rather than learn-from-studying cloth and also have degrees in unrelated fields. Fittingly enough, the major constraint as we take on bigger and bigger customers has been DB efficiency. \n\nWhich is all to say, we may not be the deep experts you're looking for, but if you're interested in finding other driven, curious-about-ML folk and some interesting problems to cut teeth on, drop me a line. At the very least, I'd love to pick the brain of a DB ninja on some of the hairier problems I've been running into with SQL. :)", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Tarantino makes some great use of music. For me, it's *Kill Bill* that really does it since it matches the action so well.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Oldboy, Assassination of Jesse James, O Brother Where Art Thou and pretty much all the Wes Andersen movies have good soundtracks.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "The Thing by Ennio Morricone, Assassination of Jesse James (and to a lesser extent, The Proposition) by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Blade Runner by Vangelis, Me and You and Everyone We Know by Michael Andrews, Punch Drunk Love by John Brion, There Will Be Blood by Jonny Greenwood, and The Last Temptation of Christ by Peter Gabriel, to name a few.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Buy her a 3/4 size classical guitar. Difficult to learn, very mathematical and a skill that if she gets into she'll carry around with her for the rest of her life. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Buy her a helicopter ride, telling the pilot to take her to altitude and throw her out of the helicopter into the middle of the Canadian wilderness during it. Benefits: it will encourage reading (especially the directions on how to use her parachute), it is educational, it sure as hell isn't boring.\n\nYou're welcome.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I registered to post this because everyone who has responded to you has thus far either demonstrated a marked lack of knowledge and/or troubleshooting skills.\n\nStep 1: what version of MacOS are you using? My guess is 10.5, but it's possible you are using 10.4. to determine your OS version, click the apple logo in the upper-left hand corner of your screen and select \"about this mac.\"\n\nIf you are using 10.4:\nFrom finder, navigate to Applications>Utilities>Terminal and on the terminal type the following command:\nlookupd -flushcache\nthen press enter.\n\nIf you are using 10.5 or newer:\nFrom finder, navigate to Applications>Utilities>Terminal and on the terminal type the following command:\ndscacheutil -flushcache\nthen press enter.\n\nExecuting either one of these commands will clear the stored DNS information from your computer. The way computers resolve DNS (that is turn friendly web names like www.reddit.com into IP addresses which are needed to actually find and retrieve websites) is it first checks the locally cached DNS information (which it gets when you first go to the website), then if it's not in the cached information it asks its primary DNS server (usually your ISP), if it can't connect to that one, it will ask your secondary, and so on. The important thing is that your computer stores that DNS information for the duration of that records Time To Live which is part of the information it gets when it first looks up the web address. When things work correctly, records with expired TTLs are removed from your DNS cache so that the addresses they point to stay current. \n\nSometimes this cache becomes corrupt, and that can cause all sorts of bizarre things to happen, such as being unable to connect to websites seemingly at random. Clearing the cache should fix this problem (if that's your problem).\n\nStep 2: If that doesn't fix your problem, proceed:\nI saw in the comments that \"it's set to 192.168.0.1\" and you mentioned that you were in over your head. I am wondering, was that perhaps the field labeled \"router IP address\" in your network system preferences tab? Many home routers default to such a configuration, and most of them lack DNS pass-through capabilities. You also said that you're having the problem on a friend's LAN which might suggest the above problem, but it also might indicate some problems with your computer's network configuration.\n\nFrom your system preferences app, select the network icon and look at your connections, they're listed on the left hand side of the screen. Select the connection that you're using (you're looking for your AirPort card or your wired ethernet adapter, ignore the firewire icon) \n\nIf you are using wired ethernet: click the icon and look at the drop down box on the right labeled, \"Configure IPv4\" and make sure that it's set to \"use DHCP.\"\n\nIf you are using wireless: click the \"advanced\" button on the lower right, and then on the \"TCP/IP\" tab and make sure the box labeled \"Configure IPv4\" is set to \"use DHCP.\"\n\nDHCP is the means by which your router assigns an IP address to your computer, and I am having you set this because 99% of home network configurations are set up to use DHCP and setting your connection up manually can lead to problems.\n\nClose out of this window and try your connection out to see what happens.\n\nStep three: If the above two steps don't work, then maybe you're having a problem with your browser configuration or there's a real problem with your connection. I doubt pretty highly that there is a problem with your connection, and I'm pretty sure it's with your computer itself based on the fact that the problem follows you to other networks.\n\nThe first thing to do is make sure you can resolve IP addresses at all, we'll do that with the Network Utility found in Applications>Utilities>Network Utility. There are ways to do this from the command line, but this will probably be faster and easier for you. In Network Utility, click the \"lookup\" tab, type in a problem web address (one you can't get to) and click \"lookup.\" Your output for www.hotmail.com should look something like this:\n\nLookup has started…\n\n\n; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.hotmail.com +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search\n;; global options: +cmd\nwww.hotmail.com.\t3111 IN\tCNAME toplevel.mail.live.com.akadns.net.\ntoplevel.mail.live.com.akadns.net. 2674\tIN CNAME origin.mail.live.com.\norigin.mail.live.com.\t224 IN A 64.4.20.174\norigin.mail.live.com.\t224 IN A 64.4.20.184\norigin.mail.live.com.\t224 IN A 64.4.20.186\norigin.mail.live.com.\t224 IN A 64.4.20.169\n\nMicrosoft is notorious for switching addresses and IPs around, but if you do this within the next few days or probably longer, you should get the exact same results. If you get different results, copy and paste them here because it could indicate a whole manner of things.\n\nIf you get no IP addresses in the results at all, then we'll have to go the terminal (Applications>utilities>terminal) and use the command line tool. \nAt the prompt type:\n\nnslookup \n\nthen press enter and you'll get a prompt that looks like this: \">\" at that prompt type:\n\nserver 4.2.2.1\n\nthen press enter. This switches you from whatever your default lookup server might be set, to one operated by a company called Level3 Communications. They are a big name provider that operates fairly reliable and spec-compliant DNS servers. In other words, they are a good benchmark for testing DNS functionality.\n\nNext, type\n\nwww.hotmail.com\n\nand press enter. This will submit a lookup query to the DNS server we just specified and it will display results similar to those that we saw in the Network Utility output. Are there any IP addresses or does it say that it couldn't find the domain? Does it give you IP addresses that differ from those that the Network Utility gave you? \n\nIf you didn't get a response from the Level3 server, then you may have a bigger issue than what I can troubleshoot without talking to you directly. If you got a successful query from the Terminal, but you didn't get one from the Network Utility, or if you got different IP addresses in the Terminal than you did the Network Utility, then I would suggest changing your DNS server to 4.2.2.1 \n\nTo do this, open the system preferences app, and select \"network.\" Select your interface from the pane on the left and\n\nIf you are using wired ethernet: enter 4.2.2.1 into the box labeled \"DNS Server\"\n\nIf you are using wireless: Select the \"Advanced\" button on the lower right hand corner of the window then click the tab labeled \"DNS.\" On this screen, are there any manually defined DNS servers? They will show up as black text (rather than greyed out, unselectable text). If there are, then select each one and click the minus button at the bottom of the pane to remove them. Next, click the plus button and enter 4.2.2.1 into the box that appears and click \"OK\"\n\nTest everything and see if it's working properly. If not, post back with the following information:\n-The DNS settings you had before I had you change them (the server IP address)\n-The Local IP address of your computer (obtained by opening the Network Utility, and selecting your interface (wired or wireless) from the drop down box on the info tab)\n-The results of the commands you ran in the terminal, as well as the lookup queries you did in the Network Utility (you can copy/paste in both places).\n-Anything else you might have noticed that was strange or unusual. \n\nI've still got a number of other things that we can try, but I'm pretty sure this will get you up and running. It's extraordinarily unlikely that your ISP is filtering you or blocking your access to these sites, and it's equally unlikely that your external IP address (as well as your friends) is being blocked by anyone. \n\n", "score": 6 }, { "body": "You probably have a re-used IP from an asshole. You might need to use a proxy of some sort (VPN or Tor)", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "it's symbolic. psychological operations.\n\nif any of this was really about saving lives, they'd be building light rail all over the place and giving people real alternatives to driving because car crashes kill about 40,000 americans every year (37,000 deaths in 2008 was a 30-year low).\n\nBetween this attempted christmas bombing and the shoe bomber, there have been something like 16 million commercial domestic flights. 1 incident out of 16 million possible incidents does not represent a grave danger.\n\nPart of the reason airplanes are an effective national symbol of terror is that 911 was the first time in 40 odd years when everybody in the united states all saw the same thing on television at the same time. the effectiveness of 911 is a counterpoint to the emergence of viral marketing as advertising markets become increasingly fragmented.\n\nterrorism is itself largely symbolic. if 20 insurgents really wanted to inflict direct damage to the united states, they'd drive across the countryside destroying high tension powerlines and they'd never be detected.", "score": 55 }, { "body": "Because our \"counter terrorist\" policies are reactionary and designed to provide the perception of safety instead of actually preventing attacks?\n\nWhat matters to the people making the rules is avoiding blame or winning the next election, not saving lives.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Trains are hard to explode. Long object, and when they derail modern trains are still pretty safe (and I guess countries where they use old trains like the US the speeds they reach are lower). They're also not build to seal pressure to the extend that planes are.\r\n\r\nThey did it in Madrid (and sort of in London). But planning wise it was a masterpiece (and \"only\" 191 death)(edit: just looked it up, 10 bombs on 4 different locations timed to go off at the same moment). And technically they were attacks on stations (compare: airports) less than on the train itself. ", "score": 9 }, { "body": "People feel a lot safer on the ground. They think they can run away and escape. Sadly, not true. So, guess thats just the subconscious paranoia of flying then.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Planes can be commandeered and taken to other places. Trains are on a fixed route, thus making them less of a threat to the general populace. Additionally, trains are near to the ground, which makes evacuation easier.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "There are plenty of examples like this. Ever walked around your city looking at it through the eyes of a possible terrorist? There are power stations with no security, train stations with no security, freeways with unlocked access walkways, skyscrapers with no security, shopping centres with no security ...\n\nIn my area we have a water station that is supplies water to our entire suburb. It's out in the open with a thin fence around it and a warning sign. \n\nWhere I used to live was a power relay station with the same deal.\n\nIf the 9/11 terrorists had blown themselves up on the ground floors of skyscrapers we'd be having the \"Should we have full body scanners in skyscrapers\" conversation now.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "It's called security theatre, it's not to actually stop terrorism, it's to present an illusion of control / safety to you, the general public.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Take a basic NRA pistol course. And rent a few guns and shoot them. Listening to peoples suggestions about CC guns is like asking someone what you should eat for dinner, you are going to get a bunch of different replies all based mainly on opinion.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "Take the $1000.00 and split that up between two guns. Go with a small caliber very small carry like the Ruger LCP .380. It would be great for the bike. That will run you in the $300 range. Then start looking at something in a larger caliber that you could carry around off the bike. A subcompact 45 or 9. You can do pretty good for a nice Glock or used Kimber sub for the $700 mark. You will be glad you did, and you will be more versatile in your day to day carry needs. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "If you're going to be on a bike, I suggest this:\n\nhttp://www.lapolicegear.com/511-select-carry-pack.html\n\nI own it, and the bag is incredibly comfortable, plus it can hold all the gear you need to maintain your bike on the fly. The best part is you can fit most weapons in it (save for something like an 8\" barrel). I can put My XD 40 in there and no one knows it's there, also my 1911 and my Colt 357 fit in the pouch nicely as well.\n\nAs far as what gun to get, I'm a big fan of the Springfield XDs, but I would tell you first off to follow Glockedandloaded's advice about renting at a range. If you have a friend or friend of a friend that you know well enough, you could borrow, but either way you should test out a few guns before you buy.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I love my Glock 27. You should try as many guns as possible before you drop that kind of bank on anything. Good luck!", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Glock 19 9mm and a Sidearmor IWB holster.\n\nEdit: Oh! And get a proper belt (that is, a *GUN* belt--yes, they specifically make belts for CCW that are designed to hold 5lbs of steel up on your waist, comfortably, for 12hrs a day--do NOT use a normal dress belt for this, it won't work well as those are NOT designed to hold up that much weight)...I think Sidearmor might make those, too, but I'm not positive... \n\nEdit2: Speer Gold Dot 147gr.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I bought a [Micro Desert Eagle](http://www.magnumresearch.com/micro_eagle.asp) for CC also with bicycling in mind. The main factors in my decision were:\r\n\r\n*Size. It is pocket sized. You can conceal it year round in virtually anything. Open carry doesn't appeal to me. \r\n\r\n*Reasonable sights. Compared to other micro pistols, they are massive.\r\n\r\n*Shape. I figured the flat sides of a semi would rub less than a revolver while pedaling.\r\n\r\n*Large trigger guard for gloved hands. Most bicycyling gloves are fingerless so this probably isn't a major factor,but I liked having the option.\r\n\r\n*Didn't like the feel of the Ruger LCP.\r\n\r\nSo far, 0 problems with about 150 rds of FMJ and JHP through it but testing it out as a cycling companion will have to wait until the snow leaves. \r\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I recommend buying a full sized pistol and shooting/training with it for a while before you start to carry; at which point you'll be a little more clued in as a consumer and shooter and you'll be able to make a better purchase decision. \n\nCarry specific guns do not make good primary weapons.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "You shouldn't *need* too powerful gun.\n\nMore important than the gun is spending money on training.\n\nIf you are in a situation, having a gun is better than no gun, but you need to know the rules of engagement and legal ramifications in your state. Learn when to present and the various levels of appropriate escalation (of course, there are a few different doctrines on this)\n\nAnd if you have to shoot, get good enough to make the shots count. 2 to the body, 1 to the ocular region if necessary. No flyers please.\n\nBut you'll need a tactics class to learn responses to various situations. Hopefully in ways that won't lead to people getting shot.\n\nWhy would you need a gun on a bike in particular? Are you riding through a bad neighborhood or in the boonies? Or perhaps a park or bike trail at night?\n\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "What is the exact model? Most Minis should be able to run Morrowind with medium/low settings.\n\nedit: according to [this list](http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/gaming/610-list-games-play-mini-9-10v.html), it's playable on low settings.", "score": 27 }, { "body": "You should try Torchlight, my 11 year old brother loves it on his netbook. It also has a \"Netbook Mode\" you can turn on in settings. I think it adjusts the UI for the screen size.\n\nEdit: Torchlight is $5 on steam for another 18 hours.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "Hi there - I'd be obliged to help but I'll need a little bit more information. \n\nIf you could, please report back the \n- Processor type and processor speed\n- RAM\n- Video card\n\nOr, provide a link to the Inspiron model you purchased. \n\nThat said Morrowind is an old game, and it is not unreasonable to assume that a comparatively lower to mid end laptop produced these days would be capable of running it. Hope this helps.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Congratulate your son on his choice of games. Tho I'd have to say it's a bit of an \"older\" game. It's very freeform and leaves a lot up to the player which can be a bit overwhelming.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "I know it runs on the MSI Wind\r\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUXd3FwX2wI\r\n\r\nNow you have to figure out how different your computer specs are to the Wind...", "score": 7 }, { "body": "You should be in the clear, Morrowind isn't too rough on weak hardware.\r\n\r\nThe first PC I played Morrowind on was ancient. It took 10 minutes to load each new area, and I played on bare minimum settings. I'm just happy that it ran at all.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "It will probably run it, but very poorly. You should also note that Morrowind may not be an appropriate choice for an 11 year old. Beyond the variety of \"mature themes\" you may find objectionable, it boasts a level of complexity that an 11 year old might not be able to handle. The combat, for example, they may find extremely vexing. I would not be surprised if their first ineffectual attempts to kill a crab lead to vexation and quitting.", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "here is a very important thing to consider- once you say you received a gift you can not go back and change it if it never really shows up. if you mark it unreceived- which is true regardless of where it is- you CAN go back and change it to received. lying to be kind is not only unnecessary but makes things harder for us. ", "score": 19 }, { "body": "Really? \nI haven't received mine yet and I get emails about it being shipped and that it would be great to describe it. It also says that if I haven't received it yet, that I should wait.\n\nEDIT: I haven't received my GIFT.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "FWIW, my Secret Santa also sent it from overseas. Arrived (after Christmas, but it was worth it). Keep holding out.\n\nMy Secret Santa recipient never picked up the package I sent (it was returned to sender), and hasn't responded to a PM in about a week. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I had one of those. It worked as advertised; the slightest touch was all that was necessary to use the D-pad. The downside was that I couldn't rest my thumb on the D-pad to track where I was going to press it. Also, there was no physical feedback to the D-pad, so I couldn't be sure *which* direction I was pressing.", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "After the new hotness of Chrome wears off you'll be left with a less fulfilling relationship in the long-term and you'll lie awake at night thinking about all of the little things that you took for granted when thinking with your dick.", "score": 54 }, { "body": "The only reason I'm not jumping ship yet is because I have far too many Firefox-only add-ons that I can't see myself giving up. Hopefully some of the most important ones to me will be ported over or something. Opera is pretty damn good too, but once again, those Firefox add-ons kick major ass.", "score": 35 }, { "body": "Oh snap, I wrote the exact same good bye letter word for word except for the \"Chrome\" part - mine says \"Opera 10.10\" instead.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "Maybe one of these days when Chrome can suppress her gag reflex properly and quit talking endlessly about every asshole who ever gave her a dollar. For now I'll be staying classy. ", "score": 13 }, { "body": "The only reason I'm not using Chrome is because I don't want to keep all my eggs in one basket. I'm already giving Google access to my searches (and subsequently, where I go), my mail, my documents, my calendar... using their browser would give them a HUGE foothold of um... uh.... shit... what don't they know about me already?", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Am I the only one who still isn't convinced Chrome is all that much better with it's memory usage? I know Firefox is pretty horrible, but isn't Chrome up there too? \n\nI use Chrome sometimes, but Firefox is still my main browser. The vertical space argument doesn't hold water for me either, since my Firefox is heavily customized, and just as good as Chrome.\n\nI'd just like to see conclusive, reliable memory usage stats for the two browsers to convince me.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Hold on folks. I'm running FF with eighteen extensions and ten plug-ins active. I presently have two tabs open: popurls and, thanks to auto pager, eight pages of Reddit. FF is using a whopping 18 meg an 1% of CPU. FF is slick and quick. Don't blame your browser if you won't go to the trouble to take control of you puter.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I keep trying Chrome, but coming back to Firefox because it's just comfortable. I'm looking forward to version 4 bringing some of the Chromey goodness to FF.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Chrome doesn't have the one extension that's absolutely crucial to my happiness on the internet, [rikaichan](http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/). It also doesn't tell you straightaway that you need the developer version to install extensions, which caused me about half an hour's grief the first time I tried it. Firefox may be a memory hog and (arguably) less pretty, but it runs faster than I can keep up with it, so it doesn't really matter to me.\n\nExtensions I need versus speed I won't notice? It's an easy decision for me. If I were running a netbook or some other low-end computer, I might consider Chrome, but even then I couldn't go a day without a decent translation extension, and Chrome's don't even come close.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Chrome is nice but until I get essential things like toolbar management, style configuration (such as what Stylish provides in FF) and some better extensions, I'll stay put with Firefox.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "This artistic DHTML website:\n\nhttp://www.dhteumeuleu.com/\n\nIt all runs faster on IE than Firefox! WTF!?\n\nWhen Firefox is cutting PNG's at the edges of the screen things *really* slow down.\n\nAlso page rendering... it's comparatively slow compared to the other browsers. (I must do some Javascript DOM creation/deletion test). An article I read said it's apparently because it follows rendering rules so closely...\n\nHere's one example... with a big difference between IE and FF... =(\n\nhttp://www.dhteumeuleu.com/run/starfieldR/", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Very well put! I've switched to Chrome for the same reason. I only miss Ad Block Plus from Firefox... :(", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I would love to take my son. He's never been to the IMAX yet. His dad has been gone to his brother's house all day to watch football, so we've been at home all day in the bed. This will get us out the house one last time before He goes back to school in the morning.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "If I get these tix I've got a date, and I get laid. No tix, no date, no sex. Vote me up so I can get some! :D", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "How does it compare to the [Baka-Tsuki translation](http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Spice_%26_Wolf)?\n\nMaybe reading that will give you some more insight into whether the translation or the original material was at fault.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Thanks for the heads up, I was pretty interested in this. \nThe cover art is a real shocker to me though. It's very off-putting, especially in comparison to the original. They must not have realised their target audience does not consist of (merely) Twilight fans.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "An example of what I'm calling poor quality of writing...\n\n>Lawrence was at a loss how to treat the girl now. Nevertheless he couldn't very well remain silent, so he took a new approach.\n\n>\"In any case, setting aside the question of whether or not that's true...\"\n\n>\"You think me a liar?\" snapped Holo at his preamble. He faltered, but Holo seemed to realize that she herself was being too emotional. She stopped, abashed, and muttered a quick \"Sorry,\" before burying her head in the furs again.\n\n>\"I understand your resentment. But where do you plan to go having left the village?\"\n\n>She did not answer immediately, but Lawrence saw her ears prick at his question, so he waited patiently. She had just delivered a significant confession, and Lawrence expected that she simply couldn't face anyone for a moment.\n\n>At length, Holo guiltily looked into the corner of the wagon bed, confirming Lawrence's suspicions.\n\n>\"I wish to return north,\" she said flatly.\n\n>\"North?\"\n\n>Holo nodded, turning her gaze up and off into the distance. Lawrence didn't have to follow it to know where she was looking: true north.\n\n>\"My birthplace. The forest of Yoitsu. So many years have passed that I can no longer count them. ...I wish to return home.\"\n\n>The word birthplace left Lawrence momentarily shocked, and he looked at Holo's profile. He himself had not visited his hometown once since embarking on the life of a wandering merchant.\n\n>It was a poor and cramped place of which he had few good memories, but after long days in the driver's seat, sometimes lonelineness [*sic*] overcame him and he couldn't help thinking fondly of the place.\n\n>If Holo was telling the truth, not only had she left her home hundreds of years ago, but she'd endured neglect and ridicule at the place in which she'd settled...\n\n>He could guess at her loneliness.\n\nIt's not *terrible*, just not particularly good either. It's like an amateur author just getting past the purple-prose phase, but a hint of it still lingers.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I'd come to a similar conclusion when discussing the cover with friends. A lot of teen-oriented sci-fi has been going for an \"urban fantasy\" motif, which is rather out of place for Spice and Wolf.\n\nI read [a bit of company consciousness](http://yenpress.us/?p=1884) about the disapproval of the new cover. Short story is that they're providing flat covers to ship with new copies of the book from online retailers. Before this, they shipped said covers as an extra with their magazine, but this was [not a wholly effective course of action.](http://omgwebsite.com/2009/11/re-judging-a-book-by-its-cover/)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I've started reading it and I have the same impression you do. It immediately reads as if it was translated.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "That's quite a dramatic change going from the UK to LA. Maybe you should visit LA before moving there. Better yet, if you got some money and a little time, travel around the US - you may find a city you'll want to move to based on the experience.\n\nMost people I know who've come over from the UK say Boston and San Francisco have a \"European\" feel to them - though you want some nice weather so they might not be the top choice.\n\nOh yeah, little know fact : The Front Range of Colorado (Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins) are statistically some of the sunniest places (days of total sunshine per year) in America. Basically, because of the mountains, the weather blows right over us here. Boulder is a nice town too.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "It all depends on the building you rent in.\r\n\r\nSome buildings have a gym and pool, others dont. Some have laundry hookups in the apartment, others have a communal laundry setup or none at all.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Vacuum sealed mason jars. This is the best storage method, I've found. I've stored buds for months and they smell and smoke pretty much the same as the day I brought'em home.\n\nhttp://www.pump-n-seal.com/", "score": 18 }, { "body": "I keep mine in a small, clear, airtight container I picked up from a local grocery store; it works great.\n\nI wouldn't say bud really loses potency from drying out; you may lose a tiny amount of the cannabinoids, but as long as it hasn't been sitting out in the air/sun for several days it should stay about the same. However it will burn faster, be less sticky (as it will have fewer, if any visible trichomes), and more prone to crumbling. Furthermore, appearance-wise fresh bud always looks better than dry.\n\nIf you really want to keep your bud fresher I would suggest keeping it in a good quality, solid airtight container; preferably glass. In addition, keep this container somewhere very dark and somewhat cool, such as in another completely opaque container stored in a closet, drawer, or even just near the floor (heat rises).\n\nIf you need even longer term storage consider placing this container in a freezer or possibly investing in a method to vacuum pack the bud, if not both.\n\nYou can always just smoke more, of course. /stoner", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I prefer a mason jar. Keeps an airtight seal, and as a bonus, if you get commercial kb that's been rushed through the dry process, a few days of jar curing can really bring out the true aroma of your buds.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "http://i.imgur.com/nAEIj.jpg\n\ni'm not sure if this helps keep it fresh, but this is what i store mine in.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Cheap great method: glass Ball jars or old jelly jars. Protip: put an orange peel in with your weed for like two days if it seems dried out and it'll seem a week fresher, especially with shitty weed. But be careful, if you leave it in there too long, it'll get too moist and then will mold. And no one likes wasted weed.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I use a \"Pelican 1010 Case\"\nThey are waterproof and awesome for storing bud. I also use one to put my cellphone in when i go to the lake.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "[i use these.. ](http://www.viewpoints.com/Ziploc-2-Cup-storage-container-review-37c03).. \n\n* they're widely available from any grocery chain store up here in canada..\n* they're cheap.. 4-5$ for 3 containers\n* they're pretty large.. fits an ounce, and a small pipe+lighter\n* since they're made for liquids, they're air-tight (no smell)\n\n\nit's fucking tupperware", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I store my nugs in a basic pill bottle. It's an airtight seal and the amber colored bottle blocks out UV rays. With baggies, THC can also rub off on the side of the bag. Pill bottles are the perfect size as well :)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "IF you have a good amount, and need it to last, freeze it, it will last up to a year that way. Other than that, yeah, mason jars or things like that.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Put it in an airtight container (tupperware, pill bottle, mason jar, etc.) and keep it in the freezer. This helps retain moisture and freshness, and helps contain the scent. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I use this used up candle jar. I bought it at Wal-Mart for like four bucks, used up the mango and pineapple scented candle, then cleaned it out. It's stronger than most jars I see for a lot more expensive, it holds more, and it has a tight seal. I don't get why more people don't do this. Here are some pics:\n\n[1](http://imgur.com/o2zVE.jpg) | [2](http://imgur.com/BIgVA.jpg) | [3](http://imgur.com/Ge0AR.jpg) | [4](http://imgur.com/Q1OfJ.jpg)", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I read this as \"Separate Reddit for computer users\" and sat for a couple minutes trying to understand how someone could use reddit and not be a computer user. I was so confused.", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "I gave money to a well known personality on a Internet news aggregate site after an impassioned plea to help his financial challenged mother. \n\nI have a sneakng suspicion he spent it on hookers and blow ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I bought a Scam-Wow once. The kind that Vince warned me about. It doesn't absorb anything - just kind of spreads the mess around. :(", "score": 5 }, { "body": "A couple of my mates tried to get some bud from some Jamaicans in Brixton... they bought it, went away to smoke but upon opening the foil discovered it was sticks . So they decided to go back & have words with the guy... he proceded to tell them not to trust anyone & always check what yer buying . They listened, nodded, paid the guy, grabbed the foil & went off to smoke... their newly purchased sticks ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "[Preordered Duke Nukem Forever.](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/al5bd/duke_nukem_forever_preorder/)", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I fell for the white van speaker scam a decade ago when I was 16. I was walking into a restaurant with my brother when I was approached by a guy in a white van telling me he was a delivery guy for a major speaker company and had some extra speakers he needed to get rid of and was willing to sell them for cheap. Naturally, I thought they were stolen and at 16 I came up with the stupid idea that this guy was probably trying to sell insanely expensive speakers for cheap to feed an addiction. I ended up handing over $150 for five \"acoustic image\" speakers. It was pretty convincing I was getting an amazing deal; the guy even had a brochure that showed the speakers were selling for $999. When I finally got home and Googled the brand I learned it was a scam. The speakers work but they are worth $50 at most. This scam is actually pretty common too and still exists to this day. Just Google \"White Van Scam\". Looking back on it now I see how stupid I was for falling for it. The scam is actually pretty good though; they take advantage of you by making you think you're buying stolen speakers and getting an amazing deal. Not only does greed take over, especially when you're a dumb 16 year old kid, you also won't report them to the cops when you realize you got conned because you would have to admit you attempted to buy stolen property. Luckily I only lost $150; it's not uncommon they try to get much more out of their victim with more elaborate speaker systems.\n\nEDIT: Noticed someone else mentioned this scam. I guess it shows how common it is.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Never, EVER buy a modified USED car. Many times the driver has no fucking idea what they are doing and usually make the additions themselves. Never listen to what the seller has to say, ever. Just brush everything off they say and bring someone who knows cars well. The seller usually says shit like \"oh yeah this thing runs perfect. never had a problem with it. it saved my life. blah blah blah\" The ones who talk the most are usually the most nervous like they have to sell it as quick as possible.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I was a chubby eight year old living in a bad neighborhood next to a housing project, approx 1985. The end of my street was a very steep half-mile long hill. My dad had just purchased me a sweet used BMX bike - red and chrome with awesome red plastic mag rims. So, one day I'm pushing my bike up the hill. Three older black kids come up along side me pushing a beat-up rusty old Schwinn with a regular tire in the back and one of those 12 inch scooter tires in the front, and no chain. I remember one of them had an afro with a pick-comb stuck in it. They convinced me that their bike was much lighter, and that my chubby husky-pants wearing ass would have a much easier time pushing their bike up the hill. So, out of the goodness of their heart, they offered to trade until we got to the top of the hill to give me a little breather. I took the deal. They proceeded to take off up the hill with lightning speed and disappear with my bike, leaving me with their retarded Schwinn hoopty.\n\nI told my dad, who was not too pleased. He called the police to file a report. The police proceeded to bring a parade of young black males by our house in the back of their police car, one after the other, for me to ID. I would tell the officer whether they had the right guy or not, knowing that the person in the back seat of the car could see me but couldn't hear what I was saying. I remember pointing to one of the guys they brought by and saying something like \"he looks similar to that guy but a little younger, longer hair\". The innocent guy thought I was identifying him as the thief and gave me the most disgusted betrayed look I had ever seen.\n\nThey never did find the guys, and my dad ended up buying me a beat-up girl's bike as punishment.\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Yes, but as a wise person once said, \"If you give someone money, and you never see them again, it's probably worth it.\"\n\nAlso, when buying a car from a private party, pay the extra $70, and have your local mechanic inspect it.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I went to college in Cleveland, having grown up in a small town. Freshman year, I stopped to help a guy who was flagging down cars next to his car on an off ramp near downtown. He said he and his son were in Cleveland for their church and their car was broken and he needed like $20 for a bus pass or a tow or something (I don't remember because I ended up hearing several hundred of these stories during my 5 years in Cleveland). I gave it to him and he took my address promising that he'd get the money sent back to me once he was back home.\n\nIt never came, obviously. But the experience did allow me to feel completely justified every time I lie about not having any money when beggers come around.\n\n---\n\nEdit: There was another time when I was hanging with friends and one of my friends got taken. That was a fun enough story that I recreated it on film as a reply to someone else's youtube post. [Enjoy reddit.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBI_AfT-qGU)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "This was a while ago and I was pretty young. I was in Boston, walking around with a few friends, when we were approached by a hipster-looking young guy, maybe in his early twenties, with a petition and a big-ass binder. He said he was collecting money for local HIV/AIDS research through a local foundation. When I asked about the foundation, he held the binder out and said I could take a look through and and read about the foundation so I would know he was legit about this. Well, I was far too lazy to actually read the information in the binder, so my friends and I gave the guy about five dollars each and went on our way.\n\nLater that evening I saw on a piece on the news about the police arresting a bunch of coke addicts getting drug money by masquerading as fundraisers. Gotta say, he did a pretty awesome job. Boston, why you gotta play me like that?", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "1. Take care of your teeth: People with bad teeth are seldom witty.\n2. Wear a bow tie: Bow ties increase wit by a factor of ten.\n3. Find an audience that has a lower IQ than you.\n", "score": 11 }, { "body": "practice practice practice.\n\nstart by doing what you're doing, listening to NPR and also some stand up comedy tapes. Don't be afraid to recycle material, pass it off as your own. You'll build up confidence in yourself and your humor. Pretty soon you'll be thinking of these one liners yourself and you'll have the confidence to deliver them correctly.\n\nConfidence is certainly key here. Some of the belly aching laughs on NPR are from jokes that aren't even that funny; but they are delivered to an appreciative audience with confidence. They laugh first, and ask 'was that funny?' later.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Watch tv shows where people are witty and absorb their knowledge. Reading lacks the timing needed.\nTheres a show in the uk - you can find it on Youtube - called 8 out of 10 cats. watch it and be the wittiest person you will know", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Fail for a while. First you will be insufferable, then sufferable, then witty, and maybe, if you keep at it, you will become droll.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Sounds like me. Maybe try wiki'ing depersonalization and derealization. If you find a solution, please let me know.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I think its a great idea. You'll have people who need help in a bunch of areas, and a bunch of people that are knowledgeable in said areas. I'd be very interested!", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "If that summary takes you 5 minutes to read, then you're going to have a really hard time finishing a whole book.", "score": 80 }, { "body": "Documentarian filmaker moves his family into a new house. Discovers a hallway in it is longer than the house's outside dimensions. Finds a closet door that leads to blackness. Brings his camera.\n\nHouse of Leaves.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "Schrödinger's Cat trilogy\n\nIn *The Universe Next Door*, the President of Unistat is Furbish Lousewart V; in that universe, a terrorist organization known as Purity of Essence, named after General Ripper's obsession in the film Dr. Strangelove, threatens to detonate nuclear devices in major cities all over Unistat. Also mirroring Dr. Strangelove, Unistat has an automated device that will send nuclear missiles to Russia in the event of such an attack. Russia has a similar device to bomb China, and so on.\n\nIn *The Trick Top Hat*, President Hubbard, a woman, promotes a scientific approach to the improvement of life, offering rewards to anyone who can design a robot to do their job or develop methods to prolong life. Eventually Unistat becomes a Utopia. She makes the whole law system into three different laws: victimless crimes, which have no punishment; monetary crimes or some such thing, which involve debt and payment; and serious crimes, such as murder, which result in being sent to Hell, a place like jail but not quite. It's encased in laser shielding and is like a primitive world all its own. It is, in fact, the State of Mississippi. The original Pocket Books edition of \"The Trick Top Hat\" contains many passages, some sexually explicit, that are not included in later editions, including the Dell softcover. Much of this material first appeared in Wilson's earlier novel, The Sex Magicians, published as pornagraphy by Sheffield House in 1973.\n\nThe third volume, *The Homing Pigeons*, features President Kennedy, although it has very little to do with the President. Near the end of the book it keeps switching universes, some of which contain President Kennedy, others which contain President Lousewort, and still others in which Hubbard is the president. Like \"The Trick Top Hat,\" \"The Homing Pigeons\" also has material in the Pocket Books edition that is not in later editions. Unlike \"The Trick Top Hat,\" however, the material that was cut out did not contain particularly sexually explicit content.\n\nThe main plots throughout these books are many. One follows Markoff Chaney, a midget, and his pranks played on the world that continuously screws him over. Most of his pranks are played on Dr. Dashwood, of Orgasm Research. However, the most important plot line follows the path of one Hugh Crane which may or may not be this Universe's Hagbard Celine; a character that is an obvious representation of Wilson himself.\n\nAnother follows an \"Ithyphallic Eidolon\", a penis removed from a transsexual woman named Epicene (or Mary Margaret) Wildebloode. She puts it on display on her mantelpiece, and it gets stolen. It passes through the vicinity of almost every character in the series at least once.\n\nThere are dozens of conspiracy theories, strange loops, satire and paranoia included within those pages. In addition, there are numerous references to other works and occasional outright appropriation of characters from them (including cameos by Captain Ahab and Lemuel Gulliver, among others). Many of the character names are either puns (Bertha van Ation refers to the film Birth of a Nation, Juan Tootrego) or references to historical personages (Blake Williams refers to the poet William Blake, Francis Dashwood's name refers to Sir Francis Dashwood).", "score": 9 }, { "body": "A college student comes home when his father dies. To his dismay, his mother marries his uncle -- who, he soon learns, was the one who killed his father. After our hero engages in a lengthy monologue, his girlfriend commits suicide. He engages in a scheme to expose his uncle/stepfather as the one who killed his father. There's a lot of treachery and scheming, and, in the end, everyone dies.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "This book starts with the song that birthed the world. But the main story line is a chronicled lineage of kings as they fight to expand and preserve their kingdom. Genocide, murder, rebellion, and sex. Oh, and near the climax a hoard of the living dead rise from the earth.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Title: The DaVinci Code Author: Dan Brown Genre: hahahahaha okay okay, I can't hold in the laughter, I give up....", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Guy can only get out of military duty if he's crazy but, since wanting to get out of military duty proves he's sane, he's stuck there.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "[Hard Boiled Wonderland](http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Wonderland-End-World-International/dp/0679743464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262574639&sr=1-1). Click Look Inside, and read the first 2 pages. I'm barely 30 pages in, and already it's one of my favorites. No idea what it's about yet, but if the guy can make a completely featureless elevator interesting, then I can't wait for what's next.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "The somewhat timid Charles Nancy finally thinks his life is going in the right direction. He is engaged, can pay his bills, and has escaped his horrible childhood and father by moving to England. The news of his fathers death changes all of that, and he sets out to bury his dad. An old neighbor tells Charles his dad was a god, but his brother, who he had never known about, got all the good powers. He contacts his brother and finds him to be slick, popular and everything Charles is not. Unfortunately his brother begins to take over Charles' life, beginning with stealing his fiancee. Now Charles must find a way to be rid of his brother in which he will travel to the ends of world and beyond, find out his family's heritage, and discover who he really is.\n\nAnansi Boys - Neil Gaiman\n\n(Hope I didn't butcher to poor book too badly. Honestly, if you haven't read it, you should. ^.^)", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Title: I, Lucifer Author; Glen Duncan\n\nFailing author Declan Gunn (o how clever!) attempts suicide only to find his soul switched with that of Lucifer, who proceeds to walk the earth and make a movie about how God is just a big grump who spoils all the fun that Lucifer was having. Everything is fine until that dratted mortality catches up with him. Best quote? 'Brutality is the McDonalds of evil'. It has satan, coke and whores. What more do you people want? Redemption?", "score": 4 }, { "body": "The trick is to create a 5-minute summary that will make you *want* to go right out and buy a *complete stinker*. Like, say, Battlefield Earth. (\"It's like Avatar, only the evil aliens are big and blue instead of small and beige...\")", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "http://crushitbook.com/\n\nSay what you will about Gary Vaynerchuk, but I think he really understands marketing. And, I'm assuming that the point of this website is to market your father's book. In other words, why should I visit this website if I've never read the book? More importantly, how will I find out about it?\n\nI think the best approach is to figure out how to engage and connect with people. Get them involved. Get your dad to talk to fans on Facebook and Twitter. Hit up forums about the subject (even if it's a fictional novel). It's tough, but a great website is the foundation for this strategy.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Steven Berlin Johnson is a great nonfiction author with a great blog:\n\nhttp://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/\n\nRobert Caro is possibly the greatest living biographer of our times, and his web site is shit:\n\nhttp://robertcaro.com/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "There's not really much of a response to be made. Those who call him a Muslim are using it as an epithet and therefore aren't trying to engage in any meaningful dialogue. Why shine the spotlight on them further by replying?\n\nThe fact that people think calling Obama a Muslim is a useful thing to do simply indicates that we've been made into the scary \"other\". There are more useful ways to deal with that reality than getting involved in silly debates. Personally, I keep waiting for China or Venezuela to take a bit of the heat off of us by providing America with a new bogeyman.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Damn straight its insulting. It makes the terms Muslim and Islam sound like bad words - and when we try to argue why he's not Muslim we also make it sound as if its a bad thing. \r\n\r\nNo I don't think he's actually Muslim, he's some sect of Christian.\r\n\r\nI don't see the logic, of him being Muslim, when there was such an issue over what church he was attending. The only argument I've heard is the whole \"In the Quran it says that they can go to whatever lengths they want to deceive their enemy\" from people who don't understand jack. \r\n\r\nBtw, how stupid is it that we have to ARGUE over what religion our President is, because some people cannot accept what he says. What does that say about our society?", "score": 9 }, { "body": "How about:\n\nIf he is a Muslim why did he go to a christian church for 20 years that was viewed as crazy?", "score": 4 }, { "body": "If he was a Muslim, he would know the penalty for killing another Muslim intentionally and without just cause is eternity in hell fire.\n\nIf a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein (For ever): And the wrath and the curse of Allah are upon him, and a dreadful penalty is prepared for him. (Quran 4:93)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I like what colin powell said about it before the election:\n\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_NMZv6Vfh8#t=4m31s\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "OpenDNS is always a lot faster for me. There's some DNS speed testing tool you can use to find out what the fastest DNS is for your area, it was always tops for me.", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "You are soul searching. That is a wonderful thing for anyone. You are giving yourself the chance to become your own hero! try not to question why it's wrong... get a journal and write about how good it feels to take a chance with life. And, if you want to warm our hearts, share with us the great experience of changing life.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I know how you feel. I get that \"dread\" feeling all the time before I do something \"big\", or before I see someone again who I haven't seen in awhile. Don't let it get the best of you, it doesn't mean the trip will be a disaster, it just means you're nervous about it. I lived in North Carolina when I was a teenager, it's a beautiful place and regardless of what happens with the girl you can still have a great time. \n\nJust out of curiosity, where in North Carolina are you visiting? ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Is it possible that you're just nervous about seeing her again, and translating that into a horrible feeling of dread? \n\nGetting away sounds like a great idea, and from what I've heard North Carolina is a gorgeous place (even at this time of year). If you think that you can handle being around her without any complications, I'd definitely say go for it. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "In 2005 I attempted suicide. A friend of mine was in Goldsboro NC because her husband was stationed there with the USAF. They begged me to come and stay with them for a little while, to get away from my life. I bought a plane ticket. The two days before I left I felt nauseous, like I was crazy to go. I was absolutely terrified and I didn't know why. It was a feeling in my gut sort of like I knew that trip was going to change everything, and that feeling was the most horrible scary feeling I've ever experienced. \nThat trip *did* change everything. I met my (now) husband and never went home. Maybe this is completely irrelevant, and maybe it doesn't help at all, I hope it does though. \n\nI agree with treephant that you're soul searching. There's a chance something huge is headed your way. Be open to it and it might be a wonderful experience. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "long distance girlfriend I was \"in love\" with. after being apart for about a year, she calls me up and asks if I want to have phone sex, of course I go for it. About a minute into it, I notice that she is not just fake moaning and then I hear the obvious sound of pelvis' coming together. I ask her what the fuck is going on and she tells me to shut up, continues to scream in pleasure. I hang up the phone and she calls me back. . . still having sex. It was one of those things where you immediately feel your stomach and heart rotting away.", "score": 441 }, { "body": "i had a crush on this girl who i only watched from afar. i hate that she didn't read my mind and ask me out.", "score": 368 }, { "body": "I finally got this girl to agree to go out with me, provided I took her to this particular club to see a certain band. We were sitting in a booth when the band took a break when she said, \"Okay - get your arm off my shoulder. I want the drummer to notice me.\"\n\nI hope the drummer gave her a ride home, 'cuz I sure didn't.", "score": 174 }, { "body": "Moved in with me. Lied about being on birth control. Got pregnant. quit her job. Sucked all my savings while she was pregnant, as I was supporting her and my teenage son (from a previous relationship) on my one income. moved out one day after the baby was born, while i was at work. Pushed for the most child support she could get from me. Only lets me see my child when its convient for her. ", "score": 161 }, { "body": "Took a bunch of money, ruined my credit, and then flaunted it in my face. Karma finally caught up with her, since I've heard that her boyfriend beats her. \n\n", "score": 126 }, { "body": "she aborted our unborn child without even telling me she was pregnant. it was a boy. he'd be three now.", "score": 98 }, { "body": "This happened to a friend of mine back in high school.\n\nMy friend, \"Alfred\", had been going out with \"Gwendolyn\" for a while and their relationship was going down the shitter. If I remember correctly, she had cheated on him, so he broke up with her. \nOne day during a break from percussion ensemble practice, we were all fooling around in a hallway. Alfred was lying on the ground after somebody pushed him or something and he asked for help getting up. Gwendolyn took his hand to lift him up and then **nailed him in the balls.** That's right, his legs were open and she saw this as a perfect opportunity to fit her shoe into his scrotum.\n\nDamage report: One of Alfred's testicles split in twain. I heard the doctors melted the smaller part and **fused it with the larger part.** Naturally, it does not function anymore.\n\ntl;dr - A girl kicked my friend in the sac so hard that one of his testicles splt.\n\nEdit: I forgot to mention that he passed out from the pain.", "score": 84 }, { "body": "I have a lot gems from an ex-gf I had in college.\nI wouldn't say any of these stories I tell about her are the meanest, but they're definitely the weirdest.\n[Here is a story I told here about how we broke up.](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/agzvb/what_was_the_fastest_youve_ever_lost_all_your/c0hj816)\n\nAfter we broke up I remember finding these long strands of hair on the flyer clip of my apartment door after I'd come home from work. Due to how weird and naive this chick was, I immediately knew she was probably dropping by my apartment while I was at work and putting her hair there. This was probably happening every work day for about two weeks. I ignored it at first, but then I mentioned something about it on my blog one day. I don't remember exactly what I said but it was something like \"I'm annoyed that Farah is stalking me.\"\n\nThe next day, which was a work day, I come home to find a turd on my welcome mat. Yup, she took a dump on my fucking welcome mat. It was a nice welcome mat too. I threw it away and decided not to mention it on my blog at all.", "score": 80 }, { "body": "Wow, the worst that a girl ever did to you was reject your advances? \n\nI can hardly fathom that level of cruelness.\n\n", "score": 72 }, { "body": "There was this girl I had a crush on during my freshman year of HS, but I was too shy at the time to talk to her. I moved out of state for a year, but then I moved back. I figured since I still liked her after being away for a year I'd make an effort to let her know how I felt. So I wrote her this long letter telling her how I'd had a crush on her for the last two years and sent it with a dozen roses. I had included my number in the letter also. After reading it she called me to tell me thanks, how she was so surprised, and wanted to meet me. I told her where I was working at the time and that she could come in and talk to me there. She ended up coming in with a group of her friends, but as soon as they saw me(I was overweight at the time) they all busted out laughing, turned around and left with out waying a word. Bitch!!!", "score": 63 }, { "body": "I made the mistake of coming my gf's ladies night by surprise with what I later learned where the wrong flowers. She called me a worthless piece of shit and useless; she screamed at me to get the fuck out. I turned to walk to her car, where I'd left one of my iPods. She was a few feet behind when she kicked me in the back so hard I slammed into the hood of her small VW Beetle. Its large cartoon headlights instantly cracked my ninth and tenth rib; less than a second later my face impacted with the windscreen, breaking my nose and splattering blood all over the red paint. Her best friend came out to see what the commotion was and offered to drive me to the hospital. I lied to the doctors at the local ER, and told them I had been in a bar fight. They knew better. The nurse asked if I wanted the police there to take a statement, and I declined. \n\ntl;dr: bitch kicked me into a car, broke my ribs and nose.", "score": 63 }, { "body": "GF borrowed my convertible to meet up with her parents on vacation. While there she went cruising for guys and found one. When she gave the car back she informed me that she was moving to CA to be with him. She had known him for less than a week. \n\nActually this is probably the best thing to ever happen to me.", "score": 51 }, { "body": "She was making brownies and she pretended she was checking on them, instead she took out the tray and threw it at my head. This was a ceramic baking tray full of brownies that were still sort of molten on the inside, straight from the oven. It missed, but still who does that? ", "score": 50 }, { "body": "Am I the only one who dreads the inevitable opposite sex version of this? I feel like three words can really put this thread into perspective...", "score": 46 }, { "body": "I saw this girl in the school library. And she was standing with my group of friends and we were all having a nice hearty conversation. I hadn't met before so I asked her what her name was. She glared at me for a second before yelling out: \"FUCK YOU\" and storming away. I was slightly bemused.\n\n(She later found me online, apologized and now we are really close friends. Awesome way to start a friendship though)", "score": 44 }, { "body": "i'm 50 now but in my early 20's i was soo in love with a girl and thought she felt the same about me. I spent a lot of time shopping for Christmas gift and bought an expesive ...for me necklass for her. I felt so exicited by giving it to her. My family was having a big party and she came over. We start talking and she informs me it's over. She has been sleeping with my best friend. ...and I soon found out the rest of my friends knew about it but let me play the fool. Dumped for your best friend on Chistmas nite. ....I'll never forget it.", "score": 43 }, { "body": "My 2nd wife threw out all my photographs, both digital and hard copies from birth to 2001 because she didn't like the idea that I had had a life before I met her. she also burned any clothing that was purchased by my first wife or old girlfriends, gave away art and furniture from same and destroyed all my kitchen stuff. She did all this one weekend that I was on a business trip. I told her I wanted a divorce after that. She didn't understand why. During the divorce process, she used my social security number to take out 6 credit cards and a staples charge card, she ran the cards up to their maximum and left me with the debt (over $65k).\n\nWe were married only 4 months.", "score": 41 }, { "body": "Cheated on me with lots of guys while all her family and friends covered and lied for her , then claimed she was kidnapped and then shows back up 6 months later saying how much she missed me and how she \"escaped\" only to find out she ran off with the guy on her own and lived with him until she got tired of it. ", "score": 37 }, { "body": "This girl I was seeing on and off for a few months got pregnant. She told me that there was a small chance that the baby wasn't mine, but most likely was. So I decided to man up (unlike the other guy who disappeared) and be there for her and the baby. I gave up my band marketing and promotions company that I had just started up for a normal job with benefits. Over the first few months she constantly told others how unsupportive I was, even after buying a $300 crib, clothes, taking her to her appointments, and making an attempt to be a partner for her. She named the child an awful name, without even asking me what I thought. She posted all over facebook and myspace how she wishes she had a \"real man\" in her life. When her and I had a falling out over the fact that I didn't even know if the child was mine, we split up. With 3 months to go, she starts dating this other guy. We had one huge fight with two months to go, and I told her to just call me the day the baby was born.\n\nI find out that the boy was born 16 days *after* the baby was born. Through Myspace. All of a sudden she wants me to be there for my son. So I make an effort to put behind me the hell she's put me through. The kid looked JUST fucking like me, but just to be sure, I had a paternity test done. Which of course she objected to, but eventually allowed. In the three months it took to get the results back, I became a father to that child. I fed, changed, cleaned, and loved that boy.\n\nI'm sure you already know where this goes. After the deadline came and went, I called the paternity people. They said that they were unaware of why it's taken so long to get my results back. Final one day I get a call and some lady on the other end goes \"Yeah, this is [name] from [lab place] with your paternity test. Yeah, uh, the test shows with 100% certainty you aren't the father. We'll be sending you the results in the mail. Thanks! Have a nice day!\"\n\nI called the girl to tell her and she went quiet and said, \"I'm sorry.\" That's it. Just \"sorry\". A year of my life, hundreds of dollars, my awesome business, friends, the respect of my family, and a son- gone.\n\nAs far as the baby goes, the hardest part of it all was having a son one day and not the next. I'll hate her for that for the rest of my life.", "score": 31 }, { "body": "I went on a date with this girl Marta about 10 years ago. We were at a bar (the Hopvine in Seattle), and it seemed like things were going pretty well. Eventually, she got up and said she was going to the bathroom. After about 15 minutes, she hadn't returned. It turned out she went home.\n\nThat was a pretty shitty thing to do, but I guess it wasn't that horrible. Women have always been pretty nice to me.\n\n", "score": 30 }, { "body": "Got roofied by my senior peer advisor the first night of college. Woke up at noon the next day on the outdoor tennis courts on campus.\r\n\r\nAnother chick, bless her heart, had a dude over into my room while I was at work. Dude stole $900 cash.\r\n\r\nAnother chick played on my seemingly good friendship with her to get me to fund an abortion for her for which she never paid me back and after a bit she just stopped talking to me. I even drover her to missouri to get it done, put her up in a room, went to the clinic with her, went to get her pads the night they had those stints in there to loosen her up. Like $2,000.\r\n\r\nAnother chick sat me down upon our break-up and rattled off a list of like 15 guys that she'd fucked around with while seeing me, most of 'em guys that I knew from around town.\r\n\r\nOh wait, thought I was done. If you ever read one of those stories about a chick who strings along a guy for years online, totally fucking with him in every possible way, that happened to me.\r\n\r\nI used to have a few problems with bitches.", "score": 29 }, { "body": "My girlfriend of the better part of a decade agreed to move out west with me and get married.\r\n\r\nWe move out to Vancouver and talk incessantly about our plans for the future, our kids (picked names and everything). I'd sing her to sleep at night, I learned to cook vegetarian for her, we joined a gym together and loved our new life together.\r\n\r\n\r\nShe got offered a great job (Marketing Coordinator for Translink, BC) and was apprehensive about taking it (hated the \"office scene\" the clothes she'd have to wear, the whole \"corporate thing\", basically). I supported her all through it. She took the job and was an immediate success. I drove her to work early each morning before heading to my own job and made her dinner every night when she got home.\r\n\r\n\r\nFirst week on the job she meets some guy. After being together since college, she decides that \"we have to break up because she wants to raise her children vegetarian\". \r\n\r\nI left to visit family while she moved out. When I got back, she'd taken everything.\r\n\r\nSix months later, I'm back in Montreal living in my parent's basement.\r\n", "score": 29 }, { "body": "I hooked up with a drunk chick at a party. She was more drunk than I thought though...\r\n\r\nShe was riding me cowgirl style and I guess the movement set her stomach off... she felt the sudden need to empty the contents of her stomach all over my face and chest. I was unable to get out of the way in time.", "score": 27 }, { "body": "5th grade. Liked Jessica. Gave her a nice letter stating the same. She tore it up in front of me. Still scars me a bit to this day (23 now).", "score": 24 }, { "body": "gf of 2 years wanted to get married...her family did the whole welcome to our family, she was going to follow me when I was moving a month later...got dumped, 3 days later she's fucking my roommate and now dating him, still no idea to this day.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "I returned from a long holiday (6 months in Tokyo). You must know that my vacation trip made me a lot of problems at the university and also I became a recognizable person among students :)\nYou know that I became somekind of cool guy or someone who i`m not. I am from Poland and for most people this trip is really exotic. \nA day before classes at my university started I received a message that my student group was divided. I was transferred to another. \nThe prettiest girl became my guide and soon friend... then even closer friend and... said to me she has a boyfriend. \nI didnt know it but for 6 years she met up with him. It turned out that this was my friend from the first years of study.\nShe didnt stoped... all the time she suggested walks, drinks etc. I felt really sorry for her bf and I told her to leave him. \nbut she didnt do it. After a few weeks we started to meet in secret. I thought to myself: last year, free sex with a pretty girl... \neveryone would accept this but I fell in love with her. It was a really crazy love, and after a while she persuaded me to go on with this intrigue. \nWhat was supposed to be fun for her (sex with handsome, popular guy) soon became a love of her life... but she still could not break up with him.\nWhenever I was angry at her, she gave me a evidence of her love.\nAfter a year of time I could not stand it no longer and moved from that town. I went back to my hometown. I hoped that she came back to me...\nand she did. But this time she lied me that she broke with him. (Now I do not know what was a lie and what is true).\nIt lasted about a half year. Then I stoped contact with her, because a friend of mine told me she got maried.\nAfter some time, once again she began to call me. Month before the wedding she called me and said that she rented a hotel room and that sie is waiting for me.\nI took the phone and said that I know about everything. Maya (that is her name) got married at her birthday 10th of May.\nSince then she rang many times, she wrote some message but I didnt answer. In september, she wrote her last e-mail o me. I didnt answer.\nNow I am a doctor, I got money and I know a lot of beautiful girls who wants to meet me... but still I love Maya :(\nWe broke up 2,5 year ago.\n\n\n\n**PS:** When I was 20 my gf dumped me for another girl, but now after 8 years it even sounds funny :) \n\n\nSorry for language mistakes", "score": 21 }, { "body": "This is hardly the worst, but it ruined my new years:\n\nI was talking to this girl at the new years party a few days ago. I thought things were going well. I invited her to smoke a spliff I'd brought before the countdown (apparently she worked at a pharmacy, so I'm sure that didn't scare her off), she said maybe, then a few minutes later out of no where she says (swear to god): \"Hey, I'm going to go talk to that hot guy over there cause he's hot.\" \n\nI was a little drunk so I didn't realize how cold that was until she'd already walked away. It stung. Bad. The ball dropped a few minutes later, and after about a half hour I went home and smoked a J by myself to cheer up. \n\nHappy new year!", "score": 17 }, { "body": "GF of two years (we lived together for the last year) dumped me. Stated reasons were she couldn't deal with me being in school (only had one semester left) and that I was too much of a free spirit (she put EVERYTHING into a day timer and I kept most of my appointments by memory or sticky notes on my monitor). 3 days later she was back together with her greasy ex who she said she would never go back to. (side story, they dated about 2 years prior but he cheated on her repeatedly and treated her like shit, among other things, which was the pattern that followed him to every other woman he had dated since). They were engaged 4 months later and will be married this spring.\r\n\r\nThe real knife twist part of this is that we share the same circle of friends and I'm still fairly angry about the whole situation. They also seem to flaunt the relationship whenever they're out together (from what I've heard from friends and witnessed when I've had the unfortunate luck to see them in public). I find myself avoiding outings with friends if the risk of them showing up is high as I don't need to put myself through that kind of stress.\r\n\r\nThey say to fully get over someone takes about half as long as you were together... so in a few more months I should be cured... right?... right??... :P\r\n\r\n**EDIT**: among other things, this sort of came as a blessing. Since the breakup it's turned out that she's really not the person I spent the last 2 years with and she's gone a bit off the deep end with how she behaves, her own convictions, etc. Not the woman I would want to spend the rest of my days with. Still hurts to see the two of them together though.\r\n\r\nAlso, she isn't getting married any sooner than if she had stayed with me. I was going to put a ring on her finger this past November and we had talked about marriage and kids for sometime mid 2010.\r\n\r\nAs a good ex-friend of her's said to me, she, for some reason, just never got over the guy that treated her like absolute garbage. Go figure.", "score": 15 }, { "body": "One girl dumped me one week after saying how right we felt together in the middle of sex. Her excuse: \"I thought I would laugh more.\"", "score": 14 }, { "body": "One time my girlfriend spit sperm into my face after giving me oral sex. I was saying something at the time so my mouth was open. She did it on purpose and she laughed her ass off.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "My life is hell. I have a son that’s a piece of shit troublemaker. I’m always having to go to school to deal with some shit he has done. I have a daughter that’s cute and all, but corrects everyone. She literally gets on everyone’s nerves and I wonder how she’s going to adjust socially. She’ll probably turn into a lesbian, but I’ll still love her. Wife and I had an “accident” that’s about three years old now. She grows up in this house with constant fights and drama. You would not believe how crazy a household with three kids can be. My wife is stuck way in the past. She says and does things like her mother did. She has two fucked up annoying sisters that hang out and critique me. Nothing I do is good enough to them or the rest of her family. They think I’m a loser and the worst thing that ever happened to my wife. I’m fat. I work a very dangerous job that pays shit. I’m not getting any younger. My car is a piece of shit. I’m going nowhere. Life has felt like it has been at a standstill for over a decade. I’m bald. I’m over forty. My skin is yellow. I love donuts.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "This one girl in high-school I really liked, well, I was going through some shit and she was there for me, so over the Christmas break I create a mixed cd with a tracklist (very obscure music, I wanted to comment on it), and a long thank you note. Well, after Christmas break I'm called into my guidance counselor's office and told that she was upset over the cd and letter and she went to the Dean. I'm told I have to stay away from her. Which is difficult because we both share the same circle of friends and are going on a weekend retreat together.\n\nTo this day, I still have no clue what made her react that way, and she doesn't have any clue how bad it made me feel. I couldn't stand looking at her because I felt guilty and wanted to get away from her as fast as possible. Yeah, life back then was dumb...\n\nEDIT: And I forgot something else, too. The emotional trauma that weekend retreat caused made me a nervous wreck, and the extreme cold gave me a week long case of bronchitis. The heads of campus ministry mistake the bronchitis as something related to the retreat - not the girl - and as a result I am kept out of a retreat meant for orienting new campus ministry members, permanently stigmatizing my relationship with my fellow campus ministry members as well as preventing me from participating in a lot of the really cool stuff like Freshman Orientation.\n\n**tl;dr**: because of the shit that occurred during the retreat, I got bronchitis and was held back from entering Campus Ministry (my \"clique\", although a third of the senior class would be in it - a hell of a large clique), and fucked up a lot of my hopes for Senior year.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "I dated a girl freshman year of college for a few months. We were both considered the innocent couple who were perfect for each other. Then one day her best friend told me that said girl had cheated on me with a guy a few floors up. Turns out he was my dealer. He was a jackass and stole a hardees sign and put it up in his window. Hardees notices and calls the cops. Cops come and ask him why he thinks they're there. He says for the drugs. Dude went to prison and I laughed. Anyways, I had my heart broken and in response I screwed her best friend all up and down my dorm the rest of the year. Ah karma.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Not a girl, but girls in general. Psychological torture over the course of several years during elementary and high school leading to lots of problems with relationships and self esteem.\n", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Had to create an account for my first post to reddit for this one.\nI was dating a girl a number of years ago. She invited me to her family Christmas gathering, I met her immediate and extended family. They were all very nice. This was my first \"adult relationship\" I thought to myself. Things were going very well.\nAbout two months into the relationship, a long time friend of mine asked me to go for a drive with him, he had something he needed to tell me. We go for a drive in the countryside in his old ford escort like we had done a million times. I noticed in his face that he wanted to say something but just couldn't. Finally I was able to coax it out of him.. he told me that my *closest* friend was also seeing her. I was in shock.\nUpon getting home, I gathered the Christmas gifts that I received from her and drove to her place in record time to confront her. She told me that I had \"imagined\" the relationship and that there was nothing there for her. This was news to me. If that was the case, why didn't I hear from her or my closest friend that they were seeing each other? My traitor friend just told me that \"this is the way it's going to be\". Great. Welp, better now than later I suppose. I told him that I don't care to ever see her again, and that he should leave her as well, else it will come back to haunt him. \"Cheaters stay cheaters\" I said. About a year later they got married. I did not attend the wedding. \nFast forward to last month.. I received a friend request and this message on facebook:\n\n\n>Dwayne: give me call cell XXX-XXX-XXXX You where right!!!! \n>\n>Me: Sorry to hear that \n>\n>Dwayne: did you hear that from anyone else? Are you available to talk sometime? \n>\n>Me: No I didn't\n\n\nI didn't feel like responding. He continued.\n\n\n>Dwayne: Ha Randy, do you feel like getting even with karen. I got a job for you if you want it. Just let me know. Give me a call XXX-XXX-XXXX\n>\n>Me: What do you have in mind? *(I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to do something stupid)*\n>\n>Dwayne: call me \n>\n>Dwayne: I need pictures fast \n>\n>Me: You do realize that your betrayal was far greater than Karen's right? I'm really surprised that you thought I needed to get back at her.\n>\n>Dwayne: Its amazing what the love of a woman can do to you. She told me she had explained it to you before i started dating her. Dude you where really angry and had every right to be, she led you on, I later found that out. You never talked about it so i didn't know.\n\n\nI had called him to make sure he wasn't going to hurt her or do something stupid. It turns out that she has been cheating on him for almost the whole time they were married, with various guys. This is the first time he knew who the guy was and wanted *me* to get pics for him. After all these years, he was still so diluted, thinking that I needed to get back at her.\n", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Girlfriend of six months dumped me out of nowhere by letter for a drug dealer, and I didn't find out until three weeks after (through a mutual friend) that she had been cheating on me with him for the last month of our relationship.\n\nApparently since then she's withdraw/failed two of her classes and set her house on fire, though, so I guess in the end she did me a favor.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "My ex broke up with me the night of a Christmas party. She then attended a New Years' eve party put on by my best friend and had sex with him, while I was unconscious in the next room. She then invited herself to all of our social gatherings thereafter. I do not know how many of my friends she fucked in the ensuing couple months, but I do know that something called \"The [her name] club\" came to exist.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I told some chick I had been dating for about 3 months I loved her. She said it back like she meant it. Then two days later dumped me and said she didn't mean it. That is all...", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I've got two: my first relationship ended when she cheated on me with my best friend. My second relationship ended when she broke up with me via gmail chat, four days before the lease on our house started. Through a mistake on my part, I got stuck with the lease, she refused to help me pay her share, and now I am paying ridiculous rent. ", "score": 9 }, { "body": "My girlfriend of 5 years was working abroad for 6-7 months. I worked 2 jobs for a while and managed to save up enough money to visit her for a few weeks. A few days after I got there she drugged me to make me ill enough so she could cheat on me with some guy she just met. yeay :(", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I had a major crush on a girl who had been giving me mixed signals for literally years. One day after I hadn't seen her in a while, I ran into her and she practically forced me to go somewhere and make out with her for an hour or so (OK, it didn't take much arm-twisting). She seemed like she was totally into it. Then she wrote a LiveJournal blog post about it, telling all her friends that she just did it as a power trip, she didn't feel anything sexual for me, etc. etc. And then she wanted us to be \"friends\" again after that. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I realize this is nothing compared to what other people have gone through, but it really did a number on my head. Now I'm married to an incredible, wonderful woman, so it worked out for me -- I learned what to avoid.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "This korean girl I was going out with in highschool cheated on me so I dumped her, no big deal, she didn't have incredible willpower and her exboyfriend talked her into one last kiss, and additionally I had been looking for an excuse to dump this bitch for a while. The EVIL part was that she went through the school to specifically request me as a math tutor. Since the school knew my schedule for tutoring, I couldn't easily say no, and got stuck going to her house regularly, just so she could be with me. I tried to teach math, she tried to seduce me, repeat this process for months. Sure, I probably could have said that for personal reasons I didn't want to tutor her, but I didn't have the balls to do something like that back then, so I put up with it. I wasn't interested, and had a long-term girlfriend at that time, it was really creepy every time.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Oh, I have a good one.\n\nAbout 6 years ago, I was a freelance journalist on assignment in Israel. I was actually one of very few people who were outside the newly liberated Church of Nativity, waiting to go in and film.\n\nThere was this one Israeli girl waiting there too. Apart from her massively huge nose, she was cute, and had a nice body. So I was sort of staring at her, trying to make eye contact.\nEventually she marches over to me and says with a dirty look, \"Excuse me, you've been staring at me; is there something you want to tell me?\"\n\nLITERALLY IN FRONT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS, as well as the Israeli army commander (who got a kick out of it by the way.)\n\nObviously, I was mortified. Fortunately, another (somewhat less attractive) Israeli chick came up and apologized on her behalf.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "One of my ex-girlfriends (we had been dating for a year and a half at this point) went to a national skills competition (she was doing video editing) out of town for a weekend for the semifinals, and since she was busy with the competiton we didn't get to talk during it. \n\nWhen she came back I called her, we talked for a few minutes but she was being super quiet, in contrast to her usual outgoing self. Wouldn't tell me much about the competition, other than \"it was fun\". She says she'll call me later, so I say \"Okay, love you, bye\" and she just says \"Okay, bye\" and hangs up. \n\nI call her back to get her to explain the lack of an \"I love you too\" and she tells me that she feels like she needs something different. I ask her what she wants to do, but she won't give me anything more than an \"I don't know\" so eventually I have to \"suggest\" we \"take a break\". Of course she agrees to it right away.\n\nAbout a week later a mutual friend comes back from the finals of the same competition, and she asks him out. I guess karma was on my side, he shot her down, telling her she should be dating me. She tries to ask out another mutual friend, they go on a few dates, and she asks him out too - he gives her the same answer.\n\nEventually, or so I heard at least, she wound up dating one of the few guys I went to high school with that I actually hated.\n\ntl;dr: gf of year and a half forces me to break up with her, tries to date two of my friends in the next month", "score": 7 }, { "body": "A girl broke things off with me by changing her facebook profile picture to one of her kissing her (then) ex-boyfriend while I was chatting with her on facebook chat.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Went out with this girl for two years. On our two year anniversary we go out to dinner and then later go to a club with some friends. All of a sudden she starts acting all weird and does not want to talk to me. I see her leave so i run after her into a local supermarket. Where she has me thrown out by a security guard for harassing her. When she gets out she walks up to me, hugs me and says, lets go home. We get a cab and head home. When we get home we sit down on the couch where she informs me that she had hooked up with my younger brother at the club that night. It is save to say that being stabbed in the back by your younger brother is actually a lot more painful than by a girlfriend", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Sprayed hairspray in my face on the school bus and threw my things out of the school bus window. I don't miss 7th grade.\n\nOr the girl in 9th grade who randomly hit me in the face while I was walking down the hallway (she was a biiiitch and it was intentional). I just ignored her and kept walking.\n\n", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Hit me with her car twice. She was taking some of my shit so i stood in front of her car. She sped into me i jumped on hood she slammed on brakes i landed on feet she sped into me again i jumped hood surfed for awhile then she turned and i flew off.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "A girl i was going out with, and was very much head over heels for, for 9 months, fucked two guys while i was in hospital for 5 days. ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "it could of been worse man, she could've cut off your dick and thrown it out the window of a moving car.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Spread rumors about me post-breakup. Pretty run of the mill stuff. Wouldn't have been so bad except my friends were afraid to bring it up with me for a while, so they managed to stick a lot better than they would have.\n\nWhat made it worse was that she had a lot of personal issues that I made a conscious effort not to discuss with people out of respect for her privacy. I ended up forced to divulge some of those things simply because it was necessary for me to be able to dispel some of the things that were said about me.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I'm to emotionally unavailable for a girl to be able to hurt me (at least like anything posted on here). Its not really working out for me though. So i'm trying to change.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Friends for 3 years (during which I had a huge crush on her), dated for a year. Each other's firsts, etc, lovey dovey.\n\nDay after Valentines day is our anniversary (*dawwww* I know)...\n\nI got her a pretty awesome (expensive) necklace.\n\n2 weeks later I find out she cheated. I rapidly forgive her, she says she misses me, sorry, water under the bridge, etc. I say to feel comfortable with getting back together, I'd like it if she didn't spend time alone with the guy anymore. She gets quiet, I say \"I think you need space. Let's talk tomorrow, I love you.\" Hardest thing I've ever said to someone.\n\nNext day I find out she spent the night at his apartment. We never did have that talk.\n\n\ntl;dr - Read to find out how to get rid of a crush on a friend.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Note that this wasn't a girl I was ever in or wanted to be in a relationship with. We were best friends, like brother and sister.\n\nOne summer day her, another guy, and myself go to Six Flags (we all worked there) for the day. After the park we end up back at her aunt's house to hang out for a while. I leave after a little while and go home. The next morning I pick her up and she's not talking to me. This goes on for a few days and finally she tells me that our friendship is over. I ask her what I've done and she says \"if you don't know then you don't deserve to know.\" I try unsuccessfully for a few days to fix the issue and then finally give up.\n\n* About two months later I'm accused of stealing from the park and am brought in for questioning.\n\n* Throughout the next year of school I slowly lose each and every one of my friends to various rumors spread about me.\n\n* I'm accused of sexual harassment (against my now old friend) and am put in an office with a police officer and the Dean of Students so they can threaten to expel me.\n\n* My parents are convinced that I'm causing all kinds of trouble and refuse to listen to my side of the story.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Lived with my girlfriend for about 2 years at university and all was well. Then she had to move back home and it turned in to a long distance relationship. One time I went to see her, stayed at her place for about 10 days. After about three days she just goes \"Oh this guy who's been hanging around, he's my new boyfriend\". \n\nI had a plane ticket home only a week later to had to endure this shitty situation for that long. This guy ended up giving her herpes. HAH HA HA HA", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Got the ball of her tongue barbell stuck in my urethra. The ball slipped in, the top half of the barbell got wedged against the roof of her mouth and we were locked together until I went soft.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Let's see, we like each other, but she doesn't want to be my girlfriend. On top of that, we have messed around a little bit, but nothing else. She is also the first girl I have done, well, anything with. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Fucked my friend. Doubly embarrassing b/c i had to find out through the rumor mill. (Though I had already dumped her for being a bitch soon after she cheated anyway) ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Cheated on me, and then tried to justify it by saying that I wasn't religious enough for her. She was a Christian Scientist and in retrospect, totally insane, like all of them.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Let's see, there was a girl who thought she was in love with me, we talked for an hour or more a day for a year or so. Long story short, she wanted me to visit. I said no (was 17 at the time no money, no job, no car, no drivers license, and the complete other side of the US). She said she thought we were soul mates anyway, but accepts that I'm not going to happen. Then she fucks up her life pretty seriously with drugs and abusive boyfriends and I can't help but feel a bit guilty. On one side she was a complete nutcase, and I know now that those people are poison to your life and you should cut someone from it the moment you think they are not sane in a bad way, but on the other side I can't help but feel a level of compassion for her over the shitty hand life has dealt her.\n\nSo in summary the worst thing a girl has ever done to me was to fuck up her life hard after I cared about her and tried to help her through hard times, unintentionally bestowing a level of guilt upon me, but also making me feel as though I somehow failed in helping/caring or being a friend.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "A girl asked ME to prom (I was just going to alone and see what I could find at the dance) and I decided to be nice and say \"yes.\" I payed for the event, the flowers, dinner - everything. We hung out and had a good time at the dance. When it was time to leave with the group we went with, she says no, I'm going with Julia (mutual friend who just broke up with a bf and apparently needed some \"immediate counseling\"). \r\n\r\nAnyway, I don't see her again that night and she avoids me for several weeks after this. I find out from a third party that she went to another party and spent the end of her night with another guy.\r\n\r\nTLDR: whore asks ME (a guy) to prom, lets me pay for everything, then ditches my ass later in the evening.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "While studying abroad in Ireland, I fell in love with a girl and we dated for about four months while I was studying there. When I got back, we continued to exchange e-mails daily and call each other at least once a week. After a while we told each other how we felt and we were both very serious about each other and wanted to see one another as soon as possible.\n\nWe had to wait our entire Senior year of college, but we decided that after we were done, we would live and work abroad in France together and just see where things went. She was arriving there first, as she had a contact that provided her with a job. I would arrive there two weeks later. We both bought plane tickets and thing seemed just fine.\n\nWe were in contact before she left; however, once she got there, it was hard to get a hold of her because she didn't have internet access or a mobile phone. I was able to speak to her once and she told me that she just got to her job and was going to e-mail me all of the information I needed so I could see her.\n\nTwo days before I was supposed to go, she sent me an e-mail and told me that she wasn't in love with me anymore and don't bother coming. She didn't give me any reasons why. She just said she didn't feel the same way about me that I did her, and that was that. Naturally, I was beyond devastated. I wasn't sure what to do, but I decided to go anyway and maybe enjoy France by myself.\n\nI stayed there two days. I just couldn't muster the strength to be there on my own. I had it my head that we would be there together and it just evaporated like that.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Married me after six years together, then left me for our WOW guild leader (one of my good friends) after two months. Then she stuck me with all the debt and all the financial responsibility and time and effort in getting divorced, which took two years and over $30k to dig myself out of. \n\nBonus: he lived in CT, we lived in CA, they'd never met in person or seen pictures of each other before she flew out to live with him, and she denied any relationship there for a year.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I dated this girl for a year, and the relationship was pretty rock the whole time. I broke up with her, but then we kept getting back together on and off for anther year. She had gone off to college by this time. I visited her and made it perfectly clear that I wanted to get back together with her, and she made it perfectly clear that she didn't want to. I went home heartbroken.\n\n2 months later she calls and says that she had gotten pregnant and had an abortion, and could I pay for half of it? I felt horrible (I was a total pussy back then), and paid for all of it.\n\nMonths late I hear a rumor that she'd done the same thing with several other guys at the same time, and it was to get money. Again, I'm heartbroken.\n\nIn reaction to all of this, I nearly went through with a vasectomy (on the table, junk all swabbed up with iodine). It was a big deal for me.\n\nSo I see her on facebook a few months ago, and it's been 15 years, and she seemed friendly to me, so I asked her what really happened. Turns out she got totally depressed when I didn't come back to her (she told me not to), and that all of her friends had dropped her (total bullshit), and that she didn't do it for the money, but only to get back at me. Then she topped it all off by getting pissed at me for bringing it up.\n\nDid I mention she's a pastor's daughter? Yes, total cunt.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I'm a girl but my ex was pretty damn shitty to me.\nSo basically I have depression and he meets me when picking up his sister from therapy. Eyes met in the carpark- we didn't go back after that. Relationship moves pretty quickly. First date he tries to screw me up against a tree (which I say no to, naturally.) Pretty quickly though he becomes insanely jealous- saying shit like he'd kill anyone who I cheated on with (IF I cheated on him, which I swore I wouldn't.) This guy flirts with me online which I rebuff, but tell him because I find it funny and he goes CRAZY and hangs up on me and then threatens to break up with me (having depression this freaks me the fuck out because I already adore him.) He then professes his undying love for me. And then offers to get his cock out on webcam for my Bipolar cousin. What a total babe. I cry about it when she tells me, self harm- and then he threatens to break up with me for THAT. Dude just don't flirt with my cousin. \nThen he goes to America for a few months to work for the Senate. He tells me he loves me more than he's ever loved anyone, and naturally I feel the same way- by this point I'm wrapped around his little finger and terrified he'll leave me. \nSo a month into his time in America he goes INSANE and starts crying every night trying to breakup with me saying he's a \"bad guy\". I tell him I love him and will stand by him no matter what and will look after him while he's going through a rough time- he sends me this list of what he'll do to me. I'll type up some of the list (which I printed out):\n\n-Be very wary if I start spending lots of time with another girl. I like having a security blanket- I'll cheat on you to give me the upper hand, keep it quiet till you said something that made me feel vulnerable and then crush you and show you who's in charge.Then you'd leave, but I'd win you back increasing my dominion over you.\n-I have a particular fascination for friends, be it of them or me. My lady friends are easy game while their friends add to the bite of the action. \n- I alternate between idolization and utter loathing. Sometimes you're the greatest person alive, and sometimes you're trash to be played with.\n\nI stayed by him. I sat with him till 6am whilst he freaked out. He told me he woke up and cried because he missed me so much. I stayed with him because I adored him and couldn't bear to be alone, but suddenly, two weeks later- after crying and crying because he missed me so much, he snaps out of it and breaks up with me (which I don't accept- I think he's just trying to self destruct again.) THEN he tells me I'm being insane and that I have huge problems and am Borderline and all this shit, and THEN he has phone sex with me and THEN says he'll never see me again. Oh and then he blocked me on facebook like I was some huge stalker, even though all I wanted was a closure conversation. Total insult from someone who said they loved you more than anything ever in their life.\n\nI didn't eat for a few weeks after that. Cried for about a week. It's a year and a half on and it still hurts like a bitch to read all that shit he sent me. He's in a box under my bed.\n\n\n\n", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I was starting out at a new school and I knew a girl who already went there, so I thought that I'd have at least one friend. Well, I got there and she acted as if she didn't know me, and she started spreading all kinds of rumours about me so that nobody else would befriend me. \n\nI still don't know why. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I was her friend for 2 years. She asks me out after cancelling on me 4 times already, I show up and she doesn't. I call her and she doesn't pick up and when I get home she has blocked me on AIM. I haven't heard from her since nor have I gotten an explanation for it. I suspect this was her plan from the beginning.\n\nAm I even more suspicious of women after this? Do I assume the worst and expect them to do the most heinous shit for no reason? *You betcha*.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "to keep it short.\n\nprobably get pregnant, convince me to keep it, she started doing heroin/drinking too much, pawned off most of my shit, setting fire or breaking the rest of it, forcing me to get a restraining order on the kids sake due to her becoming violent and then taking off on a freight training leaving me and kid behind.\n\nso yeah, fuck marriage and fuck relationships, I've had a big enough taste of whats out there.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "She was my first love, my first real girlfriend. We met when I was a senior in high school and she was a junior. The next year I went to college about two hours away and we had a few issues but nothing serious. One day my dad calls and asks if we had broken up. I said no and wondered why he would ask. He told me that one of his friends who owns a local bar saw her in the bar making out with some other guy.\n\ntl;dr: My DAD broke the news to me that my first love was cheating on me.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I don't think this will compare to any of the other commenters' stories, but when I was about 13 I really liked a girl at an after school club I went to. She was quite friendly to me too, and I was hoping that maybe she liked me too. Her and her friend used to bake cookies quite often, and I (jokingly) suggested she should bake me one. She immediately agreed, and said she'd give me one the following Tuesday (which happened to be Valentine's day). \n\nI had dreams of a cookie saying \"I love you\" or something of the sort, and was so excited to see her again that Tuesday. When I got there she gave me the cookie, and I was slightly disappointed that it was a normal cookie. Her and her friend watched me eat it, and soon after told me that after they baked the cookies, they left one outside all night especially for me, and had the dog lick it. Hopes. Crushed. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "What I don't understand is why Valve didn't just make that a big 'ol button on the menu screen: it doesn't really seem Valve's style to hide functionality from PC players, but serve it on a silver platter to console players. It really doesn't make any sense.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "L4D1 supported split screen, as well, but it was a bit of a hack. It involved custom controller .cfg files and some sulfurous swearing.\n\nI imagine you'd have to sacrifice a virgin goat to get it to work properly with L4D2, but it's probably worth it.", "score": 19 }, { "body": "If I'm remembering correctly it was possible in the first as well, awesome that it was kept in the sequel ", "score": 14 }, { "body": "This is probably the biggest reason I bought l4d and l4d2 on the xbox. \nSplitscreen is a blast. Playing online is fun, yes, but playing with someone right next to you can't be beat. ", "score": 9 }, { "body": "little known fact about ms windows os's: you can plug multiple mice and keyboards into the usb slots and all will work! one person can use the asdf keys and one person the arrow keys.\n\nfor the mouse set one mouses axis to unused keys on the keyboard then set to game controls.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "The original does as well, my friend and I play with one using the keyboard and mouse while the other uses an xbox360 controller.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "thank you im going to buy L4D2 now\r\nedit: question. if you have the second controller plugged in how do you switch to keyboard mouse?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Can I connect the PS3 controller on a PC via USB, and will they work in this game? Will they work in any game? Is any free software/drivers available?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Does anyone know if it's possible to do this with dual monitors? One player on the first and another on the second.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Marvel characters and story lines historically have focused more on human dilemmas. Spider-Man focuses on the dilemma of power and responsibility. The Fantastic Four focuses on the dilemmas of family and interpersonal relationships. Captain America focuses on the dilemma of freedom vs. patriotism. The Civil War story line focused on the dangers of taking national security too far. I could go on, but the point is that, like all good speculative fiction, the paranormal bits are used as an innovative lens through which to view the human condition. \n\nSome DC characters -- most notably, Batman -- have a similarly gritty, \"real life\" quality. DC, however, comes from a pulp tradition, and it's characters and story lines have often been more lighthearted, exaggerated, and epic. There also seem to be more DC characters with world-shattering levels of power, though these exist in the Marvel pantheon as well.\n\nThere are some analogues in both publishing lines. For instance, Aquaman and Namor, the Submariner, are pretty similar. However, I think there's a surprising amount of uniqueness to the characters -- possibly because I focus so much on the themes and character histories when I read. Similarity of powers is probably more rampant.\n\nI like both lines, as well as many more independent publishers of comics and graphic novels. Overall, I feel that Marvel does a better job of creating large crossover events without making a mess of everything and needing to start over, which DC has had to do several times. Plus, I'm not a big fan of Grant Morrison, and he seems to be DC's go-to-guy right now.\n\n*There are exceptions for every statement I've made, but that's life, eh?", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Bruce Wayne (Batman/DC) and Tony Stark (Iron Man/Marvel) both are billionaire defense contractors that tinker their own gear and dont really have any super powers. So I guess they would match.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "The Rotten Library covered this to a T:\n\n>* **Don't tell anyone.** The single most important rule for maintaining sanity after winning the lottery is: Do everything you can to keep your precious anonymity intact. Of course that means keeping your goddamned mouth shut. Don't share the news with your friends, neighbors, coworkers, or family. Resist even the urge to tell your spouse or significant other, at least for the time being. Otherwise you will have forever blown your one chance at being anonymous. You can always spill the beans later, after all the excitement has died down.\n\n>* **Don't sign the ticket.** After you write your name on that ticket, you might as well call up and announce the news to your local TV stations and newspapers. Remember that the state lottery commission will publicize the identity of every claimant. Toss the ticket into a clean Ziploc bag (to avoid spills, etc.) and temporarily stash it someplace away from excessive heat, sunlight, pets, children, roommates, coworkers, etc. Make sure it's someplace safe that you won't forget.\n\n>* **Act casual.** Maintain your normal routine. Continue to attend work, school, church, social functions, etc. Whatever's typical for you. When people ask you what's up, refer to rule number one.\n\n>* **Make a few photocopies.** At your earliest opportunity, take a trip to a 24-hour Kinko's around 2am when nobody's around and make six copies of the ticket, both front and back. Use one of the self-serve machines and take any and all bad copies with you (i.e. leave none in the trash). And before you leave, doublecheck to make sure you didn't leave the original in the machine.\n\n>* **Rent a safe-deposit box.** Contact your bank and see if they have any vacant safe deposit boxes, tell them you're going on a trip and need to store some documents for a few months. Make a point of asking them how much it costs, even though you couldn't care less. You're trying to keep up appearances. When you go down to the bank in person to open your box, you will probably need some ID and your bank card. Bring the ticket, along with some other (fake) papers. Don't show them the ticket, obviously. Loose lips sink ships. Stash the ticket in the box and put the box key on your keyring. Don't lose the key.\n\n>* **Open a blind trust.** Hire a tax attorney. Once you're a client, the lawyer is legally bound to maintain your confidentiality. Tell them you want to open a blind trust in order to claim the lottery prize as an anonymous trustee. Provide three photocopies of your ticket. All contact with the lottery commission will be made through your lawyer.\n\n>* **Contact a financial planner.** Rich people don't tend to stay that way without a little planning. If you have the choice between annual payments and a single large payout, you should consider the big jackpot. It's less money total, but it's probably about the same as the annuity if you take the lump sum and invest it in interest-bearing savings bonds. However, the single large payout may incur a higher tax rate. Ask your tax experts.\n\n>* **Tie up any financial loose ends.** No reason to procrastinate now. Pay all those traffic fines and parking tickets. Catch up on alimony or child support payments. Settle any debts. Instruct your financial planner to scrub those black marks off your credit score, but don't cancel your credit cards -- that'll screw up your rating. And don't think it won't matter anymore. It matters.\n\n>* **Draft or update your last will and testament.** If there were ever a time for estate planning, it's now.\n\n>* **Move away.** And not just out of town. We're talking out of state, possibly out of the country. You can't expect to keep a lid on your secret forever; information wants to be free. Maybe buy a modest house with a good alarm system in a gated community with a private security force. That ought to minimize the solicitors at your door. Also be sure to get an unlisted phone number.", "score": 245 }, { "body": "I'll tell you what I'd do man - two chicks at the same time, man!... Damn straight, two chicks at the same time. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a hundred million dollars I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.", "score": 49 }, { "body": "Start a set of challenges called \"Reddit: What will you do for $5,000?\"\n\n* One challenge per week.\n\n* Ideas for challenges are submitted and voted by Redditors.\n\n* People interested in the challenge sign up, get the instructions and attempt to complete the challenge. Results (Pics/Videos/News Reports) are submitted to the community who in turn vote their weekly winner.\n\n* No more than 3 consecutive weekly wins permitted for any individual. No limitation on how many time you can participate. (i.e if you've won 3 weeks in a row, you may still participate but cannot win)\n", "score": 36 }, { "body": "Invest $99,000,000.\r\n\r\nSpend about $200k to get completely out of debt.\r\n\r\nBlow the remaining $800k on frivilous shit that would make my wife and I happy.", "score": 28 }, { "body": "* Quit job\n* Pay off all debts\n* Travel\n* Buy a house in the place the wife and I liked the most\n\nThe end.", "score": 17 }, { "body": "Put it in a high-interest savings account and let it sit for a few months while I (and everyone else calling and stopping by) have a chance to calm down.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "1. wait until my ex finds out and tries to get back with me\n\n2. blow my nose on a crisp hundo\n\n3. throw it at her\n\n4. ??????\n\n5. profit from smart investments", "score": 14 }, { "body": "Purchase a self-sustaining post-apocalyptic compound in case the shit hits the fan and my money becomes worthless.", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I'd hand out $1000 bucks everyday to random people on the street. \n\nEdit: I changed my mind. Totally going with a swimming pool of money. Scrooge McDuck had the right idea. ", "score": 13 }, { "body": "I would probably feel excited and have a brief philanthropic stage before investing heavily and becoming overly protective. Then I would probably turn into a bit of a Smeagol like character with \"my precious\" being my huge pile of cash. Then I would start some form of extremely well funded, thus successful business and attribute my success to hard work and start speaking at 'You Can Do It Too!' conventions.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "I have a plan for this, as I only play when I could win 100 million (rationalizing that the odds of winning 100mil and acquiring this amount in a lifetime are about the same). \n \n \n1. Hire an attorney to create the framework. \n2. Family debts. Wiped out. Make it known that this is a one time thing. Your money is going to be tied up in various projects. \n3. 5% - personal screw off fund. \n4. 10% - discretionary project fund. \n5. Start a business who's purpose is to install solar water heating and PV systems on houses. One neighborhood at a time, offer to educate them, hopefully squash HOA restrictions on alternative home energy sources. If business self sustains use profits for more project investment and donation to my nonprofit causes. \n6. Fund startup ideas of friends - if any of them take off, have some money donated to my nonprofit causes. \n7. 1st nonprofit cause - support open source education. Start a nonprofit publisher which pays leaders in their areas of expertise to write books and publish exercises/curricula. These can be used to support any other project or used directly for schools. \n8. Buy up used PS3's, high desert land, and create a research cluster. Use surrounding land to host real robot wars (maybe underground - 20mm rounds fly far). \n9. Pay some insanely knowledgeable friends of mine to hyper optimize open source research software eg, BLAST. \n10. Start a company which offers sousveillance solutions as a foil to creeping corruption / LE abuses. \n11. Start an urban gentleman's league which would espouse the following values (with modification): \n> A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an \n> invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a \n> sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the \n> dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve \n> equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a \n> computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. \n> Specialization is for insects. \n \n12. Investigate urban aeroponic farming. \n \nI think that's about as far as 100 mil would take me to make a good effort at this list, unless some of the profitable ventures were successful.\n ", "score": 11 }, { "body": "There's this guy that lives near me who is completely fucking hilarious. Everything and anything he says brings me to tears, literally. I would pay him to follow me around and commentate my life.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "I'd buy Reddit and give myself a billion karma. Then I'd buy 50 top-shelf hookers and use them as a human shield while I run with the bulls in Spain.\n\nThen I'd buy 3000 hookers and make a house out of them. I would live in that house until it started to smell bad.\n\nThen I'd buy a few cheeseburgers and donate the rest to Soapier. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Run for mayor of New York under the platform \"None of the above\" and challenge the New York Yankees to an exhibition game. Then, fall in love with a white chick that would otherwise be out of my league. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I would build a complex of 10 or so high-end Audio and Video editing suites and studios. I'd keep one for myself to use, and let the rest out for free to up and coming talent I would find from the street through various people I'm connected with. \n\nFor once we'd have a fully professional, high-end, cutting edge studio venue in London that could be used by urban talent that would have absolutely no connection to those middle class twats that mummy and daddy paid through film school, bringing a whole new generation of film makers and musicians with something *real* to say, instead of the complete dross MOR pseudo non-representational crap that we are being fed at present. \n\nOh and I buy a new house and car. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Spend about 10-15 million buying property in the hills/mountains, \nbuilding a house on it.\n\nDonate a few million to my university.\n\nLet my dad retire.\n\nTravel w/ friends and family.\n\nStart a brewery.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Oh, hell yeah. 100M would mean complete freedom for me and my wife. Debt would be gone. We'd buy a big a ranch in a country with little to no property taxes. We'd live completely off the grid; communications would probably be the only utility we'd pay for. Grow our own produce, raise our own livestock.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Oh, and the lottery you won is the Nigerian Lottery. And you need to get the money out of the country.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Buy a truckload of lobbyists and legalize filesharing somehow. Although this might not be enough money...\n\nAlso, build my own house and start my own architecture practice.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Rebuild the [Wardenclyffe Tower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower) and laugh like a maniac when it is activated.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I would buy my daily newspaper, hire 100 new reporters and muckrake the shit out of my state government. I'd have this place cleaned up inside 5 years. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Assuming I'd figured out a way to keep it safe:\n\nwait a few months to calm down. After the waiting period, quietly inform my parents, brother, girlfriend, girlfriends parents, making it clear that they were not to inform anyone else.\n\nPay off the homes of my parents and my girlfriends parents (i've been living with the gf's parents for a number of years and they've basically become a second set of parents to me). Inform my parents and gf's parents that whenever they are ready to retire, I'd finance a retirement that would keep their income at what they are making while working.\n\nProbably drop out of my full-time schooling and switch to just taking classes that interest me, a few at a time.\n\nBuy a modest home in the woods in the same rural area that I've lived all my life.\n\nbuy a truck - one at least a few years old, I wouldn't want to be flashing a new vehicle, but I'd pay extra to make sure it had low mileage and was in very good shape.\n\nLive in the house i've purchased, spend my time writing, hunting, working on the truck, hanging out with my friends. If the family didn't spill the beans, I'd essentially try to make it seem as though I had some kind of income that didn't require that I work, perhaps a dead relative or dealing drugs, but not that I was \"rich\".\n\nI think I could be pretty content just to live a fairly simple life doing the things I enjoy and already do, without the whole \"need to go to college, get a job that pays well\" thing looming over my head.\n\noh, and if I where to have some secret project I'd use my money for, it'd be to anonymously buy up unused land that is just woods/field and take steps to insure that it didn't get turned into big houses for out-of-staters or ski areas. Let logging companies log it responsibly, maybe somehow rent it to farmers, leave it unposted for anyone to hunt/hike on. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "-60 million to combat human trafficking, reproductive/sex education for impoverished nations with high rates of disease (Africa), give to orphanages in Africa and Asia, feed a few villages for a year. \n\n-15 million to programs in California for education--math and science being primary, then the arts. \n\n-15 million to college students trying to get a degree but can't afford it (or wiping out their student loan debt)\n\n-5 million to invest.\n\n-2 million to set up accounts for family members in case of emergencies, pay off their houses and security the rest of their lives.\n\n-3 million for myself and family to do just about whatever the eff we want. That's enough, right? I'll probably set up college accounts for my kids, pay off debts, buy a nice home and remodel it exactly the way I want. Kids will get a good education, but for the most part I'll try to keep it silent that their parents have a lot of money hidden somewhere. They can work on their own! (But I'll throw them nice birthdays)\n\nEDIT: And I'd get like, three Ph.Ds. :D", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I disappear in a puff of sustainable living on my own somewhere far away, with solar panels, windmills, homegrown weed and mushrooms and wine, farm with chickens, cows and vegetables....and a few people i love enough to take away from this human mistake.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "[Tank.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088224/) Best line from the movie: \"Did you just call me a pussy communist?\"", "score": 3 }, { "body": "[Kelly's Heroes.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065938/)\n\nAlso [BulletProof.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094813/) is about a tank, mostly.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I just \"replayed\" Majora's Mask like this. It's like you get all the fun out of it without the frustration.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Watching HD playthroughs on YouTube is surprisingly satisfying, seeing as I can't invest into gaming. It's like watching a movie. I thought I was the only one.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "My son loves to watch other people play video games. Personally I don't understand it, it's like watching other people eat cake imo.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "That's pretty fucking awesome. Was it too lonely? Did you spend time on the ocean thinking \"maybe I should have gone through land, meet people and stuff\"? Btw, out of curiosity, how long does it take to cross the Atlantic? Lastly, did you take any sailing classes or was it more like trial and error (and how long did you practice before going)?", "score": 65 }, { "body": "I once transited the Atlantic and in the middle of a storm we came across a sailing vessel, about the same size as yours. We came in close to make sure they were okay; two brave souls looked up at me on the Bridge, smiled and waved hello. I will never forget how small and helpless their boat looked against the raging, foaming sea. An admirable feat to sail the oceans alone, it takes a special character. You are a brave soul.", "score": 56 }, { "body": "First of all: I'm dying of jealousy and think what you have done sounds like one of the most awesome things to do, ever.\n\nSecondly: Did you do anything to \"kill time\" or was the experience in and by itself awesome enough for you to just revel and wallow in it?", "score": 45 }, { "body": "Sometimes I wonder if people do this stuff, not for the experience, but to post it on reddit.\n\nWhat inspired you to do this?", "score": 42 }, { "body": "Hi, what would you say was the lowest, most hopeless moment in the journey, did you feel like quitting and if so, how did you get through that?", "score": 33 }, { "body": "Scariest thing you had happen?\n\nHow often would you see other boats when in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean?", "score": 18 }, { "body": "I hope this hasn't been asked yet (I just skimmed the comments), but what was the required startup capital for a venture like this, basically? Was the boat yours? You say you taught yourself everything, but did you also need to get a sailing license?\n\nSorry, I know very little about sailing, but I'd love to do something like this one day soon.", "score": 17 }, { "body": "1) Did you read http://www.arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html ? It's one of my faves!\n\n2) Did you try spearfishing? Someone I met sailed down the west coast to mexico and did that for meat. He wore a black wetsuit with a pink stripe, and at some point a walrus (seal?) fell in love and tried to mate!\n\n3) A Japanese fellow told me that when he was alone at sea, miles from anything, he would still carefully look around prior to jacking it. Do we all have a little ceiling cat in us??", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Amazing.\n\nAs the easily influenced type, I am now looking at boat classifieds...\n\nAny idea what the total cost was not including the boat?\n", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Can you explain how you financed your trip a bit more? I built my own boat 2 years ago (30' wooden cutter) but i can generally leave the harbor because I'm always broke. How do you afford mooring, dock fees, and the money various small countries charge you for the short visa?", "score": 11 }, { "body": "How were you prepared to repair broken equipment? \n\nWhat was the roughest sea you experienced?\n\nWhat music did you listen to?", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I have a friend who also made a similar trip and he had serious concerns of pirates and had a gun on board in case of run-ins.\nWas this a concern for you? ", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Interesting AMA. In case you've missed it, [here's](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9xgnd/iama_little_difficult_to_describe_designed_part/) another similar thread from an older guy.\n\nMy question is this: What were your thoughts when you dropped anchor in Coffs Harbour (your final destination I presume)? Did you stop to think back on the journey? I would probably cry of happiness to having accomplished such a feat.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Awesome experience! Having gone through the Q&A so far nobody asked, What was/is the name of your ship? Have you sold her? What was of your journey friend? Did you talked sometimes to him/she?", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Your story is awesome - I just saw a Contessa in the harbor in the BVI and your story reminded me how solid a boat they are. A few questions: \n- How often did you bathe?\n- How closely did you monitor your battery levels?\n- Did you lose weight during the time on the boat from eating less, etc?\n\nthanks for sharing the experience!", "score": 9 }, { "body": "Super cool, sounds like an amazing experience. Not sure if you've heard about [this](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/6851636/Laura-Dekker-girl-who-wants-to-sail-solo-around-world-goes-missing.html) story, but I'd be curious what you think about it. Is 13 too young to do a solo sailing trip around the world, even though it sounds like she's had much more experience than you did prior to setting out?", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Why did you ship your boat across the country instead of taking it through the Panama Canal? (genuinely wondering, I dream of doing exactly this)", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Do you have any advice on where to get started for someone with little to no boating experience who would be interested in doing something similar?", "score": 7 }, { "body": "You mention polyphasic sleeping in your intro. Did you transition to this method of sleeping before you left? Did you keep at it when you were in New York?", "score": 7 }, { "body": "With not enough room to stand below deck, I imagine you spent even more time above. How did you avoid sunburns?", "score": 7 }, { "body": "what was your daily routine like? What was your favorite recreational activity onboard?\n\nHow did you keep yourself amused? What books did you bring with you into that wet environment? If you should bring 1 book or 1 CD with you, what would it be?\n\n", "score": 7 }, { "body": "I have a sister who is currently volunteering on a tall ship, what's your experience with these sorts of endeavors?\n\nAlso, what are you doing currently? It must pale in comparison to this experience.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "That is amazing. I wish to circumnavigate the planet, i am going to take sailing courses again (on and off for the past 5 years) and ive been saving up from when i was 9 i didnt know what for but it sounded like a good idea, looks like buying a boat will be it :) I love your solar panel idea btw. \ndo you mind telling me how old you are? im 17 and i think im too immature to sail such large distances at this point but i would do anything for the chance. i cannot emphasize how good it makes me feel that there are such open minded and brave-hearted people like you around, even if you are a geek.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "One final question, thank you for taking the time for a great AMA.\r\n\r\nWhat were your emergency procedures/plans in the event of something catastrophic, like say hitting a half submerged container and going down by the head in 5 minutes. Did you have an inflatable, easy to grab water, food, a beacon, flares etc. How did you plan for that scenario.\r\n\r\nAlso, how did your small boat handle in a storm? Is it merely a case of battening down the hatches and sails and riding it out, or, did it even get that bad. Can a thirty foot cruiser ride out a bad storm and/or avoid one with enough advanced warning?", "score": 5 }, { "body": "So, was the Contessa a good choice in the end? If you had to do it again, would you choose the same boat?", "score": 4 }, { "body": "How did you get fresh water while ocean crossing? Did you collect rain water, desalinate sea water, bring it all aboard?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "> I built scripts to post **via email** my course information, speed, location etc\n\nHow quaint. While you were at sea the media fell in love with *twitter*.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Congratulations on your accomplishment. Did you ever get seasick? If so, how did you deal with it? And, after landing, did you experience that swaying feeling that you're still on a boat? How long did that last?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I never realized how awesome it was until I started comparing to the size of the speedboat we own (21 ft). Seeing as your sailboat is only 5 ft longer amazes me. Did you ever have moments when you were afraid of a boat capsize or water getting in and ruining everything (seeing as you had an eeePc)? Also, what was the most difficult part dealing with such small quarters? Finally, since I have never been out on the ocean, how is the water out there? Is it rough or smooth and quite easy to do?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "What an amazing journey! Have you read 'Sailing Alone Around The World' by Captain Joshua Slocum? If so, do you feel there were many similarities to your voyage? \n\nIf you haven't read it - it is bloody brilliant!", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Would you have made it without the donations or were they vital? And how much were they in general. Not specifics necessarily, just as in were they extremely significant or just enough to buy a meal here and there?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Thank you for sharing your stories with us, truly inspirational! Strange question perhaps but any regrets about the journey? Places you wished you had gone to or opportunities you should have taken? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "For someone looking to fast track their way to gaining the experience needed to sail the east coast how long might I expect it to take? It looks like it was 4.5 years (from the site bio) for you from dinghy to departure.\n\nI've recently had a life change that has given me the opportunity to do something big so I am evaluating things. While I don't see myself being as ambitious as you ( i.e. crossing oceans), I'd be looking to gain enough experience to live off a boat while sailing the east coast (U.S.). ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "as you were traveling from country to country what was your experience with customs? what's the process when you port, etc?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Oh shit, you're the owner of the Constellation? I've seen your videos and website before. And you're a redditor! Not to sound like a complete nutcase, but you've been a huge inspiration for me. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Inspirational. Examining the costs after the fact how much money do you think would have been sufficient for you to make the same voyage without taking donations, waiting and working to earn extra capital, and not nearly starving, yet still being relatively frugal?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "I didn't read all the comments so sorry if this has already been asked, but, what caused you to set sail in the first place? Where did that idea come from? Oh, also, how old are you?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "If you had 60k to spend on a boat, what essential things would you look for for ocean voyaging as far as size, equipment, hull type, condition, or any other specifics you'd care to mention?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Just wanted to say I've read most of this AMA (up to now) and checked your blog and this is all just incredible. What a terrific experience! Very inspiring.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Are you considering completing the journey around the world by heading across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez canal and back up to England? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "You could just take these reddit comments and your answers and put them into a book.\n\nI have no idea how long I just spent reading all of these comments and your answers, but they certainly have been interesting", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "These small things don't matter for the environment. Cutting down on meat eating or getting a more fuel efficient car does.\n\nToo many people pretend to be 'green' by doing a small act, such as changing a lightbulb. Environmental protection is about big things.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Tissues are not designed to break apart like toilet paper. Throw it away so it doesn't cause a clog.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Because of [this picture.](http://ghostradio.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/matt-smith-dr-who1.jpg)\n\nYoung, pale, emo hair. I don't want them altering Doctor Who to appeal to twilight fans.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "Because he is younger than I am. It's a bit traumatic. I got used to policemen, doctors, lawyers, politicians all looking like school kids compared to me, but the Doctor is an archetypal father figure. He should always me more wise and mature than me.", "score": 20 }, { "body": "<MINOR SPOILER> From what I saw in the last two minutes of Part 2 of The End of Time... I kinda liked him. I think it was that awareness of the criticisms when he declared \"I'm a girl!\" which made me think 'okay, sure, he's a little young, but I HATED Tennant when he started as the Doctor. Let's give him a go.'", "score": 19 }, { "body": "With Moffat behind the writing i'm positive he'll be great. I'm not sure how I feel about him yet but everytime there's a new doctor he takes a little time to grow on you. Strangely though...i'm almost more excitied to see the interior of the new TARDIS then I am the new doctor.", "score": 15 }, { "body": "it's not that i don't like matt smith.. it's just that i love david tennant.. no choice but to give matt a chance. from what i saw of him after regeneration he was pretty legit.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "I think most people are just reacting to the way he looks, as to why they don't like him. His face is a bit off. I'll bet his \"Facial Fibonacci Numbers\" are quite off. And even if they aren't that off, he is quite goofy looking. As for me, I'll admit that I will give him a chance. even if I don't like his style, I'll still watch cause I'm a SciFi Junkie and who won't relish more episodes of Daleks rampaging thru the universe. Besides, what else ya gonna watch? More cops, doctor, lawyer shows?", "score": 9 }, { "body": "i think all this whining and hatred is just the side effect of an incredibly emotional character that can never be with us for more than a few year at a time. there will always be a hate party every time a new doctor comes around. i hope they learn from this and next time keep it more of a surprise", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I admit, the emo hair is a HUGE TURN OFF.\nBut in the 10 seconds I saw of him, he is 100% better than I imagined.\nStill, nowhere near as good as Tennant, but not shit either... yet.\n", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Anyone concerned that he might be TOO much like Tennants Doctor? \n\nEccleston and Tennant played their versions of the Doctor very differently. The trailer? Eh. There have always been shifts in the energy/wit/personality of the doctors. From the trailer it seemed like Smith was acting almost exactly like Tennant could have acted in the sequences. Just as spazy and wide eyed. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I really want to. I want to be irrational and hate him already, and never watch the show again because Tennant's gone. But the combination of Moffat, and the fact that I saw Matt Smith on stage in the West End and know, unfortunately, that he is a very good actor, has deprived me of this irrational comfort.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I am excited to see how he does. I understand Tennant moving on, so someone has to be the new doctor. This should be all about excitement not hatred and elitism. ", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Same reason everyone thinks there are only eleven doctors.\n\nPoor Peter Cushing was in TWO Who movies in 65 and 66!", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "See what happens if you watch really explicit porn, with the volume on. You'll have to do some preflight checks to ensure plenty of loud, obvious moaning & groaning. Perhaps throw in some 70s-era \"You like that baby?\" comments in a faux-gruff voice? \n\nEnsure you have 6 hours of the stuff on your laptop and a spare battery or two for your laptop. \n\nReport the results here.", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "I am in my mid-twenties, and I love the music of Frank Sinatra. I've gotten quite a few quizzical/amused looks whenever I mention this to friends.\n\n(I am also into mainstream rock and the latest stuff as well...So it's not like I'm trying to be a snob or an oldies aficionado or something)", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I am a Chinese-American man living in the suburbs of California who listens to and loves country music. I can sing just about every country song that plays on the radio word for word.\n\nLike techietalk, this also gets interesting reactions from my friends when they get in my car and I have Dierks Bentley playing on the radio.", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Right click Computer and choose Properties. Go into Device Manager. Expand \"Network Adapters\". Does it show up there? If not, it's probably hardware. Just to be sure, download a LiveCD or something like Ubuntu. Boot into it (but don't install it) and see if the device shows up there. That will definitely tell you if it's hardware or software.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Uninstall and then Reinstall the drivers for the ethernet card. Make sure you have the most recent driver installed.. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "If I say I'm not ready, then I'm not ready. Trying to fuck me while I'm still dry hurts like a bitch and can lead to bleeding, quit being an inconsiderate asshole and try warming me up.", "score": 44 }, { "body": "Ok this one is offensive and stupid on several levels but that seems to be what we are going for here so...\n\n>Unless you intend to pay for it, don't ask for a fucking BJ before we've even kissed.\n\nI'd also like to add this one.\n\n>If I have cum all over my body and you care about your sheets, get me a tissue before you fall asleep.\n\nAnd\n\n>I love anal sex but trust me, it is never a good *surprise*.", "score": 34 }, { "body": "Way too many of these are relationship/person specific. For instance, some womens' clitoris are very sensitive and too much tongue stimulation would ruin it. Some only orgasm with weight on their pelvis, if a guy held himself up the sex would be one-sided. I guess the trick is to learn your partner.", "score": 21 }, { "body": ">Don't cum inside me, condom or not.\n\nSo why have sex at all? You don't want to risk the condom slipping off, right? Is he worth the possibility of HIV?", "score": 17 }, { "body": "This isn't something needlessly new for men who know what they are doing, and for those men that do know what to do this is rather insulting. I did read the entire post, and I did see that part about you are not being bitter, but from the outside looking in I can not see where you are not being bitter anywhere in your rant. I am not trying to be a jerk, but do you really have to be so forward about it? \n\nPretty much any man knows all of this, and if he doesn't, then why are you fucking him in the first place? Like you said yourself, get out! (If he's not following the rules, toss him out of bed. Nothing like blue balls to teach a man a lesson ...)", "score": 14 }, { "body": "\"Get off me. You weigh almost twice as much as I do. Prop yourself up.\n\nI am not a delicate flower. You aren't going to break me.\"\n\nMake up your fucking mind.", "score": 14 }, { "body": "It can't hurt you *that* much to wait 2 minutes to cuddle after sex before you have your damn cigarette. ", "score": 13 }, { "body": "> Kissing is the quickest route to making me wet. Don't skip this part. I am not a hooker, I actually like to kiss my sex partner. \n\nYes. Very much yes. ", "score": 7 }, { "body": ">You are going to KNOW when I cum, so stop fucking asking me if I am cumming/have already cum.\n\nThis is the only one I really disagree with.\n\nWomen are incredibly unpredictable for the most part, and the volume/muscular contractions/gyrations/noises that accompany an orgasm vary from imperceptible to OMFG-MY-EARDRUM.\n\nI've been with my gf for over a year, and we sex it up 4-18 times a week, and I think she only ever had a minimum of one orgasm one time. Usually 3-6, once I somehow managed 20. So to get kinda nerdy, we're looking at approximately 2300 orgasms for her, and I still can't always tell when she's getting off, even though I'm usually inside her and my head is right next to hers (missionary is her fav).", "score": 6 }, { "body": "And ladies and germs...this is an incredible list from an incredible lady. \r\n\r\nUse this as a starter but keep in mind, this does not, in any way, *apply to all those of the female gender.* Any and every woman will add her own variations. \r\n\r\nI personally love when my bf bust his nut inside :-)", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Btw that post you are referring to seems to already be a reply to [this thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/a41i2/women_of_reddit_what_things_do_you_hate_that_guys/). Which of course is a complete trolling mess...", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Both posts were entertaining. Hahhaa, I couldn't not imagine very angry people spouting these lists out, even though they say they aren't. It just added to the magic anyway.\n\nHas anyone added \"wash your junk and put on deodorant\"? I like a musky, real, man-smell, but *yeesh*. You're still trying to impress me, don't forget.", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Start walking around the apartment totally nude. Claim that it is your new lifestyle. This should make it nice and awkward for everyone.", "score": 12 }, { "body": "Move out if you can. If not, start charging him rent. Some rental places have rules about length of guest stays on the lease, too.", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Things are not going to get better, they will only get worse. Move out now. Next time, see if you and a future room mate can agree on some rules beforehand.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Ok, im going to say something that is going to get me downvoted. Yes you are being a whiny little bitch. IN HERE. At home, you have all the right in the world to get annoyed. What they are doing isnt right. So, stop moaning about \"not wanting to lose friends\" etc... stop asking for advice when the answer i crystal clear. Talk to her and tell her this isnt on. The flat is meant for 2 people, not three.\n\nI dont know how old you are, so forgive me if this comes across as condescending. Im 35 and the number of people in my life that i pussyfooted round cuz i didnt want to lose as a friend are huge. Im not friends with them anyway anymore. Just do what you gotta do and dont worry about it.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Alright, sorry, because this isn't gonna be easy, but it's the only way I've ever managed to solve problems with my roomates. (I've lived with 4+ guys for 4 years now, different places and different people.) For anything that happens with any regularity, notes don't work, reminders don't work, passive agressive shit DEFINITELY does not work (Fine, won't do your dishes? I'll just put them in the middle of the kitchen floor. That'll teach you.), even gentle, reasonable, rational conversation most of the time will not work. (Oh yeah, sure man, I'll take care of that, so sorry. *No effect!*) \n\nDishes were a big fucking problem, and along with one of my other roomates, I just kept a set of dishes clean and let the kitchen go straight down to hell. This was after loads of notes (my comrade's method), and a few calmish talks (mine.) Well, we got a roach problem, but not a improved sense of community responsibility for cleanliness. So I began starting fights over it. Bad ones. As frequently as the problem persisted. Flash forward a year, and there are no dishes problems, ever. Everyone does their part, and we're a big happy family. \n\nIf you can't resolve it, you probably shouldn't be living with her. Please keep in mind I'm not advocating that you blow up immediately, but if other more reasonable methods are failing, there's probably only a few ways to make her understand how much of a problem it is. Right now, the cost (whatever you are doing) does not outweigh the benefit (having bf over all the time) enough for her to want to find a resolution. She's just fine with the way things are, even though she knows you're not.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Yes, you are. Not because of your complaints, but because you are unwilling to have the conversations or take the actions you need to in order to be able to resolve the situation. You know what the problems is and you know what you want, but since you do nothing about it but complain, you are indeed being \"a whinny bitch.\"", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "For starters, this douchebag is NOT your friend. You should stop indulging his idiotic behavior by responding to him. Cut him off completely. Any nonsense he sends you should go completely unanswered. Explain to your gf and friends that David is being a douchebag for whatever reason and they should not respond to any of his communications. David will grow tired of the lack of attention he is receiving and move on. \n\nOr go with plan B. Everytime you see him from now until the end of your days on this earth, beat the ever living shit out of him. Once you're satisfied with the pummeling, stand triumphantly over his colbbered shell, and slowly urinate on his face.", "score": 21 }, { "body": "Couldn't you just make a public post on your facebook with \"Please ignore anything said by David, he's stalking me and it's getting weird,\" or something?", "score": 14 }, { "body": "As others have already stated, this person isn't your friend anymore. He may have been at one point, but now he's just fucking with you. You have to realize that he's not going to change his behavior so you're either going to have to just put up with it (in which case you shouldn't have bothered posting here) or you're going to have to fix it.\n\n**Solution 1**\nSince you went to school together you probably know his parents (who, not coincidentally, are probably helping him pay for college). I think paying them a visit is warranted, explain to them that you're still friends with David but you've noticed a *drastic* change in his behavior and give them the relevant details: he's stalking your ex-girlfriend and threatening to find her in real life. Bring print-outs of your Facebook message sessions since his parents won't be likely to believe you. Tell his parents that you don't want to go to the police but you're concerned for the safety of your ex-girlfriend given his change in behavior. Tell them you want them to talk with their son and find out what his issue is before you go to the police since that can have permanent effects on his ability to go to school and get a job.\n\nThe idea here is that you need to sound like a concerned friend in order for his parents to not instantly try to take his side and assume that you're making stuff up and lying to them.\n\n**Solution 2** (Skip to this if his parents can't/won't help)\nContact the police and let them know that you're concerned by the drastic change in your friend's behavior and that you're concerned for the safety of your ex-girlfriend, give them printouts of your messages from Facebook and definitely point out that he's used the term \"rape\" a few times. In the context you wrote he was probably using it as a metaphor, but using the word \"rape\" should get the police's attention. If your friend left you voicemail, bring it and play it for the police to hear.\n\nI suggest contacting the police in the jurisdiction of where he's currently located, you'd be surprised at how effective it can be to have the police drop by to ask someone what's going on, even if nothing happens beyond a 15 minute visit. I had a situation in college where my roommate's former roommate was harrassing him and a simple call to the police resulted in the police visiting him saying (essentially) \"WTF?\" and then all harrassment stopped. Some people don't realize that this kind of behavior actually has real-world consequences and a police visit can be just the wake-up call they need.\n\nEDIT: tl;dr Contact his parents and then (if necessary) the police to have a talk with him. Charges don't necessarily need to be filed, a police visit might be enough of a wake-up call.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Maybe time to get a restraining order? This guy clearly has issues and it seems that he's too crazy for one person to try to deal with. ", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "There is absolutely no reason to not use HTML 4.01 Strict. XHTML 1.1/1.0 is the exact same thing. It offers literally no benefit, other than saying \"OOH I USE XHTML\". You are not serving the pages up in XML/XHTML, so there is no point. ", "score": 11 }, { "body": "While XHTML is desirable for it's strictness and the correctness it promotes, unless you're serving it as XML, there's NO point in using it. Browsers still have to interpret your misserved XHTML as HTML so do the browser a favor and just use <!doctype html> or HTML 4.01 if you must support IE.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I continue to use, and recommend, HTML 4.01 strict.\n\nIf you want to use something else, that's cool, as long as you have a good reason to do so. If you're generating output with XSLT, then that's a decent reason to use XHTML, and to be honest, wanting to play with HTML5 is a good enough reason to use HTML5.\n\nIf you have no special reason to use something else, then HTML 4.01 strict is a very good default choice.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "For all my newer projects I just use the HTML5 Doctype\n <!DOCTYPE html>\nEasy and concise, you save a few bytes, and it will work just fine in IE6+, with the obvious exception that canvas, video etc. elements aren't supported.\n\nYou might find [this HTML5 comic strip](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/29/misunderstanding-markup-xhtml-2-comic-strip/) insightful.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Use HTML5.\n\nOr use HTML 4.\n\nNot one version of IE supports XHTML. So if you want IE support, you can’t use it. Even if you don’t want IE support, there’s no real point 99% of the time.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "There are multiple current standards. HTML 4.01 is the current standard version of HTML, and XHTML 1.0 is a slight modification to that standard which makes the code XML compliant as well. For most websites, HTML 4.01 is the best option, while XHTML is useful if the code is going to be manipulated by XML software. So nothing has really changed since a couple of years ago.\n\nHTML 5 is looking to be awesome and well supported, so learning it is a good idea. It has some partial support in bleeding edge versions of some browsers.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "**NO**: FAQ's don't have the sense of community. we want to help and be helped by someone who has gone through these things NOW not whenever the FAQ was written.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Yes please. I have a few question I'm afraid to ask in case they have already been answered, are obvious, et al.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "conversation is a good thing.\n\nseeing the same questions day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day, not so much.", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Stores such as TJ Maxx and Ross have name brand dress shirts on the cheap. Theyre still wrapped in plastic. Basically they are stores that buy leftover stock from bigger stores that are getting new merch. If you dont have these stores in your area Im sure there are similar stores with different names.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I buy my shirts at the Brooks Brothers outlet right after christmas and the new year (i.e. now!). Typically can find 4 for $100. That may seem like a lot, but considering you are getting the quality and style of a Brooks Brothers shirt for a lot cheaper. These shirts really last, and won't go out of style. They are real cheap in the long run.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I'm just going to second what others have said, Marshall's is a great place, I do a majority of my shopping for dress shirts at Goodwill, i have a pretty good stock of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren shirts that I paid no more than 7 or so dollars for.", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Since you're looking for a slim fit as well I would go with finding the cheapest dress shirt you can no matter what, and find yourself a decent tailor to take it in. My tailor takes in my shirts for around $15.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Ebay. Work out your size and favourite brand of shirt. I have been buying all sorts of clothes this way for a while. Anything but shoes really.", "score": 3 }, { "body": "TLDR : don't skimp on quality, it shows. But you can get high quality shirts for around 40 USD.\n\nDepends on how old you are, and what you need the dress shirt for... I'll assume it's for work since you intend to wear a shirt daily. More detail would help giving you a useful answer: are the suggestions for less than 5 USD shirts adequate for you (that wouldn't work for me), or is my 40 USD suggestion more in line with what you expect ?\n\nBasically, the older you are, the less it is advisable (in professional settings) to wear cheap-ass shirts. As Blackberry826 said, everyone will know it and secretly mock you behind your back, from your bosses to the customers you might interact with. Immediate result is getting less respect in your daily life!\n\nAs a rule of thumb, if you're older than 30, don't wear a shirt bought for less than 40 USD (or 30 EUR.)\n\nBut it's still possible to get good quality shirts for a reasonable price. I get mine at micamisa.com. They ship almost everywhere, and you get a high quality shirt made to your measure, so you can choose the slim fit you're looking for.\n\nAlso, don't wear the same shirt everyday. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Don't go to a goodwill, thrift store, or costco. I may be downvoted for this opinion, but you can tell the difference between a used good shirt from a thrift store and a new good shirt. I agree with the guy who said stores like Marshalls,TJMaxx, Nordstrom, etc. Also, if you're in the tri-state area I like Century 21. Basically any place that sells quality brand's clothing that is out of season. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "It's the difference between *additive* and *subtractive* color systems.\n\nDisplay devices (RGB) are additive. Printing (CMYK) is subtractive. See (inter alia):\n\nhttp://www.rgbworld.com/knowledgebase/1/Understanding-Color.html", "score": 9 }, { "body": "You don't see yellow pigment, you see yellow light. The pigment was absorbing all the other frequencies other than yellow. Yellow was the only color it was reflecting or scattering.\n\n*\"White\"* light doesn't have a wavelength, because it's not really a fundamental color of light. You get \"white\" light by adding together at least 3 other colors (although there's an unlimited number of combinations that can get the job done).\n\nBlack is obtained by absorbing all wavelengths (at least visible wavelenghts, as a black object can reflect invisible frequencies of light).", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "I loved all of these and couldn't wait for \"Ape Week\" where they would show each film after school. In the first film watch for the part where they are putting Taylor on \"trial\" and they show the three orangutan judges one with his hands over his eyes, one with hands over mouth and the third with hands over his ears.", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Dude, it's all about the [TV series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_%28TV_series%29).\n\nDisney Channel aired it in the 90s and my young mind was blown. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "I've been saying the same for years. As far as continuity, they are spot on. I truly recommend for anyone that never watched them all to do so. \n\nMy fav is \"Conquest of the Planet of the Apes\". Truly a work of art. Yet also not sure if I like it cause of my inability to fathom the humans mentality of the time. But good chance it's because it has Ricardo Montalban. Who doesn't love \"Rich Corinthian Leather\"?", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Planet of the Apes [the original]... is one of my all time favorite movies. I rewatch it every year.\n\nMy favorite part is when Taylor rips apart the others belief that they will be able to go back and that they have long been forgotten about. The human psyche is a fragile thing. \n\nIf you think about it... Taylor was like Dr. House.", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Epic series , love the first two. Three and Four kinda sucked but was okay.\n\nReboot was fucking awful ", "score": 7 }, { "body": "The original is one of the best sci-fi films ever, in my opinion...maybe only second to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everything from the brilliant Rod Serling script to the bizarrely alien Jerry Goldsmith score to the wonderful acting all around meshes into a beautiful gestalt.\n\nMy favorite aspect of the film, however, is the fact it makes a beautifully compelling case for the value of science and skepticism in the face of blind faith and adherence to ancient customs and religions. And of course there's the delicious irony of having right-wing/fundy icon Charleton Heston in the lead role.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "I have the opposite view. I tried to get through all of them and they just get worse and worse. The last 1 is just unwatchable and makes no sense, plot-wise.", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "I also love my iPhone, the best thing is surfing the web while in bed under all my blankets and stuff :).", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Not just your life, but the tech world in general. Apple devices have been major influences on technology's progress, even Microsoft's success. When the first PC's came out, and Apple gained success with their Apple II + Lotus 1-2-3 software, IBM followed suit and created the first IBM PC. IBM needed a PC fast, so instead of building it from the ground up, they used parts from different manufacturers. IBM then asked Microsoft to create an OS, and Microsoft simply bought over an existing company that wrote DOS. \n\nEventually PC clones were plentiful from makers such as Dell and HP. Apple needed something better, so they wrote the Mac OS which implemented GUI and use of a mouse. They then asked Microsoft to write them business software, and Microsoft came out with Excel 1-2-3.\n\nMicrosoft saw the advantages of a GUI, and implemented it onto DOS, creating Windows 95.\n\nWhen Apple came up with the iPhone, so many companies have since then used similar technologies, design, and interface to the iPhone. \n\nTry imagining a world without Apple, and we could be in a very different place, technologically speaking.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Welcome to level 2!!\n\n\nBut seriously yeah, I feel like I almost go up levels in my head...plateau for a while then go up another level, just the way I visualise it don't know if anyone does anything similar", "score": 9 }, { "body": "That's cool. But, in my experience playing music is a series of plateaus and spikes. You'll stagnate for a while, then you'll experience a brief enervating apotheosis, only to sink into the mire of mediocrity again. Yay! Boo! Yay! ad nauseam...", "score": 9 }, { "body": "My parents gave me a guitar for Christmas last year, and this year I had played enough to where I could jam with my cousin, who has been playing for years. In just the couple nights we spent together he basically unlocked the fretboard for me. Gave me a road-map, so to speak.\n\nI think it was my favorite present, come to think of it. ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "It means you've been playing enough that you are developing \"Muscle Memory\". You just think the notes, (not where to place your fingers) and your fingers go there automatically. I usually takes 3-5 years of lessons. I think it means you are starting to develop a consistent Guitar style, good work!", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I use [Gourmet Recipe Manager](http://grecipe-manager.sourceforge.net/) and then I print out recipes and keep them in a folder too. If I need to share the recipe or if I accidentally ruin it, I've got a nice electronic copy. I have a laptop so I only print recipes off after I'm sure that I like them, otherwise I just work off the laptop.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I've thought a lot about this.\n\n* Jews have a **non-assimilationist religion**. From imperial pagans under the roman empire, to european christians, to arab and central asian muslims, jews have appeared as a threat to religious norms. In societies in which state and religion are intertwined (the norm throughout human history) jews have also been seen as a threat to the sovereign. \n\n\n\n* Wherever they have gone, Jews (like gypsies, or eastern-orthodox christians) have formed close-knit communities of outsiders. Historically the jews have also tended to be literate (not surprising given the centrality of text and interpretation since the diaspora). These two factors combined with local restrictions on their ability to become craftsmen or landowners formed the perfect storm spurring jews throughout the world to become involved in **commerce, trade and banking**. Though they tended to be poor until recent centuries, they also became relatively powerful and influential in the societies they occupied, while remaining mysterious and seemingly untrustworthy. During famines, recessions and other bad periods, they have thus been a natural scapegoat.\n\n\n\n\n* **Socialism/marxism/national socialism**. Many of the 20th century authoritarian ideologies promoted the the direct manufacture of goods as the sole morally legitimate form of societal contribution. To the communists, jews were beorgeois leeches sucking the blood of the international workers. Hitler came back from the horrors of WW1, and was enraged at the relatively prosperous position of merchants during the bleakness of the weimar era. Thus, even in the face of secular regimes, jews became political pariahs due to the economic roles they tended to occupy.", "score": 19 } ]

[ { "body": "I'd claim warranty on the Samsung then sell it. Even if it's a pain in the arse to do, you'd likely still be able to sell it for more than you value the effort.\n\nAs for the Sharp, I'd give it away for parts, send it to a refurb company or recycle it.", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "All the grocery stores and CVS's around here have disposable visa or Amex gift cards you could buy. ", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "I'd say my own [personal site](http://chrisvoll.com), but I have some new things I'll be adding to my portfolio soon that I'm really proud of!", "score": 7 }, { "body": "[My personal site](http://www.stevengapo.com/) - I drew and coded it up yesterday afternoon and am super happy with how it turned out", "score": 4 }, { "body": "Here are 3 of my favorites.\n\nhttp://www.brownbagetc.com/ \nhttp://www.cornerstonejewelrydesigns.com/ (konami code on a site that sells [purity rings](http://www.cornerstonejewelrydesigns.com/rings/purity-rings.html) FTW)\nhttp://www.kellystreasure.com/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "When a statement is made that is obviously false, it is difficult to not offend the speaker when refuting it. A better way is to ask where they got that information, and then address the credibility of the original source -- not the person you are speaking with. Stay on their side, together evaluating the evidence, as it is.\n\nSometimes when they see that the information they took as fact is very suspect, a crack appears in the dyke. Not always, but if the person is reasonable, it is hard not to face facts. It may tke place between their own ears, much later, but it is a start.", "score": 16 }, { "body": "\"No, that's why I'm talking to you . . . because you're smart enough to consider new ideas, even if they're different from what you've been taught.\"", "score": 10 }, { "body": "I love this situation.\n\nI email them all the debunking info and bring it up at all given opportunities.\n\nI taunt them thereafter and start every encounter with \"Hey, remember back when you didn't think you were a liar?\"\n\nEventually they refuse to to talk about it.\n\nThe next time they make absurd claims I pounce again, reminding them of previous infractions and go through the whole process again.\n\nI made a wife of a friend cry two weekends ago. I am hoping she makes one more absurd claim as I think my reaction to it will drive her clinically insane. ", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Isaac Newton thought he could convert lead into gold, and he was probably one of the smartest people who ever lived. You can be smart and wrong.\n\nThe trick is to examine everything you think you know and ask yourself, \"Why do I believe that?\" Those silly rumors that fly around the world via email take root because people *want* them to be true.\n\nThe root of the problem is a psychological dependence on fairy tales and things that \"sound true\" because they fit the childish world view. And I'm not just talking about theism.", "score": 4 }, { "body": "You just have point out to them the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Most people are not stupid, but can certainly make ignorant statements because they are simply not well informed. ", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "She could spend half an hour and just learn how to read the hands. She's clearly intelligent, so it should be a breeze. The gift of knowledge is the best gift of all.", "score": 27 }, { "body": "Intriguing. How can she be a lawyer and not understand how to read a clock? I don't mean this to be offensive, I just find it curious.", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Holy shit. I think you meant, \"Help me find a new girlfriend.\"\n\nI could never respect a person, lawyer or otherwise, who can't read an analog clock. That's like asking us to help her find some velcro shoes, man.", "score": 9 }, { "body": "find her a brain. I tought a 5 year old how to use a watch. If you can differentiate between the big and small hand while being able to count to 12 you can use a watch. either she is lying to you or you are a horrible troll. ", "score": 8 }, { "body": "[This](http://www.skywatches.com.sg/watches/product_info.php?products_id=4837&osCsid=d217191e9e82b65d7088bc4238bb8fa7) may do the trick. Dressy with a small digital display. Her secret is safe with us.", "score": 6 }, { "body": "There is a \"form of dyslexia\" which causes this problem, the name escapes me right now but its possible to sit down and actually learn to some degree how to read the face of a clock however for most people it will still be much faster and meaningful to work with a digital 24h display.\n\nMost often its a problem with understanding the way time overlaps and how to \"decode\" the positions of the hands into something meaningful. (ie; twenty-past-seven vs. ten-to-half-past-seven vs. fourty-to-eight ad nauseum)\n\nI'd suggest something with a digital display, since shes small I'd go with a tiny watch, as most digital clocks tend to be the \"sporty\" type.\n\nEdit: The condition is called Dyscalculia, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia ), remember that specific learning disabilities like these are so granular that its often possible to only obtain one small problem of a larger umbrella 'condition'. ", "score": 5 }, { "body": "How did she became a lawyer without knowing how to read clocks ?\n\nThe best gift you could give her is a flik flak and a lesson on how to read time ! Then once she'll know it, buy her a cool watch as a reward ;-) [flik flak watches](http://www.flikflak.com/)", "score": 3 }, { "body": "i also am mystified that someone reasonably intelligent can't learn such a simple- and useful- thing. I've heard of this before- also people who cannot understand time zones or point to north. um. for her safety she should really learn how to use a clock- some day she might not have access to a digital display when she really needs one. have you not tried teaching her or she's too embarrassed? ", "score": 3 }, { "body": "If I found out my lawyer didn't know how to read an anologue clock he /she wouldn't be my lawyer anymore. She should learn how to tell the time. WTF?", "score": 3 }, { "body": "If the idea of an otherwise intelligent woman being unable to perform a task that you take for granted arouses your curiosity please search the name Phineas Gage. You will not be disappointed.", "score": 3 } ]