What is making you happy right now

[Nessus]

When I was young and courted girls who still lived with their parents, their fathers were supportive and non-intrusive, which at the time I found an exceptional courtesy and luck, and still do. Obviously I don't have kids myself, but I'd say that it's a better learning experience for the child to experience their first relationships mostly by themselves. Of course if your potential daughter decides to date a bank-robbing motorcyclist, you kinda have to step in, but that's an aberration rather than the norm.

[earthJoker]

I moved into my new apartment this weekend, I am glad everything is moved. The new apparent is really awesome

[Dreadnaught]

When I was young and courted girls who still lived with their parents, their fathers were supportive and non-intrusive, which at the time I found an exceptional courtesy and luck, and still do. Obviously I don't have kids myself, but I'd say that it's a better learning experience for the child to experience their first relationships mostly by themselves. Of course if your potential daughter decides to date a bank-robbing motorcyclist, you kinda have to step in, but that's an aberration rather than the norm.

Do you still court girls, out of curiosity? Unless I've missed something, you've never spoken about that

[GGT]

Here is a question to you fathers with daughter(s): Were you ever strict with them bringing a boyfriend round? Did you openly embarrass them for kicks? Did you like who they brought back?

The future Mrs Lor has already stated that if we have a daughter, that she can see me being overly protective.

My parents would never embarrass anyone on purpose, not just because it's bad parenting but downright mean. Why would a parent do such a humiliating thing?

My dad had a rule, he wanted to meet any boy we dated, and they had to pick us up at home for the meet-n-greet. He'd also check out their ride. He once forbade my sister from going on a motorcycle date, but she snuck out anyway. She ended up getting badly burned on her leg when the guy lost control on a turn, and she was pinned underneath the hot exhaust pipe. Yeah, Father knew best.

We had boyfriends my folks didn't like or "approve of", but they had the sense to know forbidding contact could backfire. Mostly my parents were really open about relationships, sex, birth control, self-respect and respecting others, having some standards, how to say No and what to say No to....to the point my sisters and I did a lot of eye-rolling. But it was nice to know our dad cared and was looking out for our welfare.

[Catgrrl]

If my Dad didn't approve, he'd clean his knives at the table that night. Dad's a redneck sometimes. He also tended to have red eyes due to long work hours back then, so he looked scarier than he really is.

But, we did have certain rules such as date had to come to door, we had to introduce them. No running to a guy who would honk his car horn to alert you to come out (not that I'd ever do that anyway, I do have some pride in myself).

Dad never really said out loud if he did or didn't like a guy; my mom was the vocal one on that. But he was always more conversational and courteous to the ones he did like; never cleaned his knives when my future Hubby picked me up.

[GGT]

Ironically, I'm somewhat relieved that I don't have a daughter.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/vid...NRLL&gt1=42010

[Nessus]

Do you still court girls, out of curiosity? Unless I've missed something, you've never spoken about that

It's been a bit dry lately, but women are the ones I'd court

[Flixy]

My parents never commented on my girlfriend's (or the dates of my siblings), and were nice to them, but you could notice which ones they liked or did not like. I remember my mother commenting something like "about time" when my brother and his girlfriend broke up But I am pretty sure she never said anything like that to my brother. They consider it our choice who we date, and as long as we are happy with it they would not interfere. I am pretty sure they wouldn't mind what gender I'd date either

All girlfriends I have had, the parents were all nice to me and never rude or embarassing. Even the ones I knew didn't really like me much were nice and polite to me.

[Catgrrl]

Watching Daria on the LOGO channel....I missed that show!

[NGS]

*ball flies past*
...5 seconds later...
*moves her hand out*

Awesome show, indeed.

[oldmunchkin]

I know it sounds silly, but I am really happy because I got my dishes washed! All I need to do now is sweep the floor and take out the trash, and my kitchen will be clean.

I have an appointment for my first "real" counseling session tomorrow morning! This should make GGT happy! The first 2 times I went to the counselor, it was the screwy test and intake. Now we can actually do what a counselor is supposed to do...talk to me and help me get passed this rough spot in life. Actually, I feel like a fucking whine-titted wimp for even going to this woman. Basically, I am wasting her time and my money, but oh well...it will play well for the medical crowd that is taking care of me. Of course, they don't think I am capable of quitting having a life without help.

Well, now I suppose I should go get something more to eat! This eating 50 times a day is for the birds! But, tonight I have some ranch-raised hamburger for my dinner! If you don't think it tastes completely different than the watered down shit you get in the grocery, you are wrong!

[GGT]

munch.

Of course, they don't think I am capable of quitting having a life without help.

uhm isn't that backward?

[BalticSailor]

It's a bit too early to bring out the fireworks and "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banners, but proton NMR seems to comply.

... and mass spectrum as well. It's very unlikely that the reaction produced something else with the same molecular mass as my intended product, so...
[fireworks]
[MISSION ACCOMPLISHED]

[Flixy]

Nice

[Flixy]

The weather is awesome, I'm on my way to visit my grandma, and tonight I'm playing with my band. Today is promising to be a good day!

[Aimless]

good weekend, lotsa chilling, lotsa yummies


have finally switched to CM7 on the Nook, with some tablet tweaks, and it's working just fine...

... and best of all, have finally gotten some sort of file-sharing working using a summat limited tool soon's I figure out how to get two-way sharing working I'm gonna be the happiest bunny stupid workgroups

[Lor]

The new Foo Fighters album rocks, very impressive piece of work.

[Angel_Mapper]

Hoooooooooly crap. My old high score was 169, today I bowled a 210.

[GGT]

My son scored his first game goal today!

[GGT]

http://northbuffalo.wgrz.com/news/en...er-goose/54141

"Bambi Protects Mother Goose"

Aww

[Ominous Gamer]

The class action lawsuit againist EA for inflating games prices after they attained exclusive rights has been certified.

http://www.hbsslaw.com/signup/suit/308 For anyone thats owned an EA branded NFL game since 2005. Its a long shot, but I'll support any chance I find to open this up so other developers can attempt to make better games (which is why EA signed the exclusive rights to begin with).

Looks like the lawsuit is moving along, got the following in my email yesterday.

GEOFFREY PECOVER and ANDREW OWENS v. ELECTRONIC ARTS INC.
U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal. - Oakland Div.)
Case No. 08-cv-02820 CW

If You Purchased Certain Electronic Arts Brand Football Video Games
Between January 1, 2005 to the Present
You May Be a Class Member.


Membership as a class member in the Electronic Arts Litigation is the result of a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Oakland Division (Case No. 08-cv-02820 CW).


What Is This Class Action About?
The class action lawsuit alleges violations of California's antitrust and consumer protection laws in connection with the sale of certain football video games. Plaintiffs, purchasers of Electronic Arts' football video games, claim that Defendant Electronic Arts entered into a series of exclusive licenses with the National Football League (NFL), National Football League Players' Association (NFLPA), National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), and Arena Football League (AFL), which Plaintiffs claim foreclosed competition in an alleged football video game market. Plaintiffs allege that this series of exclusive licenses caused customers who purchased certain football video games to be overcharged.
Defendant Electronic Arts has denied any liability and all allegations of misconduct. The Court has not decided whether the Defendants did anything wrong, and this Notice is not an expression of any opinion by the Court about the merits of any of the claims or defenses asserted by any party to this litigation.


Who Are Class Members?
The Class includes all persons who, during the period January 1, 2005 to the present, purchased the Madden NFL, NCAA Football, or Arena Football League brand video games published by Electronic Arts with a release date of January 1, 2005 to the present. Excluded from the class are purchasers of software for mobile devices, persons purchasing directly from Electronic Arts, persons purchasing used copies of the relevant football video games, and Electronic Arts' employees, officers, directors, legal representatives, and wholly or partly owned subsidiaries or affiliated companies.


What Should I Do? (Getting Further Information)
If you believe that you may be a class member (see above "Who Are Class Members"), you should get more detailed information about the class action and its potential effect on you and your rights. Further information can be obtained by going to the following website: www.easportslitigation.com. Additional information about the lawsuit may be obtained from Plaintiffs' Counsel website at www.hbsslaw.com, or by calling Plaintiffs' Counsel at 1-206-623-7292.


To Remain a Class Member
If you are a class member and you do nothing, you will be bound by the court's rulings in the lawsuit, including any final Settlement or Judgment.


To Exclude Yourself from the Class
(Deadline to Request Exclusion: June 25, 2011)
If you are a class member and you want to exclude yourself from the class and keep your right to sue Defendant, you must take further action before June 25, 2011. By that date, you must request exclusion in writing to this address:
Electronic Arts Litigation Exclusion
P.O. Box 8090
San Rafael CA 94912-8090

Or submit a request for exclusion electronically at the following website: www.easportslitigation.com

For further information about excluding yourself from the class go to the following website:
www.easportslitigation.com

Please do not telephone or address inquiries to the Court.
April 6, 2011. By Order of the U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal. - Oakland Div.).

[Catgrrl]

It's a fcking video game. People should be allowed to charge what they want for something so nonessential in life. You don't have to buy shitty fooball games the day they come out; all of our Madden games were bought at used game stores. People are idiots if they stand outside of Gamestop at midnight waiting for the newest Madden, or whatever, to come out.

Ridiculous.

[Ominous Gamer]

I have no idea if its got a chance of winning, but competition is good and EA's practices here are not very competitive. At best, I might get a discount or free game, at worst, I wasted 5 minutes filling out the form. After the ATI/Nvidia price fixing scheme netted me a check that paid for my next video card upgrade, I look at these and figure "ah, what the hell".
Essential purchase or not, EA has had this coming for a long time.

[Catgrrl]

I'm not saying you shouldn't get in on the action. I just don't understand what the problem is, when to my general knowledge these games cost the same as, say, my Rockband game or Red Faction 2 did when I bought them brand new. I don't see how consumers have it so bad. I can see maybe other game production companies wanting to cry foul, but seems silly to clog up courts with this drivel.

[Supermarioman]

I was having a merely ok day, but then this happened.



OH MY GOSH NEW LAST EXILE SEQUEL TRAILER HNNNNNGGGGG

[BalticSailor]

Chemistry related stuff is making me happy, once again.

Today was a fairly shitty day at work, since our lab is currently working on synthesis which involves using disturbing amounts of methyl acrylate. Methyl acrylate is a compound with a characteristic overwhelming acrid odor. Imagine the most disgusting constituent of the smell of nail polish, and multiply that by a thousand or so to get an approximate idea. This compound also has a double bond in its structure, and I don't know why, but compounds with multiple bonds in them seem to stick to clothes and hair, in small concentrations - just enough to feel their odor for a while after having handled them.
The happy part - I seem to have managed to work my way around a reaction I really want to avoid. The reaction is an aromatization of a partially hydrogenated naphtalene derivative. It looks simple enough on paper - two hydrogen atoms are removed from the ends of a single bond, thus turning it into a double bond, which becomes a part of aromatic system. In practice... Well, looks like people have never needed such a reaction for compounds similar to mine. Some guy in 1915 used bromine for this reaction (and neat bromine is something I'd like to avoid for several reasons, such as possible side reactions, and the feeling that the gloves we got at the lab might not provide sufficient protection), and the method I tried previously involves heating my compound with elementar sulfur for several hours (this produces hydrogen sulfide, which stinks. Think rotten eggs.), then vaccuum distillation of the resulting mixture. In theory, this should provide the pure target compound. In practice, this fills the valves of the vaccuum pump with elementar sulfur, thus killing it. At least that happened the last time I tried this method, and there's no reason to destroy another pump. No other purifying method gave satisfactory results, either.
To avoid the sulfur nightmare, I tried to use a more up-to-date method. There's this oxidant, called DDQ, which is supposed to work like a charm in aromatization reactions. That'd be too simple, though, so my first attempts failed. That was more than two years ago, and the situation appeared so hopeless that my boss gave me another synthesis to work on.
This time I tried to first prepare a derivative of my starting compound, which might be more eager to get aromatized. Getting the derivative was already a great success. The method mentioned in literature said it'd take 32 hours and special equipment. I thought "screw this", and used a more general method, which worked fairly good, yielding a little less pure product in 4 hours of simple heating. Then, upon oxidation with DDQ, I obtained a compound that was different from the starting material. The yield was miserable (the workup was an improvization, I suspect that to be the reason), but I got the proton NMR spectrum today - it's exactly what I wanted to obtain. So... Yay!

[Catgrrl]

Reading your Chemistry blurbs make me happy BalticSailor!

[GGT]

Hunting around for some hard-to-find items and landed at Vermont Country Store. Hadn't seen Lifebuoy soap in ages, but my gramps used it (and would stick the slivers together to make another bar). Wow, it's amazing how something as simple as a bar of soap can elicit strong memories!

“I grew up on a farm in Vermont around 1950. I went to school in a one room school with around 13 students from grades 1 through 8 and we all lived on farms and helped with the morning chores. Needless to say we all smelled a little like cows but as we all smelled the same, nobody noticed. We got a new teacher who was from the city. After a week or two he came in with a bag and told us he had something for us. He gave us each a bar of Lifebuoy Soap. The next morning the smell of Lifebuoy Soap overpowered the smell of cows. In thinking back I think that was what he had intended.” — Gail Drysdale, Milford, MA

Dear Mr. Orton, My dad always talked of Lifebuoy soap, he couldn't believe it when we found it online . . . your product arrived in time . . . my dad got his last bath with Lifebuoy soap before he passed away on June 13th of this year. We even buried a bar of it with him! Thanks for giving him a memory with one of his favorite soaps.
” — Dee Shackelford, Wauchula, FL

“I grew up with my grandparents on a farm. I never knew there was any other soap but Lifebuoy. Next to my grandpa's aftershave it is the most memorable trigger from my life. I loved him and I love Lifebuoy. Before he died he found a small store in Central Oregon that carried a few bars. As it was no longer available at any store in our city, my grandad bought that store's entire supply. I can just imagine him driving back from his quartet concert with his friends and a case of soap between them. God can take my sight, but give me the smell of memories like that. Thank you for carrying it.” — Brian Livingston, Salem, OR

“I grew up outside of Philadelphia and one ritual of our life in the 1950s and early '60s was to go "down the shore" to Stone Harbor, N.J., for two weeks every summer. My dad helped take care of a neighbor's house on 92nd Street and in return we had the use of this place early in the season when the ocean was still a bit chilly for comfortable bathing. There was a bathhouse at the back of this -- typical white asbestos shingle Harbor Cottage (with the knotty pine paneling inside). In the bathhouse closet was an old Duke Kahanamoku wooden long board, various mildewed canvas beach umbrellas and chairs, a rusty balloon tire bomber Schwinn, and some old-style blow-up canvas rafts that looked like properties from the film "The Cruel Sea." In the shower room, there was Lifebuoy soap. When I shower every morning at the gym, the peculiar, authentic aroma of that soap takes me back to 1962 and all the adventure and romance of the shore as a 14-year-old. Dollar for dollar that stuff is the best mental therapy there is. No matter what problems I may have to deal with, for a few minutes I am there with the little girl across the street with whom I had a shy but tender relationship. What more can I say?” — Philip Tramdack, New Castle, PA

[Dattu]

What does it smell like? Good, bad?

[GGT]

Lifebuoy? I'd say it smells strong but clean. Hard to describe if you've never smelled it. It was "the first deodorant soap" and was common to WWI and WWII people. Reading the consumer comments I learned it's also apparently good for chiggers and poison ivy, so it's probably harsh in some way. I might buy a bar though, along with some Chiclets, just to have a whiff of my gramps again.