Dave

Staff member
... That's strange to you? I get mails from garages, requests for calligraphy, reminders from church and for picking up the kids, etc almost daily for a Rachel, a Rick, a Richard, and a Rose (with my last name). People suck at writing their own email address.
I get 10+ spam messages a day from Halforums. Spammers love the “Contact Us” button and guess who gets those?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
... That's strange to you? I get mails from garages, requests for calligraphy, reminders from church and for picking up the kids, etc almost daily for a Rachel, a Rick, a Richard, and a Rose (with my last name). People suck at writing their own email address.
It's pretty uncommon, for me. After all my email address is the same as my handle.
 
I get dozens of emails/day at work from people who apparently can’t be bothered to check their addressees. Paul, Peter, PJ, Pam, and some of these people are pretty high up in the company, so I’m talking, “It’s time to renew your slip and boating insurance for your sailboat in Cape Cod” or “Here is the receipt for that new Dodge Ram you just purchased” kinds of emails.

—Patrick
 
Long ago I when I worked for a large corporation I used to get emails for some one much higher up in the company. No big deal until I got one from his mistress.
 
Quick question for the folks who have/had kids: What age is appropriate for a child to be left alone at home for extended periods of time? By extended periods of time I mean like 3+ hours at a time.

Cause there's a couple I know who have a 4 year old daughter, and the wife needs to go away for a while for family/work reasons, while the dad needs to work during the day, so the wife wanted to hire a baby sitter or ask one of their parents to come take care of the daughter, and the dad was all like, "Nah, she'll be fine, she can walk home from nursery by herself and then take care of herself until I get home from work." And everyone who's heard about this has reacted pretty much with, "NO SHE FUCKING WELL CANNOT!!!" And the dad's all like, "I don't see what the big deal is here."
I have another story of the clueless dad.

So recently the mom in this story brought their 4 year old daughter on a trip abroad. They were going to visit a family friend in Australia. The dad didn't go along because he had to work. He did, however, drive his wife and daughter to the airport. When they were waiting to check in, the daughter said she wanted a stuffed toy that happened to be in their luggage (ie, not their carry-on bags) so mom opened up their suitcase to find the toy. At this point the dad noticed that mom had packed a bunch of the daughter's favorite snacks and cereals, presumably to ensure that their 4 year old would be able to have her preferred breakfast and snacks in Australia. He apparently took issue with this, and insisted that mom remove all the cereals and snacks, and that he would take them home. The idea was that surely there would be no shortage of breakfast foods and snack foods in Australia, so there was no need to weigh down their suitcase with such trivialities. Or maybe he was afraid of appearing rude to their friend in Australia, as if they didn't trust the friend to feed them properly or something.

Apparently the discussion got a bit heated there in the airport terminal, but dad got his way in the end, and mom gave him the cereals and snacks to take home, and then she e-mailed the friend in Australia to ask if they had that brand of cereal down under.

When the mom was relaying this story to me, she portrayed it as dad having legitimate concerns and that he just had his family's best interests in mind. But even then he still sounded like a massive dickhead to me.
 
The problem with having got into playing walking football (association not gridiron) is that when you're watching a pro game you occasionally find yourself thinking "hey, that's a foul he's not allowed to...oh, wait they are allowed to run".
 
So the Death Star is staffed by 1,700,000 people and 99.9999% are men.

What kind of chaos does their shore leave look like?
 
So my wife is an English teacher at an elementary school here in Taiwan. She got in touch with a teacher in Minnesota who teaches Chinese to elementary school students, and arranged a Christmas card exchange activity. My wife's students would each write a Christmas card in English, and my wife would send them to the school in the US, while the students in Minnesota would write Christmas cards in Chinese and their teacher would send them to Taiwan. Each student would get a card from a student in the other class.

There were just two minor hitches. One, both teachers sent the cards too late so the cards are only now arriving at their respective schools. Two, there was one more student in the class in Taiwan than there was in the class in the US. This meant that one of the students in my wife's class wouldn't get a card. So my wife decided to make up a fake American student, make a card herself, and give that card to her student here in Taiwan.

Thus, last night my wife came to me with a handmade card and asked me to write a message inside in Chinese.

"Why do I need to write it?" I asked.

She replied, "Because your handwriting looks like an elementary school student's."

"Fair enough," I said, "hand me a crayon."
 
Quick question,

In an official contract, what would be the better way to write this:

.... shall pay for it's own accommodation, if required. These cost shall be reimbursed...

or

.... shall pay for it's own accommodation, if necessary. These cost shall be reimbursed...
 
"These cost" would also need to be changed either to "These costs" or "This cost."
In my mind, the distinction between "required" and "necessary" depends on the context of the remainder of the sentence preceding that portion. Also curious about the use of "it's" since it should probably be "its" (no apostrophe).

--Patrick
 
Vero's parents are going to get married. I mean, they are legally married but they never had a religious ceremony. Vero and I are in the same situation and this ceremony is going to bring pressure to us to do the same.
 
Vero's parents are going to get married. I mean, they are legally married but they never had a religious ceremony. Vero and I are in the same situation and this ceremony is going to bring pressure to us to do the same.
If they could wait... What, 30 years, so can you, and by then they'll be dead and you'll be off.
 
If they could wait... What, 30 years, so can you, and by then they'll be dead and you'll be off.
The thing is that this is something very important for a devout catholic as Vero. But it's also something that needs a lot of preparation. Ironically, I'm technicaly more catholic than her because I had my confirmation and she hasn't.
 
Yeah, ignore those, i changed them quickly so it doesn't actually say something too close to the actual document that resulted.
In my opinion:
"Required" implies that there is a rule or regulation (government law or nature/physical law) and so someone was compelled to pay.
"Necessary" implies that the payment was somehow unavoidable/unpredictable/unexpected and so someone ended up needing to pay.

--Patrick
 
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