Phaedrus

I'm still rather unclear on the exact details of what she was supposed to have done. Don't be worried, though - she's still a lovely person and a fantastic MA.

I'm @__Phaedrus__, and I'm there reasonably often...

Indian for me, but I always end up eating enough for about eight and then regretting it. And shawarma, provided it won't matter that I stink of stale garlic for the next few days

Some of us aren't even talented enough to keep plants alive :) I'm a cat person, but I don't have any 'cos I'm far to lazy to actually look after them. But I like to play with other peoples' occasionally.

No. I've been... er... involved in this hobby for less than two years, and I visited R&E a few times before it closed. Maybe 18 months, tops?

The urban management authority in Zhengzhou, Henan province, has commissioned a series of 21 cartoon stone sculptures designed to inculcate values - such as perseverance, diligence and love - in young children. The statue to represent the importance of filial piety depicts a young pig giving his mother a back massage. Um... yeah. Right. That's totally what's going on here. Politicians, eh? h/t: http://shanghaiist.com/2012/08/22/mating-pigs-zhengzhou.php#photo-1

Well, no, most of us don't put vodka on our Cheerios in the morning. But now you mention it, it strikes me that SPs can't really indulge in the delights of a liquid lunch followed by an afternoon spent doing nothing constructive... ah, the joys of being self-employed!

It's OK if we can phone... but it an email was required, I'd be screwed. Quite a few of us guys use cheap, anonymous cellphones for our communication with SPs... so calling is fine, text is annoying (for anyone used to smartphones, going back to a non-smartphone is sooo frustrating), and email is impossible!

I like MightyFinn because he keeps us entertained. And I also like Old Dog (who got missed!) for the same reason.

Emily, sorry to hear you've been hit by this crap again... I've said it before, but once more, with feeling: theft of someone's personality really is about as low as you can go. Good for proving an image was stolen after the fact, but a watermark is probably more useful as it also acts as a deterrent. A couple of thoughts on words... First up: a trick I've seen done elsewhere is to have each webpage coded so that the entire content is overlaid by a transparent gif. That means that anyone who tries to select anything, or copy anything, will probably end up selecting/copying that transparent gif rather than the actual content of the page. This is easily circumvented by looking at the page source, but that may well be enough to deter many. You can do the same with your pics too; overlay each of your pics with the same transparent gif, and anyone trying to copy/save them will not get what they want. Secondly... I appreciate that this may make page formatting really hard, but you could dispense with text altogether and have your text in the form of an image (a picture of the words, if you like). You can't stop anyone typing it all out by hand, but again, if you make it less easy you may deter some.

I think the point's worth making, though. Different people do have different ideas of what "just one" drink means. And sometimes one drink arrives in many glasses...

My understanding is that most ladies will be happy enough to get hold of a particular brand if you request them in advance. AFAIK the insistence on using their own tends to be because the ladies then know they've been stored properly and not tampered with, rather than because they're particularly insistent on a favorite kind.

Speaking personally, I don't care what you do before we meet, provided I can't tell :) If you want to have a glass of wine while you get ready, then that's your business, and I probably won't notice; smelling it isn't an issue if you've just had a little because we all use mouthwash before we meet (right?). But as others have said... if the door opens and either person is visibly under the influence, that's probably the end of it. During the date... depends. If I'm meeting someone new, I'll either not drink at all, or have a glass of wine at the outside. Once I know someone better then we'll both have a much better idea of how much we can relax and indulge, and that's entirely up to the individuals in question.

Thanks for sharing, Chavez. That sounds like it could have been absolutely disastrous - and also sounds like someone wanted it to be disastrous for you. I used Hotmail when I first joined CERB - but after having a couple of hotmail accounts cracked (just by spammers, fortunately) in the space of six months, I went to gmail and stayed there. As others have said, Hotmail has a horrible reputation for getting cracked, although I confess I have no idea why this should be. It's a good idea to keep your email account as clean as possible. No matter what service you're using, work on the assumption that your password will fall into the hands of the worst possible person right about... now. It's not possible to delete everything immediately, of course... but once an encounter's done, delete all the emails exchanged previously. Don't forget to clean your "sent items" folder, and then empty the trash. Also, password hygiene is very important. Pick a strong password. Length is far more important than incomprehensibility ("CERBisareallyfunplacetohangout!" is actually a MUCH harder password for machines to crack than "arHJDFH%#@$%fkASDF87T56", and it's a lot easier to remember too. There's a lot more on this at this site (originally posted in this thread). Finally, Do NOT re-use your email password for any other site or service. It's good policy to have different passwords for everything, but that's REALLY important for your email. The reason for this is that, given the way everything works these days, your email address is essentially your online identity. We use it to sign on to all sorts of websites. And that means that once someone has access to your email account, it's trivial for them to find and reset the passwords for your accounts on in sorts of other places too: social networking, shopping, banking... everything! And so if there's one password you really want to have secure... it's email. Edit: one more final thing: don't access your email from your smartphone. Yes, that's inconvenient. But if you also use your smartphone for your "real life" stuff, there's a high risk of some app pillaging your email for other addresses and phone numbers so that the can suggest more friends/contacts for you (and not so they can enhance your social graph to better target their advertizing, oh no...). See this thread for a cautionary tale.

Many happy returns, Soleil! Hope you had an awesome day!

I like Lee because he understands the fundamental amusement value of ninja poo. This is not to be underestimated.

Settlers of Catan Chess And, for a few hours of outrageous lunacy... Quelf. I've never laughed so hard...

I like Castle because he knows how to drop a subtle hint. Even I got it!

Something else to look out for: if someone has a reco thread with many posts, see how many of them are actually recos and how many are just chatter. Some are a lot less impressive once you take out the "Thanks for the reco" and "How do I contact her?" posts. Worse: if she has no recos anywhere, she may find it harder to acquire new clients, and may eventually leave the industry as a result. So this can be utterly counter-productive.

Off-topic, but that made me think of this...

Okay, enough Greek islands. In fact, I'm going about as far away from Greece as you can get while staying on this planet. Samoa.

A mosquito landed on my wife's ass. Easiest. Decision. Ever. Further updates will probably be in the "things that suck" thread :)