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The title of this thread is inexplicably driving me crazy. Every time I pass by it, "casual" gets initially rendered as "causal" in my mind. I've been seeing "Casual Discussion Science Forum" on this board for years, without anything like that happening. Must have something to do with the subforum it's under.

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I was going with casual but it seems to have ended up much the same.
(Mar 14, 2019 02:41 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]Casual is when you tell a story and not think about it afterwards. Not-so-casual is when you tell a story and a few days later you start thinking "Was that ok?". (I hope it was).

Well, here’s a really long story for you. I hope that’s okay.

The sun is out and I’ve been working my ass off. I’ll be busy for a while and I won’t have much time to interact with you guys. My son’s active service ends in 20 days. I’m letting him fly home and I’ll be driving his car back. It’s my first time driving across the country. So, I’m going to take my time and check out a few places.

C2 might appreciate this story.

Years ago, when he first joined the Marines, I was devastated. I was venting on Sciforums and that asshole Fraggle Rocker called him a goddamn murderer.  My son called the other night with a funny little mouse story. He only got four hours of sleep the night before and was staying with his girlfriend for the weekend. As he was just starting to fall asleep, her roommate starting screaming bloody murder. A mouse was in her room. He said that the chase went on for hours. It ran into the roommate’s closet. He had to clean it out and by this time he was starting to get really frustrated. He told the girls to make sure it didn’t get pass them if it ran out. Of course, as soon as it started running towards them, they freaked out and ran in the opposite direction. He scurried into the laundry room and jumped into the washing machine outlet box. He thought it was over at this point with the mouse safe behind the wall, but it jumped back out, and took off again. However, this time it ran straight towards one of those sticky glue catchers. He picked it up with a glove on and he said that his little eyes were squinting as it tried to bite him with all his might. His empathy kicked in when the poor little guy sighed and finally gave up. He couldn't kill it. He took it out front and was going to let it go but wasn’t able to pull it off the paper without hurting it. They googled it, and came up with an olive oil solution, but it said that it would freeze if the olive oil was left on it. They ended up bathing the mouse, blow drying it, and making it a little shelter before abandoning it about 100 feet from the house. If he wasn’t getting out the Marine Corps soon, I’d be fretting over his battle skills. Murderer, my ass!

I’m still helping my girlfriend plan her daughter’s wedding. It’s been difficult because I’m extremely frugal. Spending money, even someone else’s money is actually painful for me. I guess you could call me a disagreeable giver. I’ve been searching for some rustic items and reclaimed wood for decorations. I found an ad for a free pile at a local winery. I couldn’t believe it. I was just going to grab a few pieces for a couple of projects for the wedding, but when I got there, there were tons of those old grape stakes. I asked the guy if he would hold them until I could get my truck and trailer. He said, sorry but it's first come, first served. I offered to buy them and he said he’d hold them for twenty bucks. When I returned, they were loading them onto a trailer. He said that he had some bad news. The owner realized how valuable and rare they were, and wanted to keep some, but he held some back for me. I wasn’t disappointed at all, though, because he held back about fifteen hundred of them, which is about three thousand dollars’ worth. In fact, he felt so bad that he had five workers there to help me load them. One of them was a young girl in her late twenties. She was the vineyard manager—my ideal future daughter in-law. She was from Argentina. Her family owned a vineyard there but she got her masters in horticulture in Switzerland. This winery was bought by a German fella, who lived in Switzerland. A friend that knew him told her about a harvest job here. She worked one year and then he said he could help her get a four year working visa. She speaks French, Spanish, and English. She’s a dancer, extremely intelligent, and gorgeous. She said that it was difficult because her family is friendly and outgoing but the German people are sort of reserved and standoffish. I asked her how she felt about dating younger guys. I told her about my son and she invited us to an oyster and wine event. I was thrilled and so grateful for the grape stakes. I absolutely love grape stake fences. I built a beautiful one on my property and now I’m going to do the same for my older son.

It’s going to be a busy summer for me. One son is coming home, the other building a home, with my help, of course. Lots of legalities and manual labor. Oh, and I still have to coordinate a wedding.  

A funny thing happened, though. It’s a barn wedding on this beautiful ranch. I was looking for online photos to get some ideas for lighting. I clicked on the website and it said that they were no longer doing events and they recommended that you contact this other premier wine country venue. I went to school with the owner. She’s a little shady. Her ex-husband invented some sort of device for welding and he made a fortune. She was, however, cooking the books. Took him to the cleaners and now she owns this beautiful ranch. I panicked, called my girlfriend, who paid up front, and told her that we’re screwed. There wasn’t even enough time to find a new venue. The owner wasn’t aware of it until I brought to her attention, but come to find out, she accidentally let her website expire, and a local competitor bought it. He was directing all of her traffic back to his place. I think that she might have some leverage, though. He committed libel by saying that she was no longer in business and her business has suffered. The name is unusual. It might fall under a common-law trademark. It was a diabolical on his part, that’s for sure. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.

I might pop in on the rainy days if I have the time. I hope you guys stick around, though, because I still have a few interesting science tales to tell, and a whole lot of questions.

Peace out!  Smile
My mom left a bag of flour out in her laundry room once. Apparently mice really love flour. She didn't have any mouse traps on hand, but she did have a five gallon bucket. So I made a mouse trap with a ramp up to a plank, baited with flour from the tainted bag, that would teeter and dump them into water, so they couldn't jump out. Whole family of mice, I think about eight, died that evening. I took pity on the smaller ones, that would swim to the top to gasp for air and squeak, and fashioned the top of a 2-liter to drown them quickly. No way I'd release them only to have them find their way back. Same goes for venomous spiders, but other spiders are fine, and I escort the larger ones, like wolf spiders (especially if covered with babies), outside or to the garage. Got some reusable mouse traps for my mom, as I wouldn't expect her to drown mice.
One story I’m not too proud of, and it may reflect a common selfish sign of the times reaction, occurred a few years ago when I was searching the internet. I like a good joke and I stumbled onto this one site that had some particularly good ones. I was reading page after page of great jokes when things suddenly took a turn for the worse. Can’t remember how many pages I had read before stumbling upon what was obviously an internet site for child molesters/exploiters. There were pages of dialogue containing explicit chat between the lowest of the low in society.

What I am most ashamed of was my first thought, getting out of there because I didn’t wan’t to be associated with these guys. At the time I figured authorities were probably watching or listening to this site. I went back to the site about a month later just to see if this site was still a front for these bastards. A brief check told me it was. Still, because I didn’t want to be associated/involved, I clammed up. I wonder if that’s how other people feel when they see sites that suggest a violent sick individual should be checked out. That was about 10 years ago for me, I’ve long forgotten the name of the site and have tried to find it again without any luck. If I ever do, I will not hesitate this time to report. My only hope is that someone did and this group no longer functions.
(Mar 10, 2019 07:55 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]
Quote:And I see you decided to permanently make ignorant broad generalities about religion, in your signature.

I changed it because well, I have a sense of humour. Don't think it will be permanent since this, I think is, the 4th time I've changed it. That plus I think it reveals something about my nature... I'm not going to even worry about criticism or being wrong. I always stand to be corrected, especially if science related. The subjective, not so much.  

Don't know about the rest of you but I take the word 'casual' to heart. When I visit this site I don't have a plan, I'm rarely thorough, not much thought goes into my words and to top it off I'm usually quite relaxed and unconcerned. That just about describes 'Casual' in my books.  For me it's more spontaneous, spur of the moment chatter. I think of something then I post it, before I forget it. I've forgotten some good ideas that have flashed through my mind at times so this forum helps me in that respect. I feel I can be more anecdotal & less careful here than any forum I've ever participated in. I will always operate this way here unless Stryde changes the Forum's Title by removing 'Casual' from the nomenclature. 

I am quite content behaving in this fashion. I'm not proving or testing a theory. I write for the common layperson, not to impress or anger scientists. At least I don't have to saddle up to a bar and hope the drunk next to me wants to talk science. This forum is what they made recliners & iPads/laptops for and it's great.

why react to fake liberals trying to force others to comply to their extremist dictatorship ?
because freedom of speech is an important pillar of democracy.
in-spite of the fake liberals labeling themselves liberal conservatives who try to force you to comply to their extremism.


Smile

if you are a conservative, what are you being liberal about ?
how others rights to freedom are taken away to serve your own ideology ?
Fine work by the US Murine Corps.

RU Wrote:why react to fake liberals trying to force others to comply to their extremist dictatorship ?
Just a casual comment and I could be wrong but I don't think any of the regular posters here are fake anything.
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