Fun stuff -- word related or not, ramblings, junk, whatever.

[floppers]

of the things that might leak, I'm thinking an ad blocker might be a preference....

[Naboka]

This was from a new/unplayed board.

Second day in a row I've come across this word. (It's in my notes from yesterday with the point values.)

Either that game miraculously got recycled in one day, or the words are in more than one game.

Thought it might be useful to someonoe in the future if that's the case.

Both ritornel and ritornels. Has something to do with repeated passages in music. (not that I could detect it if I heard it--but sooo many words here have no meaning, only pattern and structure.)

Enjoy. Pretend you hear the music.

Screen Shot 2022-06-14 at 9.34.18 PM.png

[littlemarph]

On the topic of critters and neighbors and such, the other day, I was walking my dog and saw a woman double-park her car on a somewhat busy street. She waited until traffic slowed a bit and then, with gloved hands, picked up a very smelly skunk carcass off the road, placed it in a shoe box, put the box in the passenger seat of her car, and drove away.
I'm still trying to understand what I saw.

Related story:
Many years ago, I was asleep when my dog broke through a ground-floor window to go after a skunk. The skunk proceeded to spray my dog and then come in through the broken window, into my apartment, and INTO MY BED WITH ME. I jumped out of bed and left the apartment. The skunk stayed in my apartment for a spell as I freaked out on the outside, not knowing what to do. It eventually left the way it came, leaving me to feel as though I was going to vomit for about a month. Let me tell you: that smell will get into your mouth, nose, and every pore of your being, including your soul. It will haunt you. You will not be able to eat and will constantly feel sick. I still have PTSD every time I smell a skunk.

If I were religious, I'd be praying for this woman with the dead skunk in the box in her car.

[BoredInTheCar]

The skunk proceeded to spray my dog and then come in through the broken window, into my apartment, and INTO MY BED WITH ME.

That's hilarious (now) but must have been nightmarish at the time.

I think I can top that story, just barely: when we were living in Jakarta, a giant roach got stuck in my husband's ear canal. (Our theory is that our cat had been hunting it, jumped up on our bed to show us its prey, and the roach escaped and scuttled into the first escape route it noticed.)

We had to find a health clinic open at 3am to deal with it. My ex remained remarkably calm throughout, though he shared some gruesome details, like the fact he could feel/hear the antennae brushing against his eardrum, and then when the got the roach out, in pieces, he could hear the body crunch as they broke it up.

The health worker on duty that night said he was lucky that it was a really big roach because that was actually easier to deal with - it got stuck in the outer ear and couldn't go anywhere. He said that the little roaches are worse because they'll get deeper inside and end up being difficult to grasp with tweezers. He is fairly common problem in villages where people sleep on the floor in huts.

[bwt1213]

Coffee smells exactly like skunk to me. Probably explains why I don't drink coffee. On the other hand, I don't think skunks smell THAT bad. Bad, sure, but not as bad as described. Disgusting and rotten, yes. Just like coffee.

[littlemarph]

That's hilarious (now) but must have been nightmarish at the time.

This is absolutely accurate. I also agree that I would be more disturbed by the cockroach/ear canal scenario. How fortunate for your husband it was a big one! Yuck!

[littlemarph]

Coffee smells exactly like skunk to me. Probably explains why I don't drink coffee. On the other hand, I don't think skunks smell THAT bad. Bad, sure, but not as bad as described. Disgusting and rotten, yes. Just like coffee.

I suppose we are all different, and to me, coffee smells nothing like skunk. However, I assure you that there is an enormous difference between smelling a skunk from afar and smelling one that has sprayed you, your dog, and the inside of your home.

[bwt1213]

I suppose we are all different, and to me, coffee smells nothing like skunk. However, I assure you that there is an enormous difference between smelling a skunk from afar and smelling one that has sprayed you, your dog, and the inside of your home.

I've never been sprayed by a skunk, because it has been described to me precisely as you have. So my experiences have been only with road kill and by walking by a place a skunk has sprayed -- diluted by time or distance. Whatever combination of genes I have, the smell of a skunk in those circumstances is precisely the same as the smell of coffee. I really could not tell one from the other. And I have been challenged on that, and I really can't.

I find it interesting that as much as our languages enable communication, there are things that are literally indescribable. How do I describe the smell of a skunk so everyone will know exactly how a skunk smells? How about the taste of a blueberry, the taste of a fine Merlot, the smell of apple wood/oak/maple/pine on a campfire, the color of a sunset? There are no such words because we all experience those things differently. We live very different lives, language be damned. I really don't know how anyone else experiences this world. From biology, I expect there are a lot of commonalities. But then we run up against coffee/skunk and cilantro/soap and color blindness and thousands of other things.

Dismiss the senses. What we have in common is humanity.

[floppers]

" Let me tell you: that smell will get into your mouth, nose, and every pore of your being, including your soul. "

INCLUDING YOUR SOUL... bwt, gave me the best laugh all week! (Littlemarph, my soul is probably 80 something % coffee,...coffee is good, it make it look like I'm paying attention...)

Bwt, I do enjoy our common humanity, but don't be so quick to dismiss the senses...that's how accidents happen. And oh dear! that has made me go down the path of those offspring of mine...the two born last century tell the two born this century that they were "accidents", but really offspring 3 was aspirational, and 4 a happy surprise. My youngest nephew was the result of an accident (my sister tried to catch my (driverless) Leyland Marina at the bottom of the driveway (handbrake failed, she had driven it for hours in 2nd (it was an automatic), and the transmission failed too), it was the eighties and she was wearing white court shoes and acid wash jeans, she has an almost absent adrenaline response so nothing "slows down" for her in an emergency situation, which means she is ten different buckets of clumsy. Anyways, her car catching was spectacularly unsuccessful, and she ended up a lil bit under the Leyland...a possum breached the transformer and a power line at that moment and we sat by the light of a hurricane lamp picking gravel out of her ankle. So, anyway, years later she had to have that ankle reconstructed, the anti inflammatories suppressed her contraception, and we got Nicholas!)

[2cute]

Ummm, yep, other people in other countries DO see the same thing, sometimes. The internet knows your location, through your IP address (weirdly, mine thinks I live suburbs away...) The ads that you get are based on a few things, like what you have been "googling" in looking up in another search engine, and if..for example on facebook or some other platform, they have your birth date (like the real one) and gender, ads are targeted by what the algorithm assumes is your problem. I also only turn the "location" thingy to "ON" on my phone, if I really don't know where I am going.

The best way of solving any problems you have (because we all LOVED the cartoon man with the fatty liver...not), is to A. have a google account, and tell google that you don't want to see the ad anymore, and B. let admin (here) know if it is somehow offensive...take care to look up dating sites/porn on an "incognito" tab, and if you don't ever do that, but are getting ads for dating, performance enhancers, etc....the best case scenario is that the algorithm is picking that might be an issue for you...or worst case..someone in your household is looking those things up...(ewww, particularly if you have teenagers, are a sugar daddy/mommy, etc...that leads to some interesting conversations...) Ahhh...I forgot the toe fungus ad, THAT WAS DELIGHTFUL...

Anyways...BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU..which matters not, if you've nothing to hide!!

And, I nearly forgot, but I think if you get PREMIUM membership, maybe you don't get ads? Admin might be able to confirm?

Thanks floppers.

How do they know my birthday (the real one)? I never put it anywhere online? I also don't Facebook (I don't feel the need to share everything about myself to strangers or have my online interaction tracked).

I also clear my cookies frequently, sometimes between sites and especially after I make an online payment to my credit account. Isn't that why sites are encrypted, so that info can't be collected & used against me? I also use a firewall so everything on my computer isn't up for grabs to whomever is interested. Plus I also use anti-viral, anti-phising (anti-anything out to get me) software company (Norton).

So in my case they're just guessing @ things that may interest me based on my location. Or maybe what people purchase in my neighborhood that say don't take such precautions. I do get a lot of ads for clothing & for some reason it always works out to be from Hong Kong & like I've said before, nope won't purchase from them. I must admit, I haven't seen the one for the fatty liver ... eww... that's sounds gross. I almost always get the one for the Charger as I have considered buying one, its the only 4 door sports car. I like exotic cars, too bad they don't send me ads for Ferrari's, Venom's & Lamborghini's - ooo ... those I would click!

[bwt1213]

You can get rid of almost all the need for anti-viral and spyware stuff by running Linux instead of Windows. Linux works like Unix -- you have to actually allow a program to run or it won't run. About the only danger you have is with someone guessing the admin password. A surprising number of people have either no password, or one like "guest" or "secret", and that defeats the whole purpose. But if you have a 16 character password with mixed numbers and letters that you can remember, no one is going to hack that. How to make such a password? The first place you lived as a child, what was the street name? Then the second place. Then the third. In some order that makes sense to you, include the house number or the last four digits from the phone number and the title of your favorite song, all run together. If you can't remember the address, use the name of the town. So, mine might be "17thElliottWindemere4557/739/5052PreludeInC-SharpMinor". It's not, of course. But no one will guess that. Ever. It's 55 characters long. But something like that is something you can remember. Just a hint: pick something you can type without making a mistake over and over. And Linux is free. You can even dual-boot your computer so you can run Windows if you want and Linux if you want (if you want to make a payment or do something else dangerous).

[floppers]

Failing that...bwt...google aspirational stuff (for example Lambos, etc, nice watches, holidays to exotic places), and see if that changes things? Could be fun?

[2cute]

You can get rid of almost all the need for anti-viral and spyware stuff by running Linux instead of Windows. Linux works like Unix -- you have to actually allow a program to run or it won't run. About the only danger you have is with someone guessing the admin password. A surprising number of people have either no password, or one like "guest" or "secret", and that defeats the whole purpose. But if you have a 16 character password with mixed numbers and letters that you can remember, no one is going to hack that. How to make such a password? The first place you lived as a child, what was the street name? Then the second place. Then the third. In some order that makes sense to you, include the house number or the last four digits from the phone number and the title of your favorite song, all run together. If you can't remember the address, use the name of the town. So, mine might be "17thElliottWindemere4557/739/5052PreludeInC-SharpMinor". It's not, of course. But no one will guess that. Ever. It's 55 characters long. But something like that is something you can remember. Just a hint: pick something you can type without making a mistake over and over. And Linux is free. You can even dual-boot your computer so you can run Windows if you want and Linux if you want (if you want to make a payment or do something else dangerous).

That's an interesting way to make passwords. I guess that is if you never change it. I worked @ a job that changed the password every 45 days, so your method would be tough to follow. I did had a system though. I used flower names. There's thousands of flowers, I like flowers, they are pretty. The number part varied, maybe it was the day of the week I created it, or how many petals that flower had or whatever. Then I'd remember it for 45 days. I couldn't use the very same password for over a year afterward either, each time it had to be a fresh new one.

I really don't know much about the Linux operating system in order to switch over to it. Is it compatible w/Windows or Mac? You say I could switch back & forth @ will. How would I do that?

[bwt1213]

I use Open Office software, which runs on Windows and on Linux. The Firefox browser runs on both, too. I've played this game using Firefox and Linux. As far as compatibility is concerned, I'm not sure how much Mac software would run on Linux, but the newer (last 5 years, anyway) Mac operating systems have all been Unix. So, if you're running on a Mac already there's no reason to install Linux that I know of. That's why Macs are pretty invulnerable to viruses.

If you have an older Windows computer you're not using and wouldn't mind playing with it a little to try out Linux, there are tutorials on the net and descriptions of all the kinds of Linux available. I used to run Ubuntu Linux on an old desktop that is now defunct and has been recycled. And I have my old laptop, which I am thinking of turning into either a dual-boot or a Linux-only machine. Dual-boot machines give you a choice when starting up: do you want to run Windows or Linus. And you choose which.

[2cute]

I use Open Office software, which runs on Windows and on Linux. The Firefox browser runs on both, too. I've played this game using Firefox and Linux. As far as compatibility is concerned, I'm not sure how much Mac software would run on Linux, but the newer (last 5 years, anyway) Mac operating systems have all been Unix. So, if you're running on a Mac already there's no reason to install Linux that I know of. That's why Macs are pretty invulnerable to viruses.

If you have an older Windows computer you're not using and wouldn't mind playing with it a little to try out Linux, there are tutorials on the net and descriptions of all the kinds of Linux available. I used to run Ubuntu Linux on an old desktop that is now defunct and has been recycled. And I have my old laptop, which I am thinking of turning into either a dual-boot or a Linux-only machine. Dual-boot machines give you a choice when starting up: do you want to run Windows or Linus. And you choose which.

Unfortunately I do not, I've only had Macs, I used to use PCs @ work as that was their preference. So I know both operating systems. My computer hard drive is (I can't believe the time has flown by so quickly) 7 years old & my software is about 3, yeah yeah, I need to upgrade, been needing to for a while. As soon as go through all the files on my computer I'll be doing that. Anyhow it is possible to get a virus on a Mac if you download bad software, luckily its much easier to get rid of too (just delete the bad program). I don't feel comfortable w/o a firewall so I have Norton, just like any kind of insurance, it just makes me feel better to KNOW my computer is protected.