Gosh, what did Naboka say?!?

[BoredInTheCar]

So in the list of recent posts that appears to the left of my playing board, as well as in the top-level forum page, I'm seeing that Naboka started a thread called "the ethics of digital assistance." That piqued my curiosity because it is interesting to think about what constitutes cheating. Obviously, someone who uses a boggle-solver is cheating. And someone who plays every board and keeps every score is not. But there are other strategies that I think most of us are comfortable with that a purist might object to (only playing promising boards, and quitting before the score is recorded if one is doing badly). At any rate, it is kind of a fun topic to think about, at least for me.

But when I try to click on the thread, I get a message that says, "sorry, you are not authorized to view this page." Everything else is working fine, so I'm guessing that Naboka innocently put something into the post (a link to a solving site, maybe?) that is not allowed by the administrators.

I would love to know what's going on, and if the message can be reformulated to eliminate any disallowed links, I hope it will be posted again.

[Naboka]

So in the list of recent posts that appears to the left of my playing board, as well as in the top-level forum page, I'm seeing that Naboka started a thread called "the ethics of digital assistance." That piqued my curiosity because it is interesting to think about what constitutes cheating. Obviously, someone who uses a boggle-solver is cheating. And someone who plays every board and keeps every score is not. But there are other strategies that I think most of us are comfortable with that a purist might object to (only playing promising boards, and quitting before the score is recorded if one is doing badly). At any rate, it is kind of a fun topic to think about, at least for me.

But when I try to click on the thread, I get a message that says, "sorry, you are not authorized to view this page." Everything else is working fine, so I'm guessing that Naboka innocently put something into the post (a link to a solving site, maybe?) that is not allowed by the administrators.

I would love to know what's going on, and if the message can be reformulated to eliminate any disallowed links, I hope it will be posted again.

I made the mistake of making a mistake about the player's name who was running a program so I went back to correct it.

Unfortunately, a lot of times when you edit a post it gets thrown into the ???????? needs to be reviewed by admin category.

I cheat like crazy. About 2/3 s of my games get trashed in less than a minute. Mostly, I don't spend a lot of time looking at the actual board, so I'm playing memorized words in me skull. Probably another cheat.

And because letters don't always align as my memory would prefer, the words getting typed don't actual exist on the board.

A quick glance about 15, 30, 60 seconds in lets me know that I've nosedived and will crash. Or that I'm on the right track.

The glances also refresh and suggest new word elements to piece together.

And, after a while, a majortiy of the high scoring combos become automatic.

The post should be available now.

[BoredInTheCar]

Thanks for the explanation, Naboka. I responded in your thread, although my post has been flagged as possible spam and I got a message that it won't be posted until it is approved by a moderator.

I wouldn't characterize any of what you described in your post above as cheating. It's just a playing style.

[Naboka]

[QUOTE=BoredInTheCar;n33155]Thanks for the explanation, Naboka. I responded in your thread, although my post has been flagged as possible spam and I got a message that it won't be posted until it is approved by a moderator.

I wouldn't characterize any of what you described in your post above as cheating. It's just a playing style.[/QUOTE

Never saw your response, so now: what did BoredinTheCar say?

As always, while working at something else (garage/basement decluttering) my mind runs a hundred miles an hour pondering a concept that's snagged my attention.

This might get complex, but if you're bored, in the car, with nothing else to do...

The subject of cheating is fascinating. Humans are social creatures and create rules to structure our interactions. It's like building a house. But instead of 2x4's we use agreement and trust.

And not all "cheating" is bad. A lot of social advancement came from breaking the rules.

Our brains are designed to solve problems. What problems? Usually concerning matters of survival and attainment. When you have shelter and food, you start looking to attain other stuff. Like a new car. Or a girlfriend.

Part of the social contract involves how others regard us. And how we treat others. We all like to be appreciated. And, barring mental irregularities, we like to appreicate others.

We assign value to others, and they assign value to us.

When the value is earned, all is good.

But, when the hunter Gregor goes out and kills game, letting Megor take it back to the tribe, credit can become an issue. When Megor comes carrying the game over his shoulder and sees how much appreciation others are giving him, he might be a bit reluctant to credit Gregor. After all, Gregor isn't there, so...Megor takes credit for the kill. The tribe cheers his tales of adventure. He loves it. And then heads back out to pick up the next game offering Gregor has produced.

VALUE ATTAINMENT lies at the heart of most human goals. How to solve the problem of attaining a specific value. How to find the gold. Or how to gain the admiration and high regard of others. Being admired by others seems to have far more value than gold. (And gold's just an invented value anyway.)

When Megor works really hard to actually attain the hunting skills of Gregor, he might find himself inadequate. His self esteem plummets.

Yet, he craves the admiration. So, he continues his scam.

Morals boil down to regard for others. And trust. The more moral a person is, the more they include the well being and feelings of others in their decision making.

And the more you can trust them.

We all fall somewhere on the scale of narcissism. Having a high regard for self is crucial to well being. Having only regard for others and no regard for self at all is self destructive and as problematic as malignant narcissism. There's got to be that balance of regard for self and others. Preferably high regard for both.

Research tends to find disregard for others being elementary to cheating.

A fairly common condition is when a person has extremely low self-esteem, but an exaggerated sense of self importance. That hellish state of knowing you aren't good enough, but desperate to show the world that you're the best. Being good enough isn't good enough. Compensating for low self esteem demands drastic solutions. Like being better than everyone else. And not just better, but way, way, way, way better. Over compensation on steroids.

Crazy? Yep. But, irrational minds aren't prone to rational problem solving. At least not rational as regards the rights and well being of others.

Sports are filled with cheaters. Athletes taking steroids and looking for any competetive advantage. Or colleges paying players under the table to join their teams. The goal is to win. Integrity and honesty have zero meaning. Win at any cost. The rules are for suckers. And everyone's cheating, so why not us? Like Lance Armstrong competing against other top riders, all of them cheating. Or Barry Bonds suddenly becoming a monster and claiming he's not taking steroids. Yeah, right. But then again, so were the other top home run hitters at that time.

But, our trust suffers. And their accomplishments become less admirable because they cheated.

Can we trust any outcome at all any more?

Just what's cheating can become murky. A lot of what I do in Wordtwist violates the spirit of the game. But subsets and subcultures exist here where certain things are allowable. We vie for highest average points, but it's not really honest because a lot of games have to be dumped to attain this. Sure, it's the culture, with tacit "rules," but it's all manipulated.

On the other hand, manipulation gets a bad rap. Our lives are successful to the degree that we manipulate elements in our life. We make decisions and choices, about what to include, what to exclude. I suppose honest manipulation is good and dishonest manipulation is not.

(Getting bored yet?)

That woman in the art class (Helen, we'll say) really considered herself an excellent artist. She was almost desperate that we believed she was creating those portraits and landscapes without digital assistance. She'd get a little pissy and upset about it. And, oddly, she really seemed to believe it. She really wanted to believe that her paintings and drawings had absolutely nothing to do with using an app and 100% to do with her talent. But, when the desperate start lying to themselves, they certainly want to believe those lies. Undoubtedly, a lot of individuals using digital assistance come to believe they, not the computer, are getting the result.

Mergor came to believe that he was the one killing the game. Even if the tribe would have starved had they been dependent on him. Though, for a while that tribe carried him aloft.

When a person discovers they lack the ability to garner the admiration and esteem they can't earn from accomplishment, they'll gladly grasp any twig in the flood. And when the twig proves to be a yacht, they'll climb on board and start claiming it as their own. Helen found a way to produce the pictures she desperately wanted to produce, but lacked the talent to accomplish without assistance.

Which is fine. As long as she doesn't try to deceive the rest of us. If she's producing such magnificent stuff and we aren't... Especially if she's taking wall space in contests that prohibit using digital assistance. It's important to trust the results we and others produce. Those results are a social reference--a measure of expectations and agreements.

Still, we all have different abilities, and linking our self-worth to how well we perform in some irrelevant arena is a bit silly and self destructive. Who really cares how well any of us do in Wordtwist. Just go out and tell anyone in you real life your best score. Doesn't matter if you scored 2,000 points in 4x4 or 3,000 in 5x5, anyone not playing this game will just try to be polite and hope the conversation moves to something relevant.

There's so much in life that's just sooooooo much more important than anything here. It's just a game. And having a goal to be admired for playing a game that doesn't earn money or the admiration of cheerleaders, probably shouldn't be the dominant focus of one's life.

For me, it's just a mental exercise. Like doing pull ups and bench presses at the gym. A simple solution to staving off the ravages of aging. So, I'm attaining the goals my brain is trying to solve. Regardless of whatever abilities, nonsense, scams anyone else is ushering to their pew.

At the end of the day, the hotdogs will be yummy; the campfire will be welcome, and the stars will shine in a gloriously mysterious sky.

[floppers]

At the end of the day, the hotdogs will be yummy; the campfire will be welcome, and the stars will shine in a gloriously mysterious sky. [/QUOTE]

Naboka writes like a song, I love to follow the meandering of beautiful prose.

And occasionally, we all need or want to find the little bow at the end, that ties it off perfectly. This was achieved with this closing line....

[BoredInTheCar]

Never saw your response, so now: what did BoredinTheCar say?

It is still showing as "unapproved" so I am going to try posting it here and see if I have any better luck. If no post appears after this one, you'll know it got blocked again.

I agree with you that cheating is a fascinating topic. Have you read about the Harvard professor who has been caught falsifying data - ironically, her research area was why people cheat!

[BoredInTheCar]

This is my unapproved post in your thread, Naboka:

People have been debating the ethics of using technological aids for longer than you might think. The painter/illustrator Norman Rockwell started using photos instead of live models when photography became cheaper and more accessible. He defends the practice in his autobiography, but admits some people thought it was cheating.

I'm glad I'm not in a position where I need to make judgments on term papers, fiction-writing assignments, and the like. I honestly don't know where appropriate use leaves off and plagiarism/cheating begins.

As for Wordtwist, back when I played as JakartaJane I used technology much more intensively to boost my scores - similar to what erakis17 describes, but also zeroing in on particular boards which I would review off line, then search for and play. This was probably close to 10 years ago - even if I wanted to adopt that method again (which I wouldn't, it was too incredibly tedious) I think there are now too many boards active at the same time to make that practical.

I don't think entering previously-played boards into a boggle solver and studying the resulting word lists counts as cheating. But what I did (though I never used a solver, I just studied boards at my leisure) was definitely pushing it.

[Naboka]

At the end of the day, the hotdogs will be yummy; the campfire will be welcome, and the stars will shine in a gloriously mysterious sky.

Naboka writes like a song, I love to follow the meandering of beautiful prose.

And occasionally, we all need or want to find the little bow at the end, that ties it off perfectly. This was achieved with this closing line....

[/QUOTE]

Why thank you, floppers.

Sure do miss your posts. You would have no way of knowing that without you, I might have quickly bored of this site and moved on to something else. But, I wanted to see what you and a couple of others had to say.

Then got hooked on the prospect of Wordtwist as a promising mental exercise. Just got back from a 22 mile bike ride (whatever the k's are for that). Just prudent to keep things active.

Certainly hope the clan is doing well.

[floppers]

It's nearly 35.5km, which is lovely! I was just back from walking Mud and Moose (only 10k, but Mud is 14 now, so we cut him some slack....luckily there is the creek, so he swims three kilometres, good for the joints). The clan is clanning....offspring 2 made a person of her own, which is fun that is funny. Offspring 2 now doesn't not argue with me when I sign off a telephone call with, "I love you more", because she knows what I mean! Offspring ! was somewhat inspired for a lil while, but is having a third birthday party for his pup Mango instead (with party games, at the dog beach).

3 is a nurse now, BUT STILL DOES NOT HAVE HER DRIVERS LICENCE....grrrr....it's not even for environmental reasons...

4 is a dental nurse, still with her lovely labrador of a boyfriend, and enjoying trying to train Chewbacca (a Maremma, see the movie Oddball for reference...true to breed, when we go to the dog beach, party or no, he is more interested in guarding small children making sandcastles that playing ball with Mud, Moose, Mango, Guiseppe, and Obi Wan Kenobi).

I had a lovely chat with a four year old at work recently. He told me that, "the dinosaurs were coming back in a month", so I commenced explaining about dinosaurs, asteroids and extinction, the closest living relatives still around etc...turns out that a presenter from the museum had contracted covid...and the Dinosaur Experience Incursion...has been delayed for a month.

At the weekly clan meetings at my parents we have been having a few rounds of trivia (non competitive), and it's very interesting to see where each generation can "shine". Mother smashes the old movies (it's amazing how often the answer is Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart or Dr. Zhivago), British royal and math questions, Dad; geography, science, 1"; science, math, popular culture, sport, 2 celebrity, Australian rules football, basketball, 3; music of all eras and genres except classical (although she gets some classical, if it has been sampled in a contemporary tune), afl, basketball, physiology, medicine, and 4; sports, popular culture, music and animals. The various plus ones have knowledge close to their partners. We (parentals and over 50's) are often surprised at what the kiddlywinks don't know. I know that you can always Google what you don't know, but I wonder sometimes if we are losing the ability to make educated guesses, and how to deduce an answer (maybe by knowing "root" words, rote learning times tables, applying logic...or even understanding that if it's a multiple choice, the odds of the answer being "b."!).

I have a mouse, again...I am off to humanely correct the problem...catching and relocating the meece last time, was taxing, and about as fruitful as trying to teach snails to fly (I have so far been spectacularly unsuccessful in that endeavour). This time I am seeking the assistance of Tuppaware, I hoping that the mouse finds Tuppaware as difficult to open as four year olds do! For some reason, I keep visualising myself in armour, with a shield and sword...maybe because I feel like I'm off on a crusade....it's the little things...

[Naboka]

This is my unapproved post in your thread, Naboka:

People have been debating the ethics of using technological aids for longer than you might think. The painter/illustrator Norman Rockwell started using photos instead of live models when photography became cheaper and more accessible. He defends the practice in his autobiography, but admits some people thought it was cheating.

I'm glad I'm not in a position where I need to make judgments on term papers, fiction-writing assignments, and the like. I honestly don't know where appropriate use leaves off and plagiarism/cheating begins.

As for Wordtwist, back when I played as JakartaJane I used technology much more intensively to boost my scores - similar to what erakis17 describes, but also zeroing in on particular boards which I would review off line, then search for and play. This was probably close to 10 years ago - even if I wanted to adopt that method again (which I wouldn't, it was too incredibly tedious) I think there are now too many boards active at the same time to make that practical.

I don't think entering previously-played boards into a boggle solver and studying the resulting word lists counts as cheating. But what I did (though I never used a solver, I just studied boards at my leisure) was definitely pushing it.

Thanks for the repost.

If I had something to drink when I read your sentence about the Harvard professor, the contents would have been out of my mouth and all over the screen and keyboard.

A nearly religious fanaticism exists in some people concerning right and wrong. Most of us buy into the concept of fairness and appropriate behavior. But those concepts muddy as soon as your feet hit that stream.

I have a couple of Rockwell books. His Post illustrations were minor thrills growing up, like a short story all in a single image. My uncle knew him--and Disney, and Benton and O'keefe and most of the talent back then. The photography angle was mostly an issue with pedants and critics.

Have you seen Leyendecker's work? Love, love, love his stuff. He would have climaxed at the thought of painting Joe Burrows. His illustrations of football players show why.

If I had your and erakis17's knowledge, I'd probably do the same. I've spend hours examing video of games played by Megaword. Don't think I ever ran across any of those games to play, so... maybe a waste of time. But, I wanted to grasp his mental approach.

(Guess I'm going to have to research Boggle solvers. So much crap I don't know. Maybe it'll improve what I do. But, at this point, I'm convinced I've reached systemic limits, so, it'd probably be a waste of time. I'm close to my limits and inclined to find another activity. Another few points won't make a difference, nor will trophies or records or anything else.)

Mentally internalizing how things function has always helped me learn. To try to become the thing you're trying to understand. (probably would save a lot of marriages.) When I took a stage lighting course, I was up against professionals who really knew their stuff. Not me. It was a mystery. So, I sat for a long while trying to imagine being a light bulb, how it worked, what it did, how it felt. The degrees of energy required, the types of materials involved. Come test time: it was no contest.

Your term paper comment made me chuckle. I procrastinate on everything possible. College was for playing around. Term papers? Those were for the night before due date. I'd have all the information I wanted to address, but often lacked something, some quote to bridge a gap. So, I'd just make up my own in the style of various authors I'd read on the subject. Worked out great. No computers in the 70's to check all that stuff.

Though, I probably was caught once by the department head who was the prof. When he handed me my paper, he looked at me intently, as if trying to decide something, shook his head and told me I should be a writer. I'm pretty sure he knew, but had concluded the cheat counterintuitively favored me. I mean, how do you punish someone who really hasn't plagerized, but rather improved on the original author's intent? Of course, there was the dishonest attribution, but it was like giving credit for your work to someone else rather than taking credit for another's work. I'll leave the ethics of that to others. I got my A and lots of time to goof off. So I'm good with dishonesty.

Sometimes it's hard to compare apples to apples much less to oranges. Think Martha Stewart said there were enough cultivars of apples to eat a different one every day for 20 years.

Bottom line, people are mostly a mess. Even the best. And I'm far from that top group. Living can be tough. Feeling good about oneself can be challenging. All of us are lying and pretending about ourselves to various degrees. Even the most honest of us. It's not a big deal, and it's probably part of our genetic blueprints. It certainly makes it possible to suspend disbelief and watch movies.

That someone's cheating, I really could care less. I've come to terms with that epidemic on the internet. It's an epidemic that makes COVID 19 seem insignificant.

The silver lining with Wordtwist is that games get recycled. Someone cheats their way to a 700 plus score and the game just goes back into play. Other than losing a record, what does it matter. People are legitimately besting records every minute here. It's nothing important. So, if someone feels better about themself stealing scores, it's not going to raise my blood pressure. Life's tough enough.

And if a person feels that poorly about themselves that they have to pretend to be what they aren't, let them have the illusion. We don't have to believe they're the King of Spain no matter how much they pretend. And if the pretense keeps them from slitting their wrists, well, that's for the better.

But, despite any altruism involved, it's prudent to recognize that the Brooklyn Bridge they're trying to sell is just a scam. If they want to sacrifise legitimacy for pretense, oh well. It won't change the softness of my Charmin one bit.

[bwt1213]

It is still showing as "unapproved" so I am going to try posting it here and see if I have any better luck. If no post appears after this one, you'll know it got blocked again.

I agree with you that cheating is a fascinating topic. Have you read about the Harvard professor who has been caught falsifying data - ironically, her research area was why people cheat!

I remember telling one of my stats classes how a professor/cheater was caught (this was in a medical research field, but it tells you how smart cheaters really are). Sample size: 27. Percent cured: 90.4. Sample size: 13: Percent cured: 96.3. Sample size 43: Percent cured: 91.3. Distinct problem was that you are either cured or you are not, and none of the claimed cure percentages give anything near a whole number of cured patients. When that was discovered (it took YEARS), all of his previous results were reviewed and nearly all of them showed the same pattern. Detecting the cheat took only elementary math, and the fallout was extensive. All his claimed results were totally bogus and he created a whole lot of damage because of them. I guess the next generation of professor/cheaters were thus encouraged to be more careful. Wordtwist is just a game. Really, that's all it is. And we're here for the fun of playing it and the friendship of those who play with us, so it feels like a betrayal to have someone play with artificial help. No, I don't count "dumping games" as artificial help or cheating -- the ones you count are still YOUR games. I've never scored 900 or more, and if I ever do it will be all my game. I don't count reviewing previous games or studying what a machine has achieved as cheating, either. When you play the game, if those are your keystrokes and the words are the ones you typed in, it's not cheating. Period. And it doesn't matter how you got there.

[Naboka]

It's nearly 35.5km, which is lovely! I was just back from walking Mud and Moose (only 10k, but Mud is 14 now, so we cut him some slack....luckily there is the creek, so he swims three kilometres, good for the joints). The clan is clanning....offspring 2 made a person of her own, which is fun that is funny. Offspring 2 now doesn't not argue with me when I sign off a telephone call with, "I love you more", because she knows what I mean! Offspring ! was somewhat inspired for a lil while, but is having a third birthday party for his pup Mango instead (with party games, at the dog beach).

3 is a nurse now, BUT STILL DOES NOT HAVE HER DRIVERS LICENCE....grrrr....it's not even for environmental reasons...

4 is a dental nurse, still with her lovely labrador of a boyfriend, and enjoying trying to train Chewbacca (a Maremma, see the movie Oddball for reference...true to breed, when we go to the dog beach, party or no, he is more interested in guarding small children making sandcastles that playing ball with Mud, Moose, Mango, Guiseppe, and Obi Wan Kenobi).

I had a lovely chat with a four year old at work recently. He told me that, "the dinosaurs were coming back in a month", so I commenced explaining about dinosaurs, asteroids and extinction, the closest living relatives still around etc...turns out that a presenter from the museum had contracted covid...and the Dinosaur Experience Incursion...has been delayed for a month.

At the weekly clan meetings at my parents we have been having a few rounds of trivia (non competitive), and it's very interesting to see where each generation can "shine". Mother smashes the old movies (it's amazing how often the answer is Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart or Dr. Zhivago), British royal and math questions, Dad; geography, science, 1"; science, math, popular culture, sport, 2 celebrity, Australian rules football, basketball, 3; music of all eras and genres except classical (although she gets some classical, if it has been sampled in a contemporary tune), afl, basketball, physiology, medicine, and 4; sports, popular culture, music and animals. The various plus ones have knowledge close to their partners. We (parentals and over 50's) are often surprised at what the kiddlywinks don't know. I know that you can always Google what you don't know, but I wonder sometimes if we are losing the ability to make educated guesses, and how to deduce an answer (maybe by knowing "root" words, rote learning times tables, applying logic...or even understanding that if it's a multiple choice, the odds of the answer being "b."!).

I have a mouse, again...I am off to humanely correct the problem...catching and relocating the meece last time, was taxing, and about as fruitful as trying to teach snails to fly (I have so far been spectacularly unsuccessful in that endeavour). This time I am seeking the assistance of Tuppaware, I hoping that the mouse finds Tuppaware as difficult to open as four year olds do! For some reason, I keep visualising myself in armour, with a shield and sword...maybe because I feel like I'm off on a crusade....it's the little things...

10 k is plenty for walking. I feel for Mud. I've taken to using hiking sticks to reduce knee pressure. Good exercise for the arms and shoulders.

Would love to have our people produce some people. Not sure that will happen. Different mindset with their generation. The daughter feels that having another human being growing inside her is a bit creepy. That combined with a complete distrust for the future of humanity. The son is dating a young woman who just got accepted into her doctorate program for clinical psychology, which is 6 years. Don't see kids in that quarter either.

I used to tell them that I never knew how much I could love someone until we had kids. The wife suggests not saying that anymore so they don't feel guilt. Guilt? Well, sociopaths don't feel guilt, so being able to feel guilt is probably a good thing. Feeling a bit of guilt keeps us honest.

Trivia games. Yikes! They make me feel stupid. I've read that married couples divide the mental load with one partner acting as additonal brain for the other. Seems to work for us.

Is this what Chewbacca looks like?

th-3016773849.jpg

Their having a Marrema would be grounds for dating someone. It would be like being a grandparent. You could go over, have all the fun and loving, then go home without having to buy the food or clean up the poop.

Mice are certainly cute. Being humane has its limits. Mice can burn down your house chewing through electric wires. Happend to a home several blocks over. With cold winters, we get a lot of intrusion--especially sitting on the border of a woodland. The cats we used to have were hunters and would take care of the problem. The current cat isn't bright enough to find a tasty treat we put on a chair out of her sight. We put down the treat and she follows our hand thinking we still have it. We used to hear mice scurrying behind the bathroom walls. When we remodeled we found poop and insullation damage. Guess they use fiberglass for building sandcastles. Mice poop up in the ceiling. So I placed a healthy supply of ratfood poison in the walls and ceiling while closing them up. Haven't heard a skitter since. Makes me feel a bit sad and guilty, but...

Writing posts is more fun than playing the game. Surprised more people don't.

One of the players here had a huge chipmunk problem. That's another super cute critter that can cause a lot of heart ache.

[floppers]

Chewie looks like that, but somehow waaaaay goofier, they are big dogs, so it's lucky that the Labrador (called that because he is still a puppy five years in, is taking a lot of training, is very food motivated, but is turning out to be a lovely man) boyfriend is 6'8".

I don't know that any of the offspring would feel guilt about that (they are not sociopaths though, they feel guilt about other things, which doesn't include replacing the tp, sadly...) and whilst I recognise that they all have their reasons for making people, or not, I've always told them that because it's true! When I made them, I felt like I understood the meaning of life, I suspect it's some kind of inbuilt biological thing in the beginning. Luckily for me, it has been ongoing, and I have decided to keep them all (considering 4 is 21 years old now, I'm pretty sure they know that).

I don't know if I posted it here, but at one stage two mice got their feet stuck to one of those very sticky fly/moth trap things, and 4 spent ages untrapping them, and then relocating them to the local park...I am also banned from trying to teach snails to fly, and have to relocate them too....I wonder if they mice eat them?

Mud is deaf now, so I'm glad I taught him, and the family and the neighbours sign language to go with his commands. Mud is still very clever though, and will purposefully "not look" at anyone who might want him to do something that he doesn't particularly want to. Some of the other regular dog walkers thought that I was deaf, maybe I need to get him a dog coat to identify his deafness, there wouldn't be enough space to identify his stubborness....

Grandparentalling is certainly all care, no responsibility, it's a cracker! When the lil fella needs a change, I give him back...

[2cute]

It is still showing as "unapproved" so I am going to try posting it here and see if I have any better luck. If no post appears after this one, you'll know it got blocked again.

It'll never 'be approved' I think that's so annoying about this site, no editing & don't stick a URL in your message, the horror, no links allowed. You might as well delete it as it'll never be seen & repost changing your words around so it appears differently. Or removing everything except your direct response. And the 'authorization' never appears. You'll never be authorized even if the message was sent directly to you about a topic of which you already discussed.