helen-louise's journal

My mother is nuts. She sent me a text message telling me to check the plant pots for "hungry creatures". And it was 20:14, and dark outside, so I had to take a torch to do so.

Context: my mum does not have a garden of her own and lives 10 minutes away. We do have a garden but aren't desperately interested in gardening. So she grows stuff in our garden for us. It is a compromise which would suit everyone except that she insists on growing plants which snails like to eat. Having been a gardener for decades, my mum thinks that snails are ravenous monsters who must be squashed like bugs. Richard and I are woolly hippies who object to killing things, and rather like snails.

Currently, we are checking the plant pots in the front garden (neat, pretty flowers). If a snail is found, we carry it through the house to the wild back garden, which contains a buddleia triffid (snails can eat what they want). However, there is a certain amount of hassle involved in this and I would like to prevent the snails from getting to the plants in the first place. Prevention is better than cure.

My plan is to shield the plants that we care about with copper and then have some sacrificial plants for the snails to eat. Apparently snails can't/won't cross copper, so I wanted to find out why. ( SCIENCE! )

[Bad username or site: hoopycat>, number 389 of a long series: @ livejournal.com]HoopyCat's comment about this idea: #soc.bi science fair!

Random other HoopyCat gems from today:
<HoopyCat> being-the-middleman guideline #3: when relaying messages between two people who are geeking out on a topic that's well outside your normal geeking range, put them in direct contact; it will probably result in something cool.

<astra> in our sainsbury's, next to the vegan bouillon, they have CANS of SNAILS
<HoopyCat> canned snail! they keep that next to the potted meat food product here.
<astra> and i always thought it was a special variety of snail that was eaten, but these ones look JUST LIKE the ones in our garden :(
<HoopyCat> i wish to believe that a lot of these items were originally made into canned goods while our world in the depths of the cold war
<HoopyCat> in your fallout shelter, keep canned snails and potted meat on the visible shelves... when your neighbors come over for the tour, they see your canned goods consist of utterly unappealing crap and then decide to build their own fallout shelter
<astra> i like snails
<HoopyCat> 'course, in the event of REAL emergency, you have shelves of good stuff behind a fake wall

*lol*

( And the context of the title. )

irc transcript from #soc.bi, a few minutes ago:
<Beetlebau> IA! IA! CTHULHU CITRUS FHTAGN!
<astra> ?!
* Beetlebau found out about Buddha's Hand.
<Beetlebau> A type of citrus fruit that looks like a cross between a lemon and Cthulhu.
<astra> does this exist in reality?
<Beetlebau> Well, yeah!
<fluffymormegil> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha%27s_hand
<fluffymormegil> freaky!
<Beetlebau> We found some at Jungle Jim's Sunday. Kind of regret not buying one.
<astra> that really DOES look like Cthulhu!

OK, so an acquaintance of mine from irc is looking for a special edition of the US version of PC Gamer magazine. While my local Borders stocks the US import of the regular PC Gamer (with & without cover disc), we're not sure whether it'll have the special edition. So he's looking for someone in the US to go & buy two copies of the magazine & put them in the post to the UK, as soon as possible. He will send you the cost of the magazine & postage by PayPal as well as a bit more for your time & effort. Anyone interested?

Supposedly, the cover date of the magazine is next week, September 25th, but some US Guild Wars players have reported that the magazine is out where they live already.

A friend from irc has named a calf after me.

Richard's immediate reaction was "Left or right calf?". My immediate reaction was to check that she did mean a baby cow, and not a whale. (Said friend lives in the middle of Australia with an enormous menagerie, and while I think whales would be unusual in her area, she has enough strange animals that I wouldn't be surprised!).

Anyway, yes, she is a small bovine creature with big brown eyes. Apparently she's named after me because we have the same tenacity. I think this is a compliment ;)

From #soc.bi at 20:00, participants being marnanel (marnanel), mountain_ash (rowan_leigh) and me.

astra:        argh! someone on another channel just said something about laudnry, and i got reminded what i was supposed to be doing!
astra:        argh!
marnanel:     eep!
mountain_ash: that, er, reminds me. i was going to put a load on.
marnanel:     I should maybe say "Laundry!" "Washing up!" "Sex!" "Cleaning the oven!" every so often, just in case it would remind people
mountain_ash: That would be a useful service. :)
marnanel:     Sex!
mountain_ash: That had completely slipped my mind.
astra:        heh. you could set up a bot to do so
* astra also giggles at the thought of mountain_ash _ever_ forgetting about sex :)

also, from just now (20:33):
marnanel: did you post it?
astra:    not yet
astra:    eating apple
marnanel: okay :)
marnanel: steve jobs is tasty
astra:    lol!

I was recently the victim of an elaborate hoax. Some of you have read some of this already, but this is the full story.

The story:
A couple of months ago, I started going to a couple of new Sims 2 irc channels, where I met a woman who went by the net handle of Jorenne or Jojo. A few days after I joined the channel, Jorenne said that she was pregnant and showed us some blurry ultrasound pictures. She was very excited about the pregnancy - to the point I asked if this would be her first baby. She said this was her third pregnancy, but neither of the previous babies were still alive. She told us about her husband C, in the Army, and her ex-husband B, and his strange demands.

On Sunday or Monday of this week, Jo told us that C had been posted overseas to Kosovo. She was really worried how she'd cope with him away whilst pregnant. Then on Thursday night, she apparently went into premature labour and was rushed to the hospital. Her sister Julie logged on to the server to tell us what was going on, and F, a trainee midwife, told us what might happen. Everyone was quite scared and upset. On Friday morning, the baby Casey was born - at 26 weeks gestation, and a mass of 880g. He was in the neonatal intensive care unit, possibly unlikely to make it, and Jo herself would need to be kept in hospital until Monday or Tuesday.

The truth:
There was no pregnancy and no baby. There are almost certainly no two pre-existing lost children. We don't know if there's a husband or an ex-husband, or even the age of the woman concerned. We're pretty sure she is female and does live, or has lived in, Aldershot in Hampshire. And we know she plays Sims 2.

( The warning signs I chose to ignore, why I chose to help, what I did... )

( Proof of the lies and how I feel about it now. )

I've left this as a public entry with comments enabled because it is a cautionary tale. Yes, you may link to it. Yes, you may comment on it. But if I get abusive comment spam, I'll turn it off.

HoopyCat is hoopycat, astra is me, baratron. Log from #soc.bi this evening.

HoopyCat: i actually found a useful and efficient bus run in rochester
HoopyCat: the bus leaves the office park at 3:10pm and arrives at my boss's boss's house at 3:28pm
HoopyCat: that's the ONLY time i've EVER seen a feasible bus run in rochester. of course, for some odd reason, it cost $2.50.
HoopyCat: ah! it's because it changes routes. from, uhh, route 92 to, uhh, route 92. so, err, it's a transfer.

* HoopyCat opens envelope full of credit card checks from credit card company
HoopyCat: something tells me they didn't get my letter saying "pleasing to cancel my account, kthx"
* HoopyCat makes checks payable to cross-cut shredder, po box 0, undermydesk ny ( And there's more... )