» Strict Parents

Hair gel
My mum wouldn't let me have any hair products at all whilst I was a kid in the 80s. Her reason: my hair would fall out.

However, genetically, I had three bald grandparents so the odds on keeping my hair wasn't good.

It had virtually GONE by 22.

We joke about it now but I could have been cool, I could.
(Tue 13th Mar 2007, 16:03, More)

» Lies Your Parents Told You

I wouldn't normally say my parents lied to me but...
...thinking about it, in the mid 80s when hair gel and spikey haircuts were all the rage, I really wanted to fit in. Of course, my mom being a bit 'right-on' would cut my hair so I had little chance of ever being popular at the age of 10.

After pleading and pleading and pleading for some hair gel, I was told that it would make my hair fall out and if I wanted to keep it, I shouldn't have any. So I never did.

If you've ever met me, you'll see that at the age of 26, I'm almost completely bald, having lost most of it by the age of 23.
(Sun 18th Jan 2004, 15:43, More)

» Inventions You're Too Lazy To Make

When I've a really nasty cold
and my nose keeps running, I like to stick toilet paper up there to absorb the snot. But it's not really very absorbent and actually, quite irritating.

However something that is absorbent and comfortable that removes the need to continuously blow would be useful.

Bit like a Tampax for noses.
(Wed 7th Apr 2004, 23:55, More)

» Lies Your Parents Told You

Story from a teacher I had about ten years ago now...
This teacher and his wife are a bit 'right-on'. When they had their first kid, they didn't want to feed him sweets and chocolate so they basically kept him away from the stuff. However, it didn't stop them feeding their faces every now and then.

When driving somewhere a distance away, if they had a chocolate bar themselves, they'd scoff it and pass the wrappers to the back of the car for the kid to play with. He didn't know there once was chocolate inside of 'em and thought his parents were just playing with bits of plastic.
(Fri 16th Jan 2004, 0:06, More)

» The Onosecond

Unsubtle watermarks ahoy!
Not me, but a lad I worked with were trying out our new accounts production software - we were both juniors, so never got formal training on it. The system had just gone to Windows (in early 1999!) and we were marvelling at the watermarks that we could adorn our clients' accounts with. My mate had created many watermarks including the words "cunt", "cuntalicious", various abuses of the partners of the firm and his own name in various forms.

Knowing that any changes made to the system propegated through to all users on the network, I became concerned about the lack of a delete button, and indeed, all twelve new watermarks were stuck in the system… not just on that PC, but on all of them around the building!!!

To make matters worse, they were selected alphabetically by default and since "cunt" comes before "draft", it wouldn't have been long before somebody else saw one.

Mate looked like he was going to poo himself, but a quick chat to a friendly manager (who thought it hilarious) and a call to support, and we were helped with editing a few files to replace them all with spaces (put down later to an installation error).

In the next maintenance release, a 'delete' button was added to that window. :o)
(Thu 26th May 2005, 20:02, More)