» Pure Ignorance

If somebody could please inform...
...most of the population of my school (even those studying 20th Century History!) that there are, in fact, 50 states in the U.S.A., and not 52 ("But Alaska and Hawaii were 51 and 52..." bollocks they were), I'd be ever so grateful.

Yes, I know we're not Americans, but there's no excuse for getting something so persistently wrong!

Edit: workboresme, you'd be right. Cheers for the correction. :-)
(Fri 7th Jan 2005, 1:36, More)

» Child Labour

Beware the crooked uncle
Being young, poor, and an insufferable geek I was direly in need of a little money to upgrade my PC. My uncle, who had started up something like his 7th business in two years, wanted me to go posting leaflets around town, and offered to pay £35 for it to me and my elder brother. Okidokie, we say, thinking it can't be too many houses.

Oooh no, he wants every single house in the town done.

Cue a few weeks of us hauling crates of leaflets with us, popping one in every letterbox in the entire town, sometimes for hours at a time, in the blazing summer sun, the only thing keeping us going being the promise of proper money after we'd finished. (I even got bitten by a dog as I posted one - hurt like hell, bled a lot, and got me put on antibiotics for a fortnight. Yeeeeea)

Finally we had finished our Herculean task, and returned the excess leaflets to my uncle. He looked down at the masses of over-printed leaflets, looked back up to us, and said "You've not finished."

Yes, his own completely fucked up calculations were somehow our fault. He'd over-estimated the town population to about ten times larger than it actually was, and docked our pay to a miserable £15 each.
(Mon 20th Feb 2006, 1:06, More)

» Mistaken Identity

To those complaining
Is it really terrifying to read that some b3tans look like people you've never heard of? However do you cope when we refer to places or things outside of the USA?

"Basingstoke? What on earth is a Basingstoke? NEW QOTW PLEASE"

Grow up and accept that not everything is intended to satisfy you.
(Thu 7th Jun 2007, 20:31, More)

» How nerdy are you?

Games galore
I have at least 14 different computer platforms I collect and play games on, stretching from the Acorn RiscPC (home to my favourite version of Lemmings, ever) through machines like the Saturn and detouring through the Turbografx-16 until we reach more modern fare like the Dreamcast. All have to be boxed and with their manuals, and have to be in alphabetical order on the shelf.

Same for my vinyl and CD collections - all ordered by artist, then title. This poses a problem for music DVDs (do you sort them by title, as for regular films, or by artist?) but the system works, and I always know where something is. Always.

I've been playing Warhammer 40k again recently and remembering why I always did enjoy it, even if it empties your wallet akin to heavy drug use and even though I cannot paint at all well.
(Sun 9th Mar 2008, 23:48, More)

» That's when I knew it was over...

Smiths!
Track three on "The Queen Is Dead", right?

/coat
(Fri 22nd Jul 2005, 14:25, More)