h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now that word caught my eye straight away

Hello Michele,just thought I`d drop by and introduce myself
Known as Lurcher, or L, I am as sane as anyone can reasonably expect to be on h2g2, and in RL live in central UK.
As I don`t spend much time in RL, I could be anywhere

Now with regard to quaffing, I produce some fine s at my place, The Lupine Park Golf Club (see my fan club) together with the finest Malt whisky on the planet.

You are more than welcome to drop by and sample a few!!

In the meantime, enjoy yourself

L

Hello L,

Where at in central UK? (Not that I am very familiar with anywhere in centrak UK - as except for Canada and Mexico I have never left the USA!) but it is my goal to travel "across the pond" within the next couple of years.

So you are the local brewmeister on h2g2? Excellent! I tend to favor the midnight wheat beers myself, and those ocassional brews that are concocted with grains that only open on nights of the full moon...(Ha Ha!)

Currently here in the US we have this "Microbrewery" fad going on. There's one on every corner and they make 36 different kinds of beer, etc. I think last time I was at one I had somthing with wheat, cranberries, etc. Tasted pretty good - but I sure wouldn't consider it beer!

Look forward to running into you again soon!
Michele

Hi Michele!

I live quite close to Derby, and a few miles south of the Peak District, one of the UK`s national parks.
A few miles in the opposite direction is Burton, a major brewing town,so we know our beer around here
Like you, we have a multitude of mini-breweries, some tiny, some quite big, and there are often Beer festivals. The largest, hosted by The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is one not to miss

Came over to your side of the water, a few years ago now, stayed near Hartford Ct, travelled about a bit (liked Boston). Most of my travelling has been on the Continent though, the job I had meant being over there a lot. Never had much time to see places though, always too busy
BTW..As I type I`m drinking a Bud!!

Take Care, see you soon perhaps

L

*Is quite hurt that Michele has never been to visit at my fan club...after all ..there are some wonderful drinks on offer, and I am quite a nice person*

Has not been to Lurchers fan club because when I first signed on h2g2 I was told that checking out someone elses conversations on their personal space was considered "lurking" and not in h2g2 good taste. And I would hate for you to think that I was "stalking" you! However, since I have been formally invited I will be there in a flash!

Now you`ve made me feel awful!!
Seriously, I don`t know who told you that, but, although it shows a commendable respect for people`s privacy, it is an ideal that is most unlikely to work in practice. Lurking is a useful method of getting to know people. Providing due respect is shown where a conversation is obviously of a personal nature, I don`t think many people would object to having their contacts with other researchers available to the rest of h2g2. That`s a personal opinion, of course..so I could easily be wrong!
Anyway, I respect your attitude, Michele, but as far as I am concerned, you are welcome to join me anywhere!

L

Happy Valentine's day Lurcher!



love,
Michele

Happy Valentine's day Michelle,
I've bought you es.

Happy Valentines Day Michele,



L

Hello Michele

Don`t know whether you will see this, buried as it is in a thread from way back!
Just thought I`d explain why I will probably be less active on some of the more popular forums.
I`m not getting anything like the pleasure I once got from h2g2. It`s my own fault,nobody else`s. There are areas of h2g2 that I never explore...unlike yourself, and Batty, who have Duties you have undertaken, I`ve just hung around some popular threads, and left it at that.
Things have changed as well. At one time, there were several "role playing" things going on. Unfortunately, in moved the youngsters with their *Wham bang..total destruction by advanced weaponry* mentality, and interest waned all round. Game over
As I`m now finding it difficult to sustain interest, it`s probably best to back off for a while, and not cramp anyone`s style, as I`m sometimes tempted to do!! (there are one or two I would dearly love to kick up the A**E !!!)
Put it down to a lessening of tolerance levels....but I do miss actually having a conversation with someone! Other than AR1, and perhaps Light, I can`t remember the last time I did
It`s become mainly one-liner postings. Fine, if thats what you enjoy, but not for me , at least, not exclusively so.

Sorry to bend your ear, Michele, but I thought I`d try to explain. Which I probably haven`t managed to do
I might just become a Lurker......naaaaah, not my style

Anyway, enough of this diatribe, while you`re still awake, I`ll sign off
Oh, and by the way, I really hope all goes well for you on the job front
Take care


L

Dearest Lurcher ,

I find that I also have not been enjoying the conversations as much. I think I voiced that to you in some degree some time ago when lamenting the end of rhyming! It's all I can do to keep up with one line postings in all of the conversations now. Thank goodness for the smileys! Sometimes I feel obligated to post in someone's conversation, and not being able to think of anything original, I just post a smiley and move on! (yes, I know - I'm bad!) And I have people who seem to follow me around into all of the conversations (maybe this is paranoia) and most of the time I can't understand a word of what they are saying! It's very frustrating! (present company excluded of course!) And the "blow up" this, and the "disentegrate" that... gets very old!

I enjoy the witty banter and creative thinking this site promotes. And I (like you) don't seem to be getting much of that from the one-line responses. When I get really frustrated I try to post some fantasy at "Michele's Room". But then that's usually shot down rather quickly. I miss the conversations you, Thog and I had at the Bacchus Bar, and the ones you, Mistadrong, Ex-R, Paul and I had at your hideaway. And I think the Pirate ship has totally fallen by the wayside, along with the Church of the Holy Tail! I think that I am going to pull out of most of the conversations except for a few.

However, that being said I think that I should tell you that you have been one of the few mental delights I have had recently. There are days I can't wait to get on to see what you have written! You are a caring, sweet person. Witty, wise and just all around wonderful. And one of the few people I have ever met over the internet that I would actually consider calling a "friend". I would miss you horribly and would find h2g2 greatly diminished if I didn't have your conversations to look forward to. So please don't go too far away. I need you! (of course - having said this I realize that I may be one of the "newbies" that are driving you crazy!)

You know love, I can`t recognise the person you described,...must be someone else posting under my name
But you do say the nicest things

No ,it`s not paranoia, I`ve noticed that you are, for want of a better word..*stalked* from time to time. A natural consequence of being popular, love ! And I understand the cryptic content can be a bit hard to follow, I`ve scratched my head on a few occasions, trying to fathom out whether there was some hidden meaning I`d missed. Nice to know I`m not on my own The kindest interpretation I can come up with is that communication is not this particular person`s strongpoint, at least, not in our language

With regard to how some conversations seem to "die the death", it`s possibly because so many new ones are continually being created.
It gets almost impossible to keep up. I mean , there`s only so much one can say, without getting repetitive. So...nonsense tends to take over... which is great ,if that`s what you want. It`s obviously a form of relaxation for many people. Good luck to `em.

Me, doddering old fart that I am sometimes feel the need for a bit of old fashioned conversation, where every post doesn`t necessarily have to be "funny", or wildly inventive.
Glad you feel able to regard me as a friend. You`ve been in that category with me for some time
So, you aint seen the last of me yet!!



L

Well, I went through and unsubscribed to 3 pages of conversations! That still leaves me with two - but they comprise the core group of people that I interact with the most ofen. And most of them have multiple rooms (like you, Batty, Mistadrong, Plastic Squirrel, etc.) I even unsubscribed to some of the conversations I had been on the longest - (a couple of the Thingites converastions, Questions Only, etc.) as they are so big and take so long to load that I can only get onto them at night - therefore only being able to post once a week if at all.

I am almost to the point of giving up my sub-editor position. Only because I have been so swamped the past couple of weeks that I have not been able to even look at the last four entries they sent to me 2 and a half weeks ago! We're supposed to sub at least one a week if possible! However, my mom is in San Francisco visiting my brother and his wife this weekend. So I hope to get all four out this weekend, and I will still be ahead of the game. (4 entires means I technically have a month to sub them in).

I'm tempted to ask for your email - as I always pannic whenever I havn't heard from you in a while (like when you had that infection) and I of course always think the worst (that you're in a hospital somewhere with me having no way to get in touch with you). But I hate giving out my own email to strangers - so therefore am always reluctant to ask for other's. Batty and I have each others email addresses, but that's because we're both Aces, and we have to join an email group to get our updates. It lists the persons email address, and not their h2g2 name. So give it a thought and let me know if you are comfortable exchanging email addresses. I would only use it if the h2g2 server was down over a period of several days, etc.

In the meantime dear I am probably off the internet until tomorrow. Have a lovely evening, hope you and your wife have something exciting to do (your social life is so much more exciting than mine! Envy!)


Michele

Actually - I'm still on for about another hour...

Good..
That gives me a chance to say that great minds think alike!!
I was thinking about the e-mail question myself. I think it`s a good idea, because it`s nice to be able to sometimes talk about something in a less public forum, and, h2g2 shouldn`t be the only means of contact between friends
I have one or two accounts, one of which I don`t mind appearing here.
It`s [email protected]
Another,which I prefer to use, I`ll send when I hear from you.

Don`t know about social life love...ours is pretty mundane..but I know what you mean
Tonight, having been out for a few "scoops" this lunchtime, it`s watching snooker on the TV...and a bit of lurking on h2g2.

Golf tomorrow, though

I`ll wait to hear from you..

Hi dear!

You can email me here at work:

[email protected]

as I can check my email both here and from home. It's private, and my home email is in a bit of mess currently. We have Roadrunner (internet connection through cable) and the main account is under my mom's name. I set the email identities up, but even though we all have different identities, when any of us get an email it comes into my mom's inbox. (needless to say this REALLY annoys my 13 year old daughter who likes to think she is having private email conversations with her friends ) Doesn't bother me too much as I get most of my email here at work. However, I plan on being on the telephone several hours with technical support over the weekend. And will give you that email address as soon as I get the gremlins worked out of it!

Hello Michele

Any further developments on the freelance opportunity?
On another thread you were pondering the pros and cons of self-employment. Having earned a living by my own efforts for many years, I can honestly say that I have never regretted it.
Many`s the time though, when I would have welcomed some job security,particularly when work was hard to find, but overall, the freedom of being your own boss is worth a lot.
I suppose it all depends on what you value most. Many people will, and do, take any amount of crap from bosses, others can`t. I was one of the latter. Of course it`s fine when you have a job that you love, and an understanding, appreciative boss. That`s something I didn`t have, so it wasn`t too hard for me, when I was made redundant, to go out on my own.
Of course you miss out on paid holidays, sick benefits (unless you make your own arrangements) and other *perks* that a good job offers.
But, you know what they say....nobody ever got rich working for someone else
And some cynics would say....precious few do , working for themselves
All in all, though, it aint a bad life, so if that`s what you choose to do, good for you!!

Hi luv!

You don't know how happy I was to get that email from you! I'm sure you can understand when I say that I am fluctuating (hourly) between thrilled, shocked, stunned and scared to death!

I went to college to study art, dropped out after 2 years (had WAY too much fun - thus my grades plummeted!) Luckily I paid my own way, and got gov't. grants, so I didn't have the "guilt" I would have had it been my parents money I p****d off! Then went into the business world. I have worked full time since I was 22, and have taken more courses over the years (Accounting, medical terminology, several computer programming languages, graphic arts, watercolor, etc.) It was always my dream to work in art. But the thought of "freelancing" scared the heck out of me! So I just did the ocassional piece of artwork for a friend's ad, local newspaper or magazine, etc. and continued working in insurance and other business offices. I was doing accounting when I started with Heartland Corp. Then after being here two years I told him that he was wasting money sending all of that stuff to ad agencies when I could do a lot of it in house. So we bought a little out-of-date graphics program for $99 and I started doing some of the artwork. The next year he took me out of the Supervisor of Order Entry and Customer Service position I had and moved me into "Art Director". Since then I have been doing all of our label, box, ad slicks, sales sheets, brochures, etc.

WD-40 bought our company, and their Vice Presidents of Sales and Marketing have been in our office all week (5 of them from those departments). They have all come over to my desk several times this week saying what fabulous work I had done. Finally the head guy told me that they wanted me to stay on as one of the "transition team" for the month of June, and then they wanted to know that if I was interested in "freelancing" that they would give me this computer system I have here at work, and would like to be my first (and probably major) client! Well, to say the least I was flabergasted! Here's a guy who worked 20 years for an advertising agency before he went to WD-40, telling me that he loves my graphic work. and that he wants to pull some of their graphic business away from the ad agency they use now and give it to me! What a compliment! (and here all these years at Heartland I have been working in a bubble - I was never around any other graphics people to compare my artwork to, so I didn't know how good my designs were compared to the outside world!) But I've never worked for myself, and even though I know I can do the job, I don't know the details, like what to charge for my work (hourly or by the piece), I need to research how much my taxes will increase, etc.

So you can see I'm in a bit of a tizzy! Hopefully I will get it all sorted out here in the next month.

Talk to you a bit later dear!
love,
Michele

While we're on the topic of WD-40, here's an appropriate joke for you!

Way down in dat old swamp known as Louisiana,
Bubba's ole lady had been pregnant for some time,
and now the time had come. So, he brought her to
the doctor, and the doctor began to deliver the baby.
She had a little boy, and the doctor looked
over at Bubba and said, "Hey, Bubba! You just had
you a son! Ain't dat grand!"

Bubba got excited by this, but just then the doctor
spoke up and said, "Hold on! We ain't finished yet!"
The doctor then delivered a little girl. He said,
"Hey, Bubba! You got you a daughter! She a
pretty lil ting, too..."

Bubba got kind of puzzled by this, and then the
doctor said, "Hold on, we still ain't got done yet!"
The doctor then delivered another boy and said,
"Bubba, you just had youself another boy!"

When Bubba and his wife went home with their three
children, he sat down with his wife and said,
"Mama, you remember dat night what we ran out of
Vaseline and we had to use dat dere 3-in-1 Oil?"

She said, "Yeah, I do."

Bubba said, "Man, it's a damn good ting we didn't
use no WD-40!