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

Hehehe, the thing you really need to aim for, is to outlive the warranty on those saucepans. Outliving the pans themselves wouldn't be that hard, after all; I know of several ways to destroy them

Blu is much too kind. Without her, these pages would never have been there. I'll explain that right away

About just after you left on your trip, I was just looking for some company, so I looked up blu's home in the goo. There I noticed that she'd recently posted something in a thread named "I'm there", which in fact happened to be related to an article on the "H2G2 Researchers group". I checked it out, and found a group that was formed over 7 weeks before, but consisted of no more than 4 people. So I took upon me the task of attracting some more attention to that group.
So, now you see: if Blu hadn't been writing in that forum, I might never have found it

And while I was writing my own article on SETI@home, Blu had already opened up a thread related to "Peta's Picks", attracting attention to the original article she had found. I used that same thread to ("divert auxiliary power to deflectors") attract attention to my own entry In the meantime, Daniel was attracting attention to my articles using his "Drake equation" entries and Peta then helped us out by mentioning my pages on the frontpage for a couple of days.
All these efforts together resulted in a massive growth: we're now at 29 participants.

You don't even have a computer of your own at work? Is your employer such a cheapskate? Pity, 'cos it'll be hard for you to join the SETI@home effort, then.

Ireland, huh? I guess you'll have sampled some glasses of the "water of life" (whiskey) there too, then?

Here I have some nice Earl Grey for the kettle. Fill her up, please

Morning guys, yep, Fest - that Earl Grey will go nicely with this buttered scone I've just brought back from the canteen. Still warm from the oven and all. It's maybe a bit early, but we could keep some water for hot whiskey, which you get in Ireland at this time of year. A good measure of Irish Whiskey (seems to work better than Scotch), sugar to taste, a lemon slice studded with cloves, top up with hot water. Lovely! Alternate those with Guinness over a night and you'll be right as rain in the morning, apart from a desire to eat everything in the house that looks vaguely like breakfast.

Yes, sadly because we don't live behind desks all day, our employer makes five of us share one computer, although as we're all on a network and everybody's personal files and settings are stored on the server, it's not really a problem unless things are slack. Then everybody's in the office and they all want on. So the SETI project might not accomodate me, and there's also the fact that h2g2 can't access anything on our server. That's also why I haven't got my nice cartoon of Spiny on my home page. I should get time today to go and check some of these forums out though.

My contribution to the Paris article was pretty minimal, blu - I was the Scotsman who cleared a carriage on the RER by pretending to be drunk! It came out of some chat with Munchkin, I think, about being bothered on the underground. However, my stuff about the Christmas markets in Vienna was extensively quoted. So yes, I've been to Paris a few times, most recently to visit Wonko, who lives on the outskirts in the wonderfully-named St-Germain-en-Laiye. Fantastic city that needs a bit of time spent visiting to do it justice. And we want to go back to Vienna in the summer to see how it differs from Christmas time, and whether the Danube is ever actually blue. It was pretty damn brown last December when I took Moira there for her 40th birthday. But definitely a great city, especially for the architecture, the history, and the wonderful coffee and cake houses.

We're not exactly globetrotters, blu, but we do love Greece, where we've visited several of the far-flung islands. If you want peace and quiet, sunshine and clear water to swim in, good food and a relaxed lifestyle, that's the place. Places on the list to visit are Spain, Tuscany and Italy, rural France, USA and recently Moira said something about Australia, though I'm not sure about that myself.

Right, that scone and Earl Grey are long gone - how about some coffee for a change? And yes, this thread is getting a bit long. I'm happy to go wherever you guys lead.

Well, as the Hatter said at the Mad Tea Party...'I want a clean cup, let's all move one place on'.

I'll see you at the new thread Fessie created:
http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?thread=27263&forum=6380

}:=8