Randomness

[enterprikayak]

Yeah, the throwing stars really give off a sense of "Don't touch my baby."

[JadziaKathryn]

Randomness: I am still alive. For the moment anyway. I meet with my adviser tomorrow and we shall see how my status is after that. And moreover, what I want my status to be after that meeting. Where's the petrified emoticon? I have come up with a simile: the last semester of grad school is like the last leg of Mt. Everest. Which is to say, the hardest (thin air, thesis... there's a completely valid comparison in here, I swear!) And I need to start looking for a job, a process which I am considering on no less than three continents. Gah.

[Silverbullet]

Can we get a Rant Thread going?

My Rant: although I have seen it for decades, it still makes me sad. How people will trade and make money off misery.

In Hati as in other places where there has been a Hurricane, earthquake, Tsunami, the good people rush in to help but later the scammer, bilkers, and others move in. Today in Hati the gangs are hitting Orphanages, Camps, stealing children for various things. Gangs are starting to stop and Rob food shipments to outlying areas. Problem is the PUblic and rivate organizatins are too swamped to check or police so these vermin can operte fairly freely.

[Alelou]

The sad reality is that those gangs were operating in Haiti trafficking children and looting and stealing BEFORE all this, and they just got whammed by the earthquake too. Now they're back in business stronger than ever in all the chaos, and probably swelling their ranks with people who are desperate.

In a poetically just world, all their victims would be anarchists and libertarians who don't believe government should do anything.

[WarpGirl]

Very true. The sad thing is that things will probably get even worse after all of the relief is gone.

[Silverbullet]

This hits close to Home: The Bastards who prey on the Elderly. I accidently opened something that loooked innocent and found out I had signed up for a Service that I didn't want and was quite expensive. Just by opening the damned thing. Fortunately they had to include an out. One had 24 hours to back out of it. So I escaped.

My spam filter works but those people are real creative with Titiles so some gets through. I don't dare open them so I just read the title of the e-mail. NOw days I don't even bother with that. Just erase them.

However, there are many elderly who are not wary or in their old age more naieve. So they fall for things. That and creeps who manage to to take charge of an elderly persons estate.
We had one Lawyer who ws hired by a son to help his mother manage about one and ahalf milllion dollars. By the time the lawyer was thorugh the woman was destitute. Fees, charges, costs. ate it all up. Son had gone to Judge to stop it but the Judge sat on it for one year doing nothing. Nw the Judge had been removed and the state is trying to make the Lawyer cough up at least half of the Money. Lawyer is claiming it is all legal. This poor woman couldhave easily handled her Estate but her Son didn't trust her because she was elderly. Too often the Elderly are treated like Children. As if they have somehow become incompetent because they are aged.

I get callls, e-mails constantly offering me deals that have real nasty hooks in them. I avoid them but there are many elderly wo are not equiped to deal with those sort of things. They are not stupid it just takes longer for them to understand.

Too often the elderly are warehoused, taken from their homes. Where they are at the mercy of whoever runs whatever institution the elderly person is put in.

The Elderly are preyed upon and children want to protect them but make sure first, that the Elderly person is incompetent. Try to remember when Mom and Dad were the "Go-To" people when you were young. they are the same people they just have grayer hair.

[Linda]

The elderly certainly are a targeted group by unscrupulous people! Recently I got a frantic email from a friend who is elderly and very ill. Someone tried to pull an email scam on her (she lives in California), that a mutual friend (who lives in England) was stranded in an African country and needed $2500 dollars. This is the most unlikely situation there is and an old, old scam. But my California friend really believed it enough to email the scammers back and say she didn't have that much money. So then the scammers asked for $300.

It took me three or four emails to convince my California friend that our English friend was safe at home in England and didn't need any money! My California friend is easily confused and so ill that even the stress of this scam had the potential to kill her. These old scams that are so transparent and laughable to most of us are still around BECAUSE THEY STILL WORK ON A FEW PEOPLE. If they only work on one out of a hundred, or one out of a thousand people, it is still worth it to the scammers. It is too bad that these scammers are rarely caught and punished.

[Entilzha]

I'm going to a game show tomorrow. It's a entertainment part for a lottery draw. All I know there will be two teams and I have a chance to walk away with some money. One person from each team has to answer some questions to win money and when they answer wrong they will be replaced by another member or something like that I think. Another 30 minutes on TV (not my first time on TV, I have directly been shown on TV for 2 hours on another game show like 11 years ago plus another 30 minutes on the same lottery draw show but then the studio games were different). At the moment I have no idea what I will be facing.

[enterprikayak]

That's hilarious. Good luck!

[Entilzha]

Oh and I forgot to mention it's on national TV. At least it's not live.

[justTripn]

I'm going to a game show tomorrow. It's a entertainment part for a lottery draw. All I know there will be two teams and I have a chance to walk away with some money. One person from each team has to answer some questions to win money and when they answer wrong they will be replaced by another member or something like that I think. Another 30 minutes on TV (not my first time on TV, I have directly been shown on TV for 2 hours on another game show like 11 years ago plus another 30 minutes on the same lottery draw show but then the studio games were different). At the moment I have no idea what I will be facing.

!!!! Good luck!!! Does that mean you are a trivia expert?

[Aquarius]

Good luck!

[Entilzha]

I do have the bad habit of remembering a lot of useless information. The amount of stuff I know depends on how much diverse information I have read in the near past(depending on the info I can sometimes remember a lot of info from couple of months too maybe a year. I usually overwrite information with new info). Basically I read lot of stuff about the universe around us.

[Entilzha]

I'm back from the game show and I got like 120 dollars worth of money . The show consisted of two teams of 10 members each the money each team won was divided between it's 10 members equally.

[Asso]

Hey!