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This might make for an interesting discussion.

My dad is a sociopath (read more about sociopaths here http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html).

He'd fathered and subsequently abandoned numerous children from other relationships, before meeting my mother (ten years his senior and very naive), who he strung along and abused for over 20 years (he didn't tell her about these children). He never held a job, he made my mother work full time, yet despite this he never helped in the house and expected her to bring him breakfast, lunch and dinner. He did lots of drugs. He was hideously violent towards all of his children and my mum. He was controlling and manipulative. I thought I was going to die a number of times throughout my childhood.

My mother has been separated from him for many years now, and as a result his health has gone downhill (his sociopathy means he is unable to take good care of himself, he destroys his body with ridiculous amounts of poor quality drugs such as speed, he smokes copiously, he lives on the barest amount of social welfare as he cannot keep a job, which means he has to survive on the poorest quality food and rarely exercises).

Recently my mum has found out that he might well be dying as he's in extremely poor health and can't even walk. Knowing the state of my Dad's health and his age, it's actually quite likely that he won't see more than a few more years. Now here's the question:

Do I make up with my Dad before he dies, or is this completely pointless given that he's a serious sociopath? I haven't seen him in four years and all I have heard about him is from my brother (who sees him occasionally)... apparently my dad was obsessional over his hatred for me because I once threatened to call the police if he continued to abuse anyone in my family. But maybe dying will make him open his eyes up, or perhaps he will feel something for the people he will lose when he dies? Although I have mostly overwhelmingly bad memories of my dad, there were of course the good times too... though that is not unusual for a sociopath. Is there a point in trying to "reconcile" with him, or will it just be a completely pointless exercise that will give him an inflated sense of self-worth and smugness before he passes away? Might he feel something?

What do you think? Discuss

'Lo all,

Strange thing happened two days ago - tried to log into my facebook account and was told that it had been deactivated by a moderator for breaching of the TOS. I was not aware of having broken the TOS and after reading them through I decided that I definitely had not.

After a bit of moaning over MSN I also discovered that five of my friends had had their accounts deactivated in exactly the same manner at exactly the same time, without warning and for no apparent reason (other than the vaguely stated 'TOS breach' which we're all certain we didn't do).

We are all very careful with security and giving out our passwords, my facebook account has a different password to every other account that I have and so it's fairly impossible that something got a hold of my password and spammed using my account (I also don't click dumb links and all that basic stuff).

One of my friends also received an email warning saying that they would ban her if she didn't stop spamming... she doesn't even post that much, so she definitely wasn't guilty of that crime! And again, her account had not been compromised by spam bots or anything.

I emailed Facebook when it happened, explaining that I thought it was a mistake and could they reinstate my account? My friends all did the same, but two days later have not received any reply back at all.

A quick google search shows that people have been banned before for no reason, or for ridiculous reasons such as having "fake sounding" names, pictures of cats as their avatar etc. It's certainly not a new thing, it just hasn't happened to my group of friends before. How on earth do they moderate, do they examine social graphs or peruse networks of people actively looking for stuff to ban people for???

Has this happened to anyone else recently?

Hi all,

My friend was recently burgled and ALL of his stuff taken from his apartment while he was at work. He has been told that there is a high chance the burglar will return after he's claimed on his insurance and take his NEW stuff too, as it is a common tactic of this type of crime around the area. He feels helpless and vulnerable and unable to replace anything in the house as he's sure it will be taken.

Unfortunately he's stuck in his contract with the letting agent until May 2009.

I'm wondering if he'd be able to get out of this contract. The apartment was not broken into but accessed with a key, which somehow the burglar got hold of or a copy of. This guy lives alone and is 100% certain nobody could have got a copy of the key from him - it must have been from the letting agents or the apartment owner.

The gate that leads into the communal area shared by the apartments (and not otherwise accessible to anyone else) was supposed to be locked at all times, however it had been broken for many weeks leading up to the burglary.

Additionally there was no CCTV or other measures of security, and the police have advised him to move out ASAP as otherwise he will almost certainly suffer a second burglary.

I'm going to get this guy to leave work now and go home to read his contract to check if there's anything in there that can help him. However, in the meantime can any of you offer help or advice? Otherwise he's going to have to spend the next seven months sitting in an empty house in fear

Hey all,

Just wondering if anybody would be able to help me. Long story short, a lot of people in my company recently go made redundant due to restructuring. However, there was a number of cases of people being made redundant whose positions were not actually redundant - they were just using it as an excuse to remove these people from the company. In these cases the company quietly paid out extra to those people.

In my case, I was made redundant along with another girl from my department, leaving only one other person there. It seemed a little ridiculous to me that they left only one girl in this department when clearly the workload is far greater than one person can handle. In my job description, although my primary focus was recruitment, it also said that I should help out in day to day running of the HR department, but nonetheless I was made redundant.

I've now learned that they've hired a temp to help in the day to day running of HR, which seems to imply to me that my job wasn't in fact redundant but it was another case of the company quietly removing people that they didn't want/removing dead wood.

Can anybody give me advice on this situation? Do you know what my rights are? much appreciated all!

I'm trying to find this video I saw on the internet a few months back, it's of a little girl reading in front of her english class. She's about 5 or so, and some kid says "You can't read cos you're just a baby!" to which the little girl replied, " I am NOT a baby! I'm a woman!" and then proceeds to call him an asshole... IIRC... anybody know how I can find that video? I've tried searching for everything, it seems... anybody remember it?

And not a single chav or obnoxious teenage bastard did I encounter there!

I live in Brighton, which is similar to Nice in terms of layout and atmosphere. They're both seaside towns with shingle beaches, popular tourist destinations due to their good weather and restaurants and shopping areas.

But what a difference.

Nice is clean, for a start. It is full of trees and plants; in fact the entire seafront is lined with gorgeous trees. The amazing weather probably helps a great deal too. I didn't encounter a single obnoxious teenage brat or chav. Several gorgeous parks with beautiful playgrounds, lots of fresh food, fish markets etc... It was awesome.

Brighton on the other hand, oh dear. It's dirty, so so dirty. No trees or plants except for the occasional failed little park that is so dirty that you'd never sit in there unless you were a tramp. We're a seaside town - so where are OUR fresh fish markets? There's one hidden away in some back alleys that is open on Sunday mornings, that's all that I'm aware of. The moment I stepped off the plane I was hit by a wave of screaming chavs... a huge difference from the peaceful nature of the teenagers in Nice.

And despite all this, it's still more expensive to live in/buy a house in Brighton than in Nice.

Why can't we sort ourselves out a bit?

right click and pressing Properties seems to not work... it shows you the time that it was last accessed as being the time when you checked the properties. Clever. ¬¬

Hi all,

Never ever bank with Alliance & Leicester. They just tried to charge me £400 (apparently not including admin fees, even though that entire sum was one huge admin fee) for a 98p overdraft I had outstanding on my account which, at the time it was made, was allowed on my account. I have never used my account since signing up for it because I was provided with a 9 digit long bank account number that none of my employers were able to pay me into; A&L said that I should have known that they're "9 digits long because you take the first digit off to use it". This was never explained to me, ever, while I was signing up, and it's clearly not as obvious as they seem to believe as none of my employers knew how to use it either.

They also claimed that they sent me letters informing me of my overdraft and also their policy change on charging for overdrafts. I never received these, and then discovered that they'd put a "no longer lives at this address" flag on my account (even though I've lived here for three years now, far longer than I've ever had an account with A&L, and I've never had a problem getting mail from anybody else).

Though I got my money back, I was furious at how they had attempted to scare me into paying this ridiculous sum of money all for the want of 98p. Further investigation shows that Alliance and Leicester charge £5 A DAY for every day that a customer is overdrawn, with no limit as to how far they extend that charge! They also only send letters informing you of this every couple of months apparently, instead of every day when they apply the charge, so by the time I realised what they were doing to my account they had charged me over £400.

I advise anyone who banks with this particularly corrupt and money-grabbing bank to close their accounts. Try First Direct or even Barclays. I really can't believe how corrupt their overdraft policy is - I know that banks are in hot water over this at the moment and no bank is ideal, but £5 a day without limits is atrocious and is going to put so many people in the red that do not deserve to be...


Additionally, they only refunded the money back to the 98p that was originally outstanding, which meant that unless they froze my account, I'd get charged £5 a day for the five days it took for the money to get cleared into the account, or that I'd have to go into a bank to pay in 98p by the end of the day. The woman speaking to me said quite calmly that it "probably won't matter if I freeze your account, you'll get a mark 3 on your credit rating but that probably will never matter". I can't believe she actually breezily advised me to get a mark against my credit rating instead of dropping £1 into my account that day, which is of course what I did.

Hey guys, here's my predicament:

I've been interviewing for jobs recently. Tomorrow I'm due to hear back about a job that pays very well at Company A, with great prospects etc. I've been told that they have to decide between me and one other guy, so I have a good chance of being offered this job. That's great. I am excited.

However, another company (company B) is so interested in hiring me that they're in the process of hastily putting together a position for me. They're doing this very quickly because they know I'm interviewing for other jobs, and on Thursday I'm going in to talk to them about what I could do for them.

As you can see, both roles are exciting and awesome, and I am excited.

But, I can't make my mind up about which to take before I've spoken to the people at Company B. So in the meantime, when company A calls up (IF they call up to tell me I have the job), how do I politely hold off from accepting the position until thursday? I don't want to seem rude or ungrateful, or as though I'm not excited about their position that they're offering. What is the polite and socially winsome way of doing this, or isn't there one?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a C++ programmer to create a small DS homebrew demo. I have a brief and you'll get more details if you are interested in the position, but the important thing is this: It's about 5 - 7 days work, and you'll get paid handsomely. If you are interested, send me a PM! Preferably include details of previous work that you've done, too. Then we will discuss things like how much money you want, and how in love we are with each other!

Thanks!

Unlikely as this may be, if any of you AGS'ers are carpet fitters living in the Sussex area that want to fit a carpet for me before New Years Eve, then please get in contact. There are milk and cookies and all sorts of wonderful things in it for you. You can meet my cats even. They're super nice cats. You're gonna love them loads.

[Number 1 .... called something like "The Wizard Who Painted The Sky?]

Once again I call upon your help.... and no, I couldn't find the answers on google.... and yes I did try...

I'm looking for some books for Christmas, books that were childhood favourites of mine, that I want to give to my little sisters.

I can't remember their names or enough about them to track them down, not even my mum remembers.

So if any of you could identify the childrens books I'm thinking about, from the descriptions I am gonna give, well you win my love


Number 1 .... called something like "The Wizard Who Painted The Sky?
I remember this story was in hardback and about the size of an A4 sheet of paper (though I was about 5 at the time, maybe it just seemed big). In my memory, I remember a wizard (he looked a bit like Rincewind from the Discworld Game, in my mind). I think he was sad that the world was so dreary, so he decided to paint everything. Or maybe he accidentally cast a spell that caused lots of rain, and caused all the colours of the world to be washed away? Or maybe the world was already black and white, but he was a giant so everyone hated him? I really can't remember, but all of those sound likely! I think he took colours from a rainbow to paint everything... he started with the sky and then the hills and so on and on... It was beautifully illustrated on every page and so, so magical.

EDIT: could this have been a book called "The Wizard And The Rainbow"? This book exists, however I can't find any information about it on the internet so I don't know if that's the one I'm looking for! Does anybody have this story?



Number 2
I really really remember very little of this story, so I won't be surprised if nobody knows what I'm talking about! All I remember is that... there were kittens or cats. And they got lost somehow? And in the end they were... I think I remember the end illustration of them being under/on/in a cupboard? Sorry, lame description... it's seriously all I can remember so I doubt anybody will get this...



That's all for now, I'd seriously appreciate if anybody could name these stories... particularly the first one (not so much hope for the scant details I've provided for the second one... all I can remember really is the happy feeling it gave me to read it!).

Thanks!

http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/forums/viewannounce/467_22/

Enter it nowwww!

Hey guys,

My computer is weird. In the past two or three weeks (since the cold weather has REALLY set in), she's started to freeze a lot... but ONLY in the morning!

When I first turn her on in the morning, she freezes at various stages for no reason, forcing me to reboot. An example would be as follows: I turn her on, check my email, she freezes. I reboot, she freezes on the startup screen. I reboot again, read the internet for a bit, and she freezes. Then after about 20 minutes of being turned on, she is perfectly normal for the rest of the day. In fact, I've kept her on for three days non-stop now, and not a single problem have I had.

Why is she such a bad morning person? Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this? My boyfriend keeps his PC in the same room and his works fine, so it can't be just because she's cold.... ¬¬

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1294455,00.html

It's so sad that so much of the world is so, so backwards.

http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/forums/viewannounce/378_22/

There haven't been any entries yet since it was only announced like yesterday or something. Is anybody going to enter this?

I just went and bought two pumpkins but I have no idea how to make them Double Fine-y. Oops.

Hello all...

I have a bit of a problem. My two cats have fleas...

My cats are completely indoors, they've never been outside, so I have no idea where they got them from. Immediately after I discovered one flea on my cat, I sought advice from a petstore. I got flea tablets, tapeworm spot-on stuff (just in case), flea collars and some kind of incredibly hardcore pesticide.

I went home, vacuumed everything in the house, washed everything, gave my cats all the medication and put collars on them... washed all their bedding... followed every bit of advice given online and by the pet store...

a day later there were still active fleas on my cat!

So I repeated the dosage of flea tablets.

Today, there are STILL fleas on my cat!? Despite having had two doses of flea pills, the entire house fumigated, AND a flea collar on for days!

I'm at loss. Has anybody ever had a similar problem? I'm going to take my cat to the vet but the closest I can do that is on Wednesday, as I'm in London for the next two days. I have absolutely no idea how they could have survived my several intense waves of Flea Attack... the fucking... fuckers.

I haven't noticed any sign of fleas about the house (I've heard that in really bad attacks, you can spot 'em around the house...). I haven't had any bites or anything, either...

I know SOME of them died... I found a dead one in her collar...

Anybody got any advice, or know what I could be doing wrong here?

Additionally, the stuff I fumigated my house with has an ingredient which prevents fleas from reaching sexual maturity, apparently this ingredient is active for 12 months. Fleas only live a few weeks, right? So even if some of them somehow survived, maybe their children won't...

Hi guys,

I'm sure I've heard of places where you can download or buy ready made 3D objects (tables, chairs, lamps etc). The kind of thing I'm actually looking for is more fantasy-based stuff (crystal balls etc).

I don't really know what to look for though. I've tried googling unsuccessfully for "art packs" etc... does anyone have any recommendations?

I am also in a hurry as I need these for a deadline... whuups!

Hi guys,

I need to speak to someone with knowledge and experience in using a DS homebrew kit, and preferably with experience of making a game for DS. If anybody has such experience, could you drop me a PM so we can exchange MSN details and discuss it further? Do I remember Scotch saying he had experience? Anyway,

Thanks

ok, I have a few questions.

First of all, I've come across a few sites where people seem to have taken midi files and then DONE SOMETHING to them that makes the midi instruments sound more like... real instruments. And then saved them as MP3s. How is this done?

Secondly, I'm looking for some software recommendations... I need something to mix together say, you know those short radio station jingles? Things like those. Preferably something nice and simple

And maybe some recording software too...

Any recommendations from you good AGSers?