Mahone

I was vaguely aware of a ward cleaning rota in my ward, but wasn't aware of it's contents and was too busy to look into it. I caught a glance of it a couple of weeks back, and was surprised to see my name was on there. I was surprised because I hadn't been asked or informed that my name had been added to the list. This is not the way to do it :)

Agreed.
Had I not been through the process myself and associated myself with dozens and dozens of others doing the same thing for a couple of years, some with and some without lawyers, I'd be arguing for getting a lawyer right now and telling everyone who disagreed with me that they were idiots for not getting legal counsel. It does seem counter intuitive, but of the immigration lawyers that are even close to affordable, most of them are like the quack doctors of the medical field. Those that are genuine and really know what they are talking about will likely cost everything you have and more and their expertise is generally only needed in waiver cases. But take this for what it is, advice from a stranger on the internet.

In a criminal defense context, i'd absolutely agree with you. But immigration is a different beast entirely. From those I associated with while going through this process, of those that said they had a lawyer, many later regretted the choice to do so because they didn't believe the advice they received really assisted them in anyway and others claimed they in fact made the process harder than it needed to be due to the lawyer giving them incorrect advice.
Visajourney.com is a good forum for those going through US immigration - the question has been asked countless times on there and the answer from those that have been through the process is nearly always the same. A straight forward case does not need a lawyer; most people don't use a lawyer and are almost always fine. The exception is waiver cases and in said waiver cases, a standard immigration lawyer is not going to help. You need one that specialized in waivers and they will not be even close to cheap.
I don't anticipate that most of those going through the criminal courts will advise to not use a lawyer and it seems to be the exception, not the norm when they don't use one. It's apples and oranges.

The first bit of research would tell them they can't do this. If they aren't going to even bother checking the basics of US immigration law then yes, hire a lawyer.

I'm not so sure that this is necessary. Having been through the process of applying for US residency and now about to go through the process again for US citizenship, my experience is that so called "immigration attorneys" are at best very expensive proof readers and in some cases their knowledge of US immigration is so poor that they actually make the process more difficult. Most people who hired them ended up saying it was an unnecessary waste of money.
In 99% of cases, everything an immigration lawyer can tell you can be found on the USCIS website. Just do the research and you'll be fine. Assuming you end up marrying this girl, make sure you collect as much evidence as possible to prove your relationship is bonafide and not a sham marriage. Keep things like text messages, facebook messages and photos. DO NOT ELOPE.
The exception to this is if you need to apply for a waiver for whatever reason. Lets hope you don't, but if you do, an immigration attorney that specializes in waivers is definitely what you need.
Outside of immigration, be prepared for your family to potentially express their displeasure at you having a relationship with a 'foreigner'. We had issues on both sides, with my family having a predisposition against Americans in general and her family accusing me of marrying her for a green card. Others went as far as to place bets on how many months/years our marriage would last. You may end up having to grow a pretty thick skin.

I'm not so sure that this is necessary. Having been through the process of applying for US residency and now about to go through the process again for US citizenship, my experience is that so called "immigration attorneys" are at best very expensive proof readers and in some cases their knowledge of US immigration is so poor that they actually make the process more difficult. Most people who hired them ended up saying it was an unnecessary waste of money.
In 99% of cases, everything an immigration lawyer can tell you can be found on the USCIS website. Just do the research and you'll be fine. Assuming you end up marrying this girl, make sure you collect as much evidence as possible to prove your relationship is bonafide and not a sham marriage. Keep things like text messages, facebook messages and photos. DO NOT ELOPE.
The exception to this is if you need to apply for a waiver for whatever reason. Lets hope you don't, but if you do, an immigration attorney that specializes in waivers is definitely what you need.
Outside of immigration, be prepared for your family to potentially express their displeasure at you having a relationship with a 'foreigner'. We had issues on both sides, with my family having a predisposition against Americans in general and her family accusing me of marrying her for a green card. Others went as far as to place bets on how many months/years our marriage would last. You may end up having to grow a pretty thick skin.

Some application software is available for Linux, some packages have equivalents, others can be emulated. Some you just can't use on a Linux OS. Choice of operating system is like choosing any other tool, just depends what you want it for.
Personally, I rarely use Linux on my personal workstation, it just doesn't do everything I need it to do. But I have used it for many servers. Linux is always my first choice for external DNS servers and web servers. I have also used certain Linux distros for penetration testing in the past.

Something that I think is implied in your post but not explicitly mentioned is also checking for signs of your own children bullying other kids.
Many parents check for signs of their children being bullied, but rarely check for signs that their children ARE the bullies. I do think this should be emphasized more.

The caller ID that you see can also be easily forged. Many telephony providers allow the customer to have control of the outgoing ANI/caller ID that will show up on the called persons phone, particularly if the customer making the call is a business.
I've been managing VoIP telephony systems for a few years now for various companies as part of my job and I can easily configure our systems to make a call to my cell phone or anyone else's phone and have the caller ID show up as any number I like, including numbers that don't comply with national standards here in the US, such as '012345'.
 
That's not to say that every telco the call passes through en route after the callers own telco will allow a blatantly forged caller ID, but in my experience, they do.

I had to provide the National Visa Center with an enhanced criminal record/police certificate from the UK and they performed further FBI "background checks" afterwards, before I was issued a US visa. Bear in mind that many of these immigrants come from countries where such records are either not kept, not kept in any centralized location, have long since been lost or destroyed through war or the government aren't going to cooperate with US embassy requests for such information. So unless an individual has garnered the attention of a foreign government that is included in FBI background checks, such checks will likely not help much.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that a cause of all this is him no longer being attracted to you. Men who look at pornography often do so despite their active attraction to their spouse and his lack of affection is more likely than not a symptom of repeated pornography use as opposed to the other way around.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that a cause of all this is him no longer being attracted to you. Men who look at pornography often do so despite their active attraction to their spouse and his lack of affection is more likely than not a symptom of repeated pornography use as opposed to the other way around.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that a cause of all this is him no longer being attracted to you. Men who look at pornography often do so despite their active attraction to their spouse and his lack of affection is more likely than not a symptom of repeated pornography use as opposed to the other way around.

Business cliches irritate me a little. Going forward, I will reach out and ping you an email to arrange a time to touch base and we can ensure we handle this paradigm shift.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/solder

I'm something of a hoarder of computer kit that I obtain through various means. My wife puts up with it more than she used to, mostly because she has now realized it saved both us and others a decent amount of money. It's a fairly common occurence that people come to me with broken equipment and components that need to be replaced. Broken graphics card? I'm pretty sure I have a 3 year old one in a drawer somewhere that you can have. Router stopped powering up? I've got a box of them I can replace it with.
 
When we moved to the US last year, I had to leave all my spare kit behind. I got asked to look at a ladies TV briefly a couple of months after we moved here and quickly determined they needed to replace their HDMI cable. I've got loads of them saved up in my 'hoard' in the UK, but none of them here, so we had to go out and buy one. Unless you order these things online, they are pretty expensive. I think target has them for something like $20 which is crazy for a basic cable. They bought it that day as they wanted it quickly and I replaced the cable.
 
Later that week, I was back at her house and had to go into the garage. I found a box of old cables with at least three HDMI cables in. What a waste of $20 - I took it back to the store and got the money back. She may not have known what an HDMI cable was or what they are used for, but if she hadn't kept them, she'd have lost that money.
 
I also have a copy of windows 3.1 somewhere... believe it or not, it's been useful at least once in the last 5 years - some companies still use this operating system today, including the LDS church.

I had my phone go off during a job interview once, many years back. I could have sworn I had switched it off before hand, so I assume I knocked the power button and switched it back on as I got my wallet out to show my ID. I apologized and diverted the call to voicemail, but in my haste I still didn't immediately switch it off. The caller, not taking the hint that they had been manually diverted to voicemail subsequently called me again 15 seconds later.
Not surprisingly, I didn't get that job. Incidentally, the persistent caller was my sister asking what we were having for dinner.

I had my phone go off during a job interview once, many years back. I could have sworn I had switched it off before hand, so I assume I knocked the power button and switched it back on as I got my wallet out to show my ID. I apologized and diverted the call to voicemail, but in my haste I still didn't immediately switch it off. The caller, not taking the hint that they had been manually diverted to voicemail subsequently called me again 15 seconds later.
Not surprisingly, I didn't get that job. Incidentally, the persistent caller was my sister asking what we were having for dinner.

I had my phone go off during a job interview once, many years back. I could have sworn I had switched it off before hand, so I assume I knocked the power button and switched it back on as I got my wallet out to show my ID. I apologized and diverted the call to voicemail, but in my haste I still didn't immediately switch it off. The caller, not taking the hint that they had been manually diverted to voicemail subsequently called me again 15 seconds later.
Not surprisingly, I didn't get that job. Incidentally, the persistent caller was my sister asking what we were having for dinner.

I don't believe either of these are known to have been said by Einstein.

I don't believe either of these are known to have been said by Einstein.

I feel the same way. "It only goes down hill from here" and "these are the best years of your life, enjoy them" are snippets of things I was commonly told during my teenage years. Well intended but very misguided advice.I too had an horrendous time during high school and I have little desire to attend any reunions they might have and no desire to ever again meet most of my fellow students from that time. Not that I have much of a choice anyway as I'm now living on a different continent which makes such things impractical.
I had to endure 5 years of it as well, as that's how long high school lasts in the UK.
All I can say is, my life improved dramatically since then. We finish high school at 16 in the UK. I'm 29 now and I've never looked back.

I've been through the immigration process from your cousins spouses perspective.
Firstly, it's been a couple of years since I had to deal with it, but I'm pretty sure there is no mechanism for transferring from a tourist visa to a marriage visa while in the country - it has to be applied for outside of the USA. It's different if he is here on a fiancee visa transferring to a marriage visa, but I'm pretty sure what they are doing is illegal, whether they know it or not. I'd caution them to check this with USCIS. If he is here illegally, its grounds for a denial and a ban when it comes to applying for a visa in the future. These bans can last from 10 years to a lifetime and believe me when I say USCIS have no sympathy.
It's also worth noting that a courthouse wedding with no real wedding photos or guests won't look good when the application for his visa is made, and he wouldn't be the first to be denied on this issue alone.
Secondly, I have a great deal of empathy for them both. When I got engaged to my wife, I was accused of using her for a green card by members of her family and members of my family were mocking and taunting my wife both behind my back and in front of me, despite having never met her. I think much of it was -because- they had never met her and our relationship was fairly unusual due to the long distance involved.
So I understand why they made the decisions they did, but I suspect they did it under a misunderstanding and no real experience of going through the visa process.

I've been through the immigration process from your cousins spouses perspective.
Firstly, it's been a couple of years since I had to deal with it, but I'm pretty sure there is no mechanism for transferring from a tourist visa to a marriage visa while in the country - it has to be applied for outside of the USA. It's different if he is here on a fiancee visa transferring to a marriage visa, but I'm pretty sure what they are doing is illegal, whether they know it or not. I'd caution them to check this with USCIS. If he is here illegally, its grounds for a denial and a ban when it comes to applying for a visa in the future. These bans can last from 10 years to a lifetime and believe me when I say USCIS have no sympathy.
It's also worth noting that a courthouse wedding with no real wedding photos or guests won't look good when the application for his visa is made, and he wouldn't be the first to be denied on this issue alone.
Secondly, I have a great deal of empathy for them both. When I got engaged to my wife, I was accused of using her for a green card by members of her family and members of my family were mocking and taunting my wife both behind my back and in front of me, despite having never met her. I think much of it was -because- they had never met her and our relationship was fairly unusual due to the long distance involved.
So I understand why they made the decisions they did, but I suspect they did it under a misunderstanding and no real experience of going through the visa process.

I've been through the immigration process from your cousins spouses perspective.
Firstly, it's been a couple of years since I had to deal with it, but I'm pretty sure there is no mechanism for transferring from a tourist visa to a marriage visa while in the country - it has to be applied for outside of the USA. It's different if he is here on a fiancee visa transferring to a marriage visa, but I'm pretty sure what they are doing is illegal, whether they know it or not. I'd caution them to check this with USCIS. If he is here illegally, its grounds for a denial and a ban when it comes to applying for a visa in the future. These bans can last from 10 years to a lifetime and believe me when I say USCIS have no sympathy.
It's also worth noting that a courthouse wedding with no real wedding photos or guests won't look good when the application for his visa is made, and he wouldn't be the first to be denied on this issue alone.
Secondly, I have a great deal of empathy for them both. When I got engaged to my wife, I was accused of using her for a green card by members of her family and members of my family were mocking and taunting my wife both behind my back and in front of me, despite having never met her. I think much of it was -because- they had never met her and our relationship was fairly unusual due to the long distance involved.
So I understand why they made the decisions they did, but I suspect they did it under a misunderstanding and no real experience of going through the visa process.