IM Greeting

It's odd that there isn't a standard greeting for IM. There should me something, a way of saying "I would like to talk to you or ask a question" as the ringing of a phone would do. Not even the same as "Hello" because that's actually the response, it's more the question, "Are you there?" "Hey", "Hi", "Ping", "are you there?", "firstname?" seem to be popular. Maybe I should start using "Ahoy, Ahoy" as A. Graham Bell proposed.
Keywords:Quirks
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Sensation Seeking

Today in my Entertainment Engineering class we discussed why people chose whatever types in entertainment they prefer. We took a little quiz to find out where we fell on the sensation seeking scale. My score was 19 out of 40. While that is in the middle numerically, I feel like it is still low as if the scale isn't normalized. We saw a bunch of slides about the results of the studies done on sensation seeking. Someone asked the question about the person who may classify as a low sensation seeker, who would never want to do something like ride a rollercoaster, but then when forced on it ends up loving it. The question in my mind about the whole thing was, "What can be said about someone who is a low sensation seeker but wishes he were high (and blames his parents for this)?" That is how I feel.

The statistics said that only or first-born children tend to be the most high sensation seeking. Although I am the oldest I'm also the most conservative. They attribute that statistic to parental attention which actually lends credibility to my belief that it is partially my parents' fault that I am the way I am. I feel that they have gotten more adventurous as time has gone on and by being the oldest I had more of their attention in my young, formitable years when we were less sensation seeking. My mom never used to like rollercoasters but for some reason now she does. She teases me about not wanting to go on them but she's the reason I don't like them. I never learned to like them when I was a kid.

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Keywords:Quirks | Classes
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Transportation Part 2

A month ago I wrote about Transportation. I wanted to follow up. I mentioned that I was thinking about getting some HypnoSkates, rollerblades where the bottoms come off. I got them as a birthday gift from my dad. I am pretty happy with them, but they definately have their disadvantages and limitations. They work very nicely as rollerblades. I haven't been on rollerblades in a long time and it is much better than the shoes with wheels I had a couple of years ago. They are very easy to use and it is much more natural than the scooter, especially for uphill. My biggest problem is stopping, or slowing down. It's not easy to control my speed which is really annoying. Going downhill should be fun on wheels. it is the best part of the scooter. It is the worst part of the rollerblades. I can use the break, but it seems to wear down really fast. The other disadvantage is, while taking the blades off is very easy, it isn't as easy as just stepping off the scooter for things like stairs, hills, or when going indoors. Also, I feel less inclined to ride indoors than I do on the scooter, which is part of what makes it great. Wearing the helmet also makes them less appealing. And finally, as shoes, they aren't the most comfortable. They are tight and hot, and even if I'm ok walking around in them, I am definately limited in what else I'd do. I'm sure occasionally they will be fun or usefull. They are no worse than regular rollerblades which is worthwhile to have, even if it isn't my primary transportation.

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Keywords:Quirks | ETC
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Transportation

I've been meaning to write about this for a while. A side interest of mine is finding the perfect transportation. I don't believe in convention and I don't care what other people think which leads me to try out some unusual things.

For a few weeks, a couple years ago I had "shoes with wheels". Street shoes with wheels that fold out of the soles so that they become skates. The problem with those was that the wheels were too small so you tripped everywhere. What finally did them in was that I actually bent one of the locking mechanisms. My diagnosis is that they are just toys and not meant to be used as actual transportation.

I rode a Razor scooter a little while I was an undergrad because Stage3 had one. For the past year I have owned one and rode it all around. A few days ago I replaced my first set of wheels. A week ago, while braking, the rear wheel locked up and the bottom rubbed off.

Which brings me to my point about authentic vs. rip-off scooters. I'll only buy an actual Razor. The rip-offs are cheap and bad. My friend Jared has one. There are a number of things that I think are more poorly designed about it, but I'll only mention one. He bought silly light up wheels, so he let me use one of the original ones as a spare while I ordered my new ones. The first time I rode it I rode to work. My route is quite downhill including one really steep part. I know that after going downhill fast and breaking I have to be careful because the friction break could actually burn me.

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Keywords:Quirks | Rants
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Anguished English

I feel I have a very strong connection to the English language. I often, especially when writing, consider very carefully the logical and symantic intricacies of turning thoughts into English words and phrases. I think one of the reasons that foreign languages are so hard for me is that the simple sentences I could learn to use do not compare to the very high level concepts and subtle distictions I can express in English. That's why I thought I'd point out a few of the things I've found interesting about English, common mistakes people make, and some helpful websites.

Back when I was in Stage3, we had an argument at one meeting about what the correct plural of octopus is. At the next meeting Dennis had done some research and provided us with the answer. While many people think that octopi is the plural, this is in fact the most incorrect answer. As we all know, the standard plural in Enlish involves adding s at the end. Of course, many words in English are inherited from other languages which lead to all the exceptions to this rule where the plural is also inherited. Latin is the source of many English words and there are some, like fungus, where the -us ending is pluralized as -i. Octopus is not one of them. Latin nouns are seperated into 5 groups, called declensions, which have different endings and different plurals. The rule above that we are most familar with is the rule for 2nd declension, but Octopus, originally from Greek origin, is a 3rd declesion noun in Latin. The correct Latin plural would be Octopodes

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Keywords:English | Quirks | Rants | Truth
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Today-Tomorrow Reasonableness

For a couple years now, this has been a term in my friends' and my lexicon. It came up first at one of our late night Denny's runs. We never went before 10, and typical was 11-1, which meant getting back even later. On the way home, as we were talking about the next day, someone pointed out that, being after midnight, that it was actually today. This is a prime example of today-tomorrow unreasonable. This is really a precursor to the discussion of when one day ends and the next starts.

The concept of the day and the year, both based on astronomical events, makes perfect sense. Hours, however, I feel are a big more arbitrary. We are diurnal creatures and therefore daylight definately has define the way we live before and after the invent of accessable artificial light. The current method of keeping time is designed to center around noon, the center of the daylight hours. This doesn't seem most appropriate to me, as we are much more tuned to sunrise than sunset. People generally wake up around sunrise, or at least the morning is the time around when the sun rises. Most people stay awake much longer than daylight which means that sunset has very little effect on the human cycle.

I believe there is a natural human daily cycle, also based on the sun as the clock is, but with a different concept of when the beginning of the day is than the clocks notion of midnight. In general most people talk about "the beginning of their day" as when they wake up. No one I know who goes to bed at 1am and wakes up at 9am talkes about the previous midnight when they were still awake from the day before as the beginning of their day.

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Keywords:Quirks | Rants
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Games but no fun

Well, more than seven days have gone by since watching The Ring and I'm still alive so I think I'm safe.

I got my projector back on Thursday. The projector is still broken. They didn't fix either problem. I'm sort of pissed that they didn't call me or anything even though they couldn't find the brightness issue. But I can't believe they weren't able to see the problem with the VGA cable. You'd think it is simple enough that they'd just replace it anyway for the purpose of customer care. Promixa, where the customer is always wrong. That's a sort of inside joke and a whole nother story. Anyways, now they are going to send me a new cable, no questions asked. They are also going to pay to bring the projector back in, and if the newly reworded problem description isn't good enough, they are going to call me so that I don't get a broken one back again. If they can't see the problem I'll demand a new one. I'm not getting this back unless they see the problem and are sure it is fixed. I'm just sort up upset at this whole deal. I'm missing my whole summer with it. If it gets back and works, though, it will be worth it. That's the way it was with my DVD player, when I finally got it working, I've not had a problem with it.

Also, I got the video game I ordered. It wasn't really as bad a game as I remembered it. I kind of liked it. I played almost nonstop for the past four days and beat it this morning. Problem is that I wasn't going to work. Now I have to go to work tonight and do all the things I was supposed to do this week.

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Keywords:Anecdotes | Quirks | Girls | Worries
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Sparkyisms and moods

Preamble )
I often say some really strange things. They all make sense to me. It is just the weird way my brain works. A friend of mine said there should be a place to write them down. I said I had a journal but it didn't really have that sort of stuff. Well it should. I don't remember what I said that day, but here's some nonsense with more to come.
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Keywords:Quirks | Depression
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