meme update
Jun. 7th, 2004 11:49 pm( Read more... )
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Post anonymously, giving me three clues as to who you are. I will try to guess. I won't check IP addresses.
I'll add my guesses to your comments, so you'll have to check back now and then. If I guess wrong, give me another clue. I'll continue until I get it or I give up in despair and embarrassment.
Clues that describe half the people on my friends list, such as "I have cats", won't be very helpful. And if you're not on my friends list but just popping in, you might want to say so if you want me to have a fighting chance. :-)
So, say you were meeting a new person -- blind date, new friend, who knows. And you wanted them to have some idea of what kind of person you are, and who you are. But you can't actually tell them in so many words. Instead, you have to give them a box, with a dozen things in it for them to look at/read/listen to/taste/whatever. What would you put in the box? And a copy of your journal or a link to your LJ would be the same thing as just telling them directly, yourself, so that's not allowed.1. An On the Mark CD.
2. A copy of Lapsing into a Comma: The Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print, and How to Avoid Them, with post-it notes recording my annotations and corrections. :-)
3. A siddur, probably Sim Shalom, maybe a marked-up leader's copy.
4. A catalog from URJ Press (that's the Reform movement within Judaism).
5. A photo album with pictures of me and my family, including pets.
6. My SCA Laurel scroll, or facsimile. (The SCA is a medieval/renaissance re-creation organization. The Laurel is the highest award they give for achievement in the arts and sciences. The scroll is a document -- really a work of art itself -- that comemorates this.)
7. A complete run of Babylon 5, augmented with the smuggled episodes from the UK.
8. A copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
9. A copy of Joy and Jealousy, a book on renaissance Italian dance that I co-wrote, with accompanying CD. (I arranged all the music.)
10. A bag of polyhedral dice.
11. A copy of my current software-documentation project. (Ok, technically this would require an NDA...)
12. A bowl of perfectly-cooked mattar paneer, somewhat spicier than usual.
And the final part of the meme:
What one thing would you add to the box to represent me or my tastes?
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(I will assume that these are modules that could currently exist, rather than things like "cure for cancer". :-) )
1. Hebrew. All flavors -- biblical, classical, modern, dilects... written and spoken.
2. Music theory. All of it -- medieval, renaissance, modern.
3. That combination of psychology, sociology, political science, and whatnot that would allow me to determine what someone means and what he's trying to do, rather than what he says.
4. Cooking technique, particularly meat, particularly red.
5. Update to current CS technologies -- design patterns (catalogue), concurrency, N-tier/peer-to-peer/client-server/other architectures, performance without sacrificing design, and much much more. (Do I have to expend a separate slot on encyclopedic knowledge of Java?)
6. Names, faces, and key facts about everyone likely to ever be relevant to me, indexed for quick and reliable access.
7. Handyman 101, including carpentry, plumbing, and electricity.
8. Playing bowed strings (viola da gamba, cello, etc -- ok, violin is ok too :-) ).
9. Literary and historic classics, indexed for retrieval by quote, obscure character name, plot point, miscellaneous factoid, and so on.
10. Photography.
Caution (for the ~5 people on my friends list who haven't seen this yet): because I had seen others' results and knew approximately what the test set out to measure, I was a little more aware of meta-issues than was probably ideal. The test is here.
( results )
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I'm not doing the BBC book meme that's going around, because that particular list of "100 best books" just seems too wacky. It's got a mix of classics and modern fluff. I mean, much as I enjoyed Good Omens, for example, I would have difficulty counting it -- and several other Pratchett books -- as among the 100 best books out there. And I'd certainly have trouble believing that every single Harry Potter book belongs on that list.
Thirteen things that have been going really well for me:
1. Interesting work. I get to do technical writing for programmers, rather than for end users. And I'm good at it.
2. I work for a company that treats its people really well. I'm not talking about money (though the pay is competitive); I'm talking about the things that really matter on a day-to-day basis, like respect and professionalism.
3. I have a great relationship with my rabbi. I am thrilled that he is willing to learn with me one on one. How many people get that opportunity without enrolling in yeshiva?
4. I'm having even more fun than I expected to in
ralphmelton's
D&D game.
5.
ralphmelton,
lorimelton, and
mrpeck
have gone from being casual acquaintances/coworkers to being really good
friends (with me, I mean :-) ), initially through the mechanism of
Sunday dinner.
6. I heard a bunch of great music at a recent convention and have gotten a couple of friends hooked on Clam Chowder (the group, not the soup).
7. I'm getting to know a lot of interesting people through LJ, some of whom are friends in real life.
8. I've been filling in occasionally for a congregation that doesn't have a cantor, on Friday nights. Not only am I doing a good job, but they really like me.
9. Soon, I will be able to move my office upstairs out of the cold basement. Shelves are being installed in the new room, possibly as I write this.
10. On the Mark sounds really good with the new lineup.
11. My SCA group is being reasonable in the face of unreasonable demands from above. It didn't look like it was going to play out this way.
12. Dani, my family, and the cats are all healthy and doing well.
13. I have lost enough weight that people have noticed, though not as much as I need to (nor as quickly as some of my friends are losing it), without doing anything more formal than paying attention to what I eat and trying to walk more.
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Edit: math error. (I had broken people into groups like "3-5 years", "6-10 years", etc and then failed to sum.)
I am a Defender-ship.