Monica

Pennsic. :-)

Ok, that's because of the people who show up and the cool stuff they bring with them. It's not much for sight-seeing if you aren't already part of the SCA. But in thinking about this question, I realized that I'm not much of a tourist. I mean, for similar reasons, I could say my grandmother's house (well, except that she is no longer living, so technically you can't go there), but that's because of the ties I have.

2. Who is the most inspiring person you have ever known?

For overall effect on my life, my father. For recent in-depth effect, my rabbi.

I've talked about my father in other recent entries. He encouraged me to be smart, which has less to do with scores on standardized tests and more to do with the way you go about solving problems and answering questions. And he's a good person, easy to talk with and spend time with.

My rabbi is amazing. He taught me that it's not inconsistent to be Reform and be observant. He encourages study and analysis, and is willing to study one-on-one with me. He's intelligent and articulate, and when I'm on the bima what's in the back of my mind is "I hope I can be a tenth as good at this as he is". So he pushes me to get better, to think about ethics and behavior in ways I didn't previously, to study more, to consider more observance -- much of it without realizing he's doing so, I suspect.

3. Were you ever bullied as a child?

Oh heavens yes. A lot. One of my classmates in particular was a real bully starting in first grade; he would pull necklaces off me (breaking the chains), hit, try to trip, and sling insults. The teachers were either ineffective or unwilling; I'm not sure which. There were many conferences with both parents, to no avail. The physical aspects eventually died down when an enlightened principal gave me blanket permission to fight back in a particular way. Specifically, I was using large-print books due to a vision problem, which meant I had special books that were about four times the volume of the regular text books, and he specifically told me to hit this bully with one of my books if I needed to. (I lamented the fact that I was not strong enough to wield the dictionary. :-) )

Non-physical bullying was a staple all through school, because I wasn't pretty, I had an obvious physical defect, I wasn't into the sports/cheerleader thing, and I was smart. This is an eperience that many of my (current) friends shared.

4. What are your ten favorite words?

Interesting question. I wonder if this is anything like what you had in mind. :-) (No, those aren't the words.)

Think. Question. Passion. Justice. Compassion. Connection. Fun. Life. God. Ginger. :-) (Hey, I had to throw in one silly one. But it's one of my favorite ingredients...)

5. What do you want to leave as your legacy on this earth?

That the world was in some way a better place because I was in it.

I hope I have a significant impact on my family, friends, and immediate religious community. If I am very lucky, some of what I do will have broader ripples. Maybe through my writing I can bring encouragement or insight to people I don't even know. Maybe through my involvement in the Jewish community I an lead other Reform Jews to take religion more seriously. Maybe through my music I can make people smile or think or sigh contentedly.

The rules:
1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll ask you five questions.
3. Update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4. Include this explanation.
5. Ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

He seemed to assume in all seriousness that I would have some loyalty to this team or that I would care. My only connection to it is having graduated from that school more than 20 years ago. I don't know the players or coach, nor do I have any past association with high-school sports.

It's not just my father and high-school sports, of course. It's kind of expected that sports fans will root for the home team -- and that voters will vote for the local candidate, and that people will generally show some pride when someone who shares ethnicity, an alma mater, or the like does something noteworthy.

I don't care about such factors, however. For me, it's all about relevant factors, quality chief among them. Now I might end up knowing more about the similar person/team/company/whatever, and that may lead to favor, but the favor does not derive directly from the connection.

I don't root for the US teams at the Olympics or the Steelers/Pirates here. (Bad example, I know, because I don't follow football or baseball anyway, but if I did, I wouldn't necessarily favor those teams. I would favor the teams that showed the best balance of skill and sportsmanship, whoever they are.) I don't vote for politicians just because they're from my neighborhood/county/state, or women, or Jewish, or Carnegie-Mellon alums, or (speaking theoretically) SCA members or coworkers.

Now there are some areas where having something in common can affect a decision. In an election for city council, the guy who actually lives here and participates in the community has an edge over the guy with a local post-office box who's never seen on the streets. Or, if all other factors are equal (which they rarely are), I'd probably vote for the candidate who shares my religious views, because those views can affect how one governs (or judges, since we elect judges here). But that's not at all the same thing as favoring the secular Jew just because he's named Rosenblum.

I've seen a lot of campaigns that amounted to "vote to put a woman in office" or "vote for the home-town candidate". (And, of course, the "vote party line" appeals.) That sort of thing is actually less likely to get my vote, because they should have been talking about issues instead of appealing to my presumed "nationalism" ("statism"? "townism"?).

Now voting is important and sports are not, but I suspect that a lot of people base loyalties on the same kinds of factors in both. But I just don't feel that connection -- that someone went to the same school or lives in the same town is casually interesting, in a small-talk sort of way, but not really relevant.

(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.

2. What is the best job you've ever had? What did you like about it? ( Read more... )

3. Aside from religion, what is one aspect of your philosophy, beliefs, or lifestyle that has changed significantly in your life? What motivated the change, and how did you go about it? ( Read more... )

4. When you were growing up, who in your family did you feel closest to? What was the best thing about that relationship? Are you still as close to them now? ( Read more... )

5. Consider the following scenario: ( Read more... )

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 )

( comments )

hobbitblue

( Read more... )

Do you have any big regrets?

Yes.

Oh, that's probably not the question you really wanted to ask. Ok, I can elaborate. :-)

The only time that I initiated a breakup of a romantic relationship, it played out badly and I feel that this was largely my fault. I'm not certain what specifically I could have done better, but I'm sure I could have handled it better in some way. The other person got hurt pretty badly (though he tried not to let it show), which was certainly no one's intent, and the friendship has never been the same. (It wasn't a hostile breakup; it was more of a "this isn't going to work" situation.)

I don't know. As far as I know we don't know each other in real life, and we don't appear to have friends in common right now. Maybe we did and you saw me on a "friends of friends" list, or maybe you surfed randomly or via similar interests?

Approximately 1 mile (less as the mole digs, but that's not an accurate measure of surface distance -- it just means don't trust maps in Pittsburgh). It takes me about 20 minutes to walk there on average. I can rush it in 15 minutes or so, but I rarely feel the need to rush on Shabbat.

I don't mind. Let me try to figure out the best way to bridge the gap between the short summary and the longer version that, among things, manifested in approximately 150 pages of journal at the time. This may take a few days.

Actually, here's an oddball question (which is not, itself, an answer to your question, but more of a tangent): I could post that journal over a similar span of time in a different LJ ("reruns"?). It would take about a year altogether. (I think there's value in not just reading it all at once. I can't just post the entire thing as-is anyway, as I have to edit out people's real names and stuff like that.) Would this be at all interesting to anyone? Don't worry; I'm not using this as a way to blow off your question.

I'll also entertain more-specific questions by email, if that helps any. The hardest thing about trying to tell a big story is figuring out the parts that would be seen as interesting and significant to others.

Coming up sometime after Shabbat: more on religion, a visit from Dr. Science, and assorted others. Keep 'em coming.

One of the links to the dance book is in Cyrillic, oddly enough, so I now know one way to transliterate my name into that character set. I wonder if it's a phonetic transliteration and, if so, how the author thinks my last name is pronounced.

There's a link to a page of credits for Common Lisp: The Language. (I was an undergrad assistant, and can actually point to some of my words in the finished book.) There's also a link to a recipe that an SCA friend named after me, which I didn't realize he had published with that name until more recently.

It's not until link #54 that you get the first reference to a lawsuit I was involved in some years back, and that's for the award of attorneys' fees and costs, which means no one can reasonably claim it was a frivolous suit. (Oddly, I don't recognize the site that archived that.) Hints that this journal exists start showing up in the 40s, but you'd have to already know about LJ to recognize them. (The journal itself isn't indexed, but that doesn't prevent interest lists and the userinfo page from showing up.)

All in all, I think potential stalkers would get bored. Which is the correct outcome. :-)

Update: This entry was inspired by this article, which was pointed out by browngirl. (Nothing new here for me, but it's a good summary/overview.)

tangerinpenguin

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.

Do you believe that what you see of someone else is the entirety of that person? Most of us hide the bad stuff inside, so you see only the better qualities in other people and everything in yourself. You're not getting a balanced view.

If you don't like something about yourself, examine it and figure out a plan of attack. But don't do it because you think you're not as "good" as other people, because, as I said, your view of other people is flawed. And don't do it because it's what you think others expect. The only changes that ever stick are the ones that you are motivated to make for selfish reasons. Yes, selfish, as in "I'm doing this for me", not "I'm doing this so so-and-so will like me" or "I'm doing this because my doctor says I should" or "I'm doing this because I'll go to hell if I don't".