The Topic of Great Randomness

[EricG1793]

Originally posted by A Traveller with Magic:
Seems I drop in, only to leave again *sigh* Dai, anyway. And 50 posts a year- what a charming record.

Fifty posts? That's it?! I've been a member for half a year and I have 240, including this one.

Hey, 240 after this one.... What's up with that.... I could have sworn I had more than that yesterday.... I thought admins didn't mess with the post counts of members? I've been noticing that happening a lot lately.... When my count suddenly goes down unexpectedly.... Does that happen when a topic that I've posted in gets moved? Hmmm....

Kathy, how's the situation down there with the fires? I don't know anything about them right now....

[Tuttle]

Originally posted by EricG1793:

Fifty posts? That's it?! I've been a member for half a year and I have 240, including this one.

This is part of why you shouldn't judge people by their post counts. Some people like posting a lot, and others try to only post when they have a lot to say, or at least stuff which noticably adds to the conversation. Its two different approaches which both work, but just looking at post count means that those who don't say much in terms of posts (though not always words ) are not given credit for their being active.


Anyways, now that I've mentioned, hey some of us with not lots of post are just thinking in different ways to be interacting with a forum, I ramble.

For those who want to see what we mean by being allowed to ramble here I suggest looking at some of my old posts in TOGR and people's responses. I went overboard on some of my posts which are completely insanely long, and people responded positively. We like talking to others here and helping them and being happy when they're happy.

I've been sick lately, its not fun. I ended up missing a week worth of classes in one class (10 am class) because of not being able to be functioning. It's the worst class for me to be missing too...though its really interesting. Rings and Fields. Yay math. (I's insane math major yes ). My other class is odd. I wrote a paper which is about the unethical uses of ping). And another paper about the ethics of white hat hacking (hacking to find the problems of a system to tell those making it where they are so that other people can't hack into it and take advantage of those. And making sure not to break any laws or hurt it or anything like that.) It's interesting.

I go eat now, so stop rambling for now. byes.

Tuttle

[EricG1793]

(Reviews the last post)

Judge? Where did I say I was judging?

Where's the word, or otherwise hint, that I was judging?

Has anyone considered that I may just be amazed that I have what I consider to be a small amount of posts and other people have even less than that? Yes, I consider 240 in half a year a bit small.... If the forums were busier and there were more other people posting more often we'd all be making a lot more posts, right? That's why I consider it small, and when someone comes up who has even less posts than that, I'm just a bit surprised, I don't usually judge by post counts, but in that (and many others) instance I was not.

The reason I do sometimes is that people who post more tend to have spent more time thinking. Thinking about Youngwizards issues, thinking about rules, thinking, thinking, thinking. With each post, ya think. So the more ya post, the more ya think. So, in some aspects, post count means a lot, but in most aspects, it doesn't, I agree. Again, that particular time I wasn't judging by post count; I was just surprised, hence the smiley I put there.

If I was judging, I would have said, "That's it? You obviously don't put as much thought into the forum as us more frequent posters do." THEN I'd be judging.

(Sighs) Why is it that I come here every day and find someone else complaining in at least one instance about a suggestion I've given, something I've said, etc. etc. etc....?

[smile]

Well then you were obviously not judging - and Tuttle's post was not aimed completely at you - it seemed a bit general. to me. It is understood that you were not judging - anyway...

Does anyone have a book recomendation? I am rereading some things at the moment but...

if only there was a smile with a book - then there would almost be everything...

[EricG1793]

Just a recommendation for any random book?

Youngwizards series, of course, and Harry Potter's good too. "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke, "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, and "Where the Red Furn Grows" by Wilson Rawls. Those have been my favorite books that I've read in the last few months.

I'm currently reading the first book of "The Bartimaeus Trilogy" by Jonathan Stroud. I started it once and it was SO confusing and unclear! I felt that same way when I started to read it again a year later, but I decided to read on, even though I had nearly no idea what was going on. I've gotten through the rocky beginning, and now it seems to be a pretty good book, so I guess I recommend that too.

[Emi]

Oh "Where the Red Fern Grows" is such a sad story! We also had to watch that movie in fourth grade, I almost cried. I recommend reading the "Blue is For Nightmares" series by Laurie F. Stolarz, there's only like four books but it's very suspenseful.... I like it.

Lets see what's happened since the last time I've posted? Oh I made it on Varsity in basketball!! I'm soo happy. My coach said that I have a lot of work to do. I guess the only reason why he kept me was because I have the court smarts. Meaning I know the game very well and I make good decisions (sometimes). I'd probably not get that much playing time, but at least I'm on varsity right? Which is good, being a Junior and all. Also, I'm wicked sore from try-outs... Really out of shape I'll tell you that much...

I got straight a's on my report card which is extremely surprising judging from my test scores I've been receiving!! Hm...

Oh and I have a three day weekend as well... My friend has a four day weekend because of Teacher Workshop. I wish I had that!

We're reading "The Great Gatsby" by Scott Fitzgerald in English, it's a very interesting story, probably one of the best novels we've read so far! Speaking of novels my nano novel is coming well, although I should be writing everyday I haven't gotten the time. So I do mass writing on some nights! hee hee hee...

Oh and one more thing, there's this private school in Concord (NH) and during the summer they have this program where some students in their junior year from public schools get to go there for five weeks and take some courses that interest them. You have to be in like the top 15 rank in your class. My guidance counselor told me that I get a chance to do that! All I have to do is apply and get interviewed.. but that thing that bugs me is how much it costs! $2,900!!! Luckily they give out financial aid.. so I just have to worry about getting accepted. It's almost like a college atmosphere... but it's a high school. Pretty sweet. I want to take the Mass Media course because you get to make films and stuff. Let's hope that I get in, because that would look wicked good with my college apps!

Alrighty, that's all.... (this is probably what they mean about the long ramblings)

Dai Everybody!

[Tuttle]

Originally posted by EricG1793:
(Reviews the last post)

Judge? Where did I say I was judging?

Where's the word, or otherwise hint, that I was judging?

Eric, you really need to stop thinking that everyone is out to get you. People will express their opinions and they may be different than yours but that doesn't mean that they think you're stupid.

Anyways, I wasn't saying you were judging people with less posts. I was saying what came to mind, because this is the TOGR, where something like that is appropriate. I know you weren't judging us, but people sometimes do act like people aren't good enough to be thought of as reasonable because they're at 50 posts or 100 posts. It's the same problems with people not treating newbies right, but can be applied to people thinking they're better because they post more. It's not you, but it is some people. I've had that at other forums mainly though...can't think of any instance here.

The reason I do sometimes is that people who post more tend to have spent more time thinking. Thinking about Youngwizards issues, thinking about rules, thinking, thinking, thinking. With each post, ya think. So the more ya post, the more ya think.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think its important to point out the other side. I'd say in some cases posting less means they're thinking more, because said person wants to put more content into each post. I know I am very unlikely to make a post which isn't considered by lots of people to be extremely long. I've recently been posting posts which I think are short, and still aren't. This is mostly because I want to make sure that it is worth posting before doing so, make sure that I am adding to the conversation and not just posting something which isn't helping the forum community.
I know most people aren't like me and that there is probably some correlation between post count and how much people are thinking in relation to this forum though. I think its actually a lot more accurate to be looking more at the content of posts. First I'd say word count, but even then a lot of posts which don't add much don't mean people are thinking. Either way, both of those are hard to see anyways so it doesn't really matter. Just to point out the other side of the issue so you can see both sides.

smile, I'd suggest looking into this author named Diane Duane. Her books are really good... to be serious, I do want to recommend her other books though. I've not read the Star Trek ones, but the others I'd suggest. Also I'd suggest Discworld (Terry Pratchett), and umm... depends on what types of books and age group and such. I've recently been reading Heinlein, suggest Moon is a Harsh Mistress most to a random person of what I've read. Flatland is geeky and mathy, but really good. I'm really not sure what to recommend though.

One of my homework assignments for Monday involves stalking myself online. It's interesting how little I can find. Apparently it takes people knowing me to be able to connect my online persona to my real name. If someone can find my screen name they could pretty easily, but that requires me knowing said person pretty well. We also need to stalk the rest of the class. It'll be amusing. It also means that the rest of the class will stalk me. I'm curious what they'll get from facebook on me. Because nobody in the class can see more than my photo and friends list, but between those and something else online you could possibly figure out who my boyfriend is. Mainly 'cause I'm friends with his mom and you can find online that I know him at least by a simple google search.

Oh, yeah, I need to mention, my computer's back! yay Om's back... It was broken and I've been needing to use Patina in a body I was borrowing from a friend for a while. It's old and not much RAM and going from a new 1 Gig ram machine is a huge difference. Mainly 'cause I have homework involving websites which abuse computers and don't work right on old computers (in that whole 5 minutes to load where you can type into forums)

Patina's working much better now that I have an insane window manager now though. She had gnome and now she's using a tiling/tagging/not much there gui now. WMII I think its called. It's pretty good, especially when you remap Caps Lock to be Meta-4 and make that your modkey (I use caps lock to change windows now. Like Caps Lock +Enter is open a new terminal). I probably just lost a pile of people in my computery talk... I like my computery talk. Its probably why I'm a CS major. . And a linux user.

I can't think of anything else to say now. I think I'm going to go take a shower then freeze because its freezing in this apartment. (heat's kinda on...like its high enough that it should probably keep the pipes from freezing and bursting...)

Tuttles

p.s. Oh and Eric, don't stop thinking about stuff to help the forums. I'd suggest thinking about them a good amount before posting them, but some of them are very much appreciated and others are issues with you not understanding the problems until they're explained. It's useful to learn the problems too, makes it easier to make later suggestions.

[Rhi]

Eric:
I'm currently reading the first book of "The Bartimaeus Trilogy" by Jonathan Stroud....I've gotten through the rocky beginning, and now it seems to be a pretty good book, so I guess I recommend that too.

Oooo, I second the recomendation! But don't stop with the first one; the whole trilogy is good. Though I disagree with you, Eric, I think the beginning is really good, it can just be confusing switching between the different points of view...

I've been so busy this past week. I have this project I'm working on for my engineering class this year (closest thing I can compare the project to is a Rube Goldberg machine) and it's been really stressful trying to get it done by the deadline, though we got an extension on the time since none of the groups were done, and all the groups have to be done for the project to even have a hope of working...I hate deadlines I guess I'm one of those people who truly thinks they're dead if they miss a deadline

[EricG1793]

Well, it's not the switching from talking about different characters that's confusing. I suppose that switching from first-person to third-person is a tad confusing.... But what was confusing me was these words that kept turning up that were completely unexplained.... And there isn't much character description and/or atmospheric description at first, and I was unclear as to why all this was happening.

Nevertheless, the second time I decided to keep reading, regardless of how confused I was, and I have a grip of what's going on now. I'm begging to like to story quite much.

[seabiscuit1009]

So...today I wrote my fourth potential college essay. It's not that I didn't like the third one; it's just...the fourth one was a story that had to be told. I'd tried writing it before, but I wasn't ready to write it then. Now it's ready to be written. I love it when my writings talk to me and tell me when they want to be written; it makes life so much easier.

School's going well; I did extremely well first quarter-all A's, and 4 A+'s out of 8 classes, so that's pretty sweet. School is...school, I guess. I just want it to be Thanksgiving break already; I'm going to be done with this whole applying to college thing by then. It will just be...so much better when it's all done. Then, on Thanksgiving, I will go and run the Turkey Trot with my cousin, a 5 mile run through downtown on Thanksgiving morning (it's billed as an event to make sure you don't gain weight from Thanksgiving-like I need to worry about that ) The cousin I'm running with isn't one I'm particularily close to; she's a sophomore in college, and I haven't talked to her much since she graduated from high school. However, she's training for a triathalon, so she'll be able to keep up with me during the race. I've never actually raced 5 miles before; cross country races are all 3.1 miles. I mean, I've ran a timed 5 mile as fast as I could (41:00 minutes flat), but it wasn't a race; it was just part of cross country practice. I bet I could run faster than that...that's around an 8:00 mile, which is ok...but I can do better. I'm excited. Also, I'm such a dork for being this excited about running! It's bound to be freezing cold on Thanksgiving morning, and will probably be either raining or snowing. Or the wind will be unbearably strong. I can't wait!

I'm trying to find a job for the winter, and maybe the spring if they'll be flexible about my hours during track season. I want a job, I'm just afraid of it turning out like Panera did; crazy hours, and management who don't listen to what I say.

Books...what have I been reading. Not much that I haven't read before; I read Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein earlier in the month. It was extremely good; I hope the library has some more of his books. Actually, I know they've got some of his books; they've just got the entire Science-Fiction section in storage, since our library is being redone. It really makes life hard when I'm looking for a book for my Science-Fiction/Supernatural class.

Daylight Savings makes me unhappy. Yes, it's light out at 7:30 when I leave the house, but it's dark at 4:30. I barely have time to run, since I'm not allowed to run after it gets dark. And on days like today, where it's been dark all day, I'm not really allowed to run. My legs are sad; they want to go running. And now my legs are talking, haha. I need a life.

Oh! I apparently have plans for after after-prom that I didn't know about! Which is exciting. A bunch of my friends from AP English, lunch, and cross country are going camping, and apparently had included me on their list of people going, but forgot to tell me. I'm a big fan of camping, and we've already got big plans about what we're going to do; on Friday we sat in a coffee shop for 3 hours talking about life, camping, and not talking about the English project we were supposed to be working on. Apparently, they say I'm going with them even if I don't have a date for prom. Good to know they're so optimistic about my chances of finding a date.

Hmm...I got my second letter in cross country. I'm kind of mad at about half the cross country team right now though, since they've been doing things like having sleepovers and not inviting the half of the team that I'm friends with; they didn't even tell me they were having one! I here about it from one of the team captains, who asks me if I'm going. Ok, way to be rude...the stupid newbies this year have started so much unnecessary drama, and it's ridiculous: cross country isn't a sport that should involve drama. It's insane how many newbies are mad at me for the stupidest things. I just want to sit them down and say "Grow up! I'm not out to get you; neither are any of the other older members! We tried to be your friends; you were rude to us and didn't treat us with respect at all; of course we're not going to like you that much!" It's ridiculous, and I'm kind of sad my last season of cross country had to end like this. I'm glad that I'm not going to be on the team next year, and am escaping further drama from people who keep talking about me behind my back. Stupid freshmen...meh.

Oooh...I'm getting a new phone for the first time in 3 years. It's this fun blue Razr; my dad just got his in the mail, and I've been playing with it; it's a cool phone. I like new technology; I like messing around with it. But seriously, this phone is so much more high-tech than my old one is; I mean, my old one is literally just a phone. No camera, no nothing. This one's got VIDEO on it! I'm amused by the simple things, honestly. XD

Well, I suppose I'll go take a shower now, since I can't think of anything else to say.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

A really amazing book I just read is Dreaming in Code, by Scott Rosenberg. It's about the development of Chandler, and why it didn't work out the way they expected. It's one of the best descriptions of programming I've read in a long time. There's more information about it at DreamingInCode.com, including an excerpt from the beginning.

Hey, Tuttle, if you stalk me online, what can you come up with? :-)

[Wizardling]

My Nintendo DS friend codes:

AC Friend Code: 4252-9028-4819
Name: Nita
Town: Big Pond

42 All-Time Classics Friend Code: 1289-6351-0760
Name: Wizardling

Metroid Prime: Hunters Friend Code: 257-770-524-085
Name: Wizardling

MK DS Friend Code: 201-936-124-614
Name: Wizardling

Pokémon Pearl Friend Code:
4510-7859-4420

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land Friend Code: 420-979-644-114
Name: Wizardling

Anyone care to share their FCs?

[EricG1793]

Hey, that's a good idea! Next time I have my DS I'll post my Animal Crossing data. Just a small word of advise, other members... make sure your AC towns aren't named after your real towns, for personal security issues!

Hey, maybe if we posted those codes in the "Video Games" thread, it'd be easier to find. Because that doesn't get posted in as often as here, before you know it the messages with the friend codes would be lost in the mass randomness.

Now what we need to do is to arrange a time to play, which we would really need Chat for.... I suppose the IRC channel would do for that (I suppose I'm giving up my strike against it; admins, are you glad?)

*Completely changing the subject*

Well, it seems as though... something... happened so now there are more posters posting slightly more frequently! I don't know what happened.... It may just be because many of us have a three day (four for me, parent/teacher conferences Tuesday) weekend so school work is somewhat letting up.... Or maybe it's because the post rate is speeding up so much that people are noticing and are coming back! Either way, I'm glad it's happening. But, still, nearly none of the members I used to see are posting.... People who used to be in Chat all the time.... I've said this before, Chat was a traffic bringer. People came to chat, poked around on the forums, made a couple posts.... That kept things flowing at a nicely paced rate. But now chat's gone, and so is half the traffic that there used to be.

[Dragon Writer]

things by orson scott card,
things by Robert Jordan (his books will be finished eventually, even though he's dead)
READ TERRY GOODKIND! Sword of truth series is WONDEROUS *grins* I have the last book, but i'm reading the Book of Swords volume 1, 2, and three By Fred Saberhagen at the moment, which comes from the library so i have to finish it. (that's also a good book by the way)
I could give you more, but this isn't the books topic. if you REAAALLY want a big recomendation, send me a pm. I'll email myself my reading list. :P It's LOOOOOOONG...Oh, jane yolen books as well! The pit dragon trilogy by her was a wonder...read it years ago. And star dust. And the princess bride, was great. (Don't worry about the words abridged version, it's a twist by the author) and...*Restrians self, with much twisting*

*looks at comment on switching of characters*
I love that series! also, read the last apprentice. *Throws self out of topic before i can get even more out of controll*

[smile]

Hi! - I haven't been on in ages, but anyway...

Thanks for all the recomendations, it'll last me a bit and they look really good!

The reason why I can post this right now - I don't have to go to school! There was a problem with the water, and because it was only one school in the district, we don't need to make it up, and it does not count as a snow day!

And I switched to a different math teacher - the other had all of these kids trying to change left and right - I got lucky.

Unfortunately it is raining - I might not get to go to riding lessons today...

I know this is short, but I don't have much to say... not much has happened.

I don't run much - I like to, but I am definately not an endurence person - more of a sprinter, if anything. Swimming is good though (not in compitition) - anyone like that?