apodictism

Software Liberation Front website launch

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:38:47 GMT

It's still in its early stages of development, but I'm happy to be an integral part of the creation of the Software Liberation Front website. Check it out, tell your friends, and join the fight to liberate software.

X3 Review: The Sequel (minor spoilers)

Sun, 28 May 2006 05:28:55 GMT

I've read another review, and discussed it with its author. I'm impressed with the fact that someone complained about disappointment with the movie without picking on it for reasons that really don't apply. Yes, the script was thin, the acting was mismanaged, the politics of headlining was gruesome to behold, and the directing was . . . directionless.

In particular, I most agree with the following points from the above review:

You can kill off your least favorite character in the beginning to make room for a preferred alternate coupling. It's not like people will notice or anything.

Giving the talentless eye-candy a large acting part will draw the audience in. Failing that, a new haircut will do the job.

If the actors are choking on their terrible lines, it's because they have no acting ability - "What have I done?" is classic stuff. It's not your fault Ian McKellen couldn't make it interesting.

I don't like Cyclops much, either. The actor they've had playing Cyclops was always at best wooden and a trifle whiny — but secretly whiny, behind that Strong Silent Type facade. I think he was well-cast, though, because that's exactly how the character always was. I've fantasized about him getting killed off in the comic book and never coming back many times. Of course, I'm sure he's coming back (didn't this sorta, kinda, happen in the comics, too?), and the way they handled it in this movie was asinine. I tend to think they did it just to satisfy Halle Berry's ego, giving her more room to "act" (like a money-grubbing hag).

This brings us to point two: I've never even thought of Halle Berry as being all that eye-candy-ish. She ranks right up there with Jennifer Tilly on my list of Awful Actors To Avoid, and just like Tilly she's ended up in movies I can't bring myself to avoid (Bound was excellent other than Tilly's whiny voice and funny-looking face). While it kinda fits with the way the X-Men storyline progressed in the comic books to do what they did with Storm moving into a position of leadership (though not exactly the way they did it in the movie), I'm positive this was a decision of the producers in response to Berry's attempts to blackmail them with her newly race-baiting Oscar-extorting star power, and not of the director or screenwriters.

Some of the actors in this are good at what they do. Third point: they don't deserve what has been done to them. Famke Janssen isn't Lauren Bacall, to be sure, but she's no Halle Berry, either — and yet, they relegated Janssen to the "shut up and look pretty" role while elevating Berry to the "screen-time owner" role (second only to Anna Paquin, but then the other girls have always had to defer to Paquin in the X franchise for some reason), swapping their places. At least Janssen is better suited to looking pretty than Berry, with sort of a statuesque perfection thing going on to which Berry only pretends she could ever aspire. Ian McKellen is damned excellent, though, and the fact the director wasn't able to leverage that to save more of his lines from flaming wreckage doesn't say much about him. As if that weren't bad enough, Patrick Stewart (another dignified and excellent old fart of an actor) had his character raked over hot coals and had to struggle with lame pronouncements like his accusatory "What have you done?", serving as a "sign of the problems with this movie" bookend to McKellen's "What have I done?" at the end.

On the other hand, the way characters die and resurrect with only pseudo-plausible explanations randomly throughout the movie serves as a form of nostalgic reflection for me, since it happened so often in the comics. By far the worst thing about this movie, however, is the simple fact that even now nothing has been done to correct the criminal mismanagement of the character of Rogue from the first movie. I realize there's only so much you can do when you're trying to avoid mass defections in the audience by throwing out the talentless twit you've got playing the character (as with Berry/Storm), but something must be done to make up for the way they've destroyed Rogue. Seriously. When hair-color, name, gender, and superpower are the only points of intersection between the print character and the screen character, something has gone sorely awry and demands mitigation.

In other words, I'm still of the opinion this movie is quite enjoyable, but you need to intentionally overlook some issues and check your brain at the door. Just roll with it. You'll be better off.

The Best Non-Spoiler X3 Review Ever

Sun, 28 May 2006 01:10:56 GMT

I'll make this quick.

Stay through the (very long) credits, or at least don't leave any longer than it takes to urinate. There's an anticlimactic "surprise" scene at the end of the credits. I'm sure you'll guess what's going on before anything happens. Still, watch it.

The movie is kinda fluff. I'm not surprised. The previous two weren't exactly art, either. They were fun. So is this one. Don't be disappointed because it's not art.

Kelsey Grammar is much better as Beast than most people expected. I chose to reserve judgment, with a fair bit of trepidation, and I'm glad I did. He wasn't bad.

The burninator's fire-starting tools are neat. Don't blink, or you'll miss the explanation bit for him starting fire later.

As Roo mentioned to me, there's a bit of 90210 in the story of this one. It's not as bad as I expected from her dire warnings, though.

If you didn't complain about continuity, plotline, timeline, characterization, and so on in the last two movies, ever since the COMPLETELY HOSED UP introduction and unrecognizable modification of the Rogue character, you BETTER NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT ANY OF THAT IN MY HEARING WITH REGARDS TO THIS MOVIE. Well, you may if you like, but if so:

PREPARE TO BE MOCKED MERCILESSLY!

Python: the drain snake of programming.

Thu, 25 May 2006 20:24:36 GMT

Every once in a while, someone notices I don't like Python much and wants an itemized list of reasons. It's not very easy to come up with such a thing on demand. I don't usually sit around making lists of reasons I dislike a given programming language, believe it or not, so I don't usually have such reasons in front of me. The short, flippant answer I tend to give instead of an itemized list is usually "It makes my eyes bleed."

Here's a little bit of a reason, though, from a conversation in IMs today:

(13:59:59) ilcylic: holy crap python is way different from perl.
(14:00:29) @: What did you notice is "way different"?
(14:01:16) ilcylic: just all the stupid OO language.
(14:01:32) @: Scaffolding an' stuff?  Egregious overuse of "self"?
(14:01:46) ilcylic: yeah.
(14:01:49) ilcylic: Oh yeah.
(14:02:06) ilcylic:
template = self.template('admin/article/index.pt')(context=self.context, **dict(self.options))
        self.form = HTMLForm(template, ArticleFilterSchema)

    def getDefaults(self):
        defaults = {'active':self.request().field('active', 'true'),
                    'featured':self.request().field('featured', ''),
                    'categoryID':self.request().field('categoryID', ''),
                    'locationID':self.request().field('locationID', ''),
                    'year':self.request().field('year', str(DateTime.today().year)),
                   }

(14:02:30) @: OUCH.
(14:02:39) ilcylic: yeah.
(14:02:39) @: You're making my EYES BLEED!
(14:02:47) ilcylic: and the use of tabs instead of braces
(14:02:52) @: yeah
(14:02:56) ilcylic: for flow control.
(14:03:03) ilcylic: makes it hard for me to read what's going on.
(14:03:11) ilcylic: like reading a book without punctuation.
(14:03:16) @: There's a distinct lack of symmetry.

I particularly like the punctuation analogy. Tomorrow I may not like it as much, but for now, it just sounds right.

NOTE: I intentionally changed the indentation on the first line of that Python code to try to neaten it up a touch for LJ.

I laughed. A lot.

Wed, 24 May 2006 16:23:16 GMT

(10:05:23) Fang: Ahh well. It... could be worse?
(10:05:40) @: It could.
(10:05:46) Fang: You could be on fire.
(10:05:47) @: I could be on fire. That would be worse.
(10:05:49) @: hah
(10:05:49) Fang: AGH!
(10:05:57) Fang: OUT of my head, foul demon!
(10:06:02) @: OMFG
(10:06:05) @: WTFBBQ

Also, from a description of how to install Bind on SuSE 10.1:

insert CD, click OK, receive banana.

Usually life is only this funny at three in the morning when nobody's slept in about 24 hours. Mornings aren't supposed to be this amusing.

I'm spoiled, I tells ya.

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 06:25:11 GMT

I got a few very nifty gifts for my b'day this year. Proof of how well the people giving me gifts actually know me follows:

I got a copy each of the Kenshin Intros & Exits, Kenshin in-show, and Kenshin OVA soundtracks. That's pretty spiff. The OVA music especially should be good -- once I start listening to it. I seem to recall rather liking it while I was watching the OVA (last time I watched it was a couple weeks ago, I think).

I got a DVD-R with the 60 Minutes Johnny Cash interview and Johnny Cash at San Quentin on it.

I got Steve Oualline's Wicked Cool Perl Scripts, from No Starch Press. Even the title is good.

Last (so far?) but not least, I got a bottle of Mu Sake. Mu Sake is, it turns out, junmai daiginjyo-shu. In general: you can get junmai or honjozo sake, where honjozo has "brewer's alcohol" added to it (usually along with some water), rendering a "fortified" sake, whereas junmai is made with nothing but rice, water, and koji (the magic mold used to ferment the rice). Ginjyo sake is reasonably good quality, but daiginjyo is the really premium stuff. Generally speaking, for the purist, the best sake is junmai daiginjyo-shu, or highest-grade sake (with at least 50% of the rice grains polished away before brewing) that is made only using water, rice, and koji. I've had one glass of the stuff so far. I washed my one and only wineglass, then opened the bottle — and the scent made my mouth water. I poured a glass, and sipped. This is, bar none, the best sake I've ever had. I wasn't sure whether I was going to drink any tonight, but a friend talked me into yielding to temptation via IMs, and here I am, impressed.

Yep, my friends certainly know how to spoil me.

Go Daddy, Dune, and Weblog Contemplations, in reverse order

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:33:05 GMT

Wow. I've really been remiss in my "duties" here at LJ. I haven't been reading my friends list, I haven't been posting anything — I've just been generally absent and lazy. Actually, I've been busy. I've been busy with stuff that interferes with my blogging motivation, but have made an effort to start putting some time into it again nonetheless.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I've moved the longer, thoughtful stuff to my Standard Obfuscatory Babblings outlet. I rarely have only brief, superficial things to say, really, that I consider worth committing to the permanence of the web. Maybe dividing my weblogging efforts wasn't precisely the best idea, in retrospect, in terms of maintaining my current audience. Whoops.

I promised weblog contemplations in my title. Well, there were some. Here are more:
Blogging vs. Writing, Login vs. Spam
It's primarily a discussion of conflicting motivations between different outlets for the writing impulse. Well, maybe "compulsion" would be a better term than "impulse". I've been known to describe my "desire" to write as a hand reaching out of the blank page, grabbing me by the throat, and slamming my head against the desk repeatedly until I relent and start writing, and enough blood has flowed to provide all the ink I need. Differing outlets for that writing compulsion can have interference effects upon each other, however. See the link above for more.

While I'm at it: I'm watching part three of the Children of Dune miniseries, for the first time, as I write this. Actually, I'm watching an ad, or more precisely I'm trying to ignore it, until the miniseries comes back from this commercial break. In my surprise at how good it is, in contrast with the preceding Dune miniseries (which sucked awfully), I find myself inspired to reread the Dune chronicles by Frank Herbert, and wrote an expository contemplation of the Dune milieu in all its various incarnations. If you want to read about the non-ornithopters, poofy purple costumes, and the challenge of avoiding Dune burnout, that's the place to get it. There's even a Gay Eye for the Straight Guy reference.

In other news (as written by me, no less), I found it quite fascinating to discover that Go Daddy ditches open source OS then donates $10k to open source project. Those of you who care about news of the webhosting industry might find that story to be of interest — I know I did. Have a gander.

I think that's all for now. Back to your regularly scheduled LiveJournalling.

Who's afraid of the big bad SCO?

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:29:03 GMT

Has anything good ever come out of Utah? Certainly not SCO.

SCO was ordered by the court to "disclose with specificity all allegedly misused material identified to date."

In response to SCO's recent filing, nominally in compliance with that order, IBM says of 198 out of the 201 items noted "SCO does not provide a complete set of reference points (version, file and line) for any of the 198 items. Astonishingly, SCO fails specifically to identify a single line of System V, AIX or Dynix, and Linux code for any of the 198 items." According to IBM's response to the filing, the remaining three items are also without merit, but at least bear the appearance of compliance so that IBM will deal with them at summary judgment rather than in its initial response. "This motion is directed only to 198 of the items because SCO's disclosures as to those items are utterly lacking in the required detail." They're not even worth taking to summary judgment. Furthermore, "It is beyond reasonable debate that SCO acted willfully in not specifying its claims. The court made it perfectly clear what SCO was required to do."

"To create the false impression that it has provided information that it has not provided, SCO tells the court that it has provided 'color-coded illustrations', 'line-by-line source code comparisons' and 'over 45,000 pages of supporting materials'," IBM said in relation to SCO's opposition brief. "What SCO fails to mention is that 33,000 of those pages concern item 294, which SCO abandons in its opposition brief."

Is there more that's wrong with the 201 items? You betcha. "Moreover, while the Final Disclosures include color-coded illustrations and line-by-line source comparisons, they do not do so with regard to any of the 198 items at issue."

In summary: "By failing to provide adequate reference points, SCO has left IBM no way to evaluate its claims without surveying the entire universe of potentially relevant code and guessing." Yeah. Throw darts at 5.7 million lines of source code and see if you hit something relevant.

Two good things would come of IBM actually doing an exhaustive survey of the Linux kernel's source code for matches with code for which SCO claims copyright:

SCO would be substantively and without question fed their own damned feet.

Some bugs would get fixed in the process.

Actually (if I remember the timing correctly) at the time of SCO's original complaint, it seems there were about 2.4 million lines of source code, and SCO was claiming 1.1 million lines of code infringed on SCO's copyrights. Say what? In the period between the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (when the malfeasance supposedly occurred, I believe), there wasn't enough time to incorporate anywhere near 1.1 million new lines of source code from any single source. That would have required willfully setting out to create the biggest copyright infringement SNAFU in the history of computer software and for probably half of IBM's programmer staff to stop doing anything else for that entire period but copy and integrate source code, throwing out great gobs of source code that was legitimately generated by the open source development community at large for no other reason than to make more room for copyright-infringing code. What kind of asinine nonsense is this?

the world is ending, and nobody noticed

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 04:02:24 GMT

Some sales manager for an LLC knocked me off the top Google hit for my legal name. As such, I figure I should link to me. If you also link to me, I would be pleased. Spread my online resume linkage to the world at large so that I will gain increased Google fame and millions of job offers with six- and seven-figure salaries.

I am Chad Perrin. Thanks for your time.

Simulation Of Brilliance

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:12:59 GMT

I've got an entry at SOB about two things related to software development that I'd like to bring to the attention of some of my LJ readership:

users as programmers

web browser development spec

(note: all of the following links lead to the same page)

users as programmers is actually the title of the entry. I address the matter of the value of having your target end user population as your software developers, for purposes of producing quality software. I think it's a reasonably interesting discussion of the topic.

web browser development spec: I also brought up the idea of developing a new web browser built on the Gecko rendering engine. While I still use Firefox, I think the Firefox dev team has seriously lost the plot, and I would like to have a browser that actually delivers on the promises Firefox (or, actually, Phoenix originally, then Firebird) made. After quite a bit of hunting around and punishing myself by experimenting with other browsers that suck, I've come to the conclusion that to get such a browser, I'd have to develop it myself (with others, of course). I'm hoping any of you with some interest in the subject of a Better Browser will surf over to that entry and have a look at the initial proposed specification as it evolves. Input, from non-techies as well as programmers, is quite welcome. What do you want in a browser? Let me (us) know.

While I'm at it, I'm also considering the possibility of an easier to use, more sanely implemented encryption scheme for secure and private web browsing than SSL. Ideas on that are solicited.

I've never done one of these before.

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:06:56 GMT

I sorta ganked this from mata_hari_, but modified it slightly to suit my purposes (the number five just seemed a better fit than four).

FIVE JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:

Comic Book Shop Cashier

US Army Airborne Infantry

Fencing Instructor at Renaissance Faire

Datacenter Technician for the Wikimedia Foundation

Professional Writer

FIVE MOVIES YOU COULD (AND DO!) WATCH OVER AND OVER:

Bladerunner

Duel on Genryu Island

Equilibrium

Grosse Pointe Blank

To Have And Have Not

FIVE CITIES YOU'VE LIVED IN:

Kahului, Maui, HI

Rivercide, CA

Vicenza, Italy

Tampa, FL

Fort Collins, CO

FIVE TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:

Battlestar Galactica

Stargate SG-1

Profit

Firefly

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Project

FIVE PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION:

Firenze, Italia

London, England

Muenchen, Deutschland

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Glamis, CA, USA

FIVE WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY (besides LJ):

SOB

PerlMonks

TechRepublic

Wikinews

either Paul Graham or ESR

FIVE OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:

Buffalo Stirrup Steak

Gnocchi con Crema

Pancakes at Mollywhop

Strawberry Waffles at Norm's

Teriyaki Chicken and Rice

FIVE PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

With Friends I Miss (though I'd rather they come here than me go there — this place rules)

Libertopia

Mars (Planetforge version)

Mars (Messiah version)

Right Here, but With More Money

holy crap

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:03:03 GMT

The expisode of X Files in which I was an extra is on TV! It just started on TNT. (Mountain Standard Time)

The title of the episode is "The Unnatural", and I have a copy of the script signed by David Duchovny (who wrote and directed the episode). I remember his wife was thoroughly pregnant and impatient for him to leave while he was signing autographs that night.

Seriously Overbearing Blog

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 05:45:23 GMT

As some of you are already aware, I have a weblog I call SOB, which I have been known to describe as "recursive extropian linguistic therapy" or, in layman's terms, "talking to myself for purposes of improving things" (or something like that). I've decided to create a subdomain redirect to it, so in about 24-48 hours (once it's propagated through Internet DNS) you'll be able to reach it at http://sob.apotheon.org as well as http://apotheon.org/sob (not a huge difference, but it looks nicer). The old /sob URL (as opposed to the new sob. URL) will still work, however — never fear for your old links.

As for the weblog itself, I've been doing some writing there. Today, I added a just-completed bit about the effects of corporate law on individual liberty. If you find that too politicized for you, though, feel free to stick your fingers in your ears and repeat the word puppy over and over again to block out the bad thoughts. Cuteness shall overcome.

yes, finally, the truth comes out

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:10:52 GMT

In an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin commented on TV censorship by the FCC. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "What the hell? They let Sarah Jessica Parker on TV, and she has a face like a foot!"

It's nice to finally hear someone else say what I've thought for years.

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:18:52 GMT

Zombie dreams suck.

trackback

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:44:20 GMT

Hey, Ratha, I linked to you. I just thought you might wanna know. It's in reference to that discussion we had way back when we met and you questioned the validity of arguments in favor of intellectual property law. Yea, verily, you've had a profound effect on my opinions on some matters.

Hopefully this new entry will influence my Google ads to stop showing a bunch of evangelical Christian marketing materials that nobody visiting SOB is likely to buy.

a gun under the pillow

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:57:07 GMT

The words "sleeps with a gun under his pillow" are sort of a common indictment of someone's sanity. If someone says "He sleeps with a gun under his pillow," what that person is really saying is "He's a paranoid nutcase."

What's crazy about it, exactly? I'm not disputing it (yet — I haven't formed an opinion of the actual practice of sleeping with a gun under the pillow). I'm just curious about it.

I, personally, wouldn't sleep with a gun under my pillow on a regular basis, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it would probably cause me to wake up with a sore ear and a stiff neck in the morning. I'm not sure that I see any "craziness" in the idea to a degree that justifies the colloquial meaning of the term, though. Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough.

Hey, Anatol . . .

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 05:16:33 GMT

Hey, Anatol, I tried responding to your email about information regarding database administration, et cetera. The first email I sent bounced. I expect the second will do the same. Just so's ya know, I didn't ignore or forget about you.

the apotheonic Internet celebrity report

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:21:14 GMT

I Google-stalked myself and stumbled thereby across me, in syndication. There's something vaguely amusing about that. The website itself from which that is drawn has had 240 unique visitors this month as of the ninth, which ain't bad considering the currently most interesting part has only been in existence for a few days.

Google now shows 132,000 hits for apotheon, and if the statistical density of direct references to me from my survey of more than 600 pages of hits a year or so ago still holds, more than 99.99% of that is me. On a scale of 0-10, my Google page ranking gets up to 4 on my top-ranked hit. Roughly the same statistics seem to hold true for my legal name, but scaled down by a factor of about ten. I show 11,100 hits for that.

The real surprise, though, is that one of my weblogs has a page rank of 8. I'm sure that's due in large part to the number of links to it through an IT professionals' online resource that buys articles from me.

I randomly decided to do a search for the term integrity auditing and was pleased to find one of my articles as the top hit. The next-highest site hit, oddly enough, was another of my articles, several paragraphs of which had been copied to some other website with a link to the full article. Whee. Gotta love it. I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the fact that people find this stuff useful.

In the end, that's the part of this that makes me happiest: people are reading and using the information I'm publishing online. It's actually doing some good for people whose existence has never even crossed my radar. The money's nice, too, though. Now, if only I could come up with a way to make real money off SOB as well. . . .

Comcast customer support wins and loses.

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 22:20:38 GMT

My cable went out today.

I was reading a Wikipedia article about disemvoweling, and clicked on a link at the bottom of the article to something else in Wikipedia. It wouldn't load. I tried another Wikipedia article, and that too would not load. I tried loading one of my own websites in the browser: no dice.

I turned on the TV. Snow. Lots of snow. A staticky noise from the television's speaker. No cable.

I thought about the fact that I just paid my cable bill, so that couldn't be it unless someone screwed something up. I called Comcast customer service to ask about it.

It turns out there was an outage in my area. I was told there were already technicians in the area to deal with it, and that it shouldn't be out for more than about two hours.

About five minutes later, it was working again.

The customer service representative was friendly and helpful. She credited me a full day's charges for cable. I was more than pleased with the service, especially in light of the fact that I got credited a full day's charges for what turned out to be a mere ten minutes of outage (give or take) and the whole process was thoroughly painless.

Well, almost the whole thing. There was one major failure.

The Comcast telephone customer support system starts out by playing a recorded voice saying that they'd appreciate callers taking a brief telephone survey after receiving service to comment on the service received. I asked to be redirected to this survey by the representative so I could report on how helpful she was. She seemed pleased with that, and asked me to hold for a moment while I was transferred.

She screwed up the telephone transfer. I never got through to the survey. How ironic: she got the service right, and screwed up the part that would have had her on record as being appreciated by a customer. I guess, if they're going to screw up, it's best that they not screw up on the part that actually involves helping the customer. It's just not what I expected at all.

By the way, I finally wrote that thing about feminism.

I'm so sorry to post another quiz result. Really.

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 02:21:08 GMT

This one isn't even all that thought provoking, so I don't have that excuse. On the other hand, it's hilarious.

This is what you'd look like! ^_^

What would you look like if you were anime? (Anime pictures) ^^
brought to you by Quizilla

In other news, there's a bit about a rape in Italy in SOB now. It's not the promised entry about feminism. That'll be late tonight or tomorrow, I think.

the dangers of cooking

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:05:09 GMT

(17:48:52) @: Be afraid. Be very afraid. I'm baking chicken.
(17:49:04) nelliebelle: lol
(17:49:11) nelliebelle: why should i be afraid? is it still alive or something?
(17:49:13) @: Yes, I -- I -- am cooking. Me.
(17:49:22) @: Hide the children.
(17:49:28) @: Avert your eyes.
(17:49:32) @: Chad is using the kitchen.

In other news, as nelliebelle requested, I'm planning on writing an entry about feminism soon. It won't be here, though. You'll have to cruise on over to the recursive extropian linguistic therapy hermitage for that when it's done. That, or add its RSS feed to your friends list.

Once in a while, I succumb to these things.

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 06:51:13 GMT

The Avoidant
You scored 47% Security, 52% Avoidance, and 35% Anxiousness!

I think there might be some kind of conspiracy about twins and being separated at birth going on here.

You're the Avoidant (not unlike me, go you.) When it comes to
relationships, too much just plain bothers you. Cuddling is out, you
want to get on with life, you don't have time for that, and you don't
necessarily want to be with someone who even wants to call you
regularly. Because that's annoying too. The mushiness of romance tends
to bother you on some level that you just haven't figure out yet. No
worries, I did.

Avoidants crave me-time, they want to work and they want to make the
most of themselves outside of relationships. You may be bad at
formulating friendships or relationships, not because you're genuinely
terrible and use stupid pick-up lines, but you kind of WANT to sabotage
the stupid thing, whether you know it or not. You'll put up with
physical intimacy to get off, but when it comes to spooning or asking
each other "Do you think we knew each other in a past life?" you want
to squash that shit as quickly as possible.

If you want a long-term commitment, and you don't want to change, pick
another Avoidant, just like you. Will it be a healthy relationship,
well probably not. Did you ever watch The Oblongs? (You should have,
there were only a few episodes and you have to support Will Ferrell in
these sorts of things, even if they aren't as good as some other
cartoons, whatever man.) If you did, you'll get it when I talk about
the Hill People, and that couple who used to talk over their cellphones
and say things like: "Love to our child." and "You mean both of them?"
"Yeah. Right there's a boy...and another one." Like them, you're going
to want to spend less time with each other and in your "together" life
and more time working or fulfilling your potential, because maybe it is
just me, but Avoidants tend to be intellectuals.

NEVER try to go in with an Anxious/Ambivalent type, because they are
going to want so much intimacy, it will make you sick. If they try to
get in with you, you'll know, and you won't like it. Don't pick them
out of a crowd and don't put up with them if you get one by mistake,
not that they are bad people on their own, but together? Oh you are
realllllly bad for each other. They'll want to cling and you will want
to shake them loose and there's no middle ground.

If you want to get away from your avoidance, pick a Secure style lover,
who is usually just happy the way that they are, and wants more from
you than an Avoidant would, but not as much as the Anxious. They're the
warm little center, the place everyone secretly wants to be, and
usually? They'll do right by you and make you come out of your avoidant
little funk.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 40% on Security
You scored higher than 72% on Avoidance
You scored higher than 24% on Anxiousness

Link: The Sullivan Attachment Style Test written by pretentiaahoy on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

high-larious

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 06:28:37 GMT

some funny things:

best (actual) headlines of 2005

probably only Linux/BSD users will understand this

possibly the world's stupidest support tech

I was going to link to the Amber Forever thing that nelliebelle sent me, but it's just wrong.

subject matter

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 07:24:30 GMT

Tell me what (specific) topic you'd like to see me address in a post.

EDIT: . . . and if you know why all the text on my friends page suddenly became red, I'd like you to tell me that, too.