Almost an hour, and nobody's posted yet? Gosh.

10 great albums you've (probably) never heard of...

- "Permutation" by Amon Tobin
- "Dust to Dust" by Steve Roach & Roger King
- "Below the Waste" by The Art Of Noise
- "Substrata" by Biosphere
- "Aquarello" by Hans Joachim Roedelius
- "Slider" by Bruce Kaphan
- "The Golden Wire" by Andy Summers
- "Black Tie, White Noise" by David Bowie
- "The Mix" by Kraftwerk
- "Bloodline" by Recoil

In 1985, on Sept 28... The woman who'd soon become my wife moved in with me. That day I went to pick he rup at the aiport after buying a copy of story collection A Sound of Thunder.

she may get love but she won't get mine,
'coz I got you.

Domitian was pretty reasonable for the first 1800 years or so, but lately he seems to have gone round the bend a bit. That fuss over Janet Jackson's breast, for instance. I'm coming to believe that perpetual censors are a bad idea.

"Captain! Ship censors indicate a large Jackson's breast on starboard!"

Ah, now, that's a common mistake that people make.

He actually appointed himself perpetual censer, and used to go around Rome swinging a brass ball on a chain, scattering incense everywhere he went.

They used to call him "Fumidus". Because his personal icon was a bear, he later became the symbol of the US Forest Service's fire-fighting efforts. They even named an orphaned brown bear after him.

abi... That would explain why censors become so easily incensed.

Yes, it all makes sense, doesn't it?

"1985" was Spike Milligan's classic parody of "1984", in which renegade employees of the Big Brother Corporation (or, as you knew it, the BBC) are strapped down in Room 101 and tortured by being forced to listen to the Light Programme.

#6: I am trying to make some sort of Bujoldish pun about Jackson's Whole, but I can't think of one; can everyone just pretend that I have done so and it was awfully funny?

Since it's open thread:
Does Ellen Asher have a blog or a place one can send a general "good luck and I think bookspan s*cks" message?

"It's great to be alive on [Pow!] channel 85!"
--Proctor & Bergman, "TV or Not TV"

("And it's free; only a dollar.")

Ajay #10: *groan* OK, I admit your pun was awfully funny, but don't you think that bit about the clones was in poor taste?

Steen @13
I'm just impressed that he managed the whole thing in French!

#7: What is less well known is that he had some fascinating, if suspicious, personal connections in the Gaulish territory of the Senones, later known as Sens.

#6:

There's breastses on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow...

abi@14

It was the trilingual pun that had me ROTFL.

In 1985, a five year old me took part in a paper recycling drive in my hometown in the Yorkshire Dales on a bleak, rainy day. Later, my mother appeared on local television in front of the radiation monitoring unit the government set up in the car park to give Friends of the Earth's view on Chernobyl.

Daniel "Dsquared" Davies was in North Wales at the time and claims that he is detectably radioactive as a result. Me, I've never dared to find out.

J @ 16... You've been listening to Doctor Demento's Star Trek homage again?

"Always moving forward because we can't find reverse..."

Results 1 - 10 of about 940,000,000 for 85 include Interstate 85 at Wikipedia; 85 Broads, a "network of women from leading universities, graduate schools, and companies from all over the world"; bus 85 from Spring Hill to the Kendall/M.I.T. T stop; and STS-85, a Shuttle mission from 1997 that involved continuing work on the International Space Station.

#19:

Again? I heard it once, ten years ago or more. And I still can't get the damn thing out of my head at times like this...

jenny1ofmany @17

It was a trilingual pun?

Huh. Must brush up on my Finnish.

I'm sorry ajay. The pun you were going to come up with was so funny that it would have caused a rip in the fabric of the internet, sucking thousands of poor, hapless LOLcat macros into a gaping, humorless vortex. This left the world with a critical shortage of LOLz at a vital historical moment, leading slowly but inevitably to the infernokrushocalypse.

I know this because my descendant (Hereziark m3, the new model with the laser-guided missile-launcher attachment) was sent back in time with a humor-impairing gas to release into your home's ventilation system at the critical moment, preventing you from coming up with the future-killing pun. He left me a note, explaining it all before leaving (and the little punk drank all my beer too!).

It was all for the best, ajay.

Isn't "Star Drek" a Bobby Pickett tune as well?

What year was Heather Mills born? He may have been right after all...

abi @22
I missed it at first. It only works if you say it with a Betan accent. (bug or feature?)

J @ 21... I know what you mean. When we moved from Toronto to the Bay Area in January 1989, the darn thing was playing on the van's tape deck as we were driving down from the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento and I still associate that with Spock saying "It's Life, Jim. but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it..."

Heresiarch @23
Drat your future self! The memory of the joke is fading away now, like a dream just after one wakes.

Something about a vambrace, and some guppies?

Say, does anybody have a link to photos of Ted Cassidy as Ruk? I need an icon that reflects my true self for my LiveJournal.

abi @ 27... I thought it'd happen more like it did for George Orr in Le Guin's The Latte of Heaven...

Free associated press:

"May be innocent, may be sweet... ain't half as nice as rotting meat."

Also circa '85.

Heresiarch: if this is true, then the joke we saw must have been left here by Ajay's future robotic double, who should not exist at all but Hereziark m3 left a crucial piece of machinery behind. Obviously Ajay found this while housecleaning and inadvertently started the MekTek corporation which will one day be our destruction, throwing our present and future into and infinitely recursive loop!

(that's what happens when you clean the house)

Ajay @ #10.

*groan* That gives a whole new meaning to "beta software."

I always forget that Michelle Trachtenberg is a year older than my elder child. Which means that the mad winter when our house was all-Joss, all the time, (first run BtVS, Angel, and, for as long as it lasted, Firefly, and two hours of Buffy reruns twice a day to catch up on what I'd missed) the offspring were very young teenagers.

My son turned 21 two weeks ago Saturday, which was two weeks after his 19-year-old sister came home from her first year of college. If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

argh

"It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it. It's life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Jim!"

Dammit, it's been veritable weeks since I've had that thing as an brainworm, and I'll even take back "Raised on Robbery" in exchange, although my brain is not up to the speed of Joni Mitchell's articulation.

JESR... It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead, Jim!

If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

Thread crossing alert!

Ye canna break the laws of physics!

1985? Big fannish year for me. According to my journals, I met Teresa (and Avedon Carol and Martha Beck) on the brink of 1985, at a New Year's Eve party at Lani Litt's; I attended my first Fanoclasts meeting (at your home) later that year. (I also met Walter Breen that year, at another party.)

Why am I always late to threads with temporal paradoxes? They're always cleaned up and gone by the time I get there.

So much for my GCSE Finnish and A-level Temporal Mechanics.

1985 was the year my older son was born. It was also the year I acquired my first PC (a Sanyo PC clone), and modem (300 baud).

For those who know dresses: is there a name for the style of 1770ish colonial things? Like you have Victorian stuff, Regency stuff, is there a name I can search for this sort of thing with?
That was such a horrible sentence. I apologize, O Light-Wrights, but my brain is not working with words just now.

Also, in 1985, my brother was born. It was a sad Christmas because Mom was still in the hospital, but hey, baby brother! Dad didn't brush my hair all week, and I think we meant to eat Christmas dinner at McDonald's... but it was closed. I don't remember a bit of this; I was almost two years old.

1010101 could be broken down into 10 + 10 and 101...

Sorry...every time I see "In A.D. xxxx" my Zero Wing reflex kicks in...

JESR @ 34: take
JESR @ 33: offspring
Skwid @ 42: every

Zig?

JESR #33
If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

Because there's a secret ritual initiation one has to go through these days in order to clean microwaves* and you're clearly the only one in the house who's had the initiation.
If it weren't for all the temporal paradoxes in this thread, you'd probably find it easier to remember the initiation. There's a secret handshake and everything.
Do you recall anyone handing you a can of cleaner and saying something like "Hic est Bon Ami; nondum abradet"?

*and lots of other things.

As a self-appointed reporter of all news regarding the noble Hamster, anxiously awaiting a new open thread, I submit for your consideration:

How a hamster can save you e-mail trouble about a new book titled: The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your E-mail Before it Manages You.

I hope the multiple links are ok.

Firefighters Rescue Hamsters in Eagle Lake, MN

There were also some buzz (about 20 hits on Google News) about the Man Hospitalized After Hamster Attack (that link has a cute picture) story which was mentioned in Open Thread 84.

Serge (#29):

...Le Guin's The Latte of Heaven...

Wasn't that the story about the canonization of Howard Schultz?

fidelio, actually, I used up the Bon Ami scrubbing moss off the north side of the F250 the other day.

#47 That doesn't surprise me a bit. It's great stuff.

Serge #29: Regarding your comment on The Lethe of Heaven ... oh drat. There it goes again. I'll remember it later, I'm sure...

When I was of an age to attend YMCA day camp in the summers, our counselors were obsessed with that song, and it was played at morning and afternoon assemblies for weeks on end. I can not only sing the whole thing, but can also do the hand gestures. Being unable to change the laws of physics was represented by a gesture like playing with a Slinky. I suppose that's appropriate.

(YMCA summer day camp exhausted me because it was like living in a pep rally. You had to have SPIRIT! ALL! THE! TIME! Even though it was 95 degrees and so humid you couldn't breathe.)

But the Vulcan Science Academy has proven that time travel is impossible!

Diatryma @ 41, I haven't seen such a name -- in my experience, 18th-century costumes tend to be called simply by their time and place, or associated with whatever was going on at the time, so a mid-18th-century English gown, or a Marie-Antoinette-style shepherdess costume, or a Colonial-era shoe (this would probably imply that the shoe was a style worn by colonials in the Americas). Certainly the Costumer's Manifesto historical index doesn't give names to any part of the 18th century, as it does for the Regency, Victorian period, etc.

Larry, that's next year's headline!

Caroline at #50, yes. It's always been a wonderment to me that no one was ever strangled with a woven lanyard made of plastic (that I know of).

This summer I'm going to be doing some field research work, some of it in boats. One piece of standard equipment that many of my peers seem to bring with them is a pocket knife. Everyone has a different knife. I'm trying to choose one for myself, but I am bewildered and confused. Looking on the Internet is not helping; everywhere I look seems to lack useful information, while having lots of hyperbole and macho bullshit. Then I remembered that this community has (a) plenty of people who do interesting things for a living and who might have opinions on pocket knives and (b) low amounts of macho bullshit.

So my question: What kind of pocket knife would you recommend, and why?

Thank you, Jenny of Legion-- I'm a bit disappointed, but I figured it was a long shot anyway. At least now I know the era; I'd been sort of rambling about the 1700s and 1800s and confusing people who didn't know much more than I did. Asking them to find the dresses shaped the same way I am was no help, either.

Andrew T., My first recommendation is to get one that you feel comfortable with. It's no good to get one that you won't carry. My second is to decide what you're going to do with it. Cutting rope or twine? Cleaning animal carcasses? Serving as a tiny toolbox for doing everything from getting in computer cases to help fix an ailing outboard motor? Fighting off eldritch horrors?

For simple cutting, I've carried generic pocket knives, the kind you can get at a local store. When I've wanted two blades plus a screwdriver and maybe a small saw-like blade, I've carried a Victorinox "Swiss Army" knife. Careful: those can become so packed with stuff that you won't want to carry it in a pocket. When I've needed the next step up in tools, like when I've wanted pliers plus files plus etc. for when I'm doing field demonstrations, I've gone with a Leatherman. Their Wave in particular is full-featured enough to be useful without being too bloated, and fits nicely on your belt.

Andrew T. @ #55, There's actually been some discussion of pocket knives on here in Open Thread 32[1], and my advice would be the same. I like Buck Folders, and my Buck multi-tool. For boating-type excursions, you're almost certainly going to want a 1/3rd serrated folder.

[1] As a followup to that thread, the adhesive joining the ivory to the blade body on my Frost Bulldog finally gave out a while back...I haven't got around to repairing it yet.

Andrew @ #55: Gerber makes a variety of outstanding utility knives.

Andrew @55, First, and foremost, don't get a knife that feels uncomfortable in your actual pocket.

Me, for the last... thirty years? at least? I've carried a Victronix with two cutting blades, scissors, a phillips screw driver, a magnifying glass, and a corkscrew, all of which I use constantly, and an awl, hook disgorger, can and bottle openers which I never use. Unfortunately the things I need come bundled with the ones I don't, sort of like TV cable packages. I'm on my second one, and it needs replaced because I've broken the side that holds the wonderful little tweezers, which I also use constantly, bent the scissors a little, and somewhat straightened the corkscrew.

Don't get a knife without a lanyard ring; they get lost less easily if you've got a way to tie them down. Mine, recently, has grown a tiny 1M tape and an LED light, and the cluster is of more use than the car's tool box.

In a perfect world, they'd put thee things together as custom arrays.

I have always thought well of Victorinox Swiss Army knives. There are a bewildering number of models; what suits my needs is at least one pen blade (generally they come equipped with small and large in the models that have the other things I want), scissors, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, Phillips head screwdriver (the top of the bottle opener makes a flathead screwdriver), and pokey awl thing, as well as the toothpick and tweezers that seem to come with all the models.

This is just the sort of thing I keep in my purse for the demands of daily living. I don't use it in my work; I'm a baker and have a variety of tools at my disposal there. And I don't have a job or hobbies that cause me to need pliers or small electronics tools or other things that people like to have on their multi-tools or pocket knives.

I'm sure there's a model out there that will match up with the way you want to use it.

Andrew T @55:
It depends what you want to do with the knife. If you want to screw and unscrew things, cut wood, open wine, and repair a hyperdrive, go for a Swiss Army knife.

If you want to, you know, cut things, I'd suggest that you choose a knife with a lockback function, so you can't accidentally close it on your fingers. I used to use Buck knives, which were very good quality and lock back.

Considering my overwhelming grace*, Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

-----
* none at all

Whoops, the correct link should be: Open Thread 32.

Sorry!

Andrew T, if you want a knife for messing about in boats, go to a shop that sells boat stuff and get a proper boating knife that won't come apart if exposed to salt water and spray, that has a spike for splicing ropes and undoing shackles, as well as a knife blade. Boating being what it is, mostly these knives now include a bottle opener.
And it must have a loop to which you can tie a lanyard (what boaties call a piece of string) with the other end tied to your belt, or you will drop it in the water.

I graduated high school in 1985.

It was also the year my family bought its first home computer. It was made by Epson and ran Valdocs and Peachtext and used 5 1/2 inch floppies.

It was the first new appliance my family had bought since 1969. We still had the black and white tv my parents bought to watch the moonwalk, a 1969 Chevrolet Biscayne and the Maytag washer and dryer and GE stove and whirlpool refridgerator my parents bought when they moved into the apartment in 1969.

I get burned out on time-paradox stories pretty quickly (wait, you mean in this universe I am a different person? oh noes!), but a customer at the bookstore swears by The Man Who Folded (by which Gerrold means F***ed) Himself. The customer is a big trekkie, so I can't always trust his judgement when original series writers might be involved. Is the book worth reading?

Diatryma @ 56,

You're most welcome. At the risk of excercising my penchant for geeky overhelpfulness, another way you can describe lines and dresses is by the specific cut and waistline. So you can say things like "I'm looking for something with a Basque waistline," (that's the kind of starting-at-the-waist-narrowing-to-a-point waist seen on some dresses from the 18th century, as well as in certain mid-Victorian-era dresses) "and a square neckline, and a very full skirt."

A good dressmaker should know what all these terms mean.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, of course, I've chosen a sort of stereotypical, generic mid-18th-c. set of ideas, and expressed them very vaguely. Here's a nice resource for the entire century, with a good overview of the styles and silhouettes.

so far, three hours, 66 posts...
22 posts an hour...
about a hundred posts every 4 hours...
at this rate, we'll hit a thousand posts in 40 hours,
figure 12 hour days (posting rate drops as people sleep), that's about three days...

damn

I was just in a conference room where the remains of a "catered" lunch (read: sandwiches and chips) were being cleaned away. The chips were in a large white bag with black lettering: Lay's Potato Chips. Regular Lay's logotype and everything else that you might find on a standard bag of Lay's except that it was plain b&w.

I turned to the several other people in the room and said, "Look, it's generic potato chips! Are you all too young to remember generic packaging?" And with one exception, they were.

The person who remembered and I spent a few minutes enlightening the younger folks about "generics."

I remember that I was working at Berkley Publishing at the time and that at the height of the generic craze we published three or four "generic novels," including, iirc, a Science Fiction Novel and (maybe) a romance. But it was 20+ years ago and memory dims.

Does anyone else out there remember generics in general and the generic novels in particular, and does anyone have any idea where I might find a visual on the web of the generic novels to use to further enlighten younger Tor staffers? Preliminary searches of amazon, ebay, alibris, etc. have been unhelpful.

I know, I know, this is a weird question, but this is an open thread and the people here are some of the smartest folks with the most wide-ranging interests I know.

#52, thanks for the reference! I've been trying to figure out what the folks in my 1920s-set WIP would be wearing (and almost as importantly what it was called), and there's some great stuff at that site.

#56 Diatryma--were you thinking of something closely fitted, or something more like the style called sacque or Watteau?

Melissa @ #69: Generic! I remember that. As a lad, one of my scout troupes even had the collective sense of humor to call itself The Generics at the Silver Mocassin jamboree. Our flag was all white with a black dot in it.

This Wikipedia was interesting. No images of generic books, though.

Gursky @ 66 I read The Man who Folded Himself some time in the mid 90's, when I was a teenager. So all of this is with the caveat that my memory is imperfect and my reading sophistication has increased since then.

It was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end, but when I got done I didn't see the point. Our protagonist falls into the possession of a time machine and uses it to explore all sorts of paradoxes, alternate histories and sexual escapades with alternate versions of himself. Ultimately, he is an extremely bored dilettante who keeps hoping to find something interesting in some timeline somewhere. I wound up feeling like "well, that was amusing, but couldn't this guy find something worthwhile to do with all this power?" I don't know, maybe that was the point.

I certainly remember the Generic Novels - I owned the one entitled Science Fiction. The motto of the series was "If you like one, you won't mind the rest". I'm sure MITSFS has a copy of the SF generic novel, but I have no idea if they can send you a scan.

Melissa @69
I know it's not generic in the classic sense, but at the MOMA Design store they carry a line of, what, office wares? house wares? by a Japanese brand that follows the same design precepts. They're called MuJi if I remember correctly. It translates into something like "No-Name".

Also, I know a guy following more directly in the generic lineage who constructs blank boxes designed to be the same shape as real products and leaves them on the shelves at local stores. Like a little refresher for folks who've been blinded by row upon row of ad-text.

Cathy @ #65,

We also got our first family home computer in 1985. It was a Commodore 64. IMHO one of the better mid-80's home computers to emerge before the generic PC proliferation forced just about everything besides Apple off the market. Its color and sound beat the daylights out of the just about everything else released that same year; even the Macs of the time.

I loved that computer. Used it until 1992 when I got an actual PC as a graduation gift. I think my parents still have our C64 in the attic? I wonder if it works. I'd love to get it and set it up again. I have not played "Legacy of the Ancients" or "Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set" in decades!

I have vague memories of military commissaries selling generic canned goods back in the 1970s. Even then I'd been so conditioned to bright colors on cans that the black-on-white labels made me uneasy about the quality contained therein. Unreasonably, I'm sure.

#46: No. That was Battlestar Galatteca.

I loved the matter-of-factness about generics.

You'd look at the cereals, and see the pure white box with the words CORN FLAKES shouting amidst the sea of colorful boxes and capering kiddie characters.

No gimmicks. No bullshit.

And they tasted just like cornflakes should taste.

As did the GRANULATED SUGAR you'd sprinkle on it in the morning, and which was sold on the opposite side of the isle from the CORN FLAKES.

I remember my mother being very suspicious of the generic TUNA--I think she thought it was cat food. But I bought TISSUES and TOILET PAPER and a few other products (the memory dims).

John Silbersack, now an agent, wrote SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL. David Hartwell reminds me that Terry Bisson wrote WESTERN NOVEL. Neither of us can remember who wrote the other two books.

Gursky @75: I like the guerilla art guy. My 11-yo dd and I just read The Plain Janes, a graphic novel which is very much about guerilla art.

Melissa @69: There's still one place where I see generic products, and that's in the Generic Value Products line of knock-off shampoos etc. A bit of Googling turned up this example of their generic conditioner. Their design is busier than the generic products of old, but that's mainly so they can say THIS IS JUST LIKE THE STUFF WE'RE RIPPING OFF.

I have nothing good to say about 1985 except that that was the year I discovered that BEER in the generic sixpack made excellent banana slug traps.

I can't hear about generics without thinking of the recurring joke in "Repo Man" that everyone is always eating from generic cans of FOOD or drinking bottles of DRINK (or, of course, BEER), etc. "Do you want some FOOD, son? It's meat flavored."

1985.

That was the year I started my library, in that I began to act on the thought that I'd be keeping books long-term.

Not that I didn't have a library before, but I hadn't yet connected "books" with "deep time." Buying not just for the me of today, but the me of 22 years (or 44, or 66) from now*.

Then, my used book-buying budget was about $10/month. Most of that went to a local flea-market, where books tended to be about 4-5/$1 for paperbacks, $.5-$1 for a hardcover.

I could easily find my 40 books for the month if I didn't worry too much about the spine's condition. But sometime in 1985 I started to look much harder. I wanted the books to be in reasonably good condition. Books that'd last.

Books I still have**.

-----
* 22 years? 2007? That's the 21st century! So far away.

** Mostly. I did finally work out a rule for getting rid of bad books, because otherwise I'd be a Smaug with gold in my library.

Cathy @65 We got our first home computer in 1985 too. It was a Corona, and we splurged on the one with two 5-1/4 floppy drives. We got an 9-pin dot matrix printer with it. With the later addition of a daisy wheel printer, I word processed my doctoral dissertation on that machine in 1988. The daisy wheel printed about one page every 2 minutes, and had a tractor feed for fan-fold paper but did not have a sheet feeder. So the final copy of my 180-page dissertation took 6 hours to print, the night before it had to be turned in, with me sitting there feeding it one ... page ... at ... a ... time of the special watermark paper the graduate school required.

Melissa @69 I remember the generics, though not the novels. The food product labels used to say things like "suitable for everyday use," which has survived in our household as "suitable for everyday abuse."

abi@62: Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

You have instantly earwormed me with music from the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

"Abi of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom! Why does she have only Nine Fingers? Where is the Ring of Doom???"

abi@62: Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

You have instantly earwormed me with music from the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

"Abi of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom! Why does she have only Nine Fingers? Where is the Ring of Doom???"

Some generic stuff was truly bad.

I bought, from Pathmark circa 1985:

Generic frozen ravioli. Careful examination of the label showed that they were imported and that the cheese was made of sheep's milk.

Generic spaghetti sauce. It was like the slippery, translucent, orange stuff that comes with Raviolios or Chef Boyardee canned pasta. Awful.

* * *

I think there's a big difference, marketing wise, between knock offs and generics and house brands.

Some house brands are really good. They sell on quality and trust.

Knock-offs in look-alike packaging sell via a sort of reputation voodoo. If it looks like X, it must have the same qualities as X.

The closest thing to generics these days are specialized low-rent house brands. For example, the local Kroger chain, Fred Meyer, sells Fred Meyer stuff, Kroger brand stuff, and also FMV. ("For Maximum Value.") FMV stuff is always cheaper; sometimes suspiciously cheap.

One of these days I'll buy a bag of Fred Meyer frozen peas and FMV frozen peas and do a comparison.

I'm not sure how far the Grocery Outlet chain extends these days, but my wife and I shop there all the time and it's always a gas to see all the strangely packaged stuff, some of it quasi-generic, some of it just off-the-wall. One time we found a box of approximate Lucky Charms, only the writing seemed to be in Arabic, and Lucky The Leprechaun was entirely absent. Sure tasted and looked liked Lucky Charms.

Huh. I hadn't noticed generics were gone--but then it's been a while, even before I switched to the co-op, that I've pursued that "follow the outer wall of the market" principle.

I remember having read The Man Who Folded Himself, but next to nothing about it. Only comment I can make is that I do occasionally think I ought to look for it and read it again, so the experience must not have been entirely negative.

1985 was the year that I was first mentioned in a fanzine (Uncle Dick's Little Thing) in a news report about the SMOF-BBS, which first went online as one of the first science fiction specialty bbs's on January 26th, 1985.

Right.

Someone had to kick it off. And it has mutated inside my head. Now I pass it back on to the world. Soon my revenge will be complete!!!!!1ONE!

Web Surfing
__________________________________________

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer networks, servers: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward, because we are not n00bs

Communications report!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Analysis, nerds and pedants!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, LOL!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer browser, websites: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward. Dammit, we're not n00bs!

Data filtering report!

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, ROFL!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Weblog administration report!

Ah ha! Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel, disemvowel)
Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel trolls)

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, ROFLMAO!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Make it stop, please!

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer networks, servers: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward — hey, look: b00bs!

Systems analysis report!

Ye canna change the laws of logic
Laws of logic, laws of logic
Ye canna change the laws of logic
Laws of logic, sir

Ah ha! Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel, disemvowel)
Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
Crap, the server crashed.

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them. WTF?

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

ALL UR BASE BELONG TO CATS!
MY BUCKET, HAVE YOU SEEN IT?
I CAN HAS PR0N?
OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!
Server meltdown. Network meltdown.
Computer meltdown. Brain meltdown.

Tubes all blocked.
The rest is silence.

Melissa @ 69:

A little Google research, and I turned up the term "No Frills Books" and "No Frills Science Fiction". After that, I was able to find this picture of the "No Frills Science Fiction" book:

"No Frills Science Fiction"

In June, 1985 I was recovering from my first and only (knock wood) surgery - the removal of an osteophyte (dang, that word is not in the spelling reference) and preparing for a big move from Utah to Illinois. That's quite the culture shock for a 13 year-old.

And speaking of generics (always popular in my household) I had a grey tabby named Generic; I had acquired her as an Easter gift in '83, and it took a month for a name to "stick". Generic was my dad's suggestion, based on her complete nondescript gray tabby-ness. She gained a "sibling", Spot, shortly after we adopted her. Generic only lasted one year in Il, before being hit by a car, but Spot was nearly 20 before he wore out.

Stephen Granade (#20): the 85 bus is one of a handful of MBTA buses that consistently runs on schedule. (The rest, of course, fail to do so with varying levels of failure from mild to "there's a bus route here?".)

Ken houghton (#24): I have both Bobby Pickett's "Star Drek" and The Firm[1]'s "Star Trekkin'"; the latter is the one being repeatedly quoted here.

[1] Not to be confused with either of the two "supergroup"s that used the name.

Owlmirror (#92): Bravo.

On knives: I have the Victorinox "Cybertool 34", because it has (among other features) Torx bits. I have found that it is a sufficiently versatile tool that I can disassemble a large rack-mounted server with no other tools necessary. I wouldn't recommend it as a boating knife, unless you're planning to sail around a data center.

A notable musical reference to 1985 is in the SR-71 song of the same title, most famously covered by Bowling For Soup (complete with a video referencing a number of 80s music video clichés).

"So tell me, future boy, who's the President of the United States in 1985?"
"Ronald Reagan."
"Ronald Reagan? The actor?"

(Please note I'm 5 hours east of the server time...)

Earl @ 91: How soon after that was "Godwin's Law" coined? I remember it being discussed one evening at Schultz's Beer Garden, and it certainly came up on SMOF-BBS.

Gursky 66: The Man Who Folded Himself is, in my opinion, the best time travel novel ever. YMMV.

PRV 79 As did the GRANULATED SUGAR you'd sprinkle on it in the morning, and which was sold on the opposite side of the isle from the CORN FLAKES.

Well, that's not so bad in Manhattan, but it's still kind of a long walk. Blocks and blocks, unless you're wayyy downtown.

1985 was when my first post appeared on Usenet. It was in rec.comics. It was a review of issue #7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which included the death of Supergirl.

I have fond memories from the mid-'80s of the generic bus in the Champaign-Urbana bus system. It was assigned to different routes, was painted with the classic olive green stripe, and cost less to ride than the other buses in the MTD.

Melissa,

I can't find any images of the generic books either. But there are what seem to be copies of the sf one ("Science Fiction I") selling on abebooks.com for $1.

Xopher @ #98: LOL! Yah caught me in another 'lexical' blunder. Good eye.

1985 - the year I graduated from high school AND discovered Beer. (I was a bit of a late bloomer.)

#89: I love Grocery Outlet. Friends and family call it (and places like it) "the used food store."

Not used as in digested and shat, but because it has a grotty thrift store vibe to it.

As PVR suggests, the place has entertainment value, as well as occasional wonderful bargains.

Last year I saw a shelf full of Pathmark house brand pop-tarts. I'm in Oregon; as far as I know Pathmark doesn't have stores west of New Jersey.

Once Grocery Outlet got a shipment of 5 lb. bags of things like collard greens and brussel sprouts. Very cheap, very good. I had hopes they'd show up again. Not to be. Wah!

Can anyone recommend a book on Russian daily life around the time of the Napoleonic Wars?

Insightful comment about the number 85. Witty reply to earlier comment.

See? I'm topical.

I remember generic products. "This product is suitable for everyday use. Color and consistency may vary." There was a generic Knight and Lady at an SCA event; even her favor was bar-coded.

I believe that by 1985 I no longer had to eat generic products. But in about '80 or so, I remember that they saved me from starvation, at a time when I had $60 to my name, and had to make that last for six months (food only; I had a different arrangement for my rent). That wasn't as ludicrous as it would be today, but still pretty extreme. Generic mac&cheese was 19¢ a box. You were supposed to make it with margarine and milk, neither of which I could afford; I'd cook it at noon and have half for lunch and half for supper. Breakfast was not a meal.

I did a certain amount of scrounging to supplement during that time. Also my sister gave me a huge bag of assorted potatos left over from the ag lab she worked on. That helped a lot. Also I never knew there were so many kinds! And I may have been one of the first people to eat what is now called a Yukon Gold potato; they were developed at Michigan State around then.

I won't eat box-mix mac&cheese now. I WILL eat the zingy pasta-cheddar casserole I invented, with the mushrooms and onions and sundried tomatos and the herbs and spices—but I never, ever make it with elbow macaroni.

1985. As someone else mentioned, that was the year Back to the Future opened. I hadn't seen Michael J. Fox before; I fell in instant lust.

On the down side, it was also the first year of the second Reagan administration, as watching that movie reminds us.

Stefan Jones @ 104

I used to love Grocery Outlet for the cereal boxes printed in Urdu and Hindi and Mandarin. Especially Count Chocula.

Bill @ 97: Yes, the SMOF-BBS was one of Mike Godwin's first online venues, but I think his meme was formed after he had spread his wings a bit to a variety of other online locations. My own "Bentsen's Defense" was first used in 1991 on austin.general.

While we are on the subject of the Man Who Folded Himself (but not did not spindle or mutilate), does anyone remember the title or author of a novel that came out in the last few years with a similar concept, a woman who receives a visit from an older version of herself, is given a time machine, and proceeds to jaunt all over the Multiverse, changing history to see what happens. The end, when she dies after having given herself the time machine, is very different. Well, it's different after she dies. It's irritating me like a mosquito bite that I can't remember who wrote it. And I liked it better than the Gerrold story, too.

Generics, yes. My mom always shopped for value, so I'm sure we bought a bunch. However, the only one I can specifically remember was the BEER, because I thought it was amusing. I turned 17 in 1985, which may explain that bit. 1985/1986 were also my maximal years of MTV watching.

Re knives: it is illegal for any person to be in possession of a weapon, including "any knife with a blade of 2 or more inches", within 1000 feet of a school in the state of Georgia. (O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1) You might want to consult your local laws if you regularly carry a pocketknife and might find yourself near a school. (Exceptions exist for certain categories of people, e.g. law enforcement personnel.)

Melissa @ #69, I certainly do remember generic groceries, but did not realize there had been generic novels.

Stefan,

The used food store! LOL! That fits entirely.

Although Grocery Outlet, as a chain, seems to be doing far better these days than it did ten years ago. Ten years ago, when we went to the outlet in Mt. Vernon, WA, it really was grotty. Dirty floor, bad lighting, hulking and unclean register workers.... Not attractive.

The location in Tacoma where we now shop is almost like a regular Safeway or Albertsons or something similar. Lighting is better, aisles (hah, Xopher) are clean and well organized, they even have produce now, and much of the discounted stuff is 'normal' brand; though you still see the off-name stuff, like the pop tarts you mentioned.

I'm always amused to find store brand Piggly Wiggly canned items at Grocery Outlet. Talk about seeing things not normally found in the West!

Bleargh. 2001, not 1991:

So we have Bruce, Stefan, and myself.

Any other Grocery Outlet shoppers here?

Bruce @109

Do you remember there being a war in your story? Your description reminds me of one recent story, but I hesitate to name it here because your description + the title could be a spoiler.

In some respects, bulk food sections are a modern version of generic foods.

Across the street from me is a WinCo, a huge no-frills supermarket. The bulk section is remarkable; everything from candy and dog biscuits to whole grain pasta and three-colored couscous.

Last month, when various news outlets were covering the "[Congressperson|mayor|governor] shops on a Food Stamp budget," I took some scratch paper to WinCo and figured out what I'd buy for $84 a month. It seems doable, and I'd probably eat better than a good chunk of Earth's population, but it would be a boring and rather starchy diet that requires lots of prep time and cooking. Lots of cabbage, potatoes, pasta, oatmeal, and so on. (Of course, not everyone lives next to WinCo. If you shopped at a ripoff urban grocer you'd be in deep trouble.)

Fidelio #44: Shouldn't that have been 'Bonus Amicus'?

Kathryn,

I don't remember a war, but I do remember gung gur cebgntbavfg ng bar cbvag fcrag n ybg bs gvzr va na nanybthr 19gu Praghel Ybaqba nffvfgvat n Ubyzrf-nanybthr va qrgrpgvba. That help?

I'm thinking of getting an e-book reader (sony's, maybe, depending on how nasty their file format/drm thing is)...anyone want to share experiences?

I have gone to Grocery Outlet; there is even one very near me. They're OK as far as amusing grocery shopping goes,and a reliable place to find good sardines, but for a real thrill of dependably exotic stuff (aisles and aisles of sauces! aisles and aisles of frozen dumplings!), and amazing fresh produce, I prefer Uwajimaya.

However, I will never again go to the one in the ID on the day the Mariners are playing at home. It's pretty visited by every Japanese tourist in the Northwest at such times, and I don't like crowds much any more.

Bruce @118,

Ah. Different story, and not ringing any bells.

Abi #62: Do you have a Ring of Doom?

abi @ 62... Abi Nine-Finger sounds almost as scary as Nightmare Abi.

Stefan Jones #88: What is wrong with sheep's milk? The cheesemakers of Roquefort would like to know.

Xopher #98: Or way uptown (former Inwood resident here).

And if abi is going to have two noms-de-terreur, I'd like to have one for myself. Considering that I almost blinded myself with a screwdriver last night while trying to set up blinds, something piratical might be in order.

Serge of the Seven Seas?

While we are on the subject of the Man Who Folded Himself (but not did not spindle or mutilate), does anyone remember the title or author of a novel that came out in the last few years with a similar concept, a woman who receives a visit from an older version of herself, is given a time machine, and proceeds to jaunt all over the Multiverse, changing history to see what happens.

Could this be Here, There and Everywhere by Chris Roberson? I haven't read it, but it sounds like the synopsis.

Serge #126: Wouldn't that make you a Tidal Serge?

Fragano @122:
Abi #62: Do you have a Ring of Doom?

No, but my doorbell does.

It's the sound that a double glazing salesman hears when he presses the button beside the door during the dinner hour, shortly before he is flensed in one neat, swift tongue-lashing and sent upon his way, still skinless.

I do it to phone spammers as well.

abi... Do you show them the skull that's encased in a bowling ball?

Sarah @ 105:

Personally, I'd have to say "War and Peace" is about the best novelization of Napoleonic-era life in Russia that I've ever read.

Andrew @ 55:

First, get one with a lanyard hook.

Second, I'd have to say that in my opinion (which counts for little if anything at all) the best knife is always the one that someone gives you...I had a Swiss Army Knife for about two decades based on it's status as "coolest gift I was given on my 11th birthday" and NOT on it's merits of practical usefulness.

After it broke from over sharpening and one-too-many tumbles down a rock wall after falling out of my pocket (no lanyard ring) I tried several alternatives.

For my personal taste, a leatherman tool with the needle-nose pliers in the fold up is the perfect multi-use tool. They make several that are durable, fit nicely in the hand, and have as few or as many "extras" as you need (but seriously, NO ONE needs an awl on their pocket knife).

For boating I'd get one with a nice serrated blade and a corrosion resistant finish. And a lanyard hook.

Trust me on the lanyard hook.

---

I used to have ellipsis-itis...but now I seem to have developed hyper-hyphenation-disease...is there a reliable and effective cure someone could recommend?

#124: Any reputable cheese maker would disown the grainy, almost tasteless sheep's milk concealed in those utility grade ravioli!

Abi @129,

You may enjoy the story I just told in the White Horse thread on why my acquaintance will never again get door-to-door religion salesmen.

Abi Nine Fingers sounds like one of a) a 19th century Cree Indian b) a Delta blues player or c) a minor character from "Goodfellas".
Or, indeed, all three.

#75: Muji opened shops in London a couple of years ago. Not bad.

#95: there was a band called SR-71? I'll file that along with the B-52s and U2. And, I suppose, the Eagles. And the Foo Fighters.

Any others? Was there a rock and roll band called the Phantoms? It sounds as though there ought to have been. Glamorous Glennis and The X-1-ettes? (better than Enola Gay and the Liberators)
Has Charlie Stross set up a cover band called the B-36s yet?

Kathryn @ 133:

THIS is why I HOPE to someday get a door to door religion peddler. It won't be unique, but it will be fun.

The follow up is also a good time waiting to happen.

ajay, expand to helicopters and you could have the Hueys, the Cobras, and the Apaches. Go further to the manufacturers and you could have the Bells and the Sikorskys.

Wesley @ 127

Yes, that's it. Thanks a lot, the itching has stopped.

Looking at the website: was the book published under two separate titles or are there two related books with the same protagonist? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ah, and then there's the best swiss army knife of all

Rats. How about a link that actually does something?

best swiss army knife of all

Karl @ 135 Thanks! First I laughed. Then I forwarded the link to my daughter, who is a student in a Catholic high school, with strict instructions that she was NOT to use it to get herself and her fanfic-writing friends in trouble. Now I'm still grinning.

Abi #129: Here we're less bothered by door-to-door salesmen. Telephone solicitors were another matter before the Do-Not-Call list, but now we're only bothered by 'charities'. We've had fewer calls though since a caller for a county police benevolent association got me:

Caller: ... and there's a death benefit as well.
Me: You mean you'd benefit from my death?
Caller: Oh, no, no, no.
Me: But you just said so. Why do you want my death?
Caller: I don't want you to die.
Me: Then why did you talk about benefitting from my death? This is just too weird. Goodbye.

Bill @ #97:

ISTR Godwin's Law appearing for the first time on Usenet, on misc.legal, something like 1987 or 1988. Mike was one of the more prolific posters there when I was following it.

My own religious door-to-door story was actually Eva's because I was off slaying schedules at Intel that day. She was newly pregnant with our second child and hthe doctor insisted she stay home and rest. This made her hungry for company but also a little cranky.

So she let the Jehovah's Witnesses* in and sat them down to talk. After a bit one of them noticed the family photograph. At the time I was thinner and had dark hair and beard. I was compared physically by several people to Charles Manson.

The JW was a little shaken by the picture, and then noticed a Frazetta print I'd hung on the wall**. He asked Eva what that signified, and she told him that was one of our holy pictures. They left hurriedly muttering something about "Satan".

* I resisted the temptation to use 'l' instead of an 'n'. Ain't I good?

** I think it was Sun Goddess but it was almost 30 years ago, and I'm overdue for ... something, don't remember what.

wow, fast-moving thread. Seemingly a few minutes ago, #69 and the No-Frills Book - there's a low-res file of it over at Library Thing:

http://www.librarything.com/work-info.php?book=8064884

And: a thread about pocket knife recommendations! (Man, I love this place...)

Since I went off to college a long time ago, I've carried a Swiss Army "Classic" on my key-ring. I've experimented with various larger models, right up to the Victorinox "Preposterous" model - but they wear right through your pockets.

So I've settled on an everyday knife on my key ring (currently, the version of the "Classic" that has a built-in LED), and I also keep a Special Occasion tool/knife somewhere in the vicinity, where it doesn't wear out my clothes: I keep a Leatherman tool in every glovebox, a specialized Victorinox in the laptop case, etc.

Fragano et. al @141,

I've mentioned who called us in other threads: it's a website where you can look up caller-ID numbers and enter in numbers of phone spammers calling. I encourage everyone to use it: the more info entered, the faster spammers and scammers' patterns are visible.

Recently I got back from a weekend trip to see 5-6 "missed calls" from one number.

I looked it up: it was a 'benevolent fund for firefighters and kittens' type charity. Not a full scam, but the majority of donations goes to overhead- ick. Other people reported how very, very difficult it was to get them to stop calling: as soon as you mentioned the dnc list they'd hang up. And then call again and again.

Ah. I was prepared. Since they'd hang up on people mentioning the dnc list, they were fair game. Note that I never... lied.

Ring. Ring. [Notes caller-id is from the spammers]
"Hello, who is calling?"
"This is the BFFFAK, is this Kathryn Fudsudlyjail? Do you know about the good works of firefighters in the face of dangerous fires...?"

"Are you calling about my dad?"
"What?"

"Because he's dead. Firefighters couldn't save my dad*."
"Wha...oh, I'm so sorry, and..."

"Don't you think it's a little too soon**? Why would I want to hear about fires now?"
"Err... well, firefighters..."

"Do firefighters think about giving to my family?***"
"I'msosorrytohearaboutyourloss. I'm going to put you on our do-not-call list, so no one from here ever calls again. AgainI'msosorry. Goodbye."

---------
* Not that we asked them to: he was in the hospital. No one could, including firefighters.

** certainly it was too soon from the last 6 times they'd tried calling me.

*** No. (Although they, on balance, might owe my dad some thanks. He did some nifty work as a forensics engineer on fire prevention.)

Kathryn from Sunnyvale #145: I'll have to try both of those approaches! The big problem with registered charities, which those firefighter and police 'benevolent associations' are is that they're exempt from the Do-Not-Call list.

You can be stopped, searched & your knife taken, if police in New South Wales think you look suspicious in a public place. I used to carry a smallish, fairly plain pocket knife in my bag all the time, but had to abandon the practice after the "it's illegal to carry a knife" law came in ... might be 10 years back.

An official "Do Not Call" list for Australia has just started, and I'm dead certain that the exemptions for charities & other 'good causes' will just become a loophole wide enough for the botheration to be hardly affected.

Stefan (#88) Now, of course, sheep's milk cheese is fancy, expensive, gourmet stuff, pecorino, & so forth.

they're exempt from the Do-Not-Call list

But it doesn't mean they don't have Do-Not-Call lists. It's just trickier to get on them.

Those charities and their overhead, boy-oh-boy. Let's talk about charities and direct mail and the efficiency they obviously don't feel they need to have in direct mail expenditures.

So an elderly relative of mine passed away 2 years ago, and I'm helping, as is all my family, (probate recently closed) to clean up and fix up the house.

She did donate to the Humane Society, we know that. But she was and continues to be on the lists of another 30 "Save the X sympathetic megafauna" charities*.

They send photos, and cards, and nickels, and quarters, and calendars. At Christmas they send Xmas cards, even thin ornaments.

They run inefficiently, and that annoys me, because they haven't noticed and don't care that she hasn't responded ever, especially ever in the past 2 years.

And, gah, catalogs. She did shop from 2-3 catalogs, not being able to walk well her last few years. So she'd get about 10 catalogs. I've been watching them. The catalogs will say they miss you, and that if you don't order soon (this when she never ordered ever) they'll stop sending the catalog. No, they'll just send 10 "we miss you" covers in a row, and never ever stop.

----
* I should take her name off. It only costs $1. Although that's $1 by credit card to the Direct Marketing Association. Not thrilled, that.

ajay, expand to helicopters and you could have the Hueys, the Cobras, and the Apaches. Go further to the manufacturers and you could have the Bells and the Sikorskys.

I don't think they have quite the same cultural traction as a B-52, U2, or SR-71, though. Plus, helicopters aren't the fastest, biggest, highest flying, or anything like that. They're airborne jeeps.

Not to mention, the actual model numbers, UH-1, AH-1, and AH-64, have almost zero cultural traction.

Is there a band called "Weapons of Mass Destuction"? That's got some traction, but it's negative. There is a band called "Anthrax" named after the bioweapon, but the band existed long before the anthrax scares.

Hm. "foo fighters" is an obscure ww2 term. My guess is if you want military terms for bands, look for more WW2 terms. That was the last "good" war, after all.

Re door-to-door religion salesmen, I once scared off a Jehovah's Witness by pulling out my Greek New Testament and challenging the translation of a particular passage she kept citing.

Not everyone is prepared to deal with an Episcopalian* who did the first two years of her A.B., Religion at a Baptist college.

-----
*Well, I was one at the time. It got better.

1985, according to a log I started keeping a few years before, was the year when I flew the most miles (Aussiecon 2, \and/ Norwescon via Atlanta (because it was the longest overnight return flight I could find, OK?)). Yes, I'm a geek. But I've got a homemade great-circle calculator and I'm not afraid to use it!

Andrew T: I second (tenth? twentieth?) Victorinox. I have the 3-bay enlisted model: Phillips screwdriver in place of a corkscrew (because enlisted men drink beer instead of wine*), awl, 2 blades, scissors, can & bottle openers, tweezers, and a plastic toothpick in a very compact package. I've used all of them. V are usually stainless steel, which is a good thing if you're around water but not great for cutting -- the blades don't seem to hold a good edge even when sharpened by a serious knife store. This may be a serious problem on a sailboat, less so on a motorboat.

* No, really, that's what the salesman said. And I pay heed to anyone who recognizes a stylized Cheshire cat from the other end of the store.

It's from a few years before 1985 ('82, to be exact) but Daniel Pinkwater wrote a YOUNG ADULT NOVEL...

Mary@119:

I have the Sony reader. The reader itself is fine and is stuffed with Neil Stephenson novels at the moment (I just finished the Baroque Cycle). The software is Windows-only, and the attached online bookstore has a disappointing selecton. There have been no problems putting "outside" books on there: I've loaded the whole Honor Harrington series off the CD that was included with the last book. The DRM is only slightly obtrusive - a one-time setup. I have not had to transfer my books between PCs yet so can't report on that.

If you're buying one, go to Borders and play with the demo unit there to see if you like the look and feel and if the screen is ok. The way the screen works, there is sometimes ghosting from previous screens. It also will store pictures (display is black and white only), and MP3s, which I haven't tried yet.

My biggest complaint is that if I leave it powered up, random bumps will flip pages. So I always bookmark my latest page, and usually power it off if I'm not actively reading.

I would love to have the Harry Potter novels or the Aubrey/Maturin series in an electronic format: anyone know where I might find them (if anywhere?)

Re JWs and their ilk:

Years ago, we had a sort of Pagan slan-shack going on the top floor of an apartment building. Unfortunately, the second floor was partly occupied by JWs who liked to knock on our doors first thing Sunday morning when we were recovering from the p/a/r/t/y ritual of the night before.

One day, a rather large member of our group got fed up with this. Saturday night, all 6 foot 2 of his wrestler physique took the biggest book we had and knocked on their door. He said,
"Hello, I'm from Odin's Witnesses and I'm here to talk to you about the Elder Eddas".

They never bothered us again.

Re generics:
At one point, they were so widespread here in Minnesota that a friend had a generic *party*. The invitations were plain black and white with a bar code, all the food and drink, including the beer, were generic. AND he made t-shirts for all attendess that said "Generic Guest" on them, with a bar-code; the host and his girlfriend's t-shirts had "Generic Host" on them.

Still have the t-shirt.

Melissa Singer @ 69 - Not only to I remember generics, I recall that Pathmark (a dodgy NY supermarket chain) had a whole line of them.

I once started a trend at a party by taking a plain white label, drawing a black stripe 1/2" from the top, neatly (for me) writing "NO FRILLS" above the line, "LARRY" below it and adding starbursts reading "CFC-Free" and "Dolphin Safe". Soon everyone was wearing inappropriate product attributes.

Oddly, now some of the store brand products are better than the national brands.

You can also send a postcard to the DMA for the 26c postage.

The $1 charge online is to prevent people from doing bulk unlist operations -- i.e., use a bot to submit an entire phonebook.

The sad part is the reason the charities resort to the geegaws and telemarketing is that it works. Most people don't just send checks out of the blue. From the charity's point of view, getting 10% of money contributed is better than 100% of zero.

Here I am mind firmly stuck in idle clicking thru bookmarks to find something to enjoyably pass the time till bed and what pops up but 1985. Well here I sit in my tee from the 1985 South Tower Race. Now all your comments have made that race a mindworm. I am repeating it over and over. Thanks a lot.
Then I read about 9 fingers and a mindworm of my friend 9 toes takes a firm grasp of my imagination.
Thanks again for nothing.

Re: Generics: I read a report of a blind taste test of various chocolates. The dark horse winner was Safeway Select Semisweet Chocolate Chips, beating out Vahlrona (sp?) and a multitude of other hoitytoity chocolates. I've used it myself quite a bit, and as long as you properly anticipate the higher melting point (they add heat-stabilizers to chips to keep them from melting, I hear), it makes a killer ganache.

Heresiarch, Haggen (Washington and Oregon only, I think) also has very fine semi-sweet chips, fine textured and intense.

One of these days, I've got to memorize the juicy bits from Mark Twain's The War Prayer. That could come in handy some day.

Earl Cooley III @ 160

If we're giving them prayers, what could be more appropriate than The Possibly Proper Death Litany otherwise known as The Agnostics Prayer ("To whom it may concern ...")

Kathryn from Sunnyvale at #84 wrote:

> ** Mostly. I did finally work out a rule for getting rid of bad books, because otherwise I'd be a Smaug with gold in my library.

What's your rule? I've been trying to purge lately and the best I've been able to do is "purge books while feeling sour and irritable".

Lila @150:
Sounds like the experience my friends gave the JWs once, entirely unintentionally.

They were student priests of the Carmelite order (discalced) studying at the Berkeley theological college. They were a little...unworldly. They were also, by house rules, in the custom of wearing their habits (brown, long tunic plus scapular plus capuce) around the house.

The house was an ordinary residential house on an ordinary street.

The brother in charge of opening the door on the fateful day was Thomas, who happened to be going bald at the time. His particular baldness pattern exactly duplicated the medieval tonsure, and he has a lean, aescetic face anyway.

So the JWs ring the doorbell, and this monk straight out of a medieval illumination opens the door. They begin the spiel - a little hesitantly - and he looks interested. He invites them in, offers them something to drink and some nibbles (they always had things around, because they always had people around). The other brothers gather to listen to these people, like it's another lecture at theological college.

Then they get out their triglot (Hebrew/Greek/English) Bibles and start looking up the relevant passages. Without really meaning to, they fall back into some long-running arguments about the translation of a couple of words, and some of the exegesis that falls out of that.

I think it went on for an hour before the priest in charge of the house came back from the shopping and rescued the poor JW's. I understand they haven't been back.

ajay @134:

Ironically, my mother's father's father was a nineteenth century Cree, we think. I don't think his name was Nine-Fingers.

There's an ad on the side that asks what the length of your fingers says about your personality. What the length of my fingers say is that I have gout.

Greg, #68, I'm the one who asked for the new thread to start with, and there's 163 posts when I get here!

Linkmeister, #77, I remember the generic cans at the commissary in the 1960s and on. They usually weren't even black and white, but black lettering on the can.

Fragano, #128, Ow!

Karl, #131, I use the awl on my Victorinix Swiss Army Knife. I use my regular awl at home much more often, but I keep the VSAK in the car for when I'm out.

"This morning the authorities entered the home on Babson and found it deserted, the floors slick with mud and seaweed. On the computer was the LiveJournal of Zachary Marsh, with a notice reading “Update Successful.”"

More of the story here.

Mary @ 119 Ebook Readers.

I read ebooks on: My desktop PC running Windows XP (19" CRT monitor), My Sony PSP (4.5" Backlit TFT) and My HTC s710 Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6 (2.5" Backlit TFT).

The Desktop PC can read everything I've thrown at it no matter what the DRM because all the umpty-billion ebook DRM formats have a reader that runs on Windows XP, but it's ummm, not exactly portable, and a 19" CRT isn't the greatest thing for reading books on. It's actually too big, and the brightness and contrast level I want for reading ebooks, is different from the one I want for doing other stuff.

...

The Sony PSP can't do DRM of any kind, but has a web browser so can read books in HTML and plain text format. Unlike a desktop PC it's actually portable, and the TFT screen is really quite reasonable for reading. However, it's fairly heavy, and the inbuilt web browser is not ideal for ebook reading as the controls are a bit clunky when reading a book. It also tends to get really slow on some HTML ebook layouts. Generally when they stick all the text for the entire book in one file and have a big picture of the front cover at the top of the page, it tends to have performance problems.

(Tip for reading Baan HTML formatted books on a PSP, link to the contents page of each book from your homemade booklist index page, rather than the usual Baan start-of-book page, as this will strip out all the navigation cruft that just gets in the way on the PSP.)

...

The phone can handle most DRM types because it's running Windows Mobile. As long as it isn't DRM'd PDFs -- too heavyweight, out of date software from Adobe -- I can probably find something that does the job to put on the phone. It is portable and light, and the screen is actually really nice, but obviously it's just too small.

It's not actually as bad as 2.5" sounds because most ebook reading software will let you jack up font size to something reasonble and set scrolling options and things. However 40 words per 'page' is not exactly ideal. I haven't even tried HTML or plain-text on it, I just can't see there being enough flexibiity in a web-browser or text-editor application to get a comfortable setup for reading on a screen that small.

...

So if you want a more-portable-than-a-laptop device primarily for reading ebooks on, I guess I would say you want a PDA of some kind running Windows Mobile/Pocket PC, with a TFT screen of a similar size to the PSP or bigger, should such a thing exist. This would give the most DRM compatibility in a smallish device, at a reasonable screen size for reading.

If you don't need *quite* as much DRM compatbility then a PDA with Palm-OS rather than Windows is probably just as good if not better.

You'll also want a flash memory card of an appropriate type to stick your books on.

If you don't mind being locked into a single DRM format then you have more choices, including the various types dedicated ebook reader hardware, for your first device, and then probably subsequently horribly limited ones for future devices due to the DRM lock-in.

If you don't need or want to read DRM'd material at all, you are in the happy position of being able to choose practically anything that's in the right form factor with a screen you like that can read html or plain-text, including Linux-y things like the Nokia N800 (as recomended by Mr. Stross I believe).

Steve @162,

My Friends Rush In rule:

Friends rush in. "Hey, late for the airport, gone in 30 seconds... Flying to Australia- 16 hours- plus layover- fully awake- need to borrow books. k...thx..bye." And they're gone.

While talking, they've taken several books off your shelves. Assuming that they're aware of what type of books they have*, do you feel compelled to grab any of those books away, because you like your friends too much to let them be trapped on an airplane with that book?

You've already read it, and you strongly feel it isn't worth your friends' time. If you won't let your friends read it, why would you not be a friend to yourself and stop yourself from rereading it?

Why do you still have it?

This is a rule / question I could apply while in in any mood, and I did. Note that I generally wrote the names down so that I could revisit them** if needed- funny, I've never missed them.

For example, me in a happy mood and contemplating my library:
"Would it make me less happy to think of my friends reading this book?" leads to
"Am I as happy knowing the book isn't on the shelf and is in this box?" leads to
"Am I happy the box of mediocre books is gone?" leads to
"I now have a shelf with room for new books. Yay!"

-----
* i.e. they know they're in the Economic Theory section, or you call out "zoology" or "Kierkegaardian existentialism" when they were about to choose a book. Also assume your small library of guilty pleasures is in another room, and that your friends can recognize your antique or collectible books.

** now I can and do take a digital photograph of what I sell or give away. When I go back to look at those pics, I've felt nothing but happiness that me-of-the-past gifted me-of-today with getting rid of that ugly stuff. And it isn't that I don't understand the "but I could use it someday" feeling.

Me @ 167

Baan HTML formatted books

And if you think those are something you should try reading SAP or Peoplesoft HTML formatted books on your PSP! Alas, the J.D. Edwards ones suck.

...Yes, I did actually mean Baen there :)

1985 was Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel, which I recall involved rogue schoolboys speaking Latin as an underground language.

As for Jehovah's Witnesses, I was doorstepped by a Mother and Daughter pair one day while working at home. The mother started talking about Eve crushing the serpent, so I got out Robert Graves's Greek Myths and explained about the cult of Ashtoreth, and she hustled her daughter out of the door rapidly...

Marilee @ 166:

You know, probably 2 or 3 times a week I get insomnia. Frequently I get up and web surf, searching for that one special link that will bring meaning and joy to the internet.

Up until now, it hasn't worked.

(Those following Marilee's link should also check out Subservient Chicken at the bottom of the referenced page.)

Serge, #28: Ask and ye shall receive.

Gursky, #66: It kept me tolerably well-entertained while sitting in the jury duty pool for several hours. I remember that I was mind-bent enough to shake my head after finishing it, that I thought it was worthwhile to have read it, and that I've not felt any need to read it again.

Have you seen LOLfeeds yet? Turn any LJ or RSS feed (including yours) into cat macros.

Larry Lennhoff@99: I think you mean "net.comics". (I got onto Usenet shortly after the Great Renaming. When I tried to post, rn advised me to go read "mod.announce.newusers"; I dutifully tried to do so, and was quite confused to be told that it didn't exist.)

On knives: I have a pocketknife I keep on my belt. It's this one. I didn't buy it, nor was it given me -- I sat down on a BART train one day, and there it was. It must have caught on the edge of the seat cushion and fallen off its owner's belt without him noticing. Really I ought to have turned it in to Lost and Found but I couldn't bring myself to.

"That was no ladle, that was my knife."
(I stole that one, yes.)

Lee @ 172... Thankyouthankyouthankyou! I now find myself before such an embarassment of riches that I don't know which Ted Cassidy picture to use in LiveJournal. (By the way, you knew that Cassidy's hand was Thing on The Addams Family, right?)

Patrick Connors @#153 & Skapusniak @#167:

Thanks for the info!

I shouldn't read books on the computer because I spend 8-10 hours a day in front of a computer, and my spine isn't wild about that. I shouldn't read them on anything smaller than a paperback because the 8-10 hours of computing is hard on the eyes as well as the spine. So it sounds like I could get the Sony reader and buy DRM-free content for it if I want to...that's good news. I'll go fiddle with it at the store and see what I think.

So, where do you buy your e-books?

abi @ 164... my mother's father's father was a nineteenth century Cree

But no Skrull in the family tree, right?

1985 includes one of my first clear memories, arguing with my younger brother about the gender of our soon-to-appear third sibling. He won the debate, and I remember my mother comforting me that really, I would end up loving my new little brother just as much as if he had been a sister, really truly! I didn't believe her but of course she was right. (Had to wait another four years for a little sister of my own, but eventually got one.)

I didn't see Back to the Future until 1997, but fell madly in love with it when I did. I suppose Xopher has dibs on Marty, though, having seen him first. (Rats!)

All this talk about Generics is fascinating! I much regret having never experienced them (although I am familiar with numerous "no-name" and "house" brands).

#117--you're right, Fragano, "Bonus Amicus" is correct Latin, but I wanted to be sure the product was entirely identifiable, because otherwise, where's the joke?

#93: The Encyclopedia of SF (1993) on that No Frills Science Fiction book:

"SILBERSACK, JOHN (WALTER) (1954- ) US editor and writer, active in the former capacity with Putnam/Berkley books 1977-81 [... snip further career details ...] His own writing has been, by comparison, peripheral, consisting of an anonymous sf spoof, No Frills Science Fiction (1981 chap) ..."

1985 was ... probably the hardest year of my life. It started with highschool, and ended with the death of my maternal grandmother. It still hurts.

(1984, by comparison, was almost certainly the best year of my life. A large part of me still lives there.)

1985 will always be Marty McFly and Doc Brown, and dreams of going back and making things better.

Ben @93: Thank you. That was indeed the book I was looking for. Thanks to the various others who posted additional bits of information. Though I was working for that publisher at the time, it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. My memory of that time has been largely overwritten by the ensuing couple of decades (especially the last dozen years [insert dd here]).

Stefan @116: Part of the point of the "congressperson on food stamps" experiment (my congressperson was one of them) was to demonstrate what people could afford _in their neighborhoods_. Not only do many urban neighborhoods not have _any_ supermarkets, they also don't have greengrocers. And to get to a supermarket, you have to either drive or take public transportation. Not everyone has a car, obviously enough, and trying to carry a week's worth of groceries on the bus or subway, well, it's a serious trial--and people can't afford to make an extra trip more than once a week. It's $2 each way in NYC right now if you're not bulk-buying your transit. I assume most of the people on food stamps are not able to bulk-buy transportation.

The other part of the food stamp experiment that was really interesting were the physical and emotional/psychological effects of eating that sort of diet. My congressperson reported feeling tired and cranky all the time, having substantially less energy, being unable to stick to his usual exercise/activity routine, not being able to think clearly, etc. This made me wonder how much diet was responsible for poor educational outcomes in families on food stamps/in poverty.

It's not just inner cities that have problems gaining access to food, either. At the other end of my neighborhood, a small supermarket closed a few years ago, replaced by a "nearby" and much larger branch of the same chain. The problem? The small market was that only supermarket near a number of senior living facilities. Most of these older people don't drive anymore for various reasons, though they are living mostly independently. The new, large market is too far for the seniors to walk to. Happily, the living facilities ultimately set up a shuttle service so that the old folks could do their shopping, but it's not free.

For reading e-books, I like my Palm, which as a bonus is my external brain: keeps track of my calendar, to-do list, contact list, and miscellaneous notes. It comes with a reader program, eReader, which works just fine for me, and will run programs like Mobipocket too, since some e-books are sold in that format.

The Palm Z22 is $100 and though the screen is small, I found it surprisingly easy to read lots of stuff on it. The Palm TX has a much nicer screen but is more expensive, in the $250-$300 range.

My understanding is that the Sony reader is a lot bigger, which would seriously cut down on its portability for me.

And at this time in 1985, I was coming up on eight years old and just finishing second grade. I can't be the youngest person reading this?

Kathryn from Sunnyvale #148: I tend to find that in such cases feigning complete insanity helps (some people might say I wasn't feigning).

Re: JWs

When my daughter was a lot younger, she and I wound up becoming fairly friendly with a young JW and her daughter, who was the same age as my child. For about a year she sporadically attempted to convert me. I think she was never really taught how to try to convert a Jew, though, because she was really bad at it. I was actually very curious about her faith, and asked a whole lot of questions. But alas, this never turned into a desire on my part to become a JW. Also, I was newly involved with what has since become "my" synagogue, so after a while it must have become clear to her that I was just not interested. I was never less than respectful of her faith, though, and we talked a lot, as time passed, about faith and practice, about educating our children, etc.

Eventually, we were invited to her daughter's end-of-school-year (because they don't have birthday parties) party. We were the only non-JWs there. I think that no one outside of my friend's husband knew that we were Jewish until we were well into the festivities; then there were all sorts of awkward Jewish cliches trotted out (talking about education, someone said, "your people really value education, don't they?"; talking about how JW's tend to marry within the faith and how my friend was unusual because her husband was a convert rather than born into the faith, someone said, "well, Jews tend to marry their own, too, right?"). Ignorance rather than bigotry, you know?

Anyway, it was fascinating.

It was also the last time we saw them socially. I have a feeling that the elders who were at the party came down on my friend pretty hard for associating with a non-JW. And I suspect they figured out that I was the source of some questions she'd asked during the preceding year or so (oops, that was bad of me, but it wasn't on purpose). We saw them from time to time in the neighborhood, of course, but it wasn't like before. About 2 years later she stopped by my table in a local eatery to say that the family was relocating to a predominantly JW town somewhere in the South. And that she and her husband were in counseling.

I wonder about her from time to time.

Generics: essentially all UK supermarkets have their own line of "no frills" products. The Tesco spirits have a plain white label with text in black, Helvetica caps - for example, SCOTCH WHISKY (oh, we're stripping html now are we?)

Muji: had it in Leeds in '98 or thereabouts.

Blades: I used to carry a Victorinox everywhere, and I also had a Swisscard - a tool they make that fits into a credit card-sized wallet pouch. However, I used the Victorinox to activate a sealed USB port on a college computer, and (floating on a wave of geekifaction) left it there. The card remained in my wallet until I forgot it was there and Heathrow security nailed the fucker..

Marilee #165: Thank you!

Fidelio #180: You're right. On t'other hand it has a bit more sonority in straight Latin (and I'm amazed that I got the Latin right).

I find it immensely easy to let go of books now, since I started on bookmooch.com . My old, unwanted books go to someone who wants to read them, and I get new books to read myself. It's amazing how different a library looks when the question are:
-Will I reread this book?
-Is this book good enough to keep, or should I trade it in for a new one?
-Do I have a sentimental reason to keep this book?
-How easy is this book to replace?
-Have I tried to read this book more than once, and then stopped? Do I feel like giving it another go?
-What category is this book in? Is it an Twinkie book, or something more substantial? Do I need another Twinkie book/series in my library right now?
-Do I want to have this book in my library to lend to other people? For potential future children/ current visiting relatives to read?
-Does my sweetie want to read this? Should I lend it to hir mother/sister, then put it up on bookmooch?

I like your method, Katherine. I've found it very freeing to be able to let go of books I no longer want, of clothes I won't wear, of the things that clutter up my life and accumulate. It's easier for me to let go when the objects I'm letting go of are going to good homes, and people who want or need them.

Apropos of previous Trek comments this abomination is making it's way into the world

Can someone head out to California and explain to Mr Wheaton and Takei why involving themselves with these people is a bad bad bad idea?

I don't automatically keep any book I've bought anymore. Moving from Canada to California, then later to New Mexico, has taught me the virtue of weeding as I go, not all in one mad session. Still, I enjoy being surrounded by books. Can't help it.

Half-awake JW memory:

My entry yard is a series of steps filled with loose pea gravel, with floating pavers of various shapes. The utilitarian rectangular concrete ones are set to accomodate the pace of people between 4'6" and 6'2" (this feature also acts as a drain feature to keep the roof water from running down the driveway). One wintery afternoon the dogs started their "visitors" bark, and I got to the door in time to see a young woman carrying a fist full of "Watchtowers" and a Bible, wearing an unseasonable but flattering dress and pumps with three inch heels, carefully picking her way between the pavers, avoiding the grey concrete and multicolored Escheresque fish and roughly split basalt with equal care to sink her narrow heels half their length in loose gravel.

I'm sure any number of instructive analogies could be derived from that scene.

There are apparently Vulcans among us, we know them as Canadians.

Fragano @ 194... Does that include French-Canadians? Or are they more like Romulans?

1985 is the year of all the events described in the famous, award winning novel "One year later" by George Orwell

Serge #195: I'd presume that it would.

Kate Nepveu @ 184

I've been seriously thinking about a Palm now that my Newton** is on its last legs. I've been holding out for a smartphone, because the idea of having 3 gadgets on my belt** was just too much. But now that I've got an iPod shuffle that clips to my shirt, and a cable that hooks it up directly to my hearing aids, I'm not so concerned about that.

So is the Palm screen, either Z22 or TX, really comfortable for reading over long time periods (say a 4 or 5 hour plane flight)?

* Yes, an Apple Newton 2100. If you think a Sony E-Reader is too big, then you don't even want to think about this monster. But the screen is large and has good resolution even by today's standards, and I've read books on it quite comfortably. Still, because the software is pretty much unmaintainable anymore, I use less and less of its capabilities. These days it's primarily an encrypted password store.

** PDA, phone, music player.

fragano @ 194

corrected link

I think I'll avoid that drug, thankyouverymuch

P J Evans #199: Oops! Thanks.

Bruce Cohen: I found the Z22 surprisingly readable, and have read entire books on it. The TX has better dpi and more screen room than the Z22 (320 x 480 pixels, somewhere over 100 dpi v. 160x160, somewhere under 100 dpi (I'm not going to get out a measuring tape, even if my old Z22 weren't in Canada at the moment)).

I haven't looked at the in-between model, the E2; when I upgraded I wanted Wi-Fi.

My area Staples has handhelds out on display to play with, which might be worth looking at to get an idea of what you think. And the TX does play music, though not stuff bought from iTunes.

There are also Windows Mobile PDAs, of course, which I haven't used. When I started on PDAs I wanted something small & relatively inexpensive to see if I'd really use it, which meant the Z22, and then when I upgraded I was used to the OS and had all my data in Palm format.

Re generics: Shortly after our first child was born, we got a case of Berkley and Jensen (as in, BJ's Warehouse Club house brand) diapers.

It's the perfect diaper for the baby who never poops. Everyone else, umm, not so much.

Fragano @ 194

I'm getting a 404 Page not found error on that link. Has the Vulcan - Canadian cyberwar finally begun, do you think?

P J Evans @ 199

Oops, cross-posted with your fixed link. Thanks.

Kate Nepveu @ 201

Thanks, I'll take a look at them.

I'm not particularly interested in a Windows Mobile device; I've been very unhappy with most attempts to use Windows in memory-constrained or real-time environments. It was a while back, but I've taken the incident of the Navy Smart Ship to heart.

In 1985 I was 17 years old, and went to the Chicago Comicon with one of my geek girl friends. It was the 10th anniversary of the con, so all kinds of folks were there. Frank Miller, Bill Sienkevitz, Marv Wolfman, Paul Smith (who was drawing X-Men at the time), Dick Giordano...it was held in 2 and 1/2 rooms at the old Ramada O'Hare hotel.

Pretty much the only other girl in evidence was the one DC had paid to dress up as Wonder Woman. My friend and I would get in a line to get an autograph, and the artist or author would instantly wave us to the front of the line - "hey! girls! come up here!" Steve Rude came up and introduced himself to me in the dealer room but I blew him off because I was shy of strangers and hadn't heard of him...d'oh!

Every artist or writer had a little circle of fanboys huddled around them, drinking in whatever they had to say. The guys in a circle around Frank Miller were all comic book pro's.

It was one of the best days of my life, and one of the very few where being female made everything that much more wonderful.

I used to carry a VSAK and a Leatherman.

The modern paranoia on weapons has rather stopped me doing so regularly.

1985 was just about the end of relatively relaxed attitudes to toy guns. I recall several people at Albacons in Glasgow in well-armed hall costumes. Then there was the Hungerford massacre, and the politicians started.

Alex @187: so far I have lost two Swisscards to airport security, simply because the things are so unobtrusive I forget to decant them into hold luggage before going to the airport. After the second one, I replaced it with the tiniest of the conventional knives, which also makes a very nice handbag knife. That one simply seems to have been eaten by the furniture or my suitcase [sigh]. I need to go and get a new Swiss Army Something soon.

#205:Have you thought about a Nokia N800? Charles Stross has blogged about how much he likes it for reading e-books, IIRC.

I'm also looking for a Newton replacement. But, in my case, I want it to be an electronic moleskine pocket notebook. There's something that's almost what I want on the market. If the Newton were pocket-sized rather than the size of a VHS tape, I'd probably make do with the 10 year old tech. I've pretty much eliminated all other PDAs because their methods of text entry don't really work for me.

1985 was an intense year for me. This, the invitation to free associate to "she may be fine," and the "sky isn't evil" thread have all conspired on my brain to examine the psychological nature of my tendency to overeat.

Bear with me.

In 1985 I was 10. A few years earlier, I have one of those clear and distinct memories of wearing a shirt that said "knockout" on it with a picture of a "pretty girl" (something that must have been a gift--not the kind of clothing my mother generally would approve of), and my father and one of his friends discussed how much potential I had to, in fact, become a "knockout."

I was 8 or 9 at the time. The expectation this laid on me was anxiety-producing, to say the least.

In 1985 my parents split and my mother started making plans to move us across the country, back to the bosom of her family. The plan was to drive over the summer, with all the earthly belongings we had that were deemed needful, from San Diego to Buffalo. It was going to be an adventure.

Instead, I came home from school a month before summer vacation to my mom packing up the house and announcing that we were leaving that very night. She sold our bikes, desks (new that year for Christmas, beloved grown-up furniture) and the TV to finance the trip. We didn't get to say goodbye to anyone but one family of friends who drove us to the airport. In secret. My father didn't know until the deed was done.

I saw him once more, a year later, when he came to visit his own family. Then he dropped out of my life and committed suicide when I was 17.

So: anxiety over potentially sexually attractive self + anxiety over lack of control over my own life = subconscious sabotage of appearance by means of hoarding and self-medicating with food? Where does the loss of father figure in?

Hmm. Maybe therapy would be a good idea. Thanks, 1985.

Marilee @ 165:

I stand surprisingly corrected...but I have to ask, what possible purpose does it serve? I am certainly not the most "outdoors-y" person under the sun, but I've done my fair share of "outdoors-y" activities with very "outdoors-y" types...and no one has ever been able to either explain it's purpose or recount a practical use for it...

..and you have TWO no less! I stand intrigued. I always figured someone needed such a thing somewhere, as it was important enough to be included on your standard 1980's era SWK; but please tell me what it is used for, I feel very ignorant in "the ways of the awl".

(I hope this doesn't sound sarcastic, I am genuinely both curious and delighted that it has a practical use. I've wanted to know what earthly purpose it served for YEARS.)

Andrew T (#55): What do you want the knife to do?

There are lots of knives, and they all do one thing, cut. Some are better for cutting some things than others.

When you say pocket knife, do you mean a "swiss army" style tool? If so you still have a lot of choices, all of which depend on what you want it to do.

I carry a knife, pretty much all the time. Depending on where I am, which knife I carry chages.

I also carry a multi-tool. If I had it to buy all over again, I might make the choice to get one with a hoof-pick, instead of the second knife blade.

But maybe not, I suspect the hoof-pick isn't as strong as I'd want it to be, and I dislike combination serrated/smooth edges, so the trade-off might be worse than having to add a hoof-pick to my knapsack when we hit the trail.

Here are the questions I ask myself when selecting a knife.

1: What am I going to cut?
2: How large does it need to be?
2a: Will this blade shape cut what I want it to?
2b: Is this knife a comfortable size to carry?

Will you be using a lot of rope? Doing a lot of knotting? Then you might want to get a knife with a marlinespike/fid.

If you're going to be dealing with a lot of fish, one with a longer blade, and not as deep from edge to back, and a long point (basically a filet knife) might be the thing.

It might be you want to do what I do, and carry a knife for cutting, and a multi-tool (I like the Gerber, because you can select some of the tools, and the opening/locking mechanism is built in a way which makes it more comfortable in the hand) for other things.

Leatherman tools have edges which bite, and Buck has a vise-grip effect, but at the cost of being harder to manipulate. From personal experience it also has some design flaws which lead to sticking, and binding, or just failing. Not such a big deal if you can get to a shop, or live without it for a few weeks while it's being repaired; but if you are away from shore, that could be a problem.

1985... I think that was the former half of my fifth grade school year, which was spent unhappily at St. Catherine of Sienna (as opposed to every other year of my K-12 schooling spent more or less happily at Metairie Park Country Day--if the folks at MPCD picked on me, it was put in perspective by some really vicious bullying at St. C's). That would make it also the latter half of my fourth grade school year, which was positively halcyon. Had a mad crush on my best friend, who didn't seem to mind; loved my homeroom teacher; learned how to quilt, crochet, knit, and cross-stitch in that homeroom; practically lived in the lower school library.

1985 was one year before the Challenger disaster. It was one year before I was diagnosed with acute myelogenous (sp?) leukemia, which had a lot to do with my parents returning me to MPCD. ("If she's going to be in and out of school all the time, she might as well be where she's familiar and happy.") My braces came off early so I wouldn't have to deal with them on top of everything else; they never went back on and I'm just fine with that.) It was a good year for me and pop radio, although it was near the end of that honeymoon period. Also a good year for game shows, which I got to watch a lot of due to being in the hospital instead of school.

I think that may also have been the year Pope John Paul II held Mass at the New Orleans St. Louis Cathedral (unless that happened in 1986), and I wasn't allowed to go not even wearing an anti-germ mask, but a friend brought my prayer book to be blessed and the physical evidence of this was the way the pouring rain caused the dye of her skirt to run and form a tortoiseshell pattern all over the book which was in the skirt's pocket. She kept apologizing. I kept telling her it was beautiful.

I don't have any useful Swiss Army Knife information beyond that I use the awl to flip DIP switches "awl" the time.

Karl, #211: It'll punch a hole in damn near anything, with relatively little effort. There are times when that's an extremely useful thing to be able to do.

I don't carry a pocketknife of any sort -- but I jokingly refer to my nail clippers and (metal) nail file as "the poor man's Swiss Army Knife". The clippers can be made to perform as scissors for small jobs (e.g. opening stubborn plastic bags or trimming threads), and the file emulates a not-very-sharp knife (with enough of a point to pierce most tape), a box/letter opener, and a screwdriver.

Karl Kindred @#211: You can use an awl to punch a new hole in your belt. Or the upholstery of the car seat.

kouredios @#210: therapy can make a world of difference, I definitely recommend it. And I'm so sorry about your father.

Melissa Singer @ 183 : At the other end of my neighborhood, a small supermarket closed a few years ago, replaced by a "nearby" and much larger branch of the same chain. The problem? The small market was that only supermarket near a number of senior living facilities. Most of these older people don't drive anymore for various reasons, though they are living mostly independently. The new, large market is too far for the seniors to walk to. Happily, the living facilities ultimately set up a shuttle service so that the old folks could do their shopping, but it's not free.

That's happening quite a bit in Seattle. Albertson's shut its Greenlake store (soon to be high-priced condos), which was right near a large assisted living facility. I used to see lots of folks with walkers going back and forth as I sat and had my coffee ouside the Peet's that was equidistant between the two. Now there's a lot less of that kind of foot traffic.

I don't know if they've set up a shuttle to the nearest big market (a really bad QFC). What I wonder about, though, is how much less exercise a lot of those folks are getting and what effect it's having on their health.

Mary Dell @ 215: Thanks. As I've been told over and over, I adapt well. But I've been wondering lately where there's more repression there than I originally thought. I know I skew young for this readership, so I figured there was wisdom to gather on the subject.

I used to keep a keychain-sized Victorinox this one, but branded with the school I used to work for. Alas, I didn't treat it well and it's kind of rusty now. I find myself missing it all the time. Handy.

Regarding knives, if you are planning on using the knife as a knife, and have any klutz genes at all, I strongly recommend making sure you get a lock blade.

I almost cut a huge chunk out of my middle finger in girl scouts (cutting balsa wood of all things) because my girl scout knife was not a lock blade.

Remember that you'll be cutting with your dominant hand, and any damage you do will severely inconvenience you for quite awhile afterwards.

Thirty years later I still have the scar on my finger and nail--although in another thirty years the scar on my nail may be gone. (I almost certainly should have gotten stitches, but emergency room visits were expensive, so no stitches.)

JC @ 209

The problem I have with most smartphones is that they're half-vast PDAs and not such great phones. I have a Motorola RAZR that I love because it's small, has a very good keypad, and good sound, even on speaker. I"d have to find a smartphone that was as good a phone.

want it to be an electronic moleskine pocket notebook.

That would be great. I have a real moleskin notebook I use for poetry and random story and animation ideas. I love it. And it's larger than pocketsize, so I have to carry it unless I'm wearing a jacket, and I still love it.

I've pretty much eliminated all other PDAs because their methods of text entry don't really work for me.

I have some concerns about that; my handwriting sucks, and my Newton puts up with it nicely. And I'm not keen on having to use Graffiti or anything else that make me adapt to the device.

In 1985 I was two and three years old. I remember a flash of my preschool classroom. That's about it for identifiable 1985 memories.

(Oddly, I remember my second birthday but not my third. This may be because I got a shiny tricycle horn for my second birthday, and it made an impression on me.)

I do remember Ronald Reagan being president, but I'm pretty sure that was closer to the time when he wasn't anymore....

PDAs/e-books: I wonder how the iPhone is going to be for reading them. Seems like it'd be reasonable, with the fairly large screen. (My boyfriend will be in San Francisco on the day of the launch -- not specfically for the launch, but he'll be there anyway. We get too excited about gadgetry. I doubt I can afford one for quite some time, but....shiny....)

You people are making me feel very, very old (I had my 33rd birthday in 1985, and got pregnant with my first child in August of that year).

kouredios @#217: Therapy has really helped me to get a handle on assorted crappy childhood experiences. My goal getting into therapy is always to get back out of it--I'm pretty independent, so I just like to be able to put a name and a strategy to the problem and then go deal with it on my own--but others use it as a regular & ongoing support mechanism, and that seems to work well, too. Feel free to email me if you want to talk more about it.

My advice (to anyone considering therapy) is to make a list of what you think you could accomplish by going to therapy. If the finished list seems significant to you, then it's probably worth a shot. If the stuff you want in life is better accomplished by taking a pottery class or volunteering at the senior center, that will become apparent as you write it up.

The other advice I'd give is to try to match the therapist to whatever you're trying to work on. A lot of therapists, when confronted with an issue they haven't studied, will try to use the tools they already have to help you with the problem, rather than referring you to an appropriate specialist. But in my experience this can do more harm than good. For example, if you're troubled by phobias, you don't need the "whatever you're feeling is valid" approach.

JESR @ 221... You people are making me feel very, very old

I get that feeling more and more too, young at heart as I may be.

Larry @216: I'm sure the lack of walking impacts them. There are two elderly people who live on my floor in my apt. bldg. On days when the weather is not good or their health prevents them from going outside, they exercise by walking up and down the hall for minutes at a time, once or twice a day. It's better than nothing, but it's not much.

JESR @221: I was in my mid-20s in 1985 but had been working full time in publishing for 7 years by then. They're making me feel old, too.

Kathryn @ 168:

I like your "Friends Rush In" rule. I'm about 2/3 through sorting through all 114 cartons of my books, deciding which go on shelves (about 25%), which go back into storage, and which get culled. My rule for culling seems to be "am I ever going to re-read this again?" It's much harder to decide which books go into storage, and which stay within reach. (This partially explains why there are still 30+ cartons to deal with, eight months after move-in; severe back trouble and fibro flares are the rest of the explanation. One of my friends has dubbed herself Igorina and come over once a month to do the lifting of boxes. The phrase "yeth, mithtreth" is heard frequently.)

Bruce @ 219

I find that Graffiti isn't too difficult, if I stay in lower case. The PDA came with a pair of stickers that live on the inside cover of its case, and tell me how to do Graffiti for when I'm misremembering how to do it.
It isn't really a problem for me, as my PDA functions as an electronic 3-inch D-ring binder, carried for reference purposes, rather than for making notes or other things, where paper works just fine for me.

kouredios @ 217

One thing I will tell you, there's no such thing as being too old for therapy, or waiting too long after a trauma. I'm just starting to find out things about myself I did not get at all*, and I'll be 61 next month. It's actually rather exciting.

* not bad things, just things I didn't realize, that make a difference in the way I live.

Bruce Cohen: the TX and Z22 both have on-screen keyboards, for tapping with stylii, that pop up on request. I think they're fine but my husband think they're too little. You sound like you've tried Graffiti, so I'll just say for others that I was surprised at how natural it was.

Caroline, the iPhone's screen is apparently roughly the same as the TX's, so should probably do just fine assuming the software is available.

I'm as sane and reasonable as I am today because of two things: therapy and magic. If they're really distinct. Certainly they overlap by quite a bit, and the most effective magic I've ever done has been therapeutic magic.

I'm a bit wacky even today. I've mostly managed to keep the good parts. I'm able to not alphabetize my vitamins, though it does occasionally bug me that they're not in order.

I'm not all done yet. I'm still in therapy. But great progress has been made.

If you think therapy might be a good idea, it almost certainly is.

#219:The problem I have with most smartphones is that they're half-vast PDAs and not such great phones.

You know that the Nokia N800 is not a smartphone, right? (It's a small Linux based tablet.)

I have the Motorola RAZR too, because it's small and so it fits in my pocket. Of course, so does my moleskine notebook. It's only 3.5x5.5in. I'm still looking for the electronic equivalent because everything I scribble enters a computer at some point.

I don't do well with Graffiti either. The Newton does a terrific job with my handwriting. WinXP Tablet results are mixed at best in English. (It's Chinese recognition is usable.) ritePen in conjuction with WinXP Tablet works scarily well. I'm left with the awful feeling that whatever I end up with may have to run Vista.
(At the size of a pocket sized moleskine notebook, you don't get a proper keyboard. So handwriting recognition needs to work.)

Xopher @229: Wait, you mean alphabetizing vitamins isn't _normal_? (or, why I take a multi . . . )

When I was getting my comics once a month by mail (a nice big box of stuff), I read them in alphabetical order by title unless a storyline crossed from one mag to another in non-alpha order. But it always griped me to have to put something into the stack out of order.

Heh.

1985 was the year when, among other life events, I found myself in a midshipman's summer white uniform, standing in the middle of a nighttime protest in Manila, Phillipines, with several thousand very agitated people who— I would only learn today because I finally had cause to look it up on the web— were mainly concerned about the trial of Fabian Ver, one of the Rolex 12, for the assassination of Ninoy Aquino based on the findings of the Agrave Commission, which was basically a captive pet menagerie of the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. The trial was apparently not inspiring much confidence in the regular population.

I saw many things in my first real liberty outside the United States of America. Some of them... I wish I had never seen. Others, I hope I never forget.

re Swiss Army Knives.

There are two makers. Victorinox, and Wenger.

I have owned both. For some things I prefer the former, for others, the latter.

I think Wenger has better knives, saws, awls and can openers.

Victorinox I prefer for tweezers, scissors and the eyeglass screwdriver which threads into the corkscrew.

Knives are personal. I'd not keep one in a pocket. Then again, I try not to keep much in my pockets, because I find having lumps on my thighs unpleasant.

I wear, as a rule, a Buck 110 folder on my belt. On the belt I can always get to it, even when sitting down, in the car, on a horse, etc..

One of the things I like about the Buck that it take an edge well, and that edges wears well.

Things I don't like about it... there is nothing to prevent it from slipping back into my hand. In a wet/slippery environment I prefer something with a finger guard, because I've had things slip backwards, and cut me.

Lila (#111) It is a quirk of knife laws, pretty much everywhere, that having a knife; pretty much any knife, is a violation of some statute.

Re Grocery outlet. There is a related chain in the Central Coast of Calif. (Cookie Crock). They are decent. For some things, they are great, best price, and supply, for tomatillos in San Luis Obispo.

But they ran the stupidest add. The guy said he saved $50 a week, which meant he was saving $5,000 per year.

CHiP (#151) The only difference on the models is that. The real knives for the Swiss Army are flat, two-bay, about 3" long. Have one knife, a can opener, and; for the enlisted, a bottle opener; for the officers, a corkscrew.

I never got the one the Swiss officer was supposed to send me, though the Greek one did send me a Greek Marines beret and flash.

Karl Kindred (#211) The awl is designed to make holes in leather. It can also be used for small holes into/through wood.

The reason I prefer the Wenger awl is that it has a hollowed out ege, something like a gouge, which reduces the energy required. That makes it more comfortable in the hand.

Mary Dell @119: I got up close and personal with a Sony Librie ebook reader the day before yesterday. Interesting technology, but don't touch it with a bargepole. (Shorter version: you can't load files directly onto it -- you have to convert them into a native file format using Sony's own ebook library software, which sucks mud through a micropipette.)

My ebook reader of choice is still my Palm TX; reasonably affordable, takes 4Gb SD cards (that's a lot of ebooks, plus mp3s, the odd MP4 movie, games, my life's work tucked away in a corner, and so on), screen is okay, and so on. And they've been around long enough you can find second-hand ones on eBay. Nothing else quite matches it in terms of stability, price, battery life, and flexibility, although some of the cheaper UMPCs could give it a run for the money (f you're willing to carry something that large around everywhere).

1985: The year I graduated high school, got my first girlfriend, failed a semester of college (related to the girlfriend), got my first job in retail (B. Dalton Booksellers).

I don't really recall much of the first half of 1985, the year sort of starts, in my mind, with June, and ends in the June of 1986.

If I add the events of that chunk of the calendar, it was even more eventful.

1985 - Celebrated my 35th birthday. Finally recovered from a serious case of unrequited infatuation. Rented a car and drove all around the Sierra Nevada and Northern California for vacation. Stayed in a motel in El Portal outside Yosemite; from my room I could hear the Merced River bubbling away.

Not the best year, but not too bad.

2007: Am stranded in Mesa, Arizona with a dead laptop and very little connectivity.

Holy crap, these threads move fast.

Christopher Davis #95: A notable musical reference to 1985 is in the SR-71 song of the same title, most famously covered by Bowling For Soup (complete with a video referencing a number of 80s music video clichés).

And far and away the best version of that song was done by Richard Thompson on his 1000 Years of Popular Music project.

In 1985 I was three, and not up to much.

Teresa @237,

Anything we can do to help?

(Afraid I don't know anyone in Mesa/ Phoenix closer than 2 degrees of separation. Hey, Fluorosphere...)

Do you know why the laptop is dead?

No idea. I can faintly hear the hard drive power up, but the screen stays completely dark.

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

1985 was year I turned 13, started high school that fall. I drank socially, but deliberately got drunk just for the experience, which wasn't bad. That's the only time I've been drunk. Having a family of addict and alcoholics takes most of the romance out of recreational drug use.

Musically I think of Peter Gabriel and Scritti Politti.

Politically, helping out with the construction a figure of a commando/guerilla with a rotating sign label "Terrorist" on one side and "Freedom Fighter" on the other. You gotta look out for those politcally aware drama geeks.

Oh, and that's the year I started formally taking Latin. My Latin is barely good enough to get abi's jokes.

My widowed uncle is marrying a long-time friend who lost her spouse many years ago in Mesa tomorrow, if you're in the mood for a wedding.

Thanks for the comments re: therapy.

For about 4 months, I taught English at a theraputic boarding school. The academic side of the place was broken; they hired me as a department head but didn't authorize me to make any needed changes and were hopelessly hidebound for all of their 6 years of existence. Plus, they were run for profit. Messed up priorities all over the place, e.g. $4000 wide-screen HDTV for the common area, but only 6 non-functional computers for the whole school building.

But I did learn a lot on the theraputic side of things. Teachers were required to participate in mixed group therapy once a week (the one day the teachers ran the asylum at night), and I learned a lot. One of the things I came away with is the distinction between cognitive and emotional progress. I think I've got the cognitive down; I analyze everything to (if it's possible) a fault. I'm just not sure where to go from there. So I've been seriously thinking about finding someone who can help me with the non-cognitive side of things.

Of course, the rest of the experience at that school was so frustrating and soul-crushing that I think I may have been clinically depressed for those 4 months. Silver lining though, huh?

Thanks Mary Dell. I may take you up on the email invitation.

Teresa, could it be something as simple as the screen being shut off? My work laptop has three modes: laptop screen, external screen, and both. It's controlled by a button with a blue screen on it (meaning you have to hold down the blue function key to make it work).

I beg your pardon if you've already thought of this/tried it, or if your laptop has no such feature.

237-246: So what kind of laptop is it? Anyone know?

1985. I was 15, and it encompassed the latter half of my sophmore and first half of my junior years in high school.

I went to my second Boskone.

I was listening to WFNX. That was the year the Smithereens' "Especially For You" came out. "Blood and Roses" blew me away.

A lot of the other memories have to do with boys.

Teresa, it's also possible that it's simply decided that it's hooked up to an external monitor, even if it doesn't have an actual hardware button as Xopher describes. Mine occasionally does this in reverse -- it suddenly forgets that it's sitting on a port replicator hooked to an external monitor and keyboard. If it's a Windows box, booting in safe mode can clear odd glitches like this.

#141 Fragano Ledgister

The best way I found to get rid of charitable fundraising calls is to tell them "I don't have a lot of money, but I do have a lot of time. Where can I volunteer?" Then I get to be all earnest while they hem and haw around.

After a couple of conversations like that, all the calls from charitable organizations stop. It's disappointing. Sorta.

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Teresa @240,

One diagnosis test you can do is to look at the dark screen with a flashlight.

If your screen shows a very, very dim display, then something might be wrong with your laptop's backlight or the inverter which provides power to the backlight. You'll have to bring your laptop to a shop to deal with those.

If instead it's fully dark, then it could be a problem listed upthread.

------------
If it ends up that repairing the laptop is too expensive, and you have an older laptop, there's an inexpensive and 'avoid shopping for a new laptop' Ebay method:

My partner-in-time's older laptop broke. He went onto Ebay and found an identical laptop for sale at $100- cheap because it had no hard drive. He bought it and swapped in his own laptop's hard drive. Instant brain transplant.

But of course Canadians are Vulcan! Didn't you know?

(Yes, I've been there, got the pointy ears to show for it.)

Having been shopping today, I now have our local "used food" store's jingle running through my head--as well as a litre of orange juice for 79 cents (among other things). Yay vitamins.

Best luck to Teresa's laptop.

Charlie Stross @ #234:

My ebook reader of choice is still my Palm TX; reasonably affordable, takes 4Gb SD cards

Note to those who may be buying: the TX does not take SD_HC_ cards, which are what most 4Gb cards are (it's a newer standard; SD technically doesn't support anything bigger than 2Gb). Some SD 4Gb cards are crap. User consensus seems to be in favor of Transcend's 150x cards (Newegg has them for about $40), which I have and works fiine.

And they've been around long enough you can find second-hand ones on eBay.

Where I got mine, though it purported to be basically new and I have no reason to doubt it--anyway, at half price it was not guilt-inducing. There are definitely deals to be had there.

Nothing else quite matches it in terms of stability, price, battery life, and flexibility

I can easily get several hours of straight use out of mine. And the *other* reason I got a Palm over a Windows Mobile machine is the breadth of free and shareware software written by users--great stuff.

I really need to write up a "living with my TX" post so I can point to it in future, with all my software additions and so forth.

* * *

Teresa, I hope your laptop is only mostly dead.

Linkmeister (244):

"My widowed uncle is marrying a long-time friend who lost her spouse many years ago in Mesa tomorrow, if you're in the mood for a wedding."

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

Teresa @258, Oh, no. That would be way to big a coincidence. His name is Dowell.

Teresa 258: Good gods. Even for the Fluorosphere, that's a huge coincidence.

Argh. "Too big a coincidence."

Re pocketknives, I usually carry two. Both of these go everywhere I can legally take a knife.

The first is the Swiss Army knife, which mostly gets used as everything but a knife - screwdriver, scissors, etc. The knife-blades are occasionally good for small fine use, e.g. first aid, fine crafts in place of an Exacto knife, etc.

The other is a medium-sized lockback knife with one hand opening and a pocket clip. This one is good for knife-qua-knife use; I can go from thinking I need it to having it open in my hand in about a second, and can fold it up and put it away again nearly as fast. I use it a number of times a day without ever thinking about it, and although you'd think that carrying a potentially weapon-like knife would alarm people, they never notice it. When I've taken it out to slice open a box (for instance) it's occasionally startled people who I've carried it in front of for years, because they had never noticed it. I have run through several different models like this, between losing/misplacing them and just changing them, so I have a couple recommendations on this.

Opening type: The fast-open knife types I've used all open with a kind of rotating flick of the thumb on some part of the blade, and there are 3 basic variations I've seen: a clip or lever thing on the back of the blade; a small thumb stud, on the side of the blade, or a hole cut out of the blade which the tip of your thumb fits into. The hole-type opener works by far the best, and (if properly sized/shaped) is the only one you can reliably open one-handed with work gloves on. Spyderco had a patent on the cut-out opener, but some other makers have licensed it and the patent may have expired by now.

Clip types: Plastic pocket clips don't have enough strength and springiness to keep the knife safely in your pocket. Avoid; I lost one this way. Only buy the kind with metal clips. Some clip to your pocket with the (folded) point of the blade downward, some with it upward. They take a different type of hand motion to draw and open it, but either is equally easy to use.

Invertable clips: Some knives let you unscrew and move the pocket clip to the reverse side and/or end of the knife. If you're a leftie, you should definitely get one with an invertible clip, so you can carry it in your left pocket and still use it.

Best value I've found in this type of knife: the Gerber EZ-Out or EZ-Out Jr.

It uses the cut-out thumb opener type, has (had?) a metal pocket clip, decent quality blade (high-strength stainless, holds a decent edge), come in either an under 3" or 3.75" blade size (3" or 4" folded) and costs less than $30.

Best knife in this style will be a matter of opinion, personal taste, and budget. You can spend $100s for a nice folder from Benchmade or the like (and then lose it overboard the next day...) and I've still not found the perfect one, but the Spydercos and Gerbers are very good.

Grocery Outlet is the food jumble sale. The one here in San Jose was best in 2001 or so when wine.com (or some other buy wine online site) shut down and they got its stock to sell.
They priced wines as if the vintages were sell-by dates...

We seem to have a comment which is stuck. Or something.

Ok, the Used Food Store has gotten Food to Rent by the Bobs stuck in my head now. Thanks.

(Actually, it's pretty catchy. :-)

Charlie Stross at 234 -
Mary Dell @119: I got up close and personal with a Sony Librie ebook reader the day before yesterday. Interesting technology, but don't touch it with a bargepole. (Shorter version: you can't load files directly onto it -- you have to convert them into a native file format using Sony's own ebook library software, which sucks mud through a micropipette.)

This is too bad - while I'm not a fan of Sony (love their hardware, hate their opinions on too many subjects - and inserting rootkits on their CDs was the last straw), I was hoping the epaper devices would have a more auspicious beginning.

My ebook reader of choice is still my Palm TX; reasonably affordable, takes 4Gb SD cards (that's a lot of ebooks, plus mp3s, the odd MP4 movie, games, my life's work tucked away in a corner, and so on), screen is okay, and so on. And they've been around long enough you can find second-hand ones on eBay. Nothing else quite matches it in terms of stability, price, battery life, and flexibility, although some of the cheaper UMPCs could give it a run for the money (f you're willing to carry something that large around everywhere).

My first PDA was a Newton 120, and I kind of liked its size a lot - small enough to fit (barely) in my back pocket (width and depth wise, anyways, when I'm wearing khakis - height... not so much), big enough to make me want to take it out and use it, and with a good enough resolution to allow for reading books (I just found it again, the other day, and it still has the last books I was reading* on it - Cremation of Dan McGee, The Prince, and The Eye of Argon

Currently, I'm using a Sony Clie SJ-22 (although I'm on the lookout for a UX-50 if I can get one cheap - the SJ-22 has seen better days, at this point), and it does fine as a book reader - the screen is smaller than I would like (and PDFs are basically impossible), but it is much more portable (and unobtrusive) than the Newton was. (Although if I were to stumble across a cheap Newton 2100, I wouldn't turn it down - at worst, it would make a decent reader for on the trail, being nice and rugged).

There aren't really any devices out there (or on the drawing boards) that are what I really want in a book reader/handheld device, but I'm afraid my desires regarding such a widget are unusual and peculiar, and will likely have to wait until micromanufacturing/CADAM are a bit more advanced, and I can get someone to build me something to order. The iPhone is, however, something I'm paying close attention to...

*Or, at least, had on it. AIR, I was trying to memorize Cremation, was re-reading The Prince for a character study, and, well, the myriad uses of The Eye of Argon should be obvious, but include making Rich Dansky drink a lot more at a local brewhaus than he ought to...

Karl, #211, it untangles things. It punches holes in things, too -- most recently extra ankle strap holes in my new sandals -- but mostly I use it to untangle threads or chains and such. When you get tight tight knots in small linear things, you can insert the tip of the awl into the knot, ease it up through, which opens the knot, and then untangle it. The bad part of this is that I really enjoy untangling things. It's kind of relaxing.

Kevin Marks, you don't need to keep reposting.

Oct. 26, 1985. Four days after my 29th birthday, I get the best present evar. A friend whose father was a high mucky-muck at Marion Laboratories (owned by Ewing Marion Kaufmann, owner of the Kansas City Royals), calls and asks if I want to go to a ball game. Game six of the World Series, to be exact. Um, hellz yeah!

The Royals had battled back from a 3-1 deficit to get into the Series against my first favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals*, and had found themselves in the same position before winning Game 5. The Cards go up 1-0 in the 8th, and I watch with extremely mixed feelings as the bottom of the 9th rolls around. Then Don Denkenger grants Jorge Orta absolution at first base, and a hit, a botched sacrifice and an intentional walk later, it's Dane Iorg facing Todd Worrell with the bases loaded. Sitting in the right field stands, I have a perfect view as Iorg lofts a single which Andy Van Slyke fields on one hop and rifles home. Ball and runner reach home nearly simultaneously, and I remember distinctly thinking (if not yelling) "Make the damn call!" at the umpire. His arms flash "safe," and the place goes berserk.

Oddly enough, when I finally get home and watch the play in real time, I discover there was no hesitation or delay in the call at the plate. A wonderful example of time dilation/personal relativity I have never forgotten.

*I grew up in KC in the '60s; we didn't have major league baseball, but rather the A's, who were effectively a Yankees farm team. After becoming a Cards fan, I discovered my mother grew up in Palatine, IL, and has always been a diehard Cubs fan. Poor woman.

And I was at a dear friend's birthday party near the Westport bar area (in Valentine neighborhood). I could hear people yelling about the game. Even though I begged, the friend put the TV tuner where I couldn't reach it (not hard, he's 6'5").

After a minor hoo hoo with their toddler, I excused myself and walked over to a sports bar to watch the end of the game. Came back for more cake, etc. glowing with the Royal's win.

Oh, I love internet coincidences. My favorite personal one is the girl who had me on her Livejournal friendslist because of something to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer-- and then I mentioned the name of the college I had recently been accepted to. Thanks to that, I had fannish friends waiting for me the minute I arrived at school.

As for 1985, I'm afraid I only existed for the last twelve days of it. They were pretty eventful for a newborn, though; apparently my doctor had to make me a house call on Christmas Eve in a snowstorm.

For a second I got all excited and thought I could say that Traci Lords, who shares my birthday, filmed her one and only ever legal porn on my birthday in 1985, but then I did a little research and discovered I had the dates wrong. It was 1986.

...or I guess I could have saved that insignificant little tidbit for the next open thread...

Mary@177: So, where do you buy your e-books?

Well, so far, mostly from the online store attached to the Sony Reader PC software, but I've used up the $50 credit I got when I bought the reader, plus a bit more in getting all my Neil Stephenson in one place, and now I find that the selection at that bookstore is rather limited. I went there the other night and only found one book I was a little interested in, which I ended up not getting.

Since you can load PDFs on the reader, I'll likely be loading some work-related stuff. But I'm really only now beginning to look around for other online sources. Stay tuned; I'll post on an Open Thread or over in my blog when something turns up. I suppose I could put the wife's novel-in-progress on there as well.

You mention not reading anything smaller than a paperback. The Sony reader is about the size of a paperback, and you can select the text size.

1985 - 1 year out of highschool and 1 year at Salem State College. Still living at home. Met people who are still very good friends. I think I may have actually gone on my first date that year.

And the whole wedding coincidence - very odd and cool.

1985 - 1 year out of highschool and 1 year at Salem State College. Still living at home. Met people who are still very good friends. I think I may have actually gone on my first date that year.

And the whole wedding coincidence - very odd and cool.

#240: Teresa: Apple laptop, if I'm not mistaken? (I'm in Glendale; a bit of a drive to Mesa, I'm afraid, but might be of some assistance.)

OK, this is random, but I thought of it today. Kind of the non-LOLcat version of something I posted on the Catz thread.

Season, time of day.
Just seventeen syllables.
Very short poem.

Check out the next thread up for the final word on the wedding coincidence.

Stephen, Skwid, PublicRadioVet, Rikibeth, abi, John, Christopher, Lila, Karl, Bruce, Bob, CHip, Alex, Terry, Nicole, Michelle, Clifton: Thanks for your advice on pocketknives! Open Thread 32 was also very helpful.

I agree that the first thing to decide is the tasks for which the knife will be used. The problem is that I want this knife for the unexpected tasks I don't know about yet. My work will be taking me out to a river delta to work with environmental sensors, in and out of the water, and I'll have a good toolbox on the shore, filled with all the things I think I'll need (including several cutting tools). What I'm looking for is a tool to help handle the unexpected.

Your suggestions have given me a lot to think about, and some places to start looking. Thanks again!

Steve Jackson describes his Scary Fan Moment.

'As in, "a moment when I got to be a scary fan."'

Of Charles Stross, as it happens.

1985 - I was 20 years old for all but one day of that year. Not the best of years. I ran out of money to pay for college and had to switch from Polytechnic Institute of NY (a.k.a Brooklyn Poly) to City College. My mother was very sick, and she and my nephew became fully dependent on me for income until the idiots at Social Security decided to release her benefits - a full year after she became eligible. The extra income I need to earn totally wrecked my eligibility for financial aid. I also had an emergency appendectomy on Thanksgiving day. 1985. Feh.

I think 1985 may be the year I started thinking about getting a teacher's credential. I don't think it was necessarily the brightest thing I ever did, in retrospect.

On a different front: is there anybody here taking gabapentin and/or meloxicam for nerve pain? I'm looking for experiences, especially with interactions with other pain management drugs. (I'm taking them for hand pain, but I also have other pain that they don't seem to be helping -- could they be exacerbating? -- and I've been told I can't take hydrocodone or any NSAID while I'm on these)

kouredios, #210: The suddenness and secrecy surrounding your mother's change of plan sounds very much to my adult self as if there had been a physical threat to your safety. But I can imagine only too well how it looked to 10-year-old you at the time. It's a shame that so many parents think they need to shield their children from any exposure to life's unpleasantness, when the cost of their doing so is that it frequently reads to the child as a betrayal of trust.

Mary Dell, #222: Even more importantly, if you have any social or sexual traits which are outside the mainstream, the Kink-Aware Professionals List is a good place to start looking. The last thing you need is a therapist who will decide, on the basis of their own prejudices, that your non-traditionality is the root of all your problems and must be eradicated first!

BTW, I second (third? whatever) the recommendation for therapy. I've turned to its less-intense form, counseling, several times at major stress points in my life, and found it well worth my while; and I've seen friends who had far worse problems than any I've ever had to deal with get their lives back as a result of it.

Paula, #270: Was your friends' TV on at the time?

In '85, I was twenty-nine...

Which means I was living with the person who is now my ex, though we hadn't yet become engaged. That might be the year we evicted the Ex-Roommate From Hell, though I can't be sure. Scanning the Billboard Top 100 for that year on iTunes doesn't provide me with any cues; I'd cut way back on my radio listening by then. That was also during the period when I had no TV, and before I got a PC. I was working as a computer programmer for a benefits consulting firm. I didn't go to Worldcon that year. Beyond that, it doesn't seem to have been very memorable.

Well, OK, I guess 1985 wasn't so very bad that I can't talk about it.

In January of 1985 my father, from whom I'd been estranged for more than 15 years, had a heart attack, and I went back to New York to be there. He survived, but our estrangement resumed shortly after he got better.

Later that year the 300 person division of Tektronix that I worked for (the Graphic Workstation Division) was flushed down the toilet, and everyone in it was given 2 months to find another job in the company before being laid off. Being able to read handwriting on walls, I had quit three weeks before and gone to a small startup company. That startup lasted another year and a half, so you can't blame its demise on 1985.

That was also the year that our older son was diagnosed as ADHD and ODD, and the doctor making the diagnosis told us there was one chance in 6 that our son wouldn't be sent to juvie before his 18th birthday. 1985 doesn't get the credit for the fact that he did not go to jail, that he went to college, got a doctorate, and is now in a tenure-track professorship.*

Not my favorite year.

* Damn right I'm proud of him.

Lucy @282,

A web forum where you might get useful results is at Dr. Bobs. It is a neurology and psychology focused discussion forum. I did a quick search and found that gabapentin / neurontin and its interactions with other drugs gets discussed there.

1985 was the last year I had both my parents; Mom died in March, 1986. She'd been diagnosed with cancer late in 1984 and was getting increasingly frail.

My best memory of the whole year is the night that August (the 8th, IIRC) I came home -- my parents' home; I was on vacation -- from the Bruce Springsteen concert at Three Rivers Stadium. (This was also the last time I was at Three Rivers.) Bruce had dedicated his song "My Hometown" to Homestead, Pa., which was suffering a lot of problems relating to the demise of the steel industry in the Monongahela Valley. He also gave a very large check to the local food bank there. This hit close to home because Homestead was, in fact, Mom's hometown, and I couldn't wait to tell her about it.

So I got home a bit after midnight, and Mom was waiting in the living room to tell *me* -- it had been on the 11 o'clock news! It made her really happy.

Later that same month I scored two tickets to the opening game of the Pitt football season and took my dad to his first and last ever Pitt football game. It turned out that after decades of watching Pitt football and putting a daughter -- moi -- through two degrees worth of school there he'd *never* been to a Pitt game; I thought that was a situation that needed to be remedied. (It was my last game at Pitt Stadium, too. Both stadia have since been replaced by Heinz Field.)

Also, my two youngest nephews were born that December. (Nona @271, you were apparently born in the middle of them! Tommy was born on the 14th and Josh on the 30th.)

Andrew T. From that description, I'd reccomend (accepting that it's a scant one), a smallish 2 1/2-4 inches) sheath knive.

That is, one which has a fixed handle, and some sort of finger guard.

That will make it handy, tolerably rigid and easy to get at/use.

Lucy @ 282: Gabapentin and hydrocodone should be reasonably safe to take together, and I have been on both as pain meds via prescription from the same doc for years at a stretch, for arthritis. They synergize in a slightly odd way - if I understood what I've read of the pharmacodynamics, whichever one you take first has its effects amplified when you take the second one - but that is perfectly safe if you're aware of it. If you've been told not to take them together, get another opinion.

My only problem with gabapentin a.k.a. Neurontin is that I sometimes get weird angry/irritable moods if I take it during the day, so I only take it at bedtime.

1985: the last year before I started primary school. I spent it overseas: my parents, my older brother and I were travelling in Europe and Asia.

I remember small, vague details: that they had grape flavoured Fanta in Indonesia. The pineapple drinks they make there, and in Singapore. The smell. The cartoon sheets on one bed. Getting a little souvenir model of the Eiffel Tower.

Being, for some odd reason, scared of the emblem of Indonesia's national airline: Garuda, the phoenix. The little in-flight things airlines give to four-year-olds. Tiny wooden clogs from the Netherlands - blue with flowers on - and poffertjes.

How I trimmed my fringe because it was getting in my eyes, and cut it too short, and my parents insisted I get the rest of my hair cut short to match, and how upset I was. Hapi-coats and pretty cotton pyjamas, and a Chinese doll with its own baby doll, both in silk pyjamas.

How the culture of Indonesia generally is extremely supportive of and affectionate towards small children, and how, as a very stand-offish child, I was freaked out by all the strangers who wanted to pat me and talk to me. My parents coaxing me to at least say "terimakasi" (thank you.)

Not having to deal with other children - it was a nice break from that, between creche and school. There was my brother, but he was fifteen, not as bad.

1985:
My high school science fiction club and a number of hangers-on became known as the Lemming Migration because of our tendency to appear at east coast conventions in the form of a seething mass of teenagers crammed into way too few rooms. I was the lead Lemming, as president of the club, having convinced the school that conventions were such an educational experience that they should buy us all memberships at group rates. The Vice-Lemming died four days ago.

I had already been going to cons for a few years and was quite grumpy that at 17 I couldn't come up with a way to get to Australia, so I missed worldcon for the first time since I'd started going.

I entered my first-ever masquerade in a classic Star Trek uniform.

I acquired a wicked stepmother young enough to have once been mistaken for my sister.

The second friend of my own age to die either was in an accident or killed herself via train. Twenty-two years later I am still not certain.

1985: my second year in university in London, studying pharmacy. I'd already figured out it mostly bored and depressed me and the idea of a career as a pharmacist filled me with dread ... but I was locked into the track and not yet independent-minded enough to jump the rails.

It was also my first year in a real grown-up-ish relationship, and I did a lot of growing up very quickly. (I had a -- shall we say, undersocialized -- infancy; bullying and a single-sex school didn't help, either.)

It was the year I went to my first SF convention (Yorcon III in Leeds, IIRC) and decided I enjoyed fandom and wanted in. It also probably gave rise to the legends about me pursuing editors with a carrier bag full of manuscripts. (See socialization deficiency above.)

I spent a chunk of the summer doing an unpaid internship in a teaching hospital pharmacy department, and a chunk studying for and (successfully) resitting the exams in heterocyclic organic chemistry that I'd failed at the end of year 2.

I don't really remember it that clearly. A lot of things changed inside my head in 1984-86, and by the end of 1985 I wasn't the same person I was at the beginning of the year.

1985... Before Sue and I moved in together, anything important? No worldcon, no NASFiC, alas... I atttended that year's Balticon. Favorite memories include a few of us meeting with CJ Cherryh who told us of the time she was on a plane that showed 1978's Superman and how weird it feels to watch Kryptonians fall to their death when you're loaded with cold medications. Later during the con, we were in the bar with her when Diane Duane joined us and something I said gave the latter some goofy idea for an episode of Superfriends. I don't think there ever was an episode about an alien who could shapeshift into human furniture, was there?

Lis Riba @ #173:

I particularly like the convergence of picture and caption for FANLIB WHOLLY EXPLODED and for WE WERE AFRAID OF THIS.

Lee @283: Her stated reason was that she was afraid that in the next month he would be getting a restraining order to keep us in the state since at that time the divorce and custody arrangements weren't final. I think he had actually threatened that. The way she tells it, she had a bit of an omelas moment (which she ascribes to God speaking to her) that told her to leave and gave her the courage to go through with it.

A month or so later my grandmother was diagnosed with Breast cancer, so my mother is all the more convinced that it was an act of God that got her home early.

There were times when my father's anger could be scary, but the only things he ever hit that I can recall were walls. They suffered horribly, though.

Now I feel like I've been a horrible downer on this thread, and I don't mean to be. The coincidence of Teresa and Linkmeister becoming cousins-in-law is quite glee-making.

kouredios... If you have to talk about something that's important to you, do it.

1985 was the year I started piano lessons. I thought my teacher was very grown up, although she was still a student living with her parents. What's odd about that is not so much that she was teaching my mother too, but that she was teaching my mother before she started teaching me. Anyway, she was one of my favourite people, and when she slipped on some ice and broke her wrist just before I turned 8 I remember being very upset.

1985 was also the year we went camping in Spain, travelling by coach nonstop all the way from Calais. My mother gave out puzzles and home-made doll's clothes at scheduled intervals to keep my sister and me occupied on the journey. And it might have been the year my Sindy doll's arms fell off. They were held in by an elastic band that hooked them together inside her torso, and the elastic broke. I wrote a letter to the manufacturers saying Matilda was my favourite and please mend her, and they did. But the second time it happened, I think my mother thought it would be unreasonable to write to them again. So one day after school she told me she had taken Matilda back to the toy shop and by coincidence, the Sindy man was there. As well as mending her arms he gave her a good clean, brushed all the tangles out of her hair, replaced her lost shoes and her torn dress, and (the part my mother didn't know about) did something to her ankle joints, which were a bit broken too. In fact, by the time he had finished Matilda looked just like new! I must have been very gullible because I believed for years that this was exactly what had happened.

I probably read an awful lot of Enid Blyton that year. I think it was also when I started reading Narnia. And on my birthday I cashed in £1.50's worth of school book club stamps to buy Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, a slow-burning favourite in which I still find new bits to like when I reread it now.

Kouredios #210: That is a truly affecting story. It must have been really tough to deal with. Therapy does help.

Eleanor @ 296... Your post still has me chuckling.

Victoria #250: That's an excellent approach. I don't think it will work too well with 'police benevolent associations', but with other 'charities' it might.

Eleanor #296: People still read Enid Blyton in the 1980s? The Famous Five and Secret Seven seemed a bit dated to me when I was a boy in the 60s.

Fragano @ 300: Most of my Enid Blyton books were second-hand and some were probably decades old (we had all but one of the ______ of Adventure series in matching, possibly 1950s cloth-bound editions) but we also had a lot of paperback Famous Five books that seemed quite new judging by the photographic covers. I've just googled, and they seem to date from 1980. Extra Famous Five and Secret Seven books by other authors were being published for the first time in the 1980s too. I read a couple of those, but liked the originals better.

Some of the school stories had clearly been revised after 1971 because the children weren't getting their pocket money in shillings any more, but almost nothing else seemed to have changed. I found this very confusing. After Charlotte Sometimes opened my eyes to the idea that Things Were Different In The Past, I wanted to know how they were different.

Eleanor #301: Oddly, some of the best children's books I recall reading were Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons stories written in the 30s.* A lot of Blyton's stories seem to be set in a kind of timeless 1950s.

* I was astonished, and pleased, to learn that Ransome had worked for Trotsky. Makes the books seem that much more adventurous in retrospect.

Gee, the wealth of memory posts here shows not only how *old* I am but how stable my life has been. In 1985, I was in my second year of living with the man I eventually (much later) married, and my fourth year working at Locus (where I'm now an out-of-state Contributing Editor). Not sure if I was reviewing yet then, since the older issues aren't within easy reach, but I would be before long. While things have changed in this century [from my medical conditions to the new home in AZ], we still have the same cat, and (as Serge will say if I don't!) I still have the same Computer.

My personal memories involve great music shows (especially in the Sixties and Nineties), umpteen interesting and productive years at the Locus home base, plus the ongoing happy relationship/marriage -- so I certainly can't complain. {Even if I grouch at minor stuff, like NBC not carrying the men's semifinals at the French Open live for my time zone or complete for anyone in the US, grumble grumble.} Music in 1985? Kind of a lean year for show-going, though I saw Sting in concert that summer.

Open Thread-type post, seeing as I've complained about the Troubles of the Providence Libraries on these boards before:

The latest is that the City government has promised to increase their library spending a little bit, in return for which the library must keep all branches at at least the same level of services for the next three years. And the number of layoffs has dropped from sixty to six, four of which are interns. And while I hate to say it about a situation where two probably-awesome probably-beloved people will lose their jobs, I'll say it anyway: hooray!!

For now.

Faren @ 303... we still have the same cat, and (as Serge will say if I don't!) I still have the same Computer.

(...must... control urge... must... NOT!... comment...)

XKCD explains Merlin

ethan (304): Yay! That's good news.

1985 was the year I graduated from college and started library school. It was also the year my grandmother died.

#212 - I've never seen any part of a pocketknife/multitool remotely as heavy-duty as my hoof-pick. Which I acquired c. 1978, used for part of one summer, and have kept ever since as a souvenir. My current multitool is a Leatherman Wave, and it's pretty versatile - and has a lanyard loop.

In 1985, I (and my wife, who still is) celebrated our first wedding anniversary, and (iirc) I was primarily working in IBM Script (aka DCF), on mainframes. But we did have a Macintosh to mainframe/Xerox 9700 graphics system up and running.

Lee, #283, no. It was almost never on in their home, why they even had one I don't know. And the birthday boy was and still is sports-abhorred. It was better that I left the house...

kouredios @ 294

ML is a community. Communities worth the name rejoice and celebrate in the good times, and sympathize and support in the bad times. One of the interesting features of an internet community like ML is that it's easy to do both at once. So your blues can't bring the wedding down; go ahead and say what you need to, and there will be someone here to listen. And if you can get some relief from that, you may be able to listen to someone else's blues some other time, and help them.

No site affiliation, but the Gerber river shorty is an excellent river knife - flat and serrated blade parts (the serrated is a serious requirement for things like rope), a blunted tip which also doubles as a largish phillips screwdriver - and multiple ways to attach it to a variety of gear.

Thank you Bruce, and all. This is one of the reasons I've taken the step to cultivate a self here, after reading for some while. It's been amazing so far.

I'm really processing a lot right now, as my grandfather is also getting close to the end in hospice. It makes sense that so much is surfacing for me at the moment.

That, and I blew up at my husband this morning for treating me like "default parent." Too much "sky is not evil" for me!

It's all good now. We got take out from our favorite Chinese-Japanese-Korean place, I planted my vegetables finally, and tomorrow I get to play D&D. I'm thinking about talking to a friend in Health Services at my alma mater about finding an appropriate therapist. She's been spending a lot of time in Kenya and just emailed me yesterday that she was home for the next two months, so that's fortuitous.

Lucy Kemnitzer @ 282:

On a different front: is there anybody here taking gabapentin and/or meloxicam for nerve pain? I'm looking for experiences, especially with interactions with other pain management drugs. (I'm taking them for hand pain, but I also have other pain that they don't seem to be helping -- could they be exacerbating? -- and I've been told I can't take hydrocodone or any NSAID while I'm on these)

That's... interesting. I'm currently taking 1800mg/day of gabapentin for neuropathy in my hands and feet (which is apparently caused by the fibromyalgia). Am also prescribed daily hydrocodone (vicodin) and NSAID (naproxen) (chronic intractable daily migraine plus the various fibro pain plus inoperable wrecked knee, etc., ad infinitum); have had no problem interactions, though the doctor doesn't want me taking any aspirin on top of that mixture (as well as the umpteen other medications).

Kathryn from Sunnyvale @ #285:

Thank you for that link!

kouredios@210: Hmm. Maybe therapy would be a good idea. Thanks, 1985.

The thing that sticks out for me is that in 1985, you were 10 years old. You're a lot older now, you've got a lot more tools to work with, you've got a lot more emotional experience under your belt. But sometimes people look back on their younger experiences and hold themselves up to expectations based on who they are now, what they know now. I don't know if you're doing that, but it sounds like at the time you had quite a bit to deal with for a ten year old.

1985:
At 16, recently in a new country. I thought I spoke English, but quickly discovered that I didn't, at least not the local variant (New Zealand).

It was SFnal. Most things were familiar enough that every so often, I'd get tripped-up. Like at the first party where we'd sing to songs by bands of that era (Duran Duran, Van Halen, U2 etc). Then "Six Months In a Leaky Boat" by this band came on. Everyone kept singing; I'd never heard it before in my life. The sense of alienation was intense.

See also:
Live-Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", "We are the World".

Kouredios @ 312... tomorrow I get to play D&D

Good for you. Take the pleasure that you need out of Life. Still, be careful with that broadsword. Heheheh...

Greg, 314: I think it's more the case that I've always been someone who just deals with things, and adapts, even as a ten-year-old. I've kept a tight amount of control over myself and my life for a long time. I'm starting to wonder whether I need to deal with things now that I never really did then. I think my mom took me and my brother to some counseling for a short amount of time when my parents were splitting, but not after the move. For her, things were much better emotionally, because she was back with her family. I don't think she every really got a handle on how traumatized we were by that event. To this day, she'll talk about how I was a great baby but a tough preteen (in her narrow view: the truth was I was neither.) And when I point out that I was dealing with a lot back then, she just sort of blinks at me. (My brother was the opposite, supposedly, so that's why it comes up, especially with respect to my own young daughter.)

Serge: You mean dagger! I'm a rogue. :D

kouredios @ 317... You mean dagger! I'm a rogue.

Human? Elfin? No matter what kind of rogue you are, take care of yourself.

Thanks everybody for the gabapentin information. Now I just have to find out what's up with the meloxicam.

Serge: human. male. Johnny Depp-in-Chocolatish.

It's a group of old college friends who are all still in the area. My 10-year reunion is this weekend, but meeting twice monthly for campaign is my kind of reunion, for sure. It's the best kind of self-care.

kouredios @ 320... It's the best kind of self-care.

Indeed. Take that, you inner conflict! For me, it's like when I've spent a whole day using my brain resolving computer issues. Afterwards, I'll treat myself with a trip to the comic-book store, where one can find stories where problems are resolved in a more physical manner. Which reminds me that I should probably take up archery again.

Now I know where the idiots who planned the invasion of Iraq got their expert knowledge of military affairs. Where all the military academies teach from the final version of the writings Sun Tzu, Rumsfeld and Cheney used an early draft.

kouredios, what Bruce said @ #310. If you thought you might worry me, you didn't.

kouredios - I had some nasty incidents when I was a young, and I 'dealt' with it. I suspect why, but the year I turned 31, I couldn't 'deal' with it anymore. I think I finally reached a point where I was ready to address the situation. Counseling is one of the better choices I have made. I still think of myself as damaged goods, but not in a damaged=bad way. I need to be aware of the damage, and how to work around or through it.

From experience, I can tell you that no matter how ugly something is, once you put it out there, it starts to be easier to deal with.

1985 was the year I tried to work. The small airways disease had been diagnosed the year before and since there weren't the good drugs I use now, I had to use a nebulizer every three hours around the clock. My company wouldn't let me use it at work (even though I offered to donate it to the vault, since I couldn't take it out once it was in, and I offered to do the treatments on my breaks) so I would work one day, spend the night in the ER, stay home the next day, work the next day, repeat, modifying for weekends.

In 1986, the executive VP wrote me a letter insisting I come back to work full time, quit, or go on disability. The doctors had been telling me for two years that I had to go on disability, so I did that. I think the eVP was surprised -- they seemed to think I was goofing off.

Bugger, sorry about the multiple posts - I was on my sidekick, with intermittent connectivity and got error pages.

Question: The Dresden Files. Worthy DVD investment or not?

Also, I am a pretty big Buffy fan, but I've never seen Angel. Is it worth it? How similar are the two? Advice would be appreciated.

I liked Angel. It's different, but it has a lot of the essential wit, loopiness, and ambiguity of its parent show. It also engages with some stuff barely present in BtVS, like for instance race and urban poverty. With, of course, monsters.

Basically, its lows are a lot lower than the worst of BtVS, but its highs are nicely high. From memory, the most taxing parts are the first several episodes of Season 1, and much of Season 4.

Like its parent show, the single most annoying character is the one the show is named after.

Tania @ 324: That sounds about right. Right down to the age, though I'll be 32 in a week.

Thanks Linkmeister. I was more worried about bringing the whole thread down. One of the things I love about ML is the sustained glee. But I've also noted the serious sincerity when called for. It's a special, special place.

Heresiarch: I think Angel is worth it, but I don't love it as much as Buffy or Firefly. In fact, I haven't watched all of it yet, though I own most seasons on DVD. It was never really appointment TV for me.

OTOH, as long as I don't watch all of it, there will still be new Joss out there waiting for me, so when I do start watching it again, I'll go slow.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden @ 328: From memory, the most taxing parts are the first several episodes of Season 1, and much of Season 4.

A very good description of Season 4, by Pbaabe: "It's kinda like a bad dream I had--a very strange, and violent, at times inappropriately erotic dream."

Eureka's new season starts on the Skiffy Channel on Father's Day. I caught an ad showing Deacon tinkering with something in his garage, not paying too much attention to what Fargo is doing, until the latter picks up what looks like a remote. Before can finish saying don't-touch-that, Fargo pushes the button, gravity disappears around him and he's last seen crashing upward thru a skylight and disappearing fast into the sky.

Yay!

Serge @ 331

You mean Fargo was still alive at that point??

Paula Helm Murray @ #309: [The TV] was almost never on in their home, why they even had one I don't know.

Perhaps they were like Nero Wolfe, who owned a television in order to better appreciate the pleasure of not watching it. (Occasionally, he would turn it on solely in order to have the satisfaction of turning it off.)

With regard to the fourth season of Angel: as is the case with almost everything in the Whedonverse, opinions can vary widely. For example, I liked the Season Four arc a great deal.

(Season Five is problematic, but mostly -- in my opinion, anyhow -- because the show got unfairly cheated of its sixth season, and a bunch of stuff that should have played out at length got drastically foreshortened in the name of closure.)

kouredios @ #294: Therapy is particularly helpful if you've had someone else's emotional sense of events imposed on you, and not been encouraged to develop your own.

Greg London @#314: But sometimes people look back on their younger experiences and hold themselves up to expectations based on who they are now, what they know now.

Amen to that. I was kind of shocked the day I, at 34 years old, sat next to an 11-year-old girl on a plane for 4 hours and realized how incredibly young 11 is! I had always blamed myself for being naive at that age, but of course children aren't naive; they're actually innocent, which is different.

kouredios @ #294:
I've been trailing around here like drowned Ophelia for four days with the ghosts of dead friends trailing like soggy fronds all over me and no one's been anything but sympathetic, and it's had no appreciable effect on the general merriment.

But if I had more emotional energy, the email I just got would make me start running in little circles screaming "Kalamazookalamazookalamazoo!!!!" and performing obscure galliard variations. This leads directly back to dead friends, of course; joy streaked through with pain and loss because the very first person to share this with is not available.

Susan... But joy is there.

Oooh! Me! I *love* Grocery Outlet (my friends and I call it the Scratch n Dent.)

The one here in Corvallis expanded a couple of years ago and is the size of a regular grocery store, with produce and a big frozen section. I like it because you can often get really good deals on things like canned beans and tomatoes, which I use a lot of, and on different kinds of 'gourmet' sausages and a pretty good variety of cheese, which I enjoy but are often prohibitively expensive in regular stores.

It's always funny to find "Hellman's" mayonnaise (here west of the Rockies, we call it "Best Foods.") The only problem is when they stock something unfamiliar that I really get to like (such as for a while they had a very nice mildish curry sauce by Patak's for several months) and then one day it's all gone and I discover that the only way for me to get it is to buy it online (for a lot more than I ever paid at the Scratch n Dent, of course). Sigh.

But it is a lovely store, all the same.

Question: The Dresden Files. Worthy DVD investment or not?

I would say so. Both Dresden Files and Blood Ties generated a "hey, this is -good-!" reaction here (including from a fan of both book series). I don't know how much of that was from proper expectation calibration, though.

Tangenting off, in the ungood category we have Cthulhu the Movie, co-starring Tori Spelling. At least it's not a musical (although "Cthulhu F'htagan" means "No Worries").

Serge (331): Father's Day? Are you sure? I thought Eureka was returning in July, and it's not on the schedule I just checked. July 17 (instead of June 17) would put it back on Tuesdays again.

In 1985, I was 31 years old, living in Columbia, MO, working fulltime at the University Library as a Library Clerk, taking classes for my Master's in Library Science on my lunch break (mostly) and working a very part-time job(2 Sunday afternoons a month) at the public library to pick up some public library experience. I didn't have a TV, because the old one had broken and I figured I didn't have time to watch it anyway. I moved to my 4th apartment in 5 years. I was mostly reading romances, because my supervisor had a never-ending supply and they filled my printaholic need to read with meals, without being impossible to put down when I needed to study.

It was some time during the grad school years (it took me 4 years to finish) that I decided that the only house work that "had" to be done was take out the trash, do the laundry and do the dishes. Everything else was optional, at least until the end of the semester.

Mary Aileen... Drat! You're right. What's premiering on Father's Day is The Dead Zone and The 4400. I guess we'll have to wait one month more than expected to find if Fargo died, eh, PJ? He'll probably just come back down with a serious case of frostbite at worst and they'll have to put him in a regeneration thingie. (If they don't have one such thingie, someone will probably have cobbled one together before the next commercial break.)

Re: Angel. I can forgive "Angel" its fourth season (the troubles there actually started late in the third), because it was willing to go to such a dark place & torture its characters. Unfortunately, that was the big problem--it lost its sense of humor, which, for a Whedon show, was nearly fatal. There was a great episode midway through 4, when a certain character came back.
Season 5, though--god, that's a good season. (Agree a bit about the foreshortening, but for comedy, "Smile Time," and for tragedy, "A Hole in the World/Shells,"--TV writing does not, IMHO, get any better. And the series finale still lingers in the mind…

Re: 1985. In 1985, I went to kindergarten, and liked it. A future writing partner and I began our collaboration by writing on each other's papers, and had to be separated. My sister broke her arm when she was pushed off a slide by a neighbor's kid (she wanted to go down the slide, and pushed him first). 1985 was also the year the L.A. Critics declared "Brazil" the best film of the year, despite the fact that it hadn't been released yet. Universal was embarrassed into releasing it. God bless the L.A. Film Critics Assocation.

1985 was a year of personal crisis for me. I was 33, a bit young for a mid-life crisis, but I've always acted older than I am. (No details, but if I told the story, at least one person who posts here would say "You did what? AGAIN?") (No, it was not on the hood of a police car.)

But that was what led to some serious breakthroughs in therapy* (I'd been going for several years, but had been carefully skirting around important issues until then) and, I think, some drastic improvements mentally. (I'm still neurotic, but I don't think I'm WILDLY neurotic anymore.)

*Is "therapy" the newest meme for Making Light? The thought also comes to me to wonder if progressives are the people who got therapy, and conservatives are the people who didn't.

About Angel: I watched seasons 4 and 5 from the beginning, unspoiled, and didn't see seasons 1, 2, and 3 until they were shown in syndication starting midway through s4. It mattered more to watch things in order for that show than for Buffy, I think; the serial structure was more marked, and there was less going back and reminding people of how the characters got where they were: Gunn, in particular, is incomprehensible if you haven't seen the first two episodes he's in.

Bruce at 334: It seems an early-thirties pattern too, doesn't it? Hmm. I'm right on schedule.

I'm sorry about your friend Susan. "Emotional energy" is a good term. I'm low in it right now as well since I visited my grandfather in hospice. That must account for the way I've been hit broadside with old issues: no energy to keep up my control mask.

And more Cthulhu! Is there something about mid-June and Cthulhu I should know about?

FungiFromYoggoth @ 339

Wait, Tori Spelling is in Chtulhu? Now I haven't seen her in a while, but I'm certain she doesn't have enough tentacles for the part.

1985 was the first time I fell in love*. It lasted seven months, long enough to go to his prom but not long enough for the photos to come back.†

As for counselling, I have been blackmailed into going to it twice, by two different people. Both times, I solved the problem that was causing the friction myself, just to get the therapist out of my head. Only go if you freely choose to go.

-----
* with a real human being, as opposed to, say, Spock or Therem Harth rem ir Estraven.
† which was a pattern for me, to the point that I now think the boyfriend who decided to go see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre instead of taking me to his prom did a good thing.

Bruce Arthurs @#344: The thought also comes to me to wonder if progressives are the people who got therapy, and conservatives are the people who didn't.

That sounds like a variant of the old "everyone's damaged; everyone needs therapy" idea. I don't buy that, personally. For me, step 1 in getting past the worst of my issues was realizing that many people are walking around without a thousand pounds of baggage. Therapy's what's helped me to become (mostly) one of them.

kouredios @#346: it's very common for old wounds to re-open when you go through a related experience. Your Grandfather's illness (very sorry to hear about that, by the way) is probably putting you in mind of losing your father, and whatever you felt then that you weren't able to express.

Bruce@344 & kouredios@346:
Had my early-mid-life crisis round the time I hit 30 (quite a bit later than 1985), so it's not that early really. There was an expectation (back then, not so much now) that by the time one gets to 30, one has worked out what one is doing with one's life, some measure of success has been obtained, a roadmap planned, that sort of thing.

Being in the throes of a PhD train-wreck really didn't help. The saying "Doing a Phd is a lot like repeatedly bashing your head against a brick wall; it's really nice when you stop" was apt. In my case, it was not completing it, but giving it away that salvaged my sanity. That and the love of a good woman.

Mary Dell @ 335

Therapy is particularly helpful if you've had someone else's emotional sense of events imposed on you, and not been encouraged to develop your own.

I would say it's essential in that case. I thought I could put things back together myself, and it took me several decades (as in 3 or 4 of them) to realize that it just wasn't going to happen without help. As happy as I am now to be getting out from under that weight of other people's judgements, I do wish I'd started a lot sooner.

Greg @ 343

I agree about season 5 of Angel. Just remembering that arc of Fred and Wesley makes my hair stand on end, especially their scene in the last episode. And damn, I just realized what that scene's been resonating with in my head for the last 3 or 4 years: the scene in "Lord of Light" where Sam and Kali spend a night together before Kali's wedding with Yama and Sam's execution.

Kouredios @ 336

Is there something about mid-June and Cthulhu I should know about?

Not until 2014. See This document. WARNING: This information is classified Most Secret, and Restricted to clearance CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN under the meaning of the Official Secrets Act. If you are not cleared for at least this level of sensitive information, do not access this link.

When the Prozac stopped working and my then-primary doctor ordered Wellbutrin, which didn't work, she sent me off to a psychiatrist who ordered Cymbalta, which did work. He also told her that anybody as sick as I am needs therapy and that anybody who had as lousy a childhood as I had needs therapy. So I went twice and stopped. I think I deal as well with those as I'm going to.

1985 was the end of forth grade, which was okay, and the start of fifth. Fifth grade was the beginning of the boy-girl split, where you didn't socialize with the other sex, which is where I mark the beginning of the hell that was 7th and 8th grades for me.

If anyone would like to have lunch in NYC with me this Friday, please drop a line to the email address, with LUNCH TACO in the subject so I don't think it's trash....

In 1985, I had been a Locus subscriber for 10 years.

Heresiarch, #327: I never found Angel to be all that interesting a character on BTVS -- I lost interest in the Angsty Brooding Hero type somewhere in my mid-20s -- so I never made a point of watching his show. However, my partner's daughter was a big fan of both shows, and as a result I've seen bits and pieces of it on DVD. (It should be noted that even she didn't want Season 4 -- it wasn't quite a Bobby-in-the-shower, but it came close.) The first episode is well worth watching IMO, and if you really like that one, then you might want to explore further.

FWIW, I've really been enjoying Bones on Fox; it's got David Boreanaz playing a character I describe as "Angel with all the wit and considerably less angst," a wonderful lead character for him to bounce off of, and a set of supporting characters who will be instantly understandable to most of the readers here. If you're not the type to get seriously torqued by occasional lapses into Trek-science or just plain bad science, give it a try.

abi, #348: Amen, sistah! While it's horribly frustrating to watch someone you know tying themselves in knots over something that therapy might straighten out, it's like dealing with an addiction: you can't FORCE someone to do it and expect good results. The motivation has to be internal.

Mary Dell@335 realized how incredibly young 11 is! I had always blamed myself for being naive at that age, but of course children aren't naive; they're actually innocent, which is different.

Yep. You'd be surprised how many people look at their childhood experiences through their adult eyes and beat themselves up for doing something or not doing something that seems obvious to them now.

The idea is that the mind isn't aware of it's own changes. So all experiences and memories get played through whatever your current mindset happens to be. Your mind doesn't record your emotional development with the memory of that nasty event that happened when you were five, so the memory replays through whatever mindset you're in now, and you have no way of experiencing what your mindset was like then.

It comes up once in a while when I'm life coaching. I'm not sure if the description of what's going on in the mind is technically accurate, but it helps clients put their memories into perspective, so it works for me.

As for whether therapy, coaching, whatever is a good thing, it all depends on whether you're stuck enough that you're willing to accept outside help. I had one client where our phone calls were like pulling teeth. After the third call, I suggested that I wasn't the right coach for them. I don't think they were ready. Which is fine. I just didn't want to waste our time or his money.

In 1985 I met Xopher at the Nasfic in Austin, Texas. (Hi, Xopher!) Probably met a few other Making Light posters there too.

Lee @ 355

Second the mention of "Bones". The characters are interesting, and changing believably over time, the plots are mostly interesting, and the science isn't always out the window. My major problem is that, as a co-worker said about CSI the other day, "They've got way better user interfaces than we do."

And I really can't wait to hear what Bones and Seeley have to say to the minister when the new season starts.

JESR@345: that's an interesting assessment of Gunn; do you feel there weren't enough bits dropped (old connections showing up, old obligations touched on) to keep his backstory visible? I gave up on both shows in November of BtVS's last season, giving me a limited perspective, but I remember the local group watching the Hugo nominees; the people who didn't follow the shows made some sense of the A episode with the ]haunted[ ballerina, but found "Conversations with Dead People" impenetrable.

Laina, do I know you? If I do, there were questions in Pinkys Place tonight about when you were returning home.

Glad to hear from you!

Bruce Cohen @310 - I just wanted to say what a gorgeous thing that was for you to say. It ought to be sidebar'd or something. In any case, it certainly crystalized why I love this group (ok, it's not the only reason; cascading joke games are another; but anyway). I mean, when I was discussing the train car incident with my husband and asking him the same question, and he suggested I survey my female friends, I realized that even better would be a post to an appropriate thread here because I'd get an even better sample set from people whose reactions I equally trust even though I haven't met most of them yet.

Also, Making Light has permalinks. This is a cool thing for a blog to have and should be encouraged.

Mary Dell @335 and Greg London @356 -

I was kind of shocked the day I, at 34 years old, sat next to an 11-year-old girl on a plane for 4 hours and realized how incredibly young 11 is!

The idea is that the mind isn't aware of it's own changes.

I am not entirely convinced that this is wrong to do so long as I make allowances for how I acted at the time, having been only 7, 11, 16, etc. at the time.

This isn't coming out the way I mean it. I think I get closer if I say that for just about every time I remember my parents say, "You'll understand when you're older," I can confidently say, "I'm older now, and my opinion hasn't changed," at least where my childhood outrage at perceived injustice came into play. But there's also the sense that the person that is "me" is still "me."

Maybe I should worry that I haven't grown up nearly as much as I think I have. The alternate conclusion, that I was a lot more grown up at the time than I ought to have been, seems a bit too simultaneously self-congratulatory and tragic to be countenanced. But when I fell in love with a boy in 3rd grade, I remember it feeling a hell of a lot like when I fell in love with my husband-to-be. When I got bullied in 6th grade, it felt awfully like when I got bullied by a drunk idjit in the crowd of a Cowboy Mouth show in Denver last month. Some situations I'm better equipped to deal with now than then, and some I'm still hopeless at. Doesn't this crap ever get easier?

That didn't end up where I thought it was going. I hope it's at least fairly evident what I'm circumlocuting, if I'm not managing to get at it directly.

Andrew T:

This summer I'm going to be doing some field research work, some of it in boats. One piece of standard equipment that many of my peers seem to bring with them is a pocket knife. Everyone has a different knife. I'm trying to choose one for myself, but I am bewildered and confused.

Will there be salt water involved? Do you have a bit of a budget? If so, then look at Boye Dendritic Cobalt Boat Knives, which stay ungodly sharp forever. If I had the cash I'd carry one: since I don't I tend to carry a Kershaw Leek pocketknife and a Gerber multitool.

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers:

I've been seriously thinking about a Palm now that my Newton** is on its last legs. * Yes, an Apple Newton 2100. If you think a Sony E-Reader is too big, then you don't even want to think about this monster. But the screen is large and has good resolution even by today's standards, and I've read books on it quite comfortably. Still, because the software is pretty much unmaintainable anymore, I use less and less of its capabilities. These days it's primarily an encrypted password store.

You do know there's a new, OSX native sync package out for the Newton as well as one in final development for Windows, don't you? As it is, since my 2100 does almost everything I need to do I'm just getting a n800 to go along with it as a web browser--can't do SSL with a Newton unfortunately...

Bruce E. Durocher II @ 362

You do know there's a new, OSX native sync package out for the Newton

No, I didn't; thank you very much for telling me about that. Unfortunately my serial port dongle disappeared awhile ago, and I've been waiting for one to show up on EBay (googling hasn't spotted one anywhere else yet).

I'm really not sure what to think about this: A Dictionary Of Botanical Epithets. I suspect the regular commentariat here will set me straight.

Nicole @ 361

*blush* Thank you for those kind words. I admit I was a little hesitant about hitting 'post' after I wrote that; I'm relatively new here, only been reading about 4 months and posting for a little over 3. But I've seen how people care for each other here, and I wanted you all to know I feel the same way.

Just finding ML this year was very important to me; I needed to know there was a place like this somewhere, and that I could be a part of it.

So the consensus is Angel is, overall, worthwhile?

One more Angel/Buffy question: Does the new Buffy comic, season 8, take place the year immediately after season 7? In other words, does it take place during Angel season 5? I heard a bit when it first came out, but nothing since--how is it?

Apologies for all the questions, but I'm a cautious shopper, and I trust you guys' opinions. =)

CHip @ 359- in general, I think that from midseason 3 on, Gunn's actual history gets reduced to a formula which under cuts most of his other-than-muscle identity.

Would say more but I've not ROT-13ed before and I don't learn well after midnight.

Heresiarch #366: I also haven't seen any of Angel (weirdly), but my understanding is that Buffy Season Eight takes place a year or so after its last season, so two-ish years after the end of Buffy. I don't recall exactly where I got that from, but it seems about right.

As for the comic's quality, it is very, very good.

Nicole, #361: ...for just about every time I remember my parents saying, "You'll understand when you're older," I can confidently say, "I'm older now, and my opinion hasn't changed,"

Hooboy, does that sound familiar! Moreover, the things they said that make sense to me now made sense to me from the start. As far as I can tell, there is no topic of disagreement upon which the mere fact of my getting older has caused me to change my opinion and agree with them -- although there are some things that I understand better from my adult perspective, I still ultimately disagree with their statements and/or actions.

jh @ 364: well, they're squamous, but unaccountably not rugose....

Lee & Nicole, re "understanding when you're older"--I have an older sister who confidently expected me to grow up to be her. Didn't happen.

And re downers: my mother, at 89, has decided she's tired and is no longer going to eat or drink. Hospice care commences ASAP. Thanks to the fluorosphere for giving me a calm and pleasant place to wait this out.

j h woodyatt @ 364

Do you know what character encoding that page is in? My browser is set for UTF-8, which is what everyone should be using in an international world, and there are a whole bunch of characters (decorating symbols, I would guess by their placement) that won't display. I tried some other encodings like ISO 8897-1 and MacRoman, but no joy.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers):

Unfortunately my serial port dongle disappeared awhile ago, and I've been waiting for one to show up on EBay (googling hasn't spotted one anywhere else yet).

They show up pretty frequently at newtontalk.net, and I think that J&K Sales has them still available.

Home soon.

Home soon.

Heresiarch @ 366 & co:
Angel is a good series but I find it quite dark, for all the humour. It's said to be about redemption but I'm not sure it is. It's a giant trap of a universe, in which evil has a clear supernatural presence and good does not -- indeed, it seems increasingly likely by the end of the series that the Powers that Be are evil or at least amoral. The characters become increasingly damaged as the series progresses, and I'm not at all sure that the ending represents any more than another winding of the trap. (I wonder what they would have done to our favourite characters by season 5 of Firefly, by comparison...)

I liked Illyria. I wanted to hear more of her story. Curiously, considering the circumstances in which she came into the world, she felt like a breath of hope. (V yvxr gb guvax gung fur pbhyq abg unir gnxra ba gung nfcrpg unq fur orra va n qvssrerag obql, naq gung va fbzr jnl Serq'f angher jnf erivirq va ure ol Jrfyrl'f nterrzrag gb or ure thvqr: znxrf uvf qrngu, naq snvyher ng gur cbvag bs qrngu, yrff hggreyl pehry naq zrnavatyrff).

I do kind of like the darkness of it all in a way. Some truly poetic moments.

SpeakerToManagers @ #371:

It claims to be in ISO-8859-1 (which would have been my first guess), but viewing it with that encoding set doesn't seem to help either.

I'm inclined to the suspicion that it's a piece of (probably-WYSIWYG-)HTML-editor-randomness unrelated to character encoding.

Paul A.

Thanks, that's the conclusion I reached after fiddling with it some more. Moderately irritating.

Jennyanydots @ 375

I agree about liking the darkness and specifically about Illyria and her relationship to (but not quite with) Wesley. I'm not sure that ending was really organic to the arc that Whedon and Minear had worked out for the series. I think it was a result of the premature cancellation. In fact, I think one way to read the very ending is as a commentary on the never-ending struggle between creative artists and the distributors and sellers of their work.

Think of Angel and his band as Whedon and the rest of the show's crew and cast, Wolfram and Hart and the Council as the network, and the Powers that Be as the general audience (not just the Angel fans) and you'll see what I mean.

Serge (#354): In 1985, I had been a Locus subscriber for 10 years. Impressive! Too bad the magazine doesn't hand out customer-loyalty awards.

Before joining the gang in 1981, I just picked up the occasional issue at Dark Carnival (including the fateful one with the Help Wanted announcement), and actually I've *never* subscribed -- since both the full-time workers and regular contributors get free copies. But the more subscribers the merrier! (Especially since I no longer have to process them by hand, on a typewriter in the offices, as was done in olden times.)

Faren, I bet mine was one of those you hand-processed on that typer. (1977 or 1978 - around there.) I'd been buying them at Recycle Books for a while before going for a subscription. I think Big Mac was the first Worldcon I read about.

Bruce E. Durocher II @ 372

Thanks again, and my encrypted password file that hasn't been backed up in months also thanks you.

Paula at #360

Yes, you know me. And your question reminds me that I haven't done a good job of telling folks about the change in plans for the move. I'll be moving back to Kansas* in early/mid Sept. instead of June. We ended up moving to the new library in May instead of February, and I'm sticking around for three months extra so I didn't have to try to get myself moved at the same time I was helping move the library.

* feel free to insert comments about ruby slippers/clicking heels/don't think we're in Kansas at this point.

#365 Bruce:

Are you familiar with the Callahan's stories? At its best, a virtual community is like that--shared pain lessened, shared joy multiplied. (A long time ago, I was an alt.callahans reader, and for all tghe flamewars and misunderstanding and dramatics at times, it could also be that kind of community. Here, we may benefit from having Teresa play Fast Eddie sometimes, albeit with disemvowelment instead of a blackjack.)

My big problem is not letting the virtual community become so much of a focus that I lose touch with the physical communities I'm also a part of.

#369 Lee:

One complicating factor here: A lot of us were pretty old-acting adults, by some combination of intelligence and interest/inclination. Smart, quiet kids tend to be seen as older than they really are sometimes, and I think it's easy for adults, especially adults under a lot of stress, to lean on them more heavily than is appropriate.

Some things my parents or other adults said, with which I disagreed as a kid, I've come to agree with. Dress and grooming are pretty pointless in any functional sense, but they really do matter in your interactions with other people. Shared values and culture really do make a marriage easier, though when my mom told me that at 16, I thought she was being closed-minded. A messy room really is a dumb thing to live with all the time.

Other stuff, I kept my ideas about the same because the reasoning was the same. Once you get, say, the proof that there are an infinite number of primes, life experience doesn't contradict it. I think I became more accepting of subtleties and gray areas as I grew up--places where a beautiful model is a poor fit for reality are less obvious when you don't have 40 years of life experience to compare your model against. More, I think life experience gives you a lot of examples in memory where your well-thought-out theory absolutely collapsed under an onslaught of inconvenient facts.

Henry Troup (#308) re hoof picks:

I am fond of the style made from a flatheaded scredriver blank.

I've gone through five or six in the past twenty years (mostly becuase I prefer to have some sort of rubber dip on them, to reduce slippage, though I've worn a couple down to where the horse thought they were too narrow.

No, there isn't a foldable pick which is as stout.

Victorinox makes a decent riding knife, with hoof-pick, and locking blade. I think of getting something like that, not because it's what I really want, but because I'm more likely to keep it handy, and no not have to improvise with other tools on the multi-tool.

Andrew T: I forgot to mention he most important reason I recommended the fixed bladed knife. If you have slippery hands, the odds of losing your grip while opening it goes down.

For all that there are lots of good knives out there, online, I'd go to a shop, or two, and handle them. How it feels in the hand is important. If it doesn't fit well, it's not as useful.

Laina, I will pass info along to Pinky, he was askiing about you last night in Pinky's Place.

Once you get to a point you can leave, remember you don't have to bother the perfessor, just click those ruby slippers together!

The HTTP Content-Type header just says 'text/html' with no 'charset' parameter, so your browser has only the HTML to go by. The page source has explicit <font> tags in it (thank you, Claris Home Page!) referencing Trebuchet MS, which I note is installed on my machine. Not sure where I got that font...

FWIW, it renders fine for me, even with UTF8 encoding forced.

Albatross at 383-- yeah. I'm coming up against stupid assumptions now, living pretty much on my own for the first time. I don't have the same practice of moderation that my siblings do; when I want something, I have to remind myself not to get it immediately. Why? Because growing up, I mostly didn't want things. People congratulated me on being so mature, not running around like a hooligan, not drinking or doing drugs, and missed the fact that I had no one to run around with and no one had ever offered me anything illegal. No one has, in fact, except my parents, and that was wine with dinner. There's a big difference between restraint and disinterest.

jh woodyatt

I think Trebuchet may be one that comes with WinXP. (I've got it at work, and it's an XP machine, to which I've added no fonts. Therefore ....)

albatross @ 382

I've read several of Spider Robinson's Callahan books, and I visited alt.callahans for a few days a long time ago. Maybe it was where I was at then, but the callahans conversation just didn't grab me the way ML does; maybe coming into that "3 Arab leaders walk into a bar" joke thread is the only sort of thing that could make me sit up and take notice.

The other thing is that Spider has disappointed me in the last few years. He started well, I thought. The notion of community he used originally was very much like what I said in my post upthread. But after awhile it started sounding like Callahan's was only a halfway house for damaged people; once you healed, you needed to move on. I don't see ML that way at all; this is a place to meet interesting, smart, caring people. Some have problems they're dealing with, some do not; some people get sympathy and perhaps some respite here. But we're not therapists or counselors; we don't know who has problems unless they tell us (and it's none of our business if they don't), and we can only help by listening and making suggestions about what direction to take.

The other thing about the Callahan stories these days is that our heroes are omniscient, omnipotent, and they like all the right brands. It's hard to care, and it's really hard to think of that setting as someplace I would fit in.

3D model of ancient Rome.
wow.

Aconite 330: A very good description of Season 4, by Pbaabe: "It's kinda like a bad dream I had--a very strange, and violent, at times inappropriately erotic dream."

That's a quote from Connor, who as you'll recall jnf tvira n jubyr arj uvfgbel jura Natry gbbx bire Jbysenz & Uneg. Ur fnlf gung jura ur yrnirf orsber gur svany onggyr. That gave some of us hope for a spinoff series, but it was not to be.

Allan 357: Um. I'm ashamed to say I'm not placing you just at the moment. Unless you were the one who...popped up on the computer. THAT I remember. Was that you?

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @#361: Some situations I'm better equipped to deal with now than then, and some I'm still hopeless at. Doesn't this crap ever get easier?

I find things do get easier as I get older, but just because I've had more practice. The second time someone close to me died was definitely easier than the first, because I'd done most of my philosophical wallowing* the first time around, for example.

The main thing that makes childhood different from adulthood, I think, is magical thinking. Children have a sense of cause and effect that has little to do with reality, and then the didactic adult way of explaining things gets layered on top of that, which makes the world a painful, guilt-inducing place. "Your great-aunt is sick, so we have to be really nice to her" can metamorphose through events to become "I wasn't nice enough to my great-aunt, so she died."

I imagine a lot of us made odd choices as children based on an incorrect idea of our power to affect the world. I know I was always trying to save people who couldn't be saved...certainly not by the self-sacrifice of a child. It took a long time to understand that I was motivated by something other than idiocy, because as an adult, I'd forgotten what it was like to believe in my own absolute power.

*why do people die, what is the meaning of life, is there an afterlife, etc etc

In unrelated news, I just had dinner with TexAnne, who's visiting New York City. I filled her in on the ML gossip (spoilering the wedding news, I'm afraid) and took her to eat at Zen Palate, where she actually photographed some of the food before we ate it (and if she shows you the photographs, you'll see why).

What a thoroughly delightful person she is. It was great to finally meet someone in person who I've known only via text before, of course, but she's fun and bright and witty into the bargain. Not that the rest of you aren't, of course.

More ML meetups. They're a good thing.

Bruce, #389: Spider appears (to me at least) to be suffering from Reichenbach Falls syndrome. He had enough good stories for 3 books set at Callahan's Place plus 2 more set at Lady Sally's before he blew up the bar. (Yes, literally!) But then his readers, and his publishers, demanded more, and he had to stretch further and further to keep the ideas coming, and the last 2 or 3 books have been, frankly, rather lame. I wish he'd come up with fresh ideas to explore, but I understand about having to pay the bills.

The various online incarnations of Callahan's Place have all suffered, to some extent, from not having the ability to put someone in the Fast Eddie role. I think the observation that Teresa (and Patrick, and sometimes Jim) having that role makes this a more pleasant community is spot-on.

I spent considerable time in a.c. myself; during the years immediately after my divorce, it gave me something to stabilize my life around, and I met my current partner there. But, as the motto in the books says, it was a place I found when I needed it, and left when I no longer did.

Well, that was special. I've been trying to update pages on ML for the last 15 minutes, and getting 'Name lookup failed' messages. Don't know how long it was going on before I started. Anybody know what happened?

xopher,

More ML meetups. They're a good thing.

funny you should mention, cause

all fluorospheroids in new york area! d'you want to hang out in a couple of weeks?

i will be in town from the 21st to the 26th, & selling my comical books at mocca art fest saturday & sunday.

i may not be the most well-known around these parts, but i'm told i'm pleasant in person! there's an email address linked from the website linked from my name, & another equally good email address viewable with the "see all by" trick.

miriam beetle @396
i may not be the most well-known around these parts...

In my head, there are three types of people on ML.

1. The giants who bestride the landscape. PNH, TNH, Jim, Avram, Xopher*, a few others as well


2. People whom I remember - not just names but facts and characteristics - from thread to thread. For instance, I once startled Serge by recalling that his wife writes romance novels, which he had mentioned a couple of months earlier and on another thread**. Note that some of the people in this class have landed there by behaving like a'holes; there is more than one way to be memorable‡.


3. People still classed as non-notable in abipedia. That doesn't mean they're really non-notable at all, just that abipedia is not a very general encyclopedia††. It also means they have the chance to reinvent themselves with each comment.

Anyway, having now defined my terms, I can say that you're in category two for me (not that I'm in New York). I suspect you are for many others here.
-----
* to prove that it's not just admins, and well, because it's Xopher
** and because they're romance novels, the wench is not dead†.
† I appear to be Baroque and discursive today. Hm.
‡ I always used to say that nothing is as memorable as a good affectation, back when I used one in my online persona.
†† Maybe I need more editors. Then I can have edit wars in my head! Wait. That's why I left therapy.

And, of course, category #4: aspects of abi's personality who have escaped the confines of her head and taken up an independent existence on the infinite neon grid of cyberspace.

Which could be any of us.

For all you know.

(Also, I like the wikipedia model of human consciousness, and will have to give it some serious thought.)

Many of my sub-personae are identifiable by their usernames, often all lowercase and starting with "a"*

-----
* thus begins my stealth attempt to take credit for that fantastic posting in the Catz thread†.
† because having my name on the top of the thread didn't work.

since the thread was called "abi sutherland, on catz," i was pretty much assuming that all the posts in it must have been by abi sutherland. what other explanation could there be?

i r largekitteh.
i can has multitudes!

#399: SCREAM gibber gibber HOWL DOUBT OWN EXISTENCE AS INDEPENDENT SENTIENT BEING whimper SCREAM

Odd. I just felt a sudden disturbance in my head, as though someone in there was screaming.

albatross @ 383: "Dress and grooming are pretty pointless in any functional sense, but they really do matter in your interactions with other people."

Heh, that rings a bell. In many ways my life can be divided into the "Adhering to Arbitrary Social Norms is Illogical" and the "Yeah, But Little Effort, Big Payoff" epochs, with very little continuity between the two. Figuring out that it might be worthwhile to pay some attention to social norms (even if they don't make any sense) was a pretty major revelation in my life.

Mary Dell @ 392: "I imagine a lot of us made odd choices as children based on an incorrect idea of our power to affect the world. I know I was always trying to save people who couldn't be saved...certainly not by the self-sacrifice of a child."

I get weird (in a good way) resonances of Pan's Labyrinth and the His Dark Materials trilogy from that. I think a non-neglible fraction of sf/f deals with that theme, though I don't think that there's much of a consensus.

abi #401: I can has self-contradiction?

ajay @ 402

What's the matter? Don't have a mouth?

Lee #394 and others:

I agree about the Callahan's stories--he's kind of run out of ideas. The last couple books were pretty lame. The super-intelligent psychic daughter thing wears thin in about five minutes, and the idea that one small-time gangster could frighten a group that had faced down extraterrestrial invasions was silly. (Steve Barnes made a comment one time about how you had to match the difficulty to the characters--his example was that it wouldn't be interesting to watch James Bond foil a 7-11 holdup. This problem killed _Callahan's Con_ for me.)

On the other hand, I thought _The Free Lunch_ was quite good. There were implausibilities, but they somehow didn't ruin the story for me.

#404 Heresiarch:

Temple Grandin (as far as I can tell, an autistic genius--she's a world-famous expert on animal behavior who also has a book explaining how she translates her picture-based thought processes to words) calls these "sins of the system." She commented in one of her books that her life became much easier when she understood that there were arbitrary rules, and that if she committed to following them all the time, people would cut her a lot of slack on other things.

#397 ::: abi commented:
Note that some of the people in this class have landed there by behaving like a'holes; there is more than one way to be memorable‡.

I have a dreadful memory for names, and have often commented that the only way I'll remember your name the first time I meet you is if you do something really impressive. Unfortunately, it's pretty rare that "impressive" and "good" go together...

P.J. Evans (#379) -- I didn't start at Locus till 1981, but if you held onto your subscription I *would* have processed the renewal. And I know I did Serge's renewals, since he mentioned being a subscriber and I remember his name from the slow-computer-printout book that listed all of them (and got temporarily updated in red ink, by hand).

j h woodyatt @ #386:

FWIW, it renders fine for me, even with UTF8 encoding forced.

The front page renders fine for me as well; it's the subpages where the problems appear.

1985 was the year I came in 3rd in the All-Ireland Harp Competition (Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann) and tied for 4th in bodhran. On a lark I went up to Pearl River NY last weekend and qualified for this year's competition in harp and accompaniment. Through drugs and therapy I have been cured of bodhran.

#403: actually things are settling down now. Had coffee with Nightmare Abi and the other alter egos, and we're setting up a union. She won't push us around for much longer...

Faren @ 410

Just renewed again. How else can I find out what's going to be happening in the future?

In 1985 I turned 21. Third year of college. My best friend James turned 30 and we made a huge production of it. I had a Commodore 64 that I hooked up to my black-and-white TV. (This was the only computer I ever resold for more than I paid for it, because it could run Toast and there was (and is) a pretty big computer animation scene here.) I was working at 7-11 then, and it was the year I totalled my car and started using a scooter, which I drove for 5 years.

We had NASFiC in Austin--I volunteered for that, and got written up in the San Angelo, TX paper.

And I my have one of the generics on my shelf at home, Melissa. I'll check!

Oddly enough, 1985 was the year that a friend and I discussed the possibility of an organisation called NAMP - the National Association of Multiple Personalities. Several memberships to one body a requirement of joining.

I can see that life has come full circle.

About "old" children and self-restraint:

I was a very old-acting first-born with many self-imposed rules and regulations. I tried very hard to follow the rules, and at an awkward early teenage time, decided that instead of rebelling against my parents, I'd rebel against my peers, and became very mormon, very intellectual (or so I imagined) and very gothy vegetarian (It was 1986 in the midwestern burbs - gothy vegetarian was still rebellion then!). The best way to get me to break down in tears was for an authority figure to say s/he was "disappointed" in me.

At nearly 35, I've been OK with legal limitations, but when it comes to things like "cake is not a breakfast food", or "if you don't buy these books/clothes/sheet music now, you can save for a good cello" or "if you hew to this schedule you created yourself, you can see at least three things in London you wanted to see", a part of my brain pipes up with "You can't tell me what to do! You're not the boss of me!!!". Despite the fact that all of the above are in my best interests.

It's quite self-sabotaging (specifically putting off long-term goals for instant gratification) that I suppose I ought to see a shrink about it. But while I am a huge proponent of the powers of therapy (which have done wonders for friends and family) I had a really rotten experience in my teens with a therapist, and I can't bring myself to go through the process of finding one who isn't a total quack.

You're not the boss of me!!!

That line always makes me smile.

Despite the fact that all of the above are in my best interests.

Ah, yes. Welcome to the human race. ;) You've at least become aware of the issue, which is probably half the battle, and puts you ahead of a lot of people.

I can't bring myself to go through the process of finding one who isn't a total quack.

The fact that you're already aware of your behaviour has me wondering if you need therapy. You sound perfectly human to me. If there is something about the behaviour that is measurably impacting you in a specific negative way, then that's a different thing. But if it's just the voice, then therapy or even coaching might be overkill. If you're interested, I could talk you through how coaching would deal with the voice and its impact, but it wouldn't make the voice go away, it would be showing you some tools you can use to help neutralize it when it shows up.

Xopher #393:

Yes, TexAnne's a great person to hell around WFC with, too. She even gave me two story ideas for free.

As long as everyone else is channeling 1985:

Started a new software job where I got to use Apollos, with mice and everything. My first workstation was the size of a small washing machine, with a monster tube that required its own stand. We were churning out vast amounts of Pascal.

Sometime that year, we bought a Mac Plus to replace the Kaypro. It didn't come with a hard drive, so we ended up spending what must have been a week's pay for somebody to get an external drive, all 10 megs.

That was the year I sang chorus in my first operas, instead of driving up to SF to just watch.

I was reading Locus, but didn't subscribe until roughly five years ago--buying it OTC always gave me an excuse (as if I needed one) to hit a specialty bookstore. (In 1985, it was Future Fantasy (RIP), which was in vague walking distance, although I always drove because I knew I'd have too many books to carry on the way back.)

We'd discovered Chez Panisse the previous summer, and then went mad ordering from Shepherd Seeds. I think 1985 was the year our back garden produced the zucchini plague (we unloaded a bunch on the little old lady from Trieste next door), and we had pasta w/ fresh tomatos at least twice a week. I made some truly amazing bread-and-butter pickles from the cucumbers.

Without knowing it, I was watching Vikram Seth writing _The Golden Gate_ at a back table in Printer's Ink bookstore (also RIP).

Fourth of Julys were always spent at the Stanford Amphitheatre, where the Preservation Hall Jazz Band had a standing gig. Show-offy picnics were the rule, and some people waved balloons in time w/ the music.

No particular angst, and the future was starting to look bright enough that I was thinking of investing in a cheap pair of sunglasses. I wish I still had all that much energy.

nerdycellist #417: t's quite self-sabotaging (specifically putting off long-term goals for instant gratification)

Can't be worse than putting off instant gratification for no goals at all. I keep not getting things because I need to save the money for ... what?

joann @ 420

the year our back garden produced the zucchini plague

Early one summer I was fertilizing some of the plants in our backyard, and made a horrible mistake from not paying attention to what I was doing. I fertilized the zucchini! Within a few weeks all of our recipes for zucchini were exhausted and we were reduced to putting zucchini in baskets and leaving them on neighborhood doorsteps with notes saying "Please take care of my baby."

Greg London @ 418

When our kids were in high school we got a new dog, a Border Collie puppy. True to breed, he almost immediately started herding everything in sight, including the kids. They started telling the dog (and everyone else) "You're not the Border Collie of me!"

Word people:

Apparently "preventative," which I find distasteful, is a legitimate word.

Is its meaning different in any way from "preventive?"

Please enlighten me.

(I also prefer "orient" to "orientate.")

Will "preventitative" be the next fad?

1985? Ugh. I had a RadioShack color computer, and I had splurged the extra money for the exernal 5.25" harddrive.

About the only thing 1985 had going for it was it was the year "Back to the Future" came out.

NerdyCellist @417,

There's a " find a therapist" search at Psychology Today. Between the descriptions they give of themselves, and that they list if they do free phone consultations, you'll be much better able to interview them and see if they set off your flake-o-meter before you start.

I'd suggest finding one with "Therapist Orientation" (link to definitions) = Cognitive Behavioral (CBT). They're somewhat harder to get appointments with, due to recent articles on the effectiveness of CBT, but then CBT is effective. And efficient.

That's for dealing with negatives. Quite separate from that is building up positives: two years ago I had a life coach*, and that was quite useful in replacing a couple of weakly good habits with better ones.

Also- your comment reminds me of my two favorite "pop-psychology but sharp and effective" books of the past 20 years:

1. The Resilience Factor by Shatte & Reivich**.

2. Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. (Link to his site-- it has a bundle of interesting tests, articles, and etc.-- but I'd also get the book.)

Both books are useful, habit changing, and dense with good ideas- i.e. not the sort of books that spend 200 pages on a 20 page concept.

The Resilience Factor especially could be helpful with stopping self-sabotage.

-------------
* "Life coaching is a new type of therapy that helps healthy people to realize their goals in work, family and life. Although many psychologists also consider part of their treatment to be a form of life coaching, this therapy doesn't focus on treating mental illness. Executive coaches, for example, may be enlisted to help a chief executive become a better manager." (psych today)

** "Their premise--that your thinking style determines your resilience--underlies the books promise: you can boost resilience by changing the way you think about adversity."

Greg, #418: You do stuff to help people deal with the Goddamn Tapes? We may need to talk...

Drat.

The beautiful house we were going to hire in the Netherlands just fell through. The painter isn't going to the Canary Islands.

Suddenly feeling deeply, deeply low. All of our plans are in tatters, the timing is fsked, and I'm not sure how we're going to make anything work.

*headdesk*

abi #428: Oh shit! That's just terrible. I hope you can find a substitute quickly.

My sympathies, abi. That stinks.

Oh, that's rough, abi. Sending positive home-finding energy from California, fwiw...

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey, protests "preventative."

May I meet that gambit with "hesitancy" which doesn't quite mean either hesitant, or hesitation, or to hesitate but some other, even more tenuous condition lingering indeterminately on the plane of meaning defined by those three points?

Bill Higgins -- Beam Jockey, @ #424, re: "preventative" vs "preventive"

There's nothing wrong with "preventive", and if Google's to be believed, it's over 2½ times as common on the web as "preventative". On the other hand, there's not much of a rational case to be made against the latter. It's not a recent innovation — the OED's earliest citation for "preventative"[1] is from 1655, just 29 years after the first for "preventive"[2] — and there are other "-ative" adjectives similarly formed from stems not ending in "-ate", unless you prefer "qualitive", "authoritive", and "talkive".

1. 1655 LD. ORRERY Parthenissa IV. II. viii. 74 All preventative thoughts of hostility were silenc'd.
2. a1626 BACON Considerations Warre with Spain (1629) 2 Warres preuentiue vpon just feares, are true defensiues, as well as vpon actuall inuasions.

Sorry to hear that abi. Come on, guys, there must someone in the fluorosphere who has contacts in the Netherlands that can help abi find a really nice house (sorry, every one I knew from there is either gone, or long gone).

Kathryn@426: Life coaching is a new type of therapy that helps healthy people

I wouldn't call it "therapy". The difference being, as it says, that it's geared towards healthy people, who are for some non-mental-illness reason, stuck. But otherwise, it's a pretty accurate description.

Lee@427: You do stuff to help people deal with the Goddamn Tapes?

That's definitely a big part of what I work with.

YMMV, etc...

Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey @ #424:

(I also prefer "orient" to "orientate.")

I can speak to this part of your post, because someone made me wince by saying "orientate" when they meant "orient" so I looked it up. "Orientate" means to turn toward the Orient, a.k.a. the Far East. So if you're oriented toward the Orient you are Orientated.

Presumably this means that "occidentate" should also be a word.

Mary Dell @ 436

Presumably this means that "occidentate" should also be a word.

Yes, it means your teeth face west.

My irrational word peeve is 'to utilize' where 'to use' is sufficient.

"No, you idiot— that wrench already had its utility for tightening bolts before you even picked it up. If you insist on abusing that word any further, then I'll be tempted to utilize this chair leg as a blunt instrument to club the proper meaning of the word into you. Lucky for you, I'm plagued with a natual hesitancy to escalate matters of word choice into violence."

Bruce Cohen #437: That, I suppose, was an occident waiting to happen.

#438 It is so hard to pick one word peeve out of so many.... 'myself' and 'infer' spring to mind.

Some of the US usage differences, 'momentarily' for example, still seem like a bump in the sentence to me, but are not really a true peeve.

abi 397: Good grief. I do not walk in such august company. In fact, many of my contributions are jejune, but then it may be that I march to my own beat.

Seriously, I always picture people rolling their eyes and scrolling down past my posts.

____ 428: I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you find something soon. Do not despair.

Mary 436: I used to say "Boreate" when I meant "face north." No, this wasn't correct. But it was fun. Btw, 'orient' really does originally mean "face east"; medieval maps had east at the top, and lining up the map with the world involved facing east.

Fragano Ledgister @ 439

My occident has been Gored. True, but inconvenient.

Xopher @ #441: lining up the map with the world involved facing east.

Neato! Didn't know that.

I, myself, have recently become orientated, by the way, since I'm planning to go to China within (hopefully!) three years or so. But I suppose for most people, orientatation is something they're born with...

oh, FWIW, I always enjoy your posts. You have a strong POV, which you present consistently, but without being a f&ck-stick about it. This is also true of many other ML regulars, which is part of what makes this such a cool place to hang out.

Heresiarch, #336: Does the new Buffy comic, season 8, take place the year immediately after season 7? In other words, does it take place during Angel season 5?
There's a throwaway line in the 1st or 2nd issue which strongly suggests it's taking place around the time of the Angel season 5 episode "The Girl in Question", but other than that I haven't noticed anything to time-place it.

how is it?

I'm enjoying it quite a bit, even with my occasional difficulty recognizing people (which isn't necessarily a sign of a problem with the art -- I have trouble recognizing people in movies and TV shows too). I don't understand gur fvtavsvpnapr bs "KKK" naq gur ahzore 30 ba gur qbbe gb gur qbbe Rguna jnf in the latest issue, though. Anyone?

Er, hrm. That's unfortunate rot13-ing -- hope this doesn't attract the wrong attention.

Bill Higgins, #424, when I had the mover estimator here and we were discussing philosophy, religion, politics, raising kids, etc., he said "Deitist" and I automatically corrected him. He took it well, but I was careful not to correct any more words, and there were a lot with an extra "ta."

Greg London, #425, if you like Back to the Future, you'll like Two Lumps today.

abi, #428, I'm so sorry! I hope something comes up soon.

xeger (#409): at times I will be talking to someone and mention where I work, and hear "oh, do you know so-and-so? they work there too!"

Sometimes I recognize the name and sometimes I don't. When I don't, I point out that (as a sysadmin) if I know someone's name it's for one of two reasons:

1. They've done something really memorable like reimplementing a chunk of the sequencing pipeline to take advantage of our new batch queueing system only a few days after we announced it was in production.

2. They've done something really memorable like submitting 40,000 jobs to said batch queueing system without either (a) testing the code or (b) using the flag that says "don't email me a job completion message". (One mail server. Hundreds of compute nodes, rapidly generating "job exited with status 1" emails. You do the math. Instant self-DoS attack.)

So if I recognize your name, that can be a very good sign, or it can be a very bad sign. If I don't know who you are, you can't have done anything too incredibly stupid, or at least you did it in the lab and not where I'd hear about it.

you'll like Two Lumps today.

Oooh. The artist can sure draw one mean cat.
Literally, mean.

;)

Xopher @ 391: "Popped up on the computer." ...... Well, that's one way of describing it. Yes, that was me.

;-)

abi - #$%@! Damn. I'm sorry.

Miriam beetle @ 396: i will be in town from the 21st to the 26th, & selling my comical books at mocca art fest saturday & sunday.

Another small world phenomenon: Hi, Miriam! We met at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. I'm a curator at MoCCA, and I'll be selling my comics at the festival, too. I'll be sure to track you down during the weekend.

Lila @370,

I'm very sorry to read that. Wish that there was something useful to say.

From my own experience, one thing I learned is that floods-of-stress aren't necessary to grief. If you find you're getting too much adrenalin (fight or flight response) or too little sleep there's nothing wrong with a short course of modern meds to help*.

-----------
* For me, driving while crying was tough: driving and crying while sleep deprived would have just been dangerous. I made sure I got my sleep.

albatross @ 408: Ah, Temple Grandin. She's an interesting woman. I'm not autistic by any stretch of the imagination, but reading her explanations of what it feels like to be autistic felt very familiar. It described quite accurately, though to a dramatic degree, what it feels like to live in my head.

I wonder how many fannish folk would score noticeably outside the norm on a test of autistic/Asperger's-ish tendencies?

bill,

hi! i finally got around to reading young bottoms in love this past weekend, & it is aces. in fact, it got rather passed around (my little sister & her fella were up for shabbat) & many laughs were shared.

see you soon!

I always picture people rolling their eyes

(takes eyes out of sockets.)

(rolls them like dice towards xopher)

(picks them up, dusts them off, and puts them back in sockets)

Yeah? What of it?

Greg, don't you say something like "C'mon, baby, daddy needs a new pair of shoes!" when you roll them?

I'd like to note with annoyance what I saw on Sci Fiction tonight:
"As of Friday, June 15, 2007, SCI FICTION will no longer be availabe on SCIFI.COM.
SCIFI.COM would like to thank all those who contributed and those who read the short stories over the past few years. "

So much for "...you can continue to visit SCI FICTION's archive of critically acclaimed and award-winning tales...10 major awards, including three Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards and a World Fantasy Award."

Todd Larason@444: Ynfg vffhr, jura Rguna Enlar jnf va Ohssl'f qernz, ur fubjrq ure uvzfrys va n fbeg bs pntr znqr hc bs guerr K'f. Jura Ohssl fnj gur 30 ba gur qbbe, fur pbaarpgrq gung gb gur 3 K'f (K = 10) naq pbapyhqrq gung Rguna jnf orvat uryq vafvqr gurer.

This article reports on a proposed law making attempted infringement of copyright a crime, not to mention increasing penalties for copyright infringements to the level of drug dealers. There is a link to a pdf of the proposed law. Is it real?

Greg London @ 454... It sounds like you've been reading too much Joe Lansdale.

1985... That's the year I met Galileo. Not metaphorically, but for real. In the metal. I knew someone who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and she gave me a private tour of the facilities, going to corners where the guided tours weren't allowed. That's how I came to the building with the big vacuum-testing chamber, and right next to it, 50 feet away from me, there was the probe Galileo.

Todd Larson @#444 & David Goldfarb @#457, here's what I want to know: jura qvq Ohssl yrnea Ebzna ahzrenyf? I mean, c'mon, are we really supposed to believe that? :)

Does anyone remember the trick to saving the entire Scifiction archive? Just after Scifiction ended, a bunch of people posted a way to save the entire thing, but I don't remember enough about it to Google.

Kathryn @451: Thank you. Actually, if anything, I'm having the opposite problem. I am almost preternaturally calm. I made quite a good score on the comprehensive exit exam for my physical therapist assistant degree on Monday, for example. (As I told my sister, it's amazing how little test anxiety you can have if the test itself is a welcome relief from real life.)

Judging by past experience, I will probably have a meltdown of epic proportions after it's all over. Right now we're sort of in Francisco Franco mode, for those old enough to remember Saturday Night Live that far back.

(462) Diatryma
Does anyone remember the trick to saving the entire Scifiction archive? Just after Scifiction ended, a bunch of people posted a way to save the entire thing, but I don't remember enough about it to Google.

Here's a free, open source program that makes whole copies of sites. Works pretty well, though some others work slightly better.
http://www.httrack.com/
You don't even need to install anything if you don't want, you can just download the program itself. (The "no install" version.)

You just point it at the address you want to save, and it follows all of the links and makes a copy of everything. There are settings you can mess with that control how deeply it digs, and how far it drifts, but you can probably skip that for this project.
(Tip: don't point it at google, unless you want a copy of the internet.)

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)#442: I presume that's patriotic.

My question is: why is scifi.com doing this? Is it worth bothering Ellen Datlow?

Soon Lee writes in #458:
This article reports on a proposed law making attempted infringement of copyright a crime, not to mention increasing penalties for copyright infringements to the level of drug dealers. There is a link to a pdf of the proposed law. Is it real?

Confirmed on the Department of Justice site.

Hmm, 1985? That was my freshman-sophomore year at Brown, and also the year I finally graduated from high school. I skipped 12th grade, but they wouldn't give me the diploma until I transferred an English credit back from college...

Kimiko @ 464

Oooh, neat! There's a site I want a copy of .... (Actually, there's two of them. Many pages, none of them particularly large in size. Just ... many pages.)

Soon Lee@458: This article reports on a proposed law making attempted infringement of copyright a crime

Why am I always surprised when these people demonstrate their insatiability for more monopolist powers? I know I shouldn't be, but here I am, shocked. And disgusted.

@#456, @#462, @#464: The Internet archive is our friend:

http://web.archive.org/*/www.scifi.com/scifiction/

Lila @ 463: That's how I operate too. Having work to do distracts me enough to function, and then I'll get smacked later when I have time. Physically, as well: I can stave off a cold until the end of the semester and then be sick when I have time for it.

Right now I'm focusing on the translation thesis so that I can work through until the end of the summer, at least. I need to defend in August...

Fragano Ledgister @ 465

No, no, down with the patriarchy!

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #473: I know no one who has ridden on Noah's patriarch.

Heresiarch @ 452

I wonder how many fannish folk would score noticeably outside the norm on a test of autistic/Asperger's-ish tendencies?

A lot of us, I suspect. I had very much the same reaction when I first heard Temple Grandin speak. I'm neither autistic nor do I have Ausperger's Syndrome*, but the kinds of experiencex she described, such as reactions to touch and texture and the effects of sounds, were very familiar. Fore example, I have never been able to eat an unskinned peach, because the feeling of the fuzz on my skin is excruciatingly uncomfortable. Similar though not as severe a reaction to polystyrene foam, but only if it has large air cells. I conjecture it has something to do with the spatial frequency of the texture, but that's just a SWAG.

Aside from that shock of recognition, I greatly admire Ms. Grandin's success in building her life in what must be a terribly alien world to her.

* I do have ADD, not a mild case, but well under control these days between medication (not stimulants incidentally, but SSRIs) and therapy, and have since I was about 12 or 13, I think.

I'm another ADDult, as we used to say on the posting boards; when I was diagnosed at 39, my second-grade teacher was the least surprised person I told. Reading Temple Grandin, I constantly find myself going "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, WHOA, nope!"

But, short of Ken Kesey's "Abdul and Ebenezer" she's one of the few people who writes about cattle in a way which is recognizable after my experience of living with them. (The All Creatures Great and Small animals are all too stupid and mechanical; the medical filter, I suppose).

Fragano Ledgister @ 474

Well, if Gore is right, maybe we'd better all get tickets for that ride. The water's getting a little high already.

JESR @ 476

"The medical filter" - Yep. You've got to remember that doctors are taught to see humans as stupid and mechanical too. If you can stomach it, watch "House" for one episode; his attitude towards his patients is an underlying subtext for most doctors.

Yeah, working for a med school made me respect doctors, sure it did.

Bruce Cohen #477: Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case. Even the president has stopped saying 'Noah'.

Rereading my post, I find it's a little confusing about the time element of my ADD. I believe, in hindsight, that I've had it since early puberty, but it wasn't diagnosed until I was 50, and not properly treated until almost 8 years later*. There must be some sort of irony in the fact that my son's ADD was diagnosed more than ten years before mine.

* Treatment for ADD is highly idiosyncratic. Stimulants like ritalin and amphetamine work well for some people and not at all for others. I'm using an anti-depressant which is usually effective for less than a year and that for only 40% of patients, and is used as a starter, with stimulants to follow. In my case, the anti-depressant is still going strong after 2 years, and I haven't needed anything else. Brain chemistry is wonderously complex and varied.

Any time I see a list of symptoms for Asberger's or other autismy things, I read down it going "Ooh, that's me! Oh, that's not me. Ooh! Oh. Ooh! Oh." The ohs outweigh the oohs, though.

Re: the rot13'd Season 8 discussion, I would just like to say that V pna'g oryvrir Rguna'f qrnq, naq qrfcrengryl jnag uvz abg gb or (naq abg whfg orpnhfr jr funer n anzr), ohg vg ybbxrq gb zr yvxr vg jnf cerggl qrsvavgvir. Nal gubhtugf?

Bruce, I'm psyching myself up for a showdown with my Doc right now- she is so narrowly focussed on my hypertension that it takes me developing major side effects to the pills she prescribes to me down from the old good numbers to the new, lower-than-I've-ever-been-since-childhood levels before I can convince her that there are other matters to worry about, like my weight, and depression. So remembering that she thinks I'm a machine that should have predictable outputs and that "everybody lies" is sort of my morning affirmation, this week.

This, even though we've already done the "See, if you take me off methylphenidate my blood pressure goes up" experiment and the consult with my shrink about why sending me to the fire department to get my blood pressure checked doesn't yield good data. Just another rock to push up the hill.

JESR #482:

The fire department? This sounds remarkably peculiar.

Bill Higgins @467:
Experiencing disbelief right now.

ethan @ #481, after Serendipity and the last few eps of Angel I pretty much expect tbbq punenpgref gb qvr rirel gvzr Jurqba jnagf gb fgnegyr hf. SO irritating.

#457 David Goldfarb: Thanks! I either completely missed that or had forgotten about it (or just didn't recognize the person previously).

#461 Mary Dell: maybe by osmosis, by being around Giles & his old books so much?

#481 Ethan: I'll have to read it again before having any useful comment, but Mary makes a good point in #485.

joann, it's SOP here for people who need regular blood pressure checks to go to the fire station because that's where the medics are. Me, I have serious "social anxiety" and the idea makes me freak out just to consider it.