From Burning Man Polls
(I’d better practice my DanceDanceRevolution for endurance ;-) )
Trance music on the playa: what’s your take? |
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(Most people are on the playa ALL week. Wow.)
When will you arrive on the playa? |
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0.166 / (0.166 + 0.366) = a rather encouraging 0.318
Love on the playa. Romance! or romance? Did you come to the playa… |
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(bring a bike!)
How do you plan on getting around the playa this year? |
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from http://eplaya.burningman.com/viewtopic.php?t=3890
Yesterday I said that I thought the eHarmony site was broken…. well, that’s not the case. I just didn’t read the letter they sent me. (which is kind-of out of character for me, hence the title of the entry). It actually says that my personality profile is too non-standard for their system.
Based on your answers to our Relationship Questionnaire we will not be able to provide you with matching service.
The message you received onsite is used to notify people that they fall outside the range of those we can accurately match with the eHarmony matching service. Let me explain what that means. eHarmony matches people by analyzing their answers to the Relationship Questionnaire in order to accurately match compatible types of people.
The difficulty with this technology is that about 20%, or roughly 1 in 5 people, do not fit neatly into any of these categories. When that happens we are faced with a dilemma. We can either match them anyway and hope for the best, or not match them. We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish and enjoy happy, lasting relationships that we have chosen to not provide service instead of risking an uncertain match. We feel that incompatible matches could easily lead to bad marriages; the very thing eHarmony was created to prevent.
Please do not take our inability to match you as a reflection of your desirability. We want you to feel totally welcome to spend time with us on our site. Take advantage of every other part of our service – Our Personality Profile, Q&A with Dr. Neil Clark Warren, and Enlightenment, our monthly newsletter. One thing I can promise you is that all of us at eHarmony are deeply committed to your welfare. We want you and everyone else involved with us to end up with the life he or she most dreams of having.
To access your free personality profile, please go to www.eHarmony.com. At the bottom of the screen you will see the text, “Login to complete your registration or personality profile” next to form fields with the words “Username” and “Password” directly above them. Enter your user name and your password in the corresponding spaces then click the Login button. At the bottom of the screen you will see the message referenced above ending with, “You can still receive your free personality profile by clicking here.” Please click the ‘here’ link to access your profile.
This message is an auto-response to your inquiry. If your questions or concerns have not been addressed, please reply and a Customer Care representative will get right back to you.
Sincerely,
eHarmony Customer Care
Yesterday, I was 1/2 way through writing another rant about a problem I was having with Match.com when I realized that the problem wasn’t on their site but in my head. Hmmm. Hmmmmm. I don’t know what’s up with me. I -feel- reasonably ok. So why are my senses off-kilter like this?
My Cassiopeia E-125 Pocket PC died a few days ago. :-(
The screen started getting really flaky. Sometimes it would work… sometimes when I hit the box, it would work… sometimes not. So I opened it up. And opened it up some more. And then a little more. And I didn’t find anything loose. I think I have to open it even more to find the problem but I can’t figure out how to do it. Hurumph.
So I bought an E-125 on eBay. I paid $500 new in 2001 or so. I bought the used on on eBay for $97, shipping included. It will hopefully arrive by Wednesday.
I spent 3 hours over 3 agonizing evenings filling out the eHarmony.com profile thing and this is what I got back after 30 milliseconds of thought by the mainframe.
eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive testing of married individuals. One of the requirements for it to work successfully is for participants to fall into our rigorously defined profiles. If we aren’t able to match a user well using these profiles, the most considerate approach is to inform them early in the process.
We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish and enjoy happy, lasting relationships that we choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.
Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching system is not suitable for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply would not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand that we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time.
And their system seems to be broken… The FAQ says that I can change my profile to cast a wider net (ie, change the geographic area I’m willing to accept, religious beliefs, etc). But I don’t see the button they want me to push on the web site. :-( I wrote to them.
I went out with The Eleventh President the other night. She helped me feel better about things. Thanks.
I got an email of encouragement from TJIC. Thanks.
These things mean a lot. Thank you.
You know, right after we broke up, the dread-factor in my life decreased dramatically. I wasn’t expecting that. I mean, there shouldn’t be a direct link between a universal dread of waking, working, and living and not getting to see a girlfriend as often as wanted. I’m surprised I didn’t see this strong correlation before.
I just bought a Projeti electric flying wing and brushless motor set. It promises to go 3 times as fast as the Zagi, still with amazing acrobatics. I’m taking it to Burning Man in August. It’s going to need a more artistic paint job than what comes out of the box. Too bad I don’t have an artistic girlfriend.
Everything is coming from Northeast Sailplane Products http://www.nesail.com
I’ll probably be lighting the plane with something from one of these companies:
http://www.glowire.com
http://www.rcneon.com
Here is a calculator for LEDs I might need
http://www.rc-cam.com/led_info.htm
Paypal says:
Transfer money into your PayPal Money Market account and earn the #1 Money Market prime retail yield as ranked out of 297 investment companies. Currently, you can earn 1.00%*!
I spent 15 seconds looking and CNN Money showed me 14 money market funds currently earning between 1 and 2% interest. I’m not sure I could find 297 investment companies, much less 297 offering less than 1%. Paypal is lying.
I just bought a Projeti electric flying wing and brushless motor set. It promises to go 3 times as fast as the Zagi, still with amazing acrobatics. I’m taking it to Burning Man in August. It’s going to need a more artistic paint job than what comes out of the box. Too bad I don’t have an artistic girlfriend.
Everything is coming from Northeast Sailplane Products http://www.nesail.com
I’ll probably be lighting the plane with something from one of these companies:
http://www.glowire.com
http://www.rcneon.com
Here is a calculator for LEDs I might need
http://www.rc-cam.com/led_info.htm
What is in the mail to me from Vermont:
Sal at NESail tells me that at WOT, the motor/prop draws 26 amps, 24,000rpm, 237 watts
I’m planning on getting a hard-sided archery case to haul it to Burning Man. Maybe this one on the right, from http://www.unlimitedoutdoors.com/accessories.html
Or maybe I’ll just spend $40 on this plain case on eBay 
One girlfriend is now just a girl that’s a friend.
One girlfriend says we’re “seeing too much of each other.” 1.25 dates/month for 6 months is too much? :-(
Can anybody find me somebody to love
Ooh, each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
(Take a look at yourself) Take a look in the mirror and cry (and cry)
Lord what you’re doing to me (yeah yeah)
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can’t get no relief, Lord!
Somebody (somebody) ooh somebody (somebody)
Can anybody find me somebody to love ?Yeah
I work hard (he works hard) every day of my life
I work till I ache in my bones
At the end (at the end of the day)
I take home my hard earned pay all on my own
I get down (down) on my knees (knees)
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord somebody (somebody), ooh somebody
(Please) Can anybody find me somebody to love ?(He works hard)
Everyday (everyday) - I try and I try and I try
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I’m going crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Ah, got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe in
Yeah yeah yeah yeahOh Lord
Ooh somebody - ooh somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love ?
(Can anybody find me someone to love)Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat (You just keep losing and losing)
I’m OK, I’m alright (he’s alright - he’s alright)
I ain’t gonna face no defeat (yeah yeah)
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
One day (someday) I’m gonna be free, Lord!Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love love love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love somebody somebody somebody somebody
Somebody find me
Somebody find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love ?(Find me somebody to love)
Ooh
(Find me somebody to love)
Find me somebody, somebody (find me somebody to love) somebody, somebody to love
(Find me somebody to love)
Find me, find me, find me, find me, find me
Ooh - somebody to love
(Find me somebody to love)
Ooh
(Find me somebody to love)
Find me, find me, find me somebody to love
(Find me somebody to love)
Anybody, anywhere, anybody find me somebody to love love love!
Wooo somebody find me, find me love.
AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
On 5-24-04, I pushed the wrong button.
Tivo had been on the fritz for a couple weeks. You’d be watching a program or moving through the menus and it would make this clicking noise. If it made at least two clicking noises in a row, the screen would freeze for a few seconds or longer. Actually, I had seen this problem a couple years ago when the Tivo was younger. I shut the Tivo off for a day and it got better. I -should- have looked into the problem more thourouly then but it just fell off as a priority.
Well, just before my folks got back from Florida, it died entirely. It would click and get stuck 3 minutes after booting and that would be that. So I had to fix it myself. I was having the normal frustrating time of it… swapping hard drives in and out of my PC. Some would boot, some wouldn’t, depending where they were in the IDE chain. It was a bit frustrating but nothing I couldn’t handle. Until it happened.
I noticed that I had successfully put the Tivo image onto my 200 gig Maxtor drive instead of my 40 gig Maxtor drive. The two look very similar but are very different inside. One drive is a scrap, lying around from…. I don’t even recall where it’s from. The other is my system drive, the one everything is on. Everything. I instantly became very unhappy.
Flash forward 3 full days of recovery time and I’m finally back online. It took days to pull the backups from TJIC’s computer (mini-moral: don’t zip up and send a single 5 gig file as a backup. If there’s an error in retrieving it, you’ll have to fetch the whole 5 gig file over again… which sucks because it takes 20+ hours to move 5 gig over a cable modem.)
I’m still not recovered by a long shot. For example, I’m writing this blog using notepad instead of Frontpage because [deep inhale] since I was going to try out the new Office 2003, I figured it would be good if I installed it fresh on the “new” computer; all is well except that Outlook 2003 Pro apparently doesn’t come with Frontpage but MS Word as an HTML editor. Trouble with that is that Word vomits all over my HTML with idiotic MS formatting shit (it vomits shit, now that’s a pretty picture). I also installed VMware workstation and it works peachy except eMule won’t stay online. And I’ve got nothing going on in my life except what I make of it and I’m sitting in my parents basement doing nothing with my life. But that’s just me.
My parents arrived and prompty went to the store and bought duplicates of every food item in the house. Which wouldn’t be so bad except:
I had planted several things from seed, anaheim peppers, hungarian peppers, nasturtium, Sweet 100’s tomatoes, and morning glories. I asked my dad what the proper time to plant was and he replied “they have to go in the ground May 15th.” So, in an effort to grow early, I put all the plants under lights starting April 6th. Well, as any gardener will tell you, I planted a month too late for planting from seed in a small garden.
There are people power washing the deck. When they came to out place, they moved all the planters that were against the railing into the middle of the deck. Of course, my morning glory vines were growing out of the pots and wrapped around the deck railing. The pots were in the middle of the deck, the vines were still on the railing. Scratch 5 of 6 morning glory plants from seed. I wanted to cry and apologize to Julie.
Update: Some of the morning glories are coming back. That would be nice but I realize I’m overly emotionaly invested in morning glories.
I got home one day last week and found that they had gone plant shopping for the outside. As I knew they would, they got all the standard annual crap. Plus hungarian peppers, something almost exactly anaheim peppers, and a few tomoto plants with unknown heredity; maybe they’re Big Boys, maybe they’re Sweet 100’s. One tomato plant was obviously not a Sweet 100; I’m glad they’re planting that.
My sister has left a lot of crap in the space I’m currently living. She was in the space before me, about 2 years ago. I found a big box of girlie stuff under the bathroom sink taking up a lot of space and asked her to remove it “from my bathroom.” She came back instantly and said that it wasn’t “my” bathroom. That bothered me. I didn’t bite as agressively as I might have when I responded, “Well then could you remove your things from the bathroom I am currently using?” It took 3 weeks for her to finally take the box (though it might actually still be hidden in some closet somewhere upstairs)
Oh, in other computer news: I was recovering data from the newly deceased hard drive, putting it onto a 40 gig drive I had lying around. I spent a day (yes, a full day) pulling lost clusters and crap off the 200 gig drive. I was probably pulling too much off it but I knew that I had only one shot at this; after I reformatted the hard drive, everything would be lost. So I spent a day at this and I get home after going out… the drive is making grinding noises! Short story short: the drive died. Well, I always wanted to open up a drive and see what’s really inside.
My $500 ad in that church newsletter has been in for about 3 weeks and it hasn’t generated a single phone call.
Good news: After fiddling with Ontrack Easy Recover for 1 1/2 days, I recovered -everything- from the old 200 gig drive.
I posted a personal on polymatchmaker.com. It feels weird. But I posted it.
A client of mine, A.P. told me that he wants me to sign up for eharmony.com and run it though its paces because he has a friend he thinks could use such a service. He wants me to vet the service for him. A.P. will pay for my account and everything. Actually, I think he’s just perceptive and believes I would benefit from it. A.P. has quickly become a friend. I’ll sign up soon.
So this post has a lot of grumbling minutia. Sorry but that’s how I feel right now.
[Grumble]
In other news… an old friend from Wavexpress wrote to me to sign this petition…
Here’s the petition
By forwarding this message to you sign the petition. You need to put TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG in the cc field to be counted.
>> Subject: Six Degrees from Columbine: Save the Ban on Assault Weapons
>>
>> Dear Friend:
>> Five years ago my 15-year-old son Daniel Mauser was one of 13 people
>> killed at Columbine High School by two students. One of them used an
>> illegal assault weapon. This summer, AK-47s, UZIs, and TEC-DC9s, will
>> be legal again unless we do something about it. In this day and age,
>> nothing could be more insane.
>>
>> Using an exciting and unprecedented new Internet technology to grow
>> an online petition, join me in my effort to see how many millions of
>> names I can collect to deliver to President Bush. We will change the
>> course of this country and create a lasting legacy for my son.
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> Here is how you can help:
>>
>> Please sign this petition by forwarding this email to your family and
>> friends. Make sure to add my e-mail address TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG to
>> your list of friends in the same forwarded e-mail (don’t use bcc).
>> This petition uses a new technology that allows you to see how many
>> supporters you can reach through the power of “six degrees of
>> separation.”
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> Sending to TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG confirms your participation and
>> allows our petition software to map the growing support for our
>> cause. We will immediately send you a link to your personal petition
>> page, where you can see a real time map of your impact on this
>> historic cause.
>>
>> If each of us passes this message on to our friends and family this
>> will be the fastest growing petition on the Internet ever! We will
>> reach millions of people and force president Bush and Congress to
>> extend the assault weapons ban.
>>
>> For more information on how the petition technology maps your
>> support, go to: http://www.tomspetition.org/info
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Tom Mauser
And my response (modified on 6-10-04 from my original email response)
>I don’t usually go in for online petitions but I thought I would in
>this case. It was started by a friend of a friend and is legit.I completely agree that Columbine was a terrible tragedy. But the ban wouldn’t have reduced the destruction. 3 of the 4 guns used were (and still are) legal for anyone over 18 that can make it into a Wal-Mart. The TEC DC-9 machine gun used was already illegal for the killers to own before the ban. The home-made bombs were illegal as well. The manufacturer of the TEC DC-9 changed the design slightly after the ban (to the “AB-10″ model) and can be purchased new with the proper license (of which, the Columbine kids still could not obtain)
I see where you’re coming from. It’s possible that the country-wide anti-gun sentiment that a ban inspires might help shape public attitude about people using guns inappropriately against other people but an “assault weapons ban” is only a tiny step in a direction toward civility, at the great expense in national safety and personal liberty.
Such legislation does not seem beneficial to our country or the kids that live in it. Much more important than attempting to make the “dangerous” guns illegal (an oxymoron if ever I saw one) is public education and community involvement.
Thanks for sending the petition along to me,
Lee
37.9%
34.2%
14.6%
12.0%
1.4%
33.8%
16.6%
3.0%
25.4%
9.1%