1. No.
2. Sounds about right to me.
3. It's time to broaden your horizons, yo.
1. iPhone
2. wow, that's depressing.
3. Felons are a hell of a good time, though.
the helio's commercials are retarded. don't get it.
Eh, it's not like you're going to respond to their profiles anyway.
4: I don't know what you're trying to imply, buddy.
I can't find the thread where I directed ben to the craigslist ad of a woman who just got out of prison and was seeking a nerd, but the ad's long since been taken down so it doesn't matter.
7: Wait, both those bands are named after actual places?
Too bad she also says she's a convicted felon.
Nobody's perfect. And there comes a point in the life of every singleton when it's time to ask, Is it time to settle?
Ducking...
Is it time to settle?
Yeah. So what's your sister up to these days?
Take that!
she's a convicted felon
Not all convicted felons are guilty. Fact.
At least find out what she was convicted of.
What you really want is the Nokia E90.
I refute you thus. Not to mention that the E90 costs literally $1000, you crazy person.
Two opinions, for the price of one, on the relative merits of the Treo.
So what's your sister up to these days?
I think she's busy. But I might have a cousin.
I think she's busy.
Washing her hair, no doubt. Forget it, I've moved on. To sobbing.
Gosh. John Gruber pimps an Apple product. Shocking!
on the relative merits of the Treo
Different model, but ok.
The E90 may cost almost $1k, but at least it's unlocked!
(I'd totally buy one if it cost half as much. But yeah, $1k is a little steep.)
Unfortunately, the internets appear to contain no images of Al Franken's mobile satellite uplink unit.
Forget it, I've moved on. To sobbing.
Euro-wimp defeatism. The terrorists have already won.
The terrorists have already won.
That's your issue, white girl. The clash of civilizations is no lose for some of us. And I need to try my luck with a new demographic. I'm still sobbing, ladies.
"I'm still sobbing, ladies." s/b "I'm still sobbing,…laydeez.
Most of the reviews of the Ocean have said that the open/close thwack of the Ocean is surprisingly satisfying. Which probably means that you need to get your hands on one in person, at which point your hands will tell you if that is the one for you.
Oh, and this may or may not be of relevance to your decision depending on if you care about what browser is on your phone.
Hmmm...I've had all kinds of smartphones. I've got an iPhone, courtesy of a kind donation, and I wouldn't go back.
That being said, I played with the Helio Ocean a bit, and I liked it. It's smaller than the iPhone, and the dual slider bit is nice. Of course, you're dealing with a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator)*, not a cellular provider like Verizon or T-Mobile, so if Helio goes the way of Amp'd, you're SOL.
As for Palm, meh. I'm not a fan. The OS is ancient.
But that's not the biggest point; the biggest point is what kind of computer you use. Reason why is because I'm guessing if you're looking at this type of phone, you're going to sync it with a computer. If you use a Mac, your best bet is really going to be an iPhone; it merges seamlessly with the Mac. Everything else is a bit kludgy. If you use a PC, it's a moot point.
*This MVNO leases their cell space from Sprint, FWIW, and I'm told if anything happens, you'd theoretically be able to use the Ocean on Sprint's network.
Reason why is because
Are you trying to give me an aneurysm?
If he gives you an aneurysm, then would you stop bothering people about they're conversational internet grammatical mistakes?
Don't get a Nokia E90; Nokia is recalling them due to bugs, and there's been a lot of griping about the Series 80 OS.
Don't get a Palm anything unless it's a Windows Mobile 6 gadget; the PalmOS is a dinosaur, and the new linux-based thing isn't out yet.
Do get a Nokia E61; QWERTY keyboard, WLAN, UMTS, quad-band GSM/EDGE, Series 60, native SIP VoIP stack, compatible with all the push-email options, and you can code for it in python. And they are getting on for free on most UK networks.
Mind you, I chose an E65.
And they are getting on for free on most UK networks.
The US model is very different, though, isn't it?
[I like my K800i but it's not really a 'business' phone and lacks about half the features of the E61.]
Oh, wait, it's the because that's the real problem.
re: 37
I presume w-lfs-n's aneurysm is created by the absence of the definite article.
38:
Actually, the reason why w-lfs-n's aneurysm is created is because of a "localized, blood-filled dilation (bulge) of a blood vessel caused by disease or weakening of the vessel wall."
Heh. A friend of mine dated a felon once. She found out when things started to get steamy and she discovered the tracking bracelet on his ankle. Nothing like finding out a guy is a sex offender to kill the mood!
re: 39
No. The quoted section in 39 is constitutive of an aneurysm, not a causal antecedent.
If you date a felon, you don't have to worry about canceling out your vote.
In all seriousness, Ogged, I think it is great that you are still out there looking for love at the local pools and probation offices. At some point, it will get creepy, but you are at least 8 to 10 months away from that point.
Boston is the new Alabama.
Musically.
Yea! No screwing up our language buddy! Only grammatically correct Americanized Queen's English is allowed.
Wow, the cnet user reviews for the nokia e61 are off the charts. Why do verizon phones suck so much? Oh, wait this should be a thread at saiselgy's.
Boston was the old Alabama, too. Check out Common Ground .
because of a "localized, blood-filled dilation (bulge) of a blood vessel caused by disease or weakening of the vessel wall."
w-lfs-n has blood?
m, get something with a USB port! Like w-lfs-n!
re: 45
Or, for some of us, the actual non-Americanized un-Bowdlerized original.
"Wait, both those bands are named after actual places?"
Been waiting for a band named after Rhode Island.
"Boston is the new Alabama."
Kind of harsh on Alabama, aren't you?
I refute you thus. Not to mention that the E90 costs literally $1000, you crazy person.
The E70 is quite a bit less. The definitive review of the E70.
Or, for some of us, the actual non-Americanized un-Bowdlerized original.
Which sounds fabulous, especially when you cuss.
47: Verizon Wireless phones suck because, despite being half-owned by Vodafone, they chose to build an all-American CDMA2000 network. There are about 400 million CDMA subscribers in the world; there are about 1.6 billion GSM and UMTS subs in the world. Which technology would you, as the head of development at a mobile phone manufacturer, unhesitatingly direct the bulk of your engineers to work on?
localized, blood-filled dilation (bulge)
We're talking about phones. This is off-topic. There are no shortage of unfogged threads to discuss your localized blood-filled dilations (bulges).
The link in 52 was indeed definitive. This guy should take Enderle's job.
Ogged, I'm guessing that you're considering the phones you are in part because you do a lot of texting? As an unashamed Apple fanboy fanboi, I would be happy to encourage you to consider pimp the iPhone, but I think the keypad is a legit issue for serious texters. On the other hand, I think the iPhone keypad is great for people like me who aren't very texty, but would be moreso were we not limited to a regular numeric keypad. And also it would be great because I'm an Apple fanboi whore.
Verily, do Verizon phones ever suck. And blow as well, the only sense in which they are multifunctional. The heartbreaker, however, is that the network seems to be the best, or at least in competetion for it. In New York, I'm the only person I know on Verizon, and the only person I know who doesn't constantly bitch about coverage, noise, and dropped calls.
Boston is the new Alabama.
Folk wisdom holds that in the South, white people dislike black people as a matter of principle, but like them as individuals. In the North, it's the reverse.
re: 58
I don't know if there's any truth in that for the US, but something like that applies in some parts of the UK with social class a replacement for south/north.
Is there some rule that says you have to acknowledge being a convicted felon in your personals ad, or did she just volunteer the information because it makes her look like a dangerous bad-girl?
Also, you don't need to be checking out B's Nerve ad, like that. You already know how she feels about you.
The version of 58 I grew up hearing was that southern whites don't mind living next to blacks as long as they aren't uppity, while northern whites don't mind if blacks are uppity so long as they don't have live next to them. I'm still unclear exactly what "uppity" means, but the differences I've noticed in zoning patterns between northern and southern cities buttresses the proximity argument, anyhow.
I think I mentioned in a previous thread that my mother worked in a women's prison for many years. Well into retirement, she is still friends (albeit long-distance, but really friends, as in they stop by and visit sometimes) with a number of the former inmates. Some of them were convicted of what were essentially crimes of passion or desperation (like trying to kill an abusive husband), and many simply got mixed up with the wrong crowd (drug dealers).
I can remember going on picnics and such with some of these women as a kid, and by god, they were genuinely good people.
Rationally speaking, the fact that a woman has done time should probably make you a little more on guard and skeptical, but should not be an exclusion criterion. Especially considering that most women go to jail for non-violent offenses, drug offenses in particular.
Don't tie yourself to a phone that relies on the cellular equivalent of a late-90's CLEC. It's just crazy to even think about doing that.
Felonies come in all shapes and sizes and degrees. I honestly do think you're making a bit of a snap judgment by not even taking into account that her felony could be incredibly minor. Maybe she got caught with a tab of acid in a wad of tin foil in her pocket twenty years ago, y'know? It's not like she's guaranteed to eat your face off in your sleep.
Yeah, but for the grace of something-or-other, alameida could be sporting a felony record. And just think how you'd feel like you hit the lottery if she showed up for a first date.
she's a convicted felon
Also, if you go out with her, you can get her to tell you about what went on in the showers in the prison.
From what I've seen on late night television and straight-to-DVD movies, it's pretty hott.
1. Smartphones still suck.
3. Nice Cyrano reference. All kinds of things are felonies in the U.S., so maybe adjust your standards --- after all, remember you're only a few foreign policy missteps away from an internment camp in the Mojave.
I heard 58 in the same formulation growing up.
16: I refute you thus.
Here is a more appropriate size comparison.
remember you're only a few foreign policy missteps away from an internment camp in the Mojave.
"Mojave" is Persian for "briar patch."
52 is awesome.
58/62 are true. My mom thought that raising my brother and I outside the South would mean we weren't exposed to the particularly open and shameless kind of racism she grew up around, and, in Kansas, I do feel like maybe there was a semi-happy middle. Up here in Brooklyn, especially in the white enclaves of Brooklyn, I am pretty continually horrified by the way class markers get used as a rationale for actively racist judgments. Oh, and it turns out, people really don't want you to call their attention to it!
Helio's use of "ginormous" and "kickin'" on its info page is unforgiveable.
Questions: so what if the Palm OS is ancient? In some ways that's good. And why is it crazy to go with an MVNO? Yes, Helio might suddenly disappear, but it might not, and I'd only be out a couple hundred bucks for the device itself if it did.
OTOH, look at who MA just elected governor. Things change.
Rationally speaking, the fact that a woman has done time should probably make you a little more on guard and skeptical, but should not be an exclusion criterion. Especially considering that most women go to jail for non-violent offenses, drug offenses in particular.
I had a co-worker whose third wife was a convicted murderer. She was the only ex-wife he spoke well of. He still loved her in fact.
Definitely, felonies should not be an exclusion criterion, but I'd say that if the felony is a violent one, you should treat your date with a certain degree of respect. That's where the problem lies. Do you really want to respect someone you've met through a dating service?
Yeah, but nobody lives next to the governor's mansion.
ogged, do you need either of these gadgets for a specific purpose or set of purposes, or is this just pure technolust?
62: the differences I've noticed in zoning patterns between northern and southern cities buttresses the proximity argument, anyhow.
The fact that black people are simply more relatively numerous in the South accounts for the difference in racial attitutes, I think.
As a kid who grew up in the suburban white Midwest, black people were pretty much an abstraction to me - until I moved to the South.
As for 63, I share KR's experience with pleasant felons. Think in your own life how many felonies you have at least arguably committed. Then ponder the fact that juries are composed of human beings who screw up all the time. Add to that the fact that some of our punishments are really screwed up, and you can see that you ought not necessarily disqualify former inmates as friends.
73: My experience in telecom was in traditional telecom rather than cellular service so the comparison may not be apt. That said, when the landscape flowered with competitive carriers who were leasing their lines from the big dogs ten years ago it ended in tears - mostly for those CLECs' various clients. I would not voluntarily enter into similar terms with anyone after that. I would only have a cellular provider who owned towers.
If it's not a big deal to be out a couple hundred bucks and have your phone stop working then hey, more power to you.
black people are simply more relatively numerous in the South accounts for the difference in racial attitutes, I think.
This is probably true, but it's seemed more equal to me because all the cities I've lived in (Kansas City, Cleveland, Brooklyn) have had very large or majority non-white populations.
I share KR's experience with pleasant felons.
As it happens, my mother was what you might fairly call a soft-hearted liberal social worker, so she extended the benefit of a doubt to some pretty notorious felons she claimed to be personally fond of.
or is this just pure technolust?
You're so mean to me, Cala. My current phone doesn't have a full keyboard, so replying to the drunk texts of the Unofggetariat is pretty annoying, and if I'm going to upgrade, I want to get something good. (I also rely more and more on my phone to stay in touch with email, so something that does a better job of that, and has a full keyboard is called for.)
81: I haven't thought through it enough to come to any conclusions, but it is true that in most northern states, in the absence of segregated housing patterns, blacks would be a pretty small minority -- 17.4% in NY, smaller in most other northern states. This is going to affect perceived integration levels -- that is, a community where one in five people is black would look pretty white-bread.
I really don't know what this means about attitudes, and so forth, but there's stuff to be thought about.
80: I should have noted that urban whites are in many ways like southern whites, IME. As someone whose attitudes were shaped by the Midwest suburbs, I speak of all of these things purely as an outsider, though.
Technolust is acceptable, ogged. I just didn't know if you needed the keyboard or the navigation system capabilities. Anyhow. shivbunny has a thing for the Helio Ocean, I like the Treo just because I've liked the keyboard when playing with it in the stores. My next phone will have a keyboard because texting is too much fun and texting on a Razr is pretty damn hard.
We actually have an enV (or, well, he does because blahdiblahd new immigrant needs a phone and he couldn't be economical about it) and its keyboard is pretty nice.
17.4% in NY
North Carolina is only 22%.
On the race thing, just re-listen to Rednecks.
why not a blackberry Ogged?
Partly because the blackberry browser kinda sucks, and I browse a lot. Also because I'd either have to give up a camera or 3G, depending on the one I got, and that's no fun.
On the race thing. I grew up in pretty much the whitest place on the planet. And my extended family includes a number of bigots, but not much to do about that except wait until they die.
And I wonder if part of the problem is complete lack of exposure: the only time anyone from the whitest place on the planet would see a black person is in a poorer or city area (DANGER DANGER WHITEBREAD.) All you have are stereotypes, which means if the person's liberal you get the down-with-the-gente sort of ideas, and if they're conservative you can't go downtown but for all the welfare queens in their Lexuses.
I get the sense that the South has more of a black middle class so there's actually more than TV informing people's opinions.
87: Didn't know that.
The sort of thing I was thinking of is that lack of familarity and comfort with African American culture tends to get dinged as implicitly racist, particularly in this discussion of northern whites versus southern whites. But for North Carolina, if the total African American population's pretty much the same, I suppose that wouldn't explain any differences in attitudes that may exist.
I thought you were from Pittsburgh, Cala! Was it some specially white suburban enclave, or somewhere out in Rural Route country? Or am I fabulating?
Greater Pittsburgh is largely white ethnic (or used to be, anyway). The Philly area contains the bulk of the African American population of Pennsylvania.
92: Wouldn't you guess she means suburbs? I mean, I live in Manhattan, but I can think of a bunch of places within 30 miles I'd call 'the whitest place in the world'.
Well, I suspect that in New York state (which actually has the largest black population in the US; NC is #7), the black population is heavily concentrated in the cities, while rural black populations are easier to find here.
Actually, ignore that. I see Wikipedia claims 27% African American, so I guess I'm unfamiliar with those parts of Pittsburgh.
89: GYALB. Wait for the implanted phone with optical nerve attachment.
And I wonder if part of the problem is complete lack of exposure
Anecdotal evidence tells me yes, that's at least part of it. But there are a lot of parts of it, and I don't, for the most part, think that we know what's going on. Nonetheless, things manage to get better.
92: Even Pittsburgh's pretty white ('ethnic' still means 'Uh, like the Tamburitzans?), but I grew up well outside the city. It's not really an enclave when the 'city' goes pretty white somewhere around, oh, Mt. Lebanon.
A little googling turns up some random nutjob's map collection. The commentary is, um, eccentric, but the maps look legit.
Nonetheless, things manage to get better.
I don't know that they do. I don't know that they don't, mind you, but I am not convinced that the US is on any kind of path to a future in which racism isn't a significant problem. That doesn't mean I have any ideas about how to fix stuff on much beyond an individual "don't be evil" level, but I'm not sanguine about how things are going.
I am going to conjecture that you can reconcile 93 and 96 by looking at the difference between the city and the MSA. Wikipedia gives the population of the City of Pittsburgh as 312,819, so 27% of that is pretty small against a metro area population of almost 2.4 million (assuming the African American population is concentrated in the central city).
99: Eccentric=fucking creepy. Although I am entertained by the inclusion of 'rafting' on the list of sports that African Americans allegedly lack the intellectual capacity for.
lack of familarity and comfort with African American culture
Following on Apo's #95, my understanding is that the number of commonalities between African-American culture and Southern culture is pretty large. (Which I suspect is why, but for a few topic exceptions, you slur them in the same way.)
But 92 really is my point about population -- given segregated housing patterns, that leaves most white people up North living in very, very, very white areas. Take a reasonably small black population, and concentrate it at all, and the rest of the country turns very monochromatic.
Allegheny County is 13% black. Pittsburgh is pretty much a donut... almost no one's in the city. So if let's see... 27% of Pittsburgh is black... about 100,000 people... 13% in the rest of the county.... gives us... about 300,000... and Pittsburgh's about 15% of the population, meaning the other 200,000 are spread out over the other 85% of the Greater Metropolitan Area....
My town is 97% white, and the 3% non-white seems high.
Heh at comments that areas with a 20% black population are pretty white-bread. You've clearly not been to Scotland, where black people make up 0.16% of the population.
In Portland OR people eould warn newcomers about our dangerous black neighborhood, and newcomers from the East Coast would laugh and laugh because it's tiny, not very dangerous, and not very black.
My favorite along those lines was the Combat Zone in Boston -- the scary downtown neighborhood with porn stores and hookers. I was hearing about it for a year before I walked through it -- it's half a block of, yes, porn stores and hookers. (Or at least was in the lat 80s.) I hurt myself laughing.
Ah. Huh, I grew up in Pittsburgh proper, which I suppose gives me a very different sense of the racial makeup of the area.
You've clearly not been to Scotland, where black people make up 0.16% of the population.
I just looked it up out of curiosity, and the African American population of my (northern U.S.) town is 0.09%.
I wonder what his (or her) name is?
Yeah, my area was 1% black. I resist calling it a 'suburban enclave' only because that sounds like we were an island of white people in a happy multiracial area except that we're actually slightly MORE diverse than our immediate neighbors.
In Portland OR people eould warn newcomers about our dangerous black neighborhood, and newcomers from the East Coast would laugh and laugh because it's tiny, not very dangerous, and not very black.
I still get a kick out of what people consider a "bad" neighborhood in Salt Lake. It's not like there's an equivalent to Compton up here.
re: Boston/caucasion
That relationship probably only holds for people who say they're from South Boston, interestingly enough.
Southy is a bit, umm.... insular.
Because it has the biggest black population of the major NC cities, Durham has a reputation for being oooooh scary and dangerous. Which is completely false, but it keeps the housing costs relatively low so we mostly encourage it.
I guess I'm sanguine about things getting better, regardless of horrific WV. The slow-moving middle seems OK wrt black people in positions of responsibility,
with personal contact (ie, integrated schools and workplaces), while the pockets of inbred, ugly racism (the projects and the countryside) get eroded at the borders. Mostly, though, I'm sanguine because my kid's elementary school seems completely color-blind; lunch tables and play groups don't segregate by skin color, a sharp contrast to my own childhood. Some ugliness will doubtless kick in later, but having friends whose skin is different is a pretty strong tonic.
99, 102: Here is a disturbingly earnest recounting of the fucking creepy nutjuob's encounter with a Las Vegas sex worker.
109: I had a similar experience when I was finally old enough to make it into town from the burbs.
However, I think the heyday was over by the 80s. The "Combat Zone" might have lived up to its name more in the 70s.
Given how close it is to the theatre district, that might have been an amusing scene.
112: Again, yeah. Given the population realities, housing segregation in the north is overwhelmingly a matter of keeping minorities in minority areas (like downtown Pittsburgh), rather than of keeping them out of mostly white areas (like the rest of Allegheny County), if you see the distinction I'm making. Again, not that I have any real sense of what the social implications of that are, but there are some.
Maine is the whitest place I've ever been, though certain areas have recently received African refugees, mostly Somalis.
Yeah, but nobody lives next to the governor's mansion.
We don't have one. He actually lives in Milton which is a nice suburb, though it is not too far from Dorchester.
Deval Patrick is originally from Chicago, and I've seen him talk to poor communities of color (mixed with white liberals), but he went to Milton Academy. (That was paid for by A program called A Better Chance which pays for minorities to go to prep schools. Prep schools get to have more non-white students without upping their financial aid budgets!) He's also got an A.B. and a J.D. from Harvard. That can make him "like us" for an awful lot of influential people.
119--Eh, in upstate New York, I've seen low-income, government housing moved out of areas downtown that were dilapidated but close to nice ones to inconvenient places.
It is distinctly possible I'm over-generalizing, of course.
I live in Manhattan, but I can think of a bunch of places within 30 miles I'd call 'the whitest place in the world'.
Connecticut is cheating.
We do in fact have an actual black family renting a house one street over, and a couple of their kids are close in age to mine. So at first I'm thinking, "good times, my kids play with nothing but other white kids." But, because god hates me, the one black family in the neighborhood has to be kind of screwy. Fun conversation of the week? Hearing my 8 year old remark in passing that "black people are kind of smelly" and getting to explain to her that no, black people do not smell, and that it's just that her friends from down the strett pretty obviously aren't being made to bathe as often as they should.
115: Ha! I think I bought that stereotype and made some comment based on it, which you then corrected. OTOH, you're probably a felon.
I think I've recounted the story of my mother trying to ask all sneaky-like whether shivbunny was black by asking about his family and nationality. (Yes, I answered 'Canadian' just to let her squirm a bit.)
So I can see race relations going weird. You don't get a whole lot of overt stereotypes in my whitey mcwhite hometown because everyone recognizes that Racism is Bad. But you don't see a lot of actual contact with people who aren't white. In practice, I think this means a lot of 'I can't be racist, I mean, I never would burn a cross and I don't use slurs' combined with worries about property values. I guess that's better?
re: tough areas with undeserved reputations.
Yeah, this sort of stuff makes me laugh. During and after unversity I lived in or on the edge of some of the rougher parts of Glasgow,* which most of the rough areas in the rest of the country look rather pleasant.
I haven't spent much time in the really shitty parts of Manchester, Liverpool or London, though, to make a comparison.
* and also some of the really nice bits.
In Portland OR people eould warn newcomers about our dangerous black neighborhood
It was amazing to me, when I moved to that neighborhood, how pervasive that attitude was even among people I thought surely knew better (the place whitened since then, but is still very recially diverse by Portland standards).
I don't know about lack of exposure breeding racism. I grew up in the second whitest state in the nation, and there was one black student in my class, the daughter of a colleague of my parents. There was no 'black' part of town (well, their house, I guess, and it was pretty sweet), so there weren't the underlying class tensions Cala describes.
119: It is weird, but I think you're right... I'd be willing to bet based on what I know of Pittsburgh that even redfoxtailshrub's hometown area (if I am guessing right) is largely white (over 85%). Even within the city proper it's only diverse if you count the city as a whole.
I just want to brag and say that I'm going to see the Steelers on Sunday. Yea for me and my son!
Turns out where I live now is only 2.5% black, but also only 55% white. Pretty typical of California, I think.
I don't know about lack of exposure breeding racism.
Well, it breeds lack of familiarity, and consequent discomfort, which can come off as racist. To take an unimportant but kind of fraught issue, think about hair -- one of the most uncomfortable moments I had in college was a soc. class where a white guy revealed in the course of class discussion that he thought kinky hair was sex-linked: black men had kinky hair but black women didn't. This actually wouldn't be an insane thing to think if your only exposure to black people was through the media, and being ignorant didn't necessarily make him a racist (and by not necessarily, I mean really, there's no reason at all to think that he was), but I'm guessing the one black woman in the class, who set him straight, didn't enjoy the encounter.
13: There trick is figuring out which convicts are guilty.
Slightly off topic, a woman is going to fulfill the community service requirement of her recent conviction by helping us out around the office and we're looking for a jailhouse nickname. Any suggestions?
131: Yeah, considering my neighborhood (largely Dominican), having this conversation on a black/white basis doesn't actually relate terribly closely to much of my first-hand experience. I did have a moderately puzzled moment when Sally and Newt mentioned that their eye-color (blue) had been a subject of comment in school as really really unusual, but they don't seem to be having any problems other than being odd looking, so not a problem. (There are a fair number of other white kids in the school -- Sally and Newt are just particularly Anglo looking, and stand out a bit.)
OT: Does anyone know how to find payphone numbers. I need to call an annoying 1-800 number, and I understand that *67 does not work to block caller ID when you call companies who are paying for the call.
But, because god hates me, the one black family in the neighborhood has to be kind of screwy
I know the feeling. The one black kid in my elementary school was quite possibly the dumbest person I've ever met. My parents were good Southern liberals, so no problem for me, but for a lot of my classmates it just validated the stereotypes they were getting from home.
My town is 97% white, and the 3% non-white seems high.
To be fair, though, you often seem high, too.
Find payphone numbers, or find the locations of physical payphones to call from?
Awhile ago I was at a conference in Milwaukee and the fellow whose couch I was sleeping on warned me about the rough black neighborhood nearby. Fast forward to three A.M. and I walking, drunk, down the street in that neighborhood with another white dude. A group of four African American youths approached us, giving us the hairy eyeball. One of them asked us what we were doing and we told him that we were looking for someplace to get some breakfast. He was visibly relieved and told us that they'd thought we were cops. We all had a good laugh, but they didn't know anywhere to get eggs.
This purports to be a list of Boston payphone numbers and locations. No guarantees, of course.
BG: The other good trick for not exposing your own number to annoying callees is to pick up a prepaid phone card and call that from whatever phone you're using. They get the caller ID from wherever the phone card's network is operating. I get all sorts of weird calls from my brother this way - calls purporting to be from Colorado when he's in Louisiana and so on.
Nathan,
Where's the easiest place to get a prepaid phone card. THta might be the best option.
The Harvard COOP seems to have one still, but a I'd welcome tips on where to get prepaid phone cards with good rates.
Any random convenience store or drugstore? Phone cards seem to be in almost every general-purpose retail outlet these days.
145: Didn't know whether a trip to Downtown crossing was in order.
In February, when I'm eligible for a phone replacement, I'm buying the hell out of this phone. Clamshell with keyboard. That's all I've ever wanted.
Or use Skype. It's free to call 800 numbers.
Clamshell with keyboard. That's all I've ever wanted.
This sounds like a cyborg sex fetish.
I'm buying the hell out of this phone
Huh, I didn't know about that one. Interesting. Too bad Verizon's plans cost a billion dollars.
The best place to get a prepaid phone card that I know of is this website because you don't have to leave your house (and the international rates are better than the convenience store kind). Unless you're into that sort of thing.
shivbunny and I looked at that one but the hinge seems kind of flimsy.
You may have heard that robots have always had a thing for me, AWB.
the hinge seems kind of flimsy
You guys are more rough and tumble than I am.
Verizon's the only plan that works around here. It is outrageously expensive, and all the phones suck, I'm told; I've never actually cared about a phone until I saw this one.
I'd second gswift's recommendation of the E70 (I have one) but ogged's already rejected it.
Verizon's expensive, but less expensive than any other plan that would allow my sister 4000 minutes would be.
Helio offers unlimited voice and data for $120/month.
$120 a month?! You can get a Sidekick with unlimited data and a good voice plan for much, much less than that.
Going through my bills, I hit 2000 minutes a couple of months, so I can't save that much money anywhere, and besides, the sidekick is ginormous.
It's all In-Calling for my sister, so she pays $10 for her line plus a $10 it-used-to-be-$20-a-line-before-so-you-owe-me big sister surcharge. It's all rather moot as she never pays me anyway.
This only works because her boyfriend is also in-calling, but my plan is about $90 for the three lines I have.
Then again, I could just wait for what's essentially the Ocean on ATT (my current carrier), with Windows Mobile, which might be an improvement or much worse, I'm not sure.
Here is a more appropriate size comparison.
I forgot to note how great that was.
FWIW, I got a BB Pearl several months ago, and I love it. I also love T-Mobile - who knew? The predictive text recognition thing is surprisingly good, and for me - who'd never had a regular BB before - it took no time to get the hang of it.
Basically, it's got some features I don't really use - you can play vids and music, but am I the gagoots who's really going to walk around listening to my phone? No. Camera? Sure, but it takes pix that look basically like I took them with my phone. So there's that.
I need the phone to be productive, and this is it.
Plus it's a rare smart phone that I can stick in my pocket without looking like I'm packing like Teena Brandon. (Or was it Brandon Teena?)
This Slate article on the iPhone versus the BB pretty much nails it for me. Good luck! How exciting - new and REQUIRED technological upgrades are always so promising.
Thanks, Moira, I do go through periods of coveting a Pearl. But then I think about typing www.ahmadinejadwillkickyourass.com, and I get turned off by the text recognition. Maybe I'll just wait for something that also has a built-in phaser. Why settle?
Maybe I'll just wait for something that also has a built-in phaser.
This has always been my attitude toward gadgets. (A) I don't like them much, but (B) whenever I buy something, three years later it'll be a tenth the cost and comparatively insanely technologically advanced and usable. So why buy it now, whatever it is?
The Buddha teaches us to live in the Now, LB, so you really should be buying more gadgets.
If you asked most people, and they were honest, they would want children who look like themselves. That's why they didn't adopt, even with the world full of miserable orphans.
No, I really should be writing this brief. Remember at the beginning of the week I said I wasn't going to be around much, and then instantly commenced leaving every other comment, not counting the times when I left strings of several in a row? This did not indicate that I got out from under my work problems, not at all.
Can anyone recommend a quick therapist in NYC suitable for curing being a lazy sack of shit who can't focus long enough to get anything done? Results by sometime this evening would be nice.
Failing that, job openings with people who don't mind hiring the recently fired?
169: Silly rabbit, segues are for kids.
Man, would I like having a job I didn't loathe.
You've got kids to feed. Nose to the grindstone. Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!
I don't loathe my job, but the tradeoff has been a job in the least stable profession in the universe. Which brings its own stress, natch. Nothing's ever perfect.
(So go ahead and BUY that gizmo you've always wanted, LB! Live in the now and head to Fry's ASAP! Sure, you'll be soundly ignored by every sales person there, but no mind!)
But I don't like gizmos. All I want is a day off and about fourteen hours of sleep, and some clients I don't hate.
I have whatever the latest-and-greatest Treo available through Verizon in April. It's a giant piece of crap.
The BB Pearl that I had before I switched jobs was the best damned phone I've ever owned. I didn't notice the slower browser speed at all.
Might I recommend a nice glass of Bordeaux?
Can anyone recommend a quick therapist in NYC suitable for curing being a lazy sack of shit who can't focus long enough to get anything done
No, but I can remind you that you are a brilliant lawyer who has gotten lots of good work done before. I have witnessed it. I remember the day that one of the country's foremost civil trial lawyers came into our work space to get legal advice from you to be sure he had a basis for the arguments he wanted to make to the court.
Hang in there.
117: This website is actually pretty fascinating.
Since 2004 i have been a homeless vagrant living in my 2000 Red Honda Civic Coupé using my dotcom savings.
1) They can't fire you, you'll quit first.
2) People who consistently do good work and occasionally slack off are much more valuable than those who just suck in general. So it's not like you'd get fired anyway.
3) At least you didn't casually violate policy because "you're special" and then screw up in a way that caused hard-core anal sex images to be displayed to hundreds of thousands of 13 year old boys interested in cars for 12 hours before anyone noticed.
4) Back to work!
184.3: Now why'd you go and do a thing like that?
It was a minor change, not even really worth reviewing or testing, really. I mean, what could have possibly gone wrong?
LB, sounds like you need a new job whether you get fired or not. I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't be lazy in a job that didn't suck.
Nah, I have a good job and I'm lazy. If you're lazy, it's forever.
Thanks, everyone. I'm having a little bit of a breakdown over this thing, but I'll manage.
And yes, I do very much need another job. I'm working on it in my inimitably fucked up and ineffective way.
Did 184.3 really happen? Or is it just riffing on that teacher in Connecticut?
I should never type out the word Connecticut. I spend the rest of the day with "trying to forget it / that they really do regret it / that they moved up to connecticut" in my head.
Did 184.3 really happen? Or is it just riffing on that teacher in Connecticut?
Oh yes. It really happened. In retrospect, the "hundreds of thousands" is probably exaggerated and "tens of thousands" would be more accurate. I also have no particular reason to believe that it was specifically 13-year-old boys who were interested in cars, rather than random internet users in general. But the essence of the incident - i.e. looking for cars and getting anal sex is 100% true. And it happening due to disregarding policy is also more or less true.
for 12 hours before anyone noticed suggests that interested in cars is an incomplete description of interests.
I would doubt the laziness of slol, but, well, that would take effort. So I have no opinion.
Well, twelve hours before I noticed and fixed it, and no one mentioned it to me, whether because they didn't know it was my fault or no one complained to them, I'm not sure. I'll say "interested in videos of cars", but anything more is too work-specific.
For DC readers: I'm sort of unhappy with Sprint, but, like Verizon, it is on A CDMA network. It's not that expensive to get a plan with unlimited roaming which allows you to access Verizon'e network. Even with Sprint you can get your cell phone reception on the Metro.
Can anyone recommend a quick therapist in NYC suitable for curing being a lazy sack of shit who can't focus long enough to get anything done
Screw therapy, you need amphetamines!. Tell your doctor you have adult ADD and ask for Adderall.
Good luck, LB. Loathed jobs (and the low motivation that accompanies them despite the fact that you know you can do better) suck, but I'm confident you'll get through this. Keep that chin up, this too shall pass.
And, have you considered a career in baking?
But the essence of the incident - i.e. looking for cars and getting anal sex is 100% true.
Jake, there is a future for you in the world of expert testimony assisting in the criminal defense of child pornography cases.
have you considered a career in baking?
There's something about the law that makes its practitioners go into baking. Not sure what's up with that.
I'm going to go bake these right now. Baking is how I avoid writing.
Ooo, those look good. Baking does sound like fun, except that when I get involved in one of those insane cake projects it makes me just as crazy as work does.
I am going to need to make some appetizers for a "beer club" party tomorrow, and am really drawing a blank. It's been a long time since I've had to make something of this sort to take to someone else's house instead of serving up mere footsteps from my own kitchen. Any inspirations for me? Requirements: relatively portable, good at room temperature, vegetarian, not dip, good with beer, delicious.
CakeLove makes really good, basic cakes. LB, it sounds like the stuff you do is more complicated.
But get back to work.
Try some mindfulness meditation to get you back in the moment. Listen to the sounds in the room and as your mind wanders, notice it and bring it back to the sound. Or take something and smell it (I did this with playdoh), but a good cup of coffee will work. Just observe (or describ the smell. Two or three minutes of that can do wonders to bring back your concentration and focus and to calm your nerves--at least temporarily.
Now do a mini meditation and then get back to work!
I know of a girl who majored in chemical engineering as an undergraduate, got into the workforce, hated it, said screw it, and went to school to become a pastry chef.
Requirements: relatively portable, good at room temperature, vegetarian, not dip, good with beer, delicious.
Pot!!
appetizers
slices of potato panfried in olive oil with a whole mess of dill and salt and some black pepper. Best fresh, but good miked to warm within 2 hours of cooking. Dense red potatoes work best.
I do not find pot good with beer. Pukey!
slices of potato panfried in olive oil with a whole mess of dill and salt and some black pepper. Best fresh, but good miked to warm within 2 hours of cooking.
This sounds delicious, but perhaps not so great for dragging across town before serving?
People like things folded into a triangle of dough, like asparagus and brie or a diced veggie and feta thing. I used to make snacks for my roommates like phyllo triangles with mire poix with mushrooms in port reduction, but phyllo's a little annoying to work with.
And if you don't want to make dough, you can buy sheets of puff pastry and wrap them around whatever filling you like.
Pot!!
Dude, I think the young call it "reefer." For extra street cred that will certainly seem completely authentic, Bo.
I do have some nice butter puff pastry in the freezer. I'm not sure why I've been resisting that route. Foolishness, perhaps, or the fear that people will think I bought stuff ready-made at Trader Joe's (of course, who cares if they do think that?).
Scone update: Delicious! It's a great recipe, and very easy.
211: If people can't believe you made the snack yourself, doesn't that mean you're just a great cook?
Requirements: relatively portable, good at room temperature, vegetarian, not dip, good with beer, delicious.
I'd go with #3 with maybe more spinach or fewer breadcrumbs myself but YMMV.
m, the one thing my ex- cooked
