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TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 25 (view)

How can happiness last? Posted: 11/8/2008 7:13:46 PM
It comes down to homeostasis; each of us has a "hardwired" mean happiness quotient and we continually cycle around that mean happiness. It's possible to raise or lower our natural HQ, but it's seldom we do that because of the required exceptional circumstances. The best most of us get is a well-moderated stability - such that the highs & lows aren't dramatic sweeps of emotion. In essence - as I've said before - there can be no mountains without the valleys between them. The mountains and valleys define each other. To the last two questions: No, not greatly so; runnin' about midrange. :) ...and... me. I and I alone can make me happy.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 18 (view)

Compressed Air Engine/Car Posted: 11/8/2008 7:08:07 PM
The tank is the really scary part, disregarding the obvious efficiency issues. If you've ever seen photographs of what happens when a quite ordinary oxygen bottle (as for an oxyacetylene torch) gets loose, you have a pretty good idea what I mean. Now... for northern climes, what's to be the source of heat for the passenger compartment? That expanding air gets frosty cold on a hot day - that ain't gonna' warm up your windshield or your fingers. The single benefit I can see is that a motor powered entirely by compressed air can be operated indefintely inside a totally sealed structure - like a warehouse - with absolutely no ill effects on the inhabitants. Generally, I see compressed-air vehicles as pointless concept demonstrations. These TATA cars - what's their expected service life? In years? In miles/km? What are the projected maintenance costs? As to competing with Smart... the Toyota Yaris already beats the Smart ForTwo, which is EPA rated at only 36 mpg.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 7 (view)

When do you pay your mortgage? Posted: 11/2/2008 7:19:52 PM
Your credit report lists , among other things, payments "30 days past due" and "60 days past due". From that I infer that "60 days past due" looks bad on the credit report & "30 days past due" or less looks a lot better. Last time I looked, there wasn't any mention of "paid ahead" or "paid on schedule".

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 15 (view)

working overtime question Posted: 11/2/2008 7:14:14 PM
Was this a one-time thing, or does it happen often? Do you like your job? How hard is it to find jobs where you are? If you work ten minutes over one day, can you freely leave ten minutes early the next day with no repercussions? Did others also work ten minutes over at the same time? Do you think maybe this was part of a test to see who'll accept it & who won't?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 22 (view)

Philosophy Question: Would you rather be famous or rich? Posted: 11/2/2008 7:09:16 PM
Well... I can't be Rich if my name's really Tim, now, can I? So that narrows the choices a little. Famous? If my friends recognize me, I'm quite famous enough. Goin' for the straight line, of what use is more money than you need?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 11 (view)

What gives one person the desire and determination of ten people? Posted: 11/2/2008 7:05:26 PM
Who's the one person? Who're the ten with so little desire & determination? Who measures such things, and in what measurement units? How can that possibly be a valid comparison?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 6 (view)

Re-wiring the computer to operate more like a brain Posted: 11/2/2008 7:03:41 PM
Scorps, I was just going to bring up that point but you seem to have beaten me to it. If someone successfully mimics (at least in part) the processing capacity & style used by the human (or even earthworm) brain, it won't be quite as ruly as we expect... it can no longer behave in a strictly predictable manner because it'll literally have a mind of its own. Major project, that. Silicon simply does not behave like an axon-based colloid-state microchemical processor which seldom thinks in binary - thinking instead in greyscale & influence.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 7 (view)

Need insight with ex Posted: 11/2/2008 6:55:52 PM
Five months versus two weeks, man. Two weeks out of twenty were miserable, right? Ya really WANT to spend 10% of your time miserable, feeling all seriously messed up? You didn't feel that way before her, right? Miserable 10% of the time? I see some real issues here, some in your behavior (ahem... fooling around with someone else is risky business) and some more in your behavior (failure to get over it, insisting on clinging to something that's clearly not going to work, possessiveness) and quite a lot in hers (volatility, ductility, overriding your control, etc). Really. You personally feel like you're right for each other because you're "addicted" to her. She sees the relationship in an entirely different light, and clearly from her perspective (which is every bit as valid as yours, even though it IS different) you are NOT right for each other. It went wrong because the two of you aren't very well personality-matched and she probably never felt like it was as "right" as you felt like it was. None can tell except her; nobody ever really knows what another person is feeling. Could be she gave you signals that led you to believe she was as much "into it" as you were... but pretty obviously that wasn't true or she'd also be agonizing in front of her keyboard right now.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 19 (view)

Appliance safety question Posted: 10/31/2008 8:02:50 PM
Yep, definitely the element finally burning through & arcing, creating a small pocket of ionized air which enabled further arcing. The arc (which is intensely hot) ignited spilled food of some sort, hence the flame. A replacement element will be all you need. Meanwhile, the remainder of the stove should be fine... PROVIDED it was fine before this happened. Like the guy who woke up after surgery on his hand. "Doctor? Will I be able to play the piano?" Doctor replies "Of course! After six weeks recovery, you should be able to play the piano with no trouble at all!" Smiling, the patient mused "That's nice - I always wanted to be able to play the piano..."

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 15 (view)

???Would you keep it in, or Pull it out??? (pellet in my hand) Posted: 10/31/2008 7:55:25 PM
They're making the lead-based solder for water pipes illegal because of health problems. They've already made lead shotgun loads illegal because of health problems. Quite some time ago they made lead-based paint illegal because of health problems. Are you sure you're prepared to carry around a wad of soft metal inside your body? A metal that's flat guaranteed to slowly disintegrate & be absorbed? How old are you? I don't think I'd do leave it in place unless I was at least 60.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 24 (view)

Emotionally blocking somebody out....... Posted: 10/31/2008 7:27:22 PM
Definitely. Turn to stone. At work... "be professional". It may even land you a promotion. Or get another job. It's no FUN... but you're certainly well within your "rights" to do an emotional full stop... and it really HELPS in terms of getting over things. Trust me - the chemistry with someone else can be just as good.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 6 (view)

Why do people ask about other's ethnicity? Posted: 10/30/2008 11:17:44 AM
Neb22: You got me laughing! OP: I don't think you have really just cause for either offense or flattery. I think some people are intrigued by your appearance and curious about your heritage because they can't readily discern what it is. Some folks' heritage is fairly obvious - yours isn't. In fact, I'm nearly curious enough to ask, too... but I'll abstain.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 10 (view)

Thermostat problems??? Posted: 10/30/2008 11:11:36 AM
Um... I really hate to be Captain Obvious here, but... you DO have FUEL, right? Gas, oil, whatever your furnace burns?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 17 (view)

Guts Posted: 10/30/2008 10:56:12 AM
OP, I'm gonna' quote a little excerpt from Cat Stevens' "Father and Son": "I was once where you are now, and I know that it's not easy". Questions for you to ask yourself: 1. Do you have great difficulty making & holding eye contact or exchanging a smile with an attractive girl/woman? 2. Do they seem mysterious or do they seem judgmental or do you feel like you can't compete? 3. Do you have a fear of emotional/physical intimacy? Are they more frightening when they may actually be "available" than when they're proven not to be? 4. Do you have a fear of sounding stupid in trying to open such a conversation? Methinks that the "old brain" portion of your mind has developed an archetype about relationships and is "protecting" you from them. It's very VERY good at its job (keeping you alive) but it can be taught to replace that archetype with a substitute archetype that doesn't in the way of your social / relationship life. Expect to spend a fair amount of work on it... but it's WORTH IT. I wish I had asked for help when I was your age...

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 33 (view)

moving from casual to exclusive relationship? Posted: 10/30/2008 6:07:28 AM
HC (msg21)... not at all my intent to suggest any sort of superiority. I meant that the finest details of the way men process information and the way women process information are different from one another - those details being affected by genetics, social "steering", and physiology. The bulk of the processing that goes on within the human mind is common to all of us.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 24 (view)

where DOES this place me? Posted: 10/30/2008 6:00:13 AM
PPP (msg 19)... I don't claim to be any authority. After all, I've never lost a spouse to death - only an ex and a best friend.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 6 (view)

how to make a fake eyeball Posted: 10/29/2008 8:52:37 PM
^^^ I like that egg thing. You can further enhance it with a red Sharpie for veins. Just a fillet of it, sliced beyond the yolk.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 2 (view)

socio-economic class and personality Posted: 10/29/2008 8:50:00 PM
Without a doubt, the friendliest & most affable people I've ever met have come from the lowest economic group, those who run at or below the poverty line. They tend to be approachable and generous and receptive to those of any other socio-economic stratum. It was one observed by an acquaintance of mine that when it comes to dinnertime, those who lay out the biggest, most satisfying feasts are always the poorest. Reasons? Maybe because they have nothing to hide and little to lose; you represent no threat to them. Maybe because "poor" people are accustomed to cooperation. I don't really understand it well... but then I haven't spent much time pondering it.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 27 (view)

best/worst cigarette! Posted: 10/29/2008 8:43:08 PM
I buy off-brands... but then again I only pay about $2.50US a pack because I buy 'em by the carton at the local Beverage King. Anyone who smokes regularly and still buys by the pack - especially at a convenience store - is surely "math challenged". One of these days, with the rising price of cigarettes (and presuming I don't quit again for the last time), I'm probably going to break down & buy a cigarette stuffer & start getting my tobacco in bulk. That beats anything already packaged, and you can get pretty good tobacco that way. The stuffed cigarettes are built exactly like any name brand cigarette - filter & all; they don't look like a doob.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 11 (view)

Would a lizard caught in wild survive in captivity? Posted: 10/29/2008 8:37:12 PM
You've still GOT it. Yep, it probably can... but they may be hard for it to catch. This might be a good time to start breeding houseflies on rancid meat, maggots & all, for it to eat. Moths, too, that've come to the porch light. That's assuming it's even carnivorous, which (I think) it PROBABLY is...? Crawling insects, maybe? You can buy feeder crickets at the pet store.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 14 (view)

where DOES this place me? Posted: 10/29/2008 8:19:46 PM
I think... in a lot of cases guys won't know how to act around you because not a lot of us have much experience being around widowed women. There's a kind of social expectation that we should act somehow DIFFERENT, but it's never been clearly defined. A little mre respectful, maybe? A little more physical reserve? We don't know... until we get to know you a little better & figure out you're just like all the rest of us after these eight years. You DID go through something really rough back then... but surely after this long you're pretty completely recovered from it. Losing a spouse to death isn't vastly different from losing a spouse to another lover, is it?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 4 (view)

Thermostat problems??? Posted: 10/29/2008 3:37:05 PM
Could also be the little thermal fuse in the ceiling directly above the furnace... or it could even be that the furnace's big red power switch (wall, next to the stair light switch) is turned off.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 4 (view)

Logged out all the time?! Posted: 10/29/2008 3:33:55 PM
Yep - but sometimes when ya get back there it's completely blank. The browser empties the form when it feels like it... If there's much question about it, it's best - just before you click that "Send" button - to quickly highlight & copy everything you've written. Then if it loses your text you can paste it back in after you've logged in again.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 9 (view)

Do you think having a bf/gf makes you more attractive? Posted: 10/29/2008 3:31:21 PM
I think it's nothin' but the smell & the urge to compete with it.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 11 (view)

Opinions on this behavior? Posted: 10/29/2008 3:30:24 PM
I have a bud with curious behavior a lot like you describe. He happily engages in conversation, laughs often & easily, is easy to talk with, is helpful & welcomes help when it's offered... and at certain unexpected times simply breaks off all communication abruptly. Maybe a couple weeks later he resumes communication again and life goes on. Funny. I never did understand it, really... but I see no harm in the behavior, although it seems a little quirky. There could be a thousand things happening when he drops away & isolates himself - it could be depression or it could be that he just gets tired of the whole human race... or he could be having an Asperger / autistic episode & just needs to withdraw or there could be something cyclic that's tied to an anniversary of some sort. No telling unless your friend talks with you about what happens when he withdraws... and he may not even understand what it's about. If you don't get good clear answers & better understanding, you'll just need to learn to accept that is his "norm".

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 29 (view)

What are your further options? Posted: 10/29/2008 3:21:58 PM
When I was barely out of high school I proposed one addition to the Law of Sixes, which states that, although there are exceptions, a human can't be expected to live longer than: Six minutes without air Six days without water Six weeks without food Six months without shelter I proposed to add "six years without companionship". Then chit happened, life got in the way, things got complicated. Here on the far side of it all, I question my proposed addition. There's the instinctual breeding instinct built into each of us, along with a package of parenting instincts. All that is driven by hormones. For some, the package is more complex than for others... in some cases breeding & parenting don't seem satisfactory in the absence of a certain kind of relationship, while in other cases there seems to be little call for that sort of relationship. Further, as we get older the instincts dull somewhat - and at some point past our reasonable breeding age we may become entirely disinterested in that aspect of life. The desire for friendship, whether associated with breeding or not, remains throughout as a social instinct and driving force... yet that's not quite the same as "coupling" instinct. In short, I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here except that because of different individuals' biochemistry there's a pretty wide variation in preferences for relationship (or the lack thereof). GENERALLY, if we turn to archetypes, people TEND to be more satisfied with life if they're involved in a pleasant, productive relationship with some person, and if they're involved in reproductive behavior, and if they have a circle of friends... all in accordance with our basic instincts: Survival of the self Survival of the bloodline Survival of the family Survival of the community or social group Survival of the race

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 2 (view)

Logged out all the time?! Posted: 10/29/2008 10:25:40 AM
Especially when you're writing a long message to another member... and you risk losing everything you've typed. It's for your own protection, I suppose - helping ensure that you don't walk away from your computer & someone else take your login & wreck your social life with it. I'm more concerned that there's a character-count limit on messages written to other members... there's no warning, your message will just get truncated at that limit mark. Bummer, since I tend to write tomes.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 27 (view)

What are your further options? Posted: 10/29/2008 10:20:39 AM
Al (Msg 6)... unfortunately, a lot of people can't even achieve happiness to a desirable degree EVEN IN THE CONTEXT OF relationship because of nagging issues with mismatches & lack of mutual acceptance & possessiveness & control, etc. It's been my observation that some people are highly skilled in being satisfied with life, while other people have less skill at it. I've known people who were clearly "permanently single" and yet were as satisfied with their lives as anyone I've known who was paired with a partner.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 13 (view)

Help with my relationship issues please (lacking experience) Posted: 10/29/2008 6:55:50 AM
OP, what we're seeing here is a mismatch in appetite for "hanging out". Neither of you can force the issue - if you try, it'll go thermo. So... you can (1) decide to yourself that you need to satisfy your appetite by other means, spreading it out & around, (2) teach yourself to lower your appetite, (3) find another individual to hang out with whose appetite more closely matches yours. After all, your post - like most here - is all about you & the way you feel. Right? These are the things you can do to feel better about that aspect of your life. How well I remember that same sense, though, from... heck. From thirty years ago.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 18 (view)

moving from casual to exclusive relationship? Posted: 10/27/2008 2:55:36 PM
B.A.D.... you're an intelligent & well-spoken young man, and you'll go far & do well in this world. I think you're right at the point of understanding that your intelligence is sometimes as much a burden as a blessing. Ya see... I'm afraid you're overthinking things in the belief that they're really more complicated than they really are. What it comes down to is that women in general process information in just about the same way you do - not to the finest detail, of course, but all the processing is done the same way. So... the challenge before you is this: Try to imagine how you'd feel if the situation were exactly reversed. Play the role. Play it "expanded" a little, though, because there's more variety of personalities out there than you might expect. Heck, I'm still running across more variety of personality than I expect! You get the idea, though - what might work for you? Good bet it'll work for her, too.

tdhofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 30 (view)

Oxidation product possible? Posted: 10/27/2008 9:54:17 AM
Thanks, SCW - I'll look into that.

tdhofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 18 (view)

would you do anything to save your relationship Posted: 10/27/2008 9:46:43 AM
Not me personally - while a relationship does want a degree of trust, any individual also wants a degree of privacy. My last ex had me do just that, and she ended up reading ALL my email, scanning for anything that she thought looked "untoward", or anything that she didn't agree with. My personality doesn't get along well with closeup supervision like that, the kind one might get if they were intellectually incompetent. Some people might be fine with it, though. Your friend seems to be fine with it... for now. She may change her mind further down the road, though, if he gets more supervisory.

tdhofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 8 (view)

moving from casual to exclusive relationship? Posted: 10/27/2008 9:41:41 AM
I don't think there's a need for a segue... this kind of talk is worth doing as a "standalone" talk. Say she's sitting somewhere - sit down next to her & maybe say something like... "You know, I really like this, how we are when we're together. What would you think about only dating each other?" Do wait a while, though. It's way early.

tdhofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 22 (view)

Having problems early on.....advice needed please..... Posted: 10/27/2008 9:34:36 AM
I'm going to mostly side with Steve on this one. The name thing? That's a thought clot, and it happens a LOT in relationships with priors. The butt thing... some people are more physical than other people, and those butt pats aren't a good indication that he's actually engaged in anything more than butt pats. Butt pats? FOOTBALL PLAYERS pat each other on the butts, for Pete's sake! A long, slow butt FONDLE might be more cause for alarm... but a pat is usually pretty benign. If ya can't deal with that, then ya gotta' leave it where it is & find someone else who isn't as openly physical as that. Um. That brings something else to the fore. If his butt pats weren't pretty innocent, wouldn't he have been secretive and HIDDEN them from you? If you cry foul and require that he stop, he WON'T stop - he'll just not do it where you can see it any more. Then he'll have secretive behavior, which you won't trust, and you'll end up with a shambles for a relationship. Either acclimate to the relationship... or discard it.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 11 (view)

investments Posted: 10/26/2008 9:40:45 PM
Hey, OP... your profile is identical to the profile of another person who messaged me in a very suspicious manner a couple of weeks ago, looking very much like a scam troll. Just so you know. As to your questions here about investments... from what you've said so far, it doesn't sound at all realistic. It's a terrible idea to put up the money before you have any clue what you're going to do with it. If the person who's proposing this to you is a close personal friend (or even someone you've been discussing this with IN PERSON in a professional manner), tell them you've been thinking about gas stations and you've decided that you'd rather do something else with your money. If this person is a relative stranger - someone you've never met before - tell them to go blow it in a hole.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 21 (view)

Virus Software Posted: 10/26/2008 9:30:28 PM
Do a quick search for "Trend Micro House Call". It's a free online virus scan, and it's actually pretty good.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 11 (view)

Can you define the word ‘communication’. Posted: 10/26/2008 9:26:46 PM
Communication. Sorry, I got nothin' funny or esoteric - I'm a pretty literal fella. Communication. Any action by which any individual or group of individuals may intentionally induce a concept within another individual or group of individuals by any means, the purpose generally being to indicate a perspective, message, or request.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 6 (view)

Total darkness Posted: 10/26/2008 9:13:37 PM
You did Carlsbad? Or a different one? Cool, isn't it? Even down there... it's not utterly dark. There's a miniscule amount of light reflecting down the cave walls. It IS DANG dark, though. If they'd given you some more time in it, you'd have started to develop a sense of how to get around in it... relying partly on your ability to visualize your surroundings and partly on the rudimentary but still amazing echolocation humans are capable of.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 19 (view)

Lost & Confused Posted: 10/26/2008 9:03:08 PM
THAT IS NOT BEING "IN LOVE". It's also a LOT OF WORK to get it to go away. You can do it, though - I've done it before. It took most of a year to get it done - months & months of distracting myself every time I thought about her, of reminding myself that she's just another "fish" (because that's realistic), of convincing myself that it honestly did NOT make good sense and that her life & my life just weren't in close enough agreement to be sensible, even of intenionally fixating on little details that weren't "ideal" about her. It may be a very good idea to postpone the wedding plans while you sort this out... but if I were you I'd only postpone them instead of canceling them. You probably have much better reasons for being engaged than for being in some sort of relationship with this newcomer.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 4 (view)

Is there any future in a relationship when the one you're are now in began before another ended? Posted: 10/26/2008 8:56:48 PM
If you describe the nature of this latest relationship in greater detail, we might have better advice for you. At face value, since you haven't stated you were sleeping with both of them and pledging monogamy to either one, it sounds to me like she overreacted... but how does one convince her of that? Not likely, until she sees similar things in other relationships. At this point, she feels like the trust she placed in you - whether you asked for it or not - has been "broken". It may take her some time to regain that trust, or to think about things from a different perspective that doesn't require the same sort of trust. She may never get to that point, though. How important is that relationship to you? Important enough to revise the way you live your life? How likely is it that you'll do the same thing again, d'you think? CAN she trust you in the way she wanted to trust you? If so... how can you go about convincing her of that? Obviously you can't prove anything... but you may be convincing enough if you really put for the effort. Is this relationship worth a lot of effort?

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 16 (view)

Haunted Experiences Posted: 10/25/2008 1:41:43 PM
The Albuquerque house I used to live in clearly had SOMETHING going on in it. For lack of a better way to express it, I think of it as a "ghost" - a distinctly female ghost. "She" drank; we had a hutch with crystal glasses in it. ONE glass would be very often out of its normal place - the dust circle was clear, and the glass was one to two inches away from it. No slide marks. No other glasses ever moved. "She" welcomed me home from work every day by tapping once, loudly, on the picture window next to the front door. Nobody else ever got that treatment, but everyone heard it as I got to the front door. "She" "lived" in the spare bedroom, and often cooked chili. Open the door once & you were surrounded by the heavy smell of chili. Close the door & immediately reopen it and the room simply smelled fresh. "She" was cautious about me remodeling the house. As I tore things apart, "she" responded by making a lot of loud noises in the house during rest breaks. Example: the clear sound of someone dragging a ribbed vacuum hose across the top of a metal tank-type vacuum. "She" spoke to me exactly once, as I rushed to collect tools when a water pipe burst in the ceiling of one room. "She" said, in a clear voice, "You've got trouble up there". "She" was seen once, by my then-wife's mother, walking through the hall & into the kitchen. My then-MIL followed her, thinking it was my then-wife. There was nobody in the kitchen. The MIL didn't know about "her" at the time. Before I moved into that house, there was a long bout of battles over light switches (snap-type, not the "silent" ones); those turned off were turned on while nobody was in the room, and those on were turned off. The volume knob on the stereo was often spun to max volume. After a long hard chat with "her" about nobody moving out, all those disturbances ceased abruptly. I can't say I understand what "she" was with any confidence. The whole concept of ghosts (as defined by concensus) doesn't work well in my head; there are too many open holes in the concept. I seriously doubt, too, that my then-wife was carrying around an "extended psionic field"... and it can't possibly have been me because the disturbances existed in that house before my first appearance and remained with that house when I moved on. Black helicopters? Hmmm. Multiperson hallucination? Possibly... but with a great deal of parallelism of experience. Heck, I just thought "she" was kinda' neat.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 27 (view)

Oxidation product possible? Posted: 10/25/2008 1:25:07 PM
For some people, cessation isn't quite that simple. I've quit twice, a couple of years apart. The first time was as easy as falling down. No withdrawals at all for six months. The second time I was symptom-free for two weeks, followed by three years of barely-tolerable symptoms all but one of which disappeared within a couple of hours or resuming. That's highly atypical for smoking cessation, the symptoms of which usually peak within the first day or two, fall off rapidly during the first two weeks, and gradually subside thereafter for the first six or so months as the nicotinic serotonin receptors reconfigure themselves.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 17 (view)

Do you trust Wikipedia Posted: 10/25/2008 1:18:23 PM
I use it a LOT... although always with the understanding that the information I find there could be flawed, so I usually verify with other sources of information if it's important stuff (to me). I've found troves of highly valuable information there, though. Heck, buried someplace in it is some of my own language... I no longer remember where, though.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 5 (view)

Scotch Posted: 10/24/2008 2:59:15 PM
I'm rather fond of Lagavulin, but it's not a popular taste - lots of folks think the flavor is too peaty. Geez. It's now been nearly two years since I've had any... ya got me thinking maybe I should pick up a bottle one of these days.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 15 (view)

pretty things belong in museums and galleries, real live goes better with off the line Posted: 10/24/2008 2:33:27 PM
There are two kinds of "pretty". There's "model pretty" and there's "personal pretty". Model-looking "face people" have usually (but not always) been high-maintenance people in my experience. People I personally find attractive, while not necessarily people the modeling companies would prefer to hire, have been a fair cross-section of ordinary society (which means they're usually, but not always, high-maintenance).

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 12 (view)

Debt? Posted: 10/23/2008 8:47:40 AM
I've applied for loans a couple of times in the last few years... and I've been told that my credit score is excellent - nearly off the charts. That, despite the fact that these were the first couple of loans in my life. Credit cards are a good way to build a credit score, as can any other kind of credit (including phone & electric bills) as long as you're religious about paying promptly.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 2 (view)

Forget SUPERSTRINGS! New THREAD Theory!!! Posted: 10/23/2008 8:44:15 AM
Infinity can most definitely be a subset of itself... an infinite number of times, even.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 3 (view)

The difference between a friendship and an emotional relationship? Posted: 10/23/2008 8:40:45 AM
Breaking NEWS: Friendship IS emotional relationship! Every friendship I've ever had involved quite a lot of emotional "investment"... that's what makes every one of 'em so good. The fact of the emotional component in that friendship doesn't have anything to do with any other relationship - including the marriage. It may even enhance the marriage, if it's allowed to do that. It's when married (or "partnered") people DON'T have outside friendships that worries me. That speaks strongly of heavy mutual dependency, which is NOT HEALTHY.

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 20 (view)

Dreams about exes? Posted: 10/23/2008 8:29:37 AM
Nothing consistent... but from time to time I've had some really BIZARRE dreams including her...

TDHofstetter

Joined: 4/29/2006

Msg: 2 (view)

How long to a committed relationship? Posted: 10/22/2008 3:28:45 PM
When you and your partner agree that the relationship will continue to be monogamous, and refreshed when you mutually reconfirm that it has been, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, monogamous.

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