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Malapropism junction what's your function?

Part Two: Unblocked!

(03:13:52 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: haye hh ru?
(03:13:57 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: why u r sad
(03:14:05 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: i am in here dont worry
(03:16:09 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com just sent you a Nudge!
(03:20:19 PM) Michael: Er, hello. I'm afraid that your message was missing things. Packet loss? Keyboard Error? Neurological dysfunction? Who knows. No matter, please send again. Maybe this time words will appear on my side of the screen
(03:21:34 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: yeah yeah u r so funny
(03:21:34 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: heeheheeeh
(03:21:56 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: u must be serios oky
(03:23:54 PM) Michael: Well, actually, I don't really follow college sports, and the the Okys aren't particularly popular around these parts.
(03:24:45 PM) Michael: actually, I think that is spelled Okie
(03:25:13 PM) Michael: but again, not really popular in this region so I don't know.
(03:25:18 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: oky is the paricularly piont of my and our life so we r use the oky and think about it oky so whats ur opinion about oky
(03:27:50 PM) Michael: sports fan then?
(03:28:37 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: oky
(03:30:34 PM) Michael: So are you real or are you just a gutted and abused version of Alice?
(03:31:42 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: listen me who u r ?
(03:32:37 PM) Michael: Well, Alice has better grammar and makes more sense, so we can probably scratch that off the list.
(03:33:07 PM) Michael: It is really a shame, the more recent revisions of Alice are quite entertaining.
(03:33:31 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: yas


Rather more nonsensical than last time. That takes talent.
Or a really bad attempt at an Alice type bot.

Rule #1:
If you open this you GOTTA take it. (yeah, right)

Rule # 2:
You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone
messages you and asks

Rule #3:
Only answer True or False to the first set of questions



Q: Kissed someone on your friends list - False
Q: Been arrested?- False
Q: Kissed someone you didn't like? - False
Q: You like someone?- True
Q: Held a snake?- False
Q: Been suspended from school?- False
Q: Sang in the shower?- True
Q: Sat on a roof top?- True
Q: Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?- True
Q: Broken a bone?- False
Q: Shaved your head?- False
Q: Played a prank on someone?- True
Q: Had/have a gym membership?- True
Q: Made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?- False
Q: Donated Blood?- False
Q: Had your heart broken?- False
Q: Broken someone's heart?- False

"Who was your last?"

---Last person...
1. You hung out with? Christiane
2. last person you texted? Eva
4. Went to the movies with? Matt
5. Went to the mall with? Matt
6. You talked to on the phone? Mom
7. Made you laugh? Christiane
8. You hugged? Jessica

---Would you rather...
1. Have white bread or wheat? Wheat
2. Be serious or be funny? funny
3. Drink whole or skim milk? Skim
4. Die in a fire or get shot? shot

---Choices---
1. Sun or moon?-- Moon
2. Winter or Fall?-- Fall
3. Left or right?-- left
4. Sunny or rainy? drizzly
5. Hugs or kisses? Hugs
6. Where do you live? Podunk Southern Indiana
7. Rock or Techno? Rock or SOudntrack Techno from 80s anime
8. Do you want to get married? some day
9. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? twirl
10. Do You Cook? Yes, rather well
11. Current mood: happy

In the last 72 hours have you...

1. Kissed someone? Nope
2. Sang? Yes
3. Been hugged? Yes
4. Like someone you can't have? Yeah

Just got back from Jessica and Daniel's wedding. I had a great time at the reception. Best DJ I've ever heard at a dance, so I enjoyed the whole night even though I don't dance. Very little new music, no rap, no crappy midwestern dance songs (like funky chicken dance) Just enough corny stuff that the folks on the floor were having a blast.

Also, the music was, miracle of miracles, not too loud.

Held the reception at the clifty inn.

Jessica and Daniel's friends are my kind of people. Had I known them, it is possible I would have been out there with the interpretive dance folks.

The food was good. DIY salads, choose your own adventure meals (I had the asparagus, the roast potatoes, the to kill for roast beef, and some fish that was quite good.

Got to see some people I seldom see.
Got to see some people I see a little more often but not nearly enough.
Ran out of champaign before I got there.
Had Coke products, specifically Diet Coke.
Also. 4th Garter Belt.

Very awesome party. (If you didn't know all of the above are plusses)

I'm trying to find two Science Fiction short stories. No idea who wrote them, what their names are, or when they were written.

The first is about reality TV, possibly even before MTV's The Real World.
In it 3 men (Artist Athlete and something) go on a series of dates with a young woman on camera. All three of them manage to have sex with her off camera even though they are supposed to be filmed the whole time. She has a secret that they are to be told at the end. All three men fall madly in love with her. Won't give the ending away.

Second concerns a man who is saving a current addict (cyberpunk neurojack type thing) at least partially against her will. He spends days or months staying with her helping her pull her life back together. In the end it turns out that he was there initially to rob her apartment.

Whew boy, special...
A combination of people I knew in college and lovely lovely snark.

I now want a second Potterverse heptalogy.
With the arc title "Potter's Shadow."

It would take the same seven years from the viewpoint of Neville "Bean" Longbottom.

Hee hee.

So I need a word for a typo that goes on to influence word choice later. This happens to me a lot.

For example I recently said:
"From my come-lately position, that sounds like the definition of an early 3rd wave feminist."

I accidentally added the an which propagated to the last word, which was supposed to be feminism.

This would have given:
"From my come-lately position, that sounds like the definition of early 3rd wave feminism."

These are importantly different statements.

Harry Potter 7

Rocks Fall. Everyone Dies.

Yaknow what would have been great?

A forum bot that went about posting on random forums posts of the sort:

OhmyGOD!!! X kills Y by Z on Page N

Where X is a member of a X list of good or bad guy characters from Harry Potter.

Y is a complementary list of characters

Z is a manner of setting acceptable manners of death (no locking them in a dark room so that they are eaten by a Grue.

And N is a number between 1 and 759

thirty one million five hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred twenty six seconds, thirty one million five hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred twenty six moments of life.

So didn't post this yesterday, but Harry Potter 7 was quite good. Same structural problems that annoyed me in most of the other books, (more on that when Monday rolls around) but still a good book.

so, a big part of why I have qbasic on my computer is that I can use it ot solve simple np complete problems, like this one:


By the way, this comic is from xkcd.com. I suspect that if we know each other in real life, you'd enjoy the comic. The rest of you? I bet you'll enjoy it too.
here's the code:

CLS
ms=4.2
mf=2.15
ff=2.75
ss=3.35
hw=3.55
fs=5.8
d=0

FOR u = 0 to 7
FOR v = 0 to 7
FOR w = 0 to 7
FOR x = 0 to 7
FOR y = 0 to 7
FOR z = 0 to 7

price = z * fs + y * hw + x * ss + w * ff + v * mf + u * ms

IF price = 15.05 THEN PRINT u; v; w; x; y; z
d = d+1

NEXT z
NEXT y
NEXT x
NEXT w
NEXT v
NEXT u

PRINT d
END

So the expected output is:
0 1 0 0 2 1
0 7 0 0 0 0
262114

meaning that the two solutions are
1 mf, 2 hw, and 1 fs
and
7 mf

the actual output is
0 1 0 0 2 1
262114

I've fiddled with the program and I had it display price after each individual set of numbers... the output at 0 7 0 0 0 0?
0 7 0 0 0 0 15.05
The program should identify that as a win. No idea why it isn't.
I want to scream. And learn a new language. And get a different computer.

Edit 11:00 AM 7/10/2007
The talented and lovely told me what I did wrong and how to fix it. Had a floating point error. QB apparently dislikes decimals. So I multiplied everything by 100 and everything worked. *headdesk*

It is also possible that qb dislikes 7. I seem to remember that being a problem years ago for something or another.

There is something special about not being able to use getright to download the update for getright...

I got my own little MSN imbecile today!

Start Chat Log
(02:30:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: ;helloo
(02:30:41 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: voic e of th e p eople h ru?
(02:30:41 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: whats u p?


(02:34:26 PM) Michael: er something seems to be wrong with your keyboard
(02:35:15 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: why
(02:35:17 PM) Michael: your space bar is having troubles, and apparently some of your keys register only sporadically.
(02:35:37 PM) Michael: for example "voic e of th e p eople h ru?"
(02:36:45 PM) Michael: see? one word is interrupted by random spaces and then there is a cluster of letters that I'm sure would make sense if all of the keys you hit had registered.
(02:36:53 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: no no its my style
(02:37:29 PM) Michael: oh... that was on purpose?
(02:40:46 PM) Michael: Oh and also? The contraction for it is? Yeah see, that has an apostrophe.
(02:41:16 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: so explain something about u
(02:43:59 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: i am waiting for ur anwer
(02:43:59 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: *answer
(02:44:46 PM) Michael: 21st letter in the modern Latin alphabet, u was introduced to that alphabet in the 16th century. One of five vowels common to the English language, it follows the basic English rules for long and short vowel sounds.
(02:47:48 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: sorry
(02:47:48 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: so u like friendship to me..
(02:49:05 PM) Michael: U, being a letter, has no likes or dislikes, or more accurately, it has no mental states so it can have no desires.
(02:51:35 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com just sent you a Nudge!
(02:51:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: please what ut age
(02:51:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: please tell
(02:52:52 PM) Michael: well, u was introduced in the 16th century, and we are at the foot of the 21st century, so no more than 500 years and no less than 400 years.
(02:55:05 PM) Michael: ah a brief correction. No more than 507 years and no less than 407 years, this being the two thousand and seventh year Anno Domini
(03:00:07 PM) Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:
ah a brief correction. No more than 507 years and no less than 407 years, this being the two thousand and seventh year Anno Domini

End Chat Log
And that's a blocked for the win ladies and gentlemen.

I am Homo sapiens sapiens descendant of H. erectus and H. habilis . My people are masters of fire and steel, water and air, of the very energies of the storms themselves. I am heir to two and a half million years of tool users, and more than a million and a half years of weapon makers. Thus I find it ridiculous that you would suggest we use our hands in a fight. When I come for you, I shall come bearing the harnessed fires of Hell itself.

MIddle of the year reading list.

Oops, forgot to post this in April. That's okay though, since I haven't read all that many new books this year.
Also? Firefox's dictionary doesn't recognize okay.

1 A Fistful of Data Stephen Dedman Hurm, well, it is a shadowrun novel that isn’t a direct riff on Gibson. Sadly, I liked the one that was a direct riff on Gibsion much better. The “party” was a little bit off, especially with their focus on non-lethals (the Mercs they were fighting would have cleaned up against the squatters.) Oh well, a fun bit of fluff.
2 The Jennifer Morgue Charles Stross. British intelligence meets lovecraft. This one had fewer laugh out loud bits than the first one (The Atrocity Archives) and the best turns of phrase were all near the end, but this did some really nice riffing on the James Bond themes, though I think that maybe the part where the characters discuss the riffs on the James Bond theme was questionable. (Oh I admit, I’m not familiar enough with JB to have picked out the variations that they talked about, and I suspect that most of the audience wouldn’t be either. That said, it strained the fourth wall to the breaking point.) Still a damned good book, with [DELETED FOR SPOILERIFICNESS]. Also, this wasn’t really the second book I read this year, just the second new book. I reread the Belgariad in-between. Still too few books for Early March of a new year, but better than 2.
3. Childe Morgan Katherine Kurtz. Good. I still wanted a new Kelson book, and the title character reached the venerable age of 4 by the last page, but I liked it better than the first in this set. I really hope that the next one covers his teen years and Brian’s young adulthood. (And the Priest whose name escapes me at the moment’s becoming a priest.) Also, I look greatly forward to watching Nigel grow up in the next book.
4. Time Travellers Pay Only Cash Spider Robinson This is supposed to be a Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon book, except that only half of the book is Callahan’s stories, and a fair chunk of what is left is not even non-Callahan’s stories, but essays. Including one of the pieces that establishes Robinson as Heinlein’s hagiographer, though to be fair, this particular essay was written for the book published as a remembrance of RAH. All in all, I thought this was fairly weak for a CCS book,
5. Gust Front John Ringo Military infatuation SF. Took me long enough to hunt down a copy (especially since it was published. For Free. On the Baen Free Library CDs.
5. When the Devil Dances John Ringo More military infatuation SF. I’m enjoying it, though I suspect that the series won’t end to my satisfaction.
6. Command Decision Elizabeth Moon
7. The Hero John Ringo and Michael Williamson Well, set a thousand years in the future of the setting of five, and I can now say that no, it didn’t though the setting is interesting. On the other hand, a thousand years of research and development ought to have brought them further than it did, especially with tame Postileen to add to the exchange of ideas (and the subjugation of the elf folks due to the fact that they directed the war to leave humanity broken at the end of the war.)
8, Deliverer C.J.Cherryh Well, more of what we expect from Bran and the horse people
9. Prodigal By the person who wrote hammerjack. Liked this one at least as much as the last. Seriously I do read non-military and or non-intelligence agency SF. I swear.
10. St. Patrick’s Gargoyle Katherine Kurtz. Um, I’d been saving this for when I got a strong urge to read more Kurtz. I haven’t read the adept books and really ought to someday, but I’ve been wanting to (do something) (Can’t remember what I was going to say
11. Off Armageddon Reef David Webber. Er, Mr Webber sure likes to rewrite the Hornblower books. This one has sailing ships.
12. Furies of Calderon Jim Butcher I grabbed this one because I wanted to read something by Butcher, but my library only has the 7th Dresden Files book (which I’ve already read.) Good. Very different from his detective novels. But different good, not different what the hell is wrong with you man, the old formula fits your style and this doesn’t!
13. The Android’s Dream John Scalzi. YANJSBTIWWTAL. Detectives, intrigue, shooty bits. Also, a nearly extinct breed of sheep and a would be alien overlord.
14. Storm Front (DF1) Jim Butcher
15. Fool Moon (DF2) Jim Butcher
16. Grave Peril (DF3) Jim Butcher
17. Summer Knight (DF4) Jim Butcher
18. Death Masks (DF5) Jim Butcher
19. Blood Rites (DF 6) Jim Butcher
20. Proven Guilty (DF8) Jim Butcher
21. White Night (DF9) Jim Butcher
22. Restoration of Faith and Something Borrowed (DF 0 and 7.5, short stories) Jim Butcher

So I read these straight through over about 4 days. Way better than the last series of mystery/detective/whatever books I read (Stephanie Plum.) Harry is more competent, way more faithful when he is in a sexual relationship with someone, and just a more interesting person than Stephanie. Also, he suffers real consequences for his actions. A few minor complaints. 1 The Fallen Storyline in book nine was resolved way too quickly for this series’ pace. The gun wasn’t fired in act 3, it was fired right after it was pointed out. Harry needs to hurry up and either give the sword to Murphy or start boinking her (his word) or ideally both. I mean sure Butcher is setting up the whole Arthurian line for her, but enough is enough. Hee book nine of approximately 20+3! Yay!

23 Academ’s Fury Jim Butcher
24 Cursor’s Fury Jim Butcher
I often forgot that I was reading something by the same author as the Dresden Files (I did the same with the Wolf books and A Brother’s Price by Wen Spencer.) I liked both sets muchly.

25 Blood Name Robert Thurston. I read the first book in this set years and years ago. It is battle tech, mostly set before and during the Clan Invasion from the view point of a member of Jade Falcon. Honestly? These books fall prey to the same weakness that a lot of game fiction (and a lot of non-game fiction) do. Books one and two spend way too much time paraphrasing the descriptions of various things from the setting books. (In the case of Battletech Fiction, that goes both ways. Sometimes descriptions from books are co-opted for manuals.) It wasn’t quite as bad as Faith and Fire where the characters were carefully stated to have exactly the load outs that were listed in the codex and much of the description came directly out of the codex’s fluff text.)
26. Falcon Guard Robert Thurston Some of the same problems as the first two, though with less “it came from the rulebook” stuff in it and tighter plotting and writing. Not as good as the later Grey Death Legion stuff or the best of the TSR books, but much better than the first two.

27. Mutineer’s Moon David Webber
28. The Armageddon Inheritance David Webber
29. Heirs of Empire David Webber

These three are a trilogy together. Fun reads... themes that Webber has explored in depth. Glad I read Off Armageddon Reef fist, or it would have felt like more of a rehash than it did. (Webber has no less than 3 distinct settings where characters uplift a society’s weapon making to something just before the Napoleonic Wars. Two of them make an attempt to produce smaller versions of Horatio Hornblower’s style of navy. (The third set? Patience. They are 30,31,32,and 33.) By the way, the black power warfare in this series is actually only book 3. Book two is a hidden invaders story and book 2 is an endless hordes of aliens that must be stopped, but act in particularly silly manners story. Book 3 is the shipwrecked in a world wide theocracy story, one that feels very much like Off Armageddon Reef.)

30 March Upcountry John Ringo and David Webber
31 March to the Sea John Ringo and David Webber
32 March to the Stars John Ringo and David Webber
33 We Few John Ringo and David Webber

Shipwrecked. Endless Combat turns spoiled prince into bloodthirsty killing machine who gets the job done at any cost. 8 months of Endless Combat does the opposite to a number of his body guards. Stone age to early black powder natives and an endless succession of localized uplifting from a pike and shield unit from warriors to arbuquses to rifles and proper cannons as they walk across a continent. Political upheaval and space navies in the last book. Space combat that is remarkably similar to the Harrington books. (no surprise there.) These books probably sparked much of the research that lead to the ones above and Off Armageddon Reef.

34 Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall Bill Willingham et al. This is a prequel to the Fables comics with a framing story set several hundred years earlier and a bunch of sub stories set throughout the history of the fable worlds. It was enough to convince me to add it (the comics) to my “hunt down as soon as you have money again” list.

35 Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Cory Doctorow See 36 for my hagiography of Cory. This book is an incredibly cool mixture of developing culture and mythmaking. (At least I think the son of the mountain and a washing machine are new bits of myth. It feels like Gaiman’s American Gods mythology but created from whole cloth.) GO check it out from his website (www.craphound.com,) then go buy your own copy.

36 Overclocked Cory Doctorow Hum. Award winning author. Postpost cyberpunk. Cory is an active member of the free as in speech movement, working against people who would prefer all expression to come at the sole control of major media cartels. Open internet, communications systems that aren’t controlled or owned by governments or cartels, a dozen other things. Cory is also a damned good writer from the generation that’s giving us Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Sarah Monette, and John Scalzi (I know there is some time overlap, and I’m being research lazy). He’s a proponent of creative commons, and before I’d ever picked up any of his books, I’d been reading his work on boingboing. This collection of short stories is, as expected, excellent.

37 Breakfast With the Ones You Love Eliot Fintushel Urban Fantasy. Home made Talmudic space ships. Looks that kill. Teen Angst. Russian Mafia. Boxing. Bringing about the Eschaton. A talking cat. A good deal of fun within these pags.
38. Making Comics Scott McCloud. This is Scott at his best. Witty, excited, full of the promise of the media and new technologies, lucid and coherent, grounded. There are hundreds of how to draw comics books. There are many fewer on the craft and art of all of the other tasks. Only part of a book though. The rest is online, though I haven’t read it. Liked this one almost as much as Understanding Comics.

39. What if the Moon Didn’t Exist? Neilf Comins A double handful of what if scenarios about the formation of the earth and how small (and large) changes would influence the development of life on earth. Pretty good. A couple points here and there that could go either way, but then that is always the danger in speculating about things like changes propagating through deep time.

40. Mystic and Rider Sharon Shinn Fun read. Actually grabbed this one because the cover of the second or possibly third book grabbed my attention. Fantasy novel with a romance sub plot. Hope it stays that way. (I have read too many series like that where they spiraled into Romance Novels with fantasy trappings by the 3rd or 4th books. We’ll see.) The first one is worth a read at least. (The worldbuilding exposition/dialogue thingy at the beginning was a little clumsy, but I don’t think that there is any really good way to do an info dump, and false transparency is apparently in vogue at the present. Personally? I’d prefer narrator asides *coughcoughHeinleincoughcoughLynchcoughcough* Not that anything I’ve ever written with a “here’s how the world works dialogue worked as well as this one.