Posts made by fortydeuce

93% Socialiser
73% Explorer
27% Achiever
7% Killer

Accurate. Though that one about "would you rather have a sword or be really feared?" was kind of a no-good-choice question for me.

@cobaltasaurus Jack went on the roster yesterday. I know it because the name stuck out to me!

Have we met? I don't know if we've met. Find me; meet me. I'm pretty public (OK, public to a fault.) Got a (semi-)private thing now and at 3 PM EST, but otherwise open today.

Well, fuck.

I teach Left Hand of Darkness each time I get Science Fiction to teach (last time was 2015). The students always love it, even the ones I know are very socially conservative. The discussions are great, and especially for college kids, super respectful. Last time, when we read it at the very end of the spring semester, I had a graduating senior student come out as trans to me and then (through her own initiative, not my doing, of course) to the class. The highest compliment I can pay LeGuin is that she changed that young woman's life through her writing. Thank you for that, Ursula, from someone who witnessed the power your words had.

@jinshei said in Social Awkwardness?:

I used to work with social workers who would send me a long, rambling email and then two minutes later come to tell me what it said, with added details, when I was obviously flat out. All I wanted for them to tell me was the problem, and what they wanted from me. Just the facts. I don't need to know that the patient gave you biscuits and tea. They also persisted in stopping for morning and afternoon tea (a very Aussie workplace thing it seemed to me), and social events and ... oh god, the forced social interactions.

I'll see you and raise you with:

1. Forced social actions in academia, with people you actively dislike, and
2. Student E-mails. "Can I have an extension on my paper? I am really swamped with two jobs and five classes" = yes, you can! "Can I have an extension on my paper? <Long, rambling story which I don't care about and which may not be entirely true because you don't want to come out and say that you're just busy and oh my God do I really have to read this I have like 10 other papers to get to grading!> = noooo. I am the nicest person when it comes to extensions and stuff like that, but if you don't get to the point, I am dying inside.

From earlier:

if you are still having trouble, you can ooc that you're still getting your bearings as you're new.

Except people are free to ignore that as they wish, and screw you up anyway, per your own statement.

Let me put it this way: I just started on a game with a very expansive theme. I am two weeks in. I am still learning. I know I'm still making mistakes, because I'm still learning (though I think I'm making less of them now than I was two weeks ago!). One of the first things I OOCly asked, two weeks ago, was how to refer to a certain character in manner of speaking, and that person responded. Two seconds. Done. Now, I'm asking more different, complex questions, because I'm starting to get my bearings.

The website is all well and good, as is going to a Discord or message board or whatever, but if I can't OOC simple corrections, or ask for more complex clarifications, and get a straight and reliable answer each time without being left to my own devices for it, and if I run the risk of my character dying for unknowingly getting it wrong (as opposed to "knowingly," which is a whole different ball of wax), that's not an environment that would make me come running back to play.

@Kanye-Qwest Oh, sure. I tend to overthink code things just a little, and I'm not saying this should be priority #1 by any means! Just that the repetition caught my eye and I figured I'd toss it up as a point of interest. Like @Darinelle says, it's more likely my weird luck about it than anything else. But I could see a more cloistered concept or the like feeling a little "huh, okay then" if they got a draw like that.

Lucky in one sense -- I like the well-known person (Thena, who was Derovai's Gala plus-one)! I like the A and B from the A, B, and C scene that popped up at cron -- but Thena's player and I were both like "okay, then; I guess that works, but yeaaah" when we saw the @rs!

ETA: And I wasn't saying track it all the time. Just maybe in the newbie period and for the cron where you drop off of @rs's newbie list, so you're sure of getting at least 9 contacts you don't already know? Obviously, I'm not hurting for contacts or anything, but it might be worth preventing on more cloistered concepts.

Because if I were to break down mine, it would run:

A,B,C = already played with A and B
D,E,F = E is related to PC I know.
G,H,I = G is IC acquaintance; H is in-org person.

Which, if I were a shy person (I'm not! I'm not saying this was problematic for me, only doing the math on it) would tap out at only four people I'd have no reason besides @rs to look up. Hope that makes sense as an explanation as to why it caught my eye.

@Darinelle -- other way around! I'm advocating for less well-known-to-me people popping up on the @rs. It's just funny to me, because so far -- two weeks out of three as far as @rs turnover -- I've gotten a couple of people that I was just RPing with and/or would RP with anyway, so there's been less "randomness" to that than there would be if I got totally obscure-to-me people. Definitely a luck of the draw thing, though.

@packrat You and I are twins.

@Auspice if it's of some value, by the way, I'll note that I am an extrovert IRL as well as online (ENFP if you buy into Myers-Briggs), and even I hate open floorplans. I don't know anyone who likes them, even people who are extroverts. They combine the worst features of forced bonhomie and enforced public space. It's like a mandatory team-building exercise with trustfalls writ large into each day.

Open floor plans give me hives too. Even libraries are moving towards open study areas. In college about 15 years ago, one thing I absolutely cherished about my senior carrel was that it was hidden away in a nook and nobody could hover behind it. In law school, I was the lone archives assistant at the university archives and would lock myself in the archives (I had hours there to cover for the 70+-year-old archivist, because I'd been there for years and was trusted), and have my own little space. The rest of the undergrad library and the law library were both open floor plans. I never got that. I know some people like group work, but sitting at any one of those open tables made it impossible to study.

My university office is a corner office with a window, and I only share it with one other Ph.D student, and you'd better believe the desk is set up so that the students can't see what I'm doing when they walk in.

@saosmash From someone who has no alts, that's actually a really good idea that I'd second.

@oldfrightful Haven't met? Or at least haven't met a lot? It was pretty amusing to me at first when it recycled with chars A and B when I'd just gotten out of a scene with A, B, and C, but given what it did this week, maybe there's a way to check previous @rs claims for the newbie period and prevent against them coming up in the next <x> @rses. Certainly doesn't need to be a code priority; might just be my weird luck!

I'm a bit punchdrunk because I was up stupidly late last night for no reason, so sorry for lack of clarity above.

Hi! I teach English literature and occasional nonfiction writing (Business Writing, etc) to college kids, so I'm going to pull a little bit of rank here and say that, though I'm not a prescriptivist, grammatical rules, including guidelines such as what typesetting to use for emphasis, exist for a reason. That reason is clarity.

@evilcabbage: In your second link, by Grant Barrett, the author makes the following point:

But as examples on both sites show, there are proper, natural, widely understood rules behind using shout quotes, even if they’re taught in no grammar or style book that I can find. They’re appropriate when you have no other easy way to indicate emphasis.

Emphasis mine, because I do have an easy way to indicate emphasis. And so do you! It's called using the code above. Single asterisks are italic, as a for-instance. You'll note I use them frequently here, to demonstrate the facility with which one might employ them.

Let's take a look at the article from The Sun too (see, there I go, using bbcode again to its proper effect).

It is an understandable mistake. Quotations set off something, and it's a short step from setting something off to emphasizing it.

And the quote you picked out:

Thus wearing my linguist hat, I am inclined to treat the new boldface as a variant usage of punctuation which, since it is used consistently by users, cannot on any logical grounds be rejected as "wrong."

That's not arguing what you think it's arguing. It's arguing against stating linguistic drift as inherently wrong, but it is also (emphasis again! I just keep doing it somehow!) arguing that written linguistic patterns are "more resistant to change" (quote verbatim) than spoken ones, and that this change itself is not settled and is still in flux.

We can argue about singular "they" and the like all day, but even from your own articles, this is not a debatable issue either in layman's practice or in academia. Emphasis using quotes is not an acceptable practice because of its potential to be confused as scare quotes. I'd mark it off in my students' papers at the drop of a hat, just as I would an errant apostrophe or a comma splice.

Peace, but you're in error here, speaking as someone with at least a dash of authority in the field.

2-weeks-in thoughts:

• I'm now off @rs! I was able to get a bunch of connections in that time; hopefully that propels forward.
• I'm getting more used to the "public RP is actually public, and people will walk in without asking" vibe, but it still weirds me out a bit at times. I ask by default, even now, because that's the culture I came from. Maybe I'll be more carefree about it, but there are times when I tap out because a manageable 2- or 3-PC scene turns into a giant clusterfuck of 10+ PCs all doing their thing (my own included, so I'm just as guilty as everyone else).
• This is a big ask on the code front, but maybe @rs could be refined a bit: last week I got three PCs who I hadn't met (though only managed to scene with one: Iliana and Luis, let's still look each other up, if you're reading this!) -- but the week before that I had two PCs I literally had just gotten out of a scene with just before cron recycled. This week I have one PC my PC knows quite well, and one PC in his org. I'd probably RP with both of them anyway (though I did tell the well-known PC's player that I operate with a sense of breathing room... guess not! ) I don't think it would be practicable to code this, and it might just be my weird luck of the draw, but it's something I've noticed nonetheless.
• I got my first revelation. Yay! So I'm making progress on the @clue front. I started on two of my own theories; one I think is pretty sound, but we'll see! Sharing as it comes up IC. Thanks to @Darinelle and others for the hand-holding as I found my footing on that front.
• Helpfiles: need a rewrite. I heard it from others too. @investigate/@helpinvestigate are the ones that came up recently. I'll also note @actions and @relationships as two others that are a bit murky.
• @Family: I caught mentions of this needing to be on for all PCs, but I don't see my PC as the type to have in-play relatives (he has enough hooks as it is). Is there a way to set this up so that you can avoid in-play relatives?
• I've gotten more used to @journal, even if mine are very short and tend to be responses to others' or IC jokes, so that's no longer an issue. (Sorry, Derovai's just not an "imma share my feelings" type of guy! But I've found a way to handle it that feels sensible.)
• Considering an alt that is Derovai's complete opposite. An Archlector. How much thematic grok would I need to app that?

Late add: to be a bit more topical, I'll note that I am not a late night player (EST and I tend to crash around midnight or so), but was up last night and bouncing off the walls a bit IRL due to too much caffeine during the day. I hadn't RPed since midnight though.

@apos Yup, absolutely understandable, and please don't worry on that front! Just some hard numbers/specifics from a new player as far as the times, because "how fast are jobs handled" in a game which requires staff involvement for stuff like XP spends has a different tinge to it than does "I'd like this thing coded" hanging around for a bit. One is potentially a bottleneck, and the other isn't.

My one non-code job that required staff took less than a week (I think 3-4 days; will doublecheck when I'm on), and that was the PC needing something to be fleshed out by staff.

ETA: Timestamps on the non-code thing I needed staff to add to my @sheet (and it was something that required a bit of thought on their end): opened the night of 01/13, closed the night of 01/18.

@apos if this is a fair example:

I have a couple of code requests that are no doubt harder to code; I think the oldest one (+glance/pcs) is going on two weeks; not sure how much longer it will take, but it was literally a request, so it's not like I'm chomping at the bit to have it done now. A +typo job was handled within a day. One request to @alias things was handled in a day with "just use nick to do what you want" -- understandably, I didn't think of the idea, because I'm not used to the codebase.

But that hasn't impacted my play. I think having the defined timeframe/turnover at cron keeps jobs/requests that are crucial to activity from languishing too badly by default, anyway. XP spends and the like don't require staff involvement until you're at 6 (off the general 1-5 scale), from my understanding from @Darinelle. I've spent about 270 XP between my PC and his single retainer without staff involvement and the spends have been instantaneous.

@kanye-qwest That wasn't the implication; it was that people could find a niche easily enough in their playstyle.