Ten things I have done that you probably have not

[beowabbit]

I had a hard time with this, because lots of my friends have similar interests, but I did my best:

1. Given a 40-minute presentation in Chinese, a language I had only studied for two years. [Edit: This was for work, to people who didn’t speak much English, rather than in class.]
2. Dropped out of high school to go to college (OK, I bet a bunch of you have done that).
3. Seen an original Old English manuscript in the flesh (well, skin, anyway).
4. Painstakingly centered and right-justified lines on an IBM Executive typewriter.
5. Typed entire college papers with nice-looking apostrophes by rotating the platen up a half line and using commas.
6. Written a program in Z-80 assembly language to print proportionally-spaced mixed-case text on a printer that normally only printed capitals [edit: and used it to print my Russian homework].
7. Invented a new Romance language as a child (I bet some of you have invented languages, but not intended to fit in as plausible relatives of real languages).
8. Invented two imaginary writing systems as a child (I’m guessing most of you stopped at one).
9. Conducted a long-distance relationship via (what would come to be called) electronic mail and instant messaging — before 1984. (See PLATO People.)
10. Recited pornographic poetry in Esperanto for a sweetie. (She didn’t believe me that it was pornographic, so I had to translate it for her. In front of her co-workers. :-)

Comments

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

Well, started college as a frosh before actually graduating from high school.

But the other stuff is very cool.

[reme.livejournal.com]

ditto.

[moechus.livejournal.com]

But did ever compose poetry in Esperanto?

[beowabbit]

I don‘t remember. I translated koans into Esperanto once, though. (From English rather than from Japanese, though, so it was really cheating.)

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I seem to see a theme here . . . ;)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I believe I share #3 with you; the British Museum's document area is wonderful :-).

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

1. & 4.: Nope, me too. :)

Mandarin. Did you do Mandarin or Cantonese? I don't recall how many presentations I did, but we had to do oral presentations of reports in class.

[beowabbit]

Oh, cool!

Mandarin. After the Tian An Men Square massacre, Princeton had about 40 dissidents come to study. (I think it was part of a deal among the university, the U.S. government, and the Chinese government.) I worked for the IT helpdesk at the time, and I gave them a talk on the computing resources available (with the help of a Taiwanese student employee -- I wrote up the talk in Chinese with his help, but then he translated for the question-and-answer phase). It was loads of fun.

Oddly, I’m even more tickled to find somebody who’s done number 4.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

After the Tian An Men Square massacre, Princeton had about 40 dissidents come to study.

And here we pinpoint the age gap! I was a sophomore in high school then, I think. Either freshman or sophomore. We were actually planning a class trip to China, but then the massacre occurred, and, well - not anymore.

Oddly, I’m even more tickled to find somebody who’s done number 4.

When I was a kid, my favorite toys were typewriters. I taught myself to type when I was about seven - I did the damage early, and I now hunt and peck at 80+ wpm!

[beowabbit]

And here we pinpoint the age gap! I was a sophomore in high school then, I think.

Your high school offered Chinese? I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived!

I’d been wondering how old you are, given that IBM Executives were starting to get a bit long in the tooth when I was playing with them. But I guess you were probably typing on that particular model younger than I was. (I also always used to switch type balls in the Selectric to get real italics rather than just underlining things.)

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Your high school offered Chinese?

Heh. Funny story. I took both Chinese and French AT THE SAME TIME. I requested Chinese, with French as an alternate, as one of my electives. One of my other electives wasn't available, so the idiots gave me French and Chinese; I had them in consecutive class periods, even. It was a hell of a mental shift, rewiring myself from Chinese to French as I walked from one building to the next.

I tell you, I looked at my ninth-grade schedule and whimpered...

I did okay. Solid As in French and Bs in Chinese both years (yes, I voluntarily did it again). I still maintain that I'd've gotten As in Chinese as well if I hadn't had French to contend with at the same time.

And my high school was... special. It was a Highly Desirable magnet school with a closed K-to-12 system. The waiting list was so insane that I was on it as "Baby Boy or Baby Girl [last name]" at least a year before I was born. It was an experimental school; we got to try things before the rest of the state did. My favorite of the programs, besides Chinese, was the blended English/History program - two hours in which we learned about writers of the times that we were studying in history, and got to put on plays and stuff...

There was counterintuitive stuff, too. For instance - I showed extreme aptitude in life sciences, so I ended up doing AP marine biology & anatomy & physiology, stuff like that, but never taking chemistry or physics. *eyeroll*

It was a really competive, single-minded school. Kids were encouraged to only do one extracurricular, in order to Be The Best at it and kick the other schools' asses.

Dude, I could write about it allll day... *laugh* It warped me. It warped everyone who went.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

Warped you? Are you sure you would not have been warped anyway? ;P

Dang, it sounds like a fun school to me. In hind sight, I would give a lot to to have gone to a school like that. If I'd been challenged I might have actually developed study skills before college.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd've been warped anyway. This is a special kind of warped. This is where my hypercompetitive streak comes from. Among other things.

[beowabbit]

My favorite of the programs, besides Chinese, was the blended English/History program - two hours in which we learned about writers of the times that we were studying in history, and got to put on plays and stuff...

That is exceedingly nifty. A lover of mine went to a conservatory, and mentioned to me once that she was taught all about the music of Mozart and Bach and Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky (or however we're spelling him in English these days), but nothing about the history or literature surrounding that music. (I had allowed as how a conservatory must have offered a reasonable amount of history and literature, and she said I'd be surprised.)

The arbitrary division of knowledge into school subjects has always struck me as a bit odd.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

The arbitrary division of knowledge into school subjects has always struck me as a bit odd.

Yep! We try to give Elayna bonus background whenever possible - and her school doesn't do half bad, being Montessori and all.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'm 30 and 51 weeks. :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

My high school offered Chinese! It is another sign of my enduring thickheadedness that I never signed up for it.

I did take a semester of Chinese as an adult, with Raymond Lum at the Harvard University Extension School, and it was one of the best classes I ever had in my life.

[beowabbit]

I did take a semester of Chinese as an adult, with Raymond Lum at the Harvard University Extension School, and it was one of the best classes I ever had in my life.

Hmmm; maybe I should consider that. I'd love to work on my Chinese some more. How much did it cost, and how many days a week did it meet?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the cost -- it was on mom & dad's dime. I think it was in the $400-$500 range. And I think once or twice a week: I was taking a data structures class three times a week and think that the Chinese class met a little less often.

This also occurred in 1989, so a lot may have changed since then...

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, I played with PLATO! Not for an LDR, though, so you're safe there :-)

[beowabbit]

Are you familiar with cyber1.org? They’ve got a CDC Cyber emulator running PLATO software, and you can sign up for free accounts you can access with a PLATO terminal emulator (for which they have binaries for Linux, Windows and Mac). I have to say it’s eerie to see “Press NEXT to begin” again after so many years.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Oooh, printer drivers for the TRS-80! I'm impressed.

When I was studying Greek I tried to design a Greek character set for our TRS-80 line printer, which used (iirc) 5x8 character cells, so it was a little cramped. I did a reasonably good job, if I do say so, though I never wrote it as a proper driver so any document could be printed in Greek.

[mrpet.livejournal.com]

Hey,

I wrote a printer driver for a TRS-80 color ink jet printer for a HeathKit H8 (8080 based running CPM)

[derien.livejournal.com]

Invented two imaginary writing systems as a child (I’m guessing most of you stopped at one).

Yes, I stopped at one, though I varied a number of symbols in it depending on whether I was using it for private journals or to communicte between myself and rowantree.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

Touring through the British Museum and spending most of the time in the documents room pushes me over the edge on #3. I mostly was looking at things in latin and taking notes on the calligraphy though.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

I dropped out of college to go to college.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

I attempted #2, but I couldn't and still get into the college I wanted to go to. So, I stuck it out senior year.

[(Anonymous)]

Seen an original Old English manuscript in the flesh (well, skin, anyway).

Yep. Done that. Smithsonian, some traveling exhibit that I don't remember now.

Painstakingly centered and right-justified lines on an IBM Executive typewriter.

And on a manual typewriter. Ugh.

Conducted a long-distance relationship via (what would come to be called) electronic mail and instant messaging — before 1984.

OK, I didn't technically conduct an LDR that way, though I did have an email account (usenet) in 1983. However, my then-gf didn't do computers so the LDR was by phone and frequent train trips. Had an '@' address by 1986 and had the State of Texas refuse me a custom license plate with the symbol (I was wex@mcc which would have fit on a custom plate, too).

--wex

[beowabbit]

Yeah, but at least on a manual typewriter the letters are all the same width. On an IBM Executive you had to count fractional character widths. (But I'm impressed; I don't know a lot of other people who are familiar with the IBM Executive.)

Bummer about the Texas DMV.

I think I probably beat you by just a year on the @-address; I got it my freshman year out east at college. However, my first Internet-accessible address was *gasp* on BITNET. :-) So maybe that's cheating. (SEKJAYA@YALEVM.BITNET.)

Hmmm...

Wow, GOOGLE knows of a message I sent from that account (albeit a few years later)!

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Dude, I wanna hang out with you just to hear these stories!

[beowabbit]

Hee! You have a story or two I want to hear, too. :-)

[jaidit.livejournal.com]

#3: Damn. The best I've done is Middle English, although I do have a nice leaf from a small Book of Hours (in Latin). (And, of course, I've seen scads of Latin mss.)

#10. I haven't ever recited pornographic Esperanto poetry to ... well, to anyone (ni volas vidi la poemon, but I have read (and probably still have somewhere) gay porn in Esperanto.

I had to add you to my list: we've a lot of congruent interests.