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.

[moechus.livejournal.com]

But did ever compose poetry in Esperanto?

[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.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

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

[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.