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

[(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)!