Random Stuff

1. I had dinner last night with someone I hadn't seen in about 20 years. I'm still trying to figure out the exact date. Randy Barris. I had a really great time. He came over around 515pm right after I got home from work -- a good 30 minutes before I figured he'd get there -- and we talked until around 630, then we went to dinner. We had a decent meal at Macaroni Grill, and then talked until almost 11pm -- me, having trouble staying awake since my day began not long after 530am. I just thought I'd let interested parties know. No further public details available.
2. A few more people accepted my LinkedIn invitations plus I got a few invitations and my contacts are over 30 now. Yay. I recommend LinkedIn to everyone from a professional work standpoint. If you have a job and you're a professional, you should have an account. It's a great resource. I have the free account and it's more than sufficient for my needs.
3. Reminder: if you're on NHL Connect, Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn -- let's connect. I use my darsysataoldotcom address on all of them.
4. If you haven't visited kiva.org, please check it out. If you haven't joined, let me know and I'll gladly send you an invitation. This is a great way for you to help those less fortunate. It's a micro-lending site. You put your money in $25 a pop and when you're paid back you can get your money or re-loan it to someone else. I have a few friends already participating. I've got 5 loans outstanding as of right now. Their default rate is low. It's not a charitable contribution, nor is it a tax deduction because you put in and get your money back without interest. But it's double-karma points and we all need good karma.
5. Looks like I am, after all, going to London this Christmas. I am ditching Christmas and leave Christmas morning with my sister. We're flying to Paris, spending a day in EuroDisney, and then taking the train to London. Continental has absurdly low fares to CDG from Newark right now. With the current exchange rate, the trip will still be a bit expensive. I'm working on that. Well Karen is, but she's so slow to respond it's frustrating me. Relatives will have to see me Christmas Eve instead. SMARTIES! YORKIES! YUMMMM! I'm going to try and meet with an estate agent to see what I have to do to buy a home and reture there, though the time of year may prohibit that.
6. I'm really hungry right now. I wish someone would bring me food.

Friend Test Analysis

In yesterday's post I posted the "friend test" which is both amusing and revealing at the same time. A number of my friends have taken it as well as some people I don't know quite as well. I assumed the better the friend, the better the score, but clearly this isn't the case.

Since I was able to control the questions and answers, nobody who knows the least bit about me should score below 50% because if you've ever read my website you can get 50%. If you've visited my website and visited my blog regularly, you should get around 70%. To get past that mark you'd actually have to know something about me.

Let me say, I'm pleased at Jose's score because not only did he get the highest score so far, he e-mailed me to correct one of his answers which would have put him at 90% -- out of a possible 95% since one question I don't expect anyone could answer right except by sheer luck (the people group question). I expected he'd do well and he did.

I've learned something from this: for the most part, the people I expected to know me really well, don't -- and the people I didn't necessarily expect to know me so well have done better than I expected. A score of 70% is where I expected my friends to start in, but that hasn't happened. I'm not sure if I should be upset, sad, distressed, disappointed, or what. I don't want to call out names because I don't want to embarrass anyone.

If you don't want to use your real e-mail to register, you can use Guerilla Mail's disposable e-mail addresses -- they're great for that.

Also, if anyone is a member of: Orkut, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, NHLConnect, or StumbleUpon, feel free to add me to your contacts. Expand your network.

My Space

Um, yeah, okay. I have a MySpace page. The direct URL is http://www.myspace.com/darsys

I made this page because my friend Maury invited me to do it. I've made a little profile which is far less cluttered and offensive than most. So I'll probably leave my account there -- though I doubt it'll get much more use than my Orkut account.

I've sworn I'd never, ever, no matter what make a MySpace page because it's full of whiny, bratty, moronic kids. To be clear, I'm not saying all kids are like that. But MySpace has more than its fair share of twits who don't know the difference between IT'S and ITS (or YOU'RE and YOUR) -- and, quite frankly, I look down on people who should know better but don't. It's a failure of our educational system where teachers are afraid to fail the students for shit like that, or worse they don't know it's wrong. But I digress.

I thought I'd hate MySpace with a passion. I don't hate it, nor am I in love with it. What I do find kind of neat are all the musicians that are there. That's the one thing that MySpace has that's great. You can learn about bands, try their music, and (if inclined) interact with fellow fans.

Social networking just doesn't do it for me I suppose.