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User Journal

Journal Journal: message to my 12 year old self...

Sweet --- my question about sending a message back in time to your 12 year old self got posted on /. and generated a lot of interesting (& hilarious) comments. It's interesting that despite the large number of comments relatively few threads developed -- the overwhelming majority were replies to the original post.

CleverNickName (aka Wil Wheaton) linked to the /. post from his website WWDN and got some interesting responses as well.

Looking back over my submission, I see that I didn't answer the question myself. Probably because I still don't know what I'd say, despite asking other people this question for years. I suppose my one piece of practical advice would have to be: "don't even think about getting on your bike without a helmet." I'll take a whack at a long answer in my blog one of these days.

Thanks to all who responded.

User Journal

Journal Journal: blog-O-rama blogs on

Updates to my blog:

find out who's leading the weenie patrol --- blog entry 16.02.03

an experiment to test the 'panspermia hypothesis' that was aboard Columbia, the classic science fiction movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and the current political climate in the US --- all in the same blog entry 13.02.03

User Journal

Journal Journal: thanks for the excellent replies

I got some very interesting and helpful replies to two recent comments, on dealing with bugs in Matlab and OroborOSX in Mac OS X and on why patches to Linux don't seem to cause as many problems as patches to some MS programs like MS SQL. Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond --- it didn't seem to make sense to reply to each one individually, but I did go and add all of the posters to my 'friends' list.

And while I was at it, I decided to add all of my fans to my 'friends' list as well --- even the dubiously nicknamed "smelly jeffrey." Actually it doesn't matter to me if jeffrey smells--- I have no sense of smell due to a head injury. (My unsolicited advice to the entire universe: if you ride a bike, wear a bicycle helmet.)

I update my blog regularly, so if you're interested in being my "instant friend" or listening to me rant about the weather in wisconsin, the functioning of my old G3 laptop, the impending war on Iraq, etc., check out:

blog-O-rama

User Journal

Journal Journal: It's all about the friends

The only way to have a friend is to be one
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
--Dale Carnegie

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

A simple friend opens a conversation with a full news bulletin on his life.real friend says, What's new with you?
--Unknown

A simple friend doesn't know your parents' first names. A real friend has their phone numbers in his address book
--Unknown

I get by with a little help from my friends.
--John Lennon

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.
--Unknown

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
--Anais Nin

Everyone is a friend, until they prove otherwise.
--Unknown

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
--Elbert Hubbard

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.
--Mary Catherwood

Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.
--Unknown

I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine, encourage me to grow.
--Cher

The best mirror is an old friend.
--George Herbert

The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.
--Wilson Mizner

This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects for it redoubleth joy, and cutteth griefs in half.
--Francis Bacon

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
--Henry David Thoreau

Gems may be precious, but friends are priceless.
--Unknown

Never explain-your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
--Elbert Hubbard

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
--Jean de La Fontaine

Dear George, Remember no man's a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings. Love, Clarence
--Clarence, the angel It's a Wonderful Life

Choose your friends like your books, few but choice.
--American Proverb

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
--Lee Iacocca

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you were somebody else, would you want to be friends with you?
--Unknown

Are we going to be friends forever? Asked Piglet. Even longer, Pooh answered.
--A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh

The best vitamin for making friends is B-1.
--Unknown

We really don't have enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us.
--Unknown

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
--Moliere (1622-1672)

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance: they make the latitudes and longitudes.
--Henry David Thoreau

A friend is a gift you give yourself.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.
--Saint Augustine Roman religious figure and philosopher

A friend is one who walks in when others walk out.
--Walter Winchell

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.
--Albert Camus

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
--Charles Caleb Colton

My friends are my estate.
--Emily Dickinson

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
--Bible: Ecclesiastes

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.
--Mary Catherwood

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival.
--C. S. Lewis

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.
--Logan Pearsall Smith

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.
--Abraham Lincoln

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him, his own.
--Benjamin Disraeli

Though our communication wanes at times of absence, I'm aware of a strength that emanates in the background.
--Claudette Renner

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
--Oscar Wilde

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
--Mother Teresa

I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.
--Benjamin Franklin

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
--Aristotle

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
--Mark Twain

Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.
--Cicero

This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joy, and cutteth griefs in half.
--Francis Bacon

Friends are born, not made.
--Henry Adams

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.
--Anatole Broyard

Friendship without self interest is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
--James Francis Byrnes

True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
--Alexander Pope

What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies.
--Aristotle

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The friendship that can cease has never been real.
--Saint Jerome

I count myselt in nothing else so happy As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends.
--William Shakespeare

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
--Henry Ford

It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm, A happy and auspicious bird of calm...
--Shelly

Too late we learn, a man must hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end.
--John Boyle O'Reilly

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.
--Thomas Jefferson

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
--George Eliot

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
--Thomas Jefferson

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.
--Edward Everett Hale

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
--Francoise Sagan

Friendship is always a sweet responsibilty, never an oppourtunity.
--Kahil Gibran

There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.
--Bejamin Disraeli

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
--Walt Whitman

User Journal

Journal Journal: just learned about this

this is an interesting feature. I wonder if over the long term people will respond with Ideas that will improve the quality of my response to the posting I do.

User Journal

Journal Journal: First Journal Entry

Ah, what the hell. I'm no stranger to weblogs, having run several, going back a few years, so why not blog on slashdot? BTW: I met Dave Winer at a cocktail party at the O'Reilly conference in 2001 and have been reading Scripting.com regularly since then. XML-RPC based weblogs are the future of journalism.

Upgrades

Journal Journal: Upgrades 2

I'm posting this with the Upgrades icon, in the event any of you Linux users want to upgrade:

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VA

Journal Journal: $1.83 1

As of the writing of this entry, stock in VA is trading at $1.83. I would still put a 'strong sell' on it at that price.

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