Author: coemgenvs

Still it moves

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I am indeed still alive. I’m not entirely sure why I’d forgotten about this blog, but a friend recently posting an entry about her two-week hiatus from Facebook to her WordPress blog reminded me that I too have a WordPress blog. After skimming my previous entries, I realized I hadn’t written anything here for almost six months.

In early August 2014, I moved with my roommate to a new apartment, and about a week after we moved my brother moved to the same city I’ve been living in for a year and a half now (!) to attend university. In contrast to my half-time academic status, he’s a full-time student and, if I remember correctly, his goal is going into sports medicine (or physical therapy or something like that).

I’m having trouble thinking of any major events from the last six months, but I guess there doesn’t always have to be something exciting. (Below the cut: What I’ve been doing since July 2014) Continue reading →

A brief list of underused words

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In no particular order, these are words that are (in my opinion) not used as often as they should be.

  • ascertain
  • vitriol
  • gainsay
  • disheveled
  • lackadaisical
  • facetious
  • murderous
  • echelon
  • counsel
  • tutelage
  • ascension
  • meretricious
  • mellifluous
  • extraordinaire
  • waylay

Anniversary

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I’ve had this blog for a year now, and I’ve written 10 posts (well, 11 counting this one). After renewing the domain name registration yesterday, I decided that if I’m going to bother shelling out 26 dollars for a year of registration I might as well make it worth my while, so I’ve resolved to post here more often. I’m not certain what I’ll write about, but perhaps I can deposit some of my creative writing here. What else are blogs for, right?

I don’t think I personally know any of the 16 people who currently follow this blog in real life, but much the same could be said about my 66 Tumblr followers – of those, I know 3 or 4 in real life, and the other 63 are people who apparently decided I was worth following. At least I know most of my Facebook friends in real life, though I’ve considered trimming my friends list a bit because there are a few people I’ve never been particularly close to. Anyone I graduated high school with (might) get a pass,  but of those 30-odd Facebook friends (since a few people have deactivated their Facebook account) that still leaves another 180-something people with active accounts. For example, from the people I met during my freshman year of college (almost 5 years ago), there are several people I’d consider friends who I’m not at all interested in deleting, and there’s also at least one guy I never remember talking to, but we lived on the same floor of the dorm, so I assume I added him at some point during the heady days at the beginning of the year when “add everyone who lives on your floor and everyone you meet on Facebook” doesn’t seem weird. Oh, freshmen.

It also seems really weird to think about how today’s the halfway point of the year. I wonder what the last half of 2014 holds? I wonder what I’ll be doing to celebrate New Year’s? Questions, questions, questions.

It’s already July?

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I don’t know why I don’t write here more often, but in case you were wondering, I’m still alive.

I was going to take a writing class online this summer, but after much procrastination I decided to withdraw from that at the end of the second week and try again sometime when I was actually interested in starting off on the right foot (so to speak).

After the spring semester ended (I definitely could have studied harder and done better), I had a few weeks off. These were spent working and doing not much of any significance or interest, which could probably summarize my summer so far. Hooray for being an adult!

My most recent adventures, at least in real life, involve weddings. I had a cousin’s wedding the weekend before last (more on that later) and about a month ago, I accompanied a friend to a wedding reception. For both events, I wore a tie like this, which says “Ties suck” in binary (ASCII) and was purchased shortly before prom my junior year of high school. Has it really been 6 years since 2008? Continue reading →

Long Time, No See

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I had pretty much forgotten I had this blog until one day recently, when I saw an e-mail in my inbox, with the subject line saying something about the impending expiration of the domain name.

A lot has happened in the almost five months since I’ve last written anything here, and I’m not quite sure where to begin.
Right now, the spring semester is beginning to wind down, and I have my last tests of the semester (before finals) this week, I think. There are two weeks left in my semester, plus a few days until my final exams. I haven’t worked as hard as I should this semester, and at this point I’m ready for the semester to be over and done with so I can focus on starting (and succeeding in) new classes.

In addition to my lackluster academic performance, I’ve also been working about 32 hours a week for the last couple of months, and I’ve had a couple of car accidents. Thankfully, nobody was injured, but I’m sure the wrecks are (or have been, or will be) reflected in my car insurance costs somehow.

Briefly:
The first weekend of February, I took a brief road trip to see some college friends. After staying up late Saturday night, and meeting them for brunch Sunday morning, I started driving home early Sunday afternoon. As I drove south, I encountered snow as I drove into a large city, and after navigating traffic in said city, and other wrecks, I was probably driving too fast, and while trying to change lanes and pass someone (I think), I went off the road and hit the median barrier in the middle of the highway shortly after leaving said city. I was physically unhurt, mentally shaken, nobody else was involved, and cursing my own stupidity. Other than a couple of state troopers who checked to make sure I was okay and a guy in an army uniform who offered me a drink or a cigarette, I think I spent about an hour in my car on the side of the road before a guy roughly my age (early-mid 20s) with a pickup truck and chain offered to pull me back onto the road for $20. He pulled me back onto the road without too much trouble, and I managed to drive a little bit further before I had to pull over. My car wouldn’t travel any further, because (as it turned out) my transmission line had been broken, and my front bumper had been torn off. I called a tow truck, who pulled my car to a local body shop and (after I made a couple phone calls and made arrangements) dropped me off at a friend’s apartment, where I spent Sunday night and most of Monday before my roommate came and picked me up after he got off work Monday evening. I hated feeling like I was imposing on my friend’s hospitality, but I didn’t mind watching the Olympics and talking to her, so that could have been worse. According to the car shop, it was going to cost $3000 something to fix the car, and since it was a 1999 Ford Taurus with 136 thousand miles on it (and therefore worth maybe about $1000), it wouldn’t have been worth fixing all of the damage.
Going a week without a car wasn’t fun, but eventually my parents brought another car down for me.

Just over a month later, on St. Patrick’s Day, I was in a hurry and worried about running late on the first day back from spring break, so I didn’t clean enough of the frost off my windshield and ended up hitting another car at the stoplight right outside my apartment complex’s parking lot. My airbag deployed, and again, luckily nobody was injured (other than the car I was driving getting a dented hood, and the Ford Mustang in front of me), but then I was worried about having to go to traffic court (once the police officer gave me a ticket). After that, I had no interest in continuing with my day as scheduled, so I returned to my apartment.
I drove that car around for a couple more weeks until (about a month ago) my parents brought down another car and the car I had been driving was taken away because the insurance company decided to total it out. (2006 Chevrolet HHR, worth about $7000, estimated about $5000 to fix, plus whatever needed fixed under the hood)

Basically, I’ve been sort of in the used car market for almost two months now, though I’ve really only gotten semi-serious about thinking what I want in roughly the last week. As with the current state of the semester, at this point (and I’ve been here for a while) I’m ready to find a car and start making payments so I don’t have to worry about deciding what I want or trying not to wreck the car I’m driving now. Since it’s spring, though, I shouldn’t have to worry about snow, ice, frost, or anything worse than wind, rain, or hail. Even then, driving in rain is different than driving through snow, ice, or any other form of frozen water.

That seems as good of a place as any to leave this entry. I have a couple of tests I should probably go study for, even if I’d rather play Crusader Kings II all night.

Family history

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I thought this story in the New Yorker about the family of 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Allen (1941-) during the first half of the 20th century was interesting. In two words, his family was “Old Money.”

In contrast, I think most of my ancestors could be described by the word “Farmers.” This isn’t bad, of course, but I think it’s interesting to read or hear about people’s families (Albert Einstein, for example) and think that, instead of being from an urban middle class family, most if not all of my recent ancestors have been farmers.

Both of my grandfathers served in the army, but that’s sort of an accident of being born male in the mid- and late 1920s – one grandfather served in the South Pacific during World War II, and the other served in Korea during the Korean War.  

I think one of my great-grandmothers had a college degree, which probably wasn’t terribly common in the 1920s, and divorces probably weren’t that common either, but I’m not exactly certain just how common either of those things were at the time.

Anyway, I always think this sort of thing is interesting to think about. On a lighter note, I started watching “Community” earlier today, and now I can understand its popularity among my friends. I remember seeing an episode about 4 years ago, but now I’ve seen the first three in order and it all makes a bit more sense. 

Well, this is interesting

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Input:

“Recently, I’ve been on a reading kick. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but the Internet and various other unfortunate facts of life (i.e., work) ensured that, for a time, I read less than I used to. This year, I’ve read in fits and spurts – reading voraciously for a time, and then not reading for a while due to being occupied by books, school work, moving, and various other petty and quotidian concerns.

In the past week or so, since my university’s winter break started nearly two weeks ago, I’ve been devouring science fiction via my Kindle – more specifically, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Iain Banks’ novelsInversions and Look to Windward. Early this morning, after finishing Look to Windward, I began reading Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade. This is the story of an alien scouting ship landing near a medieval English village, which is promptly taken over by the local Baron after a brief skirmish. After loading his entire village aboard the alien craft and trickery by the sole surviving alien who had been taken captive, the ship’s autopilot takes the ship back to its home base. The Baron sets his sights above merely going to France and the Holy Land, and instead sets about taking on the alien empire- beams, cannon, and starships versus steel, longbowmen, and horse. This story is told by the monk who was initially tasked with learning the alien’s strange tongue, and, after some initial confusion when said alien lacks knowledge of Latin and fails to burst into flames when hearing the Paternoster (I paraphrase), eventually serves as his lord’s interpreter to the aliens. Hearing concepts familar to nearly any science fiction fan (faster-than-light travel, 20th century weaponry, and astronomy, among others) translated through a 14th century monk can be quite entertaining. Suffice it to say that metal detectors are ineffective against wooden trebuchets. ”

Output:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Okay.jpg

I can’t remember for certain if I’ve read any Lovecraft, but if I have it’s been at least 5 years. Reading more Lovecraft is definitely on my to-do list, however.

Science fiction and writing ideas

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Recently, I’ve been on a reading kick. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but the Internet and various other unfortunate facts of life (i.e., work) ensured that, for a time, I read less than I used to. This year, I’ve read in fits and spurts – reading voraciously for a time, and then not reading for a while due to being occupied by books, school work, moving, and various other petty and quotidian concerns.

In the past week or so, since my university’s winter break started nearly two weeks ago, I’ve been devouring science fiction via my Kindle – more specifically, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Iain Banks’ novels Inversions and Look to Windward. Early this morning, after finishing Look to Windward, I began reading Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade. This is the story of an alien scouting ship landing near a medieval English village, which is promptly taken over by the local Baron after a brief skirmish. After loading his entire village aboard the alien craft and trickery by the sole surviving alien who had been taken captive, the ship’s autopilot takes the ship back to its home base. The Baron sets his sights above merely going to France and the Holy Land, and instead sets about taking on the alien empire- beams, cannon, and starships versus steel, longbowmen, and horse. This story is told by the monk who was initially tasked with learning the alien’s strange tongue, and, after some initial confusion when said alien lacks knowledge of Latin and fails to burst into flames when hearing the Paternoster (I paraphrase), eventually serves as his lord’s interpreter to the aliens. Hearing concepts familar to nearly any science fiction fan (faster-than-light travel, 20th century weaponry, and astronomy, among others) translated through a 14th century monk can be quite entertaining. Suffice it to say that metal detectors are ineffective against wooden trebuchets. 

Anyway, this has given me more ideas for writing Crusader Kings II-inspired after-action reports. I’ve already begun work on a narrative that’s supposed to be similar to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and today’s idea is writing a chronicle from the viewpoint of a monk. This could prove exhaustive, now that I think about it, but I had already been thinking about slight modifications – claiming that it had been translated into more modern language, or something along those lines. Maybe a mere history would suffice without having to do extensive research on medieval monastic chronicles – “In this year the harvest was poor due to the depredations of the Norsemen, may their pagan souls be damned” and so on.

JibJab Year In Review Videos, Ranked

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It’s that time of year again: every website is posting “year in review” lists ranking the events of the past year according to their interests: music bloggers rank the best (and/or worst) songs and albums of the year, literary bloggers rank the best (again, and/or worst) books of the year, and I’m sure you get the gist of what I’m saying, so that’s the end of this particular train of thought.

Yesterday afternoon, JibJab released their 2013 Year in Review Video, which I didn’t think was as good as some of their previous efforts. I also learned that they had made a 2012 Year In Review Video – this isn’t surprising per se, but I don’t remember ever watching it before yesterday night (technically, around 11 PM December 21 2013). 

In most cases I would prefer to have some kind of quantitative methodology for ranking things, but this list of every JibJab Year In Review Video is very qualitative instead: instead of ranking videos by views, or reviews, or any other potentially quantitative methodology, I’m ranking them purely by my current opinion of their quality. I will concede that it is entirely possible I may be slightly biased, in that I’ve seen some, if not most or all, of the older ones multiple times. 

What better way to revisit Bush the Younger’s second term and Obama’s first term is there than watching JibJab videos? They’ve only been making them since 2005 (after their 2004 election video starring George W. Bush and John Kerry brought them into the spotlight). At first I had thought that I might have better ways to spend my time, but let’s be honest – I’m nowhere near tired, I was slightly drunk when I started thinking about doing this, and if I hadn’t decided to write this blog post I probably would have spent my time messing around on the Internet in some other fashion anyway.

9.) 2012: The End is Here
It was a tough choice, but my reasons for giving this one the lowest ranking include lack of familarity with this video and the seemingly racist depiction of Mayans as stereotypical bone-in-nose leaf-wearing savages. As previously mentioned, I didn’t even know this video existed until about 2 hours ago. 

8) 2013: What a Year!
This is the newest JibJab Year in Review Video, and I don’t like it as much as their older efforts. Obviously I liked it slightly more than their 2012 video, but other than that I have difficulty thinking of a concise reason to put it above 2012 other than eliminating the possibility of ties.

7) 2011, Buh-Bye!
Tune: “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” (Traditional)

6) So Long to Ya, 2010
Points awarded for Muppet-esque puppetry, but still not as good as some of their earlier efforts.

5) Nuckin’ Futs! – Best of ’06
Tune: Jingle Bells (James Lord Pierpoint)
I had forgotten how funny this one was, but I decided 2009 and 2008 were better.

4) Never a Year Like ’09
Tune: The Entertainer (Scott Joplin)
Maybe I just have a weakness for ragtime.

3) 2008 Year in Review
I don’t recognize the tune, but I’ve liked this one since it came out 5 years ago.

Now that I’ve typed that, I’m wondering how it’s been 5 years since I was a high school senior.

2) 2-0-5 (2005)
Tune: Auld Lang Syne (Traditional, lyrics by Robert Burns)
This is another one of my favorites. I wasn’t a fan of George W. Bush, but so help me I almost miss a Texan accent in the White House. With Obama we just have impersonations of his non-regional accented voice and caricatures of his ears in addition to his being biracial, unlike every one of our previous presidents.

1) In 2007
Tune: We Didn’t Start the Fire (Billy Joel)
Maybe I just like Billy Joel, but this has been one of my favorites probably since its debut. Of course, when there were only 3 JibJab Year in Review videos, there wasn’t nearly as much choice, was there?

Compatibility of MBTI types

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Recently I’ve been doing a lot of reading about MBTI types. I am incredibly tempted to detail the history of personality typing, but for once I’m going to resist temptation. If anyone reading this actually doesn’t know anything about MBTI types or personality tests, there are plenty of other resources that are just a quick Web search away. How many people have Google, Bing, or their search engine of choice integrated into their browser? But I digress. I don’t claim to be any kind of authority on psychology, but a detailed treatment of the history of psychology and personality types is very much outside the scope of this post.

This Buzzfeed post “What’s your Animal Personality Type?” opens with a useful brief description of the MBTI dichotomies. I was going to start writing more about MBTI, but as I already said, that’s a bit beyond the scope of why I wanted to write this post. I’m not exactly sure why I started reading about MBTI recently, but I do know that when I’ve taken online MBTI quizzes before, I usually scored as an INTJ. I’ve noticed recently (here meaning within approximately the last 5 years) that I’ve also started occasionally getting INTP as a result. Maybe it’s all of the reading I’ve been doing on the subject recently, and taking a few unofficial online quizzes, but I currently consider myself to be an INTJ with INTP tendencies.

I’ve seen at least one YouTube video that has said that people get too attached to the four-letter code (e.g., INTJ) without reading about the four functions. The INTJ’s functions are Introverted Intuition (Ni), Extraverted Thinking (Te), Introverted Feeling (Fi), and Extraverted Sensing (Se), while the INTP’s functions are Introverted Thinking (Ti), Extraverted Intuition (Ne), Introverted Sensing (Si), and Extraverted Feeling (Fe). I haven’t done a lot of reading about the different functions yet, but regardless of whether I’m more INTJ or INTP I’m obviously not big on Feeling or Sensing. I think the differences between INTJ and INTP functions are interesting. Ultimately, the differences between INTJ and INTP are probably at least tangentially related to the idea behind this post. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is similar (if not completely identical) to the MBTI, and calls INTJ “the Mastermind“, while INTP is “the Architect.”

With that out of the way, now to the other half of this post’s title: interpersonal compatibility. More specifically, romantic compatibility. I’ve never had any romantic relationships, which I’m sure this is a surprise considering everything I’ve written so far, and I don’t think I was interested in the idea of dating until I went to college, which probably has some relation to increased personal autonomy and increased availability of intelligent women. I’ve also never been very good at noticing flirting, and generally speaking I’ve had to have someone else inform me that I was being flirted with after the fact. I’d like to think that I might actually notice  if someone flirted with me now, but that would probably require having an active social life instead of sitting in front of my computer, which would in turn require a different work schedule. Anyway, when I was reading about compatibility of MBTI types last weekend, I thought it was interesting to find several different theories. I suppose this only makes sense, though – as I was thinking earlier today, when I was planning on writing this post, biology is messy, and interpersonal compatibility is, to my knowledge, still very much one of those things that we don’t know for certain. As far as we know, we aren’t characters in a computer game programmed with specific traits to follow a specific equation, so opposites don’t always attract and birds of a feather don’t always flock together.

Among the things I think are interesting about MBTI types and different websites is the different estimates for how common they are. INTJs are supposed to be at least one of, if not the, rarest types in the population, and I’ve seen estimates that INTJs seem to number between 1 and 4% of the population. Female INTJs are supposed to be especially rare, apparently.

One site I found cited a couple books on the subject, and said that the best types for a relationship with an INTJ are the ESTJ, INTJ, ISTP, and ENTJ, while a relationship would be possible between an INTJ and a INTP, INFJ, INFP, or ENFP, while the least likely relationship would be between an INTJ and ESFJ, ISFJ, ESTP, ESFP, ISFP, ENTP, INFP, and ENFJ.
The same site said that the best types for a relationship with an INTP are the ENTP, INTP, and INTJ, while a relationship would be possible between an INTP and the ESTJ, ISTJ, ESTP, ENTJ, ENFJ, INFJ, ENFP, and INFP and least likely between the INTP and an ESFJ, ISFJ, ISTP, ESFP, and ISFP.

Another blog I found listed a few different compatibility theories, which I’ll attempt to summarize.
The identical types theory is basically that each type is most compatible with itself, and least compatible with its opposite.
Ergo, INTJs are least compatible with ESFP, and INTP is least compatible with ESFJ.
The opposite types theory is the inverse, and says “opposites attract”, so INTJ and ESFP are most compatible, while INTP and ESFJ are, as you can probably guess, most compatible.
The main cognitive function compatibility theory says that types with the opposite main cognitive function are most compatible. Therefore, INTJ (Ni) is most compatible with ENTP and ENFP, while INTP is most compatible with ENTJ and ESTJ. The secondary function compatibility theory focuses on how the 2nd function of each partner is balanced by the relationship, so INTJ is most compatible with ENTJ, ESTJ, and ENFJ and least compatible with ISFP, INFP, and ISTP, while INTP according to this theory is most compatible with ENTP, ENFP, and ESTP and least compatible with ISTJ, ISFJ, and INFJ.

Compatibility based on tandem processes is based on opposite cognitive functions working together “to create psychological dynamic and balance. There are four pairs of tandem functions: Ne ↔ Si, Se ↔ Ni, Te ↔ Fi, Fe ↔ Ti. According to Keirsey, types who share tandem processes are more likely to get along well and find common grounds for understanding each other.” Keirsey also decided that the S/N (Sensing or Intuition) process had to be shared in this tandem process theory. According to this model, INTJs are most compatible with INTJ (surprise!), ENTJ, INFP, and ENFP, while INTPs are most compatible with INTP (surprise! again!), ENTP, INFJ, and ENFJ. Duniho’s compatibility model is the same as the tandem process theory, except he suggested that the E/I preference had to be the same, which would make INTJs most compatible with INTJ and INFP and INTPs most compatible with INTP and INFJ.

The Love Types model, based on a book titled “Love Types” by Alexander Avila that includes its very own dating website, is an interesting contrast to most of these other models in that it has different compatibilities for men and women of a specific type.
According to this Dr. Avila, INTJ men are most compatible with INTJ and INTP, while INTJ women are most compatible with INTJ and ESTJ (“provided the ESTJ is not a very strong Sensor”). INTP men are most compatible with INFJ, while INTP women are supposedly most compatible with INTJ, ENTJ, and ENTP.

Since 1200-odd words seems long enough for now, I’ll write an additional post later to cover a few incompatibility theories. Maybe I’ll even have feedback!