I didn't discover D&D until after college (although I LOVED the short-lived cartoon when I was little kid), when C, my then-boyfriend-now-husband got me playing. We played Advanced 2nd Edition for a few years, mostly with a group that featured a co-worker of ours, two of her teenage sons, and one son friend. For a long time, we played in the Children's museum where three of us worked, after hours!

When C got bored (frustrated?) with DMing, I took over mid-game, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 6:23 AM on March 7, 2008

shepd, ask the Mayans about destroying an ecosystem.

Skeletons of Maya from the end of the Classic Period show evidence of poor nutrition. Other studies—including pollen analysis—point to the same cause. The steady growth of population in the valley required more and more intensive farming, which had a disastrous effect on the land. The valley just could not support that many people. Poor nutrition and disease meant that the valley was deserted by 1200 AD.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:53 PM on February 13, 2003

Kat said: This lowers the 4-year graduation rates, which vexes the university, so they're pushing hard to get students to take more credits (which means working fewer hours and taking out more loans) by pointing out the lifespan opportunity costs of staying longer in school, thus diminishing the number of years you're a full-time wage-earner.

I also work in higher ed (community college, not 4-year) and was in a meeting recently where they were... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:46 PM on February 11, 2003

I remember seeing George Burns on 60 Minutes, years ago, and they went with him to the mausoleum where Gracie was interred...apparently he went to visit her every week. unfortunately, I couldn't find anything about it via Google.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 4:02 PM on January 20, 2003

I was eight years old...the same year my father died. my mother said once that he was getting into computers right before he died - he'd been a radio tech in the Air Force, and worked for the phone company.

:(

but I do seem to remember that we got a VCR and maybe an Atari for Christmas '82.

(and I'll second rushmc, et al as regards to you younguns.)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 7:19 PM on January 1, 2003

I'm surprised no-one's yet mentioned the discomfiting experience of being addressed by name by checkers at Safeway (large US grocery chain). it's their policy that if they can guess even part of your name (on a check, debit card, etc.) then they address you buy it.

as a woman, it can be an interesting Rorshach of how one appears to the clerk. I've been call Miss Nelson, Ms. Nelson, and Mrs. Nelson. (ack! that's my mother!)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 4:24 PM on December 9, 2002

every epersonae helps. (well, I do try.)

and it seems to go well with:
AEP: Associate Epersonae Professional.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:59 PM on December 5, 2002

thanks! (my best friend, husband, and I watched this in horrified giggling fascination on Sunday.)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 4:24 PM on November 19, 2002

.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:40 PM on October 23, 2002

I'm just trying to figure out where exactly in Tacoma this house is that they're searching...since I lived in Tacoma for 10 years in 9 different places....
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:21 PM on October 23, 2002

like Fezboy!, I am a page monkey (head page monkey, actually) for an academic institution, and for more than a year, I've been working towards more and more standards and accessibility compliance. it's a slow climb uphill, but I find it quite rewarding personally and professionally.

I work in the marketing department, and my boss is not terribly knowledgable about the Web. he'd be the first to admit it, which probably helps, because for most things he asks me what we... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 1:10 PM on September 6, 2002

Sorry for carping on about this. I'm interested to know why a javascript fix would be preferable to the CSS fix I mentioned above.

I don't know for sure, but I seem to remember some weird things with heights of 100%...because of the question of whether it's 100% of the page or 100% of the viewport.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 1:59 PM on September 6, 2002

for dealing with N4 issues, I'm rather fond of this CSS and Netscape 4.xx Issues site.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:40 AM on September 9, 2002

solid careers as project managers, software developers, and all sorts

in the US, most of those sorts of jobs require a college degree. I've had a few friends & co-workers to come out pretty well without, but they've often had additional struggles for professional respect.

if a capitalist society requires a certain level of education, then it will find a way to build it into the society. my understanding is that that's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:54 PM on August 10, 2002

colleges here in WA (public at least, don't know about private) have been required this spring to switch to something other than SSN for student ID. [work self-link] and I think it's a damn good idea, even if it did throw everyone into a tizzy.

(I was once asked for my SSN to start a video rental account! how insane is that?!)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 3:49 PM on July 26, 2002

y'know, I had almost that exact experience: computer ate my paper...only it was a Mac that did it. granted, this was 6 years ago, and the computer was hell old even then (Mac in a Box!)...but I still feel the pain of finally writing all my footnotes, hitting spellcheck, then seeing that goddamn bomb and realizing...shit, I forgot to save! (and no, I wasn't stoned, either.)

prof was very forgiving.

(it was a paper for an asian lit class about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:45 PM on July 17, 2002

and to me, it sounds like she said, "I was writing a paper" - but she sort of swallows the "a".
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:46 PM on July 17, 2002

My new business venture will be selling stickers of Calvin peeing on either a Mac Apple or a PC.

already seen one with the AOL logo....
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:17 PM on July 17, 2002

or with people who don't know it's HTML mail, but just go...ooooh, I can put backgrounds and fancy pictures in my email!

we switched to outlook at my work last summer, and I'm blown away by how many people sent the most gaudy email.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 7:52 PM on July 12, 2002

I was called for jury duty about 5 years ago (oddly enough, 2 of my friends and one of my coworkers, in an office of 5, were called at the same time). The first week or so was dead boring, but at least I finally got around to reading LotR.

The second week I was a juror on a child rape trial: Mom's boyfriend was the accused. So sad...pretty obvious that the fellow was guilty, but even more than sending him away, I wanted to smack Mom upside the head.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 2:24 PM on July 4, 2002

oooh, thank you. I love this postcard of Mt. Rainier.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 7:06 PM on June 25, 2002

I just like these images - somebody was having Fun with Photoshop^TM...

sort of reminds me of this Onion story.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 10:38 PM on June 19, 2002

(taft counts for 3 presidents, easily)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:15 PM on June 7, 2002

for the html & flash, kicking the magification up to 900% in Opera really helps. :)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:57 AM on May 30, 2002

not have participated (or even read) the previous thread, I'll just add this: gender and sexuality are not the same thing.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:02 AM on May 27, 2002

is it heresy to say that I'm really enjoying blogger pro? we have several "weblogs" (not that the people who use them would even recognize the word!) on my work site, and it's much easier for me than trying to deal with setting up something on our own server. (long, long story)

I set up the two main users before pro came out, and while I could have figured something out to switch them, it's much simpler to have them continue to use something they're familiar... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:50 AM on May 25, 2002

Is PE really a back-alley mugging elsewhere?

maybe not a back-alley mugging, but I seem to recall a combo of (a) standing around and waiting for something to happen and (b) playing volleyball/tennis/basketball in little groups being endlessly mocked by my peers. (needless to say, I'm not too co-ordinated.)

oh, and ugly, ugly, uncomfortable gym uniforms, plus the horror of locker rooms and changing clothing in front of peers... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 12:10 PM on May 24, 2002

the eWeek "gossip columnist" mentions the scam from time to time, and a few weeks ago said he'd read it "reportedly is the third- to fifth-largest industry there" (full column) so probably no cause for celebration yet.

(myself, I've never gotten a copy of this particular bit of spam. not that I want it, either....)
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:33 AM on May 24, 2002

pxe2000, that's gerbils, not hampsters.

and, wow, I really, really, really wish I had Cartoon Network. Samurai Jack (which I saw once in a hotel room), and now this....
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:55 PM on May 22, 2002

the best high school job ever - children's dept. page at the library (I'm tempted to see if they want a volunteer for help with their web site...it badly needs pictures!)

it was the same library I'd been carried to as an infant, and some of the librarians had known me nearly that long. :) of course, I used to get busted by my boss (a tough, diminuitive black woman who was not happy about the then new computer catalog) for hiding out and reading in the stacks.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 2:02 PM on May 3, 2002

in my previous broadband experience, it was indeed the always-on, not-blocking-the-phone factor that made it most cool, even more than the speed. example: call best friend to see about going to a movie, neither of us has the paper, so I go online to check times, etc. - without having to hang up the phone. yay!

that said, I gave it up right after the @home/AT&T switchover debacle, because 12+ hours on hold made me crazy, and we're trying to save money.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 1:46 PM on May 3, 2002

Male or female, if a child can't work out for themselves that they might need a job when they grow up, they'll probably require a bigger hint than this.

I don't have kids, but I think this is a cool idea for both boys and girls - not that kids can't figure out that they'll need a job, but as a kid, it's hard to imagine the world of work, except maybe for firefighters and ballerinas. :)

in the modern world, so much work is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:32 AM on April 25, 2002

But this is not health care; it is contraception. Pregnancy is not a disease.

so anything that prevents an unwanted state isn't health care?

I took the morning-after pill myself about 5 years ago. (basically, it's just a super-dose of birth control pills.) we'd had a condom mishap...and for lots and lots of reasons, I was in no condition to have a child. (nor was my partner.) so I went to planned parenthood - I didn't have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:12 AM on April 24, 2002

wow! this is amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 2:02 PM on April 5, 2002

TNLNYC, I'm doing pure CSS formatting on some of the pages/sites at my job (pierce college - the home page has a couple of dorky hacks, just because there are so many NN4.x devotees on staff), and I'm trying to make the (X)HTML as structural as possible.

it's a slow process of retrofitting one piece at a time, but I'm finding that I like it, and that I like the results as well. (I had fun this week rewriting some alt attributes to make them more meaningful!)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 3:10 PM on February 22, 2002

interesting. I've been chewing over the possibility of using XML & XSLT to do some work with our bulletin, which is a pain in the ass to put together. now you're making me wonder whether it's going to be worthwhile.... :P I'm not going to give up on it, though, whatever weird stuff we'd have to go through has got to be better than the "enter it 3 times in 3 separate formats, then reformat it in InDesign, then copy & paste in HTML" that we're doing now!
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 4:04 PM on February 22, 2002

thanks for the link!

myself, I'm happy to remove the tables not so much, or just, for Lynx, screen readers, etc. as for myself. which tables/cells are the navigation hoo-hahs in? did I/they (previous designer(s) - often novices/students) put different chunks of the main content into different cells? which of those "shims" and "clear1px" images are necessary, and which can be pulled safely? joeclark, is there a good free/share screenreader that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 9:07 AM on February 25, 2002

makes me embarrassed to be from Tacoma. (I wonder which libraries those were - we have some really nice little libraries!)

actually, it makes me wonder about the larger story. I live in the general vicinity of Western State - and it looks like he didn't make it far before going back to his syrup-pouring ways. does that mean that he was living in Tacoma before the original stint @ Western State, or that he didn't have the means to go back to wherever he'd been before... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 12:38 PM on February 9, 2002

kindall - word.

DevilsAdvocate - nice explanation of entropy - thanks! I've occassionally entertained zpousman's idea, over the years, and it's nice to know that entropy isn't quite as I thought it was.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:59 PM on February 8, 2002

the one time I took a long distance train was Xmas 9 years ago - from Tacoma, WA to Glendale, CA. at the time, it was a comparable price with flying, and I had time to kill. (month-long holiday break)

I loved it, but the train down was 12 hrs late, and back was not quite so, but still late.

the last time I looked (a couple years back), it just didn't compare, price-wise, to flying. which was a pity, because I hate flying. (gimonica - your... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 5:13 PM on February 3, 2002

my mother must have worked in similar conditions as RunsWithBandageScissors....

my first date was utterly mortified (as was I) when she gave him "the lecture" on picking him up to drive us to a show.

but I'll admit that all the iterations of the lecture stuck in my head, and I don't think I've ridden in a car w/out a seatbelt ever. (except maybe once or twice in ridiculously overstuffed cars.)

still, I'm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:59 AM on January 31, 2002

aw, jessamyn. :( I voted for you. (no offense, bkdelong.)

and yes, I voted for wil wheaton in every category he was nominated for. it's all my fault!

bwwwaaaaahhhhaaaaahhhhaaaaaa!
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:47 PM on January 30, 2002

It strikes me as very strange that the greatest and most freedom-loving and fighting nation [...] should be so puritanically strait-laced when it comes to something as controllable as alcohol.

ahhhh, but remember that our (americans') Puritan ancestors have a significant influence on the culture as well. they may have been looking for freedom, but it was the freedom to not drink, dance, etc., etc. and to call out anyone who wasn't following their... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:02 AM on January 25, 2002

baaaaaaaa.

alas I am a shepard.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 6:13 PM on January 22, 2002

I'd be curious to hear of any laws that require web sites to have "Handicap Acces."

Policies Relating to Web Accessibility

some of these are policies and some are laws, some only apply to gov't web sites. it's also entirely likely that the Americans with Disabilities Act can/will apply to Web sites as well.

and as has been mentioned a few times above, creating those alternatives really isn't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 3:53 PM on January 16, 2002

re: misdemeanor plagarism

I saw the term at Talking Points Memo, who's had a couple of entries about this little bru-haha.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 3:33 PM on January 9, 2002

I last had a Mac in '97 (and it wasn't a new one, either), and haven't thought much of going back (except for briefly lusting after the cube).

this, I like.

repositioning the monitor? when your S.O. is several inches taller than you are, that's a good thing. plus when that same S.O. loves rearranging the house every couple of months.... moving a computer, or several computers, with 17" CRTs, is no small matter.

the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 11:53 AM on January 7, 2002

interesting how all this happens via the web & weblogs.

there wasn't any hacking involved, but I had a similar experience with someone who had been a friend - we had a fairly serious falling-out about 4 yrs. ago, and have reconnected in part via our weblogs.

I hope they can repair their friendships.
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 10:35 AM on January 1, 2002

my sweetie & I usually get in some sort of terribly nasty, stressful fight at the holidays...it also manages to bring out all the money, emotional & family issues one's heart could wish for.

this year we finally got it right. a little bit of shopping for each other, something wildly magnanimous for our cats, one gift for a very good friend, and new year's cards for everyone else.

and the gift for the friend was a game book...so that we... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 10:00 PM on December 29, 2001

my sweetie coined this phrase for our current emotional state: "post-tolkein depression"
posted to MetaFilter by epersonae at 8:51 AM on December 21, 2001