Chaos's info-amnesty meme

[eclectic_boy]

Meme courtesy of carpenter.

Analogous to library-fine-amnesty day, or tax-amnesty day, this is the Things You Should Probably Know About Me But Forgot amnesty meme. If there are things you'd feel embarrassed asking me to my face (say, at reunion next month) because, "oh, goodness, I really should know that, shouldn't I?", just ask it as a comment to this thread, and I'll answer it. Since it's the amnesty thread there will be zero guilt or embarrassment involved.

Spread the meme!

Comments

[glassonion]

Your question to me reminded me of the one i can never remember about you, and i know i've asked: where did you live between graduation and moving into your current place?

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

I graduated in '88 and lived for the first year or so at my parents. Then for a year in '89-90 I lived with Elliott in Greylock 409, then he went to ex-East Germany to experience what it was like to have a culture abruptly shift, and jedediah moved in with me for a year.
Then I was back with my parents for another year or so, and the moved into my friend Jeff Glasse's house in Upper Darby for about two years. Then when jere7my needed a roommate in Greylock 301, I moved in and got comfy for a long stay.

[rose_garden.livejournal.com]

How long have you lived in 301?

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

Omigod! I'm really glad you asked this, since I had only a vague idea myself. I just dug the answer up, and it's June 1st 1995. I'm about to have my 10th anniversary of Greylockicity; what should I do to celebrate (besides, say, inviting a hundred friends to come to the area the following weekend)?

[rebeccapaul.livejournal.com]

This isn't too deep, but what was your major/minor/etc. at Swat?

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

I was an honors astrophysics major / math minor (although I tried to at least slightly avoid staying in one corner of the academesphere by planning to double minor in math and philosophy -- that was possible in my day, since honors involved 6 seminars, 4 in your major and two in your minor-or-minors. But my philosophy seminar had been 2nd semester sophomore year, and when senior year came and I realized how little of it I still remembered, I retreated to the safety of math. Which I think is the only reason I got magna -- or in fact, honors at all!)

Random observation: I initially typed 'philospohy'. The spellchecker didn't like that, but the only suggestions it offered were flyspeck and floorspace(!)

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

Cake!

[tapas.livejournal.com]

How did you find SWIL? Who was the first SWILperson you met?

[megan-powell.livejournal.com]

I second cake. Let me also put forward chocolate and ice cream. And either non-complicated take out or Chaos's brilliant solution to the food dither problem.

Plus, like, games and stuff.

When you did the math, my first reaction was "Wow, he's lived there a long time." Then I did the math, realized I met you less than a year after you moved into Greylock, and went "Wow, I've known him a long time." And I felt despair, because while knowing you has of course been a pleasure, it also means I've been a grown-up and proto-grown-up for a while now and it's kind of freaking me out.

So you should feed me chocolate to make me feel better.

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

Hang on a minute... you're a grown-up? Inconceivable! If that were true, it would make me a gr... gro..... g...... Darn, can't even say that sentence.

But I do like the games and cake idea. Maybe I know what I'm doing the Wednesday before alumni weekend...

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

I knew about SWIL from the college handbook (which I got along with my acceptance letter. I don't remember if I had any awareness of SWIL when applying, though), and I'm pretty sure I went to the Activities Fair, though I don't have a memory of it. Definitely I went to the first meeting I could (I worked at The Franklin Institute every other weekend during frosh year, so it may not have been the 1st meeting -- I was made a nonmember via special rule #whatever).
But if destined-for-SWILdom-but-not-yet-dismembered counts in answering your question, then on one of my first lunches in Sharples, I met ruthling while in line getting food, and we sat down at the round table in the small room table with someone whose name turned out to be DVS. That was probably the first Best Conversation of my Life (though there've been many more since), and it was (for me at least) the start of a rapid nucleation of the SWIL froshfriends for that year.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Heh! Hi!

[glassonion]

You and Ruthling and DVS sitting around in the small room as 18-year-olds makes me smile. Like, a lot.

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

You're both so silly. Who the heckydarns cares if you're grownup or not? *I* don't. You silly beans are both just you, happily undefined.

(See also Jill & Puddleglum's conversation on the subject. Which is cool. As are you. So there!)

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

DVS--and oh! his great big smile--is one of my first memories of Swat, during my frosh year's activities fair. And then my memory gets muddled in time and I think of Live Chess and Jay and Perry and that must've been much later because I made those bishop drapy things, so that must've been the next year or something...

*happythoughts!*