Masa's Massively Masterful Message Medium - Random Banter #146

[Thufir]

I return victorious on even Planck-length scale!
Alternatively, I return from having spent almost 3 days at a friend's house. It was pretty awesome. Iust hanging out, playing some games, watching some DVDs, chatting, reading...

T-Trogland? WTF is Trogland?

It's another name for Vespuccia.

Also, huge libraries are awesome. Getting lost in the stacks with a special someone is a great way to spend an evening!

That sounds pretty amazing...

I have a friend who uses the first two letters of the abbreviation, then stops abbreviating. I once asked him "What's the point of abbreviating at all if you're just gonna curse?" He replied that it was faster.

But... it takes longer... Oh, unless you still mean typing it out. Then it's iust weird.

And I am the walrus. Koo koo. Ka choo. Goo goo g'joob.

Fixed that for you.

Heck, maybe I'm a creep.

But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo,
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here...

Meh. I'm in the mindset you can't know someone you haven't met.

This is true. But you can meet people over the internet.

Heck, I've even posted my address here. I'll do so again.

Miss Koorly
42 Curly Street
Kit Town
Girlshire
The Infinite Plane of Libraries (Earth Imitation Division)
NC17 C01

Totally would send you a letter or something, but I can't get plane shift stamps anywhere...

Posting on a forum, one will always give out more information than what one might have suspected initially. it's just part of being in constant conversation about all types of stuff.
You tell anecdotes of what's happened to you, or replying to something someone says, and all of a sudden, you let out that you live in Ohio... Or Florida. Or Scotland.
Then you go to another thread where people discuss school stuff, and you happen to let out that you're 15 years old. Or 35. Or 23.
Then someone mentions they're moving to a new house, or a new city, and you happen to mention that you live in a foreign country from where you grew up, and only see your family once or twice a year. Or that your folks are divorced or separated and you stay mostly with your mom, or mostly with your dad.

People could definitely find out who I was if they picked up on the relevant bits of my posts. Like when I say, "I did [this] with [this group which has a website]." Or that time I linked to a video of me performing which had a cast list with my name...

[AtlanteanTroll]

Britlander grades. I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

@ Thurfir: I mean met in real life.

[Dogmantra]

Britlander grades. I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

@ Thurfir: I mean met in real life.

GCSEs (take at 16) go A* to G, with a U being the only fail but anything below a C being effectively a fail. AS and A2 levels (take at 17 and 18 respectively) just added A*, so they go A* to I think E, F with U also being a fail (another I think there...)

[Phaedra]

Britlander grades. I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

@ Thurfir: I mean met in real life.

The A-Level grades? A* is the highest grade (new this year! You kids and your stars), then down the alphabet until F for the lowest score. Are you in the US? I thought they had a similar system.

Edit: Pah, ninja'd with more detail than my old brain could remember.

[ZombieRockStar]

Okonomiyaki are Japanese pancakes. They are creepy and probably the nastiest thing I ate when I was their.

Those look like...pancakes topped with berries (okay), frosting (okay...if a bit excessive) and...prawn flakes???

*goes to Wikipedia*

That's no frosting. It's mayonnaise. Eww...

I take it that you didn't try Natto, then, if that was the worst thing you ate.

[InaVegt]

My HAVO grades, with American equivalent in parentheses.

Maths 8 (A+)
English 9 (A+)
Sociology 8 (A+)
Physics 7 (A)
Chemistry 8 (A+)
Dutch 7 (A)
Literature 8 (A+)
Biology 8 (A+)
German 7 (A)
General Natural Sciences 8 (A+)
History 8 (A+)

[Thufir]

Wait, A-levels have Fs?

@Troll: Well, in that case you're wrong. Even a lot of my RL friends I got to know much more on the internet before they became my main group of friends. I had met them in RL, but the internet was where the friendships really came into being. And look at the result: I iust spent almost 3 days with them at one of their houses.

[Phaedra]

Wait, A-levels have Fs?

I just checked in case my memory was just playing tricks (leave me be, it's been six years since I took them) but yes, they do.

[KuReshtin]

Britlander grades. I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

@ Thurfir: I mean met in real life.

Some of my best friends are people I've met over the internet.
Actually, we had a 10-year anniversary meet with that group only a few weeks ago, which celebrated the fact that it was exactly 10 years (and two days) since we first met, even if we'd got to know each other online to start with.

Here's a rundown on what happened during the day.

Here are some links to photos and some video clips from the day. (In one picture it looks as if I have a light saber cider)

In that group, there are three couples that met online. Two of the couples are married and have kids.

[Thufir]

I'll grant that in some cases I'm not sure how well I really know someone if we met online, because internet forum interaction is somewhat different to RL interaction. But A) That's not universally the case, and B) I still know them.

[PhoeKun]

@ Thurfir: I mean met in real life.

*ahem*

This is real life. I am not a figment of your imagination. I am not an actress in a movie or a play. I am not a character in a video game. I am a person. A real, honest-to-goodness person with real hopes and dreams breathing real oxygen and feeling real frustration at the cognitive disconnect between reality and people's perception of it. The fact that I am using a keyboard and internet data storage to publicly post these thoughts does not in any way invalidate my message or my being.

I mean, let's say that, hypothetically, a member of my family registered themselves to these forums for the sole intent and purpose of tracking me down and calling me a miserable screw up who has squandered the gifts that were given to me and that I am a horrible person and they hate me. Should I disregard this rather horrific incident because it did not take place "in real life"? What if that same exchange happened via e-mail? Is it real then? Do they have to get in my face and physically scream at me before I'm allowed to start crying?

I despise the phrase "in real life" with an unbridled passion, and I will knock it out of everybody's vocabulary if I have to go back in time and erase the words from existence.

[AtlanteanTroll]

A^: You know what oi meant. Face to face. Not over some forum.

GCSEs (take at 16) go A* to G, with a U being the only fail but anything below a C being effectively a fail. AS and A2 levels (take at 17 and 18 respectively) just added A*, so they go A* to I think E, F with U also being a fail (another I think there...)

A* is that ike A+?

The A-Level grades? A* is the highest grade (new this year! You kids and your stars), then down the alphabet until F for the lowest score. Are you in the US? I thought they had a similar system.

Edit: Pah, ninja'd with more detail than my old brain could remember.

They are, I just didn't understand the GSCE thing.

Those look like...pancakes topped with berries (okay), frosting (okay...if a bit excessive) and...prawn flakes???

*goes to Wikipedia*

That's no frosting. It's mayonnaise. Eww...

I take it that you didn't try Natto, then, if that was the worst thing you ate.

I wasn't that adventurous with my taste. Never have been.

My HAVO grades, with American equivalent in parentheses.

Maths 8 (A+)
English 9 (A+)
Sociology 8 (A+)
Physics 7 (A)
Chemistry 8 (A+)
Dutch 7 (A)
Literature 8 (A+)
Biology 8 (A+)
German 7 (A)
General Natural Sciences 8 (A+)
History 8 (A+)

Wow. Smarty.

[Dogmantra]

A* is that ike A+?

It's better than A. You can only get A*, not any other letter, though.

[AtlanteanTroll]

It's better than A. You can only get A*, not any other letter, though.

American: A (94-99) then A+ (100)

Is your A* like out A+?

[Dogmantra]

American: A (94-99) then A+ (100)

Is your A* like out A+?

It's better than A. They wanted to add a new grade because too many people were getting As, but rather than make the new B be the equivalent of an old A and add a new letter right at the bottom, they just added a new one at the top which made things easier.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

In Ontario, it's all percentages. You don't get an A, you get a 91. You don't get an A-, you get a 86, or whatever.

In IB, it's out of 7.

[AtlanteanTroll]

It's better than A. They wanted to add a new grade because too many people were getting As, but rather than make the new B be the equivalent of an old A and add a new letter right at the bottom, they just added a new one at the top which made things easier.

It's an effective A+ then.

In Ontario, it's all percentages. You don't get an A, you get a 91. You don't get an A-, you get a 86, or whatever.

In IB, it's out of 7.

Weel, we do that too, but numbers are too annoying to deal with when you can just have letter grades.

[Dogmantra]

It's an effective A+ then.

If you only get A+ on 100% like I understood your previous post, not exactly, but yeah, similar.

[Thufir]

It's better than A. They wanted to add a new grade because too many people were getting As, but rather than make the new B be the equivalent of an old A and add a new letter right at the bottom, they just added a new one at the top which made things easier.

How did it make things easier? I really don't think it'll have made that significant a difference, except for annoying people.

[AtlanteanTroll]

If you only get A+ on 100% like I understood your previous post, not exactly, but yeah, similar.

Closest thing anyway.

I had an A- average this year. But this was my 1st year with grades ever, so meh.

[PhoeKun]

If you only get A+ on 100% like I understood your previous post, not exactly, but yeah, similar.

What precisely constitutes an A+ differs from state to state, school to school, and occasionally even class to class or (my favorite) test to test. I've seen an A+ clock in at 76%, and I was three years into my degree before my University started using them at all.

Which, believe me, caused a lot of tears all over campus among the people who were suddenly about to lose their 4.0 GPAs. It didn't do much to me, because I was too stupid to have something that shiny to begin with, but a lot of my friends were really upset.

How did it make things easier? I really don't think it'll have made that significant a difference, except for annoying people.

It's not necessarily easier, but it's more palatable and less potentially psychologically damaging to create a higher degree of success than if you created a higher degree of failure. And I suppose there's v as well.

[Dogmantra]

How did it make things easier? I really don't think it'll have made that significant a difference, except for annoying people.

Because a pre-A*, B, for example, would be equivalent to a post-A* B, whereas a pre-newlowestgrade B would be equivalent to post-newlowestgrade C

[AtlanteanTroll]

Because a pre-A*, B, for example, would be equivalent to a post-A* B, whereas a pre-newlowestgrade B would be equivalent to post-newlowestgrade C

You killed my last remaining brain cell. Thanks. Speaking of which, I'm suppose to go to the doctor to grow some new brain cells this afternoon. Or something.

[Dogmantra]

You killed my last remaining brain cell. Thanks. Speaking of which, I'm suppose to go to the doctor to grow some new brain cells this afternoon. Or something.

Okay, let's say we have a grade system going from A to F, which are all passes. We have an influx of people getting As, and not enough people getting other grades. Therefore, we want to distinguish the really good people getting high As from the still good, but not quite as good people getting low As. We have two options:

Option the first
Introduce a new grade above A, and give that to the really good people instead.

Option the second
Introduce a new grade below F and shunt everything down, so people who would have got a low A now get a B, low Bs become Cs, etc. This, however, has the disadvantage of being a bit complicated because someone with a C under the new system could have done better than someone with a B under the old one.

[AtlanteanTroll]

Okay, let's say we have a grade system going from A to F, which are all passes. We have an influx of people getting As, and not enough people getting other grades. Therefore, we want to distinguish the really good people getting high As from the still good, but not quite as good people getting low As. We have two options:

Option the first
Introduce a new grade above A, and give that to the really good people instead.

Option the second
Introduce a new grade below F and shunt everything down, so people who would have got a low A now get a B, low Bs become Cs, etc. This, however, has the disadvantage of being a bit complicated because someone with a C under the new system could have done better than someone with a B under the old one.

Gotcha. I think.

Wait a minute, an F is a pass? Why. F stands for FAIL. Well, over here anyway.

[Dogmantra]

Wait a minute, an F is a pass? Why. F stands for FAIL. Well, over here anyway.

G is a pass too.

I believe the logic is that you get graded on how well you passed the test, and if you fail, you get a U, which stands for "ungraded".

[The Succubus]

Much like the Avatar Central thread, the UK exam boards have a different theme each year. This years theme - "How can we mess with Troll's head?"

But ssssh, it's a big secret.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

Oh AtlanteanTroll, you impetuous young lad (apologies if you're actually a female pensioner or some such, you merely seem like a young lad). If you're going to get actively involved in a forum such as this, understand that a lot of people on here know each other uncommonly well in comparison to the average forum and are very happy to know each other this way.

I go against the grain of forumite stereotypes by being an extroverted, rather sociable person, but (and this is the important bit) that doesn't mean I'm predisposed to think of Playgrounders as sad little nerds, or whatever you may think one such as I should think; in fact, it means rather the opposite - that I am very much happy to interact with people on here, and that I treat them like the people they are, rather than as digital abstractions or generalised 'creeps'.

By the way, Random Banter is one of the threads on here where the conversation-between-friends aspect of this forum is at its very strongest; in here it would be odd not to expect it.

CONGRATS FRED!

Yeah, I got nothing else now, except you know, envy.

The next step is to try and pull off the University equivalent... I set myself up for hard work, don't I?
The thing is, I've never really been able to let myself settle for anything less than the top when it comes to academics... apparently at primary school I'd come home from a test with 100% and go "I could've done better."

Yeah, but who uses the dictionarys? Personally I always use dictionaries. Because I invented it, and I perfected it, then I used the sales money to buy one of every word and make them beat the crap out of each other.

Dr Johnson?!?

[AtlanteanTroll]

Much like the Avatar Central thread, the UK exam boards have a different theme each year. This years theme - "How can we mess with Troll's head?"

But ssssh, it's a big secret.

I'll make sure not to tell him

[Phase]

This is real life. I am not a figment of your imagination. I am not an actress in a movie or a play. I am not a character in a video game. I am a person. A real, honest-to-goodness person with real hopes and dreams breathing real oxygen and feeling real frustration at the cognitive disconnect between reality and people's perception of it. The fact that I am using a keyboard and internet data storage to publicly post these thoughts does not in any way invalidate my message or my being.

That's exactly what I'd expect a rogue AI to say.

I'm watching you, robot.