Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Do you play killer Scrabble or cool word Scrabble?

My grandfather calls Scrabble "beat the hell out of Richard." My grandfather's name is, of course, Richard. He will sometimes call me up and say, "We played again last night, Rissy, and guess what she did?" "She beat the hell out of Richard again?" "She did." Grandpa plays Scrabble like me: he can't make himself care how many points it is if there's a cool word.

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leahbobet.livejournal.com

I play cool word Scrabble. Of course,

truepenny plays simultaneous cool word and killer Scrabble, and that is why she keeps beating the pants off me.

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On the internet, nobody can tell

truepenny took your pants!

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leahbobet.livejournal.com

My shame. :/

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I like Scramble on Facebook, because you can play it solo or with other people. (When played with wood and plastic pieces instead of electrons, it's the game known as Boggle.)

What I like about Facebook otherwise is not so much connecting to people fro high school as connecting to people I've known from grade school and on. There's the guy, two years older, whose parents were friends with mine long before any of them even married let alone who had us, who was told to go show me proper tooth-brushing when I was barely old enough to do it by myself; there's the girl I played with since we were old enough to cross the street, who was the first person I told when I first got my period (because she was the first one I saw - Mom was at work); there's the boy who sat next to me in first grade and who now has fuschia hair and a different first name; there's my fifth-grade best friend who has kids of her own who are now that old.

It's interesting seeing how they all turned out.

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Hmm. For me, this overlaps substantially with the population of people who went to high school with me. Also I am ridiculously easy to find on the real internet, and I sort of resent Facebook not letting you see anything much if you don't have an account there.

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Oh, most of them went to high school with me too, but they're a subset - the HS was much bigger.

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We had six grade schools feeding into one middle school and one high school, but with a few notable exceptions I feel no particular fondness for the people who were in the grade school portion of that equation over the later portions. (And the notable exceptions are notable for other reasons, mostly.)

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Then given that and the fact that you *are* easy to find under your real name, unless you want access to the games or chat utility, maybe there isn't a point to you getting on Facebook.

Or you could get on it and totally ignore it except for when someone sends you a message, which is pretty much what I did until I started playing Scramble. (Even so, I spend a lot of time ignore messages about people giving me karma or Superpoking me by throwing Joe the plumber at me. A lot of the "hey, notice me!" utilities there are pretty silly)

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talimena.livejournal.com

I don't use any of the Facebook games and whatnot, so my only fondness for it is based on having two old friends that I thought I'd never hear from again find me on it. But, as you point out, that benefit is unnecessary in your case.

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themagdalen.livejournal.com

I think this too.
Also the part about fruity drinks vs. content.
I don't think Facebook is for grownups.
I may yet be proved wrong. but I share your distinction of Facebook vs. "the real internet".

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I had a moment of weakness this morning and got a Facebook account, which I mostly expect to ignore in favor of the real internet.

I am astonished that they feel the need to tell you that if you cut somebody off from contact with you on Facebook, it doesn't extend to the rest of the internet. This says frightening things about their average client base.

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scottjames.livejournal.com

You'll have to let me know how it goes, since apparently I am the last person to not be on Facebook. My wife keeps trying to convince me, but it's while she complains about how much work it is. I have plenty of work, thank you--I don't need to sign up for more.

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I can't say for sure, but I think it's about as much work as you're willing to put into it. If I wanted to spend all morning searching for people I know or playing a game on it or talking to the people I already know are on there, I probably could. But this is by no means required. I mean, you could consider lj a lot of work, too, if you were concerned about posting to yours every so often, but here we are.

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mkille.livejournal.com

I find that on Facebook (which I reluctantly signed up for a few months back, and I get taunted by Some People for never updating), all kinds of unexpected people contact me. Acquaintances from high school. My roommate from senior year of college. I can't quite figure it out.

So if that sounds good, it's a plus. If it sounds bad, it's a minus. In either case, it certainly seems to be a Facebook distinctive.

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lthomas987.livejournal.com

I can relate to your feelings on Kasota stone. I too imprinted on that building. To this day I am surrounded by Kasota stone. I work on the UST campus, which is covered in the stuff, rumor (which I could confirm if I cared) is that an alumnus owns a quarry near Mankato and gives UST the stone, but UST pays for the cutting/finishing.

It doesn't feel right though, at UST it's all smooth polished. Not rough.

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Oh! Oh, that is Kasota stone!

You're right, it isn't quite right with the smooth polish.

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markgritter.livejournal.com

Did I ever tell you that some of the Johnson's Wax buildings in Racine used Kasota stone?

Mr. Kampenga from our church used to make periodic trips out to the quarry to pick up replacement stone.

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You did. Mr. Kampenga from your church is a hero of the revolution.

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prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com

I would have to say I have the warm comfy thing for red brick buildings. Definately something out of my childhood in the inner city Chicago.

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Me too - it's a Philadelphia thing as well. (Except Drexel University, which is all gaudy orange brick - rumor says it was a large donation. But I went to school across the street at Penn, which is nice old red brick, so my imprinting was not disturbed.)

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genevra.livejournal.com

Oh, you just sent me even further back in time to 1988-1990. In your pictures, you can see the rooms I lived in too. Sophomore year was the room directly above the front door. Junior year & the part of senior year I was there were in the second room from the left end of the building, on the first floor. Lots of memories. Those carvings around the main door? One day there was an adorable little brown bat curled up in the lap of one of the figures! Other than Wahlstrom and the Caf, I spent much of my time in the art building.

Ah, nostalgia... Yeah, Kasota stone does get in your blood.

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I only got half a semester of art building, and then the tornado staved in the windows of our painting classroom and we got to paint in a trailer. It turns out trailers are not ideally ventilated for use of mineral spirits and oil paints. Uff da.

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laurel

You know the new Twins stadium is gonna have Kasota stone all over the place, right? Pretty nifty. Though I'm not so sure the stone wall in right field is a good idea . . . (Okay, I guess the stone part is up above where the players could be running into the wall-- thank goodness.)

Facebook can be fun; it's surely tons better than MySpace and has more personality than something like LinkedIn. It's been neat to see who adds me to their contact list and to reconnect with people from college and so on. People do often play little games on there where they can send you good karma or fruity drinks or play scrabble with you and I tend to just ignore those requests and just log in once in a while and do the bits that interest me.

I also have a unique name and I'm super easy to find on the internet so I've always figured if anyone wanted to track me down, they certainly would've by now. But plenty of people have cropped up on Facebook, possibly because they saw my name associated with a school or workplace or on the list of contacts for a mutual acquaintance or something. It's been neat to reconnect with folks like that, even in little ways.

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Yah, you don't so much want to run into a Kasota stone wall chasing after a near thing.

I can get my own fruity drinks here in realityland. What I want out of the internet is content. Hmmm.

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I signed up for one. There are a surprising number of people I have some desire to get back into contact with on there. The one notable one we probably have in common is Dan Pearson, but I didn't get nearly deep into the Gustavus people.

I wish I had a clue how people are finding pre-high-school friends, as that would be what I'm most interested in.

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Also Arno and Haaheim. I think it's just showing me my class.

Edited Date: 2008-11-04 07:10 am (UTC)

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I have no great aversion to my class, but I'm already in contact with

gaaldine, and I know where to find Jim and the physics phriends if I should need to again. So I hope it's not fixated.

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It eventually gave me Jon Truitt and

greatestofnates and Em, and a bunch of other people from other classes as well.

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I wish I had a clue how people are finding pre-high-school friends, as that would be what I'm most interested in.

Never mind. I think I win.

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