If she's so terrible, why were the 2 of you together?

I know shoulders because of my ow history (badly dislocated my right, kayaking, then a couple years after the reconstruction I got myself a third-degree separation in a touch football game, netting em another reconstruction), so I'd know something about that. Maybe a 5 on a 1-10 scale.

CPR — haven't had it since high school, but I know that I know it. 9.

tracheotomy: all I know is what I've seen in movies. Good luck. But I'd try if it had to be done.

karaoke: I have a decent singing voice which never gets used (not since campfire songs at nature camp when I was a kid, really). But I've never been coaxed into doing it. Nope, not once.

She is, in my opinion, a bad mother, but that doesn't mean she was bad to be with.

However, there was a lot of satisficing going on, for each of us — neither of us is very sociable, and we wee comfortable with each other and liked it better than being alone. That kept up for years, until I fell in love (with someone else ldo). That dodn't work out but I knew I couldn't stay with K's mother (who wasn't yet his mother) any more... and we broke up.

Except we were each still lonely, and also not getting much sex, so there were occasional instances of us getting back together. One of those led to pregnancy. The short version of what happened next is that we decided that living together for no good reason had not been bad, so we would try it again, for as long as we could take it, to give our child the easiest possible start. That lasted almost three years.

LSAT: I took it cold (not reading the brochure even) back in the early 90s, when it was much harder, and got 177 (about 99.97 percentile at the time; much lower percentile now). After that I didn't take it again until I was teaching it — I'd say that after having taught the class once I probably could have scored perfectly, tough I can't know for sure because I'm not allowed to retake it (because I've been to law school). A couple years after that I learned that, in non-formal conditions but with a real test that I'd never seen, I could score perfectly every time in a bout half the allotted time. Based on conversions with the other top teachers at my company (Princeton review), for a couple years I was the best LSAT taker in the company, which means I may have been the best in the world.

MCAT: afaic no one has ever gotten a perfect MCAT score (on the modern test). Most years someone gets a 43 (45 is best); there have been 44s. My best is a 41T (the letter is the writing sample score, ranging from J to T). I'm badly hampered there by my lack of organic chemistry, which I've never taken at all and which you really have to know to do perfectly. Still, that's a 99th percentile score, I believe.

GMAT: scored 790 unprepped; after the first time I taught the class I scored perfectly.

GRE: Perfect score the first (and only) time I took it, but it's so similar to the GMAT that that's misleading, as I'd been teaching for a couple years.

In case anyone takes one of these course and is wondering: most insrtuctors are never going to be able to get 180 on an LSAT, because most people aren't fast enough and the test is very tightly timed. In my office, with a couple dozen LSAT teachers, we had only two besides me who had any realistic chance of doing it.

Many GRE instructors have no hope of scoring perfectly, as they all seem to be weak in either math or verbal.

Maybe ten percent, maybe even more, of GMAT instructors who've done it a while can score perfectly, I would guess.

have you never played ww with traz, atak?

except for him always thinking i'm a wolf, he's a better villager than shortline or anyone...shortline was a better wolf than traz, though

Glad you liked Australia.
Would love to share a coffee with you, if you are ever in Sydney again.

D, As I know how smart you are - 3 big questions only.

1) Are America's best days still ahead of it?
2) If you could change one aspect of yourself, what would it be?
3) How did your father influence your attitude to fatherhood?

talk food:

favorite food. least favorite food. best meal that you've had. also the most memorable meal that you've ever had

whats the typical atakdog diet consist of?


agree with nich about traz being a better villager than shortline. but its close. traz doesn't have to force the action to make his reads the way shortline does.

Princeton Review. varies very much by subject and by office.

Subject: They are the best MCAT prep company. Examkrackers writes better books (by a long shot — and that hurts a bit because I worked on our physics book), but never can seem to put together a decent course. Kaplan is grossly inferior for all but the most independent studiers.

LSAT: their course keeps changing. They are better than Kaplan, which isn't saying much; I don't know which other players are big now. TPR (The Princeton Review) recently dramatically lowered their standards for instructors, to 160 minimum score (which is what Kaplan requires, notwithstanding what they say), and that's terrible — anyone who cannot hit 167 or 168 has no business teaching others the test. (but note: that's enough; there is a surprisingly big jump in understanding right in that part of the range) I actually started getting fewer and fewer calls as a trainer (I have trained over 100 of their teachers) when offices satarted figuring out that I was not certifying marginal candidates; that was extremely unpopular.

GMAT and GRE: the offerings are not great, but afaik no one else is better.

SAT: I'm technically certified to teach SAT but only did once, so I know less about this — but in markets where there are a lot of kids, our SAT program was pretty good.

Side note: DO NOT WORK FOR THEM if you want to be treated like a human being. If anyone cares to hear how and why I left them I'll tell, but for now I'll say that it wasn't pretty.

Very cool to read all your answers atak, respect.

Was/is having a son the best thing that happened to you iyo?

I have a test on monday will I pass? Its chemistry, thanks

Advice on what you think are the most usual problems for stable couples in their mid-late 20's, as in, they have to face in a relationship.

Do you think travelling as much as you did is worth it? Dont you feel like the world is inside you already sometimes?

When are you meeting TL?

What advice would you give me to improve my villager game at ww?

epic!

A galah!

1. Hell, no.

2. Let me get back to that (remind me). I'm getting tired and it deserves a serious think.

3. By showing me how important it was always to be there (by not being around himself). I live with my father now and he's pretty important, but he was mostly absent until I was in my 20s — really, not until after I mediated my parents' divorce. (And yes, I mean that.)

My biggest regret in werewolf thus far, other than behaving like an ass toward OrangeRake, is never having played with Traz.

Do you wish that you did not have bipolar disorder, or are you thankful for having it?

Also known as:
Eolophus roseicapillus

Good to see you digger

wrt Luckbox, I take it you think its perfect already so the question is pointless. amairite?

Speak any foreign languages Atak?

Fan of literature?

Do you enjoy etymology, or did you learn most of the words that you know through teaching tests?

Andy,
exactly

For what it's worth when I played, I think Soah and traz were #1 and #1a villagers, and Shortline was #1 wolf. Shorty's most uncanny skills were seer hunting and village mob leading.

I have a horrible diet, because I'll eat anything. and at times, nothing: I'll routinely go a day without food just because I don't want to bother, and now and then two or three days without if I don't feel I deserve to eat.

My favorite food that I can reasonably obtain is tuna, either raw or so lightly seared that it might as well be. I can and regularly do make myself at a sushi restaurant eating nothing but tuna. No fatty tuna or yellowtail, either — just the real stuff. Pity they're almost gone (like so much else).

I did once have a piece of Chilean seabass (technically Patagonian toothfish) of a patrons plate (she had eaten hardly any of it — the horrors!), and I admit it was better than that — but I can't bring myself to order it again, as they're too rare.

I also love a good rib steak, rare please (or very rare if I'm in a mood — Ive ad the manager of steak place come out to make sure I really meant my order). But then, I really like lots of foods. I had KFC yesterday; I could be happy on a diet of nothing but.

I don't really do desserts, as I detect sugar at about 40% the typical levels so everything tastes to sweet to me. It's not that I don't eat them, just that that's never the most important part of the meal, or it shouldn't be. In fact, if we could finish with a cheese plate that would always be preferred.

Typically, though, I eat what's there. Living by myself, I would go days on nothing but dried pasta (no, not bothering to cook it) and the ocacsional can of tomatoes. Now that I live with my father (who is on his third wife, the wife having one son, 15, who live here half time), we mostly go out to restaurants, as they're rich by most reasonable standards and not much interested in cooking. And that's fine — just about all food makes me happy.

Best meal: Go to Austin. Go to Uchi. Order the Omikase, their fixed price, ten course deal. Don't ask what it costs, just do it. Ten courses, maybe sixty different flavors in amazing combinations... just wonderful.

No particular meal has been memorable, other than the food itself (see above) — except I'm pretty sure that tomorrow I'll realize there are a couple that I have to tell about.

how do you decide you dont deserve to eat?

How can you stand two or three days without eating?

dried pasta, how can you eat it exactly? You dont boil it?

are you human?

Toothfish is something that I've seen on menus here, and had no clue what it was and was something that I had intended to look up. Next time I can I'll get it.

Uncooked pasta!?!?!

+1 on the tuna

God damn her — I hate that [insert pejorative], the one (I do forget her name) who wrote a book about her BPD that concluded by saying it's a blessing. that's such utter crap, and it convinces people that bipolars really don't have "disease" at all.

Of course I'd trade. Yes, bipolar disorder is associated with intelligence, of which I have lots and for which i am thankful, and yes, I have managed to work out how to focus the mania — in fact, most of my real accomplishments relied on it. But trading the ability simply to enjoy life for that s a horrible trade. No medication that I can tolerate takes away the depression,a and when I am done I stay down for months or even a year. And while that's ahppening I destroy my life, and to some extent that of those around me (though I'm infinitely better about this than I once was).

Were it not for BPD I'd probably have stayed at Yale (left after freshman year), probably not have screwed up law school, maybe accepted the full ride that carnegie business school offered me — one way or another, I'd be rich, and rich helps in a lot of ways. I woudln't have scared away as many wonderful women as I have, and I probably wouldn't be alone and likely doomed to die that way. I wouldn't have driven most of my friends away over the years. I wouldn't have panic attacks when I have to pack a suitcase, or random bouts of agoraphobia. And I'd be able to make it through a whole year without wondering when the crash was coming.

So yeah, I'd give up being bipolar.

Yeah, I would regularly eat a pound of dry whatever, spaghetti (messy) or rotini usually.

If the toothfish is the same, and is prepared right, it is infinitely moist and tender and basically perfect, although opposite of tuna in almost every way.

sad panda, someone post it

I realize that if you take everything I say as literally true, it will seem I barely am. And the thing is, it really all is true. I don't lie. There's a reason, a historical one that I'll get into when I talk about my poker history, but the short version is I used to lie constantly, hated myself for it, and overshot.

Not deserving to eat: I was brought up to think I could do anything in the world, and so everything since has been a failure. I seem to be incapable of being comfortable with myself. Also, in a an objective sense i make horrible decisions. I go months without opening my mail because it scares me (though nearly drowning, and being charged by a bear, and rolling a car [on a couple occasions] didn't — go figure). I abandon perefctly good jobs. I get obsessive about behaviors — like playing werewolf — to the exclusion of the rest of the world. And I know these things are horrible to do, and sometimes I punish myself for them.

There's also an element of wanting to learn control. As a kid I used to sit in the snow in my shorts (no shirt) and learn not to shiver. (That "skill" almost killed me some years later when I convinced myself I wasn't freezing to death even tough I was.) I value being able to go without sleep or food, or to work long hours (one summer I averaged 116 hours a week over a six week period). I do hold myself to different standards then reasonable people do or should.