Eccentric Flower talk:200909/Lets Random
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:200909/Lets Random
Iain:
But I do know that I just learned a lapsed high school friend of mine is the principal engineer for cloud computing tools at a Very Large Software Firm Which Shall Not Be Named Here, and this has given me a slight sinking feeling: Oh, look, another one who has gone over to the dark side.
Oh, piffle. A job's a job; the title isn't necessarily anything to do with him. Get yourself a grip.
..."Lapsed" high school friend? Never heard it called that before. Makes it sound like high school is a religion -- which it is, I suppose, to some people and in Texas.
-- 04:20, 17 September 2009 (BST)
I couldn't find a more concise way of saying "friend whom I knew in high school but whom I have had utterly no contact with since then."
He's actually one of the types of people that causes the most acute like/dislike schizophrenia: The nerd who doesn't care that he's a nerd and goes off to quietly make a fortune being a nerd because he was 1) unencumbered by having to care what anyone else thought and 2) is actually good at something that makes tons of money. In other words, he's Mike's friend Bernie from "Doonesbury."
-- 15:39, 17 September 2009 (BST)
Oh, look, LJ's RSS is working again. I know this because I have been flattened under fifty new feed posts for XKCD and Doctor Who news and the Astronomy Picture of the Day. But I was glad to see yours in there.
-- 21:41, 18 September 2009 (BST)
Andy:
Does "Utterly squander" mean actually being checkmated, or just producing a hopeless position?
You can be guaranteed to reach a hopeless position in 3 moves: move a pawn to let your queen out, move your queen out, take a protected pawn with your queen, losing your queen.
If you actually want to get checkmated fast, I would play f3 and g4. If your opponent has by this time moved his e-pawn, he can fool's mate you with Qh4. If he hasn't moved his e-pawn, move your queen's knight back and forth, and there's a good chance he will. (That's why you play f3 and not f4; you don't want to discourage him from moving his e-pawn).
-- 22:41, 16 September 2009 (BST)