Sinfest

[Dogen]

Ditto the onepony thing. I was 100% positive I sent a PM, but now I don't see it in my sentbox... which is shitty of me (except I'm still 90% positive I sent it... I even remember what it said). Either way, it's enough to make me check once in a while for new posts (last post was still 12/5/12 in this thread).

Re: Secret Santa... that sounds like it's got a good chance of going very badly. Good luck!

Re: Las, when did you start reading my mind? Get out of there, it's private. And don't look in the corn-- I mean just get out.
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

[Lasairfiona]

I am certain that it is just two logical people with some knowledge of psychology research coming to the same, logical conclusion.

*roots around in Dogan's brain* Oh, look at this shiny thing.
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Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

[fritterdonut]

I guess it comes down to playing the odds. Chances are pretty good today *won't* be your last, and neither will tomorrow, or the day afterward. You have to balance out preparing for your possible future without taking too much time away from actually living your life in the present. As much as there is a point in saving for retirement, there isn't a point to making yourself miserable by overworking yourself for said retirement, and then, say, getting hit by a bus.

I just generally try to live life in a manner that is overall enjoyable.

As for the secret Santa thing, I am *so* screwed. One of the (female) friends that came with me handed me a box and said "these will go great with the bra!". After returning to dorm with my purchased goods, I open the box to find a pair of panties so see-through I could damn near read a book through them. WHAT HAVE I DONE.
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Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country did to you

[Dogen]

Hopefully learned that you should never buy intimate gifts for anyone you won't see naked or don't know well enough for it to be funny as a gag.

I say that because I once bought my brother an inflatable sheep sex toy and he opened it in front of my grandparents and it was hilarious.
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

[Samsally]

Hey so remember how not long ago I had to call the cops?...

Yeah.

So at about 12:30am I hear banging in the hallway... don't think much of it. Then there is a knock at my door. That kinda freaked me out... I go, look through the peep hole and it's some guy with a hat on looking downwards so I couldn't see his face. Nooow I'm freaked out. I wait quietly and he leaves to go try other people's doors.

When that doesn't work he graduates to knocking, then trying the handle persistently. This is where I'm thanking god I'm really anal about keeping the deadbolt locked. Also I start to panic a little. Called the cops. Told 'em I didn't know how they'd get in, but hey, i didn't know how this asshole got in either.

Well hey, they've redeemed themselves tonight because after about ten or fifteen minutes I hear this guy flip his shit and start running. He manages to slam a few hallway doors in his haste and is running so hard the floor in my own apartment shakes.

Now all is silent.

Kind of hard to get to sleep, though.
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Samsally the Gray

[Dogen]

That would freak me out, too. Glad you're alright!
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

[Dogen]

Schools that don't list admission statistics.
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And then ask you questions that set you up for failure. Such as "List other institutions to which you have applied." Let's say, strictly for example (I did not apply here) you applied to Rutgers University - New Brunswick, no college. Your options are:

[Samsally]

Dogen: I feel like school application portals are notoriously horrible across the board. I recall our local university was a very similar experience. It's constantly broken and if you can't get stuff done on time because of it they still hold it against you.

Also, creeper update: Apparently he was going around to all the buildings in my area. One of my coworkers saw him as well while doing laundry and yelled at him for trying to get into his apartment. That was some time before he wandered over to my apartment building. Coworker says his eyes were super dilated and he looked pretty messed up.

I'm kinda glad to hear that 1) this wasn't a figment of my imagination and 2) I probably did the right thing by calling the cops.
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Samsally the Gray

[Dogen]

You thought you might have imagined the whole ordeal?

One thing that's interesting is how different every school's website and application are, and yet how similar. Sometimes it takes 10-15 clicks to get to a program description, sometimes 6 or 8 clicks just to get to a list of colleges and departments, then some (Colorado State, I'm looking at you) you can navigate really fast. Some require you to mail transcripts, but my favorite ones are the ones that let you upload scanned unofficial transcripts and only make you pay for official transcripts if you get an offer. That's the best thing since online applications and accepting letters of reference by email!

Still, on the front page of almost every university you'll find buttons for "Admissions" and "Academics," neither of which will take you anywhere useful, just some kind of landing page where they post university news. But every school seems to have those buttons.

Also, a lot of these systems use address verification programs, and for some reason all of them strip my apartment off my address. Because I guess my address is zoned as a commune and we're all supposed to share mail?
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

[Samsally]

Maybe not imagined so much as exaggerated? I was assured he was just as freaky as he seemed.

My school's portal had this awesome feature where it was very nearly impossible to log into at any given time. You would get some sort of indecipherable login, plus a random password, and even when you got them typed in correctly sometimes you just couldn't log in at all. Getting it to work again usually involved going to the office building on campus and just annoying the shit out of as many people as possible until one of them either fixed it, or gave you the info you needed and let you use a computer to fix it on the spot, because odds are some new bullshit would crop up before you got what you needed done and if you just spent forty minutes finding the one person that knows how it works you sure as hell aren't going to leave until its working.

Also please note, I'm not actually bad with computers, it was just a special combination of unintuitive and flat out broken.
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Samsally the Gray

[Dogen]

Yeah, I don't know who designs these things, but they're awful to use. Even when they're not doing things badly, they do things oddly. Like this, which must be for people whose email address is from here. Or this, which just seems like pointless extra work for whoever made it.
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

[mouse]

[Michael]

I guess you should start by learning how the export function works

[fritterdonut]

University websites always seem intent on driving people to insanity.

Overused XKCD comic to the rescueeeeeeeee

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Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country did to you

[Dogen]

As you would expect from XKCD, it's 100% true. It takes a half-dozen clicks just to get to a list of departments (you usually have to select a college first, which is a useless step, no one cares; just put up a damn alphabetical list). They also usually have a link to their graduate school, but there's no point in going there, because it will eventually (17.4 clicks later) direct you to the department website for the information you need, and there will be a link directly to the application from there anyway.

Again, Colorado State has done this brilliantly... there's an alphabet across the top of their home page that links you to everything you might want. Hitting P gets you a list of things like "Pingree Park," "Pagan Student Alliance," and, of course, "Psychology, Department of." I want to go just because of their website user-friendliness. Suck it, Vanderbilt.
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"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman