I have heard the mermaids singing. I downloaded them on Napster.

[dr4b]

If nothing else, tonight I discovered that playing SSX and clearing Aloha Ice Jam and Untracked is a LOT more exciting than reading the Pennsylvania Driver's Manual.

Yes, I'm going to try to learn to drive. Stay off the streets, y'all.

Bleh. Sooooo apathetic. I have to start really doing stuff during the day. Tonight I talked to my friend Franklin who said he got a job by just sending resumes through CMU HR, and people called him within a few days, so maybe I should write some cover letters and try out this sending-resumes-to-CMU-HR thing and see what happens. If I write and print tomorrow (Wednesday) and walk them to Whitfield Hall on Thursday, by the time I get back from Philly next weekend I may have heard something!

Tonight I went to SFFS, where it was mostly chaos, although we did achieve reading part of the Eye of Argon. Yippee. Carl and Visigoth and others read the mst3k part of it, which was cute.

After that, I went to IMSO. Tonight it was in squirrel hill, and since the girl hosting it has downstairs neighbors who hate her, we only played Para Para and Samba. The Dreamcast Para Para Paradise (called "Dream Para Para") is... well... it only has like 12 songs. And they're all like 3 minutes long. It's basically like they took one of Carolee's VCDs and decided to add some steps to it. They didn't even really do it well - a lot of times things don't really match up to what I'm used to from PPP, and it felt like they skipped arrows a lot. So, sure, it's $45 for the game and the controller, but I don't know whether it's worth it... if you want a cheap parapara fix I think it's great, but if you can afford to shell out the money for the real thing, you should do that. I did decide to buy Rebecca's second DPP disc off her (she bought two discs and two controllers because the controllers weren't listed separately), and I'll probly use it as a parapara VCD, for all intents and purposes. (Hm, I forgot to pay her for it. On the other hand, she borrowed my PPP controller placement paper, so... we'll straighten it all out eventually.) Samba was more fun this time since the controllers weren't so screwy. Bayani and I played this "hustle mode" thing in Samba 2K which was a lot of fun, even if I sucked at it. There's a lot of good music in Samba, actually. Reminds me that I kinda want to go swing or latin or something dancing.

I wish I had something entertaining to say right now, but sadly, the most entertaining thing that popped into my head was "ow, my eye just started itching suddenly." which probably won't amuse anyone.

Comments

[blk]

I wish I had something entertaining to say right now, but sadly, the most entertaining thing that popped into my head was "ow, my eye just started itching suddenly." which probably won't amuse anyone.

It amuses me, but that's probably because I have it in my quotefile. :)

What kind of car are you going to learn to drive on? Do you need any more volunteer instructors? :)

[dr4b]

whee!

i don't know. first I'm going to work on getting a permit sometime next week, which I'll do in Philly because we live 3 blocks from the center city DMV.

then i'll figure out whether to take expensive AAA lessons or what. I'm really not sure yet... I don't know if I'd want to subject my friends to trying to teach me how to drive. I'm sure I'll be pretty bad at it, as my driving skill so far seems to be the Daytona game strategy - "go really fast, slow down before curves, and make sure you hit the wall at the right velocity so you can angle and run people off the road."

[ardaniel]

My problem with driving (no license here either) is that I learned on SF Rush 2049...

hence, I don't even BOTHER with the brake unless it's a screaming turn onto a freeway onramp, I go 192mph the entire time, and I frequently flip my car into spirals of death that end with me exploding into the fourth story of a building. ;)

If you want to learn stick, though, I suggest finding someone with a TDI Volkswagen. They have really forgiving transmissions; I've put tarzxf's Jetta from second straight to fifth by accident with no harm done to the car or my nerves.

[dr4b]

you're in CALIFORNIA with no license? damn. or you just mean you didn't get one until moving out there?

my impression of the parts of the state I visited is that you can't get anywhere without a license unless you live in the dead center of some city like LA or SF...

[blk]

Well, it's my opinion that driving is pretty easy. Yeah, there are things you need to practice to learn, but most everybody I know learned to drive without getting in any terrible accidents. Learning in an automatic is much easier, I think, although it's useful to learn how to drive a stick.

Anyways, that said, I'm actually sorta interested in teaching someone to drive. I'll volunteer our Honda to teach automatic, and I'll even teach stick once you learn automatic (I'm iffy on trying to teach stick to a beginner, personally), although I'm not sure about how mark feels about yet another person learning stick on our poor saturn. :)

[dr4b]

if you want to teach me, that would be really, really awesome.
i'll babysit or bake you cookies or whatever you want in return...

(hopefully i'll return to pittsburgh on the 23rd with a permit!)

[blk]

Presumably you mean a learner's permit, since you actually have to prove you can drive somewhat to get a real permit. I'd be happy to give you lessons, though. I bet we can find plenty of big empty parking lots on a sunday afternoon or something.

And dude, we can always use more babysitters. :)

[cellio]

(I'm iffy on trying to teach stick to a beginner, personally),

Not sure if your iffiness is at the teacher end or the student end, but just in case it's the latter, I offer the following: my father taught me on stick from the beginning (in his Ford Pinto -- have I just dated myself?), and it was definitely a win for me. Once you know stick you can drive anything (well, large trucks are different...), but going from automatic to stick seems to hurt some people's brains. (My husband will probably never drive stick competently, alas. And it's not like he isn't bright; he just seems to have some sort of block about it.)

[blk]

I think the iffyness is almost completely because that's not the way I learned it. I learned automatic when I was 16 and stick when I was 19 (?), and although now I drive stick all the time and prefer it much more (and have gotten fairly competent at it, i think), I didn't learn as a beginner, so the idea of teaching the basics of stick AND teaching the basics of driving seems a little overwhelming.

But yeah, I've heard that people who learn stick first do it well and generally have an advantage over those who don't, so I'd recommend it if you're up to it, and I think I'm even willing to try teaching it, I just don't know how well it would work. Stick is more difficult, after all. I guess maybe I think for a beginner driver who is very nervous and scared to drive, the easier the better.

[cellio]

If you're doing parking lots at 10-15mph to start, the hardest stick-related parts will be (1) getting in motion and (2) shifting into second. Yeah, at times you'll hit points where *you* would shift again, but no harm will be done if you don't.

Hills will be challenging, but you don't have to do them right away. And they're challenging for people learning automatic, too, as I recall. (When I drove automatics early on I always drifted backward some while moving my foot to the gas, because there was no clutch to hold with. I don't know if this is an issue with newer cars.)

Deanna, whichever way you learn will be fine!