Crawl Across the Ocean

Thursday, June 15, 2006

4 of One and a Third of a Dozen of the Other

Last week, pogge tagged me to list 8 random things about myself. I was just going to ignore the tag since it seemed kind of constraining to just talk about myself, but instead I figured I would list 4 random things about myself randomly mixed with 4 things which aren't true about me, to see if anyone can tell the difference. I tried to pick some things which attentive readers of the blog might be able to figure out but which are still obscure enough to be difficult even for people who (think they!) know me.

1. I have Lotus Notes set with a recurring reminder to tell me when to pay my bills
2. I pick through blocks of equally priced cheese at the grocery store to find the one that is the biggest
3. My biggest complaint about modern remote control design is that the buttons are too small for a person with normal sized fingers (and thumbs)
4. I tried out for my high school basketball team once but I didn't get picked and I never tried out again
5. My favourite type of pasta noodle is penne because the other ones are just too difficult to eat
6. Right now I am listening to the album 'Details' by Frou-Frou
7. Right now I am listening to the album 'Alice' by Tom Waits
8. My favourite way to find my way around a new city is to take a bus tour, or to just wander aimlessly on the transit system

No, there are no prizes, except perhaps a prestigious CAtO Stalker Award for anyone I've never met in person who gets all 8.

Update: Answers are provided in the comments

posted by Declan at Thursday, June 15, 2006

7 Comments:

  • Just guessing randomly gives you a 1 in 70 chance of getting them all correct.

    Besides, this is the person you don't want writing your multiple choice exams.

    I quote: "A skilled teacher is one who acts as a positive influence on her students, and manages to inspire them. Lofty goals, those, and ones that are seldom attained. It’s far easier - and potentially more lucrative - to be a skilled multiple-choice math question writer, whose success is commensurate with the ability to correctly predict her subjects’ deficiencies, which are never in short supply."

    By Blogger Declan, at 10:26 PM  

  • Sacha - I can't comment on the accuracy of your answers (yet) but I like your logical approach.

    By Blogger Declan, at 10:48 PM  

  • I'll give it a shot too.

    #1, #3, #5, #6 are false

    #2, #4, #7, #8 are true

    1 is false because Lotus sucks, and I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily use it. (And I say this as an employee of the company that produces the product, thought I not in that division…)

    2 must be true, because I do the same. :)

    3 is one I waffled on. I had it down as true, but as I had 5 trues I needed to push something to false!

    4 is true, I think. It seems out of place for all the other confessions here, so my gut says that’s why it’s here.

    5 is false there are a lot of pastas out there as easy to eat as penne, as long as you stay away from the spaghettis, linguinis, and fettuccines, the rest aren’t all that difficult

    6 is false because I like Tom Waits better (whoops, there’s me projecting again. ;) )

    7 is true because 6 is false (terrible, terrible logic)

    8 is true because I do it too, and you’re a transit fan

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:58 AM  

  • I know that #2 is true because of a previous post.....

    Not that I'm a stalker or anything, just an odd post I remembered for some reason.

    Since I'm at it, I'll take a shot at the other ones too.

    #1, #3, #4, #6, are false.

    #2, #5, #7, #8, are true.

    Most of those are somewhat random guesses.

    By Blogger Bailey, at 9:33 AM  

  • guesswork also -#s 2, 4 and 7 are tru and the wandering-around alternative in eight is true.

    Best Wishes,
    Alan

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:42 PM  

  • OK, no new guesses coming in, so here are the answers:

    1) False, as most of you guessed rightly. While I have no choice about using Lotus Notes at work (best feature - it never asks you to update your password) it is a pain to work with like many of youe noted, and besides, there are bigger things to remember than when to pay the bills - companies will always helpfully remind you.

    2) This is true, although for Sacha's sake I should have specified that I don't bother when it is priced by weight but there are lots of stores (e.g. Safeway) where they just put the same price tag on all the blocks and make them roughly the same size. Credit to Bailey who remembered that I have mentioned this before on a previous meme post.

    3) False, as everyone guessed correctly. In case you are (not likely) interested, my biggest complaint about remote controls these days is that the 'last channel' function doesn't ignore channels viewed using the up and down arrows.

    eg. You go to channel 15 by pressing 1 and then 5. Then you go to channel 30 by pressing 3 and 0. Then you go to channel 31 by pressing the up arrow. When you now press last channel you should go back to 15. If you wanted to go back to 30 you could just use the arrows. Hard to find a remote these days that gets that right.

    4) This is true. Credit to Candace for picking out the anomolous nature of this entry in the list and correctly deducing it must be true based on that.

    5) I had this pegged as true because that is the reason I order/buy penne pasta. There are others that are easy to eat but tortellini is often stuffed with a vegetable (ugh) and the bowties are hard to spear.

    Still my wording was not very precise (I should have said 'most of the others are too difficult to eat') so I'll just credit everyone with a right answer here.

    6 is true, 7 is false. One hint is that this blog takes it's name from an 'Electronic' lyric and a fan of 'Electronic' is likely to be a fan of 'Frou-Frou'. Also, while both albums I mentioned were 2002 releases, 'Details' was only released in Canada for the first time a month back or so.

    Yes, it a little unreasonable to expect anyone to pick up on such obscure details but credit to Sacha for picking this pair correctly.

    8) is false, which fooled everybody.
    Bus tours are too constraining in terms of route and timing and interesting city is almost synonymous with bad traffic so buses aren't very time efficient.

    Wandering randomly on the transit system sounds nice and romantic but in reality would just land you in Burnaby or Scarborough or the wastelands of NE Calgary. My preference is to wander around on foot until my feet get too sore to walk any further, using transit only as necessary to avoid walking repeatedly over the same area or walking through uninteresting areas.

    So scores:
    KevinG: 0 (booooo!)
    Sacha: 5-3
    Deanna: 5-3
    Bailey: 4-4
    Alan: 5-3

    If I hadn't given credit for all answers for the pasta question, we would have had everyone at 4-4.

    So no Stalker Award, maybe next time. Thanks to everyone who took the time to indulge my guessing game.

    By Blogger Declan, at 11:11 PM  

  • Hey, you posted the answers before I got a chance to respond. I was hoping to test out my big sister abilities. I was a bit worried though.... The only ones I was really sure about were #2 and #8 although #5 seemed quite likely to be true. I also figured one of #6 and #7 were true but would have had to guess which one. Oh and I might have broken down and checked with mom about the baskball one.... Oh well, maybe it's better I didn't show how poorly I might have done!

    Trish

    By Blogger the Mom, at 10:02 AM  

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