The thought becomes the word
The word becomes the deed
The deed becomes the habit
And the habit hardens into character.

That's my working definition for character.

I think we learn to love (admire, respond to) people of
exceptional exhibited character, both in our families,
and outside them.

Love at first sight implies knowledge of the future, I think.

I think it's more important to learn to depend on a person's
exhibited character, overall. In terms of mating, it is
simply more *stable* to choose a mate of surpassing
character.

Beauty is exhibited health, also. It's function is to
advertize good health, and it is in the best interest of
propagation of one's genetic makeup to choose a mate of
good health.

I once rode a bus line a lot further than my destination, to
continue a conversation with a woman started at the bus stop.
She wasn't at all alarmed; we dated for three months beginning
the next day.

I once gave a rose to a lovely women I saw in a club; somehow
she gave me her phone number. I don't remember if we spent much
time together that first meeting. That led to an exciting
relationship that lasted all summer.

So I think in my experience you'd do better to ask a woman
on her way into the theatre alone if she'd like to sit with
you, and also to give up your idea of which movie to see
(unless you're really good at picking films to see, and the
place is showing really good films to begin with).

I generally find the 'movie' date one of the most awkward
ones early in a new friendship, so I wouldn't pick that
venue myself. I'm a lot more comfortable with going out
for a meal or a coffee or someplace we can chat. The 'movie'
date I don't remember if it generated much conversation or
not.

I've had very good luck bringing a new friend by my brother's
place, with his wife and kids and their friends around. They
always seem to enjoy this and the woman also seems to feel
quite safe and secure, so it's a big win for everyone.

There's three distinct sounds a hard disk makes.
The first is when it's spinning but idle. The
second is when it's spinning and reading or writing.
The third is when it parks, then stops spinning.

The second is of most concern; it can vary quite
a bit. 'Disk thrash' is when it's spinning and
reading/writing like crazy; this often comes with
a dramatic slowdown in operation of the user
interface. Modern operating systems often have
a means to monitor system load; load goes up quite
a bit when the disk is thrashing.

Frequent disk thrashing can be a sign you've got
too many applications open and/or are running out
of memory. If you want to continue like that, it
eventually becomes almost necessary to upgrade to
a faster CPU or more memory or both. Adjusting
swap space (virtual memory) can affect things as
well.

It is possible to get a good handle on how much
disk thrash should be happening, by repeated
exposure to it. Like if you open a graphics-
intensive application and use it, you can often
expect an acceptable amount of additional thrash.

A good operating system should terminate an
application that's run out of memory, often
cleanly -- wouldn't have to reboot immediately
to clean up the environment and continue. It's
a sign more memory should be in the machine, or
fewer applications running when you use that one.

If I were alone, I'd blush like crazy, smile like an
elated moron, and definitely return the wave.

If I were thinking of anything, that'd be a direct
memory wipe, so check to see if I've solved an
important global issue before you do that -- it'll
be lost forever.

If I were with one of my man friends, forget it;
they'd stomp it somehow, and you'd have to talk
to them instead (epic fail here).

Seems like a short e-mail is in order, just to find out
whatever you're immediately curious about her.

We had a guy on CB radio the other night who for some
reason the others wanted to track down and confront.
He was really drunk (slurred speech, and kind of a
Col. Walter Kurtz thing happening there).

Someone came up with the brilliant idea of simply
*asking* the guy where he was, instead of all this
driving around the town, triangulating on the guy's
position.

He was hidden pretty good, too; they went within 300
feet of him several times without making his location.

So I get on there and just asked the guy where he is.
Because he was drunk and keying up on everyone, it took
a few tries to get to him the idea they wanted his
exact location (I wasn't mobile and was enjoying the
guilty pleasure of chiming in).

The whole thing was a hoot, and even after the drunk
guy was on board with giving his exact location, they
*still* couldn't find him, because he wasn't able to
give clear directions or the name of the side street
he was on (if it had a name, which I still haven't
figured out, even with a good map to go by).

They all met and nothing really happened.

It was entertaining for an hour, though.

I use CSS but won't touch tables -- tables require too many tags
to maintain them well; it is a lot to do mentally and all my HTML
and CSS has to pass that test: I have to be able to render it
mentally (without the benefit of a WWW browser) before I'll use it.

I don't want to have to re-learn some obscure trick I only worked
out once for one reason, when I go back to update the page, months
or years later. So I stick to a small toolset I use as often as
I author HTML (not so often these days).

I'm a big fan of providing a good left and right margin to
completed HTML; the obvious application there is for e-text
conversions (converting book-length works to HTML so I have
a legible copy I can use in a stock web browser to enjoy the
book).

Generally I'm satisfied with including my standard CSS library
in all my HTML documents; it is a short library and so is
included inline, not a separate fetch. It would be easy to
split them out, if someone else had a need to do so.

I learned from way back to author it
myself. HTML 4.01 is easy enough to
learn; starting with about a dozen
tags and taking it from there.
HTML HEAD TITLE /title /head
cover the top part (preamble). The
TITLE tag is the only one that needs
content. It should be short; it is
the one the page will be saved as in
the other person's bookmarks (long
titles pollute bookmark space by making
them overly wide while trying to use
the bookmark list in the average web
browser).

BODY /body encloses the entire rest of
the page, which ends with /html. The
absolute length of the page should be
reasonable and the entire page should
be about 1/2 to 3/4 of a megabyte of
disk storage (including images) max.
If it gets bigger, split off a second
page to handle that content.

The paragraph tag P separates paragraphs.
Use it where you'd leave a blank line
in a post. BR breaks the end of a long
line; generally used to single-space
entries such as a mailing label (name
on first line, address on second line,
city, state and zip code on third line).

Lists -- OL UL are the two common types.
An OL (ordered list, I think it's called)
numbers the list entries for you. An
UL (unnumbered list) does not (instead
it creates bullet entries).

A (anchor) tags are used for both hot
links (A HREF) and for navigation within
the page (A NAME). Anchors end with a
corresponding /A tag (HTML tolerates it
when you do not include the corresponding
/ENDing tag, but some are required as
they (for example) operate on a specific
text on the page (such as EM for italics;
to know where italics should end, close
with /EM).

HTML is very forgiving as far as breaking
things down to a level where you can
clearly see how it is used; so you can
split complicated things into multiple
lines of HTML codes (tags) mixed in with
the content you're authoring.

When you get one page looking very neat,
it is easy to use that page as a template
for the next, saving a lot of work.

CSS is the recommended method for adding
certain kinds of layout features such
as text centering and justification.

Using a programmer's editor is the way to
go, to get syntax highlighting in HTML.
A good programmer's editor will show you
visually, as you edit, where syntax
errors have occurred. The editors are
somewhat limited, though; at some point
it is important to submit your revision
to a more sophisticated syntax-checking
program (or validator) to ensure your
HTML complies with the standard. That
way everyone gets to enjoy it (especially
those using a different kind of computer
than the one you used to create and view
it).

One of the oldest watchwords here is to
'trust your browser'. What that means is
that if it looks wrong in your browser,
stop; fix the problem. If you don't know
how, either learn how, or back-pedal and
make the page simpler until you understand
how it is rendering what it is rendering.

Learning HTML is not much more difficult
than learning to touch-type: it seems an
unnecessary refinement at first, but
quickly becomes an essential and
productive skillset.

Having said all that, there are several
good web sites that take some of the work
out of it for you, and also provide a
venue to display your work (they have
some inbuilt social networking features).

I'm reluctant to list specific sites here,
as that may not be considered acceptable
by the staff here. E-mail me if you need
a list of places to visit and comprehend.

You could probably do well by typing
'html tutorial' in a search engine as
well.

----
Note: all HTML tags are enclosed with
the less-than and greater-than symbol,
on either side of the tag; I didn't
want the system here to choke on my
post (or throw your browser into a fit)
so I didn't attempt to include them.

It helps to save a copy of what I just wrote before pressing the [SEND] button on any form in the web browser. The [PREVIEW] button in a forum also provides a chance to grab a copy of a post I worked hard to edit. I use both techniques regularly, and lose a lot less of what I wrote, that way.

I find the best place to grab a copy of what was written is the text entry box (the one I'm in right now typing this, for example).

I've cultivated a habit of doing repair to my system on the spot, as soon as it is noticed (on theory I'd rarely go back to a to-do list and work through it, of noticed, needed maintenances). I suspect this habit translates into the one mentioned above (stopping trouble potential at the earliest intercept).