h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Welcome to the Guide, Aimless Wanderer. I'm one of the Assistant Community Editors (ACEs) and we just amble around and say Hi! to people. We also try to offer advice and resolve problems as they arise.

You are obviously starting to find your way around - you've written a home page which is more than some researchers manage to do after months. Lots of links from the H2G2 logo at the top left, and don't forget that you can go to a researchers home page by clicking on their ID (if you click on mine above you'll get the idea. The things I want to hide don't appear here, anyway)

A few researchers have had problems with forums and chat boxes on other sites - a lot of folk don't seem to like strangers. This shouldn't happen here, so feel free to dive in feet first into any forum that takes your fancy. Warning - the sense of the thread may wander or evaporate after the first few entries!

Have fun - any problems just scream at me or any of the other ACEs.
Except about the current rash of oddball things which may be due to a new system coming on line earlier this week. Or due to the solar flares reported by NASA.

Byeeeeeeeeeee

Gotta watch those solar flares, huh? Well...I'm a newbie, but I'll try my hand at a guide entry or two. Thanks, BuskingBob, for the welcome, and hope to see more wanderers soon.

Hi Aimless Wanderer! Just wanted to welcome you to h2g2 and I hope your day is going lovely. What is Illinois like? Is it like Texas or California? Cause I've lived in those places and I've never been to Illinois. Do YOU pronounce the "s" at the end of Illinois? I don't but I've always wondered if others do! Anyway welcome and nice to meet you!

Illinois? No, you don't pronounce the "s" (I think there's actually a guide entry on h2g2 on Illinois) Pronounce it Ill-in-oy (or something like that.)
No, if you've lived in Texas or California, you've never experienced the lovely temperature extremes that Illinois has to offer. From 110 degrees (F) with humidity in the summer, to below zero, and loads of snow in the winter, it's a fun place to live.
How about yourself--where are you from (originally/currently...??)

I guess if I'd checked out your home page, I might know something about the questions I asked in my last reply.
So, what school do you go to exactly--and, for that matter, what do you study (or, am I missing this painfully obvious information as well...?)

Obviously, along with being a Princess Bride fan, you must like English humor--Adams and Pratchett seem the most obvious, but I'm willing to wager that you like other sources of offbeat humor as well...

Well?

I am from the San Francisco Bay Area, which according to you is probably the exact opposite of Illinois because it is usually between 50 and 85 in the day year-round. So Texas is too hot, and probably Illinois would be too. But someday I will visit there. I believe. I go to Abilene Christian University in Texas where I am a senior.
I like Anne McCaffrey (not humor but sci-fi/fantasy author) and reading in general, but I am also a fan of Terry Pratchett, etc. Some of the wordplays are just hysterical to me! What do you like to read?

And I study Elementary Education and Missions and English as a Second Language. Although I will only get one degree out of all that! But I love this school and the people. The heat I could do without...

What do I like to read? Everything I can get my hands on. I've always been a classic Sci-Fi buff (the old stuff, yeah...), and yes, I read Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett as well (personally, I'm a big fan of social satire), but despite my psychology degree, I've always been a bit of a history buff. So, I read historical non-fiction as well, on topics as diverse as Medieval European history, to millitary history, from ancient to modern times.

Sounds like an awful lot of studying for one degree. Hope you do get to travel one day. Illinois isn't so bad, in the spring and fall, especially.

So...tell me more...

Well I have traveled to some places-- Papua New Guinea, Italy, and about half of the states but most when I was too small to remember. I'm about to start reading a non-fiction book about sisters and that looks to be interesting. It's like an anthology. I think. I haven't started it yet
Actually I'll be getting an Elementary Education degree with a Missions minor and an ESL endorsement, so I will get a little more than a degree, but not much.
What do you do in Illinois?

Well, I graduated last year with a psychology degree from EIU, and realized rather quickly that to make it anywhere in my field, I must return to school for a number of years. (Whee!!) First I went to Europe to take a class for a month, and to see something outside the little farm town that I grew up in...
Anyway, I decided to take some time off, to gain real-world experience
I work at EIU doing research. The kind of psychology I'd like to work with is the hard-science kind. Neuropsychology, Cognitive Science, something like that...
To get into a good grad school, you need a lot of junk on your application...hence the time off.
I stare at people and ask them to perform strange tasks for me. I make 'tsk-tsk' noises, shake my head, and knowingly pretend to write things down about them. This makes people nervous. Occasionally, I raise my eyebrow, and look at them funny. This makes them more nervous.
Then I analyze the data, write papers, and report to my boss.
This is my life...

Oddly, this clearly identifies me to anyone from Eastern that happens to hit this site (not bloody likely, but possible.) Do I mind? No, but I guess it sort of eliminates that anonymity that makes this kind of thing possible when you should otherwise be, you know, working on stuff...

Well that sounds like lots of fun! You sort of study the psychology of psychologizing people? I know what you mean about the anonymity part. But I doubt that anyone could recognize me, so it's okay. Well I'm going to start my new book, but I will get on later! Have a nice evening!