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

A small bit of background: my childhood was lacking in trust and in pride; I believe this is why these two traits cause the strongest emotion in me, and why these traits are the most important ones for me to look for in a friend. That said, all of my close friends are people I can be proud of and people I can trust. All of my associates, or friends but not necessarily 'close' friends, are people whom I suspect hold these qualities, but I've never had reason or opportunity to test them.
As an added bonus, there are four or five people with whom I am also on the same wavelength at; we don't have to expend much energy in understanding each other, and so interesting discussions become more productive much faster.

There are people who I know will read this, that I consider close friends. Some of them aren't members of hootoo. I won't name who they are, because although they could reasonably be flattered by it, it might also conceivably be degrading for those who aren't named; even though there are people who I don't yet consider 'close' friends, I have no reason to think that they won't become so over time.

So, I would like to share with you all some of the specific traits I find most appealing in /some/ of my friends.

Just because he's in my mind at the moment due to an interesting discussion last night: J comes first.
He's a biochemist who specialises in the way that various chemicals interact with human systems. As I think I've mentioned before, he and I have been discussing how to create self-replicating nanotech assemblers for a variety of uses. Step one of this plan involves a large monetary investment, and some expertise both from his field, and from mine. After talking about this concept in more detail last night, I'm now convinced that it is perfectly possible, and that even completing only a small part of the first step of the process would make us incredibly, unbelievably, insanely rich.
As a parallel step we could also do things a different way, which would mean more work for me, but would grant us greater flexibility in the later steps of the process. It would also cause us to be incredibly, unbelievably, insanely rich. And could be done seperately as well.
We've also discussed a seperate project which would take a lot less capital and a lot less effort to start, and could give us a fair amount of acclaim, a large steady income, and the networks and skills necessary to develop the ideas which would follow. Which all means that we should do that one first.

J1 has been a close friend for almost as long, and is currently working as a firmware designer for a local company (http://www.endace.com). He and I are on the same wavelength to a scary degree. He is my doppelganger, to the point where his current girlfriend met him because she thought he was me (I'd already known her about four years at this point) and there was a couple of interesting weeks where our bosses couldn't tell us apart - we worked just down the hall from each other. I gave up and died my hair.
The only major difference we have is that he prefers working in hardware, and I prefer working in software.
About a year ago, our topic of conversation drifted around to operating systems, and whether we thought we should give the finger to microsoft and just write our own from scratch. We thought about it for a minute, and decided we didn't have all the skills we would need to create one.
Last weekend, the topic drifted to computer architecture, and embedded operating systems; we wondered whether we could create an entire computer and operating system from scratch. We thought about it for about ten minutes, talked about some of the subsystems we would need to design, and then decided we didn't really want to bother. It's amazing what you can learn in a year.

J1's workmates are mostly similarly skilled; D, a hardware designer, and G, also a firmware engineer, among others. We go drinking on the occasional friday night after they finish work, although usually we just end up somewhere with comfortable couches and fine imported spirits, and discuss interesting things.

My cousin R has not long ago completed her masters in some variation on the theme of chemistry; I remember her research project and although I can't remember the names for various things, it was to do with a topic like forensic chomatography. She is also /very/ switched on.

An aquaintance K is currently doing his doctorate in magnetohydrodynamics, and he's also really onto it when it comes to other topics too, to the point where he can keep up with a discussion between J1 and I on programming techniques for vector state machines using field gate arrays. Even though his degree is in maths and we're both comp. sci. people.

I was going to carry on talking about various other people, most of whom are currently students taking things like political science, or sociology; or have been students (some of them several times) and are just really clued up and interesting people; and I was also going to emphasise that these people all have beautiful beautiful hearts, but now I can't be bothered. You get the idea, and as long as I can keep track of them, and use them to mutual benifit at some point, then I'll be happy.


On a related note: I need a design for a chainmail machine; and then the snowball starts to roll.

ooooh....
*sniff*
*doesnt see an 'A' there anywhere...*

no..no... its alright... i understand... i dont have a fancy degree and i dont know alot about computers....
its alright if i cant be one of your best friends

nah, just kidding.

glad you know so many wonderful people

You /are/ one of my best friends, it's just I've been thinking about interesting and complex problems a lot lately, so that's what's on my mind at the moment, along with the people whom I can exploit to solve them. I probably should have mentioned that at the start, too.

Now, now. I'm sure you are. But the subject does say /local/......

oh! i'm sorry....
...i said i was kidding.....

dont worry
i know i am. look at me! i'm saying it! i know i'm one of your best friends, and i dont usually say that...
and you're one of my best friends too.

dont worry, i was only kidding.

Took so long reading that that you posted and I didn't see it 'cause the page hadn't refreshed....

Again!!

Besides, this is getting more personal.......I'd better head off somewhere else......

I didn't notice until just now, either!

Why leave?

Why stay?



Okay, nevermind. That's a stupid way to answer and one I don't use with my friends. Actually I do that to everyone who isn't. I think it's very effective at getting them to leave me alone. Anyway, in answer to your question......

I don't know......I just sort of feel like I don't deserve to be here just yet.......

Well /I/ think you should be, and it's my journal so what I say goes so there blah.

Guess you got me there! *Sticks around.*

Thanks.

Anytime!

Here, help yourself to yummies.

Oooooooooh! and s!



Don't you want some?

I've already had some; these are the leftovers. There's heaps to go around and it would be a shame to waste it all...

I didn't read that. I'm sorry.

Meh.

Oh sorry, I meant...er. Meh.

Meh.

Is there an echo in here?

The echo formerly known as Job?

Well I suppose that's better than the frog formerly known as prince.

I've got used to Job not reading my entries. It's not as if I mind anyway... most of the time I only write this stuff to get it off my chest, not so that it can be /read/, as such. So meh.

well whether its supposed to be read or not... i read it all

and as for job
i just smile, shake my head, and say 'yep thats job for you.'