From ed@hintz.org Thu Apr 17 13:44:02 2003 From: ed@hintz.org (Edmund A. Hintz) Date: Thu Apr 17 12:44:02 2003 Subject: [Promotum] Epmathy vs. Systemizing (shades of Asberger) Message-ID: <20030417194309.14468@127.0.0.1:2525> Another study in which they compare male vs. female brain activity and conclude (in the big picture) that women are more prone to empathizing while men are more prone to building systems and other structured tasks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,937913,00.html Short link here: http://tinyurl.com/9q83 What's interesting is the tests they offer. I took them, and on EQ I scored 13, SQ 47. According to the results, most folks with autism have better empathy than I, scoring around 20, and my 47 SQ score has me just 4pts shy of hardcore Asberger. I don't find the results particularly surprising, it's just interesting that their facts correlate what I've already observed. One question I found to be very interesting was "After meeting someone just once or twice, I find it difficult to remember precisely what they look like". I'd often noticed I seemed to perform poorly in that area, but recently a friend brought it up and described exactly my symptoms, which I'd never thought much about previously. It was quite intriguing to see someone else reporting exactly the same symptoms, and also curious to see it come up as a question under the systemizing quotient test. Regards, Ed Hintz ed@hintz.org From ed@hintz.org Wed Apr 30 01:17:01 2003 From: ed@hintz.org (Edmund A. Hintz) Date: Wed Apr 30 00:17:01 2003 Subject: [Promotum] Time in a bottle Message-ID: <20030430071628.6397@127.0.0.1:2525> Martin and Anna Pluth of Roundup, Montana, operated the Fifth Avenue Grocery store. When Anna died in 1952, the family just boarded up the store; didn't sell off the contents or anything. The last of the family died recently, and today (4-30) the entire contents of the store are going up for auction. Contents include everything from mint condition period food packages to a Coke display still in its carton and an American Flyer windup train set. http://www.mtstandard.com/newsregional/rnews.html Sad in a way. It would have been an impressive museum. Regards, Ed Hintz ed@hintz.org From ed@hintz.org Wed Apr 30 18:29:01 2003 From: ed@hintz.org (Edmund A. Hintz) Date: Wed Apr 30 17:29:01 2003 Subject: [Promotum] New toy-voip Message-ID: <20030501002811.29585@127.0.0.1:2525> Just setup Vonage for our home phone. Had to beef up my dsl, had a 128 up, changed it to 256. Might go to 384, not sure yet. The Vonage system consists of a Cisco ata-186 which does the anlog-digital conversion, and the service itself. So, we use our existing phones, and our voice traffic routes via the dsl to vonage and then into the POTS network. So far so good, but I expect I'll need to setup some smarter routing. Under my current system if somebody hammers my webpages or something it can affect my outbound voice traffic, I'll have to get a better router setup in front of the dsl one. Wouldn't be an issue for somebody who isn't running servers over the same network though. Also, since I'm dsl I'll still need to keep my analog line. But, I can dump it to the bare minimum + call forwarding (about $13), and all our phone traffic will be over the network. Vonage charges a flat rate $40/mo for unlimited calling within the US and Canada, so there's $53 there and then the dsl costs of around $85 (dedicated statics are why it's more than the cheapo accounts). I averaged out last years phone bills, and it came out to about $140/mo, so now I'm paying a flat $138 and getting unlimited calling and better network speeds. Nice. Worth checking out if you're of the geeky persuasion and already pay for broadband-esp. cable since you could completely kill the analog line. Also, since it's network based, you can take the ATA with you wherever you go, and as long as you've got broadband people call the same number as always. If we move to NZ this could be a huge plus, since we'd not have to pay international rates for calls back home. And we could setup multiple local numbers in the US for $5/mo each so that when folks called us it's a local call for them(although if they're paying US longdistance rates to call NZ it's still a huge savings). Shameless plug: if you want to try the system out let me know. I can give you a referral, and we both get a free month of service http://www.vonage.com Regards, Ed Hintz ed@hintz.org