Randox

I never die in my dreams. I always wake up at the time of death, but that hasn't happened in years. I don't think I have even had a proper nightmare in years. I've had dreams I didn't like, and a couple that made me unfomtorable enough that I didn't want to go back to sleep, but even in the few dreams where I get attacked, I wouldn't call them nightmares. When I get attacked in my dreams, I can pretty much always either easily defend myself, or the dream changes so I am not in danger (like creating a person with a giant sword to hack up the threat). I almost never feel fear or despair in my dreams. On the whole, I have a very positive sub-concious. Actually, its probably because most of my dreams are desire based (which tend to be the most fun, but not the most interesting). Most of the remaining ones are I don't know what. Some random fantasy story I guess. Those tend to be interesting for their otherworldly story lines and they produce the best locations (and also the hardest to remember landscapes, because they are more creative than the ones I get in desire dreams). My dreams aren't all sunshine and smiles, bad things happen in I'd say all of my dreams, but they aren't usually upsetting.

Congratulations Goddess. Nice to see your avatar around here once more. And yeah, getting that stuff on short notice is going to be tricky, but I'm sure you'll manage something.

It was the movie Hangover that did it actually. The only thing about a dream journal is it can be almost a pain to do. My recall time is probably in excess of 30 minutes now, and the last dream I recorded at that length was about 4 entirely different locations with a fairly loose overall plot and character cast (I also might have switched genders halfway through. I can't remember who I was at the beginning of the dream). I normally spend up to a minute sorting through the dream mentally, then I fire out some bullet points to help me through, then I write as fast as I can from beginning to end. The whole process probably lasts at least 5 minutes, and its not terribly detailed. But it is enough that I can remember mental pictures from them, some of them are incredibly detailed. Normally static though (I can look around in my minds eye, but not move, and no motion capture). I rarely remember emotions, so I have to remember to record any meaningful feelings, and also what I was thinking when the dream ended. The what I was thinking can be very important. I can't remember having a dream ever finish before moving on to the next dream or waking up, though to my credit, I am getting closer all the time. I have noticed certain themes my mind struggles with more than others. Most of it depends on if my dream is trying to replicate something I have done before, or simulate something I haven't done (it took several dreams before I could get flying, even under near lucid conditions. My mind finally found a way though, without any lucidity). When trying to simulate, the dreams have a tendency to essentially pause. They will try to continue a few times, and if nothing happens, they just end. Other times they simply cut out right before my brain would have to imagine doing something I have never done before. Replication is a lot easier, though I have a tendency to mess it up. For example, my dreams don't normally get the sensation of swimming right (its more akin to being able to levitate than floating most of the time, and I seem to struggle with the concept wetness. Water tends to feel like air, and I don't know why that happens). I think dreams are amazing though. You mind has essentially hijacked all the parts of your brain normally used to process your senses, and re-purposes them for simulation. And the ability to cope with real time dream generation is amazing. I know my dreams aren't planned out since I once fell asleep during family guy, and one of my dreams overlaped with one of the episodes on the dvd. The result was that everything said in the dream was from the TV rather than self generated (you sense of hearing is the most prone to activation while your still asleep), so the episode provided all the dialogue, while my brain had to, in real time, make up an entirely bogus situation and try to mesh the two together into something that made sense (for the life of me I can't remember the plot, other than it taking place inside an aircraft carrier, but I do remember that when I woke up, I felt that the dream had been mostly coherent and actually had made sense). It's just incredible amounts of processing power and creativity. The dreams seem to make themselves, and respond flawlessly to external stimuli that make their way into the dream (again, normally this is through your ears).

I started keeping a dream diary a while ago (which I stopped filling out every morning, but trying to get back in the habit), mostly because I am interested in having better dream recall, since I consider dreams to be a way to see what my subconscious is thinking about, and because I hear it can help increase the frequency of lucid dreams (by helping you recognise common elements to your dreams, so that you might see them for what they are while dreaming). It's been an interesting thing to do. The first few recordings are pretty sketchy, but your (at least my) dream recall improved tremendously inside a week. Sometimes I can even remember the dream before the one I was having when I woke up (I often have 2 dreams at the end apparently if I can get a full nights sleep, which gives you a much longer ending dream cycle). It's a fair bet that I would probably never let anyone read them, mostly because they are a window into exactly what my mind thinks about, and having someone else read them would be a huge violation for me. Some things are better as secrets, or at least not written out quite so planely (granted, I know what I think, so I know what to look for and how to interpret them). I don't know if my dreams would be considered normal or not. They have no consistency in terms of 1st or 3rd person perspective, and on occasion will even switch between the two inside the same dream, though 1st person is definitely the majority of the time. I also find locations in my dreams to be incredibly malleable, either as an odd amalgamation of places that I am familiar with, sometimes interspersed with fictional elements, or that my location literally changes around me. I am also not always myself in my dreams, on occasion assuming the identity of other people. There are however some elements that are incredibly consistent between my dreams. For example, just about every dream I have had since I started the journal a week ago has had a body of water in it, and they normally involve swimming at some point. Now, that one doesn't surprise me, and I'm not even sure other people would pick out the significance of that just reading through, but it was a neat insight for me since I have the privaledge of knowing exactly why a lake or pond or ocean appears in almost all of my dreams. It's neat to see that this is on my mind, even when I go days without thinking about it consciously. It might even be useful as a trigger for lucid dreaming some day since I am almost never around lakes during 75% of the year. I am happy to say that I don't get the teeth falling out dream that I hear is one of the very common ones. I have had a grand total of one dream I know of where I was missing teeth, and I know why I had it (it was related to a movie I had recently seen). That specific dream would probably keep me from going back to sleep. And @ the biting the tongue thing. Sometimes your dreams can really surprise you. I had one in particular where some part of my brain manifested the ability to be incredibly hostile, violent and ruthless (someone who I was about to try and help grabbed me and I created a person with a huge sword who cut them up into nearly 20 pieces. top to bottom from each side of the head, then horizontally 6 times). It's not the only manifestation I have ever seen of my violent inner self, but its one of the more vivid for me. It could also be taken as being self protecting, since in the particular circumstances of that dream it was about to become a nightmare, and the sudden manifestation prevented that (as well as making a big enough impact to wake me up almost immediately after, which is probably why I remember it so well).

Well, if your trying to figure out if she's into you at all or not, your best bet is probably asking her friends. Even if they don't know who she likes, they might be able to help you interpret any signs she may or may not be giving you. Everyone is different, so only someone who knows her well will be of any help. And dating a shy person is definitely different, and can be frustrating for some people. Actually, I'm a bit of a shy person myself. I don't know if that puts me in a good position to offer advice though or not. At some point, you might have to be very direct to find out what she is thinking. We get so used to our games that sometimes we forget we can just drop all the bullshit and talk. I'd get to know her before dropping that particular bomb though. It's more of a go for broke when you get tired of beating around the bush.

Glad to hear you patched things up, even after that stunt. Maybe there is hope for the two of you afterall :shades:

If she's testing him, then the relationship is already over. Doesn't matter which way he choose really, so you might as well go out having the most fun you can.

Don't take that stupid "it was a test" bullshit. A relationship can only be founded on trust, and if she's testing you it means she doesn't trust you. You trusted her and she betrayed you, and that's all there is to it. Not sure how serious you were, but your always better off setting these kind of things off, even if you know its going to be a trap. Better to find out now that she's paranoid rather than when your married and it ends in divorce. You can't be in a relationship if one or both parties is sitter there wondering if the other is being faithful, or worse, thinking up schemes to prove it. How pathetic. I just really hate people like that. Not even worth the time of day.

and you thought your girlfriend was in an elaborate ruse BEFORE to catch you cheating. Might be her friend using her phone. But for the sake of all things manly GET YOUR ASS OVER THERE I agree. Less asking people on the internet, more having fun. Whatever is going on, should make for a good story. And could have lost your virginity in a threesome Tim? As heroic as I'm sure all the guy's would consider that, first time tend to be pretty friggen awkward for everyone, and I can't imagine a threesome makes that any better. This would be like trying to run before you can crawl.

If they can pull this off... Looking forward to it. This I guess will make or break it for them. If this blows up, I imagine that a number of people will give up on them ever solving the problem and move on with their lives. That they are announcing this early, rather than launching it behind the scenes to see if it actually works tells me that they have done a metric [bleep] ton of testing, and are sure that this is going to work (at least against the targeted bots). If this works, I think we should have annual celebrations every year on the 25th :mrgreen:

It's a shame we placed at all. Not placing would have been something of an embarrassment for them after winning twice in a row, and might have sent a stronger message. That said, they lost to some tank game no one's ever heard of, so there is that. It might not encourage Jagex to try harder at all, but it won't hurt us either.

I get the lottery ticket (I got one for my 18th birthday), but why cigarettes?

I'm very confused. I was tired, so I fell asleep watching TV after supper, then decided to just go to bed. I woke up, and I remember looking at my watching and thinking it said like 7am (which would be a little on the early side to get up, but not unusual if I napped). Now its 2am, and I'm pretty much wide awake. In the normal course of events, I go to sleep roughly an hour and a half from now. I wanted to move back into my timezone, but going from about 3 hours late to...7 hours ahead in one try seems a little extreme.

My life just keeps coming full circle. When I was little, I was petrified of the water. My first summer job was as a lifeguard/swim instructor. When I was little, I was also afraid of needles. Not phobic, but I think I had to be restrained a few times when I was 3 and 4. Today, I learned how to give myself my own injections for a medication I am starting, using a nice little injector tool. The exact opposite of most needles. Normally you feel them go in, then it stops hurting at all (unless they miss and have to move it). With these, you don't feel them go in (probably because you can't see it), so there is no flinching, but after about a second your body figures out that there is something sticking a cm into your belly, and lets you how displeased it is with the situation. Takes 6 to 8 seconds before you can pull it back out. For added fun, the first time I got to have it done 4 times in a row. Also loving the rain. I think we just got up to monsoon levels this morning. It was fine, then all of the sudden it really started pouring. Took about 10 seconds for my sneakers to go from mostly dry to 'standing in a foot of water'. My rain coat held out for all of a minute (It's not rubber, it was intended to repel light rain and not cook you alive if the rain stopped). Not that I actually have any particular objection to being wet in general, besides getting cold after a while. Also the dripping on everything when you enter the house until you can change your clothes. Puddles are one mess that actually bother me (probably because I grew up and also now live in a house with wooden floors).

Seems reasonable to me Obfuscator. While my parents never subscribed to spanking, I know the parents of some of my friends did, and even witnessed it a couple time (not against my friends, but their younger siblings). I don't really have anything against it myself as long as its used, like you said, to symbolise that you really messed up, rather than to put the fear of god into your child, or actually try to harm them. But that's as far as I'd ever take it. Another one I learned from the parents who did the spanking, is that you shouldn't give into temper tantrums. I'm not sure how your supposed to deal with them, since I can't actually ever remember throwing any myself (I was a big fan of sulking instead), but it looks to me like giving in just creates monsters (to put it nicely). Or little self absorbed, self centred, entitled [wagon] (to put it not so nice). They gave into their youngest daughter all the time (she was the one getting spanked), probably because she was the most annoying, whiny excuse for a person I have ever seen in my life (they moved away before I got to see her grow out of it, so I have to assume she is exactly the same, unless her peers beat it out of her). But then, even when I was 10 I could figure out she only complained so much because it eventually worked. Her parents either gave in to shut her up (most of the time) or gave her spankings.

I hugely respect Judaisim for that. I'm Christian (United Church of Canada NOT Catholic), but I'm still hugely against active recruitment. I view it as a violation of each person's right to their own beliefs. You can discuss them, you can debate them if you want, but the second you try to convert someone you are saying that your right and their wrong. And people who want to say that can all go [bleep] themselves for all I care. My faith does not require other people to believe it, nor does it dictate that anyone who doesn't follow it is damned. One of the things I love about my religion, is that it only really means anything in Canada (and Bermuda). Here, it's the second largest religion in the country, only just behind Catholicism. South of the border, or in any other country (excepting Bermuda, I think), it simply doesn't exist. Also, I tend to only get along theologically with other Protestant denominations, and worst with Catholics or any fundamentalist's. Religion is not something I would ever talk about in a situation like dinner if I didn't know where the other party(s) stood on the issue. Recipe for disaster that is. I love the thing about the 2 mile bus. I can't believe they are offering that route at all. Let the kids walk damn it. It'll be good exercise, and lord knows this continent needs all the exercise it can get. If its raining, we invented the raincoat and umbrella for a reason. Or you can just sprint. Whatever floats your boat.

I'm not exactly sure how my parents did it, but they never needed to resort to inflicting pain to make me understand why I shouldn't play on the street or why I needed to make sure the stove wasn't hot before I planted my hand on it (I feel like watching me to make sure I didn't play in the street/kitchen before I was old enough to understand the danger was part of it). Now, I was a pretty compliant child by nature. If I can understand the reasoning, I am inclined to do as I'm told, and that streak is still with me. But then you have my brother who is much more defiant than I am, and I don't think my parents ever even resorted to a single spanking, even though he was a trouble child in his early years as I understand it. Children shouldn't fear their parents, and that's all you'll ever get if you hurt them. Your supposed to be their protector. You protect them, you don't abuse them.

I have to agree on the violence thing. If you think you need to physically intimidate your own children, then I think its pretty fair to say your a terrible parent and you shouldn't be allowed near children anymore. It also makes me wonder how many people here we're beaten by their own parents, since child abuse is normally something someone learns from their own parents. The key is to realize that what they did was wrong, and try to be a better person. I've resorted to intimidation once in my life, and it was while lifeguarding. Some of the kids from the local area hopped the fence (who weren't allowed in), and I grabbed one of them. Kinda funny in retrospect, because you could see the look on their faces. The "holy shit this adult isn't afraid to touch me" moment (being a lifeguard and swim instructor, you kinda need to know the laws on touching other people, since its part of your job). I didn't hurt them or anything (partly because that's illegal), just opened the door and threw them out. Got the standard "I'll phone the police" to which I replied "here, I'll do it for you". They stopped bugging me after that. Then again, that's kind of a special circumstance for me. There wasn't anything else I could actually do that didn't involve me restraining them, and I am pretty sure they were getting beaten by their parents already (or at least super neglected). They also weren't my children. But if they had been raised right I would have never thought I needed to do what I did. It's also scary how much you can enjoy having that kind of power over someone (the one I grabbed was terrified. You could see it in his eyes. I don't think an adult he didn't know had ever pinned him against a wall before). I'm not proud of what I did, and I never want to be in that situation again. It's much to satisfying, and that would be a very dangerous habbit.

It's cool if you want to be in a relationship, but not like an 'in love' bf/gf way. Something between going out and [bleep]buddies if you will. Just make sure both of you know what's going on. And your allowed to love your [bleep]buddies too. One of my friends kept having sex with his ex for months after they broke up. Actually, I think sex was pretty much all that was going on before they broke up too, but then they broke up and kinda tried to restart it, and just had sex every night instead. It just wasn't exclusive to the two of them anymore. Anyway, whatever floats your boat. If you cheat though, I think you need to break it off or come clean, so props for taking care of it. I can see not coming clean about it because of potential retribution, but honestly, you should probably think about that before you do it. If people hate you for it, its not like its anyone elses fault. "It was an accident!" "The implication being you somehow tripped and fell into her lady parts?"

Grats to the peeps getting jobs, but yeah. Work your asses off if you want those jobs once the holidays are past. Also enjoying the stories lol. I don't have enough crazy friends, I don't get normally get drunk enough to generate my own stories, and I'm pretty sure my brother must be running out (though the party with him and his friends provided me with enough hilarity to carry anyone for like a year. Best night in a long long time). My point is, I need more funny stories because I don't live in a sit comm (though honestly, there are days when I have wondered if I don't). I always considered girls claiming to lose their virginity multiple times was a bigger issue (if lying about it is an issue) then them not moving on from their first. It's pretty much attractive in guys to have experience, but if a girl has some she's a hoar. Not a huge fan of the "I'm 18 and I expect the world to bend over backwards for me" mentality. I don't think I ever went through that. I remember before I started drinking, my brother knew it was coming up (I told him about the party), and made sure to have me over for a night so that he could teach me about drinks, and let me have some practice. He used to tend bar as a summer job, and his fiancée (wife now) has plenty of experiance too. So they got me a bit tipsy then took me over to friends house (one of whom was a cop \:D/ ). It's nice to have such an awesome older brother (most of my friends don't get along with their siblings). He also used to chafer me on dates so that I didn't have to deal with the awkwardness of parents as much. Not much happened today, but me and the people I live with finally hammered out a cleaning schedule. So house is doing okay, but its mostly been a couple people doing the work which isn't right. And apparently someone keeps missing the toilet that I never use, and if they don't stop one of the other people is going to paint a target in the toilet for them to aim at.

Right there with the alcohol tasking like shit thing. I can't drink beer at all (unless I want to be so sick I need to be hospitalized of bedridden for a week), which is cool cause it tastes like ass anyway. I only like vodka, mostly because you can disguise the taste (orange juice is the best for it, but there are a lot of juices you can use if you don't make it to strong). Wine was where I started though (at the underage table at a wedding :thumbsup: ). I maintain the stuff is firewater, but it slows you down, which is good because you don't normally want to get shitfaced in the same situations where you might be having wine. And I can understand the whole history thing. I am lucky with my drinking genes. All of us are able to have a drink, forget about it the next day and not thing about it for weeks (well, I get reminded because I'm a student, but there isn't any urge). Not everyone can do that, and that's cool. On the whole taste thing though, I feel the same about coffee. I'm not going to drink it, I'm pretty sure I'd puke (not a fan of the smell either) if I tried more than a sip. Caffiene has roughly the same effect on me as the hops in beer anyway, so its not even an option (its awesome when you hate the things that make you sick). Maybe tomorrow I will do something. And here is the best quote I have ever seen on alcoholism, from a recovered alcoholic. It seems to jive nicely with my own personal observations (our family has a few, just not of direct genetic relation to me).

Whoa, what's with all the drinking haters? Sometimes its fun to have something to loosen you up. For me, I don't normally like interacting with people I don't know, or a large group (where large group is pretty much anything more than me + 3). I can do it, but its not fun and I have a tendency to go into 'background hermit' mode. Give me a couple shots of vodka and I can sit down next to someone I have never met, and strike up a nice conversation. For me, a drink just shuts off that part of the brain that's constantly afraid your going to make a fool of yourself, and lets me take some chances. I've never blacked out, got a hangover, or done anything I regretted later (so far as I know. I have lost an hour or two on a couple of occasions, and apparently once spent an hour rolling around on my computer chair at 1am). And you have to admit. Pretty much the funniest stories about anyone are stupid/crazy things they did while blitzed off their ass :thumbsup:

Played what might be my last paintball game of the season. Terrible day for it in all honesty. It was cold, super windy, and the area we used (old quarry + nearby forest) was still a bit wet. It was me and some friends, plus some people I know from university, 14 of us total, so it was a nice game. I'm a bit sore now. The guns always end up shooting a lot harder when speed isn't enforced for some reason...and the winds made long shots a lot more difficult than normal, so I think most of the hits were made under 50 ft or less (on the plus side, you could actually run while several people were shooting at you and have a few seconds before they got the aim right, which is a ton of fun). Bruises are already forming, but that's the price of some fun :thumbsup: If the weather is nice next weekend, we might suck up the cost and have another go. Maybe a night round since those are always a lot of fun.

It seems to be a problem with the system that is keeping the ad-bots in check. From the lists of worlds I have seen affected, and from what I know about the conditions on certain worlds, it seems to only be an issue on worlds with extra large populations of auto typers. I imagine they will get the kinks in their automated system sorted out fairly soon, and in the mean time, the ad bots are getting so creative its funny. At the current rate, they'll be out of advertising names (where they use their name as the web advert) inside a week easy, and I imagine a solution to the bots that spread the message over multiple accounts at once are already in the works. For the multibot spam though, they are doing it in such hi traffic areas that their messages are fragmented beyond recognition anyway. It would be nice if Jagex would officially recognize the problems the system is having though, and maybe even provide an estimate on when certain worlds will stop randomly going into qc only mode.

This makes me think back through my early years, and while some of the injustices you see as a child are actually perfectly reasonable and actually responsible behavior once your grown up, there are certain things I have seen/still see that hit me as wrong. First, I agree that children should have some sort of activity beyond school and friends. Generally this is some kind of sport. But I think its important to at least try to find a sport the child is interested in, rather than arbitrarily forcing them into one. My parents only forced me into one activity, and that was swimming. They were always totally upfront that we had a choice in all sports, except swimming, and it was because we grew up on a lake, around a small fleet of boats, and my parents didn't want their children to drown. Oddly enough, both myself and my brother grew up to be life guards and swimming instructors, despite the fact that at least I used to be terrified of the water, and I hated every second of every swimming class I ever took (and honestly, teaching wasn't a lot more fun, but it got me some nice jobs). My friends on the other hand couldn't swim worth a damn, to the point that most of them couldn't be near the lake we all lived on without their parents standing there (at their house. My parents knew we could swim and knew we weren't stupid enough to go in a boat without lifejackets). Eventually they got old enough and competent enough that they could go swimming with me at my house. My friends we're also all forced into piano lessons, they all sucked at it, and they all seemed to hate it. Eventually their parents gave up and stopped making them go. The next one is gender discrimination, and it has two parts to it. Part one is that my two best friends were male, and they both had younger sisters. I can remember many many instances where the older brothers were forced to go play outside when their younger sisters were not. This was pretty much a daily occurrence since the video games and computers were inside, and sometimes we wanted to use them (the younger sisters never did, that I know of). Yes, it was perfectly reasonable to make sure we played outside for a few hours before being allowed inside for a break. I have no issue with that. I do however still take issue that the girls were forced to play outside for maybe about 15% of the time the guys were. I figured out that wasn't fair when I was 4 years old, before I figured out it wasn't okay to invite myself over to my friends house uninvited because I wanted to play with them (I actually remember telling my parents I was going to go play at someones house, and my mother sitting me down and explaining that while I was allowed to invite other people over, it wasn't polite to show up at other peoples houses without an invitation). The other case of gender discrimination was my female friend growing up, who for a number of years wasn't allowed to have any guys at her birthday party. This would have been in the 8-10 years old range I think. On the whole, I had a lot more freedom than any of my friends. Both my parents have jobs, which led to my brother being allowed to come home alone by the time he was like 9 or 10. I would have started being the first one home when I was 8 or 9 I think. None of my friends were allowed to do that until they were 12 or 13 I think, and for the first couple years, they weren't allowed to come to my house on weekdays because my parent's weren't there. My brother also started cooking supper when he was 12 or 13, so that it would be ready by the time mom and dad got home (he enjoys it). I expect that until my children are ready to choose for themselves, I will force them to go to church much as I was, and they will do it in good clothes. I think I'll even ask my parents how to do it since they managed to get me and my brother into good Sunday clothes with minimal protest (and no tantrums) going back as far as I remember. I think it was because they did it since before either of us could remember, so we took it for granted that you got dressed up for church. We never had reason to protest, because that was how the world worked. Another one that I know was a particular issue between my parents, and the parents of my friends, was the age it was appropriate to start having a love interest. I know my parents were cool with it as young as 14 at least, though I think it was 13 (I know grade 9 for sure, but it might have been grade 8). I had my first crush, or whatever the childhood equivalent is in grade 4 (9 years old), and I saw my first bf/gf pair in grade 6. Everyone seemed to get over the idea of cooties sometime in grade 7, so grade 8 or seems about right for dating to me. Not like having sex or anything, but people that young can certainly have feelings for each other. To my view, if you discourage that, your just delaying their social skill development. The sooner they start the sooner they'll learn, and its probably not a bad idea to have a breakup when your really young when things aren't as serious as they are later on. For me, I met the first person I would date the summer before grade 9, and I started dating for real after grade 9 (my first date was the grade 9 prom, because why start off with something easy like a movie). My friends on the other hand were pretty much forbade from kissing until who knows when, not that it really stopped them. I think my parents just realized it was going to happen, so they might as well get on board and exert some control over it, rather than forbid it outright and therefore not be able to have any say.