24 posts tagged “qotd”
If money were no object, which five luxury items would you rush right out and buy?
Submitted by lorilyn.
Oh well this should be relativelly easy.
A medium sized HD LCD TV. I would guess around 37" would do. Anything bigger would dwarf my lounge and anything smaller woudln't really be a big screen. I don't want one with any fancy functionality built in, just the highest possible resolution and awesome picture quality.
A 24" iMac for my study, I played with one a while ago and it was just awesome, big screen fast processor, big hard drive and plenty of RAM. I can watch movies in the study as well as get work done, it is the prefect, not too noisy work machine. I though about putting a big Mac Pro here but I am not sure I like desktop machines anymore. But if I went that route an 8-core mac pro with a zillion GB of RAM and even more hard drive space and a 30" LCD screen.
A 15" Macbook Pro fully loaded. I need a laptop for the road and this is the best thing on the market by far.
An Apple TV. This is a thing of simplicity and beauty, who could not want it.
A Canon 30D Digital SLR and accessories. This would have to include flashes and lenses. I love my photography and having some kick ass kit would really let me focus on this.
So what we have ascertained is that if Ben went shopping with lots of money Apple would do very well out of the deal. If I got to add one thing more to the list and this may even supplant the Apple TV and that would be an Audi RS4 Avant. I love cars that look normal and go fast and this is the ultimate one of those.
Sorry if this is unimaginative or badly composed but I am writing while cooking supper so I have an excuse.
In your ultimate dream house, what does your favorite room look like?
I could answer this question any number of ways, I could go for the kitchen all hi-tech and shiny or the lounge with comfy couches and a kick ass TV, but I think that I would have to go with the study.
This would be a big room, with a desk at one end of the room and floor to ceiling windows, with french doors in the middle leading out onto the garden, at the other end of the room. The desk would be a cherry wood colour with a large leather chair behind it. On all the walls there are floor to ceiling bookcases almost all full of books with a section dedicated to first editions and a pile of old leather bound old classics just to add some class to the room.
The room has to be north facing (this is the southern hemisphere, geographically dsadvataged readers can reverse that) so that it get sun all day in winter and morning and evening sun in summer. It also needs to be long enough that the sun doesn't touch the desk at any time of the year.
At the sunny end of the room there needs to be a massive armchair, the most comfortable ever constructed, which can be used for reading on, and for taking a nap whenever the desire occurs. Basically this is a room where serious work can be done in comfort, and where naps can be taken with no chance of interuption.
You've found the fabled pot o' gold. How will you spend it?
Submitted by Red Pen.
Every time the Lottery come round and hit ridiculous numbers like R35 million I start to plot what I would do with an obscene amount of money and the truth is that I am not sure that I even want to be super rich.
I think we need to struggle through life to appreciate it, finding the pot of gold is just too easy for us to appreciate the value of money.
this is not to say that I wouldn't like to be comfortably well off, I have an insane lust for travel and gadgets and both would be well satiated by a decent amount of moola.
But in the spirit of the QoD I will list my current lust items:
1. Aston Martin (anyone will do)
2. House with a killer view
3. Home cinema system with a house-wide content distribution system
4. Great digital SLR and appropriate extras
I'm sure I could think of more if I had the inclination.
And HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY TO EVERYONE.
What's one of your favorite quotes?
Submitted by Georgie-boy.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker
I have always been a big fan of Dorothy Parker, a lady born before her time with a wit sharper than most razors. I first encountered her in Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle and reading some of her poems and understanding a bit about the sadness that was her life.
I Appreciate a good insult and a witty comeback and she was the queen of the witty comeback, I only wish I could be half as good at it as she was.
What do you do to ensure you get a good night's sleep?
Submitted by Jacob's Ladder.
I normally don't have a problem going to sleep, I can lie down, close my eyes and by the time my head hits the pillow I am off to dreamland. I know insomniacs everywhere will hate me for that, but it is one of the benefits from suffering from mild narcolepsy.
There are a couple of things that keep me awake at night and ensure that I don't get a good night's sleep, the first and most serious being having to get up early the next morning. I toss and turn the whole night because I have to catch a plane or something equally time sensitive. While I would normally sleep through I wake up almost every hour to check the time, it is a real pain. The other thing that disturbs my sleep is too much gaming, if I spend too much time playing any specific computer game I end up dreaming about the game and that is not fun. I wake up in the middle of the night wanting to get up and play more, but I know that if I do that I will be a zombie for the whole of the next day and that is no fun at all.
What's one thing you regret not doing?
Submitted by Mr. Nice.
When I had just finished varsity, being in possession of a British passport, I could have gone over the UK and spent some time doing odd jobs and generally bumming around, but because I was in a relationship at the time I chose to find a job and get on with my, admittedly short-lived, teaching career.
Looking back I really should have taken the time to enjoy life and see a bit of the world at my own pace. Nowadays I am relegated to catching glimpses of Europe on press trips, which is often an unsatisfying experience.
Have you ever Googled your own name? How did you feel about the results?
Submitted by elen.
Being a journalist you expect to get hits back when you Google your name. I did find one interesting entry for an e-bay auction for this book:
Of course being an IT journalist this could equally apply to what I write nowadays. Very funny nonetheless.
What's your favorite heartbreak song?
Submitted by esta86.
The Romeo and Juliet story of Spandau Ballet's "Through the barricades" always makes me feel sad. While it talks about people forging relationships across divides I can't help but feel that these things end badly.
Shakespeare didn't write Romeo and Juliet because star-crossed lovers normally work out, he wrote it because it starts of as this exciting and dangerous and hopelessly romantic and ends with someone getting mowed down in a gang-related shooting.
I guess the last few lines really sum it up "And I know what they're saying as our hearts go to their graves"
And isn't that the definition of a heartbreak song?
Mother doesn't know where love has gone
She says it must be youth
That keeps us feeling strong
See it in her face, thats turned to ice
And when she smiles she shows
The lines of sacrifice
And now I know what they're saying
When the sun begins to fade
And we made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades
Father made my history
He fought for what he thought
Would set us somehow free
He taught me what to say in school
I learned off by heart
But now thats torn in two
And now I know what they're saying
In the music of the parade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades
Born on different sides of life
We feel the same
And feel all of this strife
So come to me when I'm asleep
Well cross the line
And dance upon the street
And now I know what they're saying
When the drums begin to fade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades
Oh, turn around and I'll be there
Theres a scar through my heart
But I'll bare it again
I thought? we were the human race
But we were just another border-line-case
And the stars reach down and tell us
That theres always one escape
I don't know where love has gone
And in this trouble land
Desperation keep us strong
Friday's child is full of soul
With nothing left to lose
Theres everything to go
And now I know what they're are saying
Its a terrible beauty we've made
So we make our love on? wasteland
And through the barricades
Now I know what they're are saying
As hearts go to their graves
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.
What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.
I think I will start this one with an oldie: Tie Fighter. This was the first game I played on a decent computer and scarily enough I played the whole game the first time with no sound. And it was a hell of a lot of fun even in complete silence. But they say in space no-one can hear you scream. I have yet to find a space combat sim that matches this one in terms of sheer fun to play all the successors just so complex that they were not fun and I spent all my time getting blown away
Number 2 on my list has got to be the original Command and Conquer. I played this on the first computer I owned myself and was pretty much addicted to it. I even missed a date because of it, I was so engrossed in the game that I completely lost track of time and by the time I realised the time she was long gone. Needless to say that I didn't see her again.
Number 3 is another classic Duke Nukem 3D. I remember downloading the demo of this over my, highly speedy dial-up line, and paying my father back for the cost of the call. The sense of humour the game exuded made it worth every cent I spent on it. Also it set me firmly on a path of loving first person shooters and probably ensured that I have remained a PC gamer going forward.
Number 4 is Half-Life 2. Chosen over the original because the level of care and attention that the put into the sequel is evident through the whole game and even the difficult parts of the game don't feel impossible which is one of the biggest failures of many games (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter being a case in point).
HL2 is both fun and challenging and clearly deserving of a position on my top 5.
This is not a comprehensive list, I left off games like Ghost Recon and Tetris and Warcraft 3 and Thief and Splinter Cell and the list goes on, but you wanted five so here they are.
What's your method for calculating a tip?
I base my tips on the flare gun system. If I need to shoot the waiter in the back with a flare gun to get their attention, especially at the end of a meal, then I am much less likely to give them a good tip. In fact I often feel like writing: "Tip for the Day: Get a job where you don't have to interact with people!"
I understand that in the US the standard tip is something like 18% but down here in SA we work on a much simpler 10%.
This is the basis for all my calculations, if the service is particularly good then it could go as high as 20% but if the service is junk then it drops below the 10% mark. I am, however, likely to err on the generous side as a whole because the service industry is an unforgiving job and I would never want to do it.
But I get very frustrated with slack service and especially when the creatures serving me park off at the counter and discuss their lives while you gesticulate wildly and the time for the movie rapidly approaches. At that point I am tempted to put down the exact amount of cash and head for the hills.
In Barcelona last week, the people were either very greedy or very stupid. I had a meal which cost me €10 and so I give her a €20 note because I have no small change. Well, I get back another €10 note and so I got up and left. Sad because I really thought she deserved a tip, but a bit of intuition would be appreciated.
Anyway I was on a kilojoule restricted budget so tips were the last of my worries.
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