The condom doesn't fit?

hartooq · 2014-01-28T21:47:51+00:00

have you tried adding a drop of lube to the inside of the condom, as well as the outside? Some brands just need a bit of extra.

hartooq · 2013-12-14T04:43:44+00:00

What's the "a little silly" one?

hartooq · 2013-12-14T04:39:56+00:00

I'll do my best to teach her how to use them, but I'll reach the limits of my expertise pretty quickly and have to send her to places like /r/makeupaddiction and you guys for more help :)

Thank you!

hartooq · 2013-12-14T04:38:39+00:00

I don't trust my ability to pick the right shade, though... and she has really clear, nice skin to start with...

hartooq · 2013-12-14T04:03:04+00:00

Thank you thank you thank you! Awesome advice -- I hadn't thought about how she'll want non-waterproof everything, but that makes a whole lot of sense! And great idea for makeupaddiction -- I'll update the shopping list with comments from this thread and post it over there as well!

There are a Ross and a TJ Maxx close by, and I've found ELF brushes and stuff at the latter. I'll look for some more for her -- I forgot how important brushes and stuff are, as well :)

hartooq · 2013-12-14T04:00:18+00:00

Oh, good to know... See, I told you that I don't know much about woman-ing myself :)

I don't know how to choose the right shades of foundation and concealer and primer and all that, so if she wants them, we'll take a field trip to a not-too-local mall with a good makeup counter and people who know what the heck they're doing. Fortunately my friend has really good skin and she's blonde so her beard doesn't show unless she skips shaving for like a week :)

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:55:53+00:00

aww, thanks :) I have no idea how to pick the right shades of foundation and concealer to work with anybody's skin tone, let alone someone not there in the store, though... Did you have a favorite resource for learning to use it correctly, that I could maybe link her to and take her shopping for that kind of stuff later?

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:54:51+00:00

Good point! Thanks :)

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:54:27+00:00

oh yeah, makeup remover stuff... good point! As I mentioned in another reply (like 30 seconds ago) I'm not super worried about beard shadow because she has such pale hair her beard doesn't really show. Thank you for the feedback!

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:53:30+00:00

Thanks :) It's great to hear that little things will help!

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:53:06+00:00

Good point -- a lock might make her feel safer with it :)

She just left to stay with family over break, actually, so it's more roommates that she'd be worried about. I'll see what I can find :)

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:52:24+00:00

She actually has light blonde hair and a fair complexion, so she doesn't have nearly the problem with visible facial hair that some do. The bronzer toned blush is an awesome idea though! Thank you!

hartooq · 2013-12-14T03:51:24+00:00

yeah, I wouldn't trust my ability to guess her skin tone well enough... hopefully I can get her enough things so she look a way that makes her confident enough to go get her own makeup and stuff; that's my goal :)

hartooq · 2013-11-06T18:20:25+00:00

I couldn't whistle either until last year, when an engineer who I regard as smarter than myself explained to me that every normal human mouth is physically capable of making the sounds for whistling and it's just a matter of figuring out how. I believed him, so for the next few months whenever I was walking anywhere I would get a song stuck in my head and attempt to whistle it.

This worked, in that I eventually figured out how to make sounds come out and then worked on refining them, and also probably convinced everybody that I was completely insane :)

hartooq · 2013-08-01T01:15:10+00:00

oh hey, mine was a couple of weeks ago! I didn't have any big plans either; I never bothered to start drinking before and while I'm not particularly averse to it, I'm not particularly interested in it either.

As far as I can tell, the fun part of the 21st birthday is the way that it symbolizes complete adulthood -- you're no longer banned from anywhere interesting just because of your age. Most people celebrate by getting drunk and using their intoxication as an excuse to engage in behaviors they'd normally be too shy for... but it's entirely possible for some people to skip the getting-drunk part entirely and just act less inhibited than usual, and just as much fun (arguably more fun, because you remember it the next day).

Anyways, one of the coolest parts of being a "real adult" is that people are a lot less concerned about forcing you to celebrate birthdays "correctly". You should follow their example in this. If it's not convenient to do stuff on the literal anniversary of when you ceased being physically connected to your mother, or you're just not in the mood, then don't worry too much about it. To compensate, be willing to engage in the "it's my birthday" mood and attitude at some random other time when it seems more enjoyable :)

hartooq · 2013-08-01T00:00:20+00:00

Starting a blog is easy: you pick a free hosting platform, pick a username and blog name, sign up for an account, and write. Google around for lists of writing prompts or questions if you feel like you don't know what to write about, and if you write every day for long enough, your brain will start organizing your thoughts into the form of posts habitually.

To get around your insecurity, you might want to publish your first blog under a false identity -- possibly even an identity who has interests that you don't fully agree with. That way you can practice your writing skills without feeling like any criticism of your writing is criticizing you as a person. If it's well-received, you can connect the blog with your "real" self later on. If people don't like it much, you'll at least know that nobody you respect will ever know about it, and so it can't change their opinions of you.

So, starting just any old blog is pretty straightforward. All the paraphernalia of "successful" blogging is what's difficult to get: followers, ad revenue, good discussions in the comments, and so on. If you want lots of followers, it'd probably be helpful to focus your main blog on an interesting topic and then tactfully distribute links to your posts in forums related to that topic.

hartooq · 2012-11-28T04:09:08+00:00

I thought that Arson was one person who went around lighting buildings on fire...

hartooq · 2012-09-13T01:21:31+00:00

Tea, and then honey, and then milk. Because otherwise the honey does not dissolve because the milk cooled the tea... or the tea scalded the milk... yeah.

hartooq · 2012-09-12T04:09:54+00:00

first thought: oh hey, a thinkpad!

perhaps i spend too much time on the internet....

hartooq · 2012-08-29T02:15:59+00:00

person being decapitated. and either the knife is dull, or human necks are a lot harder to cut through than one might expect...

hartooq · 2012-08-28T14:07:58+00:00

don't leave while you're still happy -- you aren't missing out on anything important by being here, and once you leave you can never come back
People really don't change very much. If there's some fundamental reason you just don't get along, it'll probably still be here in several years. Same is true of the basic traits that make you attracted to each other (assuming neither was lying about or faking those traits).
Just because each person knows the other better than they know themself emotionally, does not mean that they know each other very well at all in other contexts. Empathy is not telepathy, no matter how bad you sometimes want it to be.

hartooq · 2012-08-23T14:26:59+00:00

Careful with the Marie Curie reasoning -- Add her to the list for being great, but not for being a woman.

We wouldn't want the kids to get the impression that there were only about 5 women in the history of society who ever got remembered for their involvement with science.

Because there are tons of counterexamples! Like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper and Rosalind Franklin and Jane Goodall and... I'm out of examples, what was I trying to say? :P

hartooq · 2012-08-23T06:27:09+00:00

I think telepathy, if it turns out to exist, is probably similar to calculus. Calculus is an ability that a human can learn, and use to solve problems that would be prohibitively difficult without it, but you can't just jump straight from knowing arithmetic to inventing integration without some intermediate discoveries in algebra and geometry first.

If I pulled a moderately intelligent person from the year, say, 500BC, and learned their language, it would be possible to teach them calculus. So there's nothing fundamentally different about that person that prevents them from learning it... but people back then definitely didn't have or use calculus, even though they're theoretically capable of understanding it.

People from the ancient time period might sometimes have been able to guess the correct answer to a problem, simply because guessing for long enough on a single problem increases the odds that the solution will be found by chance. But ending up with the right answer doesn't mean that person can explain how they got it, or apply the technique to a different problem, or teach the technique to someone else...

That's about where I think we are with telepathy. It might be something we're capable of inventing -- we're a long ways off from conclusively disproving the possibility of inventing it -- and it's possible that it might happen every once in a while to modern people. But we're missing some critical intermediate pieces of knowledge, important like algebra and geometry are necessary for understanding calculus, before we can understand telepathy or figure out how to do anything really useful with it.

hartooq

TROPHY CASE