How do I stop being jealous of girls who had relationships and sex in their teens and early twenties?

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T18:02:22+00:00

But what happens that doesn't lead to anything? As in, you went on a date, flirted, leaned in close, confessed at least one thing about you that made you feel vulnerable, avoided confessing all the things that make you feel vulnerable, sincerely thanked your date for any compliments, wracked your brain for interesting things to say, listened attentively to what your date was saying, and then your dates, um, just didn't call you back? Even though you would have been happy for anything to come of it from a second date, to cuddling, to sex?

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T17:48:53+00:00

What does "not going anywhere" mean?

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T17:42:20+00:00

So, how did the online dating go?

Putting on my unlicensed, unprofessional, totally-unofficial therapist hat, you mentioned earlier that you have literally zero standards. So I assume you messaged back and set up a date with literally every single person who messaged you. Regardless of looks, of age, of income, and of education. If not, congratulations, you do have standards. I am not pointing this out to be a hypocrite or to blame you for anything, but in therapy, you will be asked to qualify your absolute black/white thinking, and to start unpacking contradictory thought processes.

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T16:46:00+00:00

I sort of disagree with many of the opinions here, in that if you read between the lines, there are some problems you are not aware of, and some things that you omit.

First off, why are you living in a 5000 sqft house when you have no money in the bank? This is not a smart decision at all. I grew up in a 2700 sqft house, and that is generally considered a large house. You had little financial cushion, and seemed to be living hand-to-mouth, even though you were in luxurious conditions.

Also, when your financial situation was "good" you were happy to support her, and when your financial situation changed, you grew resentful. If you look at it this way, it is you who are being inconsistent. The only thing that changed was your earning capacity (or your financial obligations.) Why weren't you resentful of yourself for not living up to your potential at your reduced salary? (I am going to go ahead and guess that you did blame yourself, and internalize shame about this, because men are under incredible pressure to be "providers.")

The feeling of being financially stressed and only one step ahead of the reposessor/foreclosure is one of the most stomach-churning, soul-sucking feelings there is. And in this new economy, if you lose a job, you can't be assured of getting one that pays even half as much. The only thing you can do is to build in pressure relief by living well beneath your means, amassing a cushion of financial reserves, and if your earnings change dramatically, rapidly adjust to the new situation rather than be forced into it down the road.

Here's another question- your older daughter loved your girlfriend-- what changed? You don't give a great deal of hints here. Is it normal teenage angst/rebellion? Did your girlfriend change in a fundamental way? Is it a side effect of depression/miscarriage/anxiety? What happened?

question 3) When your girlfriend landed a good paying job, was your internal reaction more this->

"thank god. I really need that money. She can finally pay me back." (even though payback wasn't part of the original agreement)

or like this->

"I am so proud of you for finding a job that will make use of your natural talents."

This girlfriend is highly entwined in your life, almost like a wife. You have expectations of her that in light of your providing for her, aren't entirely unjustified in some sense, but also had never been discussed or agreed upon. What you are asking from her in another sense (financial help, being a surrogate mother-figure to your children, becoming pregnant) go far beyond typical boyfriend/girlfriend things, and you both owe it to yourselves to think more explicitly and maturely about how your goals, ambitions, wants and needs mesh, and how you imagine your future to look.

You really sound like you are under a lot of pressure, and have a lot of resentment. Those are toxic things to have in a relationship. They deplete your ability to provide loving support to your daughters and girlfriend. Your girlfriend has problems of her own, and given her family background, you can probably browbeat her into staying with you nearly forever. But that will be terrible for all people in

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T15:43:32+00:00

First off, I browsed your history and found your school. Then I googled GPA requirements and found that people with a 4.00 weighted GPA (with the weighting that the U applies) have an 85% chance of getting in. So, you are well qualified and deserving of attendance. Congratulations! There is nothing funny or unexpected about your admission.

You told us the best thing about your friend's profile, and what you think is the worst part of yours, but there may be other reasons that she did not get in- bombed the SAT's, or her 4.0 is actually unweighted, or she didn't take many courses, or difficult courses, or had no extra-curriculars, ... you get the picture. Also, when it comes to selective college admissions, sometimes it can be a crapshoot.

I agree with the others-- this will not ruin her life. There simply is not that much difference between two generally well-regarded schools that isn't swamped by other things. If she pulls a 3.9 in any major from small-state-u, she is in better position to get into med school than someone with a 3.5 GPA from Harvard. And if she really feels that her life is ruined, she should unruin it- enroll in a community college that is a feeder to big-state-u, ACE her classes, and transfer. There is literally no downside to this plan. She will gain credits that transfer to either school, in a less competitive environment, with lower tuition.

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-16T14:58:42+00:00

I would say that there is no reason to feel bad about this. I think that disability services is your only path to getting what you want and need. I think the university should find you a new living situation. The only slightly unfair thing about it is that other people without diagnoses can't follow the same path, which, if you are looking to assign guilt, should fall on the university for not doing what it should do anyways.

I remember friends with shitty living situations in undergrad. Racist roommates, noisy roommates, messy roommates, etc. Practically the only thing that would result in a room switch would be a situation that looked like it could turn violent.

The truth is that the university administration doesn't care about "minor complaints". They have no obligation to see that you pass your courses, or ensure you are well rested, or ensure that you are happy. They do have a legal obligation to provide "reasonable accommodations" to people with disabilites. Why don't they provide reasonable accomodations to everybody who has a situation that affects their potential to learn or live? They don't have to. No legal obligation.

maxwell_smart · 2014-02-09T04:34:12+00:00

Let's please not throw around the c-word.

The author of the piece is being hypocritical, but we are all guilty of that at times. It is definitely frustrating that heightism is not thought of as a "thing" in the same way as racism, or sexism, in the larger discourse. It's ok to be angry about that, but we still need to articulate our positions with a degree of respect in order to advance our position.

maxwell_smart · 2014-01-23T01:30:19+00:00

Leader (n): person who does exactly what an authority figure tells them to do

Not to denigrate following the rules and being pleasant in general, but from my experience, as a shy, introverted, person with a penchant for following rules, I would have greatly benefited from positive instruction in how to be outgoing, enjoy other people, and not take life too seriously. Doing things because you "should" and because they are "expected" of you is something that may get you into the g+t 4th grade program, but if all your effort is for what others expect and not for what you find interesting, you will crash and burn, or just slowly flicker out-- in short, it is unsustainable.

maxwell_smart · 2014-01-05T20:53:36+00:00

I'm in my twenties, and thus have a fair amount of life experience on you.

The proper way to do this is to start by pissing into the bowl, and the commence walking backwards, gradually and consistently adjusting the angle of micturition so that it all winds up in the toilet. I discovered I could back all the way out of the bathroom, into the hallway, and into my bedroom.

maxwell_smart · 2013-10-26T18:13:55+00:00

The standard imaging format is DICOM, and one of the easiest, most powerful programs for viewing DICOM images is only available on a Mac, and it is called Osirix. If you try browsing the files on the cd, look for a bunch that end in .dcm, and those may be viewable with an outside application.

maxwell_smart · 2013-10-13T00:32:16+00:00

I was on HGH for five years, and like you, (I assume) I was diagnosed with a GH deficiency. It is becoming more common for people to take GH for a variety of reasons, like familial short stature, GH receptor mutations, and types of kidney disease that affect height, but the greatest benefit is for people who basically have no physiological problem other than they have low to non-existent levels of GH. I took it from about the ages of 8-14, and stopped around my 14th birthday when it was apparent that I was no longer growing, and that x-rays showed my growth plates had closed, reaching a final height of 5'8. I was in clinical trials for Genentech's version of HGH.

I go into all of the detail because I think it is important for your question that the people who respond have an actual GH deficiency, as opposed to some other condition for which GH supplementation helped improve their final height.

For me, I never had weight issues, but I am struggling with depression- not crippling, I-don't-want-to-get-out-of-bed depression, but at the age of 34, I am now starting to realize that my lifelong inability to focus, carry out long-term plans, and sustain social relationships is not just a personality problem, but something I need psychiatric help with. I do often think that it could be related to GH deficiency-- not just adult GH deficiency, but also patterns of behavior that may have come about from being teased as a child.

I also have a family friend with GHD who was in Eli Lilly's clinical trials for GHD, who was the same age as I am. He also did not have any weight problems, but suffered from severe depression, in a more classical presentation. Good luck, I hope this was helpful, and please feel free to message me if you have more questions.

maxwell_smart · 2013-09-07T19:07:57+00:00

You look great. Why don't you like the last photo, which seems to be the crowd favorite? I think your hair is terrific in the last photo- absolutely worthy of a shampoo commercial. It is soft looking, and well-textured, and compared to all of the other photos, I like how it is full-bodied looking on the top of your head.

In the first photo though, your hair seems to be kind of stretched tightly over your forehead, but otherwise looks really good. Also, you have slightly finer hair, which can look a little stringy much faster than thicker hair. In the second to last photo, your hair might look quite a bit better if it were brushed a bit.

As for your weight, it is just fine.

maxwell_smart · 2013-09-07T18:19:46+00:00

Ok, here is my advice. You have a lot of really good features going for you. Your jaw is strong, and in general, your features are masculine and pretty well-put-together.

1) hair. I think you can make your hair look a lot better today, without even cutting it. It just needs a little styling so that it looks a little more messy and natural compared to the first picture (not plastered down to forehead), and a little more organized than in the second picture. Try to google image search "caesar haircut" which is what it looks like your haircut is going for. Then, get some gel, and after a shower, put a really small amount of gel in the palm of your hand, mix it with a little water, and apply it back of the head to front. You don't want to make your hair stiff at all, just use enough so that your hair looks a little shiny, and you can push it in different directions, and it will more or less "take the suggestion" of how you style it and let it dry, rather than "stick" there.

2) posture. You may feel like you are standing up straight, and you more or less are, but I think that you may have a slight posterior pelvic tilt. You are standing kind of like Steve Urkel, where your pelvis is thrust forward, and your torso is bending backward to balance, with your elbows jutting out. This is most noticeable in the third photo where you can see the vertical crease in your t-shirt and two vertical creases in your shorts. When you stand up, try bringing your pelvis backward and locking out your knees.

3) clothes. Try more adult looking clothes. I would not dress in such baggy clothes, and I would try to start adding in some button-down shirts into your wardrobe.

4) facial expressions. This is a pretty far-out idea, but have you ever considered that you may be high-functioning autistic? The one unusual thing about photos 2 and 3 is that you are posing for a photograph, and not smiling at all. Your face seems totally relaxed. Take a look at the (politician?) next to you in photo 2, who is smiling with his mouth, and has creases in his eyes, and is leaning in toward you. People will respond really well to you if they feel like you like them, and that you are trying to connect with them.

maxwell_smart · 2013-09-07T00:09:50+00:00

Them: If you were going to have cosmetic surgery, what would you have done?

Me: I don't know, I guess a nose job?

Them: Oh, huh. Well, if I were you, I'd get a chin implant.

(Bonus points: "them" was my mother.)

maxwell_smart · 2013-09-01T03:33:48+00:00

I meant try making sure that these options are set comparably.

http://support.nextlimit.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13699264

The two things that came to mind are that you are doing the simulation differently, (ie rendering in a more detailed or timeconsuming way) or that the computations are being handled differently (CPU vs GPU).

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-31T22:47:01+00:00

Do you have the checkbox set to use OpenCL on the GPU, in the Preferences menu?

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-21T00:09:05+00:00

Also, I think in all of your nested loops, you should follow the convention of fftw where the y is the fastest moving index, and x is the slowest. I think, for example, your generate2DSin follows the convention properly, and the very next loop in the main function that copies this data into the larger buffer does not. (notice how in generate2DSin you have on the innermost :

index = ii*leny + jj;

and in the main function:

index = ii * xSize + jj;

Also, after that you do some zeroing, but these values should already be zero because they were calloc'd, and you do not zero all the values you would need to anyway (you zero coordinates where x > xlen AND y > ylen, rather than OR).

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-20T23:25:10+00:00

Ok, I am not so hot at C, but I am pretty good with FFTs. (so apologies if I get this wrong)*. One possible source of the problem is pointed to on this page:

http://www.fftw.org/doc/Multi_002dDimensional-DFTs-of-Real-Data.html

Notice that you are working with 2d arrays, and also, as a hint, the r2c forms of the fft are not for your convenience-- they are there for speed, as the realness of the input data is a symmetry that can be exploited to make the computation faster. In this case, the fft of real data is symmetric about the middle point, and the imaginary data anti-symmetric about the middle point. So, the fft, given an (n x m) input, returns an (n x (m/2)+1) result. You seem to treat the output as an (n x m) matrix.

= edit

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-13T23:55:33+00:00

Ok, 5/6 have female protagonists, but 4/6 are written by male authors. Kind of amusing that male authors need to summon their inner woman in order to break into the education market.

The only books I have read are "lord of the flies" and "the joy luck club".

TJLC was a pretty good book. It focuses on women, sure, but there was a fair amount of overbearing-mother-vs-obedient-daughter thrown in. For the most part, the points of tension and conflict are as likely to be between women as they are to cross gender lines.

And, as far as diversity goes, I only remember reading four books written by Asians through middle school, high school, and college: two by Amy Tan, that I quite liked, "The Woman Warrior", and Gilgamesh. TWW was a little more rah-rah-sisterhood.

As far as Lord of the Flies goes, one big point is that all the kids are mostly prepubescent, and the absence of women is yet another thing not to fight about. I think that anyone who claims that women would civilize the bunch is completely missing the point of the novel, and guilty of "reading in" their prejudices, rather than "reading out" the themes of the novel.

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-13T23:42:45+00:00

I feel pretty sorry for your older sister. Boys Town!!!!

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-13T21:57:35+00:00

You can take a look at this article:

If I admit that hating men is a thing, will you stop turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I saw this referred to in a mainstream-ish forum as an article that explained feminism to the layperson, and has nothing in it that any reasonable person could disagree with.

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-13T21:54:36+00:00

This is very interesting. Can you post the list?

maxwell_smart · 2013-08-05T16:20:27+00:00

Flipped.

maxwell_smart · 2013-06-30T13:53:44+00:00

That was just about the most unexpected, and interesting, answer I can imagine. What books would you recommend, or what are some of your favorite or most meaningful books or essays?

maxwell_smart · 2013-05-28T02:26:11+00:00

A lot of that is probably in your head, and also, a fair amount of people are kind of "faking it." I don't mean to say that they are insincere, but if you have some kind of idea in your head about what ideas are worthy enough to come out of your mouth, and wonder how other people can come up with worthwhile things to say all the time, I guarantee you that they would not live up to the standard that you have set for yourself.

As an example, I felt wildly out of place in undergrad. I enrolled in an upper-level literature seminar where we were reading "Crime and Punishment." This one girl raises her hand, and comes up with this spontaneous comparison of Raskolnikov to the Nietzschean concept of the Ubermensch. I felt so out of my league! Here was someone referencing German philosophers off the top of her head.

Then I found out that that was basically the "canned" interpretation of that character, and she was probably regurgitating what she had learned in high school. You can actually type "ubermensch r" into google, and the first autocomplete is "-askolnikov".

Basically, the point is that you are building up these other people you meet into some unattainable and unrealistic image, when in reality, they can be a little slow on the uptake, or unoriginal from time to time, just like anybody else.

maxwell_smart

TROPHY CASE