How useful is a personality test?

I found one via Triangulations I hadn’t heard of: O.C.E.A.N so obviously I had to give it a shot. I’m sure I answered honestly, but still was bummed over results.

And I admit right now I altered the colour of this to be a lot more sunny than the original pea soup colour existing on site.

So, to define my results:

Openness to Experience/Intellect: High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.

You typically don’t seek out new experiences. (Your percentile: 59)

Well, I’m working on that at least. That’s part of what the whole Freethinkers thing is about. Get out, do something different and meet new people for a change. My rut is so deep I can barely see over it.

Conscientiousness: High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent.

You tend to do things somewhat haphazardly. (Your percentile: 35)

Yeah, I’ll buy that. I’d prove it with photos of my level of apartment cleanliness but why embarrass myself. I think it comes down to priorities and I don’t see housecleaning as one of them. I could take a lot more care with the stickers I put on books at work and measure just so and carefully apply tape but I have so much to do it’d be a waste of my day to be that focused on identical tape strips and level application. I need to be quick, efficient, and accurate but perfectionism is not required. I don’t tend to be negligent or late, though. And if I say I’ll do something, I’ll follow through.

Extraversion: High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet.

You tend to shy away from social situations. (Your percentile: 27)

And again, I’m working on it. I do spend too much time alone. Growing up most of my social stuff was with family and cousins will put up with a lot more weirdness than kids at school might. And I was a weird bird back then and shy about getting mocked by people whose opinions “mattered” to me in some way. Silly now. I should have just done what I liked instead of worrying about how much I’d be teased over the actors I liked (i.e. Wil Wheaton) or shows I watched (Fraggle Rock).

Agreeableness: High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous.

You find it easy to express irritation with others. (Your percentile: 38)

This is the one that bugs me, but more because it’s true, I suppose. But I am good natured and courteous and I do have sympathy and some capacity of forgiveness. Just not enough, apparently. I can also choose to look at this as a good trait, at least in terms of not being willing to take shit from people and call it jam. If I’m bothered, there might be a real reason for it. It won’t be an overreaction every single time. Not by a long shot. And not every thing that happens in a day is going to cause me irritation. I’d get nothing accomplished if I groused about everything to everyone. Some things aren’t worth making a case over and can be dropped without a feather out of place.

Neuroticism: High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy.

You are generally relaxed. (Your percentile: 37)

In this case a low score seems to be good. Awesome. It ties into the previous a bit, too. I could freak out over all the unknowns and unlikes and unappreciateds but why? It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make anything better. All it does is eat up time better spent working and it ruins the time I set aside for fun.

Someone else do this test and let me know how it goes. Is it accurate, or do you feel it misrepresents what or who you are? How does it relate to any other tests you’ve tried? I don’t remember what I scored last time I played with the Myers-Briggs. INFJ, ISTP? I’ve been both at different times of my life. Maybe now I’d get something else. Thoughts?

Whirlwind trips and consumer quips

The folks showed up last evening with their PC tower along for the ride. I unplugged my machine and set up theirs to see what kind of error messages they were getting that had Mom in enough of a panic to drive three hours on a whim. I worried a trojan had gotten a hold of their machine but all it seemed to need was an updated version of Avast. I also installed and ran Spybot for kicks. If it turns out to need something else, it can wait until Christmas, hopefully.

They’ve recently signed up with Xplornet for rural high speed internet and so far they’re more than unhappy with it. They’ve signed up for Sasktel’s 1.0 package advertising a download speed of “up to” 1.0 Mbps and upload speed “up to” 128kbps. An asterisk is included on Explornet’s site about this.

Actual speed online may vary with your technical configuration, Internet traffic, server or other factors. When compared to a standard dial-up modem speed of 40 kbps. 1 Limited time offer. Click on the desired package for more information.

Who ever asks about other factors?

Who’s heard of a Fair Access Policy? I sure hadn’t. I can’t recall if the folks ever mentioned a Fair Access Policy, either. If they were told about it, maybe they didn’t understand what it was and had I known how it worked yesterday, I could have installed a monitor on their machine so they could watch how much bandwidth they use in day. All Xplornet gives them per day for their 1.0 connection is 200 MB. Dialing in, it may have taken 16 hours or something to get close to that (if my math is accurate. I’m willing to assume it’s not). If Mom’s burning through it in three hours, no wonder she’s freaking out. And apparently they only have two speeds; cranked or snail. I don’t know if anyone told them what “bandwidth” means, either, and I know my folks would have been too embarrassed to ask. Even I had to look it up so I could explain it for them in an email.

But still, if people don’t know they’re responsible for monitoring their bandwidth use and nobody bothers to suggest they have to, then no wonder people are surprised when Xplornet throttles them once they go over this allotted daily allowance. And it could be a day, a few days, or even a week before they get another speed boost, depending on how many subscribers want their turn.

Now I’m wishing I’d found this stuff while I had the computer in front of me. I could have installed a monitor for them. This from Xplornet’s legal :

To ensure fair access for all Xplornet subscribers, Xplornet maintains a running average fair access policy. Fair access establishes an equitable balance in Internet access across all broadband services by service plan for all Xplornet customers regardless of their frequency of use or volume of traffic. To ensure this equity, customers may experience some temporary throughput limitations.

How can a company advertise high speed without advertising how they plan to dole it out? They sell their image as if users will get high speed any time, all the time. Instead it turns out to be akin to 20 people under one blanket but all trying to use the same pillow. Why yes, you can use the pillow, but you can only use it for 20 minutes and you won’t have it again for a week… I don’t know about you, but I call rip off. Considering the equipment costs over $200 plus a per month fee, there is a valid assumption that you’ll get your money’s worth each day.

Xplornet Internet access is not guaranteed. This policy applies to all service plans including “Unlimited” plans where customers’ use of the Service is not limited to a specific number of hours per month. Xplornet indicates that approximately 5% of subscribers are responsible for a disproportionate share – often as much as half – of the total Xplornet service traffic.

5% might be a low estimate if they all play with Facebook as much as my mother does. I’ve just discovered that they offer a lite version which might help matters a little.

<blockquote?Unfortunately, many of those subscribers are not using Xplornet for its intended purpose.

Intended purpose being what, web searching via Lynx so you never have to waste bandwidth getting images? Checking email once a month? What? The guys who set up my folks never even set up a mail account program like Eudora or Thunderbird that would only need bandwidth for sending and receiving because Xplornet accounts are entirely web based through Google Apps. How much bandwidth will that hog, I wonder?

Sasktel’s FAQ about this is as expected.

How reliable is the SaskTel Satellite High Speed Internet powered by Xplornet?
Although there can be minor interruptions of satellite service during severe weather patterns, the latest satellite technology has proven to be very resilent [sic] in our Canadian weather. Any type of satellite service disruptions can be typically measured in a collection of minutes throughout one year. Satellite service is recommended for users active in internet usage for: e-mailing, research and surfing, banking, chatting, photo sharing, uploads, blogging, and not typically recommended for certain quick response or real time on-line gaming.

I think service disruption will account for a lot of minutes in a month, let alone a year. But back to Xplornet:

To ensure that all Xplornet subscribers have fair and equitable access to the benefits of the Service, Xplornet has enacted a Fair Access Policy (FAP) to prevent abusive consumption of bandwidth by a handful of users.

The Fair Access Policy (FAP) is straightforward. Based on an analysis of usage data, Xplornet has established a download data usage threshold well above the maximum typical usage rates. When a customer exhibits patterns of system usage, which exceed that threshold for an extended period of time, the FAP may temporarily limit that subscriber’s throughput to ensure the integrity of the system for all subscribers.

The Fair Access stuff is hidden under a little grey link labeled “Legal” that’s all the way down at the bottom of their pages and not that obvious. Obviously they want to sell this service to people who not only don’t read the fine print, but don’t notice there’s any to be read.

I can see why they’d put this into play, obviously. I’m not arguing against the need for it. What it needs to be is visible and out there, not left to caveat emptor. What they should be forced to do is print average expected usage so a person knows that up front. Don’t advertise the “Up to” all the time if 95% of the time it’s down to 50kbps or worse. There should be more a lot more truth in their advertising.

The best laid plans of minions and…

So my mother called work before lunch today in a panic about their computer and has insisted they need to come all the way over here and drag me all the way back to their place (nearly 3 hours both ways) to check their virus checker. I told the girls at work and one of them suggested I call back and have the folks at least bring the machine with them. Maybe I can fix it here instead.

Such a smart idea, no wonder we didn’t come up with it ourselves. So, the folks will be on their way now, I suppose, dragging the tower along for the ride. It’ll be sad if it turns out to be a problem solveable in 5 minutes but who knows. Computers do odd things and they’ve had more than their fair share of issues with theirs.

This quiz claims I’m internetly younger than I really am.

For kicks I took an Internet Age quiz. Results:

Internet Age: 126.4 Internet years (*)
Internet Birthday: 4 September 2001

The asterisk is to let quiztakers know that internet time passes differently than real time, a fact I can attest to. Anyway, my birthday is all wrong here.

My first internet forays occurred in my first class on the University of Regina campus back in 1993. I had a course where I was required to email reports and assignments to my prof. It was on the now defunct MAIL> style setup that predated PINE. It had no way to inform you if your messages were received or just dropped into the ether. It was a pain in the ass and involved daily prayer to the internet gods that the stuff got to where it was going. I didn’t care for computers at the time and not just because of traumatic LOGO experiences years earlier.

In the fall semester of 1994, though, one of my friends was friends with a guy who was into mushes and moos. Another friend and I got in the habit of joining her in the computer lab those evenings just so we could see what the hell she was doing. I didn’t care for the gaming so Tankgirl showed me what Surfers was like and addiction to spodding fully set in.

It’s funny how I actually remember this part. She started out by chatting with a guy going by the name of Cunning. We found out some information about him that way and then she showed me how to log on and as Meerclar I started chatting with him, too. We didn’t tell him we knew each other so when I started performing a bit of “psychic” shit, he was totally taken in. I let him in on the gag soon after though. We were net-friends for several years before we lost touch and now I wish I could remember his real name. He’s probably on Facebook. My mother’s on Facebook.

I still spod on occasion but never to the extent I did back then. A couple hours and I’m good for a while. I don’t have close friends in EW-Too/Playground land anymore. There’s a lot more choice for communication now. I never did like browser-based chat but I had a couple ICQ numbers, tried IRC briefly and some IM but not often enough to make a habit of it.

I have one friend who met her husband in a chat room (9 years ago!), and another who found hers (four years ago?) via Instant Messenger but I’ve never had that kind of luck.

I could add more on this topic but you get the drift. I’ve been out and around for a while. I survived every encounter with the Lag Beast, no matter how heavy he stomped on my ‘net connections. I made friends I keep up with even though we’ve never met in person. And long ridiculous emails to far away love interests have got to be long deleted and disassembled by now so I rest comfortably knowing the Wayback Machine can never find them.

New flickr additions

It was so nice out yesterday I decided it was high time to take my camera for a walk. I might do that again this afternoon, too. I wound up not getting many decent shots. I liked this one though.

Check what else I’ve got there.

Forgive me Bloggers for I have sinned…

I’m a widget idjet and I think I had to cheat to get my new Canadian Bloggers link functional but at least I had an example, unlike when I was trying to get the Atheist Blogroll one to work. That was a silly pain, I’m embarrassed to admit. But who wants to ask for help when they can flounder around in the ocean of perplexity? Not me, I guess. Hmm. Ocean of Perplexity. If I ever assemble a book of poems, that should be the title.

Boasting a little pre-success

The province is gearing up for a whole new library system. The new format for the library catalogue comes online at the start of December in some parts of Saskatchewan (new library cards will be necessary) but cataloguers and aquisitions and my part of the job (processing/materials linking) are getting something of a head start now.

Ideally, we’ll have templates set up for many of the things we’d be doing every day, but even if not, I have at least found a workable solution to a little problem I was going to face.

With our old setup, I could link multiple copies of a book to the catalogue record quite quickly. A few item specific tweaks may have been necessary for the first copy (price, volume, requestable or not) but after the first item, all I had to do was zap a barcode and key in what library would own it, then zap and key and zap and key until I’d done all forty copies in less than five minutes. Easy peasy.

Prior to today, it was looking like I’d have to tweak an item in every necessary way, add the call number, zap the barcode and save that record before starting from scratch with the next. Time consuming is the politest way to describe that nonsense. But, I found what might be an easier shortcut where I can choose a field and copy/paste the info down from item #1 to #45 and then switch fields and do the same routine. Not ideal, but certainly better than the horrible chore I was anticipating.

Obviously Millennium is designed for a radically different workflow than what our library does. It appears to be set up so the catalogue work (including the location info and barcode linking) could be accomplished before any labels are printed for those materials. Linking is the last step we do here before we send the stuff out.

The “automatic label” making seemed like a great idea when we first heard we’d be switching, but now it looks like I’ll have to do them all with Word like before anyway. Millennium is not designed to print 50 spine labels on an Avery sheet like we do. It’s built for universities and other setups that use the Library of Congress call numbering system instead of the Dewey, and will also print labels to stick on cards/pockets like back in the day when people physically stamped books when lending them out. How many libraries still do that? Seems like such an archaic thing now.

But enough job related stuff. I’m just glad I sorted out a minor worry. Let the big job worries sit on someone else’s shoulders. Like the fact that since we’re ready to catalogue before the patron side of this is online, the cataloguers will have to do their work twice, as will Aquisitions – once in the old system (so patrons can still see what’s new and put holds on it all) and once in Millenium (because they can’t search for stuff in there yet). As of yet, I don’t know if I’ll even start linking any of the stuff ready to go out. I don’t really want to wait a month to start shuffling this stuff out of here, but whatever. We have enough work waiting on carts and boxes without a bunch of last-step stuff waiting around, too. Will see later how that works out, I guess.

Something I was too drunk to say last night

Get your minds out of the gutters right now, people. I’ll explain myself.

Twenty or so of Saskatoon’s Freethinkers went to Winston’s Pub last night for a bit of a shindig and I chatted with several interesting people over the night. Best anecdote came from a woman who sells tombstones and her encounter with a woman who loved her dog more than she did her husband. Near the end of my evening after I drank a few glasses of beer I was seated by “Fernando” who said he was a plumber. I made the mistake of not only sounding surprised by the response to my question, but I also gave him the typical answer given to probably everyone in a trade at some point, “Well everyone’s gonna need that..”

I can explain where I wanted to go with that, now that I’m sober and have had time to think it through. Thinkin’ and drinkin’ doesn’t work very well for me. Har har.

Fernando pointed out that people would survive without plumbers. I don’t particularly want to have to dig latrines or go outside at -40 to use an outhouse. Oh, but that’s what a gazunder is for (it goes under the bed). So yes, we’d make do. We’d learn to live with the discomfort and inconvenience that comes from not getting to flush all our little ones and twos away.

Can people fix their own plumbing problems? Sure, if they know what they’re doing. If they don’t know what they’re doing, they can try and consult a book or a website with easy how-to’s, but plumbing is a four year course at a trade school. Can’t just pop some pipes together and turn the water back on and call it good. Well, Dad can, but he’s a rare breed, one of those men who somehow acquire skills over the years above and beyond their employment needs. Carpentry, wiring, plumbing, flooring, whatever he needs to do he can do.

So not counting my dad, most people are generally lazy. They might not like having to pay someone and they might not like having to wait for someone, but when it’s a choice between waiting for a pro or getting their own hands dirty, they’ll call a pro.

Now, strangely, I’m reminded of some ridiculous show I caught on cable one night while we were visiting a couple that my folks played cards with sometimes and since so few adult card games require five, I was flipping channels instead. I wound up at HGTV, I think it was, in the middle of one of those home renovation shows.

The woman had decided to take it upon herself to add an opening in the wall between her kitchen and living room and rented some type of power tool that would cut through everything. And it did. I distinctly remember thinking, this woman is an idiot. “Load bearing wall” was obviously a phrase she’d never heard before, and I guess she thought all her electrical toys ran off brain waves or something because she didn’t check for wiring either.

Part of me was hoping it was all a sham, that nobody would be that dumb, that it was all a set up for these guys and their fix up show. She seemed way too happy when she explained how she cut into that wall, with a pantomime replay and everything. Now that I’ve browsed through Lovely Listing I fear she really could have been on the level, even if her project wasn’t.

So, back to my point, if there was one. I think trades get neglected when Career Days come around. I don’t recall anyone with a practical skill coming to our classrooms. Maybe the automotive guys got information on job prospects related to their hands-on interests but the rest of us were wooed by people who were doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. University course graduates.

Part of me wonders what would have happened if I’d gone to SIAST instead of university. Would I have come out of there with useful skills applicable to jobs right away, instead of settling for retail and a low paying library job? My four years worth of student loans took a decade to pay back. Would I have been better off financially if I’d done a trade instead? Maybe.

Ah well, the past is another planet. Maybe the alter me in some other dimension wishes she’d tried university. I can’t say I have a lot of regrets over my choices (well, I could, but nobody wants to read about that). You can’t always find what you want until you’ve seen everything you don’t want…

If only I had a dream recorder

I’m 99.7 % sure dream analysis is bunk, but at least if I had a recording of last night’s zany adventure, I could take it to a psychologist and get to the roots of my problems…

I was somehow involved with two others in a wacky little crime spree. I can’t remember what we were stealing, but attempts to stop us were laughable and we always managed to walk away from the heist free and clear. The purpose for our life of crime is not known, but it seemed to involve a casino style setting where one of my pals could bid on a rotating cat. I think it had to be a puppet, but that’s just because I don’t recall any blood flying around as it spun. I think the point of the game might have been to guess which pieces would still be attached to the torso (or the spinning table) when it stopped. Our success finally hit a stumbling block the night we arrived with our booty back at the car and all the doors were already open. Something had to be amiss, but what? Next thing I know, I’m face to face with Nathan Fillion dressed like a Sheriff and talking to me in an abnormally deep voice.

And then I woke up wishing I had a dream recorder.

Wouldn’t you!?

My brain is tired of thinking…

But not tired enough to stop thinking about how to rescue these idiotic Vikings. I’m hooked on another little game here. This one is called Ice Breaker and you have to slice the ice and ropes in just such a way as to make sure the little Viking dudes make it into their ship.

See, there are little pins in the ice in this level and no matter where I cut, I launch my little vikings right into the water. And the viking on the boat just sits there, waiting until I figure out the fucking level so everyone can jump around making Ohh noises like the best orgasms they’ve ever had. Yeah, I want the Ooh, too, guys. At least it’s not timed. I can take all night to figure it out and they won’t get bored of me. I love these little guys…