FAQ

Q.What is the number one thing to remember?
A.Have no fear.

Q.Why did you make an FAQ Page?
A.Because my sisters (christy and abby) made them and they seem pretty fun.

Q.Why do you have this site?
A.Mostly because I like having it. Having an identity online makes me happy. Also its a way of showing my friends and family who live in physically different places what I am up to. The biggest reason is it helps me stay connected with my sisters.

Q.Why would anyone want to visit this site?
A.You either met me in person or in cyberspace or you somehow found me. I have alot of computer art and a few stories which might interest the causal web surfer.

Q.Do I look fat in this dress?
A.Its not the dress, its you.

Q.Which do you like better: Writing or Drawing?
A.Right now Writing is my favorite thing to do. Computer art has been one of my favorite hobbies for many years and I still love it. But I have always written. I tried to write three books when I was younger, and I wrote and produced one play "Happy Endings" at eleven which my father recorded on vhs but was lost later.

Q.What is for dinner?
A.All signs point to maybe.

Q.Why do you like to write?
A.Writing makes me very very happy. When I write I feel like I am doing what I was created for.

Q.Why do you think Writing is important?
A.Writing is just another form of communication just like talking to someone is communication. Writing is a expressing one's opinions in an organized fashion. It also helps organize ideas by putting them down in a way that you can view them and analize them logically.

Q.Why do you think Reading is important?
A. Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own for a little while.
No one is an island. Its important to find out what has happened in the world and what other people's views are. We do this all the time in conversation. Reading is just a more formal way of finding out what another person (the writer) thinks. We get to see their point of view: their paradigm. We are able to walk in someone else's shoes. This goes for fiction and non-fiction.

Q.What is that smell?
A.It's your upper lip.

Q.Which is better: Fiction or Non-Fiction?
A.Thats like asking which you like better: to inhale or to exhale. Both are very important and useful in their own right. I tend to read fiction that is full of facts (i.e. Sci-Fi). But I tend to balance my fiction with a non-fiction book. When you decide what to read decide what you are looking for. If you just want to relax fiction may be the best for you; if you want to learn a whole lot read a non-fiction book.

Q.What is the number one thing that a person can do to better themselves?
A.Be Proactive. I have to keep reminding myself of this one. You can't control what happens to you but you can control your response.

Q.What is the number two thing that a person can do to better themselves?
A.Know that you have control over your attitude. Often we think that because we feel a certain way that we must go along with that feeling. This is a mistake. You can change your feelings and attitude with reason. Once a person realizes this power, nothing can ever stop them. Not even themselves.

Q.What is your ultimate goal?
A.To be the best person I can be in every way. I want to excel at everything I put my heart to. I fail all the time, but I will NOT give up.

Q.What tips can you give to a person who wants to write?
A.Write all your ideas down. Keep a journal. When you start a story get the main ideas down and forget about grammar and research. So many times did I loose a story line because I got distracted with minor things. Just do it!.

Q.Do you think anyone can write?
A.Not only do I think everyone can write, but I think everyone SHOULD write. Its our duty to record our lives and our way of life for future generations. A journal is very important. If you feel like its alot of work just think about how much you'd enjoy reading a journal your great great grandmother kept about living in the Wild West or in the Old Country. Your great great grandchildren will want to know what it was like to live thru the Dot Com bubble and thru the MTV years. And even if no one ever reads it it will help you tremendously by giving you an outlet for your frustrations and worries. A study found that college students who wrote down their anxieties did better on tests because they could concentrate better.

Q.What other stress relievers can you suggest?
A.Singing. I just recently fell in love with singing. It really makes a difference. Also exercise is wonderful.

Q.Can I have your digits?
A.1-800-GET-LOST.

Q.What is your greatest fear?
A.To one day discover I'm not as marvelous as my mother says I am.

Q.What do you want?
A."But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind." -Robert Walton from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~hamberg/Frankenstein/Letter2.html
Q.What is the meaning of life?
A.To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Q.What is your world view?
A.I am so glad you asked. Life can be what ever you make it. So many people don't realize they can do anything. You are only limited by what you think your limits are.
I believe that our political system is corrupt (this goes for all countries) but that it is no more corrupt that it has ever been or ever will be (I hope). I think that humanity is making progress in technology that will increase the quality of life for everyone in every country. We are moving backwards in our understanding of life and chasing pleasure. We are giving up the substance for illusion and content for packaging. We are loosing the ability to think.

I was talking to the CTO of my company today about confusing and insubstantial requirements. He said it was due to the lack of systematic communication skills in the writer. I told him it’s the writer's lack of systematic thinking. Requirements are created when there is a problem. The first step in developing anything is to define the problem. Then you can understand it and write proper requirements for developing the solution. If someone has understanding of a problem, if they have thought about it, then they should be able to communicate it in the form of a requirements document. Bad requirements are created when the writer does not think about the system and therefore must write 200 pages of fluff to cover their incompetence. It is much easier to write 200 pages of fluff than 10 pages of actual content which the writer has seriously thought about.

Insubstantial requirements is the just one of the signs that we are loosing the ability to think systematically. Thinking is very hard. It is probably one of the hardest things a human can do. It’s not physical so you can't "put your back into it." The mind is weak and wanders all about. There are so many distractions. These days it’s so easy to just drift about and not think about anything. Or should I say, not think about something. You can easily think about anything, but thinking systematically about one issue, which you know you need to think about, is very hard. Our vague meaningless language and the lack of mental discipline are to blame for the tendency to not think.

Words are symbols which we use to label things in our minds. To know something is to know a label for it. You can have abstractions floating about in your mind, but you can't know them until you label them with words. When a word does not mean anything to us but merely floats I call it pseudo-knowledge. So much of our knowledge is pseudo-knowledge. Pseudo-knowledge is the familiarity we get when we hear a word or term used over and over till we think we know what it means, and so start to use it ourselves. We use words without knowing the meaning or words that have no meaning. A sentence which has words you don't understand means nothing to you. If you use it when talking to someone who also has no understanding of the words, then you have said nothing because nothing is conveyed.

Each person must take responsibility for what they think and what they say. First make sure you know what you are thinking. Second make sure you use words that mean what you are thinking. Third make sure that the person you are speaking to understands the words you are using.

For more on this topic read Politics and the English Language by George Orwell