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What should I be doing all day?
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Doofy
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by macintologist View Post
What should I be doing with my time here? What would you do?
Do something creative.

Write a novella. Plot world domination.

You know, the regular.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
macintologist
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:30 PM
 
I got a part time job this summer at my college's switchboard. I answer phone calls which usually average about 1 every 10-15 minutes, and each call never lasts more than 20 seconds. When there are no one phone calls, I can do whatever I want so long as I stay put. I have a semi-old PC here with Firefox and WinXP so I can surf the net, but working this job from 12:30 to 5 every single day is starting to get a little... it's not boring, but it's mentally draining in a way. I'm doing this 5 days a week until late September.

What should I be doing with my time here? What would you do?
     
peeb
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:33 PM
 
Catch up on some books you should have read? Seriously, get hold of a good reading list (the one at St Johns is pretty good - I've pasted it below) and pillage your local library.
The Reading List

The reading list that serves as the core of the St. John's College curriculum had its beginnings at Columbia College, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Virginia. Since 1937, the list of books has been under continued review at St. John's College. The distribution of the books over the four years is significant. Something over 2,000 years of intellectual history form the background of the first two years; about 300 years of history form the background for almost twice as many authors in the last two years.

The first year is devoted to Greek authors and their pioneering understanding of the liberal arts; the second year contains books from the Roman, medieval, and Renaissance periods; the third year has books of the 17th and 18th centuries, most of which were written in modern languages; the fourth year brings the reading into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Freshman Year
Sophomore Year
Junior Year
Senior Year

The chronological order in which the books are read is primarily a matter of convenience and intelligibility; it does not imply a historical approach to the subject matter. The St. John's curriculum seeks to convey to students an understanding of the fundamental problems that human beings have to face today and at all times. It invites them to reflect both on their continuities and their discontinuities.

FRESHMAN YEAR

* HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
* AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
* SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
* THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
* EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
* HERODOTUS: Histories
* ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
* PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
* ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
* EUCLID: Elements
* LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
* PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
* NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
* LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
* HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
* Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust

SOPHOMORE YEAR

* THE BIBLE
* ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
* APOLLONIUS: Conics
* VIRGIL: Aeneid
* PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
* EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
* TACITUS: Annals
* PTOLEMY: Almagest
* PLOTINUS: The Enneads
* AUGUSTINE: Confessions
* ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
* AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
* DANTE: Divine Comedy
* CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
* DES PREZ: Mass
* MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
* COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
* LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
* RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
* PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
* MONTAIGNE: Essays
* VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
* BACON: Novum Organum
* SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
* POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
* DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
* PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
* BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
* HAYDN: Quartets
* MOZART: Operas
* BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
* SCHUBERT: Songs
* STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

JUNIOR YEAR

* CERVANTES: Don Quixote
* GALILEO: Two New Sciences
* DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
* MILTON: Paradise Lost
* LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
* LA FONTAINE: Fables
* PASCAL: Pensees
* HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
* ELIOT: Middlemarch
* SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
* LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
* RACINE: Phaedre
* NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
* KEPLER: Epitome IV
* LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
* SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
* HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
* ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
* MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
* ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
* KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
* MOZART: Don Giovanni
* JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
* DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers"

SENIOR YEAR

* Declaration of Independence
* The Constitution of the United States
* Supreme Court opinions
* HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers
* DARWIN: Origin of Species
* HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
* LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
* TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
* LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
* KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
* MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
* DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
* TOLSTOY: War and Peace
* MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
* TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
* O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
* FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
* WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
* DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
* HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
* HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
* MILLIKAN: The Electron
* CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
* Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy

Freshman Seminar
Freshman year at St. John’s is the “Greek” year. Just as the writings of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle represent the foundation of Western thought, freshman seminar establishes a foundation for the following years of study. Seminar begins with the Iliad and the Odyssey, continues with the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, allows much time for the works of Plato, and concludes with Aristotle. In freshman year, students learn the habits of serious reading, inquiry, and conversation.

Sophomore Seminar
The readings of sophomore seminar span the longest chronological period of all four years. After the selections from the Hebrew Bible and from classical Roman poetry and history with which the year begins, the rest of the readings (beginning with the Gospels) are by authors who in various ways brought these two very different worlds together and tried to find ways to assimilate and judge them. Even for the Roman writers, the question of how to deal with a partly alien tradition (that of ancient Greece) was a central theme. The seminar's diverse readings are thus unified by the common classical and biblical roots and by the accumulating record of responses to them.

Junior Seminar
The junior seminar draws from a much smaller chronological period (principally the 17th and 18th centuries). In the fall semester, ethical and political inquiries are mingled with inquiries into metaphysics; in the spring semester, readings in these two inquiries are segregated, with metaphysics falling before spring break, and ethical-political readings falling mostly after. Lengthy inquiry into ethics and politics leads to the first encounter with American authors (Madison, Hamilton, Mark Twain) and a reflection upon our own way of life.

Senior Seminar
The readings of the senior year are the most contemporary. Great novels such as War and Peace, Faust, and The Brothers Karamazov are on the reading list. Students also plunge into the works of some of the most challenging authors on the program: Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In keeping with the college’s mission to turn out educated citizens, the senior year also includes works central to American democracy, such as the Federalist Papers, the speeches of Lincoln, key Supreme Court decisions, and Tocqueville’s commentary on the radical nature of the American experiment.
     
turtle777
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:34 PM
 
Learn to cite teh Intarwebs by heart

-t
     
Dakarʒ
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:36 PM
 
Space Out
     
Rumor
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:37 PM
 
Get a DS or GBA.
I like my water with hops, malt, hops, yeast, and hops.
     
macintologist
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Jun 27, 2007, 04:42 PM
 
I have a DS but only one game, New SMB which I beat and got all the gold stars

peeb, that's an awesome list. There are many classics which I should read. In highschool I would often sparknote a lot of the assigned reading, maybe it's time I actually read these things?
     
andi*pandi
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Jun 27, 2007, 05:32 PM
 
when I worked switchboard at a hospital, it was only that quiet at night... during the day was too busy. At night, I read a lot. A ton. It was pre-internet though....

more ideas:

- books, magazines, etc.
- write letters
- pay bills
- mending
- make photo albums
- diary
- write award-winning novel
- plan world domination
     
turtle777
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Jun 27, 2007, 05:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
It was pre-internet though....
- plan world domination
Wow, you can plan world domination WITHOUT TEH INTARWEBS ?

-t
     
Railroader
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Jun 27, 2007, 05:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Wow, you can plan world domination WITHOUT TEH INTARWEBS ?

-t
You'll need a very sharp pencil.
     
turtle777
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Jun 27, 2007, 05:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
You'll need a very sharp pencil.
What's a pencil ?

-t
     
Mastrap
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Jun 27, 2007, 06:23 PM
 
Questions like that are the reason why you haven't succeeded in dominating the world.
     
alligator
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Jun 27, 2007, 08:44 PM
 
Quit your job and go wait in line for an iPhone.
     
- - e r i k - -
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Jun 27, 2007, 08:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by macintologist View Post
I have a DS but only one game, New SMB which I beat and got all the gold stars
Source out a pre-owned Advance Wars. Ultra-cheap entertainment for weeks.

[ fb ] [ flickr ] [] [scl] [ last ] [ plaxo ]
     
- - e r i k - -
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Jun 27, 2007, 09:05 PM
 
Time warp coming up:
( Last edited by - - e r i k - -; Jun 27, 2007 at 09:13 PM. Reason: Temporal Hampster Dance)

[ fb ] [ flickr ] [] [scl] [ last ] [ plaxo ]
     
- - e r i k - -
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Jun 27, 2007, 09:07 PM
 
And the fact is you only need to play it once, so grab a pre-owned copy of it then swap it back when you are done with it.

It's more of a book than a game really. Puzzles are fairly easy. It has a great noir mood to it though. Reminds me a bit about the Tex Murphy series (Under A Killing Moon etc.)

[ fb ] [ flickr ] [] [scl] [ last ] [ plaxo ]
     
Adam Betts
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Jun 27, 2007, 09:08 PM
 
Get Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for DS. It's one of the best interactive story game.
     
Ghoser777
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Jun 27, 2007, 09:36 PM
 
Pr0n.
     
Sherman Homan
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Jun 27, 2007, 09:39 PM
 
"Solve world hunger.
Tell no one."
( Last edited by Sherman Homan; Jun 27, 2007 at 09:48 PM. )
     
CollinG3G4
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Jun 28, 2007, 03:23 PM
 
Guitar Hero is all you need.
     
macintologist
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Jun 28, 2007, 04:13 PM
 
Ok so this is what I have done today so far

-lurk on MacNN
-read TUAW
-read MacRumors
-go on the Wisconsin courts system search and see if any of my co-workers and bosses have a criminal or traffic record
-went on a short errand
-watched cat and dog videos on Youtube
-researched good Nintendo DS or GBA games to buy

Still got almost 2 hours left.
     
turtle777
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Jun 28, 2007, 04:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by macintologist View Post
-go on the Wisconsin courts system search and see if any of my co-workers and bosses have a criminal or traffic record
Do you get paid for that, or is that due to a lack of life ?

-t
     
macintologist
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Jun 28, 2007, 04:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Do you get paid for that, or is that due to a lack of life ?

-t
If you knew these people in person you'd think it was funny in some of these cases. And I was bored and found nothing btw. All clean. I'm impressed.
     
   
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