Email: Sometimes no is the answer [AF]

What is appropriate to a relationship is not needy.

[This is] one reason why I’m still single: Persons who would like to limit or control the terms of a relationship. I will know the one for me when she agrees that we can make such decisions together, not I-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer.

Fauna: Sugar gliders

I'd never heard of sugar gliders before today. They're like a combination possum and flying squirrel that are intensely social and expressive, and they make great pets.

Houston: Bats under bridges

Houston has a Mexican free-tailed bat colony estimated to number 250,000 under the Waugh Street Bridge at Allen Parkway. (They only come out at nightfall, around 8:30 p.m.) While the colony is one-sixth the size of Austin's Congress Street Bridge bat community, it's claimed to be the only one in Texas that stays year round without migrating.

Words: troglodytical [MW]

Function: noun
Etymology: Latin troglodytae, plural, from Greek trOglodytai, from trOglE hole, cave (akin to Greek trOgein to gnaw) + dyein to enter
1 : a member of a primitive people dwelling in caves
2 : a person resembling a troglodyte (as in reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes)
- trog·lo·dyt·ic adjective

Bumpers: I check for updates

I check for and install software updates on a regular basis, often long before the system administrators get around to it on a corporate site. I install Windows security updates (such as the eight released this week) immediately, esp. on my own systems as well as my clients'.

Email: Too much religion? [D]

Let's just say I believed you couldn't have enough religion in your life, and now I believe you can't have enough life in your religion -- in fact, that's what transforms religion into faith (and keeps it all in balance).

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: La Ley del Deseo (The Law of Desire)

Musings: Salutations, Da Li

I've been good: I've been emailing an associate named Da Li with the salutation "Greetings, Da Li." But if he keeps corresponding, I can't say I won't eventually give in and write "Hello, Da Li."

Email: Who is the right type? [C]

My folks have taught me a lot. The rest they just passed on through osmosis -- or was it mitosis?

Yes, the Myers-Briggs is a handy tool; many organizations even base their management and team practices on it. In the early 1980s, I was the quintessential INTJ; now I'm probably more of an INTP; but the thing is while I was two-thirds I and one-third E (and similarly with other scales), over the years my scores have migrated so now I'm fairly well 45/55 across the board. I've become more balanced! That's the trouble with tests that make you pick one option among two though; I'm not usually one or the other, either/or; I'm often both...

What about your Myers-Briggs? And are you planning to use it to help discern the kind of mate you are looking for? I find that there are two kinds of people: Those who want a mate or partner who is closely similar to their predilections to ensure compatibility, or those who want a mate or partner who simply want someone who is expansive enough to process and grow no matter what their similarities and differences may be. I suspect the second population is smaller than the first, however, so maybe the first is the most sensible after all. It certainly is the most common-sense (if hit-and miss).

Email: When Edith Ann was 5 [CH]

You’ll have to have seen Lily Tomlin in West Wing then. Quite a far cry from Edith Ann!

Movies: A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Moviette: A Prairie Home Companion (2006): "Meryl Streep carries the show as a chirpy yet conflicted folk-music chanteuse and she sings beautifully. Her sister (Lily Tomlin) antiphonalizes as they slowly spill out their bittersweet stories about loss and sacrifice as the remaining two sisters in a legendary folk-music family. [...] Make no mistake about this movie and the radio show it is based upon: You come for the live music, the repartee, and a spirit and sentiment that cannot be described. (Listening to Keillor's voice is so much more alluring than seeing him.) You leave with memories and emotional fuel, built partly on the values of the past and reincarnated for the present day, to make it another week in the postmodern world. Four stars."