Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dumb

Long Term Relationship Advice

xopaigexo — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:51:53 -0800

Long Term Relationship Advice My boyfriend and I have been going out nearly 10 months. We have our ups and downs, not too many downs. We get along really well as we were good friends before dating but i still find that i learn new things about him all the time. Not really good or bad things, just things that make me realize how normal he is. (Not perfect like he seemed at the beginning, and not a a** like he seemed for a little while after that). Still, I wonder if he ever takes a step back and thinks about the relationship as a whole, like I do. I'm a deep thinker, and im also insightful of why other people act and say what they do. I dont really talk about these things with him, so I dont know if he does think about things deeply or not.
I brought this up because I got kinda upset with him tonight, and it made me think of something even bigger. But anyways, I got a bit upset with him because I've been with family and friends for the past few days, and so has he. i've been pretty busy, but I still make an effort to talk to him at night or in the morning, just to say hi or whatever. I'll text him (yeah i know texting is lame, dont give me hell about it), and he'll kinda give me a quick response, like he has something he wants to get back to, and then the conversations pretty much over. That's how it's been the past couple of days. I'm just really not used to it being like that, because generally we see each other almost every day. I tried talking about it with him tonight, saying that i feel dumb whenever im the only one trying to talk. I told him Im not mad, and that i want him to go enjoy his break, but that i just felt dumb because he would hardly respond to me. I tried to say what i meant so that he would understand that im not mad, which is what brought me to thinking if he thought in that way.
Then, he said to me, like it was no big deal,"Well maybe i didnt wanna talk?" He made it sound like it was completely normal, and maybe it is, i dont know, but i hate how he assumes that i completely and totally understand him. I try to spell things out for him when im upset because i know he doesn't completely understand me when im like that, though he thinks he knows me inside out. Of course, when he said he didn't feel like talking, i said without thinking,"Well text me when you feel like talking then." It felt dumb, having this debate over text message.
He's the kind of person who just goes with things mostly. I havent been able to be like that because of deadlines, alot of stress, etc. He has deadlines too but he just seems to take things like that so much better than i do.
I guess im asking a number of things right now. Do guys who are in long term relationships ever really step back and think of their relationship as a whole, or do they mostly just go with things? Is it normal for a guy to simply not want to talk? Why does my boyfriend just "assume" that i understand things without even telling me? (iffy) And one last: What should I do about the fact that I told him,"Text me when you feel like talking then"? I know I overthink things, I am OCD and keep it nearly all to myself, but what if he...doesn't? Should i just text him, or wait until he texts me? Im not very good at being upset with people, i hate anticipation...help?

Who am I really?

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:44:28 -0800

Facebook has an application dedicated to Top Five lists called Living Social. I find it distressing that, when attempting to list five things – books, for example – according to how highly I rate them, I can’t seem to do it. Quotes, a particular love of mine, are also problematic. As are memories, foods and anything else you might feel compelled to ask me. Sure, most of the time I can think of something when asked that sounds convincing enough to at least convey a semblance of intelligence, but I can rarely come up with the ones that truly define who I am until often hours afterward - sometimes I can't even do that. Yesterday, when prompted to speak about classic films, I couldn’t even think of three when asked, despite having watched hundreds over the years. It’s as if my brain just shuts down and the harder I try to think, the emptier the space between my ears becomes and the phonier and more pathetic-looking this so-called personality of mine begins to appear. For someone so academically and professionally successful, on paper at least, this is starting to worry me. I just seem incapable of spontaneous thought without the aid of a trigger. Funnily enough, once stimulated to speak about an idea, they tend to flow and a magical process seems to take hold whereby one idea feeds another. I actually feel knowledgeable and authoritative. To what extent is this normal? In real life, my problem translates to embarrassing situations in which I’m asked important questions and am able to give only the vaguest of responses, though luckily, being reasonably articulate – a good bullshitter, according to friends – I am often able to make them sound convincing enough to satisfy my interrogator, but rarely ever myself. My greatest fear is that one day soon I am going to be exposed as the fraud that I almost certainly am. I just seem incapable of organising my thoughts properly and have even started to convince myself that any ‘success’ I have had has come about more from luck and my ability to bullshit than any truly innate talent. Re-reading my Masters dissertation today, I couldn’t help castigating myself with the phrase, “Throw enough shit, and it’ll stick,” whilst questioning the intelligence of my tutors who also appear to have been too stupid to have seen through my ruse.

This has all come to a head today and left me feeling thoroughly depressed. I’m teaching English in a leading Latin American business school as a way to kill time – and make money – before I start my first full-time job within a fast-paced, demanding multinational in November. One of my students, a 30-something, self-assertive MBA, asked me to give examples of British slang, something I should be more than familiar with considering that I’ve been using slang on a day-to-day basis since arriving in kindergarten. My mind just went blank – completely blank, as if a light had been switched off and every nook and cranny had descended into pitch darkness. After an embarrassing few moments where I felt his gaze almost begin to burn a hole through me, I laughed and said I’d prepare an activity using slang next week.

One other thing, you know on social network sites where it asks you to describe yourself? Forget it. I just can't do it. I end up feeling like a complete non-entity.

Despite the existence of a wealth of evidence to the contrary, by most people’s definitions I think I’d probably be considered to be of above-average intelligence. The dire predictions of my high school teachers, confounded by the fact that I never, ever seemed to do any work, in the end proved baseless and I went on to graduate with a respectable – but hard won - degree from Cambridge and, most recently of all, an even harder-won Masters from an equally respectable French institution. I mention this not to brag but merely to illustrate that I haven’t always been so dumb as I feel now.

What is wrong with me? ADHD? Depression? Early-onset Dementia? Brain tumour? Deficit Syndrome-predominant Schizophrenia? Just going bat shit insane? What? If not illness, how can I learn to think better on the spot.

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

I just want to check my facebook!

wild like kudzu — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:38:12 -0800

Can anybody help me with my wireless router? So, I've set up a wireless network for my apartment, and when I set it up a few months ago I entered a password (although it may have been provided automatically, I don't remember if I made it up or not). My computer saved it, as did my roommate's, so we never thought about it again. Recently my roommate's computer bit the dust and her replacement computer requires the password. I wrote the password down, but I've since lost the paper it was written on. For the life of me, I can't seem to figure out what the password is or to change it.

When I pull up the advanced settings of my network I can see under the Association tab that it is an open connection and requires a WEP key. The space for the password shows that it is an 8-digit code, and whenever I try to change it simply by typing a new password into that space I get an error message that says: "The network password needs to be 40bits or 140bits depending on your network configuration. This can be entered as 5 or 13 ascii characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters."

What does that mean? Is there anything I can do to change the password entirely?

Some facts you might need to know:

It's a Belkin G Wireless router
We use Comcast as our internet provider
I'm operating on Windows XP on an ASUS laptop
We are connecting through an Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter

Any help or tips is much appreciated! Thank you :)

Next Time, My Car Will Have a Real Roof

pazazygeek — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:53:56 -0800

Um, my Jeep is full of water. What do I do? I have a '97 Wrangler with a soft top. It needs a new top, which I haven't had the time or money to replace. I live in sunny Southern California. Every once in a blue moon it rains, but it's never been a real problem, until now.

Long story short, the top had a big enough problem in the midst of our recent long rainy weekend to let a great ocean of water in to the floor on the passenger side, in both the front and back seats. There is literally a little lake on the right side of my car.

I don't have a shop-vac or know anybody with one. There is one of those wash-it-yerself carwashes down the street. Can I vacuum the water out of my car with the vacuums there? I drove by and did not see an attendant to ask. A friend with a '95 Wrangler says his has a hole in the floor which allows water to drain out, and I just need to find it in mine. Is he crazy?

Turning the heater on to dry the carpets isn't really an option, since my car is open air. Assuming I can vacuum the water out at the car wash (oh please let this be an option), what else should I do? I mean besides punching myself repeatedly in the face for buying a Wrangler as my main mode of transportation.

Help me outsmart a dumb terminal

edmz — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:05:29 -0800

Help me setup an old Wyse Terminal. A point of sale system I want to setup has support for dumb terminals. I got a hold of a Link MC5 terminal that seems to be compatible with the software I have.

My problem is I don't know how to set it up and I haven't been able to find a manual for it on the internets.

If I turn on the terminal, all I get is some text that reads "*FDX Main".

The terminal is connected to the correct serial port of the PC (which is running windows xp). What am I missing?

Pills out of order

idiotfactory — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:08:20 -0800

I screwed up my birth control. First of all, my doctor is STILL on maternity leave so I can't get ahold of her. Second of all, Kaiser Permanente has had me on hold all day and have been passing me around from one advice nurse to another. Thirdly, I know, you are not a doctor, you are not my doctor.

I am taking Tri-Sprintec, the generic Ortho Tri-Cyclen.

On my new pack, I took Day 1 of Week 1. Somehow, the next night I took Day 1 of Week 2. I finished Week 2 before realizing that I skipped Week 1. Last night I figured it out when I got to the Week 3 row. I went ahead and took Day 1 of Week 3. For those of you wondering how I could do something so dumb - I take my pill in the dark. I was also a bad girl 5 days ago, so that adds in some more risk.

What I want to know is if anyone else has done this before, what I should do to try to regulate my cycle, my pregnancy risk, or who I can call to figure this out.
(I didn't want to wait 24-48 hours for the anonymous post)

Mental Action

Eiwalker — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 15:42:49 -0800

Can we believe at will in the same way that we can raise our arms at will? I can raise my right arm pretty much whenever I want to, simply by trying to make it go up. I can do it without trying to do anything else as a means to that end. For instance, I do not try to act upon my brain in a certain way, nor do I know which muscles I'd have to flex. I just want it to go up, and, somehow, I execute the action.

Are there any cases where a person can acquire a belief in the same way?

By "belief" I shall mean a high probability of being true that one ascribes to a proposition. E.g., I take there to be a 97% chance that it will rain in Argentina in the next three days.

Some things that might help in thinking about the question:

1. Could I go from 97% to 96% at will? In this case I'd be modifying what I take to be the likelihood by only one percentage point. If the modification is small, should this make the task easier?

2. Be careful to distinguish between really taking there to be a so-and-so likelihood versus merely supposing so for the sake of argument. We can merely suppose anything; really believing is a different matter.

3. If believing at will is possible, should we expect that smart people are more likely to be able to do it than dumb people? If so, this suggests that believing at will is a kind of talent. Or would dumb people be more likely to be able to pull it off? If so, this suggests that believing at will, though it may be an ability, is not a talent, and is more likely a result of intellectual vice: stupidity or irrationality of some kind.

stupid questions from women

goldism — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:34:30 -0800

why is the question, "so have a special woman in your life yet?" always one of the first 3 questions a woman asks when you haven't talked to them in a while.

De-bunk a joke?

jsteward — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:48:14 -0800

When transporting parakeets, would keeping the birds airborne reduce the weight of the truck? One of my father's favorite old jokes: While in line at a truck weigh-station, a trucker notices another trucker hitting the side of his trailer with a broomstick. When the trucker asked why he was doing this, the broom-sticker stated, "My rig's over-weight, but I'm hauling parakeets. I need to keep them in the air to make weight."

instant frozen beer

luriete — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 22:18:31 -0800

When I was in college, beer was a central part of my life. In fact, we did all sorts of interesting things with beer, besides simply drink the stuff. One particular stupid-beer-trick that a friend did frequently - but which I have never been able to exactly replicate - intrigues me. Physicists and amateur scientists, lend me your eyes: This friend would put a bottle of beer in a freezer for a certain length of time - ALMOST long enough to freeze it, but not quite. He'd get it very, very cold but it would stay liquid, and not slushy or hard. Then he'd take it out, very carefully open it - this is a glass bottle we're talking here - and then, with the bottom of a second bottle, give it a good rap on the top - straight down on the mouth of the almost-frozen bottle. What happened next seemed to be magic - in the course of 2-3 seconds, a cross-hatched crystalline lattice of frozen beer would form inside the frozen bottle, from the bottom up, and you could see the crystals reaching up and once they reached the top the thing would be frozen solid. Not just slushy, but solid. I assume there was some weird kinetic reaction that caused this to occur, but for the life of me I don't understand how. Can anyone explain?

Deaf-Blind and Mute Children: How Taught? How Much Communication? Life From Their Eyes?

bonaldi — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:38:31 -0800

Deaf-blind question. I ask only out of curiosity, but google turns up academic stuff that's above my head. How are deaf-blind children taught? What level of communication can they attain? Does being mute make a difference? Do we know what life is like inside a mind that has only touch/taste/smell senses of the world?

I'm thinking mainly of those who are born deaf and blind.