User:Haus/about

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Haus is back at sea, with Internet access limited to the order of minutes per month. He expects to be back at Wikipedia in something like 79 days.

"Giving a complete picture of the supreme pelagic world..."¹

Talk	About	Awards	Notes

[edit] What's a Haus?

My namesake, mathematician Felix Hausdorff.

In the summer of 1993, I was welded to an nCUBE 2 supercomputer. While waiting for programs to compile and run, I began to play on muds. I started the character Hausdorff at a game named Rivers of Mud and some months later became a game administrator. Shortly thereafter, all the game's player files were deleted and I got fed up and left.

1 What's a Haus?
2 Recent travels
3 Funny-sounding places I've been
4 Funny ship names
5 A scary moment
6 Fun with words
- 6.1 Notes
7 Say what?
8 New word
9 Who would win?

The following summer, I found myself with some time on my hands. I taught classes through June, but didn't have any commitments in July and August. After reading this newsgroup post, I went over to check out Realms of Despair aka RoD. Since it had been pretty irritating to type a long name like Hausdorff all the time at Rivers of Mud, I created my new character at RoD with the shortened name Haus.

When I started the Haus character, RoD was a very small place indeed. Thoric obviously existed, as well as another "mortal" character by the name of Pandora. Haus was first the first character to reach the Avatar level, and the second (just behind Caine/Dominus) to be advanced to immortal.

To make a long story short, the Haus persona was quite successful and became widely known. I wrote a fair chunk of the SMAUG codebase, and spent an unimaginable amount of time (and patience) administering the game. I resigned, as a member of the Council of Elders in, I believe, 1998.

A note on pronunciation. The correct pronunciation, regardless of whatever Germans might say, is "House." Canadians, who are notorious for their impressionistic rendering of vowel sounds, seem genetically unable to pronounce the word "House" and end up calling me "Hoss." Hoss, we find, is a Swedish word meaning for "big in stature and big in spirit". If it seems to you that Canadians are troublemakers, you are correct. Imagine, if you will, the precious time that was lost the last time a certain Canadian girl yelled to me "Hoss! There's a munster in the boot!" Rest assured that calamity ensued as I inspected my footwear for lurking cheeses.

(If the preceeding paragraph seems offensive to you, please understand it is largely tongue-in-cheek.)

[edit] Recent travels

World culture, geography, and language are particular interests of mine. Here are some places I've been in the past few years:

[edit] Funny-sounding places I've been

[edit] Funny ship names

I have an idea to create a skit using funny ship names... I started, but it started getting sort of racy, so it is gone now.

[edit] A scary moment

Monster Island - Recently this Island popped out of the North Pacific, lurching at me in such a way as to completely fill my field of vision and surprise me to the extent of spilling my coffee. In nine years of sailing the seven seas, I've never seen such a poorly-behaved, rascally island.

[edit] Fun with words

If Herman Melville spoke Engrish^[1]:

Ismail call.^[2] A few years ago never mind how long precisely, it is little or no money in my purse, my particular interest and nothing on the shore, I thought about my sails a little watery part, please refer to the world. That's how I drive circulation and regulations off the spleen. Growing grim about every time, I find myself in the mouth;^[3] whenever it is damp, my soul is drizzly November; involuntarily stop to find himself before coffin warehouses every time, bring the All rear of the funeral I meet; Get hypos,^[4] especially when I like the upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately SUTEPPINGUSUTORITO^[5], people hat knocked off cleanly - then, I was high when I get an account to the sea as soon as possible.^[6] This is my substitute for pistol and ball. Cato philosophical flourish exception to his own sword; I quietly take to the ship. This is no surprise. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, very important towards the sea near the same feeling I think.^[7]

[edit] Notes

^ Thanks to google translate.
^ "Call me Ismail." was far to verbose.
^ I hate it when that happens.
^ Indeed.
^ Sound it out: stepping into the street.
^ Tee hee, he was high.
^ Agreed, Ish.

[edit] Say what?

Shredding a dab project with AWB, I ran into the following sentence at mach speed: "Marine BizTV links with all the marine communities from across the world. It also has a parallel coverage on its website through the Web TV, giving a complete picture of the supreme pelagic world." My sanity subsequently splattered over the *cough* supreme pelagic world.

[edit] New word

A nifty portmanteau word you can say you saw here first: frangbarred meaning franglaised beyond all recognition. Coined while translating fr:Bateau to ship. Haus^Talk 22:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Who would win?

In a fight between a jeepney and a Songthaew?

And, perhaps more importantly, what color would it be?

See also ebooksgratis.com: no banners, no cookies, totally FREE.