Story Time | Hacker News Reader

Story Time

steve-yegge.blogspot.com

49 pointstwampss24 comments

"He asked me to spell my name, and I said: "Y". He wrote "W". So far, so good. I really didn't want these fuckers to have my personal information just because they gave me an oil change, anyway.

I said "e", and he wrote "i". Wow, this was new.

I said "g, g" and he wrote "jj". Cool!"

The guy's first language was apparently French and wasn't good at English.

letters with the same sound in French and English:

  French English
  é a  same
  i e  same
  f f  same
  g j  similar (in french we don't make the implicit D sound)
  j g  similar (in french we don't make the implicit D sound)
  l l  similar
  m m  same
  n n  same
  o o  same
  q q  similar (in french we say "ku" instead of "kiou")
  r r  similar
  s s  same
  t t  similar (té instead of tee)
  v v  similar (vé instead of vee)
  w w  similar (double-V instead of double-U)
  z z  similar (zed instead of zee)

I admire Steve for just blogging what he wants to blog.

The key to storytelling is to make a point but make it personal. One key to make a story personal is to reveal vulnerability. Who cares about your successes?! (People can't always relate to I-climbed-Mount-Everest but they can relate to I-screwed-up).

Not about code/software/hacking. Dont check this unless you want to waste some time

Some time? I guess I don't read fast enough to get all that into "some".

I find it hilarious that Steve has this reputation for long blog posts... indeed, the vast majority are extremely long... and yet every time one is posted there are half a dozen complaints about how long they are.

What did you expect? It's not like the guy is changing up his format all of a sudden.

One of the reasons why I ditched Reddit for HN is because every time (yes, every single time) a Yegge article was posted, the comment thread was inevitably 90% whining or wisecracking about the length. I think it's a good measure of how much a community has degraded.

Complilation of davesecretary's stories:

http://www.storylog.com/time-for-some-stories-corrected/

I find that steve's stories are much funnier than these. These seem like flat jokes. I usually get flat jokes, but I didn't get davesecretary's.

Please stop bitching about the length. Everyone knows Yegge writes long posts.

smg's comment about not software-related is useful because the people that do read Yegge generally do it for the software perspective.

Great minds say more with less.

Agreed.

If you like davesecretary's stories, you should check out the book of poems "Mother Said" (http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Said-Hal-Sirowitz/dp/0517704978...). Here is one of the poems from the Amazon reviews:

Deformed Finger

  Don't stick your finger in the ketchup bottle,
  Mother said. It might get stuck, &
  then you'll have to wait for your father
  to get home to pull it out. He
  won't be happy to find a dirty fingernail
  squirming in the ketchup that he's going to use
  on his hamburger.  He'll yank it out so hard
  that for the rest of your life you won't
  be able to wear a ring on that finger.
  And if you ever get a girlfriend, &
  you hold hands, she's bound to ask you
  why one of your fingers is deformed,
  & you'll be obligated to tell her how
  you didn't listen to your mother, &
  insisted on playing with the ketchup bottle,
  & she'll get to thinking, he probably won't
  listen to me either, & she'll push your hand away.

While I don't really think this is fitting for HN, I do really enjoy the stories that inspired this post. Davesecretary originally posted the stories on a vinyl trading message board (http://board.vivalavinyl.org). I think it's really awesome that those stories ballooned and got popular on Reddit / other social news sites. They're great.

One opinion on which of these to read: Number 3 is funny when read directly after reading number 2, but not so much otherwise. Number 9 actually made me laugh, so I recommend reading that one. Skip the rest if you're on a time budget. Note that story 1 starts after the first horizontal rule, 2 after the next, etc.

Looks like Steve's back to his old drunken rants in a whole new way.

I always need to look at the size of the scrollbar before I start on a Yegge blog.

Looks pretty lengthy, ranty, meandering, probably boring.

I hate to say this, but...

TL;DR

I actually like this more than most of his writings - the rambling style works a bit better for storytelling than it does for trying to communicate something about technology. For me, at least.

Of course, as others pointed out, it's just entertainment material rather than something you'll learn much from, which is ok for a Friday afternoon, I guess.

I agree with your criticism and downmodded you for TL;DR, because it is the intellectual equivalent of barbarians at the gate.

You hate to say it. The next guy will think he's subverting the meme. The third guy will think it is funny. The fourth guy will do it because he thinks the site expects someone to say it. And he will be right.

Fair enough :-) I shan't do it again - hesitated to do it even this once!

A small positive from the "TL;DR" post: It finally occurred to me to do a bit of research and find out what it stands for. Now I have a greater understanding of why I get a slummy feeling when I see it.

Your comment is eerily similar to Yegge's complaint about Reddit.

6933 words. I don't think I have that kind of spare time right now.

If it's just short stories then why doesn't he split them up into multiple posts?

Or you could read them as though they were posted as multiple posts?

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