PuckSmith

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

I am a Thelemite and a 1st degree Wiccan. Most of my efforts here are on topics related to the Western mystery tradition. Where I can, I try to help out on the Reference desk and the Help desk. In real life I am an Information Systems Technician specializing in desktop support and LAN administration.

I have been reading Wikipedia since 2002, and have enjoyed it immensely. It has been informative and entertaining, but other than a brief anonymous comment on the Sara Jane Moore Talk Page in November of 2005, I never gave much thought to contributing. It was the John Seigenthaler Sr. controversy that actually lead me to join the community. In an exchange of messages on the Yahoo! discussion boards here and here I found myself defending Wikipedia rather passionately. The next time I was here I found myself dissatisfied with the wording of an article. I decided to put my money where my mouth was. I registered and put my two cents here. It was curiously satisfying.

So now that I am here I want to do this right. I invite folks to keep me straight. If I do something poorly or wrong let me know. I'm not going to learn anything if I don't know where I'm weak.

Thelema edit

93

This user is a Thelemite

I am currently awaiting O.T.O. approval of my 0° (Minerval) application.

Qabalah edit

קבלה

This user studies Qabalah

אבה אבו אגו אגז אגח אדח אדט אדי
מדח מדט מדי מכי מכל מפל מפן מפס
שפל שפן שפס שרס שרע שרץ שתץ שתק

"Do you have to be a strictly observant Jewish man over forty years old in order to study the Qabalah? Do you have to believe in the Bible and Biblical deities? Do you have to learn the Hebrew Language? If you are a strictly observant Jewish man or woman the answer is... YES! For the rest of us the answer is... NO! You simply need to know how to connect everything in the universe with everything else... until finally the only things left to connect are You and God." ~Lon Milo DuQuette, "Qabalah For the Rest of Us."

Geek Stuff edit

This user contributes using Firefox.

From my resume:
I am a seasoned support technician with 10 years of broad-based experience in the IT field. I have served in the roles of network administrator, systems integrator and desktop support analyst in a number of different environments. I am comfortable with the responsibility of being the single point of contact for IT-related service requests of all types. My greatest strengths are outstanding customer service, complete ownership of service-related tasks and projects, gold-level service metrics and a ‘can-do’ attitude. I am a highly motivated and reliable individual who looks for value-add opportunities. I understand the importance of reporting, documentation and administrative duties as components of auditable IT service delivery.

Wanna hire me?

Help desk HoF edit

Humanities edit

Q. Hi I need to find out facts about the Louisiana Purchase. Like when was it first created? Or when was it bought by the United States? For how much? How much land was in the Louisiana Purchase? Who fist established the Louisiana Purchase? How many people owned and fought over the Louisiana Purchase? ~IP 209.152.67.222
- A. At first I thought the people here were just mean, but I'm beginning to see the logic of just shrugging and doing this: -->Louisiana Purchase<--. What part of Encyclopedia do you not understand? I mean, gosh, we're writing it for you; do we have to read it for you as well? ~PuckSmith
Q. why columbus set sail ~IP 138.89.13.134
- A. The correct answer is, in fact, "To get to the other side." ~WAvegetarian
Q. How many people have died while playing the sport they invented? ~Vitriol
- A. Don't know. They didn't survive to propagate their great new sports, like crocodile riding or volcano surfing. ~alteripse

Language edit

Q. give me a 2-3 page essay on 3 insirational things tommy douglas did to canada that made him an inspirational canadian, please. Thanks. ~IP 216.185.69.78
- A. Tommy Douglas was able to become an important political figure in Canada and make many important contributions to the government of Canada because he did his own homework. And so should you. ~Ground Zero

Mathematics edit

Q. Can someone estimate how many years until those super-computers calculate the full extent of pi?
- A. $\pi /0$ years. ~StuRat
- A.1 Pi has infinite digits , they will never calculate it. ~helohe
  - A.1.1 What is the point, anyway? 100 digits are enough to circumscribe a circle around the visible universe accurate to the Planck length. ~Keenan Pepper
- A.2 Contact by Carl Sagan told me that there are secret messages in pi. ~Proto
  - A.2.1 But since pi is conjectured to be a normal number, any message imaginable is contained on its digits. (hence this joke). ~Kieff
    - A.2.2 So you're saying there are secret messages, right? :) ~Superm401

File:Smarties (Candy).jpg

Smarties. Good to eat, but how many tubes before I get the entire alphabet?

Q. Before the new, horrendous "hexatube" packaging, tubes of Nestlé Smarties used to contain a letter of the alphabet under the cap. Assuming the cap letters are chosen uniformly at random, how many Smarties tubes would I expect to have to buy before I had collected the entire alphabet? ~Matt Crypto
- A. I believe we had an equivalent question some time ago. Ah, here it is. The probability of finding all the n = 26 letters of the alphabet in m tubes is
  
  $P(m,n)=\sum _{k=0}^{n}(-1)^{k}{n \choose k}\left({\frac {n-k}{n}}\right)^{m}$ .
  This is the number of surjections from M = {1 … m} to N = {1 … n} divided by the total number of functions from M to N (= n^m). Using the Perl code on the page I linked to above, I find that 94 tubes is enough to give you just barely more than even odds of getting all the letters. ~Ilmari Karonen
- A.1 Smarties? Isn't that just Communist for M&Ms?' ~Antifamilymang

Miscellaneous edit

Q. Could someone please tell me Who invented the measurement of time. EG: Division of days into hours etc. Division of years into months etc. ~IP 80.5.126.82
- A. All are lost in mists of prehistory. There is much evidence that...<erudition continues> ~alteripse
  - A.1 Wow, I was surprised that you just didn't tell them to to type 'time' into THE BOX, until I read it. Those dang Philosophers have gone to town again, and done something that competes with Scientific method, as 'most obscure'. ~Zeizmic
Q. Do you know which word describes a person who was born and died on the same day? ~IP 81.178.70.68
- A. This should be under the Language section. But, how about ephemeral? ~StuRat
Q How can I increase my attention span at work so I'm not checking email every 5 minutes and ping ponging between projects inefficiently? ~IP 128.23.113.133
- A.If we knew that we wouldn't spend our days checking every five minutes if there's a new question on the reference desk we can answer. ~David Sneek

Science edit

Q. Are Cheeses made the same way as they were a hundred years ago? ~IP 24.225.212.50
- A. Do you mean, "Is cheese made from curdled milk?" Yes. Do you mean, "Is cheese made by poor dirty children while the father went out hunting for meat and the mother was out plowing the fields?" No, not really. ~Kainaw

Quotations edit

Personal edit

"I've heard there is no need to reinvent the wheel, but if you do you will know more about wheels than someone who builds one from a kit."
"[N]obody changed it because nobody read it because nobody gave a rat's ass about an obscure nobody." ~concerning the John Seigenthaler Sr. controversy, on a Yahoo! message board
"The New Deal and the Great Society were ostensibly beneficial, but one of the consequences is that the power they wielded for good can now be wielded for evil. A federal government which does not have the power to do good on a grand scale is also prevented from doing equally grand evil. To think an all-powerful entity would not be co-opted by corrupt, power hungry people if they had the opportunity is to be naive about human nature."
"In my opinion the materialist perspective is a tautology. It is the best approach to those things that are susceptible to empirical analysis--hence the wonders of science--but it dismisses those things that cannot be so analyzed as non-existent rather than just saying they are beyond its scope."
xe wrote: I'll be working in an ISP's NOC monitoring their clients' routers with my workstation plugged directly into Verizon's backbone.
- Virginia wrote: Plugged right in to the Verizon backbone??? I'm so jealous.
  - xe wrote: 2 gigabits/sec, but I'll be limited to the speed of the NIC in my box.
    - Virginia wrote: Isn't that a little like saying "I'll be on the autobahn, but I'll be limited by the speed of the car" ??? ~from an e-mail exchange.
"Things are more like they are now than they've ever been before."

Wikipedian edit

"roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all of my base, are belong to you" ~Shinmawa's friend
"I do not know with what weapons World Wide Web War I will be fought, but I do know that World Wide Web War II will be fought with acoustic coupler modems and TTY interfaces." ~Cyde Weys on the AfD page for World Wide Web War I
"If you do not wish your edit data to be made publically available, you should not make any edits or contributions to Wikimedia projects." ~Kate
"[T]he Old Testament is a bunch of campfire stories to make Jewish kids feel more Jewy about themselves." ~Kainaw

Favorite edit

"My mission is, in short, to bring everyone to the realization and enjoyment of his own kingship, and my apparent interference with him amounts to no more than advice to him not to suffer interference." ~Aleister Crowley
"Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion." ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." ~Isaac Asimov
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." ~Mark Twain
"You suck ass like an ass-sucking thing." ~amaionuma, an IMDB message board user, upon learning that the creator of a thread entitled "The extended DVD release OUT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" on the Kingdom of Heaven (2005) board was lying.
"Geeks thrive in emergencies, while non-emergencies fail to inspire." ~Jeffrey Tucker