Two. And perhaps they seem obvious in retrospect.
The first is about women and relationships. For me, anyway, I have realized that there is one hard and fast rule that must never, ever, ever be ignored (if it is, things will not work out, period). The rule is this: talking should be natural and unstoppable. Let me explain. I have several friends with whom I have discovered I can talk about essentially anything for arbitrary lengths of time - like gasses (read: hot air) we can fill any length of time with fascinating idle chatter without trying or even thinking about it. We just talk. (and talk, and talk, and talk…) This, I have realized, is absolutely necessary. I used to think that the secret was in the comfortable silence. Boy, was I dead wrong. The secret is in the neverending chatter. Remind me to keep this in mind for any and all future romantic interests. (Slap me severely, if necessary.)
The second epiphany is of a somewhat lesser (or greater) magnitude, in a completely different vein: email. As many people may (or may not) know, I maintain my own email server for my own purposes (since I don’t own a domainname (at the moment), I don’t have “cool” email addresses, but it is sufficient for what I need right now). I realized that I can track my spam. Or at least, future spam. I realized that I can create customized email addresses for everyone who asks for one for me very easily and quickly, with little to no overhead on my own part. For example, when/if Apple needs to know my email address, I can give them kyle-apple@memoryhole.ncr.nd.edu. This is of course an alias for my own account on the machine, BUT, it TAGS the email. Now, if I ever get spam sent to kyle-apple, I KNOW WHO LEAKED IT! And I can do the same for kyle-yahoo, kyle-ibm, kyle-slashdot, etc. Oooo, the power! … ok, so it’s partly pure curiosity as to who is giving out my email address, but you gotta admit, it’s pretty cool! (I was thinking about some of the email systems where you can create a time-sensitive email address easily… and I could do that with a shell script and the at demon, but usually you want something slightly more permanent).
Now I just have to figure out who all has my email address!
