something ultra-cool you've done

[Coolydudey60]

Here, you say something ultra-sspecial, cool, interesting weird that you've done recently (last year or so)

I just came 8th in Greece for maths.

I moved to school in France (parents work, ...) knowing only little French: i couldn't even formulate a sentence

been a year ahead at school ever since I was small

not bad all in all!

although this wasn't that recent i have to say it:
me and a couple of friends of mine were digging holes on the beach, then wee took some twigs that were lying around on the holes (~1 foot), then seaweed then a little bit of sand. they were pretty much invisible. we stepped in most of them though.
but suddenly we saw a 60 year old lady sinking a foot into the ground and almost fall over.
i remember the scene so vividly, it was hilarious

 

[Stoic Beverage]

In the 8th grade, my friend's locker was jammed. He asked if I could open it for him, and I said I'd try. I leaned back against the row of lockers and was about to ask which locker was his, but when I leaned back my elbow bumped a locker in a Fonz-ish manner. I looked at it and it swung open directly after I bumped it. That was his locker.
I felt so very cool...
Highlight of my life as of yet.
(That's not pathetic, dammit!)

 

[Coolydudey60]

that's funny lol

 

[JarNew]

fingered an asian chick as she pumped my dick to the bassline at a dubstep show, while dancing and making out hardbody

 

[snafupants]

a few years ago i danced onstage with iggy pop as he played search and destroy. i have also jumped from a fast moving mini van and ridden a roller coaster twenty seven times consecutively. a dozen of my friends from school road the coaster with me and tossed their cookies in short order.

 

[Aramea]

I haven't done anything ultra-cool, but about 15 years ago I did some travel for work. I toured the city of Sammarquand, the Hanoi Hilton, an Armenian church dug out of a mountain and the Egyptian pyramids. There are more, but those are good examples. So I guess "see the world" is the coolest thing I have done.

 

[MissQuote]

In the 8th grade, my friend's locker was jammed. He asked if I could open it for him, and I said I'd try. I leaned back against the row of lockers and was about to ask which locker was his, but when I leaned back my elbow bumped a locker in a Fonz-ish manner. I looked at it and it swung open directly after I bumped it. That was his locker.
I felt so very cool...
Highlight of my life as of yet.
(That's not pathetic, dammit!)

That is awesome.

I'm not sure if I have ever done anything ultra cool.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

When I was in kindergarten, I won the school science fair, got on the news, and placed 12th in the state.

 

[17pounder]

When I was in my senior year, I broke the official world record for pneumatic rocketry by 11 seconds, bringing it from 18 to 29 seconds. I was using a 2 liter bottle at 100psi while the previous winner was using steel pipe with 2000 psi of nitrogen. The only rule is no moving parts, and no parachute. Since I couldnt match the pressure to make the trajectory farther, I simply designed the fins to cause the rocket to turn sideways and rotate on its way down. It was simple enough, as when the fins are a certain length compared to the body of the rocket, they will act like a stalled wing when the air hits them from the side.
I also made a new mod for CFS3 in 5 hours, fixing almost every problem with the gameplay. Ill be uploading it soon.
But the best thing I did was win my regional science olympiad in fermi quesions (which have since been removed). Its questions like "How many molicules of water in lake michigan", and you must use common sense to make estimations of massive numbers. It was my first time competing, I was alone against three teams which each had three years of competition behind them, and I won by a landslide. It was the only gold medal my school ever got in science olympiad. Since my science teacher had been such a big influence in my senior year, I really felt like it was something he deserved to see.
Weird thing is, I often feel inferior to people, even though I am a reasonably large and fit person as well.

 

[mke2686]

I haven't done anything ultra-cool, but about 15 years ago I did some travel for work. I toured the city of Sammarquand, the Hanoi Hilton, an Armenian church dug out of a mountain and the Egyptian pyramids. There are more, but those are good examples. So I guess "see the world" is the coolest thing I have done.

do you find that the more culture you absorb the better you know yourself?

 

[Architect]

I sold my house in 2005 at the peak of the local housing bubble, predicted the market crash in 2008, and put it all on the only asset class that soared that year, and sold at the peak again.

 

[sammael]

Ménage à trois...

 

[17pounder]

I sold my house in 2005 at the peak of the local housing bubble, predicted the market crash in 2008, and put it all on the only asset class that soared that year, and sold at the peak again.

Isnt it funny how not screwing up can make things go so well? I honestly feel like most people are not successful simply because they make mistakes almost all of the time. I mean, really, I cant say I have seen someone make a decision in the last five years which could not have easily been improved upon. Seriously, its like 99% of people are completely incompetent, and people who simply dont screw up are super smart.

Oh, and I have something similar like this. Ive been doing collections for two months, and twice I have doubled the efficiency of the collections process, which saves $16k a month. First one was when I discovered that everyone manually searched for phone numbers when the clients provided wrong numbers with the area code cut off. By asking the IT guy to write a script which considers the numbers disconnected and uses the existing automated system to find the numbers, we save $1 per file, and we do 16k a month which had these butchered numbers.
The second time I searched for forum posts on how people view our lawfirm, and discovered that people consider our law mandated calls for settlements as offers because we could not sue them. So, I started informing people that we were only calling because we were required to by law, and all of a sudden our settlements have soared. I wont know for a few more months the exact performance, but in the last few weeks the number of people who refuse to settle has dropped dramatically.

Isnt it funny, how the most obvious things can improve things so much? Its hard to believe that 95% of people really cannot see such obvious problems.

The thing is that I feel like I should do the correct thing by default, its just what you do, but from the point of view of other people we appear somehow super-smart. I honestly do not feel like I am superior, but I sure as hell feel like people dont hold up their end of the bargain.

 

[snafupants]

I sold my house in 2005 at the peak of the local housing bubble, predicted the market crash in 2008, and put it all on the only asset class that soared that year, and sold at the peak again.

there is no earthly equal to your rarefied intellect and razor sharp instincts! thread closed, that is the coolest thing i have ever heard.

 

[Architect]

Thanks snafupants, I was pretty proud of it which bought myself an early retirement if I want. Couldn't talk about it much at the time because I was warning everybody I could about an impending crash, which they ignored, and people generally don't take kindly to being wrong, losing money, and being reminded of same.

17pounder - yes that's essentially my technique. I realized that I don't like to run with the crowd (INTP type), so instead I do a form of 'reverse gearing'. While everybody else is loading up on the latest risk asset (gold, silver, RE, oil or whatever) I analyze it and bet on its demise. Most of the time the crowd gets it wrong eventually, because a crowd can't be right in an investment (fallacy of composition.) My technique is a matter of being 'wrong' most of the time, and gloriously right some of the time.

For the particulars on this, the investment was on 30Y Treasury bonds, which earned a nominal coupon 5% return from 2005 to 2008, and which returned 50% capital appreciation in 2008 when I sold, relative to -50% in all other asset classes (except gold which turned a little profit that year)

For those that are wondering, we're back in la-la land at the moment. Maybe this year, next at the latest I guess.

 

[soraya]

Please bear in mind that at this point in my life, although intellectually adept, I hard core sucked at normal person things (eating food regularly, crossing streets without getting hit, getting adequate sleep, realizing the difference between daytime and nighttime, etc....)

Freshman year of college I decided that I would take the LSAT for fun. I forgot I'd signed up so I never studied for it. The night before the test I got an email reminding me that I had the test the next day. But, instead of studying, I decided to satisfy my weird Ni urges and read about bears and archetypes of bears in Russian folklore in the library until 2am. I got 4 hours of sleep, woke up, read the Wikipedia article on the LSAT (cause I had no idea what was on the test) in about 5 minutes just before I ran out the door to take the test.

I was calm, however, and thought the test was fun although I had to guess on a lot of the terminology that I was unfamiliar with. When I got my score back it was a 178/180, which is damn near perfect. I scored higher than any of the juniors and seniors who were taking it to go to law school.

Also, when I was young I used to wake my parents up in the early morning to tell them who was going to die that day. I did it 5 times: Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, George Harrison, and the ducks in the pond at the park near our house. Some fucker shot the ducks with a BB gun. I was right all 5 times and my parents, needless to say, were freaked the hell out.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

Also, when I was young I used to wake my parents up in the early morning to tell them who was going to die that day. I did it 5 times: Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, George Harrison, and the ducks in the pond at the park near our house. Some fucker shot the ducks with a BB gun. I was right all 5 times and my parents, needless to say, were freaked the hell out.

What the hell? That is not necessarily cool, but very interesting...

 

[soraya]

It's cool...in sorta a morbid way... I'm pretty creeptastic like that. Yeah, but seriously I don't even try to figure out what that mess is all about anymore. Never understood it and probably never will.

 

[17pounder]

Thats weird, I felt like I had to prepare for the death of someone twice, once for my best friend, and another time for my stepmother a few months back. I was in disdain when I heard, because I woke up a week earlier with the most intense feeling that I specifically had to prepare for her death. The next week she had an aneurysm.

Thanks snafupants, I was pretty proud of it which bought myself an early retirement if I want. Couldn't talk about it much at the time because I was warning everybody I could about an impending crash, which they ignored, and people generally don't take kindly to being wrong, losing money, and being reminded of same.

17pounder - yes that's essentially my technique. I realized that I don't like to run with the crowd (INTP type), so instead I do a form of 'reverse gearing'. While everybody else is loading up on the latest risk asset (gold, silver, RE, oil or whatever) I analyze it and bet on its demise. Most of the time the crowd gets it wrong eventually, because a crowd can't be right in an investment (fallacy of composition.) My technique is a matter of being 'wrong' most of the time, and gloriously right some of the time.

For the particulars on this, the investment was on 30Y Treasury bonds, which earned a nominal coupon 5% return from 2005 to 2008, and which returned 50% capital appreciation in 2008 when I sold, relative to -50% in all other asset classes (except gold which turned a little profit that year)

For those that are wondering, we're back in la-la land at the moment. Maybe this year, next at the latest I guess.

LMAO, Thats exactly how my mind works. For the last two days, Im taking in more money than all five people in my department. I did nearly $20k, while many of them didnt get 1k. My monthly quota is 30k The others didnt even come close to 10k in the last four days . Sad thing is that Ive told them what Im doing twice, and they ignore it.

 

[Hadoblado]

This thread makes me feel inadequate

 

[17pounder]

Dont feel that way, I felt inadequate my entire life and it turned out that it wasnt me that was wrong, but that people could not understand my "level" of intellect, known as not being a total f-up.
Its hard to find direction in life when you cant be sure of the information you know, you have to get a feeling for it. Everything I learned from textbooks turned out to be wrong, these books were written by S type people, and the information is incredibly shallow.
I found that the best way to built useful knowledge it to take things apart in your mind, and then make a big picture out of the pieces. The big picture which is produced by other people is never right, but you will not always be able to improve apon them. One of the most important things is to know when you dont have enough information, and holding back from making decisions until you really feel positive. This can be excruciating when people wont let you prove yourself, but eventually you will have total trust in your ability to create a picture from the small facts.
A few years ago I couldnt make effective use of my knowledge, and every time I thought I knew something, someone would come along with a detail that wouldnt fit. I eventually started feeling like I needed to find the dots and connect them for myself, and it just built on itself. Once it starts working a little, you get more confident in you ability to make decisions, and you can do more and more with it. The first chance I had was to run a shift at a donut shop, and I multiplied the income of my shift by four times. As soon as they hired someone else and they took some of my days, the income dropped to previous levels. The point of this is that you can make your intuition work for you in almost any situation.
In fact, I now max out the N on the MBTI, and its most due to the experiences of the past few years. Ive really solidified my N lately.

 

[Hadoblado]

Not inadequate in general, just inadequate as an INTP. I don't have any awesome stories about how I'm ultra intelligent or anything. It's more an expression of admiration than any genuine feelings of incompetence. I know I'm more intelligent than average, but I'm not THAT above average :P

 

[Yet]

soraya

Freshman year of college I decided that I would take the LSAT for fun. I forgot I'd signed up so I never studied for it. The night before the test I got an email reminding me that I had the test the next day. But, instead of studying, I decided to satisfy my weird Ni urges and read about bears and archetypes of bears in Russian folklore in the library until 2am. I got 4 hours of sleep, woke up, read the Wikipedia article on the LSAT (cause I had no idea what was on the test) in about 5 minutes just before I ran out the door to take the test.

I was calm, however, and thought the test was fun although I had to guess on a lot of the terminology that I was unfamiliar with. When I got my score back it was a 178/180, which is damn near perfect. I scored higher than any of the juniors and seniors who were taking it to go to law school.

 

[cheese]

Dammit soraya, you're blonde AND you ruled the LSATs

Once I was new at this school and we were doing sports, and I hit a home run on the first go, total fluke, and heard people whispering about me in surprise and admiration. I felt pretty pumped up for the second go: the ball came flying towards me, I swung the bat, raced around the track, stuck my tongue out at the opposition and went "HA HA, SUCKERS!", grinning from ear to ear....both looked disconcertingly surprised and slightly disdainful as they said, "What are you running for? You didn't hit the ball!".

Yeah. That *may* be the coolest moment of my life, but it's hard to tell. There's also the time I fell down while racing to get some food, in front of the entire universe. (Well, about 200 people.) Actually I've fallen down a lot. Probably as a result of my refusal to wear shoes. Is that cool? Oh, I also gave a performance drunk once, and forgot half the piece. That ended my career, and most of my life. I've puked on the bus, outside the bus, in a restaurant, outside a restaurant, in someone's scarf, in someone's bathroom, on someone's couch - though I haven't had the honour of doing it on an actual someone yet. Um....I guess you could also count the time I joined this forum. Yep, that's pretty much a list of my coolest moments in life.

 

[Architect]

How about this one? I flunked algebra three times in high school and early college, but then, despite having zero science and math background, got the idea that I wanted to be a physicist. Four years later I was accepted into one of the top five physics PhD programs in the world.

 

[ElvenVeil]

hmm... Cool stuff.. I find it somewhat difficult to pinpoint the cool stuff I have done.. I Also have those stories that says 'didn't study for the exam at all, didn't follow the lectures and still scored the highest possible grade at the final exam' .. but meh, that doesn't seem that cool to me. . .

ah perhaps ! I am somehow amazed of how quick my mind is when I am under stress or in critical situations.. I once ran towards a bus.. I then fell while running. In the moment while I fell the following went through my head 'How could I fall? I must have stepped wrong somewhere and then my foot slipped.. This must look stupid.. oh well there is no way to recover and avoid the fall, so might as well just crash'

or when I spoke with someone while drinking a glass of water.. I can sometimes lose a bit of control in the real world, so I forgot to hold onto the glass of water that naturally ressulted in that it fell towards the ground.
when it dropped out of my hand I thought - How could I forget to hold onto the glass?? .. I might as well just let it fall, as I don't want to be bothered by trying to grab the glass.. then it hit me, as it was my dad I spoke to, that he would perhaps be a little mad if his glass was going to break.. So because of that I then decided it would be for the best to stop the glass from hitting the floor , and I managed to save it before it did

I think the above two situations are pretty detailed concidering the short amount of time that that elapse from the beginning to the end

 

[Puffy]

I once got told to f**k off by Lemmy from Motorhead at a rock festival. Good times.

On a serious note, I think trekking Everest base camp was one of the highlights of the last few years. I will definitely be doing that again some time.