I'm assuming that you're a university student? If so, your school likely has a service for people with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. Get registered with them, and they'll provide you with accomodations that will remove a lot of the stress of taking exams and help you in case you have another panic attack.
Seriously, the exact same thing happened to me during a PhD Topology midterm last November. I went in having studied hard to what was likely to be an easy exam. For some reason, I panicked, and an hour later all I'd done is begun each question about five times over without making any progress. I bombed the exam, which was something that had never happened to me before. Someone recommended I check out disability services. I was registered with them a few weeks later and granted a private room with extra time (in the case of another panic attack) to reduce my exam anxiety, and it worked brilliantly. At least at my school, the fact that you are registered with them is not broadcast, either: while some of your professors may discover that you are, you'd be surprised at how many people need special accomodations, and it'll certainly never appear on your transcripts.
If you think that it would benefit you, I can't recommend it enough.
As for general panic suggestions, the thing to remember about panic attacks is that they cannot physically harm you in any significant way, and that they cannot last more than about 30 mins. The buildup and the aftereffects may make them seem considerably longer, but your body can only physically maintain extremely elevated levels of anxiety for short amounts of time. If panic attacks become a problem for you in the future, these are very important things to keep in mind.
This is very common, as some other posters mentioned. I was filling out an application for the Cordon Bleu cooking school of Miami when I decided at the end of the process that I wasn't ready to pay the $50 application fee and would do so when I heard back from my PhD schools since there was no rush in completing the process. Since then (months ago), I've been receiving phone calls and e-mails from them at least weekly.
Dextromethorphan, while like an opiate in structure, does not resemble opiates at all in terms of how it affects the brain or in sensation. This is because it has no activity at endorphin receptors, as it is the d-isomer of levomethorphan (which would act similar to morphine) and thus cannot "fit".
It's far more closely related to PCP and ketamine in terms of its actions.
I think that you misunderstood me. I never said that *I* personally don't care who I give money to. I said that "many of us" don't care, many of us meaning us as the group of people who download music and use services like AllOfMp3. Frankly, I do care who gets my money, which is why I also don't do things like shop at WalMart.
As for my second point, I don't know if you even read it. I do not consider downloading music to be screwing over the artists. They don't particularly profit from me buying their CDs anyways. The money I save allows me to see them in concert, buy merchandise there, etc, all of which benefits them much better in the end. Furthermore, it also allows me to expose myself to a wider range of musical talent that I otherwise might not have heard, and thus to support a larger number of artists.
Furthermore, I never denied that I want music at cheaper prices than at those that they're being sold. I personally don't think that the prices need to be significantly cheaper, myself (50% of current would entice me), but I'm strongly opposed to providing money to a corrupt organization like the RIAA that rips us off at every turn and this our own money to screw us over through the implementation of things like unfair DRM, attempts to change the definition of fair use, etc.
I think that a lot of us don't really care who we're paying, as long as the service is good and the prices are reasonable.
Hell, I'd feel guilty about buying things from AllOfMp3 if the artists received more than a pittance from my purchase of their CDs in stores. I do want to support the artists, but I am against lining the already bulging pockets of the middle men, particularly as this will just provide them with more cash to sue me if I do break the law. This is why I think it's important to spend wisely: download / buy cheap tracks if you're inclined to do so, but make a strong point of going to see the artists when they play live.
It had a scan of his passport information page on it, which, IIRC, he scanned to modify his DOB for false identification purposes. It also had a lot of his personal information (e.g. banking) on it, showing that it clearly wasn't stolen.
Re:It MIGHT not have been a scam by the seller
on
Online Revenge
·
· Score: 1
That is, of course possible, but it doesn't justify the lies that were told about the laptop. The purchaser was informed that this was a company laptop and belonged to an employee of the seller. This was obviously false. The purchaser also bought the laptop with the impression that it had a DVD+/-R drive and 2 GB of RAM, when it did not have said drive and only sported 512 MB of RAM. Obviously, there was a lot of dishonesty involved in this transaction, regardless of whether or not the laptop was working when it was sent out.
I completely agree with this comment, and furthermore, I think that this may be one of the main contributing causes to the unhealthy eating habits and lack of exercise amongst Americans: when we get home from work in the evening, we're exhausted because we have so little time off. Many of us, additionally, have kids to take care of. At that point, ordering in a pizza is far easier than mobilizing the family to go to an overcrowded grocery store, purchase the ingredients for a healthy dinner, come home, cook it, and eat it, which would expend most of the remainder of the evening.
And exercise? Where are we going to fit that in? When I was a full time IT worker, sometimes I felt that the only chance I have for exercise is climbing the stairs in the morning as opposed to taking the elevator. If I tried to go to the pool to swim laps, for instance, I found it added almost two hours to my day, and that was two hours I didn't really have.
I also believe that this culture of working too hard at dissatisfying jobs may also contribute a huge factor to our need to accumulate goods. When I worked in IT, I didn't particularly enjoy my job and was quite overpaid. To compensate, I bought myself things that I didn't really need since I felt that I should be rewarded for getting up in the morning and facing my unhappiness. I think that many people feel similarly.
There is absolutely no reason why we should be working such long hours. I thought that the invention of technology was to shorten the work week. I refuse to believe that the culmination of thousands of years of human effort has resulted in me having to get up at 7:00 AM to the sound of a squawking alarm clock.
I can't recall the name of it (PearLyrics, perhaps?) but there was an excellent program for OS X that integrated with iTunes and would query several sources and download lyrics to songs you were listening to. The author took it down under threat of being sued by the RIAA, if I recall correctly, and it didn't violate copyright in any way imaginable.
Even if the guy would have won in court, there's likely no way he could have afforded the legal costs, unfortunately, and his programming time was wasted:(.
The time to pack up the equipment, drive to the show, unload, setup, and sound check is often two to three hours.
Yeah. It takes me about three hours a day to make my lunch, pack it up with my other stuff, and then commute to and from work on public transportation. That doesn't count in the eight hours I put in there.
I do sincerely wish the best for you and your band. I just wanted to point out that for many of us, what you describe as work time is a daily reality for which we're never recompensated either.
I only wish that they would do something like this. Then people like me who hate ads could invest in ad blocking consisting of a piece of cardboard and some masking tape, and those that don't mind being marketed to could opt to watch the ads. Everyone wins.
Absolutely. But I'd still rather B happen without A happening. If we're destined for severe global warming, I'd rather get there with a higher quality of life that doesn't involve choking on our own smog. Even if environmentally responsible attitudes won't fix global warming, they aren't without their merits and should still be encourage: cleaner air and conservation of natural resources for future generations continue to be noble goals.
...the article text even hints at the idea that the slashdot crew somehow believe that this new layout is in any way "girly" is pretty damn derogatory and gives a pretty good explanation as to the notion of a complete inability to get any in the nerd stereotype.
I can't say that I've met any girl over the age of eight who said, "OMG!!! PONIES!!!"
Just FYI, benzodiazepines, and in particular, Xanax, are virtually impossible to overdose on. As someone who is prescribed Xanax for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, once, just for fun, I researched the LD-50 and discovered that even if I consumed 13.75 grams of Xanax, while I would probably be unconscious, I could be resuscitated with medical intervention. To give you an idea of how much that is, if we assume the standard Xanax prescription is for 0.5 mg pills, it would be in the ballpark of 27500 pills.
For example, they fault Linux OpenOffice desktops for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features.
Is this surprising? Many of us find ourselves living in a society that promotes the idea that "more is better". Many people go to restaurants where quantity is promoted over quality. Lots of individuals prefer to buy a large number of cheap goods over several more expensive but well-built ones. We're told that we're due to upgrade our computers even if Windows 98 running on a first generation Pentium would probably serve most of our needs just fine, because we want the extra (usually unnecessary to 99% of people) features and the bragging rights of having more and newer things. In the age of capitalism where super sizing, companies like Costco, and status symbols influence so many, I hardly consider this unexpected.
Hell, I barely used a fraction of the features in MS Office 97, but my computers are still running Office 2003 / 2004 (Mac).
Additionally, I think that part of the problem is that free software is... well... free. In many cases, people attribute value to a product, sadly, based on what they paid for it. Think of it this way: if you're given a car by a rich relative and you accidentally destroy it, you're probably far less likely to be upset than if you work for that car, pay for it, and then accidentally destroy it. It's easy to dismiss MS alternatives when they cost nothing because they're essentially not worth anything to people until they're convinced of their usefulness.
...chosen in order to circumvent such measures in countries like Canada and the US where antidiscriminatory laws exist?
For example, about five years ago, I called a housing ad for a room in a place that stated "females preferred" in its listing. I am a male, but the ad had been up for some time, so I felt that they might be willing to overlook that fact in an effort to rent the room. I was told outright by the landlord that "females preferred" essentially meant "females only". Was this term selected as a politically correct way to state this blatantly without violating the terms of the newspaper? Is it even fair to request such things? I've never seen any ad with "males preferred", although no shortage of "females preferred" ones.
If escaping the rigours of reality are your goal, and you consider dissenting viewpoints to prohibit you in this effort, perhaps you should refrain from playing online RPGs where people with dissenting viewpoints run into each other and opt instead to play non-online gmaes instead where there is no danger of that.
If you are opposed to the fact that I'm a homosexual and will thus engage in homosexual relations, seeing as that is a reasonably significant part of my identity and the identity of many others, you are opposed to me and to homosexuals, in essence. You can justify your dislike of homosexual actions through your faith or beliefs, but the fact that your religion encourages this disapproval is no justification for it; it simply indicates that your religion encourages bigotry.
Furthermore, if I were to say that I had black friends and simply disapproved of the fact that they were black but celebrated everything else about them, I'd still be a piece of shit racist.
Sorry to hear that your friends were so unlucky. I've bought one of the very first iBooks, another several years later, and a couple years back a 12" PowerBook, and I've never had anything go wrong.
I dread the day when there will be 50 different versions of Windows out there. Some will have MP, some will have IM, some will have IE... what's a developer to do? We will be forced to bundle all of these service-level applications with our installer. The poor user will end up with 5 different browsers, instant messengers, media players, constantly answering the "Firefox is not your default browser" questions. This type of decision, in my opinion, is very bad for the industry, and especially bad for the end users.
Exactly, IMO, why Linux hasn't made as much progress as it deserves to have made into the end user desktop market. There are some amazing Linux applications but with the diversity of desktop environments and window managers, GUI toolkits, system structure, distros, etc. which is way more varied than several different versions of Windows would be, it's no wonder that many companies have made no move to develop for / support their hardware on Linux.
I find people extremely interesting and entertaining...at least when there's something interesting and entertaining about them. I like being able to talk to pretty much anybody. It's really not hard...just ask them questions about themselves. What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have a family? What do you like to do for fun?
I think that this paragraph perfectly highlights the differences between introverts and extroverts. I have little interest in hearing people's answers to those questions unless I intend on making a serious investment in them and inviting them into my circle of friends in a meaningful, long term way. Small talk typically bores me and when people try to engage me in it, I find myself feeling annoyed because they're interrupting my internal dialogue, which I feel is more productive and more enjoyable than an external conversation would be.
LOL... what's funny is that the majority of my close friends are persistent extroverts that just couldn't take a hint and kept engaging me in small talk until it was unavoidable that we grew to know each other well. Finally, it would get to the point where I'd invested so much time talking to them and learning about one another that it would be silly not to be friends.
I just wanted to point out that people who are antisocial aren't necessarily hateful and bitter towards the human race; for example, I'm pretty antisocial, but not because I'm bitter. I really don't like people all that much and would almost always rather not be around them, but it's not because I harbour any particular grudge towards them. It's comparable to, say, donkeys: I feel no particular inclination to spend any of my time with donkeys, but I certainly hold no hatred of donkeys.
...who feels no particular inclination to extend his natural life?
Don't get me wrong... I'm having a pretty good time and feeling productive, but I'm only 28 and already, I find myself thinking, "OMFG this is long." The thought of living to 500 seems so frightfully tedious and, after a while, too repetitive to be enjoyable. How many new experiences are there to have after you've gotten married, had children, enjoyed grandchildren, traveled, educated yourself, worked, etc? It seems that this sequence fits perfectly into the current 80 or so years that we have. To stretch it out over 500 years sounds frightfully dull.
Then again, I'm one of those weird bastards who disbelieves in afterlife and takes great comfort in the belief that one day, I will entirely cease to exist. The thought of eternal existence sounds horrifying.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm assuming that you're a university student? If so, your school likely has a service for people with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. Get registered with them, and they'll provide you with accomodations that will remove a lot of the stress of taking exams and help you in case you have another panic attack.
Seriously, the exact same thing happened to me during a PhD Topology midterm last November. I went in having studied hard to what was likely to be an easy exam. For some reason, I panicked, and an hour later all I'd done is begun each question about five times over without making any progress. I bombed the exam, which was something that had never happened to me before. Someone recommended I check out disability services. I was registered with them a few weeks later and granted a private room with extra time (in the case of another panic attack) to reduce my exam anxiety, and it worked brilliantly. At least at my school, the fact that you are registered with them is not broadcast, either: while some of your professors may discover that you are, you'd be surprised at how many people need special accomodations, and it'll certainly never appear on your transcripts.
If you think that it would benefit you, I can't recommend it enough.
As for general panic suggestions, the thing to remember about panic attacks is that they cannot physically harm you in any significant way, and that they cannot last more than about 30 mins. The buildup and the aftereffects may make them seem considerably longer, but your body can only physically maintain extremely elevated levels of anxiety for short amounts of time. If panic attacks become a problem for you in the future, these are very important things to keep in mind.
Best of luck!
This is very common, as some other posters mentioned. I was filling out an application for the Cordon Bleu cooking school of Miami when I decided at the end of the process that I wasn't ready to pay the $50 application fee and would do so when I heard back from my PhD schools since there was no rush in completing the process. Since then (months ago), I've been receiving phone calls and e-mails from them at least weekly.
Dextromethorphan, while like an opiate in structure, does not resemble opiates at all in terms of how it affects the brain or in sensation. This is because it has no activity at endorphin receptors, as it is the d-isomer of levomethorphan (which would act similar to morphine) and thus cannot "fit".
It's far more closely related to PCP and ketamine in terms of its actions.
I think that you misunderstood me. I never said that *I* personally don't care who I give money to. I said that "many of us" don't care, many of us meaning us as the group of people who download music and use services like AllOfMp3. Frankly, I do care who gets my money, which is why I also don't do things like shop at WalMart.
As for my second point, I don't know if you even read it. I do not consider downloading music to be screwing over the artists. They don't particularly profit from me buying their CDs anyways. The money I save allows me to see them in concert, buy merchandise there, etc, all of which benefits them much better in the end. Furthermore, it also allows me to expose myself to a wider range of musical talent that I otherwise might not have heard, and thus to support a larger number of artists.
Furthermore, I never denied that I want music at cheaper prices than at those that they're being sold. I personally don't think that the prices need to be significantly cheaper, myself (50% of current would entice me), but I'm strongly opposed to providing money to a corrupt organization like the RIAA that rips us off at every turn and this our own money to screw us over through the implementation of things like unfair DRM, attempts to change the definition of fair use, etc.
I think that a lot of us don't really care who we're paying, as long as the service is good and the prices are reasonable.
Hell, I'd feel guilty about buying things from AllOfMp3 if the artists received more than a pittance from my purchase of their CDs in stores. I do want to support the artists, but I am against lining the already bulging pockets of the middle men, particularly as this will just provide them with more cash to sue me if I do break the law. This is why I think it's important to spend wisely: download / buy cheap tracks if you're inclined to do so, but make a strong point of going to see the artists when they play live.
It had a scan of his passport information page on it, which, IIRC, he scanned to modify his DOB for false identification purposes. It also had a lot of his personal information (e.g. banking) on it, showing that it clearly wasn't stolen.
That is, of course possible, but it doesn't justify the lies that were told about the laptop. The purchaser was informed that this was a company laptop and belonged to an employee of the seller. This was obviously false. The purchaser also bought the laptop with the impression that it had a DVD+/-R drive and 2 GB of RAM, when it did not have said drive and only sported 512 MB of RAM. Obviously, there was a lot of dishonesty involved in this transaction, regardless of whether or not the laptop was working when it was sent out.
NERA.
(Not Everything Requires an Acronym.)
I completely agree with this comment, and furthermore, I think that this may be one of the main contributing causes to the unhealthy eating habits and lack of exercise amongst Americans: when we get home from work in the evening, we're exhausted because we have so little time off. Many of us, additionally, have kids to take care of. At that point, ordering in a pizza is far easier than mobilizing the family to go to an overcrowded grocery store, purchase the ingredients for a healthy dinner, come home, cook it, and eat it, which would expend most of the remainder of the evening.
And exercise? Where are we going to fit that in? When I was a full time IT worker, sometimes I felt that the only chance I have for exercise is climbing the stairs in the morning as opposed to taking the elevator. If I tried to go to the pool to swim laps, for instance, I found it added almost two hours to my day, and that was two hours I didn't really have.
I also believe that this culture of working too hard at dissatisfying jobs may also contribute a huge factor to our need to accumulate goods. When I worked in IT, I didn't particularly enjoy my job and was quite overpaid. To compensate, I bought myself things that I didn't really need since I felt that I should be rewarded for getting up in the morning and facing my unhappiness. I think that many people feel similarly.
There is absolutely no reason why we should be working such long hours. I thought that the invention of technology was to shorten the work week. I refuse to believe that the culmination of thousands of years of human effort has resulted in me having to get up at 7:00 AM to the sound of a squawking alarm clock.
I can't recall the name of it (PearLyrics, perhaps?) but there was an excellent program for OS X that integrated with iTunes and would query several sources and download lyrics to songs you were listening to. The author took it down under threat of being sued by the RIAA, if I recall correctly, and it didn't violate copyright in any way imaginable.
:(.
Even if the guy would have won in court, there's likely no way he could have afforded the legal costs, unfortunately, and his programming time was wasted
The time to pack up the equipment, drive to the show, unload, setup, and sound check is often two to three hours.
Yeah. It takes me about three hours a day to make my lunch, pack it up with my other stuff, and then commute to and from work on public transportation. That doesn't count in the eight hours I put in there.
I do sincerely wish the best for you and your band. I just wanted to point out that for many of us, what you describe as work time is a daily reality for which we're never recompensated either.
I only wish that they would do something like this. Then people like me who hate ads could invest in ad blocking consisting of a piece of cardboard and some masking tape, and those that don't mind being marketed to could opt to watch the ads. Everyone wins.
Absolutely. But I'd still rather B happen without A happening. If we're destined for severe global warming, I'd rather get there with a higher quality of life that doesn't involve choking on our own smog. Even if environmentally responsible attitudes won't fix global warming, they aren't without their merits and should still be encourage: cleaner air and conservation of natural resources for future generations continue to be noble goals.
...the article text even hints at the idea that the slashdot crew somehow believe that this new layout is in any way "girly" is pretty damn derogatory and gives a pretty good explanation as to the notion of a complete inability to get any in the nerd stereotype.
I can't say that I've met any girl over the age of eight who said, "OMG!!! PONIES!!!"
Just FYI, benzodiazepines, and in particular, Xanax, are virtually impossible to overdose on. As someone who is prescribed Xanax for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, once, just for fun, I researched the LD-50 and discovered that even if I consumed 13.75 grams of Xanax, while I would probably be unconscious, I could be resuscitated with medical intervention. To give you an idea of how much that is, if we assume the standard Xanax prescription is for 0.5 mg pills, it would be in the ballpark of 27500 pills.
For example, they fault Linux OpenOffice desktops for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features.
Is this surprising? Many of us find ourselves living in a society that promotes the idea that "more is better". Many people go to restaurants where quantity is promoted over quality. Lots of individuals prefer to buy a large number of cheap goods over several more expensive but well-built ones. We're told that we're due to upgrade our computers even if Windows 98 running on a first generation Pentium would probably serve most of our needs just fine, because we want the extra (usually unnecessary to 99% of people) features and the bragging rights of having more and newer things. In the age of capitalism where super sizing, companies like Costco, and status symbols influence so many, I hardly consider this unexpected.
Hell, I barely used a fraction of the features in MS Office 97, but my computers are still running Office 2003 / 2004 (Mac).
Additionally, I think that part of the problem is that free software is... well... free. In many cases, people attribute value to a product, sadly, based on what they paid for it. Think of it this way: if you're given a car by a rich relative and you accidentally destroy it, you're probably far less likely to be upset than if you work for that car, pay for it, and then accidentally destroy it. It's easy to dismiss MS alternatives when they cost nothing because they're essentially not worth anything to people until they're convinced of their usefulness.
...chosen in order to circumvent such measures in countries like Canada and the US where antidiscriminatory laws exist?
For example, about five years ago, I called a housing ad for a room in a place that stated "females preferred" in its listing. I am a male, but the ad had been up for some time, so I felt that they might be willing to overlook that fact in an effort to rent the room. I was told outright by the landlord that "females preferred" essentially meant "females only". Was this term selected as a politically correct way to state this blatantly without violating the terms of the newspaper? Is it even fair to request such things? I've never seen any ad with "males preferred", although no shortage of "females preferred" ones.
If escaping the rigours of reality are your goal, and you consider dissenting viewpoints to prohibit you in this effort, perhaps you should refrain from playing online RPGs where people with dissenting viewpoints run into each other and opt instead to play non-online gmaes instead where there is no danger of that.
If you are opposed to the fact that I'm a homosexual and will thus engage in homosexual relations, seeing as that is a reasonably significant part of my identity and the identity of many others, you are opposed to me and to homosexuals, in essence. You can justify your dislike of homosexual actions through your faith or beliefs, but the fact that your religion encourages this disapproval is no justification for it; it simply indicates that your religion encourages bigotry.
Furthermore, if I were to say that I had black friends and simply disapproved of the fact that they were black but celebrated everything else about them, I'd still be a piece of shit racist.
Sorry to hear that your friends were so unlucky. I've bought one of the very first iBooks, another several years later, and a couple years back a 12" PowerBook, and I've never had anything go wrong.
I dread the day when there will be 50 different versions of Windows out there. Some will have MP, some will have IM, some will have IE ... what's a developer to do? We will be forced to bundle all of these service-level applications with our installer. The poor user will end up with 5 different browsers, instant messengers, media players, constantly answering the "Firefox is not your default browser" questions. This type of decision, in my opinion, is very bad for the industry, and especially bad for the end users.
Exactly, IMO, why Linux hasn't made as much progress as it deserves to have made into the end user desktop market. There are some amazing Linux applications but with the diversity of desktop environments and window managers, GUI toolkits, system structure, distros, etc. which is way more varied than several different versions of Windows would be, it's no wonder that many companies have made no move to develop for / support their hardware on Linux.
I find people extremely interesting and entertaining...at least when there's something interesting and entertaining about them. I like being able to talk to pretty much anybody. It's really not hard...just ask them questions about themselves. What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have a family? What do you like to do for fun?
I think that this paragraph perfectly highlights the differences between introverts and extroverts. I have little interest in hearing people's answers to those questions unless I intend on making a serious investment in them and inviting them into my circle of friends in a meaningful, long term way. Small talk typically bores me and when people try to engage me in it, I find myself feeling annoyed because they're interrupting my internal dialogue, which I feel is more productive and more enjoyable than an external conversation would be.
LOL... what's funny is that the majority of my close friends are persistent extroverts that just couldn't take a hint and kept engaging me in small talk until it was unavoidable that we grew to know each other well. Finally, it would get to the point where I'd invested so much time talking to them and learning about one another that it would be silly not to be friends.
I just wanted to point out that people who are antisocial aren't necessarily hateful and bitter towards the human race; for example, I'm pretty antisocial, but not because I'm bitter. I really don't like people all that much and would almost always rather not be around them, but it's not because I harbour any particular grudge towards them. It's comparable to, say, donkeys: I feel no particular inclination to spend any of my time with donkeys, but I certainly hold no hatred of donkeys.
If you act like a piece of meat and expect to be treated any differently than a piece of meat, you're probably not very bright.
...who feels no particular inclination to extend his natural life?
Don't get me wrong... I'm having a pretty good time and feeling productive, but I'm only 28 and already, I find myself thinking, "OMFG this is long." The thought of living to 500 seems so frightfully tedious and, after a while, too repetitive to be enjoyable. How many new experiences are there to have after you've gotten married, had children, enjoyed grandchildren, traveled, educated yourself, worked, etc? It seems that this sequence fits perfectly into the current 80 or so years that we have. To stretch it out over 500 years sounds frightfully dull.
Then again, I'm one of those weird bastards who disbelieves in afterlife and takes great comfort in the belief that one day, I will entirely cease to exist. The thought of eternal existence sounds horrifying.