rec.autos.simulators

Depends on how you define "hob-knob" -- doesn't sound too sanitary to me.

As I explained about 2 years ago, when some people seemed to have a
difficult time believing that parents would be so unfeeling (imagine how
*I* felt!) as to name their only son and heir "Barton" (a Scots/Gaelic
word meaning "field" or "farmer" -- my father's occupation) "Spencer"
(my Grandfather's name) "Brown" (no choice), the only reason that
"Barton Spencer Brown" showed up in my email messages was that's the way
the original configuration of my integrated browser renedered it, taking
my full name from my billing information. I didn't even notice it was
there until people -- you among them, I'm sure -- had some irrational
reaction to a person with three names, the first two actually being so
foppish as to require two syllables each. Now I know that "Billy Bob",
"Wanda Lou", and "Laquita Chenille" are accepted monikers in the Great
Democracy, but apparently anything that smacks of the "landed gentry"
(say, "Fortescue Cholmondeley Smythe III") is considered clear evidence
of aristocratic, monarchical, and anti-democracy leanings.

My father's ancestors colonized the Stonington, CT area under Governor
Roger Winthrop in the early 1630s. Finding the rocks there far too easy
to farm, they moved to upstate New York, where they found bigger and
more satisfying rocks, and moved -- generation to generation -- into
greater and greater poverty, my father's father being the last to own
his own farm.

My mother's ancestry has two distinct branches, one from Ireland (an
18th century example managed to get out of the peat bogs by signing on
as a mercenary with the British forces during the American Revolution)
the other from Scotland, where my mother's mother, born in Dundee but
raised to the age of four at the Bridge o' Weir orphanage in Glasgow
(after the death of her destitute mother and desertion by her father),
was put on a ship bound to Canada, all alone with no belongings but her
family bible with her name written in it -- the only reason she knew her
own name -- and indentured to a childless family in the British south of
the province of Quebec. Her first husband, my mother's father, was
another poverty-stricken and potato-less refugee from Ireland.

So, Dameon (and if that's your real name, I wouldn't go around picking
on the names of others; if it's not, grow some balls and use your real
name, no matter how rummy it may be), you can see that my origins are
several manure-covered steps below humble. I was raised on various
tenant farms by parents for whom the Great Depression (soon to be
reintroduced by George W Bush) was a terrifying memory of hunger and
deprivation. I remember my first pair of shoes. I remember being
humiliated in grade school because I couldn't afford a school lunch, and
going hungry for days at a stretch.

Yet somehow, 54 years later, here I am -- goofy name and all -- married
to an incredible woman who is also a brilliant research scientist. I was
the very first person in my family, for as far back as any reckoning can
be made, to have gone to college, and I did it at the ripe old age of
39. Not only that, I graduated Summa***Laude, with a GPA of 9.735.

I'm no great success, no media star (if such a word has any meaning in
these benighted times), and certainly not very well off; but somehow
I've made it up to now with that silly name.

So give it a rest, OK?

Barton Spencer Brown

PS: it's "hobnob." Should you ever wish to know the correct form,
meaning, antonym, synonym, and/or etymology of a word, may I suggest:

www.bartleby.com

as the best reference source for all things verbal.

NTRANSITIVE VERB:  
                                 Inflected forms: hobnobbed, hobnobbing, hobnobs
                   To associate familiarly: hobnobs with the executives.
ETYMOLOGY:
                   From the phrase (drink) hob or nob, (toast) one
another alternately, from
                   obsolete and dialectal hab nab, have or have not :
probably Middle English
                   habbe, have; see have + Middle English nabbe
(contraction of ne habbe,
                   have not ( Old English ne, not; see not + habbe, have).
WORD HISTORY:
                   Hobnobbing with our social betters can be a
hit-or-miss proposition, a fact
                   that has an etymological justification. The verb
hobnob originally meant to
                   drink together and occurred as a varying phrase, hob
or nob, hob-a-nob, or
                   hob and nob, the first of which is recorded in 1763.
This phrasal form reflects
                   the origins of the verb in similar phrases that were
used when two people
                   toasted each other. The phrases were probably so used
because hob is a
                   variant of hab and nob of nab, which are probably
forms of have and its
                   negative. In Middle English, for example, one finds
the forms habbe, to
                   have, and nabbe, not to have. Hab or nab, or
simply hab nab, thus meant
                   get or lose, hit or miss, and the variant hob-nob
also meant hit or miss.
                   Used in the drinking phrase, hob or nob probably
meant give or take; from
                   a drinking situation hob nob spread to other forms of
chumminess.

Sorry to interrupt the pissing match but great post Bart.  Very well done.

--
Joe M.

<snipped>

ROFL, knew there was something familiar about that bastard

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

Totally agree, if Bart could race as well as he can write we'd all be in
trouble :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

Don't give me that ***-- I *know* your real name is Fortescue
Cholmondeley Smythe III. Now you owe Nosferatu an apology, too.

Toffee-nosed. That hurt, man.

BB

Well, I think you're all in trouble anyway -- grown men (and wimmin!)
diddling about with pretend race cars and making embarrassing exhaust
noises with your lips -- but you're right: I can't race worth warm spit.
Funny... I can drive a real car fairly well -- no fatal accidents yet --
but when I get in front of a monitor and the road starts twisting, I
just get a massive headache and have to lay down for the rest of the day.

BB

You've made one miscalculation Nos, you're using *your* time scale.  Good
old Bart probably threw that response together in less than 8 minutes.  I'm
guessing it would have taken you weeks to craft such an intelligent
response.  Hell, I'm still waiting to read your *first*.  :0)

--
Joe M.

Ouch......and we eagerly await Nos' reply

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

Tru the Drag Racing sims then, about as exciting as watching my car rust
if you ask me, but you might enjoy it :-), don't even need a wheel, a
keyboard will do just fine and you do seem to master the keyboard pretty
well :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

And now it's even easier it seems

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

I need to find out what all this Linux stuff is some day :-), and yes, I
have 3 Mandrake 9.0 ISO's sitting on my HD here, just need to find the
time and energy to start.....again

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

As Uncle Goy observed, I may be slow with a wheel, but I'm hell on a keyboard...

BB

FU2

(.48 seconds - a new Usenet record)

Cheers you ornery Canadian bastage. :-)

--
Joe Marques

Cool, I wonder if Racer now runs on an X-Box! ;-)

Ruud van Gaal
Free car sim: http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Pencil art  : http://www.racesimcentral.net/

You buying one Ruud ? :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--