Skills
Don't be shy. Can you do something that other people find useful, entertaining, or impressive? Don't hide it under a bushel! Instead, post here. Put your proficiency in parentheses. Add new categories and skills as appropriate.
Contents
Automotive Skills
Drive Stick Shift
Evan Miller (maniacally)
Daniel Rooney (erotically)
Brendan Dougherty (smooth as shit out of a duck's ass)
Joe Shoer '06 (that's what she said)
Katie Montgomery (could drive anything from a '82 Toyota Tercel to a forklift, or so she believes)
Jessica Chung (She learned in a week.)
Samantha Peterson (automatics are for women)
Janey Waney Lee (She doesn't even need to say anything.)
Leah Joy Weintraub (In her other life, she actually is a race car driver.) (So she has problems making right turns.)
Lucy Cox-Chapman(Better than her brother)
Jay Cox-Chapman(Worse than his sister)
Helena Harnik (I have two driving licenses, one for each side of the road. Yeah that's right- I can use either hand to shift. That makes me 2x more stick-savvy than everyone else)
Ronit Bhattacharyya '07 (Only ever driven stick shift; now I just wish I could drive on the right side of the road)
Anne Royston '08 (can shift from both driver's and passenger's seat; working on backseat)
Matthew Earle '07 (Double-clutch downshifts saves wear on synchros, but may have caused the expensive timing chain misalignment he just had fixed)
Travis Vachon (Including sketchy old truck clutches)
Clara Hard (West Coast style)
Nick Colella (Has to watch out for moose)
Drive Really Fast In Reverse
Danny Fischler once pulled a k-turn, maxing at around 20mph, across the width of a freeway entrance. With Becky frickin' Burditt in the back seat. Ca-raaaaaazy.
Sweet Jumps
David Rodriguez likes to go as fast as he can when he sees speed bumps and likes to think he gets an inch or two of air in his 2-ton SUV every time.
Change a Tire
David Rodriguez '06 has changed more than his fair share of tires and learned that salt+rust will effectively glue a wheel onto the axle. Solution? Wedge the flat edge of your hubcap-removal tool into the jammed area and whack the crap out of it with a hammer. Eventually, if you're lucky, that wheel will pop right off.
Jumpstart a Car
David Rodriguez '06 has also had his fair share of car jumpstarts and knows not to connect the black plug to red and red plug to black. If you do, you will blow the battery fuse in your fusebox and burn out some expensive component in your car. Through his learning processes, he found just how costly it is to replace the stock amp that powers your stereo.
Jonathan Landsman (who's been zapped)
Leah Joy Weintraub (but only if you ask nicely)
Parallel Park
Jonathan Landsman, native New Yorker, has parked in spots so tight that getting in and out depended on using room provided by nudging cars parked in front and behind, counting on the flexibility of their shocks. His record in Williamstown was set when moving into his Morgan East room for the Summer of 2004, when he parked at the top of Spring Street, leaving enough room on either end of the car to fit one finger, but not two.
David Rodriguez is also a native New Yorker and often takes it upon himself to giggle at the non-city folk that have such a tough time parking in huge spots on Spring Street.
Get Parking Tickets
Chris St.Cyr (5 tickets and the infamous car boot to the front tire in first two months here as a freshman)
Evan Miller (6 in as many days)
Jonathan Landsman '05 two in three days in Queens, NYC. Both while at the vehicle, one while inside it.
David Rodriguez accidentally left car parked illegally outside of Mission for days to find 4 tickets upon his return.
Get Speeding Tickets
David Rodriguez (2 tickets, 88 in a 55 in Virginia and 91 in a 65 in New Jersey--cut down to 84 by the nice state trooper--within a month)
Oral Skills
I can blow free-floating saliva bubbles
Brendan Dougherty (Mr. Bubbles)
Evan Miller (I can catch it, too)
I can curl my tongue into a W
I can touch my tongue to my nose
Hazen Parsons (Without even having to strain.)
I can tie a cherry stem into a knot in my mouth
Evan Miller (gimme 40 seconds)
Liz Macek, '07
I can turn my tongue so it's vertical instead of horizontal
I can turn my tongue past vertical, until it's upside down
Joe Shoer '06 (I thought everyone could)
Manual Skills
I can snap my fingers by flipping my wrist
Evan Miller (right hand only)
Ronit Bhattacharyya (both hands)
Jonathan Dahlberg - amazingly well
I can snap without my thumb.
Hazen Parsons (right hand more audible...my ticket to fame.)
I can pull my fingers back to touch the back of my hand
John Chatlos can.
Amanda Van Rhyn can pull her thumb back to touch her forearm, which is almost as good.
Other body skills
Face Tricks
Some people can hang a spoon from their nose.
Liz macek can hang 4 spoons on her face simultaneously
Jessie can make her nose crack
Ear Tricks
Katie Montgomery can move her ears independently of one another.
Margit Sande-Kerback '05 can wiggle her ears.
David Rodriguez can wiggle his ears, but he can only move his left ear independent of his right, not vice-versa.
Amanda Van Rhyn can wiggle her left ear. Just her left ear.
Andrew Meador can wiggle his ears separately or together.
I can dislocate my...
Bonnie O'Keefe can dislocate her right hip.
Amanda Van Rhyn can dislocate her right shoulder. (Also, judging by the number of stupid body tricks she's signed up for, she might be a circus freak.)
I Can Get a Cool/Rare/Weird Disease
Seth Brown '01 (scurvy)
Jesse Dill (amoebic dysentery, pleurisy)
Computer Languages
Assembly Language
Travis Vachon (kind of...)
Paul N. Stansifer '07 (my claim to masculinity)
Befunge
Steve Winslow '04
Brent Yorgey '04
C
Brent Yorgey '04
Haskell
Brent Yorgey '04 (the most beautiful language ever -- don't give me this Ruby crap)
Java
Daniel Rooney (disgusting)
Evan Miller (shamefully well)
Brent Yorgey '04 (I frickin' TEACH this language)
Jessica Chung (not bad either.)
JavaScript
Evan Miller (just a pinch)
LabVIEW
Joe Shoer '06 (though he's ashamed to admit he knows such a stupid language)
Sam Clapp '06 (It is NOT a stupid language! Three cheers for graphical programming!)
LaTeX
Daniel Klein (too good for word processing)
Evan Miller (too poor for Word)
Diana Davis '07 (infinitely superior to anything else)
Travis Vachon (It's pretty frickin sweet)
Lisp
(cons 'Brent Yorgey (cons '04 (cons 'Jessica Chung '07)))
Mathematica
Daniel Klein (is too a real language)
Joe Shoer '06 (it's my thesis, and I can do more with it than the math nerds can)
Laura Effinger-Dean '06 (I make pretty pictures for my thesis!)
Nick Yates '06 (Pretty spirals! Ooh!)
Diana Davis '07 (I'll isoperimeterize you!)
Any physics major worth their weight in problem sets
PARI/GP
Nick Yates '06 (For a number theoretic software called PARI; similar to C)
Perl
Kai Steverson (competent)
Evan Miller (wizardly)
Jing Cao (kind of)
Brent Yorgey '04 (JAPH)
PHP
Young Hahn (godly)
Katherine Huang (sort of)
Dave Senft (also knows what the P stands for)
Python
Travis Vachon (the scripting language of choice)
R
Daniel Klein (it makes statistics fun!)
Evan Miller (needs to learn how to put his skills on his own line but is probably very capable at R)
Ruby
Evan Miller (the scripting language of choice)
Ronit Bhattacharyya (the most beautiful language ever)
WC237 Microcode
Travis Vachon (well, at one point at least...)
XML/XSLT/XPath/XQuery
Ronit Bhattacharyya (hey, at least I'm not claiming CSS & HTML to be languages)
Software
ChemDraw
Jessica Chung (Don't make me clipware you.)
PowerPoint
Jonathan Landsman '05 (godly)
AppleWorks
Jonathan Landsman '05 (fears no page/margin/line spacing/font size requirement)
Human Languages
Bengali
Catalán
David Rodriguez (learned a little bit while abroad in Barcelona)
Chinese (Cantonese, Hakka, Mandarin, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Hokkien, Teochew...)
Lars Enwereuzor Kana Ojukwu '07
French
David Rodriguez (He used to be much better, but he now inserts random Catalán words in French conversation.)
Diana Davis '07 is still pretty good at French.
Samantha Peterson is majoring in it, so she probably knows a few phrases.
German
Greek
Hazen (As in I can write in it and tell you how to pronounce the letters of their alphabet. I didn't write this.)
Math nerds know the Greek alphabet.
So do Classics majors.
Hebrew
Robert Streicker '07
Zachary Ulman '06
Davida Kutscher '03
Elissa Brown '09
Hindi
Italian
Lucy Cox-Chapman '06 spent a semester in Italy
Japanese
Amanda Van Rhyn now knows how to say "my husband got drunk and hit me."
Diana Davis '07 frequently mutters small phrases in Japanese. People think she is mumbling, becuase they don't understand Japanese. In addition to randomly speaking in Japanese, she also randomly speaks English with an excellent Japanese accent.
Leah Weintraub '06 spent a semester in Japan. Ergo, she probably speaks Japanese.
Charlotte White rocks at Japanese, and is easily distracted by pretty things from Japan. She also says "WTF Japan" rather often. As should we all.
Latin
Pig Latin
Seth Brown taught a course on Pig Latin during Winter Study 1997.
Oppish
Alden Robinson '06 whopat dopo yopou thopink opof thopat?
Polish
Jonathan Landsman '05 can say "What's up, sweetheart?"
Portugese
Russian
Emily Button '07 can say "I've seen more women than you've seen sparrows!"
Ilya Khodosh does an excellent drunk old Russian man impression.
Suzanne C. Walsh '05 can say, "Her breasts are as big as pineapples" and can translate for fiends who lose the ability to speak English and can only speak in Russian while drunk. She is also known to mutter things in Georgian. And we're not talking about, "y'all."
Spanish
David Rodriguez (speaks Dominican Spanish--impossible to comprehend for most other spanish speakers because it sounds more like really fast Italian than anything else)
Jonathan Landsman '05 (budding bachatero)
Sofia Torres (but apparently she speaks Mexican, a variation of Spanish)
Paulette Rodriguez can speak Spanish without consonants (also known as Puerto Rican--similar to Dominican)
Tamil
Turkish
Dave Senft can count to four in turkish, and also knows six through eight, and ten.
Other Languages
Caveman Talk
Dog Bark
Danny Fischler '06 barks at cars, beeping alarms, and squirrels with nice legs.
Cat Meow
Alexa Herlach and she does it often.
Julianne Shelby '06 is probably just actually a cat
Cow Moo
Bear Growl
Despite failing to get the dancing, trained circus bear part of "Gorky" in her high school's production of "The Cave Dwellers," Katie Montgomery was lauded for her ability to sound sort of like a bear.
Burping
Samantha Peterson can burp the alphabet. Backwards.
Circus Arts & other amazing feats
I can ride a unicycle!
Alex Ambros (the 1 in 2000 girl)
Elissa Brown (in the same entry as Alex - what's the probability of that?)
Abby McBride can too!
Bryan Dragon can but doesn't want anybody to know about it.
I can slackline
Elissa Brown (shakily)
Alex Ambros
Dave Kleinschmidt (if I'm lucky)
Evan Bick
Sean McKenzie
I can juggle (balls, clubs, knives, flaming torches, etc.)
Alex Ambros (working on passing clubs)
Elissa Brown (see above. We'll get it eventually)
Ben Brooks (I can do everything listed in the title except "etc." Whatever that is...)
Jason Ren (I can do everything listed AND Etc. I know what it is)
Robin Stewart (He's the master)
Jacob Eisler '04 says his one of his two major accomplishments in high school was learning to juggle.
Communication
Margaret Pigman can read and write braille, and has a braille typewriter! And, and, and! Margaret takes class notes in Braille.
Diana Davis '07 can write holding a pencil with her toes.
Jonathan Landsman '05 is the fastest two-finger typist there is, and can do so blindly.
Impressions
Joseph Gangestad '06 can do an uncanny Gollum (Andy Serkis)
Dan Wollin can too.
Luck
Lisetta Shah can find 4-leaf clovers pretty much just by looking down at the ground for a couple seconds, and sometimes without even that much effort.
Alex Ambros see above, plus those trippy five and six leaf ones