Personal Section
Introduction
This Personal section of my webspace is a miscellany of my interests, both serious and fun:
- On this page
- On separate pages
Some Personal Interests
Travel
My two favorite travel destinations are Italy and Scotland. Here are a few links to some information about both places.
Italy
A few travel-related webspaces for Italy
- Gambero Rosso (Italian)
- Gambero Rosso (English)
- Touring Club Italia (Italian)
- In Italy Online (English)
- Slow Food — a guide to excellent regional cuisine at reasonable prices, founded in Italy and still strongest there
Scotland
A few useful webspaces about Scotland and travel in Scotland
- Scottish Tourist Board
- Destination Scotland (a general travel guide)
- Isle of Islay (from The Internet Guide to Scotland)
- Isles of Islay and Jura (from the Islay and Jura Marketing Group)
- Isle of Jura (from The Internet Guide to Scotland)
- soc.culture.scottish FAQ — maintained by Craig Cockburn
And three articles I've published about travel in Scotland:
- Callanish: Stonehenge of the North — for The Washington Post
- Journey to Jura: Connecting with Family and Clan — for Clan Donald USA
- Oronsay: The Well-Preserved Priory — for Clan Donald USA
Jungian psychological type
I am an INFP and a qualified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®), an instrument for identifying Jungian psychological type. For more info about Jungian type and what I do with it, see my Jungian Type page or my article Personality and System Development: What's the Connection? , which concerns Jungian type in computer system development teams.
Or if you just want to know what the heck an INFP is, check out this INFP Profile (created by the INFP List).
Some miscellaneous tidbits
Favorite music
- Early Music — "Western music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras" (so says the Early Music FAQ). To my taste, however, Baroque has become too mainstream; my favorites are British and European music from before about 1650. I am particularly fond of the late 15th Century.
- Celtic music, especially of the Scottish flavor
- Jethro Tull — Rock with 16th-Century influences, a unique flute style, and cheeky lyrics. (What can I say? I was in college in the early 1970s.) Tull is the only band whose recordings I've always bought sound unheard. I like even more the work that Tull's head guy Ian Anderson does under his own name: it's more thoughtful.
- Choir I sing first alto in the choir of River Road Unitarian Church, led by the irrepressible and enthuiastic Clif Hardin (who is a wonderful music director, and also a composer). As a teenager I sang soprano in the choir of the Methodist church in which I was raised (and where my mother remained a member until she died), but when I retired from Christianity I also (alas!) left behind my singing with a group on a regular basis. My oldest friend, a member of RRUC, has been singing with this Unitarian choir for decades, and had been inviting me to join for almost as long and I finally took her up on it. It was a bit of a surprise to find myself reclassified as an alto (being 30+ years older and somewhat out of practice will do things to anyone's voice! <grin>), but I find that I'm enjoying and getting much soul satisfaction from being part of a larger effort and contributing to such a wonderful sound. After every Thursday-night practice and every Sunday morning, I feel renewed. I designed and developed the music program section of the RRUC web site.
Favorite light bulb jokes
- How many Zen Buddhists does
it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two -- one to change the bulb, and one not to change the bulb. - How many INFPs does it take to change a
light bulb?
A: Why change it? It might just be exploring its Shadow side. - How many photographers does it take to
change a light bulb?
A: 50 -- one to change the bulb and 49 to say "Awww, I could have done that." (Daryl Benson in Outdoor Photographer, May 1994) - How many Microsoft employees does it take
to change a light bulb?
A: None -- they just declare darkness to be the standard, and there's not a damned thing the rest of us can do about it. - How many usability engineers does it take
to change a light bulb?
A: It depends! - How many mathematicians does it take to
change a light bulb?
A: One, who just gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing it to a previous joke. (sent to me by my friend Robert Bryant)
(I can claim credit only for the one about usability engineers. Too bad about the others. :-)
A few links to family and friends
- Ed Hassell, a long-time friend who keeps a comprehensive, up-to-date list of sites covering news and liberal politics
- Fabio Vitali, a Bolognese specialist in hypertext, and in information systems and the law
- Robert Bryant, a long-time friend and professor of mathematics at Duke University
- Mark McLellan and Mary Galashan, who live in a thatched-roof cottage by the Avon River in Hampshire, England
- Jim Buie, a writer and Internet Democrat
- www.Buie.com, a webspace maintained by my cousin Jay
- My late husband Antonio Vallone, a system engineer, very good cook, and even better poet
Copyright © 1997-2002 Elizabeth A. Buie. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to print this page or link to it, as long as such use is personal or educational and is not for commercial gain or profit. This material may not be republished or redistributed without permission.
Last updated 13 February 2007, to eliminate a few broken links (but probably not all!)