response 1 of 79:

Oct 8 07:31 UTC 2000

At least for me, that's kind of a complicated question, and it depends a
lot on the situation and person.  I certainly hope friends and
associates have a good opinion of me, and to the extent that I have to
encounter absolute strangers sometimes in daily life, I hope they don't
take an instant dislike to me.  On the other hand, I find it kind of
disconcerting to have an absolute stranger fawn on me (ok, so I wrote a
computer conferencing system once, that doesn't make me god, honest!).
I would definitely prefer to be invisible to people, telemarketers
especially, who think they're justified in taking up my time with
elaborate plans to extract money out of my pocket.  And there is the
occasional human relations disaster - people whom for whatever reason
have taken a dislike to me, or people that I have taken a dislike to
myself, or sometimes both.  Usually, I don't find it that hard to ignore
those people's opinion of me, and sometimes, it's even useful to have
that "dislike" thing going - it makes it a lot easier to avoid conflict,
oddly enough.  I dislike conflict, but soemtimes it's impossible to
avoid, which can lead to some unpleasant situations.