August 31, 2002

grammatical musings

My job has been driving me bonkers. Actually “bonkers” is too nice of a word. More like “to depression”. I have worked for this company for one and three quarters of a year. That’s one year eight months. Six hundred and five days (approximately). In all of that time I haven’t felt like just walking out and not coming back. Not telling anybody just leaving and not returning. Maybe send an email to one person the next day saying, “you can tell them I’m not coming back and please keep that Monsters, Inc. guy with the three eyes and glasses as a souvenir.” Like previously mentioned, I moved to a new position. I told my former boss today how I’ve never passed one single test that states I’m qualified for the position. Not even the basic technical test to be hired in my field. Nobody seems to care. I should have taken at least two, but more like three or four tests by now. “That’s like saying,’good luck’ and handing a scalpel to a someone who hasn’t been to college.” What’s worse is that my current managers keep telling me that the employees really like me. That’s like saying, “we think he’s qualified—the patients really like him!” Just wait until the morphine drip wears off.

I’ve been crafting this letter to my supervisor. Tonight it was proofread by an actual human—computers are such liars—and found out that I spelled “coping” incorrectly. The way I had it: copping, is a completely different word. So for the first time “the rule” hit me. If it has a vowel modifier you drop it and add your suffix. If it doesn’t have a vowel modifier you then add another letter and put your suffix. Completely backwards of logic. You should drop a letter (vowel) and add another (consonant). Or in the case where there is no letter to drop then just add your suffix. Here’s a visual aid…

cop (transitive verb meaning “to steal”) = copping (inflected form)

cope (verb meaning “to maintain”) = coping (inflected form)

In other parts of speech an apostrophe is used when a letter is dropped. Such as the case of “ma’am” (madam) or “it’s” (it is) or even in the case where representing possessive such as “Tom’s” where an “e” is represented with an apostrophe. If this is true, why then do we add letters where we shouldn’t (should not) when adding a suffix to a word and remove letters when they should be replaced by another? It’s rhetorical, but if you can find some historical evidence as to why the rule is there, drop me a line.

posted @ 6:23 PM

August 30, 2002

who stole my archives

It appears that I have lost two months of archives. November and December of 2001. I recently deleted all the files off the .mac server thinking that I had all the archives backed up to CD. I did—for the most part. Except for those two months. I’ve tried every way I can think of the recover them… even did extensive searches on Google to see if I could find a cached page. No dice. If you happen to be a real fanatic of the site and have a backed up copy somewhere please let me know. Thanks.

posted @ 9:21 AM

August 28, 2002

parents

I was one of those teenagers. The one’s who cause our parents to go gray and wonder why they ever had kids in the first place. My dad and I phsyically fought, I called my step-mom some things that I’m sure I’ll spend some time in one of the hell realms for, and I moved out of their house and into my mom’s when I was 15. Now we are all great friends and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused any of them. Now my sister is 15 and it is her turn to cause them some pain.

She’s a straight “A” student, a great athlete and really has it together. Too together. If she’d mess up more often I think things might be different, but then again some times I wonder. She has managed to talk my parents into allowing her boyfriend to live with them. Her boyfriend’s sister also lives there now. I think it’s great that they are willing to provide for them and help them out in a time of need. What I’m not so sure about is my sister being right down the hall from her boyfriend and my dad telling me that he goes to wake him up and there is my sister.

I certainly hope that this isn’t my fault, but I think it may be. I didn’t get to do what I wanted so I would go and do what I wanted without permission. This led to conflict and my parents, being smart and learning from the past, now remember what happened when they said “no” to me and don’t want similar conflicts with my sister. What to do, what to do…

posted @ 8:22 AM

August 24, 2002

grammar

For those who care, reading Dan Mahoney was like that class I took, which I did not pass. Now, just whom did he think he was talking to (probably him—he needs all the help he can get)?

posted @ 7:41 PM

how are you

Last week: 61.25

This week: 47

What: hours I worked.

Feels that all I’ve seen these past two weeks are gray cubes, fluorescent lights and computer screens. All I’ve heard is the chatter of people on the phone—whether live or in my head. It’s never ending. I was asked to do this new job. I signed papers saying I wouldn’t talk much about it, but it is in the tech industry. It deals with Windows products and I flail around trying to learn as I go about these ridiculous machines. One month ago I had seen one BIOS and had no desire to see another. I’d never been into Device Manager and I never edited a Registry. Now I do these things on a regular basis. Actually, I just recommend that one person tell another person to do these things. I may or may not be giving them correct advice and it’s driving me crazy.

When I step into my place of work I am greeted by at least five people on the way to my desk. Throughout the course of my day I say, “how are you?” to around 70 people. I respond to “how are you?” around 70 times. Each answer and response is slightly different from the last interaction. Some more sincere than others. It’s not the fault of the questioner or the respondent that they are all pretty generic, it’s the fault of the question. It’s way to open ended. So open it’s a close ended. You don’t really want to know (generally) and you don’t really feel like saying the truth (generally). I think if we are talking strict ethics this question is the leading cause of lying. Yet I find it a somewhat reassuring that so many people are asking each other where they are mentally, how their health is, how the kids are doing, and any number of responses that can lead from, “how are you”.

posted @ 5:50 PM

August 23, 2002

the blogger

For those who haven’t been to the site before... this is my little weblog. It first started on a free homepage offered by Apple. Now that service is no longer free and I figured it was time to make the leap to my own domain name.

Basically, I talk about things of interest to me and hopefully to you as well. Since I’m sure a diverse crowd is showing up here, this may or may not be the case. I’m aiming to please only myself, however I’d love to hear your toughts, comments, suggestions, links of interest and the like.

Soon the old archive pages will be posted so you can browse through the last year and half (if you have the time and stamina). Some tweaking must be done with them to get the interface to match the current design. Seems about every three months I try something new that isn’t quite compatible with the old stuff, so I’m just making sure they all look good and make sense.

Again, thanks for visiting. Hope to see you again soon.

posted @ 8:54 AM