Sunday, March 29, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Pet Peeves: Language
No, this is not a post about swearing or cursing and it pervasiveness in our modern society. Although that could be a worthy subject on its own, I will leave it to someone else another time. This post is about people who think they are using "sophisticated" words or words that have more nuanced meaning but use them incorrectly.
Now I have probably been brought up with a skewed view of how to speak. My family is diverse in its understanding of classical languages, sentence structure and proper use of vocabulary. We actually used to have dinner conversation regarding parts of speech and the proper tense of words. I think that because I am aware that most people were not blessed with that kind of regular analysis of written and spoken word, I am able to let things slide the majority of the time. Every once in a while (maybe more to my wife to her great annoyance) I will throw out a correction on their use of a word if the meaning is truly different than what I think the person was trying to say. Usually, that person will respond with a gracious "Oh yeah, that is what I meant." or something along those lines. However what really irks me is when that person rejects the suggestion when they are obviously without a shadow of a doubt wrong, or if that was indeed the word they meant, they are misusing it.
The situation was this. I was talking about websites with someone (who also happens to be a public speaker) and they were saying that their website was good for a while but it had gotten worse as time went on and their redesigns now were going backwards in quality specifically he referenced "It used to be like 1997 and now it is more like 1992." The word he kept on using was digressed and I let it go the first time but then after the second time I said "Do you mean regressed?" and he said "No I mean digressed." I let it go because I really do not know him that well yet and I did not want to have a discussion about it without some way to show him without a shadow of a doubt that he was wrong but it has bothered me since Thursday. For those of you who think that they mean the same thing and did not click on the link, regress specifically references the decrease or going backwards of quality of a specific thing, while digress is specifically used when talking about writing or speaking that has gone of topic. Digressions happen all the time in my high school small group and regression is what is happening to our command of the English language.
So does this all make me a jerk that it bothered me? I don't think so I am just trying to help someone speak their own language corrctly. It is how I am wired. I strive for excellence and accuracy as much as possible whenever possible and I guess it bothers me when someone else does not. If you cannot say what you mean to say then why are you talking? Maybe that is why I don't say much unless I am sure of what I want to say. But I digress.
Now I have probably been brought up with a skewed view of how to speak. My family is diverse in its understanding of classical languages, sentence structure and proper use of vocabulary. We actually used to have dinner conversation regarding parts of speech and the proper tense of words. I think that because I am aware that most people were not blessed with that kind of regular analysis of written and spoken word, I am able to let things slide the majority of the time. Every once in a while (maybe more to my wife to her great annoyance) I will throw out a correction on their use of a word if the meaning is truly different than what I think the person was trying to say. Usually, that person will respond with a gracious "Oh yeah, that is what I meant." or something along those lines. However what really irks me is when that person rejects the suggestion when they are obviously without a shadow of a doubt wrong, or if that was indeed the word they meant, they are misusing it.
The situation was this. I was talking about websites with someone (who also happens to be a public speaker) and they were saying that their website was good for a while but it had gotten worse as time went on and their redesigns now were going backwards in quality specifically he referenced "It used to be like 1997 and now it is more like 1992." The word he kept on using was digressed and I let it go the first time but then after the second time I said "Do you mean regressed?" and he said "No I mean digressed." I let it go because I really do not know him that well yet and I did not want to have a discussion about it without some way to show him without a shadow of a doubt that he was wrong but it has bothered me since Thursday. For those of you who think that they mean the same thing and did not click on the link, regress specifically references the decrease or going backwards of quality of a specific thing, while digress is specifically used when talking about writing or speaking that has gone of topic. Digressions happen all the time in my high school small group and regression is what is happening to our command of the English language.
So does this all make me a jerk that it bothered me? I don't think so I am just trying to help someone speak their own language corrctly. It is how I am wired. I strive for excellence and accuracy as much as possible whenever possible and I guess it bothers me when someone else does not. If you cannot say what you mean to say then why are you talking? Maybe that is why I don't say much unless I am sure of what I want to say. But I digress.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Java: Portrait of a Dog
Those of you who watch family guy will recognize that title as the episode where Brian runs away from home because of an incident at a dog show and then eventually comes back after going on trial. Well this is kind of like that. Except instead of running away then being hauled away by the police and coming back at the end of a trial, Java ran away and was hit by a car going 50mph on a main road. Ok so those two are not like each other but I wanted to use the title.
We got a call on Sunday while we were wrapping things up at church and the guy on the other end just asked me if our dog was named Java because she had just gotten hit by a car. He said that he would stay with her until we showed up which was about ten minutes later. By the time we got there there were two more cars pulled over to the side of the road (it is a grid street six lanes plus the turn lanes, Higley and Germann for those of you who live in Phoenix) and several other people gathered around her down in the bike trail that is off the side of the road.
The account that the guy who called was that he was the car behind the car of the woman who actually hit Java and that she was hit so hard that she flipped and rolled over five or six times before finally coming to a stop. When the guy got out to see if Java was alright she got up and took off running. He chased her and so did a passing guy on a bike for about a mile before she finally started sucumming to her injuries and layed down which is when they got my phone number off of her tags. They were all so nice, giving her some first aid as best as they could from a first aid kit, waiting until we got there and even calling back later in the evening to see how she was doing.
We got there and it was pretty obvious that she was in bad shape, she was bleeding out of her nose and mouth a little bit but there was nothing really obviously wrong with her. But she was not moving and her breathing was labored and her heart was racing. I picked her up and brought her over to our car and we took her to the emergency vet (on a side note emergency vets charge twice as much for the extra one day a week they are open) where they immediately took her in and said she was in critical condition and the doctor was "not optimistic" about her chances to live.
I am not a "animal lover." I make fun of those people who make dentist appointments for their dogs and put hats on them the same as you do. However, I am also not so cold hearted that I can just watch an animal that I have spent time training and that follows my every movement just bleed out and die on the side of the road. Well it turns out that according to the doctor she had some cuts on her liver and spleen and her abdominal cavity was filling with blood. We were allowed to go back and see her and it was pretty bad. She was all wrapped in compression bandages with a mask just letting in extra oxygen and the heart monitor showed her sustained heart rate at over 200bmp. Pretty much the doctor said that even if we gave them permission to do surgery or put her on a ventilator it was not likely to do any good.
So we decided that as long as we did our due diligence our conciences would be clear. We authorized compression and fluids and some pain medication and then finally left the vet waiting for a call to give us an update. That was at around 3:30pm.
We got a call at 7:30 or so that evening saying that Java had actually turned a corner and her heart rate finally was dropping back down to normal. By the next morning when we called, the vet said Java had been sitting up on her own looking around and was even walking and peeing (apparently the bladder getting crushed is the fatal part of getting hit by a car the majority of the time).
So we picked her up on Monday morning and she has been getting gradually better all week. She has been on some pain medication that we have for her and she has been out of it pretty much until yesterday afternoon. When I got home yesterday it was really kind of the first time that she acted more like she used to, coming over to the door when she heard the garage door open and wagging her tail a bunch when I let her in, chasing her toy that I threw for her.
It is good to have a dog that is such a beast. She does (not sure when this will start again) nothing but run laps in the back yard all day long. Most of the time Erin and I have just laughed at her being stupid and hyper, but I think that her overly strong heart and extremely toned muscles not only kept her heart going for four hours at 200bmp but also kept her from getting any breaks or fractures in her whole body.
So there you have it. Our dog lived through being hit by a car. She may be a bit crazy but it was kind of tough to think about not hearing her tag jingling when she would come running to my call.
We got a call on Sunday while we were wrapping things up at church and the guy on the other end just asked me if our dog was named Java because she had just gotten hit by a car. He said that he would stay with her until we showed up which was about ten minutes later. By the time we got there there were two more cars pulled over to the side of the road (it is a grid street six lanes plus the turn lanes, Higley and Germann for those of you who live in Phoenix) and several other people gathered around her down in the bike trail that is off the side of the road.
The account that the guy who called was that he was the car behind the car of the woman who actually hit Java and that she was hit so hard that she flipped and rolled over five or six times before finally coming to a stop. When the guy got out to see if Java was alright she got up and took off running. He chased her and so did a passing guy on a bike for about a mile before she finally started sucumming to her injuries and layed down which is when they got my phone number off of her tags. They were all so nice, giving her some first aid as best as they could from a first aid kit, waiting until we got there and even calling back later in the evening to see how she was doing.
We got there and it was pretty obvious that she was in bad shape, she was bleeding out of her nose and mouth a little bit but there was nothing really obviously wrong with her. But she was not moving and her breathing was labored and her heart was racing. I picked her up and brought her over to our car and we took her to the emergency vet (on a side note emergency vets charge twice as much for the extra one day a week they are open) where they immediately took her in and said she was in critical condition and the doctor was "not optimistic" about her chances to live.
I am not a "animal lover." I make fun of those people who make dentist appointments for their dogs and put hats on them the same as you do. However, I am also not so cold hearted that I can just watch an animal that I have spent time training and that follows my every movement just bleed out and die on the side of the road. Well it turns out that according to the doctor she had some cuts on her liver and spleen and her abdominal cavity was filling with blood. We were allowed to go back and see her and it was pretty bad. She was all wrapped in compression bandages with a mask just letting in extra oxygen and the heart monitor showed her sustained heart rate at over 200bmp. Pretty much the doctor said that even if we gave them permission to do surgery or put her on a ventilator it was not likely to do any good.
So we decided that as long as we did our due diligence our conciences would be clear. We authorized compression and fluids and some pain medication and then finally left the vet waiting for a call to give us an update. That was at around 3:30pm.
We got a call at 7:30 or so that evening saying that Java had actually turned a corner and her heart rate finally was dropping back down to normal. By the next morning when we called, the vet said Java had been sitting up on her own looking around and was even walking and peeing (apparently the bladder getting crushed is the fatal part of getting hit by a car the majority of the time).
So we picked her up on Monday morning and she has been getting gradually better all week. She has been on some pain medication that we have for her and she has been out of it pretty much until yesterday afternoon. When I got home yesterday it was really kind of the first time that she acted more like she used to, coming over to the door when she heard the garage door open and wagging her tail a bunch when I let her in, chasing her toy that I threw for her.
It is good to have a dog that is such a beast. She does (not sure when this will start again) nothing but run laps in the back yard all day long. Most of the time Erin and I have just laughed at her being stupid and hyper, but I think that her overly strong heart and extremely toned muscles not only kept her heart going for four hours at 200bmp but also kept her from getting any breaks or fractures in her whole body.
So there you have it. Our dog lived through being hit by a car. She may be a bit crazy but it was kind of tough to think about not hearing her tag jingling when she would come running to my call.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
iBook G4
Little bit of background. Erin's photography business is doing well enough that we finally needed her to upgrade from her trusty iBook G4 that we bought during college for writing papers. It just is not up to the task of Photoshop actions or managing large iPhoto libraries of RAW images. So what to do.
My brother Nate and his wife Erica are in a situation where Erica was is in need of a laptop and neither of them uses the G5 tower that has been just sitting in their living room. So what to do. We traded almost straight up. Part of the arrangement is that I needed to upgrade the laptop and put leopard on it so that is what I have been summoning the courage to do.
Now I think that I could have figured it all out and it would have worked fine, but i did wimp out and looked up a guide online. The guide at ifixit.com was amazing and I took it all apart and put it back together in a little less than 2 hours. Now that little laptop has an extra 256mb of memory and a 160GB hard drive for any kind of media library that Erica might want to have.
My brother Nate and his wife Erica are in a situation where Erica was is in need of a laptop and neither of them uses the G5 tower that has been just sitting in their living room. So what to do. We traded almost straight up. Part of the arrangement is that I needed to upgrade the laptop and put leopard on it so that is what I have been summoning the courage to do.
Now I think that I could have figured it all out and it would have worked fine, but i did wimp out and looked up a guide online. The guide at ifixit.com was amazing and I took it all apart and put it back together in a little less than 2 hours. Now that little laptop has an extra 256mb of memory and a 160GB hard drive for any kind of media library that Erica might want to have.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
iTunes
I have been working on a giant music project partly for myself and partly for a good friend of mine. There have been countless hours getting correct album art and lyrics and ordering things correctly.
Saturday afternoon I thought that it was all gone. When I went to open my library to listen to some music, it would have the little progress bar saying checking library, then the correct menu bar on top would show up but the window of the application would never come up. All of the options in the actual menus were grayed out and I had no choice but to start a new library and try and import the library data that i could. It brought in some of the play lists, but none of the ratings or play counts and since I have a whole bunch of smart lists dependent on those things I still feel like I lost a lot. The last thing that you want to have to see on your screen if you have a decent music and video library is a screen that looks like this.
The good news is that I do have all of the data back and in the case of my giant project, it is forcing me to go back and fix some mistakes and make everything a bit more comprehensive and consistent. Just as a reminder to you all there is a backup option for your library in iTunes and there is also a way to export your library data which is what I should have done on a more regular basis. So bittersweet. I have all my stuff but not all the data.
Saturday afternoon I thought that it was all gone. When I went to open my library to listen to some music, it would have the little progress bar saying checking library, then the correct menu bar on top would show up but the window of the application would never come up. All of the options in the actual menus were grayed out and I had no choice but to start a new library and try and import the library data that i could. It brought in some of the play lists, but none of the ratings or play counts and since I have a whole bunch of smart lists dependent on those things I still feel like I lost a lot. The last thing that you want to have to see on your screen if you have a decent music and video library is a screen that looks like this.
The good news is that I do have all of the data back and in the case of my giant project, it is forcing me to go back and fix some mistakes and make everything a bit more comprehensive and consistent. Just as a reminder to you all there is a backup option for your library in iTunes and there is also a way to export your library data which is what I should have done on a more regular basis. So bittersweet. I have all my stuff but not all the data.
Updates:
These are things that have been going on that each will get their own update soon, so hang tight.
Our dog Java was hit by a car going 50 mph.
My iTunes library somehow corrupted and I lost all of my playlists and ratings along with some album art and lyrics.
I started a second job.
I finished refinishing a dresser for the nursery.
I started doing another DVD for some video clients.
I started back on my no sugar and no caffeine diet.
I think that is it for the moment but since I am at work and not home yet these and other important updates will have to wait until at least later tonight.
Our dog Java was hit by a car going 50 mph.
My iTunes library somehow corrupted and I lost all of my playlists and ratings along with some album art and lyrics.
I started a second job.
I finished refinishing a dresser for the nursery.
I started doing another DVD for some video clients.
I started back on my no sugar and no caffeine diet.
I think that is it for the moment but since I am at work and not home yet these and other important updates will have to wait until at least later tonight.
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