“You look like a Go Go Girl. (beat) It’s not a bad thing – I like Go Go Girls.”
– One coworker to another
I planned to link to a picture of a Go Go Girl for context, but when you Google that phrase (in Google Images) you get “Go Go Girl Sexy Adult Costume” in the first result, and “Go Go Girl Child Costume” in the eighth.
New rule: Anything that can be made into a “sexy adult costume” should be unavailable in “child costume” form.
Dear Firefox 3,
You have recently informed me that “didn” is not a word, by the subtle but helpful act of underlining it in red everywhere I use it.
I believe there has been a misunderstanding. I agree that these letters alone do not constitute a word, however when followed by an apostrophe and the letter T they form the contraction “didn’t.” This is completely valid, and might be used in the sentence, “Didn’t you learn about contractions in the third grade?”
Admittedly, the character Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation famously could not use contractions, but I regret to inform you that nobody (outside the show’s production staff) ever found this remotely plausible. If you can learn 170,000 English words, you can learn a few others that are spelled with apostrophes. This applies likewise to you, Firefox. Please do not make this error again.
Sincerely,
B’n
JK Rowling (which she herself has said is to be pronounced “rolling, like ‘rolling pin'”) gave the Commencement address at Harvard this year. Now you can watch online.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
That part’s funny, but watch the whole thing. This is the construction and utilization of language that makes English worth listening to.
(And yes, this is a point to Boston.)
It really hurts subscription sales when I leave a show and overhear someone say, “That’s the best I’ve seen them do in a long time!”
When I first moved in here I received (regularly) about two dozen catalogs in the previous resident’s name. These covered varied interests, but with a particular concentration in the field of “fluffy things.” I swear I got an entire catalog of pillows once – every page, nothing but pillows.
I of course dropped these subscriptions as the catalogs continued streaming in. This yielded conversations like the following (which I swear I am not making up):
Woman, Answering Phone: Women’s lingerie department, how can I help you?
Me: I’d like to unsubscribe from your catalog
Her: (beat) Err.. are you sure you’re not looking for the men’s department?
Me: (deadpanned) Nope.
This afternoon a new Dell catalog streamed in, so I pulled up Dell’s website to unsubscribe. Here are their procedures:
“To add, remove or update your mailing address from the catalog mailing list, you need to be registered on our e-mail subscription list. If you are not already registered, you can do so on the following webpage.” (emphasis mine)
That’s right. To remove your mailing address from their catalog list, you must first subscribe to their e-mail list. You can then unsubscribe from that too, but you have to be on it first.
Fortunately for all of us, they don’t do challenge-response validation of e-mail addresses, so I registered Mr. Not Gonna Happen (first name “Not,” last name “Gonna Happen,” no middle name) with his example.com address. He’ll probably enjoy the catalogs more than I.
Oh, and Dell? I did it all from a shiny 24-inch iMac. How do you like them Apples?
“That seems a little unusual because I had the same thing happen to me.”
– Coworker
In ~/.emacs
(setq make-backup-files nil)
(setq backup-inhibited t)
At the prompt:
[bobbojones@desktop html]$ ls -l contact-public.html*
-rw-rw-rw- 1 5 bjones 1432 Jun 4 09:05 contact-public.html
-rw-rw-rw- 1 5 bjones 1432 May 6 13:46 contact-public.html.~1.1.1.1.~
That’s right, emacs is making backup files despite me explicitly asking it not to. What really bothers me, though, is that it’s only doing it for files that were checked out of CVS. They’re in CVS! The sole purpose of CVS is to make sure I can get copies of the old files if I need to!
What possible purpose can emacs have for overriding every known “stop with the smegging backups” directive when in CVS mode? Does it really think it’s being in any way helpful?
Update: The trick is to (setq vc-cvs-stay-local nil)
I just rewatched “My Number One Doctor” – the Scrubs episode where Kelso signs up the hospital to use rateyourdoc.org
It turns out: it’s a real site! Not where you can rate real doctors, just where you can rate your favorite Scrubs characters.
“Colonel Doctor’s treatment can only be described as delicious and crispy.”
Dr. Kevin Casey still gets a 5 rating from me.
Update: There’s even a scene where Turk has the site open on his laptop. While blurry, it looks to me like the very same site.
I believe two things.
First, the airlines deserve to be skewered for a variety of reasons. Even before 9/11 there was a certain decline in service, and now added security (especially after the London attacks that brought us the “3-2-1” rules for liquids in carry-ons) has us stressed just about the process of going to the airport, much less getting on the plane.
Second, the reasons most people choose to gripe about airlines are unconsidered and counterproductive. The more time we spend griping about dumb things the less we have to gripe about things that matter.
For instance, is it really so hard to understand why we get the mantra, “In preparation for landing, please ensure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position?” If something happens during landing (which is when 45% of all airplane accidents occur), you’ll want to leave the plane in a hurry. You won’t particularly want your tray table blocking your exit, and I certainly don’t want your reclined seat blocking mine.
And what’s the deal with airline food? We know by now (thanks to Science) that our sense of taste is diminished at high altitudes. So why task the airline with cooking food in advance to prepare in tiny airplane galleys for hundreds of people at once? Of course it won’t end well for anybody! Either go without food for a few hours – a reasonable request between mealtimes – or buy something at the airport before leaving. The “Street Pricing Policy” at Logan and other airports nationwide even dictates that you won’t overpay for food at the airport.
So what should we be griping about, if not classic bits of comedian fodder? The airlines’ only real responsibility: getting us to our destinations on time.
We cannot reasonably demand perfection, of course. Too many variables impact flight schedules. Passengers on a flight from Dulles to Miami might insist weather is no factor when it’s beautiful and sunny along the entire coast, until they reflect that the plane they’re waiting for started its day in San Francisco, where it’s raining and windy. And is there anybody aboard who, upon learning of a mechanical failure, would say, “Eh. Let’s go anyway.”
Instead of pushing for perfection of scheduling, the airlines should be prepared to work around delays. In particular, when that poor San Francisco flight gets delayed all the way across the country, the passengers waiting for the plane in Dulles shouldn’t be affected. Surely some airplane is available in Dulles; let them board that one. Put the people from that plane on whichever one is ready next. Then when the San Francisco plane shows up (eventually) you’ll be caught up, possibly without introducing any extra delays at all.
Of course, this only works with interchangeable aircraft. We can’t take 285 passengers from a Boeing 777 and put them on a 114-seat Boeing 737. For many airlines, though, this is a reasonable restriction. Ted (the United Airlines spinoff) operates every flight on an Airbus A320, for example. Other airlines use only two or three types of equipment.
Ground crews shouldn’t be heavily impacted by such a policy. The decision to use a certain aircraft would have to be made somewhat in advance, giving crews enough time to get luggage and fuel aboard normally. Catering won’t be affected at all, since there should be no catering in the first place.
The real burden of this system would fall to passengers. Instead of going straight to a single gate, we’d have to check, say, an hour before departure to see which gate has our flight. This is similar to how trains leave from Penn Station in New York. You have no idea which track will host your train until it arrives and it’s time to board. True, this won’t work in all airport configurations (e.g., some airports have small clusters of gates, and going between clusters requires leaving the sterile area). At many airports it would still work fine.
And of course this isn’t a flawless system. It’s a “spherical chickens in a vacuum” solution to suppose we can just mix and match flights freely. Sometimes the crew from one flight is needed for another; sometimes the physical plane needs to end up in a certain city for maintenance. But this is the era of computer modeling. Are we really saying there’s nothing we can do?