den_down_unda, posts by tag: work - LiveJournal

Random things before I hit the road for the weekend:

Finished The Way of Kings. A very interesting book, with a lot of cool stuff, but a couple of glaring flaws. One: Sanderson tends to overcharacterize. We spend way too much time in the heads of mopey characters with moral qualms about everything. The same problem occurs in books two and three of the Mistborn trilogy. I understand the need to establish the internal, as well as external conflict, but if you can shave 200 pages off a 1,000 page book by pulling out the moping, I'm all for it. OTOH, Brandon writes possibly the best action scenes of any fantasist that I've read.

There seems to be increased activity on job boards. I don't want to curse myself or anything, but I've sent out more resumes this week than I have in many, many weeks. I take this as a good sign and I live in hope that I will at least get some callbacks if not some actual interviews.

President Obama seems to be getting out there and drawing a much sharper line between the Dems and Republicans than he has in the past. This is unequivocally a Good Thing. While I'm overall pessimistic about the Dems' chances, I am optimistic that the dire predictions of Charlie Cook et al. will not come to pass, and that the Dems will still hold both Houses come January. Perhaps this makes me naive. I don't know. We'll see in November.

I want to use the following sentence at work some day:

"Put down the semicolon and back away from the sentence!"

It would be even better if I could deliver it through a bullhorn.

So much going on and I've had nothing to say for awhile. Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans, but NOLA was spared a full replay of the horror of Katrina. I'm still going to say a few prayers for the folks down there, who could use them. And of course, Hurricane Hanna is lurking out in the Carribean, ready to do more damage. And there's another Tropical Depression, which may or may not get a name in the next couple of days. Oy.

On Friday, John McCain chose as his Vice-President Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who has been the gift that keeps on giving for the Obama campaign. She's been governor for less than tho years, doesn't understand the surge, thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, is under investigation for abuses of power as Governor, and may have loose ties to a group that wants Alaska to secede from the Union. Looks like Senator Geritol should have put a little more thought into this one.

Work is really busy, and now it's September, which means I'll be taking out the AC again soon. Oh, and I'm going to try to lose weight again. Wish me luck. I walked four miles today, which was good. Let's see if I can keep it up during the odd 11 hour day.

Things I learned at work today:

There's an International Association of Pain.

Note to self: Do not attend their meetings. Ever!

If I ever do write fiction for sale, I want to be as deft as Lois Bujold. This is because she's so good that the sentence, "Perhaps he should emit a menacing belch," becomes is joke that works on like five different levels. I've said it before and I'll say it again, A Civil Campaign is made of awesome.

Also, on an unrelated note, I was thinking this morning that I've been disafffected at work lately, and I need to start doing the opposite. Unfortunately, the opposite of disaffected is affected, and I'm not sure how that'll help, or if I can manage it. I mean, I can do the accent and everything, but where am I going to find a cane and a monocle by tomorrow morning?

Just about everything in the office supplies cabinet at the office comes from Staples, except, well, the staples. Isn't that weird?

Back in Boston and back at work today. I like five day weekends, but I find it very hard to settle to anything on the first day back, and I still have a crapload of stuff to do.

Also, took the bus home again. Trains are not affordable over Thanksgiving. The bus is an unpleasant way to travel as the clientele is pretty much made up of skells and college students acting like skells. Could be worse; could have taken Fung Wah.

Fung Wah is awesome from a comedy point of view, but not so much from a, y'know, getting where you're going safely point of view. And I've heard enough Fung Wah stories that I can get a laugh (which I did, several times) without having to resort to actually experiencing it.

Almost finished with the Conte du Graal. ("Perceval") It's sort of interesting because you can see in certain ways that the storytelling is very primitive, even as the symbolism can be quite complex. It's probably a hell of a lot of fun to read aloud, though.

Word is always evil. But sometimes it's evil in a good way—like today. I typed the word 'acidemia,' which is Something Bad. Word's autocheck changed it to 'academia.' I've noted this before, but I didn't expect Word to chime in.

This time, I'll sit here and laugh while I let the reader decide whether academia is Something Bad.

My iTunes play count at work has disappeared, due to some sort of bizarre network issues we've been having. Three years of work (okay, freakish obsessiveness) down the drain.

Oh well. At least it's one less thing to worry about when I finally get a new computer.

UPDATE: Crisis averted. Forgot the first rule of voodoo repairs: Shut down and restart. Everything is fixed. God, I'm a dork.

Apparently, Wired has come to the stylistic decision not to capitalize the I in internet. I'm not sure how I feel about this. (I'm also not sure why anyone else would care how I feel about this, but that's a separate issue.) I mean, I've been capping the 'I' in Internet for as long as the subject has come up professionally. I think I understand Wired's reasoning. It's not like the Internet needs to be differentiated from all the little internets that make it up—all the little internets are integral parts of the Internet, and words like 'intranet' and 'network' exist if we need to differentiate. But, y'know, the Internet's a big deal (of course, so was the printing press, but you don't see capital Ps all over the place, which is another point Wired makes), and it kinda makes me feel professional. I'm in the know, because I know to capitLize Internet. (It's like knowing where Fourth Avenue is, but different.)

I'm less sanguine about the decision to drop the cap in 'web,' while keeping it in World Wide Web. I agree that World Wide Web is a formal name and should be capped, but there's no difference between "the World Wide Web" and "the web." The web is the World Wide Web, just like the Red Sox are the Boston Red Sox. Of course, part of the reason I'm not comfortable with it is that I never knew how it should be in the first place. Usage is often determined by the client, and while I'm fairly sure all my style sheets have read "web (n.), but the World Wide Web," at least one organization wanted Web capped. Stuff like that makes bunny cry. As far as "net" goes, I've never really capped it, but I usually use the initial apostrophe, "'net," to indicate the abbreviation. I suppose I can drop those, or I'll look as old fashioned as Dorothy Sayers, who probably was the height of linguistic style when she had Lord Peter catch the 'bus.

But who am I to stand in the way of stylistic progress, especially when it's at the hands of a source as esteemed as Wired. So I'll mention all this at work tomorrow, because that's the sort of thing that preoccupies the mind of the copyeditor/editor/tech writer. And later, if you're good, and I have time, I'll tell you about the skunk.