otoh

Ernie (as those of us who know Ernesto well call him) was much milder than expected. I’m grateful for that even though my day was a total waste. But I did enjoy being able to roll over and sleep late. That was tempered by spending all morning with a sinus headache. Ah well, I’m learning to embrace both yin and yang. Wait, does that sound dirty?

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~Tropical Depression

Schools are closed tomorrow in anticipation of Tropical Storm Ernesto (erstwhile TD, TS, and hurricane Ernesto). Just my luck, I recycled my Hurricane Diet post back at the start of hurricane season. So, inspired by another post I’m working on, I did this instead. I took this text:

Hello Ernesto,
Welcome to Central Florida. We have closed our schools for the day. We hope that you pass through gently. And, I realize you may not be able to accommodate this, but I would really like to keep my home intact and my electricity connected. Please?

and ran it through Babelfish to translate it into Spanish getting this

Hola Ernesto, recepción a la Florida central. Hemos cerrado nuestras escuelas para el día. Esperamos que usted pase a través suavemente. Y, realizo que usted no puede poder acomodar esto, pero realmente quisiera guardar mi intacto casero y mi electricidad conectó. ¿Por favor?

which I then ran back through Babelfish to translate into English getting this

Hello Ernesto, reception to central Florida. We have closed our schools for the day. We hoped that you happen smoothly to traverse. And, I make that you cannot be able to accommodate this, but really wanted to keep my intact caretaker and my electricity connected. Please?

There’s an old joke about a group of programmers working on software to translate between English and Chinese. One day they were testing it and sent “Out of sight, out of mind” through the program. But when they got the output, no one was nearby that could read the Chinese. So they sent it back through the program again and got “Invisible idiot”.

Sure hope I still have a home and electricity tomorrow!

Technorati tags: Hola Ernesto~blog~personal~otoh

If you’ve ever doubted the power of endings, consider how often we expect “happily ever after” and forget that we were told “once upon a time”.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. ~ Orson Welles

Technorati tags: Every End is a New Beginning~blog~personal~otoh

There are something in the neighborhood of 7000 languages and dialects in the world. (Quick, how many can you name?) Last Friday, I read an AP story on Wired News announcing the release in Bolivia of Microsoft Windows translated into Quechua, a Native American language spoken in parts of South America. (I wonder who is it at Microsoft that gets to decide which language to translate the software into next?) While there are over 10 million Quechua speakers, relatively few of them have regular access to computers. But, as a result of this translation, Microsoft “recently won a contract from the Peruvian government for 5,000 Quechua-equipped computers”.

The translation process incorporated many traditional words with new concepts, of course, and introduced some new terms. According to the article,

file = kipu, an Inca practice of recording information with knotted strings
Internet = Llika, a spider web
My Documents = Documentoykuna

Quechua, like many indigenous languages, was officially discouraged for many years. Even the Internet has been disparaged for its anglocentric view of the “World Wide Web”. (English is a first language for less than 5% of the world population, but accounts for 30% of web usage — steadily decreasing from its near total domination.) I happen to think we need to do more to encourage diversity in our world, so I’m glad to see these steps toward inclusion of less common languages, even though this inclusion necessarily changes those languages.

The article continues,

Such borrowed words “are one way that a language evolves,” said Serafin Coronel-Molina, a linguist at Princeton University and native Quechua speaker. “But you can’t just fill up a language with borrowed words, because then what have you got?”

Hmm. I’m no linguist, but I think you’ve got English.

Technorati tags: All Words are Made-up Words~blog~personal~otoh

I got a phone call shortly after I moved to Central Florida. It was from a member of The Van Zandt Society, a group that assists with genealogical research on various lines of the Van Zandt families. (Spellings include Van Zandt, Vanzandt, Van Zant, Vanzant, Van Sant, Vansant, Van Sandt, Vansandt, Vinzant, Vinzauen, and more.) They were having their annual “family reunion” in the Central Florida area that year and she always went through the phone book when she traveled looking for “relatives”. I wasn’t interested in researching my family tree, but I told her I would pass along the information to my father.

With their help, he was able to track down some of our family history. (Which, even if I could remember the details right now, I would not bore you with here. Assuming it’s not already too late on that score.) And he and my mother have attended several of the family reunions and helped host one in the Louisville area.

Anyway, the group has had a web site since 1998, but it has always been hosted on the personal pages provided by the ISP of one or another of the members. Earlier this summer I was looking for the site but its current address was not showing up on any of the three search engines I often use. I wondered why they didn’t have a dedicated web site and registered domain name. So, I emailed the current newsletter editor/webmaster. I alerted her to the problems with the search engines and suggested the web host I’ve been using gives good service at a reasonable price.

She wrote back to thank me for the suggestions. We exchanged a couple other emails — she’s a fourth-cousin of mine that I’ve never met. And today she has officially announced the unveiling of VanZandtSociety.com. It will take some time before it rises in the search listings, but it’s there. She actually told me about it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I know you don’t care. But if you’ve bothered to keep reading this far, you deserve a story that she shared with me.

Her father (who died a few years ago) and my father (and me too, sort of) have the same name, Leon Van Sant. Her father…

“lived in Hamilton [near Trenton] all of his 82 years with the exception of a few in the Army during WWII. Your father is a few years younger than my Leon who was born in 1917, but there’s a funny story that links them. My older sister was born 1948 and apparently my parents did business with a certain furniture store in Trenton. A few years later when your parents ordered a crib, my parents received the bill and had to notify the store that there were two Leon Van Sants in the area.”

I can hear that phone call in my head, “No, really. There’s another guy with the same name as me….”

Technorati tags: The Van Zandt Society~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

One of these days I’m going to get an enlarged print of this photo. I was so intent on the distant elements when I took it though, that I didn’t realize my shadow was in the lower part of the frame. I haven’t decided whether to crop it, try to erase me, or leave it as is for all those people that complain that I never appear in any of my photos. (Well, that’s sorta the point of being behind the camera!) And when I told that to Jenn, she said I should post it for HNT. Sometimes I need very little encouragement….

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: On the Roadside

Wow! I’m apparently not as weird about the keys and storm drain thing as I thought I was. I still think I’m weirder than you, but I suppose we all think that about ourselves. Who was it that said that when they write what they think is most uniquely personal, it turns out to be what is most universally common? (Or something like that. I’m too tired to even start looking that up.) [Hmmm, do you think that if I had put more thought into this paragraph, I wouldn't have needed to write "think" and "thought" as often as I did?]

Anyway, I intended to include this poem in my last post and didn’t realize I left it off until long after I had published. So I’m getting another post out of the topic for cheap.

The things you fear
are undefeatable
not by their nature
but by your approach

~ Jewel Kilcher

I’ve referred to this poem several times with my students because the stuff they’re afraid of is SO LAME. Not like me being afraid of something that has never ever happened to me like dropping my keys down a storm drain. (But it could happen, dammit!) Besides, how does one change his approach to a fear that he freely admits is irrational to begin with?

I have another fear that I want to write about. I just haven’t found the right way to articulate it. I’m not trying to be a tease here, honest(ly)! [I hate it when someone starts something and then just..........] But if you’re compelled to check back frequently, who am I to complain?

Technorati tags: The Things You Fear~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

I’m hardly the most graceful person in the world, but I probably don’t drop my keys any more often than anyone else does. And I have never dropped anything down a storm drain. (I’ve had parts of my life go down the drain, but that’s another story… and a different drain….)

And yet, whenever I’m near a storm drain (the big ones like in parking lots) I’m afraid that I’ll drop my keys and they’ll fall through the grate and be lost forever. I don’t know why I fear this, but I always give that large, gaping hole to the bowels of hell a wide berth and keep my keys in my pocket until I’m well away.

According to Merriam-Webster Online a phobia is “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation”. I doubt this one is common enough to warrant a name of its own like agoraphobia or triskaidekaphobia. (But if there is one, please let me know.) After all, I’m weirder than you are.

Technorati tags: Another Pocket Post~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

When we visited the tiny town of Hope, Alaska this summer, one of the required stops was at Sourdough Dru’s. Dru Sorenson sells jewelry that she makes from gold nuggets. We chatted for a while — she told us a little about the town, about the coffee bars we would see on every corner that week, about the burglary last fall in which thieves took most of her stock of jewelry.

When we were leaving, she said she had to give us crap for not having bought anything. So she handed us a small plastic bag containing her business card and three “gold nuggets”. She explained that she had offered a local teen a penny for each piece of moose droppings that she spray-painted gold. And how she hadn’t really planned on getting 5000 of them (that’s $50).

I had taken my photos and some of the souveniers from my trip to work with me this week to show some coworkers. I brought the stuff back home tonight. I made a stop on the way and reached in my pocket, forgetting for the moment what I was carrying. Oh yeah, I smiled, I have moose poop in my pocket. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say….

I get a lot of crap at work too, just not the kind that I’d carry around and show to people.

Technorati tags: Moose Poop in My Pocket~blog~personal~otoh

From the Department of Redundancy Department:

A meteorologist on the local all-news cable station has a habit that truly annoys me. He frequently indicates features that are passing through by saying things like, “That line of showers will be moving on off to the southeast at ten miles per hour.” It’s the “on off” that tugs at my ear every time.

Almost any other option would sound better to me:

• That line of showers will be moving on to the southeast…
• That line of showers will be moving off to the southeast…
• That line of showers will be moving to the southeast…

Wouldn’t any of those be the same difference? [Sorry, I don't like it when people say "same difference" either....]

Yeah, I know, if this is my biggest problem I am truly blessed. Well, of course it’s not my biggest problem. It’s just the small, petty problem I chose to write about today.

Technorati tags: Extra Unnecessary Superfluous Words~blog~personal~otoh~sydca