Another Thought for the Day

Poor Significant Other, he reports that others have been encouraging the receptionist's email missives. Names again have been changed to protect the innocent victims.

From: Reception Desk
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 9:21 AM
To: All
Subject: Thought for the Day

Good morning, workplace! I’m sorry I’ve failed you this week so far, but I couldn’t let you all leave for Thanksgiving holiday without giving you one last thing to think about. I actually found two Thanksgiving quotes, and I couldn’t choose between the two, so you’re getting both.

Before I move onto the quotes (eliminated by me, that's not what you all wanted to be reading anyway, right?), I want to thank all of you that have given me such good feedback on my daily thoughts, even if they don’t happen every single day. I am glad you all enjoy my rambling, and my hope is that it gives each of you a little inspiration for the day. Ohh, that sounds so like my mother that it’s scary!
Thanks, thankful, Thanksgiving.
Hmmm, what am I thankful for? Well, I could really ramble on and on about everything I have that I truly appreciate, but I’m going to just reveal one. I am truly thankful to each of the employees here at place of work that have been so kind and accepting to me. I feel very welcome here already, and I really appreciate every smile, every hello, every friendly email, and each time someone stops to talk to me. Thank you for taking the time to get to know me.

It's a literal literal literal literal world.

My number one grammatical pet peeve is the misuse of the word "literally." It is defined as "word for word; not imaginatively, figuratively or freely" If one were to say "it's literally raining cats and dogs" there had better be cats and dogs falling from the sky.

Just this morning I'm quietly reading my newspaper when I came across an Associated Press article under the byline of Morris and James Carey titled Energy savings add up to serious change. The final paragraph had me literally screaming out loud (and my significant other can attest to that as I do scream every time I read a misuse of the word.)

To keep your hard-earned money from literally going down the drain, be sure to
repair faucet leaks at the kitchen sink

Now, if the drain were just a big open hole one might lose one's money down the drain, but it wouldn't be due to a leaky faucet, it would be due to tossing your change into the sink.

Please editors, correct your writers!!!

A couple of years ago, after hearing my screams almost daily, dear significant other said "why don't you start a blog about literally?" What a great idea, document all the misuses I come across. Well, fellow grammarians, it's already been done, by multiple individuals. One very well done blog is at: http://literally.barelyfitz.com/

Thought for the day

My poor significant other. His place of employment recently hired a new receptionist. Can you imagine being greeted each morning with an email such as this? (names have been changed to protect the innocent, especially poor "Jane")

Subject: Thought for the day

Good morning, everyone! First, of all, I’d like to wish Jane a Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Jane, happy birthday to you! (And yes, for all of you wondering, I was singing it while typing). Jane, I hope your day is extra special.

Well, I don’t have as much to say today. I guess that’s a big relief to some of you who may think I’m long-winded. I’m not saying any names, but I’m sure John can let you know who they are! ; ) Actually, I’ll probably never have nothing to say, but some days I may be more talkative than others.

I just hope this receptionist treats customers in a more professional manner.

The challenges of planning a vacation with my significant other, part 1

"Honey" I said as he arrived home, "listen to this vacation description;

"Tahoe snowshoeing and dogsledding: You don't have to go to Alaska to learn to love snowshoeing and dogsledding. You can do both amid the wintertime beauty of the Sierra Nevada backcountry ... Meet the sled dogs, learn how they're trained, and handle the equipment used before hopping on in back and driving the team yourself."

"I don't think I'd want to snowshoe" he replies.

"But you love dogs, wouldn't that be fun?" was my comeback.

"How much does it cost?"

"$700 per person for four nights"

"Couldn't we just go to the pound?"

AOL Instant Messenger - BAH AOL!

I opened AIM to see if I could catch my sister online. AOL soon came up with a pop-up wanting to install a security update. Sure, security is good, so I told it to go ahead.

Then the terms and conditions came up. It wouldn't let me copy and paste it, so I'm going to take the time to transcribe most of it here because I find it very presumptuous and aggresive in assuming I want all my settings changed to what they want:

You will be given a choice whether to install the AIM Toolbar, QQ Games, and AIM Tunes and whether to change your home page in Internet Explorer to AOL.com and your default search engine to AOL Search. DON'T MESS WITH MY BROWSER SETTINGS!!!

AIM will start automatically when you start Windows. You can change this behaviour ... DON'T MESS WITH MY START-UP SETTINGS!!!

A desktop shortcut, system tray icon, Start Menu folder, and Quick Launch shortcut for AIM will be added to your computer to provide you quick access to AIM's features and services. DON'T MESS WITH MY NICE CLEAN DESKTOP AND SYSTEM TRAY!!!

I'm going to agree, only because I want a secure system, but then I'll have to spend my valuable time undoing all the garbage they throw on my PC. Fooey on you AOL.

Yahoo, Dell and Microsoft, I'm unhappy with you all

In 2004 I purchased a Dell DJ MP3 player. I was able to upload music to it from my Microsoft ME computer using the free Music Match software. That computer died in early 2007 (I believe from some Microsoft patch, but that's a whole other story)

I purchased a new computer from Dell in April 2007 running Windows Vista. Sometime between 2004 and 2007 Music Match was purchased by Yahoo and renamed Yahoo Music Jukebox.

My Dell DJ worked with my new computer and Yahoo Music Jukebox. It allowed me to upload music. Then at the end of September Yahoo forced an upgrade to Music Jukebox. After the upgrade I was no longer able to upload to my player. I tried a system restore to roll back to pre-upgrade. Yahoo Music Match would not work and insisted on the upgrade.

I contacted Yahoo (which in itself was a challenge as their support form is buried and then IE7 had a conniption fit since the form required security settings to be changed to allow Active X controls) Here is their response:

We appreciate you contacting Yahoo! Music regarding this issue and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Unfortunately your portable device is currently no longer supported by Windows MediaPlayer. Since Yahoo! Music Jukebox uses the same application programming interface as Windows Media Player, it will return the error you are seeing returned while attempting to transfer tracks.

I would suggest contacting the manufacturer of your device and request an updated driver. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reply to this email.

Media Player wasn't upgraded, Music Jukebox was, so I was none too pleased with their response. But, following their advice I contacted Dell to see if they would come up with drivers for their not so old device.

Their first response sent me to an article with instructions on how to physically unlock the player (kind of like a keyboard lock on a cell phone) Hey guys, that's not the problem, the player works fine, I'm just asking you to support it under the newest Windows operating system. The device is not all that old and it wasn't cheap.

So, I replied back that their answer did not address the problem. Next guy kind of got it, but his solution was for me to pay for fee based support. Can you imagine how much it would cost for me to pay Dell to write drivers for their device?

I did check out the Dell forums. I'm not alone in my frustration but we all seem to be on a fruitless battle with technology companies' business models. Upgrade the software to require new hardware, all the while leaving slightly older devices orphans and destined for the dump.

Next step is to find an archive of old programs and see if an old version of Music Match will work under Vista and recognize my MP3 player.

The only satisfaction I've had is filling out a Yahoo support feedback survey. I let them have it.

Twitter saved my dinner party

Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Ok, it was really lunch, but all the same...

We have some vegetarian friends. When they come over I try to prepare something new and different. We've known them for years so I've gone through quite a number of recipes. I happened to have had some broccoli on hand so as I was searching my recipe database I also posted on Twitter: "looking for ideas of what to serve vegetarian guests, have lots of broccoli and honeydew melon" I heard quickly back from a librarian I'd recently started following. I've never met her yet liked her simple suggestion:

"http://www.fabulousfoods.com/recipes/side/grains/brocforest.htmldelish!"

The link went to the recipe for "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen.

It was simple to prepare. The only caution I should add is that after 20 minutes of baking the broccoli was still pretty much raw. If I make it again I'll bake it for 30 minutes.