Grammar Nazi or Valid Point?

Jun 21

Posted by Shad in Ramblings | No Comments

As I alluded to in the previous post, Sarah had her All-Star soccer tournament this weekend. Out of three games, her team lost two. Which isn’t all that surprising considering they’ve had about four practices together. Individually they might be good, but soccer is a team sport and you can’t gel as a team with only four practices. But this morning’s game (the third one) the team played well. They won 2-0 and Sarah scored one of those goals.

But I digress in what I really wanted to talk about.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a grammar nazi. Not that I’m perfect; I’ve made stupid mistakes as I’m sure many of you have, and I’d be completely unsurprised if there weren’t a couple in this post (double negative!). But I have a healthy respect for the language, and it drives me insane when I see ‘your’ or ‘there’ instead of ‘you’re’ or ‘their’. And it’s scary because I’m seeing college-aged kids who don’t seem to know the difference as well. Slack was apt in a comment in my last post; it seems a lot of them have the intelligence of a donut (doughnut?).

There’s another word that’s been driving me nuts in the way it’s being used lately, especially now that I coach soccer; the word is ‘verses’. The girls all seem to think that saying “who are we versing today” is acceptable. I’m constant correcting them. And it was really driven home when I overheard one of the other parents ask the All-Star coach who the team was ‘versing’. The way she said it sounded almost mocking, as if she was fully aware that she was using it completely wrong (and I really hope she was…). But how long before she stops mocking herself and using it naturally? I understand language is fluid and dynamic and is constantly evolving…but this is driving me up the wall.

Why do I let it bother me so much? Good question.

Excuses…

Jun 17

Posted by Shad in Offbeat IM's | 2 Comments

Obviously writing here has been completely derailed – by facebook, extra-curricular activities, hell, just life in general really. I keep thinking I could write a post about Sarah’s soccer tournaments and All-Stars, or the dog’s allergy to something that keeps her awake scratching at night, or Cody struggling through biology and the Green Day tickets Gail bought to try and bribe him into getting a decent grade so we could go… but after the day is done, my brain just can’t seem to grab onto a coherant though long enough to write it down. So, instead, I give you yet another Offbeat IM I received today.

cutti1231: wow u have a big ass mouth
Shad: Well, it CAN take a bite of a Wendy’s triple without too much spillage…
cutti1231: Ur a dumbass for that one
Shad: I won’t argue there – after I take the bite, it takes me like 10 minutes just to chew it all up enough to swallow, and in the meantime I can barely shut my mouth, so everyone sees bits of meat and globs of ketchup and mayo…
Shad: quite disgusting actually…
cutti1231: Wtf r u stoopid
Shad: For taking those big bites? Probably, but man, sometimes I can’t help myself. When I unwrap that Wendy’s triple, and get a wiff of that fried meat and melted cheese, I just can’t help it! I have to have it! NOW!
cutti1231: Wait who am i talkn 2
Shad: My name is Shad. And yeah, I don’t know who you thought you were talking to, I just know it wasn’t me. I don’t recognize your screen name, and, honestly, my mouth knows how to keep itself shut.
cutti1231: Im tlkn 2 sumbody i dont know
Shad: Exactly.
cutti1231: How old r u
Shad: 39
Shad: and a half
cutti1231: Buh bye and u need to delete ur aim u r too damn old 2 have one
Shad: Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize AIM was the providence of only the young. So, what’s the age limit. 25? 30? Considering I’ve had this name for nearly 15 years, I doubt I’m giving it up anytime soon…
cutti1231: Like i said buh bye
Shad: Bye!

Guess I didn’t realize there was an age limit for IMs. I’d better check into that.

Just a weekend recap

Apr 20

Posted by Shad in General Geekiness, On The Home Front | 2 Comments

Since my last post describing how I was getting into Drupal, I’ve worked on it a total of once. Not exactly going to get me closer to my goal of figuring out how it all comes together.  This seems to be the way I operate; I get excited about something, I start working on it, I build a few pages, get a very low-level basic knowledge of whatever it is I’m working on, and then I let it go idle for a period of time. I’m trying to overcome that, but not having a lot of success at the moment. Too many other distractions.

One of those distractions is back – soccer season has swung into full gear. Our team had its first game of the season this past Saturday, which we won, 1-0. It was a great game, and we had some great plays by our keeper. After the whistle blew sounding the end of the game, we were all giving each other high-fives and congratulations and lining up to go shake the other teams’ hands when I noticed Sarah was in tears. I asked what was wrong and she said she couldn’t breathe. Turns out she’d been trying to get my attention the last part of the game because she needed a break and was having a hard time catching her breath. I asked why she didn’t just run over and tell me or the other coach that she needed to come out and she replied with “I was worried the ball would come my way and get past me and they’d score.”

Talk about making dad feel like a heel!

After being able to rest for about 10 minutes, she was back to her normal bouncy self and was happy they’d won. It didn’t seem like asthma or anything, she was just wiped out.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing the normal weekend-suburbanite chores. I did manage to wipe out the front page of a website I’d been working on. That was lots of fun. Thankfully because I had the page still loaded in a browser, I was able to create it with minimal fuss and had it back online within 20 mins. Hopefully the owner of the page didn’t notice.

And hopefully this will make me start doing backups more often!

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Working with Drupal

Mar 25

Posted by Shad in General Geekiness | 1 Comment

I’ve been working on a new site, and I decided to build it using Drupal. Many (OK, none) of you know I’m a big fan of Expression Engine, and are probably wondering why I’ve decided to torture myself with a new CMS. I have a few reasons:

  • It’s FREE as in beer (ExpressionEngine costs $99 for a personal license)
  • It supports members
  • I like learning new things
  • It seems to have a strong developer and user community behind it
  • Never hurts to have ‘experience developing with Drupal’ on a resume

It’s been a long, slow learning curve. I should throw steep in there as well. I’m sure like Expression Engine, I’ll have an ‘a-ha!’ moment or two. The problem I’ve had lately is trying to sit down for a quite hour or three and dig into it.

I had some time last night so I was playing around with it. If you’re new to Drupal, one of the first modules I suggest installing is CCK (Content Construction Kit). This module allows you to insert fields of any type where you want them. I’m creating a site for writers, which will allow them to post short stories for review.  Rather than a typical Title field and Body field, I wanted a place for a summary. This is where the CCK module comes in. Now when someone submits a story, they have three fields: The Title of Your Story, Summary and Your Story. I will probably change these fields to sound better, but you get the idea the flexibility the CCK module gives. There’s so much to this module that I’ve only barely scratched the surface of it.

Otherwise, it’s been trial and error, trial and breaking, breaking and fixing, getting frustrated and giving up, and then having a thought and going back to it. It’s a long process, but I’m starting to feel like I’m making a bit of headway. Once I have the fields in place, and the comments working, then it’ll be putting it into a layout I want. And THAT will be a serious challenge.

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Foggy Morning

Mar 19

Posted by Shad in On The Home Front | No Comments

It will be during the dog days of summer that I’ll recall mornings like today’s with fondness. As I sit there on my motorcycle, stuck in traffic with all that metal of the cars reflecting the hot, overbearing sun onto me from all directions, the heat rising from the asphalt, the engine idling between my legs cooking my jeans. As I struggle through traffic to try and get some speed up to create a breeze to cool my sweat-beaded brow, as I feel the sweat drip down along my spine to the small of my back. That’s when I’ll recall wistfully of the rides taken in March, when I was snug in my leathers, my head encased in my full-face helmet and the temperature brisk. Mornings where you felt happy to be alive.

But this morning, as I traveled down the road and the fog grew increasingly thicker, I was being anything but wistful about the ride. The weather reports were promising a beautiful afternoon with highs near 70, blue skies and a slight breeze. Completely perfect riding weather. As it’s been a nearly two months since I had been out on the bike, I figured it’d be a great day to ride to work. It was a great day to ride HOME from work, but certainly not to.

When I got on the 6-lane that I take to work, the already thick fog grew even thicker, and I couldn’t see twenty yards in front of my bike. Combine that with the condensation that was collection rapidly on my face shield and the traffic coming up quickly behind me and probably not seeing my puny tail light, I decided it was time to get off the road. I pulled off at the next exit, and found a Chik-fil-a for some breakfast. I couldn’t even see the buildings across the parking lot, so I figured I’d stay until I could. Luckily I had a book of short stories in my saddle bag, so I had quite the pleasant morning sitting and reading.

I do love foggy mornings. Just not so much when I’m riding in them.

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Is AIG Hiring?

Mar 17

Posted by Shad in On The Home Front | No Comments

I’ve decided I’m in the wrong business, and have started to look for a new career. I have something in mind, something where my talents and skills won’t be necessary. I want to be able to have the kind of career where I can do badly and not have any reprecussions. The kind of job where I can lose my company money, and still be rewarded. Where I can mis-manage funds so badly that the goverment has to give me billions in loans just to keep millions of other people who depend on my company from going under. And then I can take some of those billions and pay out bonuses to all those people that were spectacularly crappy at their job.

Seriously, because they have a contract they should be allowed to keep their bonuses? Did these contracts not specificy that it was based on performance? If not, why the hell not?!

Bits

Mar 16

Posted by Shad in On The Home Front | 1 Comment

Two posts in the same month? Yes, apparently hell has frozen over.

I’m going to concentrate on writing more again. I do like to write, but as mentioned in the previous posting, facebook has been sucking up my time. I’m going to try and make a status update just once a day, and only check it once (ok, maybe twice, once in the morning, once in the evening) during the day as well.

Everyone have a nice weekend? I had a dinner theater performance Saturday night that was a lot of fun. It was one of those mystery theaters where the audience gets to ask us actors questions trying to gather information about who committed the murder. It was quite a lot of fun. Because of the nature of the play, there were very few lines I had to actually memorize. Mostly it was facts one where my character was and other tidbits that could lead to clues. So our answers weren’t scripted, they were all improv. Which in itself was challenging and quite a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again.

After my performance, I picked up my friend Eric and we went to a poker game. I actually won the game, taking in $140. It was a twenty-dollar buy-in, so not a bad return on my money. I was pleased with how I played, and considering when it was just down to three of us, and I had two big blinds left, I think I did well. And caught some good cards.

The rest of my weekend was chores and working on Drupal. Which is a chore in itself! It has quite the learning curve, and if I had the money, I’d be buying Expression Engine to use for this site I’m working on. But I don’t and the economy being what it is, I opted to go with Drupal. I have a few friends who are big fans of it, so that helps when I get stuck. Hopefully it’ll click and I’ll understand how it works soon. Otherwise, my head is just going to get flatter from banging it on the desk.

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Dust Bunnies in the corners

Mar 10

Posted by Shad in On The Home Front | 3 Comments

Is anyone even still checking in here?

I’ve been woefully absent of late. I blame Facebook, as it’s easy to make a two sentence update and be done, and that’s where it seems all my friends hang out.

Perhaps I need to gear this site towards a specific subject. Harleys, photography, knuckle-cracking. Something. Guess I’ll ponder that for another four months before I write something here again. We’ll see.

Upgraded

Dec 11

Posted by Shad in General Geekiness | 1 Comment

Running Wordpress 2.7 now. First impression: nice! The dashboard has a new clean look, everything seems to be working great and the upgrade, thanks to the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin, worked splendidly! Just don’t forget to re-initilize your plugins, especially the Askimet Spam protection.

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Who really *is* on first?

Nov 14

Posted by Shad in Offbeat IM's | 1 Comment

BulaCollazo : hey Shad
Shad : And you are?
BulaCollazo : mari
BulaCollazo : why
Shad : Sorry Mari, I think you have the wrong person
Shad : I don’t know a Mari
BulaCollazo : wats ur screen name
Shad : ….
Shad : the one you’re IM’ing with
BulaCollazo : who?
Shad : Shad
BulaCollazo : yes
Shad : the one you’re IMing with
BulaCollazo : huh
BulaCollazo : ?
Shad : my screen name is Shad
BulaCollazo : wats ur real name
Shad : Shad
BilaCollazo : No ur real name
Shad : It is my real name
BulaCollazo : o iight r u sure
BulaCollazo : ?
Shad : that’s what it says on my driver’s license
Shad : So, like I said, you have the wrong person
BulaCollazo : ok ok
BulaCollazo : bye
BulaCollazo : ttyl
Shad : bye

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