AliThinks

Word Nerd, Part 2

Thanks for all the comments on my last post, Word Nerd. I thought it might be fun* if we all posted our grammar and spelling pet peeves.

Margaret (who kindly corrected my grammar in her comment to my Word Nerd post) wishes people would differentiate between less and fewer. I'm on board with that. If you can count whatever thing you're referring to, you need to use fewer. If it's something you can't count, use less.

And because I'm a teacher at heart, I'll give an example: If we had fewer cats, I'd have less litter to scoop. (I know, ew. Bear with me.)

Karan wrote "My daughter's resume explained that she had experience stalking shelves. I told her that stalking was against the law.

This makes me laugh, because I recently read that someone was totally against internet stocking.

Joolie made a couple of comments: Boy, you really tow the line! (ducks), and my favorite, poring over vs. pouring over. I'm sure you know you should toe the line, especially if you're poring over party documents.

If you have any grammar or spelling peeves, other than the ubiquitous your/you're, its/it's, their/there/they're, or any apostrophe catastrophes, please leave a comment.

*Okay, so maybe it will only be fun for me. I accept that.

Just A Few Thoughts

Lately I've been thinking about social media, and I'm trying to figure out what I want to say about it without sounding like a jackass. I've been using social media for years, and it's interesting to see patterns of adoption.

When I knew I was moving to Lexington, I contacted a food preparation company Allan had told me about, to propose my services to expand their Internet presence, because I read they were hoping to eventually franchise their business. I never heard back; perhaps I went about it the wrong way, or perhaps they didn't think it was important. Whatever, it doesn't matter.

My point is that I did this long before Twitter existed, or Facebook was opened to the general public. My point is that I'm an early adopter. I'm not an über-early adopter, mind you. I joined Flickr a little more than a year after its start, and I thought Twitter was stupid when I first heard about it, so I didn't join that until January of 2008. But, relatively speaking, I'm on it. (Foursquare? Dude, Brightkite has been doing the location-based thing for years, but without all the stupid Mayor crap.)

So it was interesting for me to see how political candidates used social media last year. It's interesting to see how businesses decide to use social media.

And inversely, it's interesting to be reminded that not everyone is like me in this regard. I read about this next thing I'm going to talk about (notice I said "talk," not "write," heh) last week, and thought I might blog about it, but I put it out of my head until I saw this tweet from @dvs earlier today. The link in his tweet goes here, but I read about it somewhere else (and for the life of me I can't remember where). Whatever, again, it doesn't matter. What matters is the gist of it: This post on Read Write Web rose to near the top of Google rankings for the search "facebook login." (But it never got to #1, as far as I know.) Some people who went to RWW were confused and thought it was a new Facebook. And they left disgruntled comments on the blog entry saying as much! 

So what, right? But this means that people don't use the address bar of their browser to go to websites (or bookmark them). They go to the Google and search for it. And this kind of shocked me, Alison, who has ten different website tabs set as her Firefox "home" page.

It makes me want to tilt my head in that way that Kyle (or Stan) does on South Park and say "Reallllyyyy?" 

Now, some of you are longtime readers of this blog, and many of you are bloggers yourselves. A lot of you are like me, and I know this, because we are contacts (and some of you are friends) on other social media sites. Perhaps you already know all about the RWW/Facebook login and are mocking me because I'm posting about it nearly a week after it happened.

And in the defense of those who use the Google, I will admit to Googling when I'm not sure of a website's URL. (Like the website of the food company I mentioned above. I just looked it up a few minutes ago.) But for a website I go to on a regular basis? If it's not in my home tabs or bookmarked, Firefox remembers it and the URL auto-fills in my address bar. 

RWW had an interesting follow-up post about the FB login entry. It gave me something more to think about. 

What about you? How do you get to your most-visited websites?

Revisiting Old Friends

Writers need to read. Every writer knows it. I've been absorbing books lately. I'd say I was devouring them, but that seems like a cliché, doesn't it? It's apt, however. I'm ravenous for stories.

I'm in the middle of rereading the Austin Family Chronicles by Madeleine L'Engle, who's one of my favorite authors. I loved her Wrinkle In Time books as a teen, and was comforted by The Summer of The Great-Grandmother when I was a new mother. That sweet child of mine is now fourteen, and the Austin Family books are hers; they were a Christmas gift, and she left them here.

It's been 25 years since I've read these books, and they're still relevant. In fact, these books are 40+ years old, but it doesn't matter. Only a few things seem dated. The interactions and relationships are still fresh, but human nature doesn't change much, does it?

I remember the characters well, and I'm pleased to be spending time with them again. 

Who are you spending time with these days?

What Does It Mean?

Last night I had a dream in which I met the two remaining Democratic candidates for president.

In a bathroom. Each.

I met Hillary in a women's room at a large public gathering. My hands were wet (from water, not pee!) but she shook one anyway. And she knew who I was and where I lived.

Then I found my son in the crowd (random!) and took him to the men's room. And went inside. (What? My son is 10. Old enough to go alone.)

Barack Obama was sitting in a stall, not doing anything but hanging out. We had a nice chat while my son peed.

Usually I'm loathe to share dreams here, because y'all, I don't want to read about YOUR dreams on your blog. But this one deserved a mention, don'tcha think?

Well.

I'm thinking I might have to make a video about my last post. You know, in which I demonstrate the use of the comment-inciting phrase I mentioned.

Qu'en pensez-vous?

Can You Guess...

Can You Guess..., originally uploaded by Alison.

...why I have these fake nails on my right hand and not my left? The best story gets a prize that I have yet to determine.

I Admit It!

When I was a little girl, I had a crush on Bob Barker.*

And James Garner.

Edit: And Randolph Mantooth.

Your turn. Spill.

*I mention this because I caught the tail end of the prime time special.

How Will We Live?

As always, click photo to enlarge, or go here for the really big version.

No post tonight, just a question.

How About...

...the fact that I have close to 150 photos in my camera that I haven't even looked at? Oy, it is going to feel like a chore when I do look at them -- because before I can post any on Flickr, I have to process them and convert them to JPEG.

On the other hand, I don't even remember what's on the memory card. My attention span is really short, ya know. So I could view at it as a treat to see what images are hidden in there.

What do you think? Chore or treat?

Testing

Typepad now lets you easily add Technorati tags to your posts. When I first saw these on other blogs a number of months ago, I thought they looked unwieldy. I'm still not sure I like the way they look, especially with my choice of links-in-bold.

What do you think?

By the way, I'm still working on the FAQ. You people came up with some killer questions!
 

I Need Help

One of the things I've been meaning to do is revamp my About page. I updated it after I moved back to the States, but it completely sucks still needs work. I've seen some bloggers let their readers ask them questions, and that's what I'm going to do.

My blog is going to have a FAQ (cleverly disguised as an About page), and you're going to write half of it. Ask me your burning questions in the comments to this entry. Since I will answer these in a collective manner, I probably won't respond to your comment like I usually do. Please don't hate me for this.

If you want to ask something anonymously, send your question to alisonATalithinksDOTcom (yes, I have a domain name; I'll let you know when I move on up to it). Likewise, if you want the world to know that it's YOUR QUESTION, DAMMIT, let me know and I will give you linkage on the new About page.

Here's the caveat: I reserve the right to not answer questions if they invade my personal space, if they give me the heebeejeebees, or if I just don't feel like it.

Now have at it.

Scattered (Sca-doo-bee)

My most recent foray into the print medium has produced excellent results. I wrote a profile, and the person in question has gotten business because of it.
....

My attention span has reached a new low. I had a lot to blog about, but I can't remember what I wanted to say.
....

Oh yeah. Oh, wait... I forgot.
....

Um, yeah, this is supposed to be an interesting blog. You can fill in the blanks this time.

Talk To Me, People.

Do you know The Mellow Mushroom? Is there one in your town? Do you like it?

We had dinner there this evening. Pizza and beer, oh, yum. It was my first time there, and I thought the pizza was delish and the atmosphere tip-top.

What did you have for dinner? Are you watching the INXS show on VH1 Classic, too?

What's happening with you?

F.R.A.N.C.E.

One of the first things I learned at the Alliance Française was that the French are notorious for their use of acronyms.  This seemed strange to me, because I had always thought that the French were all about the beauty of their language. 

Not that they aren't, but acronyms pepper their speech and writing.  One of the most famous newscasters here is known by his initials, PPDA.  There are so many other examples I could give to make my point, but I'm really tired and don't much feel like spending half an hour explaining.  I will say that every teacher in the country knows what the B.O. is, and I'm not talking about their scent after a hard day of teaching, either. 

So today I went to the post office (I mean the P.O.) to give them a letter I'd received.  No one by that name lives here, and I said as much to the worker behind the glass. 

She took the letter (ironically enough from La Poste itself, from their financial services branch), scribbled on the bar code at the bottom of the envelope, and said in a self-satisfied manner, "Ça, c'est un NPAI."  It took a lot for me not to laugh out loud.  NPAI (say it with me, En Pa Ay Ee) means "N'habite pas à l'adresse indiquée."

Oh hell, I might be too tired to explain why the lady at the post office made me laugh with her official NPAI label.  It was just funny, that's all. 

Now let's see how funny you can be.  I dare you to come up with a phrase for the "acronym" in the title of this post.  I'll go first, but it might suck: Furry Rodents Are Not Carrying Ebola.

Your turn now.