Just over there
Not sure where THAT one came from. Maybe all those Valentines Day “Pajama-gram” commercials that are dueling those annoying Valentines Day teddybear commercials on TV right now?
It sounds like a cool title for a fic, actually.
Now I just need a story to go with it.
Argh!
I pay taxes for a piece of the “ancestral homelands” that I inherited in another state. Nothing impressive. Just a bunch of rocks and trees. My car is worth more.
The taxes come at different times in the year – school taxes and state property taxes. School taxes were due Feb. 2nd this year (for those of us who like to pay ‘in full’). But I thought it would get there late so I sent in the payment + interest (the tax bill had that info in it.)
And I JUST got it back. With a note from the tax collector saying she couldn’t take it because it was more that the exact amount owed. Argh. Apparently, it wasn’t received late.
She couldn’t keep it for a day or two and save me a stamp?
Because now it IS late and the amount I originally sent is now the correct amount. I just hope she takes it this time so I don’t have to make arrangements for it to be payed in person.
OS X 10.* has a spelling checker built in. Although some programs have their own, most word processors/text editors in OS X use the built-in spelling check. Why not, Apple makes it easy. And in programs like web browsers you can have it spell check the contents of text boxes (Firefox on other platforms like Windows will do the same thing but I believe it has it’s own spelling checker).
You can configure OS X to use multiple spelling dictionaries. In different languages supported by OS X and user supplied dictionaries.
Sounds great. And it mostly works.
Learned something today. That “mostly” has limits.
I do most of my fic writing using a text editor called TextWrangler. Sort of a baby/lite version of BBEdit. Quite a few features considering the cost (free). For straight writing on a Mac? I think it’s one of the best.
If I want to use a “real” word processor (with fancy page formatting, etc.) I have Pages, a part of iWork. (I don’t use Pages very often yet. (Might change if I buy an iPad.) I rarely need a word processor — when I do I’m usually at work and I use MS Word.). I’ve tried assorted versions of Open Office but it just feels “clumsy” to me.
So… I have TextWrangler set to spell-check as I type. It normally works well. Speeds up the misspelled word finding. Doesn’t help with homophones, or other grammar issues. Or wrong words caused by typing errors. (e.g. In a fic I used ‘Hoe’ instead of ‘How’ in a sentence.)
It was pointed out to me the other day, that I spelled a word wrong – I spelled ‘panicking’ without the ‘k’. I corrected it and then tried to figure out why TextWrangler didn’t flag it as misspelled (Because it was acting as if it were correctly spelled and I couldn’t convince it otherwise. But if I looked for a definition for it in the dictionary, there wasn’t one.).
So, I stuffed ‘panicing’ into Pages and it correctly told me it was misspelled.
So then I played around with the spelling settings in OS X. And noticed that it was configured to use a LOT more dictionaries than I remember setting. Not just English. But also Russian, Germany, Polish, Japanese, etc. And I started turning off dictionaries. And found the problem.
When Dutch was one of the languages being used for spell checking, TextWrangler accepts ‘panicing’ but Pages doesn’t. (Not sure if panicing is the actual spelling of a Dutch word.)But they both use the same dictionary setting, so how’d it happen? No idea but there must be something different in how they actually use the dictionaries. Maybe they use them in a different order?
No idea, but at least it is fixed now.
Well, I don’t quite qualify for AARP yet but I think I’m ready for a mid-life crisis.
Now I just need to win the lottery so I can afford all the trappings. (I think I’m supposed to go out and buy a $200K car? And get a posse of sexy young things half my age to spend all my (non-existent) money? And go find a beach somewhere?)
If one were to believe the Travel Channel and FoodTV channel (US Cable), every restaurant in the US has some speciality that leads to over eating in some eating “challenge”. Usually eat it all (whatever “it” is) and it’s free!
“It fills you up!”
Largest burger in the world ? There’s one of those in every state (Usually a 6-10lb burger. With toppings)
Hottest chicken wings in the US? Every large college town seems to have one of those now.
Largest burrito/taco? Must be one in every state in the Southwest US.
Biggest steak? We’ve got ‘em out there also.
Biggest bowl of Soup X? That too.
Desserts? Those also.
The things that bug me about this? Besides there being a tv show devoted to this idea?
The peasants/people who appear on these tv shows, trying to eat a week’s worth of food (a month’s worth if you’re a farmer in China) in an hour? They seem so proud of their gluttony (That’s a Biblical/Classical term for the non-Christians out there.). They don’t seem to care how foolish they look stuffing their faces on camera.
Somehow, each show devoted to this topic always, always ends up in some college town where a bunch of frat-boy-esque students try to prove their testosterone level by eating as many extremely hot (in a jalapeno kind of way.) chicken wings as they can stand. (Or something else equally inedible.) With their “friends” cheering them on. It isn’t pretty.
I guess it could be worse. They could have contests to see who can drink the most $1,000 bottles of scotch in one sitting.
Can you tell I don’t find conspicuous consumption like this (or any) endearing?
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet in all the iPad uproar is the different media distribution models used by Apple for their media devices (ie. iPods, iPhones, and Macs) versus Amazon’s with the Kindle.
If I buy a book from Amazon for “my” Kindle, AFAIK, that book is licensed to run on THAT Kindle. My book. My Kindle. My Amazon Kindle account. (There’s an iPhone Kindle app but it is still tied to MY iPhone, and MY Amazon-Kindle account. Amazon assumes that I’m the person using both and that I don’t use them at the same time — I believe it tracks usage somewhere in the Amazon ‘cloud’ so that the current page in a Kindle book is also the current page in the Kindle app.)
So… 1 person. 1 copy. If someone else in your house has a kindle, they have to pay for their books separately.
Now let’s look at how Apple does media on the iTunes store (iTS) (I’m making the wild assumption that they’ll follow the same model for their iBookstore.)
The center of your iPod “digital media lifestyle” is your desktop (PC or Mac). You authorize your computer to work with your AppleID and the iTS so you can purchase media from iTS with it. I believe you can tie up to 3 desktops to a single AppleID/iTunes store account. (It’s at least three.)
Now for the fun part…
If you have multiple iPod users in your household, they can EACH sync their iPods with the same computer (or another computer attached to the same AppleID). And they each have their own sync configs. And they could ALL listen to/watch the same media at the same time.
So… how would I set that up for a family? (The simple version)
1. Create an AppleID for the household (I would also get a credit card JUST for that purpose).
2. “Attach” it to a “family computer” (A Mac mini would do it. Just make sure it has a large hard drive and at least one external drive to back things up to.).
3. Everyone uses that machine to download/purchase music.
4. Everyone in the family syncs their iPods to that machine. Some will want to sync it manually. Some not. But they can share music/media this way.
So, with Apple and the iTS, you end up with 1 copy per household, not per person.
—
Have to wonder what the media people (Publishers, music industry, movie industry, etc.) think about this media distribution model.
