Gah. Innumeracy and stupidity 
I took a phone call from somebody the other day. She was having to fill out an order form to pay for some of our services.
She needed an answer to a question, and I was the one whose number she had dialled.
“I’m filling out a [sic] order form. What’s your hourly rate?”
I can’t sing in any language. That would make for the shortest blog ever were I to leave it at that, so I think I’ll seize the opportunity to elaborate a little.
“Artificial” sounds like such a negative word. I often try to avoid using it when answering the inevitable question about “what is Esperanto?”
It shouldn’t be an issue, of course, as you there reading this on your artificial computer, wearing your artificial clothing, and being used to your artificial modes of transport well know.
When I consider other constructed languages I become dubious about whether they could actually have a spoken dimension to them, whether they could be used for singing.
I fully understand others’ scepticism about Zamenhof’s project, since I harbour those same apprehensions about any other constructed language that you might suggest to me. (Well, except Solresol, for obvious reasons. 
) Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve surprised people over the years with my knowledge of football. I’m a language geek, a wrestling nerd, not cool, a follower of football, a deifier of people earning plaudits and millions for kicking around a bag of air.
Admittedly I know nothing about nor care a jot about football from the 90s and onward, but this wasn’t always the case.
To be fair, I’ve probably not been clean shaven in even longer than that.
The 5.75 years relates to the time that I first started working in my current workplace (January 13th 2003) until today. The number is on my mind because I’ve finally got around to getting an ID badge.
I know, I know; the ID badge is compulsory and I’m supposed to have had it for years. I’m just a little relaxed in my time management, I guess.
I want to blog about this because I’m *seriously* wound up, but I don’t dare write it on my own blog in case my sister, who I stupidly gave the url to, accidentally reads it and gets upset. Babel has therefore volunteered to let me use his blog, which is very kind of him and may stop me exploding and making a nasty mess everywhere.
The background to this story, is that a couple of months ago the husband of my aunt, who is in his early 40s, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It was a severe shock to the entire family. Parkinsons is a disease which people typically do not suffer from until they are much more advanced in years, and even the doctors are surprised to have discovered it in someone so young. It’s a degenerative disease, and one for which there is no cure. He has now been provided with appropriate medication which is supposed to slow down the effects of the illness, but it’s all a case of buying time; the prognosis for the future is not good. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been hit twice today by the majesty of numbers, by their capacity to throw up surprising results that fly in the face of all expectations.
The first time was when I was working through some simultaneous equations earlier. Nothing special there, until something happened that made me very nervous about pursuing any future career in economics, illustrating to me what a disaster could ensue by the very smallest slip-up in my modelling.
Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a catchy title that summed up the various threads that woven together will comprise this post, so I stole a little from Radio’s post on the same subject.
The Moosemobile is the name that Big J (“He’s big, and his name’s J“) gave to my car, in reference to an old nickname for me that he still uses, Moosedog. (Now you know what that little drawing at the side of the Meddysong logo is 
)
Well, of course it isn’t, but it may as well be.
I’ve just realised that I have read about a dozen books since I last updated my blog. That’s a lot of writing to do if I’m going to comment on them all.
And that’s where this title comes from. It seems that I find reading pretty easy. One of the books that I read goes over 500 pages, yet it was polished off in about three days.
Yet I’ll be damned if I can write about all these books. It seems to me that I don’t have time. The illusion is that reading seems to be less consumptive of my time than writing about the books would be. Utter trash, of course, but that’s how it feels.
To get around the problem, I thought I’d write about the books in a single post, add a comment, and that could be it.
I’ll write about them in order of preference, seeing as it would be unfortunate to put potential readers off by inflicting on them a line on the dull book that is Waterloo, by Andrew Uffindell and Michael Corum.
So, here I, eventually, go …
Today’s been two days in one.
It’s not that I’m particularly busy, since I couldn’t honestly claim that this is the case. It’s just that my day in the office started at 06:30 and is scheduled to finish at 22:15.
This was totally the norm three years ago, when I was covering three positions. My timesheet once showed 92.25 hours once.
Somebody once asked me how it’s possible to work 92.25 hours in a single week, so here’s a quick explanation:
- Saturday, Sunday, Monday = 15 hours
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday = 13 hours
- Friday = 8.25 hours
I’m not slipping into bad habits though: I’ve had a few hours off around lunchtime.
So how does this pertain to now?
