Hm...

It appears that I've been procrastinating making a blog post for going on a month now. I had a feeling it had been a while!

Alright, hiatus over. Starting next week, I'm going to go for a once-a-week posting schedule. Every...Tuesday. Does that sound good? I think that sounds good.

See you Tuesday!

Microsoft is annoying me

I'm working on Word 2007. I've been working on Word 2007 for ages, but all of a sudden it seems to be doing weird things. In addition to the weird things I'm accustomed to it doing, like turning my apostrophes into open-quotes and trying to persuade me to turn all my thats into whiches.

Namely, it's auto-capitalizing my i's even when they're part of a word I haven't yet finished typing. I'm just typing away at a normal speed, and my instead reads as Instead before I've actually gotten to the end of the word. I know I can just turn off that auto-correct feature, but it's the weirdness of it suddenly starting this strange behavior that's kind of freaking me out.

Secondly, it just auto-corrected a your to you're. Which was wrong. For no reason. I'd been noticing weird homonym things when I re-read my edits for a project recently, and thought that I was just typing too fast or something and making embarrassing mistakes. But now I have to be paranoid that my own word-processor is trying to get me in trouble. I think it's time to suck it up and turn the auto-correct off entirely...I'll just have to capitalize the first words of sentences all by myself. Sigh. My lazy pinkies will not be happy.

Go Pens Go!

We break from our regularly scheduled programming to congratulate the 2009 Stanley Cup champions - the Pittsburgh Penguins! Especially Canada's darling Sidney Crosby, the totally dominant Quebecois goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, and Montreal native Max Talbot, who scored both Pen goals 4TW! Awesome, guys, you deserve it.

Something neat: Echidnas

Yup. Pretty damn cool.

These guys deserve the "miscellaneous" tag in a much deeper metaphysical sense than usual.

Things they should have taught me at school

Having just done my taxes (sort of - my boyfriend did them and I mailed them without payment [but on time!] because I couldn't find my checkbook and couldn't figure out another way to pay), I got to thinking about all the things that really should be taught in school. I mean, history's great, science is great, but why is it that all of the things that *everybody* is going to need to know either don't get taught or, if they are taught, they're taught in write-off classes like home-ec and photography? I guess parents are expected to teach their kids all the crucial bits, but...well...they don't. And it's all such simple stuff - a single semester-long class per year could have saved so many of us so much grief.

So, here are some of the things I wish somebody had taught me in school!

1. Taxes. What they are, when you need to start paying them, what the most common forms are and how to fill them out. What are deductions, how to save your paperwork...all that stuff.

2. Employment. What job interviews are like, different sorts of resumes and cover letters, how to dress for an interview or a job, where to look for jobs, how to get along with co-workers, basic information about different options and the kinds of work most people end up doing...

3. Municipal matters. How to use public transit in your city, what kinds of services are available, where your elected officials are and what they do, how the legal system is set up, where to go when you need things, how the phone and electric and water systems work, what crime and safety issues are, where the really nice parks are at...

4. Technology. My computer class was taught by a teacher who knew about half what any of the students knew about computers, but insisted on starting us all at the very beginning anyway. We wanted to learn to program, she wanted to teach us which finger to use to type "7". And she spent the equivalent of an entire class trying to make us say "key" instead of "type."

Okay, that's what I'm thinking of off the top of my head. Should anyone else care to participate I shall be more than happy to update.

Electronics overload

I'm not usually one for technolust, but the pictures in this article definitely set my heart a-flutter. All...those...capacitors... (longing sigh).

It reminds me of all the happy hours I used to spend disassembling VCRs I found in the street.

Wired.com : Where Gadgets Go to Die

Happy Valentines Day

I shall be spending mine fending off the sniffles... I've been sick more than a week now with my famous "rotating cold" (1 symptom per day, with equal intensity, for an indefinite period). My Valentine finally caught it yesterday, but as is always the case with him, if he gets sick at all, it shortcuts straight to tonsillitis. When he woke up with a fever, therefore, I shooed him straight to the doctor, and now he's using his antibiotic-based energy to clean his room, it sounds like. Not quite chocolate fondue and yellow roses, but what can you do.Also, this is what I want for Valentine's day. It's attributed to Gaudi's workshop, and it's on sale for only $40,000.

Ew...

"Introduced by General Mills' owned Yoplait in 1999, Go-Gurt is an American brand of yogurt targeted at "on-the-go kids," as it is squeezed out of a tube directly into the mouth, instead of being scooped up by a spoon."

The best thing I saw today was a big black limo driving on the highway, a cloud of smoke billowing from its very flat rear tire.