A Cross Walk

Hello World,

Well, when no one was watching, our weather around here actually improved, and for those among us who consider ourselves the professional arbiters of the human condition, it was pretty hard to find anything to complain about. Of course, we all know that age-old saying about how everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. On the other hand, if people did have the power to control the weather, I have the feeling that no good would come of it, and things would end up getting a lot worse before they got any better. And for the KGB agents monitoring my email on behalf of the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, let me just say, "I love Mother Russia! Long live the Russian government, and all the dear comrades, and long may they wave."

Technically, I'm not allowed to tell anyone this, because of the HIPAA regulations that we're all so fond of, but rather than throwing away an outdated patient census from the hospital, I was using parts of it as scrap paper at home. I will say right up front that there is very little about the patient census that can be said to be interesting in any way, and that hasn't changed at all over the years. But I admit that I was arrested by the unlikely name of DEFU, CARMEN TANG that showed up on one page among all the rest of the Carters, Daltons and Fitzgibbons. I consider this Carmen Tang Defu a name to conjure with.

Speaking of names to conjure with, Bill and I were on the highway recently and spotted a white van going past us that said "Bates Ambulette Service" on the side. Honestly, who comes up with names like this, you really have to wonder. Do they really think, after "Psycho" as well as the sequels and remake of "Psycho," that anyone is going to call and order transportation from some place called the Bates Ambulette Service??? I said to Bill, they should just go ahead and call it the Bates Motel & Ambulette Service, and leave it at that. I mean, you just have to wonder.

Meanwhile at work, everyone knows that they make the employees park miles away from the hospital, and then take their lives in their hands crossing the most perilous intersections trying to get to their offices. The worst of all has a blinking light at the entrance to the Emergency Room, and you can easily get run over from six different directions by a variety of cars, trucks, ambulances, ambulettes, police cars, fire trucks and school buses. Years ago, there were pedestrian cross walks painted on the streets, but they have long since worn away, and we were convinced that no one would re-paint them because it would interfere with the hospital's plan to drum up more business for their Emergency Room by running people over in that intersection. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I left work one day last week and found all new, bright and shiny, freshly-painted cross walk lines on all four sides of the intersection, for all the world to see. Of course, I could have done without that sign they put up that said, "Hit Pedestrians Here," but you can't have everything, I suppose.

While we're on the subject of walking, I may as well say that the park where I go on vacation is like an ugly child that only a mother could love. It hasn't changed much in the nearly 50 years that my family has been going there, and probably not much before that either. The first time we went camping at Wildwood, I was four years old, and so I grew up on the place and appreciate its quirky charm, like a dear old friend with some bad habits. On an objective basis, it can be a pretty hard sell to newcomers, however, and it has many notable drawbacks as a vacation destination, for normal people who have no sentimental attachments to it. One of the biggest ones, literally, is known as the hill to the beach. If you happen to be camping in A section, right near what we used to call the old Ranger Station, which is now the Camp Store, going to the beach is not such a huge undertaking. You can grab a few necessities, skip along the shortcut to the parking lot, and hit the hill to the beach in nothing flat. However, where my campsite is in C section, it's just about the farthest site from the beach in the whole park, and just getting to the Camp Store with all of your beach gear is a hike in itself. Then you still have to take the shortcut, and then the hill to the beach. By the time you get to the beach after carrying everything with you, it's about all you can do to collapse in the sand and pant. There is no such thing as going back up to the campsite if you forget anything, in fact, if you suggested such a thing, they would carry you off the beach on a stretcher and make you lie down in the shade until your sanity returned. It's a lucky thing that it's downhill to the beach, and uphill to go back to the campground, otherwise, no one would ever go to the beach in the first place.

The hill has always seemed long and steep to everyone who uses it, and over the years as I've gotten older and my beach supplies have gotten heavier, it seems to have gotten even longer and steeper, in spite of any evidence to the contrary. In fact, it's obvious that the hill is exactly the same in every way that it ever has been, because it has never been repaved in all the years that we've been going there. Once they started using more trucks and electric carts at the park, they added in a wooden sidewalk for people to hop up on and get out of the way of the vehicles, but the hill itself is just the same. If anyone had asked me to describe it, especially after coming back up from the beach, I would have readily claimed that the hill was at least a mile long, with an incline of 45 degrees. At least that's the way it feels, and anyone who has ever tramped up it will agree.

Of course, we all know how Bill loves a research challenge, so he decided to examine this scientifically. First he got what is known as a "trundle wheel," which you roll along with you and it clicks every 3 feet. We rolled it all the way to the boardwalk, and found the hill was in reality, only about 700 feet in length, as impossible as that seems to believe. Then we used an inclinometer to measure the slope of the hill, which turned out to be a mere 10 degrees, no matter how we shook and banged on the inclinometer to make it change the reading. That was as far as we got with that, and I don't mind saying, found it discouraging news after all these years that the hill was not this monster gargantuan obstacle that we conquered with blood, sweat and tears twice a day. It sure felt like it.

After we got home, I said it would be interesting to figure out how tall the hill was, from the low end at the boardwalk to the top of the hill at the parking lot. Bill said that we wouldn't be able to figure that out, geometrically speaking, because all we had was one side and one angle of the triangle we were trying to plot. I said, "Au contraire!" (That's French for "Carry your own darned beach chair!") I said we knew all three angles of this imaginary triangle, because the slope was 10 degrees, the angle for the height of the hill would be 90 degrees, and that left only 80 degrees for the other angle, plus we knew the length of the side acting as the hypotenuse besides. Sure enough, Bill was able to find this arcane algebra web site that helps you compute the sine for the opposite side divided by the hypotenuse. When you take the sine of the 10 degree angle (0.1736) and divide the opposite side by the length (700) of the hypotenuse, you would be surprised, as we were, to find out that the height of the hill must be 121 feet, and believe me, it feels every bit of it. And keep in mind, this was figured out the old-fashioned way, using real math, and not that New Math that is all the rage nowadays where nothing adds up. However, I will say that if anyone asks me, after I've just climbed back up from the beach how big is the hill, I will still tell them that it's a mile long and 45 degrees steep, but at least now I'll know that's not technically accurate.

In other technology news, I was copying some information onto a CD recently, and noticed that the sleeve had a series of pictures telling me how to handle the media for best results. There were eight pictures in all, and six of them had "X"s through them, while two had check marks instead. I'm passing this along as a public service, in the event that anyone else has some of these Verbatim Data Life Plus Colors CD-RW 80 disks and wonders about their care. As far as I can tell, you're not supposed to let them drink or smoke, you shouldn't throw pens or pencils at them, or balance them on your finger. There's another picture that looks like the disk is hosting a flea circus, complete with marching band, or perhaps it's supposed to represent the lather from dandruff shampoo instead. In any case, you shouldn't do that with your disk either, although I wouldn't expect that to be such a common problem with disks that they have to draw you a picture to make sure you don't do it. On the other hand, I guess if people have been letting their disks smoke and drink, it would seem that anything goes!

Typos, We Get Typos

Hello World,

Well, here it is, yet another in a long series of weeks gone by and what have we got to show for it, I ask you that. Pretty soon, it will be back to school (and here, I mean for real, not like in June when they start with their back-to-school sales on candy and sporting goods) and you know I always say, after that you just look up and the year is over already. I admit that's a daunting prospect for those among us who are still catching up on their camping laundry. Speaking of which, in an odd laundry development, I gathered up one of my souvenir polo shirts that I had bought somewhere along the way, and noticed that the care label had a series of picture instructions for treating the fabric, and all of them had an "X" through them. This leads me to believe that either it's a disposable garment, that you discard when it gets dirty, or I suppose your other option is to take it down to the riverbank and beat it against the rocks.

I know what you're thinking, that the polo shirt label makers have hired away all of our crack staff in the computer department at work, but that's certainly not the case, as these recent messages will attest:

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ANY JOBS STILL ACTIVW ILL BE IMMEDIATLEY TERMINATED
PLEASE SIGN OFF YOUR TERMINLAS
ANY JOBQ STILL ACTIVE WILL BE TERMINATED IMMEDIALY
ANY USERSSTILL ACTIVE WILL BE TERMINATED
THE SAVE WILL TAKE APPROXIAMATELY 45 MINUTES
any users still acive will be terminated immediatey.
please sign offyour terminals be fore 6:00 PM
ANY USERS TSILL ACTIVE WILL BE TEMINATED IMMEDAITED.
THE SAVE SHOULD BE NO MOTE THAN 1 HOUR.
sign off yuor terminals we will bw condcuting our system saves
PLEAE SIGN OFF YOU TERMINALS
PLEASE SIGN OFF YOUR TERMINALS IMMEDIATELLY.
we will be perform our daily back ups
any users still active will be terminated immedaitely.
THNAK YOU THE HIS DEP
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I used to believe their motto in IT was "Hire the Incompetent," but on closer inspection, the sign says, "Higher the Incontinent." I don't doubt it! In other news, I had occasion to visit a web site that believes in "Encouraging pastors and church leaders with tools for healthy, growing churches" and you're welcome to go to www.pastors.com and see for yourself. They seem to be chockfull of information and resources, which I feel sure their visitors would find informative and resourceful. My favorite was about Small Group Ministry, and which they assured me I could participate in their "Free Confence Call." No thank you very much, I think I'll take a pass on that one. I already get enough typos at work.

Speaking of typos at work, we get the following story from Bill about trying to get help from the "Knowledge Base" in Corel, where he stumbled upon this curious topic --

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Creating Stationary for WordPerfect 12 using CorelDRAW 12
Could this major provider of word processing software have really made that mistake? Do they own the shop on Pelham Road? Sure enough, the answer starts:
Creating Stationary for WordPerfect 12 using CorelDRAW 12 Details Stationary is a great way of creating a corporate image for your organization. Using CorelDRAW 12 and WordPerfect 12 in conjunction, you can create stationary in CorelDRAW, and transfer into a WordPerfect 12 template, so that it is available to use at anytime, without the need of pre-printed stationary. Answer Create your Stationary in CorelDRAWDesign your stationary as desired using CorelDRAW. This can include a logo or a specific design that you want to use for your stationary.
**************************
"Stationary is a great way of creating a corporate image for your organization."!!!!!!?
It goes on and on like that. So I had to write them yet another question and point out that SLIGHT error. I also said the last thing people want is a program that says it will correct your spelling and grammar and can't correct its own. (Or, as Corel would probably say, it's own!) Oh, and I sent it because sophomoric word misuse is not such a great way to create a corporate image!
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Well, if that's not a sure sign of the world coming to an end, I don't know what is. Can't anybody here speak this darned language, for crying out loud? Other people like Bill, with an email account at excite.com might be wondering the same thing. Out of the archives, we turn up a classic spam subject line, which Bill refers to as the "granddaddy of the genre" --

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Re: begotten cinnamon candidate blackmail cornbread suicide whatsoever caracas trout engineer capsule residual bombast agricultural channel hershey muong superstitious bruce edelweiss lotus adiabatic clatter digestible lobotomy vichy berkelium
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Residual bombast indeed! But my personal favorite (and for all the rest of us who fondly remember "Across this patch of light flutterdointed!") was this last one, which if nothing else, should really give the KGB agents monitoring my email something to think about --

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I checked my Excite mail just now, and we now have:

Randi Otto - Beautiful russian tanglewrack girls here

Yes, these girls are not only "ochin prekrasny", as the Russkis would say, but they are "tanglewrack"! (Sorry, I don't know the Russian for "tanglewrack" - it must not be something you can use to retrieve your lost luggage or find the bathroom.) (Or order grape juice. I can order grape juice, in a pinch. And the even better news is that they drive home how to ask for the check, so it's on me.)
==============================

Well, I'm sure that's about all the fractured English anyone could stand for one day, and that's not just the residual bombast talking, either. I should point out that for those of us who delight in sharing linguistic lapses and typographical tangles, working on MSN Outlook is a real drawback, because it follows you along and automatically corrects these errors after you've gone to the trouble to very carefully type them in that way. In fact, if everyone was using Outlook, I'd soon run out of examples like these, and then where would we be? Some people may think that a world without beautiful russian tanglewrack girls would be a better place, but personally, I think the whole idea shows a lack of imagination and should be teminated immedaited.

Happy Trails

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about where you are, but around here, this week would not have won any awards either, and about the only good thing I can think to say about it is that at least it's over. At this point, I have to believe in better days ahead, because the alternative would be unthinkable. In fact, at work, there were rumors that a local spa was going to take over our cafeteria and use it as a sauna, but I think that may have just been the heat getting to people. Personally, I think it's too hot in there for a sauna.

Of course, as is often the case, things can always be worse, and we have the following illustration from New York Newsday's web site on August 5, with the screaming headline "Jurors For Gotti Trail Picked." From that, you might surmise that people were being chosen to ride out on the lone prairie, just moseying along on the Gotti Trail, which might be something like the Oregon Trail, only with more cement. On the other hand, "trail picked" might refer to how the jurors were selected, in the same way as vine-ripened tomatoes, hand-picked grapes or Grade A eggs. With that headline, you might be surprised that the story goes on to say, "A group of seven women and five men made the final cut Thursday as jurors who will decide the fate of John "Junior" Gotti, the son of the late mob boss whose federal racketeering case begins Monday in Manhattan." Why, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with a trail in any way at all, much less riding off into the sunset. Lest you think this typo is nothing more than an isolated incident, my favorite one happened later in the story, when Sigmund Freud showed up with his slip, in this sentence about the judge in the case: "Scheindlin is scheduled Friday to announce her decision about whether the judy gets to hear excerpts from Gotti's 1991 plea to federal charges." Judy, Judy, Judy!

Bill would never forgive me if I smacked Newsday around and never mentioned his favorite Brainiac moment from earlier in the week. Where Bill works, they make signs, and they do a heck of a job at it, but they're only human. That's why it was a little beyond their abilities when they got a purchase order from Crown Products requesting one each of two different signs, which they specified as "hard plastic sign engraved black with white letters" at a cost of $19.75 for each sign. The purchase order included a lot of helpful information, and some probably not so helpful, but one thing it entirely neglected to include was what the signs were supposed to say. For people making signs, this is considered a serious omission. For myself, I would have sent them two signs that said "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" along with a bill for $39.50. Hey, you wanted a sign with letters, that's what you get.

Meanwhile, I get periodic updates of the ELCA Prayer Network, from the fine folks at ELCAPrayingChurchOrg and you're welcome to visit their web page at www.elca.org/prayer and see for yourself. I have to say that Lutherans are about the most boring people in the world (although right now in Florida, they're having their church-wide Assembly, which promises to be about as boring as a nuclear war) and this prayer ministry is no different. I'm sure it's very well meaning, and a great comfort to the people it serves, but even in the face of the most challenging events on the world scene, it maintains a cheerfulness and placidity that is sometimes eerie. Most prayer requests are for health concerns, financial issues or family relationships, and there is also a section of Praise Reports, where people can share their stories of answered prayers, and thank others for praying for them. Naturally, being Lutheran, it's boring, and just goes on and on in the same boring way week after week. So you can imagine my surprise this week, when I read one that started, "You da bomb!" from our friends at Garden of Joy in Pacific Harbour, Fiji Islands. They can't be Lutherans!

Alert readers may remember the leaky pipe over the washing machine, and we eventually rounded up a couple of gentlemen with some plumbing experience who agreed to come over and take care of it. The culprit was a small metal pipe with a small hole that was dripping onto the floor, that either needed to be patched or replaced. Bill showed them around the basement, so they would know where to find the water cut-off, and other various items they would need to find, or what to avoid. The plan was to leave the basement doors open in the back yard, so they could come and do their work and leave again, even if no one was home at the time. Before anyone wonders if Daffy Duck shouldn't have shown up instead, let me just say that I'm sure we can all see the storm clouds brewing on the horizon if this scenario. For one reason or another, they needed to get into the kitchen, and of course, the house was locked because we were both at work. So they ended up breaking the lock on the cellar door in the kitchen, and then proceeded to leave all the doors open throughout the house, as well as pulling out everything from under the sink, and it goes without saying, that was not a pretty sight. When Bill got home from work, he found that they had fixed the original leak, but created two others, in two different places, which in terms of progress, was pretty much the opposite of what we had been hoping for. They left with assurances that all would be set right on their next visit. Of bigger concern to us was tracking down all of our cats, especially the invisible ones that live under the sink, while all the doors had been wide open all the livelong day. We did eventually turn them all up, even the most invisible of all, tucked into their hiding places under the beds, behind the radiators, inside the furniture, on top of the bookshelves and in back of the TV. It made for a very long and trying evening, and included our fearless Bill climbing around spiderwebs and broken drywall in the basement, in case any of them had snuck down there, and we didn't even want to consider the possibility of them getting out through the open doors to the back yard. We considered ourselves lucky when we counted noses and ended up with the right number, and we told Daffy Duck to go peddle his papers elsewhere. Some place far, far away, like maybe along the Gotti Trail.

Class Act

Hello World,

Happy August! I hope that wherever you are, everything is fine and dandy, spic and span, not to mention, cool, calm and collected. I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that around here the deer and the antelope are not playing, and often is heard a discouraging word. And you can believe me when I say that if last week's weather would have gotten thrown down a flight of stairs, then this week's weather would have been plugged full of bullet holes in the trunk of a car, and then wrapped in a tarp and tossed in the river wearing a pair of cement over-shoes, and that's no jive. You can only push people in this area so far, and then it's No More Mr. Nice Guy.

I came back from vacation and fell victim to a bad case of the galloping cruds that had been galloping around here while I was away. For a couple of weeks, it was too hot and I didn't feel well enough to really make any meaningful assault on the piles of dirty laundry that greeted the unwary passerby at every turn. Finally last Saturday, I felt up to the challenge, and gathered together some of the offending textiles, and dragged them into the basement for their overdue rendezvous with the washing machine. However, in the basement, I was met with the inauspicious sight of a leaky pipe over the washer that was spilling water onto the floor, and showed no signs of letting up, in spite of my clearly stated displeasure at this turn of events. I was already behind on my laundry when I went on vacation, and then came home with even more piles of dirty laundry, so this was really going to throw a monkey wrench into my progress. And I have to say, this is the first time I can ever remember the camping gods following me home to continue causing havoc after my vacation.

Speaking of my vacation, one evening when I was in Wading River scouting about for dinner options (and don't forget, this has turned into a happening burg) I decided to take my chances at McDonald's and try their new mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce. I distinctly remember thinking, "How bad could it be?" and everyone knows I'm nothing if not game, so I went ahead and plunged right in. Now, I'm not going to tell anybody to sell their McDonald's stock and run for the hills, because it was certainly not inedible by any means. But I really think that it could only be in the McDonald's Universe that anyone could think that what they're serving would be in any way considered to be mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce, even with a large stretch of the imagination and giving the benefit of the doubt. It may be a lot of things, but there's no way it's mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce.

For the corporate law firms that may be monitoring my email, let me say that when it comes to McDonald's, "I'm lovin' it," and all of their menu options are absolutely top-shelf. Kindly accept this as my disclaimer, and please don't sue me. While we're on the topic of disclaimers, I've had two cross my path lately that pulled me up short. The first one is on a fax cover sheet from what we like to refer to as "our sister institution," The Mount Vernon Hospital, and was not created by one of their underpaid minions, but rather is a blank template provided by some common computer software, that you just fill in the company name and phone number, and the rest is already done for you. But whoever was responsible for the Important Notice at the bottom really needed to go back to the drawing board, because this is what they came up with --

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This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to whom or to which it is addressed and may contain information that is PRIVILAGED, CONFIDENTIAL AND EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE under applicable law. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hearby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of the communication is stictly prohibited.
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If you want to run that past your spell-checker, you'll find that it objects (and with good reason!) to privilaged, hearby and stictly. Personally, I think that anything that calls itself an Important Notice shouldn't have any typos in it at all (okay, I admit that I'm a stickler) but even still, three typos in two sentences is just way too much, even for these lackadaisical times. Anyway, the other legal notice was even more eye-catching, turning up as it did at the bottom of some internet jokes sent by a cyber-friend, and which seemed pretty much to be your average, garden-variety internet jokes, until this startling message at the bottom --

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Aviso Legal: Este mensaje (Incluyendo sus anexos) está destinado únicamente para el uso del individuo o entidad a la cual está direccionado y puede contener información que no es de caracter público, de uso privilegiado o confidencial. Si usted no es el destinatario intencional, se le informa que cualquier uso, difusión, distribución o copiado de esta comunicación está terminantemente prohibido. Si usted ha recibido esta comunicación por error, notifíquenos inmediatamente y elimine este mensaje. Gracias.
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You bet! It kind of makes you wonder where the heck that message had been before it bounced into my incoming email, and you can almost smell the guacamole and pico de gallo all over it. Ariba!

Of course, everyone knows that the stores have been full of back-to-school merchandise for at least two months already, which is par for the course lately, especially since they've expanded the back-to-school concept to include such apparently non-educational items as candy, lumber and entertainment systems. So it comes as no surprise to get the new list of fall offerings from our friends at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies, where their motto seems to be something about bringing leadership and vision to the table. (But the question is, like leading a horse to water, can you make it drink?) Lest you think this is just some screwy, fly-by-night operation with no credentials, they assure us that their project management courses are certified by none other than the Project Management Institute itself, so that should lay those rumors to rest right now. I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that you can actually take courses for credit with titles like "Organizational Change Management," "Introduction to Business Continuity Planning," "Team Management in a Project Environment," and my personal favorite, "Beyond Compliance: Where Human Capital and Risk Meet." Quick, sign me up!

Today at work, I was flipping through a catalogue in the cafeteria, where the temperature was hovering between 90 and 95 degrees, in spite of sitting right next to what is laughingly referred to as the air conditioning unit, and even still, I was maintaining a pretty good frame of mind, that is, until I got to the pages where these people were trying to sell me assorted Christmas ornaments and holiday table decorations, and I just had to draw the line at that. I realize that there's no standards any more, but by golly, puede contener información que no es de caracter público. And that's not just the guacamole talking!