April 2004 Archives

I'm going offline for a few days while I move. You can reach me on my cell if you need me. I'll check e-mail at Pete's or Amy's over the weekend.

With the new job starting on Monday I'm going to need a place to live, a bit closer than Quincy. That said, I started looking last night and this morning I've found and just signed a rental agreement for a nice, spacious apartment in Waltham. It's a few miles from where I lived previously, but on a quieter street than the major thoroughfare that was South Street. It's a tenancy-at-will which I'm happy about because I'm restarting my savings to buy my own home. I expect to be at this apartment for only the next 12-18 months.

I'll post some digital photos in the next few days, after I get my stuff moved in over the next few days. I'll send an e-mail with the new mailing address after I filed the change-of-address with the USPS this weekend.

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted an offer for a full-time senior technical writer position with Authoria in Waltham. They have a great team of people, I have a dynamic boss who I look forward to working with, and a really interesting product using cutting edge technology. I'm very excited to get back into the workforce! I start on Monday, May 3rd!

• Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. That is something up with which you should not put.
• And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
• It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
• Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
• Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
• Be more or less specific.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
• Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
• No sentence fragments.
• Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
• Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
• Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

After using AltaVista's Babel Fish site to translate that e-mail from the Chilean government, I began wondering how well the software would do on a round-trip translation: English-to-Spanish and back to English. To make this a quick test I randomly picked a Dear Abby letter I found on Yahoo:

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DEAR ABBY: My fiancee, "Rhonda," and I went to a nightclub. The bouncer said she could go in, but I could not. I wasn't surprised because the doors are always open to gorgeous women. What did surprise me was that Rhonda went in and left me standing there.

The next day I asked her if we could go places where we could both have a good time. She said: "Look. I wanted to go in, OK? My friends were there, and I wanted to have a good time."

Well, so did I, Abby! She could have gone to the club another time with her girlfriends. We were supposed to be together that night. I think it was insulting and callous for her to treat me like that. I'm so hurt I'm ready to break the engagement.

Do you think I am being overly sensitive? Rhonda does. -- HURT AND ASHAMED IN N.Y.C.

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In my experience few letters from U.S. government agencies to the public are well written. I've often wondered if citizens of other countries have the same problem receiving official communiques from their governments. This morning an answer came from an unexpected source.

I received an e-mail message from Domingo Namuncura Serrano, the Management Advisor to the President of Chile. Although my ability to read Spanish is far better than my ability to speak it, I was not able to completely understand his message. I thought I had the gist of it, but wanted to be certain, so I turned to my favorite free, online tranlsation web site, AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation for help.

Now before I tell you what the message said, I bet you're wondering why I got an e-mail from the Chilean Government? Good question!

Happy Easter! In honor of the holiday I've "resurrected" an image from my artist's archives. I made this using Fractal Painter in 1995 for an Easter card I sent to family and a few friends:

I'm in the supermarket the other day, with two items in hand, looking for the shortest check-out line. I spot one and make my move. Coming around the corner I see two things that raise my ire: first, the sign that says "10 Items or Less", which always twists a knot in my grammatical gut and second, one of those screw-customer-service-style self-check-out stations. I make it out of the store and as I'm driving away, thanking God that I didn't punch the check-out station for ringing up my milk as feminine hygiene products (again), I take a deep breath to relax. That's when it hits me: I know why the sign is grammatically incorrect!

Now I've been a professional writer for 14 years, so knowing whether or not something is grammatically correct is kind of like Spider-Man's spider-sense tingling whenever there's trouble. Of course the difference between me and him (other than fact vs. fiction) is that where he always goes off to save the heroine, I cannot always immediately correct that which I know is grammatically incorrect. The problem I often encounter, as do many writers and editors, is that I'll change something if I can, but more often than not it requires explaining why something is wrong before being allowed to take action. For example, earlier this week I called a friend to the carpet about using "less" instead of "fewer" incorrectly. Other than when around children and ESL students, I try not to be the annoying wank who goes around correcting everyone's grammar. In this case my friend prides herself on being well-read and articulate, so I knew she'd appreciate being corrected in a constructive way. The problem arose when I corrected her and cited the "10 Items or Less" sign as an equivalent example and suddenly realized I couldn't explain why one is correct and the other not. She teased me about it and all I could say was, "Well...um...well, it just is!" Of course she got even with me by the condescending quip, "Of course, of course, I believe you, you're the trained professional writer and ESL teacher, not me!" AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!

Trying to keep from getting too bummed out by the four days of rainy weather and the pace of the job hunt, I turned this afternoon to making a collage from some photos I took at breakfast while out with my friend Amy and her kids a few months ago. This is her daughter, Natalie, who was seven and a half at the time:

Click on the image for a larger version.