I’ve been noticing more and more how the English language is deteriorating into slang, misused words, improper abbreviations, and mistakes ranging from television to print media, to the web and most disturbing, everyday language. It has become so bad, that the English language has changed to “accept” this. For instance, anyways is often used for anyway. This really disturbs me as it just doesn’t sound right and makes people who use it seem uneducated to me. I hear this used on television and in everyday conversations all the time. The problem is that no one corrects the mistakes. Is this a breakdown of our educational system or does no one care anymore?Related to vocabulary issues and slang, the use of email, instant messaging, and text messaging has caused people to become very sloppy in their writing and many people just don’t care what they write. I find myself trying to proofread everything I write as it is a reflection on me and every communication can affect my work. I wish this was imparted on kids and teenagers as the more they neglect their writing, the bigger problem society will have later.It really only takes a few good influences to change someone’s language skills. It starts in the classroom, but extends beyond that. My wife is a science teacher and for the last few years, she’s been hanging out with English teachers. A few weeks ago, I commented to her that her vocabulary has increased just by being around people that use more sophisticated words. My wife is very smart, but has said that she was never good at the SAT words. Well, I think that has changed just by her friends’ use of new words.When is society going to start caring?(I’m sure someone will find grammatical errors with this entry, but at least I tried to get everything right.)
eBay Feedback sucks
As I mentioned in a previous entry, I got a PlayStation 2 network adapter off eBay. It took forever to arrive and the seller wasn’t responsive. Once I received it, I left neutral feedback saying that shipping was slow and seller was unresponsive. Well, today I checked my feedback and found that I got neutral feedback from the seller with the comment that she had computer problems. A few problems with this: 1) I sent payment immediately which should make for positive feedback and 2) the seller had been posting feedback for others during the time when she was unresponsive indicating she had computer access, but didn’t respond to me. Lesson learned…eBay feedback means nothing…always pay with a credit card so that charges can be disputed in case of a problem. If I actually sold anything on eBay, this feedback would look bad for me.
Video Games
I must say that I enjoy playing video games on my PlayStation 2. I’m not very good, so I don’t play all that often. I recently bought a few games off eBay. I also bought a steering wheel and Gran Turismo 4. However, I’m really bad at games and my driving consists of steering into walls most of the time. Since I wasn’t very good at Gran Turismo, I saw that the wheel also worked with Burnout, so I played that and thought it was quite cool. Realizing that this was an ancient version, I bought Burnout Revenge. It turns out either that I’m OK at this game or they made it quite easy. In either case, I am having a great time playing it. My poor driving skills don’t seem all that poor (however, I found that the Dual Shock controller works better than the steering wheel for control). My wife thinks I’m crazy as I’ve played for a few hours at a time for the last week. I’m about 30% complete and am making decent progress, all while having a pretty good time. It’s amazing that this game has kept my attention for so long already; usually I play games for a few minutes and get bored. Kudos to the folks at Electronic Arts for producing this addictive game!
Does anyone still smoke?
I was happily jogging on a treadmill at the gym today when this women gets on the treadmill next to me and it starts smelling like a chimney. Has she not read that smoking will kill her? Besides the kill her part, how about the bad smelling clothing and the funny looks people give you when they smell you? When I was in college I took bowling with a friend of mine (hey, it was $2.50 for 3 games of bowling…couldn’t beat that). Basically before we went, we changed into almost disposable clothing as the smoke filled alley made our clothes smell awful. Luckily smoking isn’t allowed in bowling alleys any more. Speaking of bowling, I need to do that again.
Daylight savings time
I hate the change back to standard time as it gets dark so much earlier and kind of cuts my days short. However, what is even worse than the change is having to deal with daylight savings time as a software developer. Most of the software I deal with lately is synchronization and each device handles daylight savings time differently which results in major headaches. Too bad it isn’t all standardized to make life easy. Oh well, these issues keep me employed.
One week of blogging
I’ve now been blogging for a week and must say that it is kind of neat to be able to write what’s on my mind and not have to bug my wife. I don’t expect my ramblings to be very interesting to anyone, but at least I can get things off my mind.
First blog entry
After being pointed to RapidWeaver by a colleague for creating websites, I decided to try blogging. While I really don’t expect anyone to read this, I hope that by keeping a journal, it will help me get things off my mind.