02 September 2012
Marsha Is Back!!!
02/09/12 18:35
This week marks one year in this house. A year ago we’d just moved in, the house was full of boxes, I was looking for work, and my treadmill died. Now I have a great job, a new treadmill, we’ve redone the bathroom, and are in the middle of remodelling the garage and eventually the whole downstairs. We have a new grand niece, Marsha retired, and we got to see a solar eclipse. It’s been a good year.
Marsha got back from her Minnesota adventure on Wednesday. As a result there was general celebration and debauchery. I wouldn’t say we’re happy to have her back or the celebrations were wild but there WAS an earthquake in Victoria
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/08/29/bc-vancouver-island-earthquake.html
While Marsha was gone we had been able to keep in touch to a degree that would not have been possible a decade ago. Skype and Messager allowed us to communicate almost continuously. I kept thinking of the trips that Marsha took in the late ’80s to the Philippines and Korea. Back then I saw her off at the airport and then we had no contact until she returned a few weeks later. They were long trips, for both of us. But this time we had all sorts of new technologies that had not even been imagined back then, which mostly worked very well.
One technology that I tried was Apple Dictation. The idea is that with Messager, I can just talk and it will convert what I say to words. Here is what I sent to Marsha one morning It wasn’t exactly what I was TRYING to say:
You know, there are some people, and I include myself among them, that NEED the structure of typing to keep things organized. Add to that a bit of translation error a few missed words and an accidental deletion here or there and Apple's Dictation software really makes a mess of things.
But then English needs all the help it can get. I heard on the radio that Disney has language education division. Their curriculum uses Disney cartoon characters to teach English to non English speakers. It was on the news because they just got a huge contract to teach students in China. Oh Marvellous. Now we’ll be getting Chinese students over here that still speak broken English, but they will sound like like Donald Duck. Oh yeah, THAT’LL be an improvement.
http://www.disneyenglish.com/en/
Problems caused by language confusion aren’t limited to Canada though. I ran across this story from Iceland this week. Seems that this tourist was presumed lost in the wilderness. A search was conducted throughout the weekend. Then one of the people that was helping with the searching realized that she matched the description they'd been given. When she asked the police about this it was soon confirmed that she was in fact the very person that they were searching for.
http://grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Woman-Takes-Part-In-Search-For-Herself#.UD4VrJ1cxfV.tumblr
On the bright side though, normally takes longer than two days for someone to find themself.
The best story though, comes from right here on Vancouver Island. A friend of ours has a niece with one leg. She gets around with an artificial leg just fine but one thing she wanted to do was to go waterskiing. Our friends helped her learn how to put the skies on, how to get up on the skies, and release her leg when she fell and all that sort of stuff. They were in a nearby lake and she was all ready to go. Our friend had even connected the two skis together so she could keep the one on the artificial leg under control.
The moment of truth came and after a little bit of trial and error she got up. They kept the speed down and pulled her around the lake for a good while. Then when she was ready to stop they pulled her over near the beach and dock. That’s where things got exciting. She let go of the rope and as she settled into the water released her leg and kicked off the skis. They popped to the surface and that’s when she screamed in surprise “The ski took my leg off”. The thing was, the people on the dock and on shore did not know she had an artificial leg. They just heard what she said and saw the skis floating next to her, upright, with a leg sticking up out of the binding. All heck broke loose on shore. People started screaming. Others were looking for boats or some way to get out to rescue her. Others especially the kids were getting sick. It was pandemonium.
What fun.
Thought for the week: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in the Jello.
Marsha got back from her Minnesota adventure on Wednesday. As a result there was general celebration and debauchery. I wouldn’t say we’re happy to have her back or the celebrations were wild but there WAS an earthquake in Victoria
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/08/29/bc-vancouver-island-earthquake.html
While Marsha was gone we had been able to keep in touch to a degree that would not have been possible a decade ago. Skype and Messager allowed us to communicate almost continuously. I kept thinking of the trips that Marsha took in the late ’80s to the Philippines and Korea. Back then I saw her off at the airport and then we had no contact until she returned a few weeks later. They were long trips, for both of us. But this time we had all sorts of new technologies that had not even been imagined back then, which mostly worked very well.
One technology that I tried was Apple Dictation. The idea is that with Messager, I can just talk and it will convert what I say to words. Here is what I sent to Marsha one morning It wasn’t exactly what I was TRYING to say:
You know, there are some people, and I include myself among them, that NEED the structure of typing to keep things organized. Add to that a bit of translation error a few missed words and an accidental deletion here or there and Apple's Dictation software really makes a mess of things.
But then English needs all the help it can get. I heard on the radio that Disney has language education division. Their curriculum uses Disney cartoon characters to teach English to non English speakers. It was on the news because they just got a huge contract to teach students in China. Oh Marvellous. Now we’ll be getting Chinese students over here that still speak broken English, but they will sound like like Donald Duck. Oh yeah, THAT’LL be an improvement.
http://www.disneyenglish.com/en/
Problems caused by language confusion aren’t limited to Canada though. I ran across this story from Iceland this week. Seems that this tourist was presumed lost in the wilderness. A search was conducted throughout the weekend. Then one of the people that was helping with the searching realized that she matched the description they'd been given. When she asked the police about this it was soon confirmed that she was in fact the very person that they were searching for.
http://grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Woman-Takes-Part-In-Search-For-Herself#.UD4VrJ1cxfV.tumblr
On the bright side though, normally takes longer than two days for someone to find themself.
The best story though, comes from right here on Vancouver Island. A friend of ours has a niece with one leg. She gets around with an artificial leg just fine but one thing she wanted to do was to go waterskiing. Our friends helped her learn how to put the skies on, how to get up on the skies, and release her leg when she fell and all that sort of stuff. They were in a nearby lake and she was all ready to go. Our friend had even connected the two skis together so she could keep the one on the artificial leg under control.
The moment of truth came and after a little bit of trial and error she got up. They kept the speed down and pulled her around the lake for a good while. Then when she was ready to stop they pulled her over near the beach and dock. That’s where things got exciting. She let go of the rope and as she settled into the water released her leg and kicked off the skis. They popped to the surface and that’s when she screamed in surprise “The ski took my leg off”. The thing was, the people on the dock and on shore did not know she had an artificial leg. They just heard what she said and saw the skis floating next to her, upright, with a leg sticking up out of the binding. All heck broke loose on shore. People started screaming. Others were looking for boats or some way to get out to rescue her. Others especially the kids were getting sick. It was pandemonium.
What fun.
Thought for the week: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in the Jello.