Archive for July, 2009
Time Zones
July 31st, 2009 | 
Author: 
Time zones can be a pain in the butt. No argument there. I am an advocate of being explicit about time zones, and when people aren’t, it can be confusing. (I remember trying to coordinate phone interviews across time zones, and it’s SO frustrating when the interviewer doesn’t bother to say if he or she means noon their time or noon my time. Meh.) Even when you are explicit, it’s easy to forget time differences, or to mess them up. Different places observe daylight-saving time at different times, or not at all. It gets messy. I do get that. But it’s not all so confusing, is it?
I grew up in that tiny part of Florida that’s in Central time. I do not understand why people I’ve met find it so shocking that some part of Florida is in Central time, and why a few have even questioned if I’m sure about that. I lived there for 18 years. I’m sure.
Ads for various TV shows always said things like, “Wednesdays at nine… eight Central!” Why is it that anyone living in Central or Eastern time and owning a television set doesn’t know how to convert between at least those two?
Someone decided we should save daylight in the summertime, so they created daylight-saving time. There is no s at the end of saving. It’s the time intended to save daylight. So… daylight-saving time. See? It makes sense. I don’t get why saying it with an s has caught on like wildfire. I myself had always heard it with an s, and I thought it was weird because the name doesn’t make any sense, so a while back I looked it up and discovered that it was wrong. I guess no one else thinks it’s weird to say a name that makes no sense.
I don’t get why people are never taught the difference between (Eastern/Central/Mountain/Pacific) Standard Time and (Eastern/Central/Mountain/Pacific) Daylight Time. Everyone goes around saying EST or CST throughout the year and never wondering why it’s necessary to specify that the time is standard.
Posted in 
Reader Request: Commas!
After the overwhelming success of my apostrophe feature last week, I was asked to do a similar feature on commas. I admit that commas are not my specialty, but I decided to do a bit of research and report back. It’s a bit trickier to explain commas without giving a lot more of a grammar lesson than I expect people to pay attention to. I’ll give it a go.
1. You use them to surround parenthetical and non-essential expressions. I don’t want to have to define that, but these are usually times that you would pause if you were speaking aloud. Here are a couple of examples.
“Excuse me, ratty-haired moron, but did you know you were sitting on my cake?”
“I prefer to sit on cake, not chairs, when the sky is clear.”
The moron, ratty-haired as he is, sometimes gets frosting in his locks.
The baker, who hates the moron with the fiery passion of a thousand ovens, would like to be reimbursed for the cost of the lost cake.
BUT
The baker who hates the moron with the fiery passion of a thousand ovens is Steve. The other baker is Edwin.
2. You use them between describing words that are describing the same thing, if those words can be swapped. I know that sounds weird, but it will make sense in a minute.
I do not like the cake-sitting, ratty-haired moron.
I do not like the ratty-haired, cake-sitting moron. (comma!)
The moron bathes in the deep blue sea. (what? no comma???)
The moron bathes in the blue, deep sea. (ack! That’s why! They can’t be swapped!)
This is another case where speaking pauses usually line up really well. Even if someone were speaking slowly on a self-hypnosis CD with a backdrop of waterfalls and crickets, they would not say “the deep… blue… sea.”
3. You use them after introductory elements. Once again, spoken pauses will be helpful here.
After sitting on the cake, the moron tried to comb his hair.
Meanwhile, the baker fumed.
4. You use them in a list of three or more things. A comma between the penultimate list item and the conjunction is called a “serial comma,” “Oxford comma,” or “Harvard comma.” The use of the serial comma is hotly debated amongst punctuation nerds. In most cases, it doesn’t matter and you can do whatever you want. I prefer to use it because I pause there when speaking.
The moron sits on cakes, plastic bags, digital cameras, and bearskin rugs.
The moron sits on cakes, plastic bags, digital cameras and bearskin rugs. (I don’t like it, but it’s technically correct.)
In rare circumstances, using the serial comma can clear up potential confusion. I’m stealing this sentence from Wikipedia because I do not want to come up with another one myself.
My favorite types of sandwiches are pastrami, ham, cream cheese and peanut butter and jelly.
Is that a cream cheese and peanut butter sandwich? Ick! It can also create confusion.
I know the baker, Steve, and the moron.
Is Steve the same person as the baker or not? The world may never know!
5. You use them to separate parts of geographic locations. Some people think you need a comma after the final part and some people think it’s optional. In these cases, it’s usually a good idea to pretend it isn’t optional so that everyone is happy.
I was born in Panama City, Florida.
I now live in Herlev, Denmark.
I was born in Panama City, Florida, USA, Earth, on a sunny Tuesday.
6. You use them with dates. If two adjacent parts of the date are both words or both numbers, you need a comma between them. If you needed one of those commas, you also need a comma after the last part unless a terminal punctuation mark already goes there.
I was born on Tuesday, March 7, 1978.
Thomas and I were married on March 30, 2007, in Kokkedal, Denmark.
Thomas and I were married in March 2007 in Kokkedal, Denmark.
7. I don’t see any way of getting around the grammar lesson with this one. I’m sure that I screw this one up sometimes, but now I have to try not to. You can use them when joining particular things with particular conjunctions, but you don’t have to. If you are using a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or a correlative conjunction (both/and, neither/nor, etc.) to join independent clauses, then you use a comma. Take the conjunction out and if you are left with two things that could stand on their own as sentences, then they are independent clauses. The comma goes before the conjunction.
The moron sat on a cake and liked it.
The baker was upset, and the moron didn’t care. This is an optional comma.
The important part of this rule is that it highlights when you can’t use commas.
*The moron sat on a cake, and liked it. (not an independent clause)
*The baker was upset and, the moron didn’t care. (incorrect placement)
*The baker was upset, because the moron didn’t care. (wrong kind of conjunction)
Two ways I saw to help remember the conjunctions were the fact that all the coordinating conjunctions are short, and the fact that the first letters of each spell out “fanboys.” Pick the one that works for you.
You are now tasked with correcting my comma failures when you see them.
Wardrobe on the S-Train Saturwednesday
I was not actually planning to do a combined post today, but when I saw these pictures, I put aside my plans for a clauxthing part 2 post (look for that next week!) and decided on a new path for today.
Here’s the background for you. Many of you know that I used to work at the Apple Store at the Mall of America. Generally, people who work at Apple Stores, at least the ones I’ve been to, love Apple products in real life and aren’t just putting on a show to sell them. There’s no commission, and despite being repeatedly told that the pay was “great, for retail!” the truth is that the pay sucks. At least it did under the regime of Duke Zurek. There were always rumors of people in other regions getting several dollars more per hour, even if the cost of living was lower, etc. etc. But I digress. The pay is crap, and there are way more applicants than job openings, so you only get people who genuinely love this stuff.
Higher positions in the store, such as Mac Genius, Creative, and upper management require training that takes place at Apple headquarters in Cupertino. When I was promoted to Mac Genius, I flew out and was put up in a hotel for a couple weeks while they told me things I mostly already knew. But this story is from before my promotion. Someone else was promoted, and had recently come back from training. As all true iFans know, Apple HQ has a store where you can buy official Apple-logoed gear of all kinds, and those who go off to training usually come back with some goodies for themselves (and more often than not, had taken orders from co-workers as well). This was no exception. My co-worker had purchased a zippered fleece vest with an Apple logo whilst at training, and as I was about to leave for the day, he stopped me and asked if I wanted it. I was confused, and he explained that he had machine washed and tumble dried his fleece vest, and it shrunk to the point where he could only wear it if he became interested in men and wanted to shake his booty at The Saloon. He was offering it to me for free. I took it.
The periwinkle color is not one I wear often. Or ever, really. But the power of the Apple logo held its sway. Until now.
OMG I am never wearing it again. I swear I am not pregnant again, and although pale, I am not albino. I can’t believe how bad this looks on me. See my About Me picture up in the top corner? I’m wearing it there, and it seems so innocent. But then you see the whole thing.
My eyes! My eyes! Make it stop!
It is so totally the wrong color, wrong shape, wrong length, wrong everything for me. I can’t take it anymore!
This periwinkle zippered fleece Apple logo vest is FREE to the first Apple fan that wants it. The catch is that you have to come get it, or else be one of the people that won my Pay It Forward contest, because I’m a lameass and the boxes are still sitting here unmailed, so I can throw it in. (But boy, you’re going to love what you get, because I’ve spent so long on perfecting them!) If I still have it in September, I’ll have my mother take it back to the States with her and then she can mail it to one of you yanks, but I’m offering it here first.
So anyway, this post was supposed to be about Frederikssund. A couple Saturdays ago, we took the train out to Frederikssund. We had planned to go a while back, but decided to wait until they had activities going on at the viking settlement. Then, somehow, we waited until all the activities for the year were over. I swear they must have only had activities for like three weeks. Seriously, we didn’t put it off THAT long. We went anyway.
After getting off the train, the first notable thing we saw was the Waffle House Kebabistan. Bwah?!
Thomas was just as confused as me, so it’s not some weird Danish thing, like how key makers are also always heel repair specialists over here. Waffles and kebabs are not usually paired.
We walked around the shopping area for a while, just browsing. We didn’t actually go in any shops except a music store that had everything half off. We still didn’t buy anything. We did spot some apostrophe violations, though. Apostrophe rules in Danish are different than English, but similarly ignored by native speakers.
I thought it was funny seeing a giant, pointy, rusted metal thing next to a bunch of playground stuff. Thomas didn’t think it was strange at all.
There are lots more pics, including a bunch from the viking settlement, but this post is getting long so you’ll have to go look for yourself.
About Me
Since I’m getting more viewers that are less familiar with me than I had originally anticipated when I created the site, I thought I should add a bit about me in the sidebar. I’m not happy with the way the profile gadget works on Blogger, so I thought I’d make a post here with stuff about me, and then I can link to it for the benefit of future viewers. Just in case they happen to care who that ranty lady whose ranting they’re reading.
My name is Lorry Lee Fach-Pedersen. I’m named after my father, Larry, and not the vehicle, and it is not short for Lorraine, Lorretta, Lorrelei or anything else. My maiden name is neither Fach nor Pedersen.
I was born March 7, 1978 on Tyndall AFB near Panama City, Florida. I now live in Herlev, Denmark (in the Greater Copenhagen Area) with my wonderful husband Thomas, our wonderful daughter Dagmar, and our wonderful cats. I have a graduate degree in geeky things. I’m a former Mac Genius and current happy housewife.
Q&A with my readers!
- Do you like dogs?
I have never had a dog as a pet, but I would love to when I finally have a living situation where it wouldn’t be cruel to do so. I used to volunteer at a shelter, and I was desperately in love with a German Shorthaired Pointer there, but my landlord was not impressed. (She did end up getting adopted by someone else though. Yay!)
- What is your favorite film of all time?
- What is your favorite film of all time?
Brazil, or Annie Hall. I can’t decide.
- If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
- If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
short
- vi or emacs?
- vi or emacs?
vi
- Do you think that last question was impolite?
- Do you think that last question was impolite?
No, but I almost didn’t answer the tree one. 
- What kind of geeky things?
I’m a Master of Computer and Information Sciences with a minor in linguistics. I think my geekiest title, though, has been Beer Administrator for the Twin Cities Linux User Group.
- If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
I’d live in a larger home than my current one. Oh, you mean location? I’ll live anywhere that’s reasonably safe, has public transportation, gets snow at least once a year, and is populated by people who generally respect personal liberties. Denmark is a pretty good fit, but I’m open to other places. My husband is pickier, though. He doesn’t want to have to learn a new language. Since I won’t go without him, I think we’re stuck in Denmark unless he decides to find a job in the UK or Northern California.
If you want to know anything about me, please ask in a comment to this very post on my blog. (Facebook viewers: click here to go to my blog. Facebook comments to this post will be ignored due to the purpose of this post.) If you have trouble commenting, I’ve found that sometimes you have to hit “preview” a couple times before it gives you the word verification on Blogger. If you get an error, just try hitting “preview” again.
I will answer any question you ask that is about me, possible for me to know, polite, understandable, and lacks incorrect apostrophe usage. I get to decide if your question is polite, and I am the final authority on the matter.
my site
I’ve got an S-train Saturday that I’ve been sitting on for a couple weeks, and I’m going to try to get it to it today. In the meantime….
I was just reading about Meg’s 10 year website anniversary, and I started thinking about my website history. I don’t have any idea what the anniversaries of my sites are or would be, but here’s a little retrospective of my web life.
1990something: I have a memory of my brother and I logging on to an AOL chatroom, and the first several posts were “lol.” We didn’t know what it meant. My brother posted “pcp”in response and thought it was hilarious.
summer 1995: I hard heard of the internet. I wasn’t entirely sure that’s what I was looking at when I opened Netscape. I discovered a web-based chat that I liked, and my first username was created when I gave up on trying to think of something clever and just banged my hands on the keyboard. I was ieuw. After a while, people started voicing their distaste for the name and, since it was a hockey chat, I went with Vyacheslav Kozlov. People called me slava for short.
fall 1996: My dorm had ethernet and I had a brand new Gateway 2000 computer running Windows 95. I named him Sedrikk. A friend and I created a GeoCities page with ugly backgrounds and way too many animated GIFs. We thought it was cool. After a few months, we got separate pages.
1997 or 1998: A guy I knew wanted some graphics for his website. I made them and in exchange he gave me my very own domain and hosted my site for me. slava.net was born. It was yellow, maroon, and forest green and used lots of tables and frames.
A year or two later: Though still hosted on slava.net, I renamed my site Altered Sky because when I gave it a facelift, it looked like a night sky and all my links were stars, but they weren’t in the “right” places (that is, it didn’t look like the real night sky). When you hovered over a star, it got brighter, and instead of seeing a star name, you’d see what was at the link, e.g. “Bellatrix” would turn into “Music I Like” or something like that. I was not familiar with HCI and good user interfaces. My star-based naming system was born. At some point, my webhost started charging. (Hey, the images I made were only worth so much.)
2001: I finally replaced Sedrikk with Aldebaran. Aldebaran came with WindowsME. I became a Linux user. I needed a username for myself on my computer, and I chose a star. I was alcyone.
2001-2004: Other Linux geeks gave me cheap computers to tinker with. I had many and all were named after stars. At some point I started a LiveJournal under the name fishonabicycle. (It’s still there but I never, ever touch it.) I was dating a sysadmin, so I let him host my site and it was free again. I moved to a blog instead of a static site, which means I moved from editing my site exclusively in vi to using Personal Weblog. After some time, I was annoyed that Personal Weblog had no commenting feature. I moved to WordPress. I was annoyed with all the cruft in WordPress I would never use. I edited a lot of the code. I gave up on WordPress. Lots of migrations. Lots of server failures. Lots of lost data. I’m not sure when I moved to alteredsky.net instead of slava.net but I think it was sometime in here. I got way too much spam on slava.net and I was tired of people misreading it as “slave.net” and/or thinking I was Russian. (Now, occasionally people think I’m Polish instead and they read it Al-teh-RED-skee.)
2004-present: I got an iBook. I became a Mac user. More indecision about blogging software. I used some homegrown stuff called seamus for a long time. I switched to RapidWeaver for a while. I lost the sky look, but kept the name. I moved to Dreamhost. Now my site is on Dreamhost and my blog is on Blogger, and I guess that’s ok. Funny how it seems the further back I go, the more I remember. Isn’t that backwards? Whatever.
So what does this have to do with Money Monday? I’m glad I pay for my domain and my webhost and my internet connection so I can have my silly little site and talk at you lot. I like having my own domain, I’m happy with Dreamhost, and… uh, my internet access is adequate. (I’m still waiting for DreamISP.)
I dedicate this post to Jane.
I have at least one fan, and since everyone else she links to has a blinkie, I thought I should have one too. Anyone else can use it too, if you want to link to me with a blinkie.
apostrophes
By popular demand, here is when to use apostrophes.
1. You use them in contractions, which is when you turn two words into one word. It goes where the letter or letters would be if you didn’t make it shorter. This is not optional. It has to be in the word, and it can only be in one place. You can’t put it wherever you want.
do + not = don’t (The apostrophe replaces the o in not.)
you + all = y’all (The apostrophe replaces the ou in you.)
2. You use them in most possessives. If the thing that is doing the possessing is a pronoun, there is no apostrophe. This is absolutely a consistent rule. I’m tired of people claiming that somehow the possessive form of it is inconsistent. You don’t say hi’s or he’r or m’y, and you don’t say it’s for a possessive. If the thing doing the possessing ends in an s, the apostrophe goes at the end. For most things, you add an apostrophe and an s to said thing.
My sister’s boyfriend’s babysitter’s robot is pink.
Its shoes’ laces are green.
3. You use them for stylistic shortenings, usually to mimic speech. Like contractions, the apostrophe goes where the missing letters would be.
Frankly m’dear, I hate fish ‘n’ chips.
4. You use them when you write a year in two digits instead of four. It replaces the first two digits (these days, that’s typically 19 or 20).
I was in Mosley’s class of ’96.
5. You use them to make single letters plural.
Mind your p’s and q’s.
Dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
PLEASE NOTE: This is the only bloody time it’s used in a plural. For real. That’s it. Just that one case. Period. Here are some correct plurals that do not use apostrophes.
I have two cats.
I have 100 CDs.
I love to take photos.
I know 10 Thomases.
I was born in the ’70s.
I am human, and sometimes I make mistakes. I think I’ve covered everything, but let me know if you think of something I forgot. I’d check over what I wrote, but I have a daughter tugging at my arm.
Mac vs. MAC
For some reason, I often see people write that they have a MAC computer, or they don’t have a MAC computer, or other similar things. I’d like to set the record straight. If you’re talking about a computer that is made by Apple, then it’s not a MAC. It’s a Mac.
“Mac” came about as a shortened form of Macintosh. It is not an acronym. There is absolutely no reason in the world to capitalize the second and third letters. Even if you are really excited about your computer, and you want to emphasize that you own a Mac as opposed to something else, turning it into three capital letters is not the way to go.
MAC means Media Access Control. I think it is also a brand of cosmetics. It is not a computer.
Furthermore, Mac is a product line, and not a company. You don’t have a Mac iPod. You don’t have a Mac iPhone. The company is called Apple, Inc. Apple makes iPods. Apple makes iPhones. Apple makes Macs. When you say Mac iPod, it’s kinda like saying Jetta Passat instead of Volkswagen Passat. It just doesn’t make any sense.
The stores that have the giant apple on the front are Apple Stores – not Mac Stores, and not iPod Stores. The giant apple on the front should help you remember.
You might think this sounds like a rant and belongs in a Friday post, but it’s not a rant. It’s a public service announcement. I understand why people get confused, so it’s not exactly foreign, but just because I understand it doesn’t make it any less wrong. If you’ve been saying MAC, I’m not angry with you, but please stop. Thank you.
warmth
Not too long ago, the weather started to get warmer around these parts, and the footed jammies we had been putting on D.L. at night were not working out anymore, yet sleeping in just a diaper was not enough either, and she had the audacity to grow out of all her onesies. I headed to Herlev City Center to find the best deal on onesies.
I’m not much of a onesie fan. I get the point for scooting and crawling babies, especially in cold weather, but when they’re spending most of their time upright anyway, gravity doesn’t need so much help, and you’re just putting some extra work between you and the diaper. Why? Why would you do that? And don’t EVEN try to tell me it’s not actually that much work, because if that were true, you wouldn’t see so many kids running around with unsnapped onesies. Sure, when you go out, all the mommies make their kids look sharp, but spend some time at home with some kids, and you’ll see what I mean. Unsnappedonesieville.
Oh, and yes, seriously, my 10-month-old is walking already. I was reading some website with tips on games to play with your one-year-old and they were all about encouraging her to walk. Thomas asked, “does it say how to get her to stop?” Unfortunately, no. No one gives tips on that.
Anyway, at night, though, we’re back to the horizontal issue, and onesies have some value. So I went to Herlev City Center and at Tidens Børn (this translates to something like Children of the Time, but that’s just a stupid shop name so I’m guessing it sounds better to Danes) they had a rack out on the sidewalk. Almost all of the onesies available were blue. I’m not sure if that means I have the only baby girl in Herlev, or there are too many baby girls in Herlev, but either way, I kept looking. I went into Føtex, which is kind of like Kmart, except things aren’t nearly as cheap as you expect them to be. Their selection was better, but the prices were not motivating. I thought I should keep looking.
I don’t know why I ever bother with all that. I should know by now to just go to H&M. So I finally went to H&M and came out with a pack of 7 onesies. I kinda wished they had girlier ones, but at least they weren’t boyish. One of them said “I (heart) DAD” so I had the bright idea of taking that one out of the pack and putting it on top, so when Thomas got her ready for bed he would see it. When I got home, I took it out of the pack and… wha? They have long sleeves?
I was not expecting that. I should look at packages more carefully I guess. But it turned out well, because she’s very happy in them, and hey, this is Denmark. It’s already cooling off again. They may not be as cute as the stripey jam-jams, but they do the job quite well.
-
Clear
16°C
-
Thu
16/12
-
Fri
13/12
-
Sat
16/15