Live from UWEC

I'm visiting Eau Claire, and Claire is presently taking her final exam of the semester. I came into this computer lab to check my email and remind myself the order of the electron shells (Wikipedia tells me it's s p d f g—Claire and I couldn't remember g). I managed to get around to it eventually, but I first managed to get myself involved in editing a cover letter for one Joseph T. Jensen, who is graduating this weekend and is searching for a job in the mortgage-lending business. I helped him with his wording (active voice!), cleaned up his punctuation, and showed him that there are better fonts than Times New Roman. I always get a kick out of people's reactions when they're looking over my shoulder as I write/edit.  I'm sure I'd react similarly if I had the change to peer over the shoulder of Stephen King or maybe Thomas Pynchon, whose exquisitely-written Against the Day I'm beginning to read.

Ruining the barrel

While I'm always pleased when someone gives Apple—a company that seems monomaniacally determined to dull their customers' intellect—a good bashing, this site run by Greenpeace is perhaps too depressing to be purely amusing. Despite my utter disdain for iPods, iTunes, and Mac OS, I've been very impressed with the new MacBook's size and power, so I'm frustrated to learn that it's a mini eco-disaster. Hopefully Apple will clean up their act soon: I'd like to have my options wide open when I buy my next notebook in three or four years.

I am the very model of a modern mage or general

Year of the whale

It took me 349 days, but I finally finished Moby-Dick.  I have no doubt the sluggish pace can be attributed to the long passages of plotless descriptions of whales and whaleships which made the middle third of the book a real chore to read.  I did, however, greatly appreciate the plot, dialogue, and overall excellent prose in the first and last thirds.

Digression exemplified digitally

I'm trying to find the adverb form of the word 'analog' in the "opposite of digital" sense. The dictionary isn't immediately clear, so I'm Googling for the answer. I came across this message board, where one Nate Branscom asks the same question. He receives a multiplicity of uncited and unsupported answers before the conversation digresses into a conversation about audio formats in the 1970s or something like that. Go ahead: take a look and see if you have the patience to follow the winding thread.

No surprise here...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The Midland
The West
The Inland North
Boston
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Philadelphia
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What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

...but I do pronounce "orange" (a frequently used word here in Syracuse) with two syllables. I worked to kick the Midwestern monosyllabic "ornge," while I was dating Marget, whose beautiful pronunciation of the word made me dissatisfied with my own.