T, or admin: "This is our coffee maker.  Have you ever worked in an environment with software developers?"
New guy: "This is my first time."
T: "They drink a *lot* of coffee, so we need to check this..."

First off, understand that my grandmother is a technophobe.  We've sat through rants about wikipedia (lots), about twitter (more), about anything internet-based.  She still uses the yellow pages exclusively if she needs to find a business nearby.  She has had an email account, under protest, for many years but never checked it.  My grandmother is ( Read more... )

My first name isn't *that* uncommon, but there's something of a dearth of people roughly my age with this name. So it's really rather rare that I get email that goes like this:
"Lucy-
Thanks so much
Lucy"

And I'm disproportionately amused when it does.

I've got a 9-year-old who'd really like to get some dog contact. I've also got a household that's far from ready to get another dog. I was thinking of volunteering with him at a (dog-housing) animal shelter, but so far the only ones I've found have a minimum volunteer age of 16. I'd *like* to be able to involve him, but apparently may need some ( Read more... )

I don't *think* I've ever before gotten back from a doctor's appointment with the instructions "Google [OTC product]" in my written instructions.

So last week sometime, I was working on (yet another) Really Annoying Week Issue for my projects here.

I found myself thinking of Seven Days from Sunday, which was always kicking around GG's house.  I haven't seen it around lately, so I went to find it: http://books.google.com/books?id=0tMEAQAAIAAJ&q=seven+days+from+sunday&dq=seven+days+from+ ( Read more... )

So I went to vote in my city's mayoral primary today.  Whee ( Read more... )

It's also true that on the same evening I was reading Google Books: a Metadata Train Wreck, I was also reading Lindsey Davis's latest novel, Alexandria.  As you might expect, it's set in Alexandria, in Roman times.  And, of course, much of the plot and action center on the Library.  You know, approximately the first major attempt to gather together ( Read more... )

After reading Google Books: A Metadata Train Wreck on Language Log, I suddenly realized that I've already put in my time listening to complaints about the quality of Google Books metadata.  Only, I put in my time before it actually happened.

I've got (I think) a pretty good case that I know how a bunch of those errors crept in, and a much weaker ( Read more... )

A nice little report on a nice little analysis of SSNs and how to guess them.  I particularly liked the bit at the end:
"She said many businesses have errantly rely [sic] upon or have moved to redact all but the last four digits of a person's SSN, the very digits that are most unique to an individual."

So, of course the first 3 digits are based on ( Read more... )