Grammar Nazi

is me. Aaarrrgh. I read a lot of "academic" type blogs by professional linguists, physicists, biologists, etc etc yada yada. And I am astonished and appalled at the quality of their grammar (and spelling, too). Most of them don't seem to know the difference between/among;

its / it's
your / you're
there / they're / their
important / importantly (a particular peeve of mine)

and on and on. Not only that, someone will make a snide remark about an OP's grammar/spelling and make his/her/its own mistake in their snideness. Of course, it's getting really bad in books, too -- proofreading seems to be a totally omitted stage of production.

Gnash.

Dispatcher job

Got a nice letter today saying they'd taken the top applicants for interview but sadly I wasn't one of them. Thanks but no thanks.

Damn damn damn.

So much for starting off the new year with good news, at least for me. Hope everybody else's goes well.

Teaching Myself

With a little help, I've just learned how to embed a video. That's why you got these two. Enjoy.

Happy holidays etc

Re test

I hadn't ever embedded a video before, so I was trying it out. I had tried to do one in a forum I frequent and it didn't work, so I had to get some help and try it again and, of course, it worked fine.

Hope y'all liked the test video. Paco de Lucia is the best!

test

Job Test

Today I went to the Buncombe Co. Communications Center to test for the position of Dispatcher. This is to winnow out those they want to interview later. After a short tour of the comm. center itself, which also includes the Asheville PD and the Fire/ER as well as Bunc. Co., we went into the testing room. First we had a typing test which included typing the same thing three times. The first time, I went so fast I ran out of text so they reset the time to 2 minutes instead of 3 minutes. My wpm was pretty good (65), considering I haven't typed anything sustained in some while.

Then we put on headphones and listened to two fake phone calls, one for a missing child and one armed robbery. We were to type as we listened and try to get all the necessary info. I think I did okay.

They have another test session on Monday and then will decide who they want to interview. They'll call later in the week to set appointments but they won't start until after New Year's. There is one part-time position open, which I told them I'd be interested in (nobody else was). The money's good (about $12/hr) and the center is about 5mi from here, out near Erwin H.S. Wish me luck.

Sad news: Etta James is near death from leukemia. A great lady and a great blues/jazz singer. She'll be missed.

Hope everyone has as nice a holiday/new year as possible.