On the way back to the office after lunch, we began talking about coffee  as we passed the Tim Hortons. Somebody asked if I planned to try the new lattes that are on offer. I answered in the negative, not because I’m some sort of coffee snob (I drink Tim’s coffee every now and again), but because I prefer the handcrafted beverages at Starbucks.

While on the topic, someone else asked if I had tried a particular coffee house and bakery in my neighbourhood, to which I replied in the negative again, with clarification. This particular coffee house and bakery is closed Sundays and Mondays, “to maintain family values”. Okay. Whatever. Be closed, but don’t preach to me at the same time. I feel I’m being judged on my own family values, just because I showed up on a Sunday.

I was told that I shouldn’t boycott the place just for that reason; the coffee and baking is really excellent. Unfortunately, I’ll never find out whether the products are good, because I’ll never go there.

What if my religion dictated that I not work on Tuesday, would someone accept that my store’s closed on Tuesday? Maybe. But would they care that I’m closed for religious or “family values” reasons? Probably not. You want to be closed, be closed. You want to be closed to attend church, be closed. You want to attend church and still be open, hire someone who doesn’t attend church. You don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t go church, I think there may be a human rights issue, but whatever, be closed. But I don’t care why, and I don’t need you to tell me.

I can hold a grudge and I will. They can change the sign and change the policy, but I’m soured. And I’ll stay that way and I’ll like it.

Indeed, my first complaint is about people who don’t do their job and then whine when something isn’t right and needs to be fixed (by someone else) immediately.

The other day at work, it was imperative that a change be made at the last minute. Admittedly, the problem was not really caused by the person making the request, but by a bug in the system, but that’s not really an excuse. The person responsible for the work in the first place should have been diligent enough to make sure that everything was functioning properly and raised the issue earlier.

Had the problem been noticed earlier, the workaround could have been implemented, and the issue avoided. But the person responsible did not confirm that the changes were successful when they were originally made and so did not, until the last possible moment, notice that they were not successful.

In my opinion, that’s not doing the job.

Yes, seriously. I’ve decided that I don’t understand people, and I’m not qualified to engage in debates on topics that relate to how people feel and act.

The other night, at family dinner, I was discussing how I don’t bother saving for things that I want. If I want to do or buy something and know that I can afford it (immediately or over time, using credit), I’ll do or buy it. Why not? To which I was told that some people (in fact, a lot of people) have already used their maximum credit.

Understood. I guess.

But it also revealed to me that what makes sense to me doesn’t always make sense to others, or that it’s not the default for others. I admit that sometimes I don’t think all the way through my thought or opinion before I voice it, leaving open to debate from people who perhaps have thought over it longer.

In any case, I will try to vent more of my complaints here, allowing for feedback from my audience, which should give me some opportunity to think further about my thought or opinion.

A grammar blog I read the other day reminded me of a Slate post from a couple of weeks ago about the practice of adding two spaces after a period when typing. Farhad Manjoo, the Slate author, has very strong opinions on the subject, and even consulted typographers for clarification. I checked with the Modern Language Association (MLA) website, which provides a non-prescriptive answer.

I’m not sure I have any strong opinions on the subject. The standard in my English class last year was two spaces, and I did what I was told. Although, personally, I tend to follow the web standard, which solves the problem for me. The HTML specification is to collapse all white space when rendering inter-word spacing; meaning that spaces between words (e.g., from a period to the next word) will be collapsed to one space. Easy.

Generally, modern typography and technology resolve issues that arose from monospaced text on typewriters, allowing for a return to the original rules of typeset typography.

I don’t usually solicit feedback on my thoughts, but this time I will. What do you guys think about spaces after periods?

Something that bugs me is the specific use of “backslash” (“\”) when people mean forward slash (“/”, which is commonly referred to as slash). There is only one place I know that you need a backslash and that’s in DOS file structures (C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe). And, yes, that means Windows, too. Everywhere else, only slashes are needed.

“Uhh, no, websites are h-t-t-p-colon-backslash-backslash-w-w-w….” Actually, that’s not true. “Well, then the address is twitter.com-backslash-ICHCheezburger.” Nope, forward slash.

Or just slash. And not Slash.

Indeed. What is the internet? Most simply, it is information shared between two computers. Emails are the internet. Facebook is the internet. This post is the internet. And quite probably your telephone and television at home are the internet.

“Well, sure, but that window that opens when I clicked that blue underlined text in my email, that’s not the internet.” Yes, yes it is. “Okay, but that picture gallery of my uncle’s vacation to Machu Picchu can’t be the internet.” And yet it is.

If it has anything to do with you viewing on your computer files, photos, video, or information of any kind that aren’t actually on your computer, that’s the internet.

“Well, then, my television at home isn’t the internet.” Wrong. Unless you use rabbit ears or have an antenna on your roof. That digital signal is a series of ones and zeros coming from a computer at the cable company, and your television (or more specifically, your cable box) is another computer that figures out how to make those ones and zeros into Two and a Half Men. “Oh, is that what it’s for?” Yes, that’s what it’s for.

Your internet browser, on the other hand, is not the internet. The little blue e is not the internet. The curled up fox and the compass are not the internet. They are internet browsers, specially-produced software for navigating the World Wide Web, which is a [very large and growing exponentially] group of inter-linked documents.

I think that’s all I have in me to say about the internet. I will leave you with a funny, and quite false, discussion of the internet: This, Jen, is the internet.

Seth Godin, again! Apparently, Seth Godin got the Web wrong in 1993. Not a surprise. I don’t think too many people could have envisioned a world of Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, or Google back in 1993.

What I love about his post is the notion of getting better about announcing being wrong and learning from it.

Politicians, of course, are terrible at this. They are never wrong, apparently, and when they are, spin instead of admitting it. Which not only hurts their trustworthiness, it prevents them from learning anything.

It’s so true and it drives me crazy! “My [heartfelt, racist] comments, or [deliberate, ill-timed, and inappropriate] actions, were misinterpreted ….” Why not just admit you screwed up and hope people forgive and forget?

On How-To Geek a few days ago, I read an article about the Dvorak keyboard that reminded me of why I was learning touch-typing. I had hoped to learn to type quickly and without looking at the keyboard. I had also thought that once I had the fundamentals worked out, I might find a more appropriate keyboard to use.

I had learned that the Dvorak keyboard layout was better suited to modern typing, now that we’ve moved away from mechanical typewriters. I was interested to try to use it and see for myself whether it was any easier or faster.

Now that I think about it, though, I’m not the only one who uses any of my computers, so it may be more of an irritant to others, if I change the keyboard layout. Also, I would need to relabel the keys, so even if I could switch the computer keyboard settings quickly, changing the key labels would not be so easy.

So, while I still think that the Dvorak keyboard layout would be interesting and valuable to learn, I won’t be doing it any time soon.

I read Seth Godin’s blog fairly regularly and even bought one of his most recent books, Poke the Box (an excellent book, by the way). He had a post a few days ago called Trading in Your Pain. It’s about the perception that whatever pain you feel in your current job, there’s a way past it.

“If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer—then the pain will go away.”

He also suggests that are two ways out: leave and find something else, or stay and suffer and be unrewarded. Given these choices, he suggests taking the third option.

But what is the third option? This is something that took me several tries to figure out. For a while, I would follow the second option, then a while later, I would be forced into the first option. And in choosing the first option, I would move across the country. These were expensive, time-consuming choices.

Over the last few years, I’ve chosen to learn everything I can about the job I’m doing, suggest and implement improvements, and generally improve myself. I have been rewarded in my efforts, having recently moved into a job that gives me more autonomy to suggest and implement real changes and generally to be the expert.

The third option is to work through it. That may mean suffering for a while and probably means leaving and finding something else, but only in order to learn what you need to know and then get a chance to do it.

This is another post in my correction and clarification series. This case, in particular, drives me crazy, because not only is it wrong, it sounds wrong.

I hear or read often about someone who administrates a system or process. I fully understand the reason why people might use the term, and I know they’ll find it in the dictionary. But it’s not correct.

An administrator must administrate, no? No. And administrator administers, or is responsible for administration. I think people prefer something shorter than the latter, but don’t like the sound of the former. A nurse or a doctor administers treatment for a patient, but a systems analyst doesn’t administer the database.

So the systems analyst must administrate the database. Wrong. The systems analyst is responsible for database administration, or simply is responsible for the database, or even manages the database.

I realize the temptation to use similar words to describe ideas (administrator, administration, administrate), but other, simpler words exist that do as good a job.