"My stooooo-peed seees-ter is een de laaaab again..."

Mandarin class last night began with a review of numbers. Yi, er, san, si, wu, etc. Bigger numbers too - Huang Laoshi asked us for our house numbers (yi bai yi = 110, I got off light, one guy was something like si bai san shi wu and it took him forever to hash it out). We did phone numbers as well, which is a stumbling ground for most of the people in my class, at least partly because people keep forgetting to start from the area code. But after we got done with the numbers, we went on to the next chapter, which is words in family relationships as well as the first number-classifier word for people, ge. This is where I broke down giggling... see, there are different words for older and younger siblings. Older brother is gege, which is not a problem. It's the word for younger brother that gets me... it's didi. You'd think that wasn't a problem, right?

Ever seen Dexter's Lab? The proper pronunciation of didi is EXACTLY the same as the way Dexter speaks of his older sister. Tone and all. "DEE-dee!"

And Huang Laoshi, god help me, sounds just like the Dexter voice actor when she says didi. . . I spent a chunk of class with my hand over my mouth trying not to giggle. I explained it to her; I'm not sure she understood, as she's never seen the cartoon, but Lord it's hard not to laugh myself silly hearing an entire classroom full of Dexters in training.

Today's pulp survival tip is #9. If you're headed for your goal and encounter a room where the floor is alive with snakes, bugs, or any other kind of crawling creature, give real consideration to finding an alternative route. You might still have to cross the bugs - but you'll probably have to make a fast escape and you'll be much happier if you don't need to worry about running away from bugs as well as people and/or the Supernatural Menace.

Server foo

Og here. Og want update Og readers on bad bad server thing.

Og figure out today, server problem not server fault. Og think day before yesterday, maybe anti- an- maybe program keep code from little boys no have girlfriends, no have talent, only disk of other person code - maybe that program part of problem. Og try fix this, Og get nothing, only big steaming heap mammoth dung. While try clean up mammoth dung, Og push button make server let go back-up tape. Server take lonnnng time let go back-up tape - crash twice in process. But Og get tape eventually. Og walk away, server not crash again. Og go back before go home, put same tape back in server for night back-up, go home.

Come in next morning, Og find server crash again. Og try fix program again, still get crash. Og eject tape again and walk away; server stay up.

Og not brightest stick in fire, but Og not stupid. Og take tape. put on rock. smash tape with club MANY MANY TIMES. Og send smashed tape to mog-ur for get rid of evil spirits for good.

Og server still up this morning. Og happy.

Argh.

Was pawing through friend lists and found someone citing this. Have emailed Senator Corzine and my Representative (who has a good track record of saying 'yes, I got your mail' quickly for all that I'm in a different political party from him); would email Lautenberg only he hasn't got an address yet. Sending paper letters to the White House.

Hell, I don't think I'd trust Jimmy freakin' Carter with that kind of information power, let alone a shrimphead like Poindexter. Y'all who're American citizens might wanna pop by http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov and look up your own Congressbeings, then pester them - particularly the Senators.

mmm... shiny toy....

The Kanguru Micro Drive I was raving about a few entries back arrived yesterday. I had to buy a USB card for my office desktop, but once that was done the thing's drivers installed without a hitch. I've installed the Kanguru drivers on a number of other USB-enabled Win98 machines as well, and now I have the ability to carry around beeeeg programs on a plastic device only marginally larger than a tube of lip balm. Which I am doing at the moment; I've brought Registry First Aid, the latest Acrobat Reader setup files, and one or two other programs to a single computer without resorting to multiple floppies or putting them on the network where they can be dragged down...

This toy is cool. And it's good for work. I like it. Perhaps now I can get the damned Educational Services computer to work, as we are ploughing through the registry in search of obsolete entries to rip out by the roots (that's what Registry First Aid is for).