Well, we finally got our new computers today. I have a ginormous monitor now that fits all of my multitasking. Spent the morning readjusting/rebookmarking/reloading everything.

We now also have something I've been wanting to avoid: the Eudora upgrade. I love the program (even if somehow I haven't been able to get mine at home to work since I upgraded the DSL), but I loathe the stupid "chili peppers" the upgrade comes with and have avoided getting it at home even though I suspect I need it by now because the peppers annoy me. Like I can't tell on my own if I'm using Bad Words in e-mail? Moronic. Okay, so it turns out you can turn them off, but it's a lame idea anyway.

Though I must admit that it's pretty funny having this at work, where I get an enormous amount of sex/porn/Viagra/big dick/big tits-type spam, and counting how bad it is by the peppers (so far, "larger penis" and "erections of steel" rates 2 peppers, "free sex on the web" rates nary a pepper). Perhaps I should compile rankings for my amusement...

I am, at the moment, the official Top Poster at 3WA. I have now hit the level of "Love Machine" first. I love it. I am so damn proud of my overposting, have-no-life self. I always wanted to be first to a level, and now I've done it! Yay me!

I am pondering taking some classes again this spring, since we have been provided with whopping $10 off coupons for the hippie college courses. I love working here.

I am debating on the following classes:

* Sign language, which I have always always always wanted to take. I wasn't allowed to during college ("you don't have the time for another language class!"), but now I have the time and could take it for cheaper. Plus the ones offered at the local CC are only offered during work hours so far, argh.

* Tarot for beginners (scroll down). I really would love to get some personal instruction in this for a change.

Other classes that are possible and cool, but probably not that affordable to take all at once: origami (you get to make "wastepaper baskets, greeting cards, and wrestlers."), perfume making (which would be cool if every other person wasn't either allergic or asthmatic), hula (again) and modern dance (again).

I suspect the first two are a definite go, finances be damned.

I was told today that the building I work in translates into "Hall of Darkness" in Russian. This seems appropriate somehow for somewhere I'm in...(Told this to Dave and he was all "Not surprised.") The guy who passed this on said there was a big cloud of darkness hanging over the building, and I said "Yeah, that's the chancellor on the top floor."

After spontaneously stopping working soon after its original installation, and prompting me every five minutes for months that it needed to be updated (and then wouldn't work when I tried to update), my virus program spontaeously healed itself and started updating again today. Go figure.

I am having serious doubts about the state of education at my college.

First, I've got one friend who applies to grad school every year, the MOST PRESTIGIOUS schools of all, just so she can say she goes to a prestigious school. Her grades were not stellar. And I heard the other week that one of the people she asked to write her rec letter told her to her face that she was going to be honest and tell them that she wasn't so good with the spelling and grammar, and she didn't even care!

And then today, another friend of mine wanted me to check over her cover letter for applying for the temp pool. Oh. My. God. This is someone who has a degree in English and who has spent the last few years tutoring children, who is plugging this experience and her great knowledge of spelling and grammar. And yet she puts sentences like "I am applying for the temp position" (like there's only one offered?) and "Please find my resume attached here" and generally leaving out those crucial little connecting words that make a sentence sound like you're actually speaking it. I can't really er, blame anyone for not hiring her based on the writing she turns in if it all comes out like that.

I won't even get into all of my friends who want to teach children and/or English and also can't spell for crap.

I don't claim to be the Grammar Nazi. I don't even claim to know much about grammar at all, as lessons taught to me have whizzed over my head like Douglas Adams's deadlines. I can barely play Mad Libs, I don't know how to diagram a sentence, I know not what a participle is or why it dangles, and all I learned from a lesson on misplaced modifiers was that I never misplace them! But even I can figure out if a sentence sounds right or not, can tell if it flows or what word is missing.

Optimally, people should attempt to write the way that they speak, only minus the em's and er's and like's. Sadly, I don't think people of my generation (at least, ones in this town!) get that they should be writing the way that they speak. If they read it aloud, it shouldn't have weird gaps in comprehension. I read a lot as a kid, nearly all other people I know at my age don't or outright WON'T. I think even the English majors just somehow never managed to get any kind of sense as to how words just plain go down on a page, and how it relates to real speech. They have no overall intuition as to how words work together. To be honest, I don't think more grammar lessons in school would teach the kids this (it didn't work for me). I think what needs to be done is to get the kids into reading, reading things they LIKE so they won't only do it for assignments, instead of slogging through boring dreck they don't relate to and don't enjoy and learning that they never want to read in their entire lives if they can at all avoid it. And perhaps have them read out loud more so they actually get that there IS a relationship between reading, writing, and speaking.

Normally, I don't value writing as a major skill very much. Lord knows it won't make most of us who do it rich (one of my English profs told us if we could do ANYTHING other than writing, to do it- and this is a big shot writer, mind you), it's one of the quickest and easiest things to lay someone off for doing, and it seems like any old fool dragged off the street could write, as opposed to being a math genius who gets paid beaucoup bucks and does things that change the world.

Now, however, I am not quite so sure about that bit about the street. Sad, isn't it?

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