Nothng Much Happened The Weekend
Nothing Much Happened This Weekend
Nothing much happened this weekend for me.
The weather finally got its act together and warmed up. We finally had temperatures above normal after being below normal for sixty or sixty five days. Today it was 80F/27C at the beach with a mostly sunny sky. It does cool off nicely at night.
I found a fascinating advertisement over the weekend from a company that sells a grammar and spell checking program. The company had a survey done on the importance of proper writing in emails. Accuracy had a score of 96.8%; Clarity had a score of 96.8%, and Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation had a score of 95.2%. The scores are based on combining the survey results for the response choices of Extremely Important and Important.
I wonder how many of my students realize this.
Of course, one can discount the survey as being self serving since it is likely to help the company sell its product. That being said, I don’t think the results are all that far from reality.
I talked with the Princess on Sunday. She was enjoying her Princess M&Ms as I knew that she would. We talked about Hershey’s Chocolates ending their telephone and online sales of custom chocolate products. The Princess was devastated by the thought there would be no more Hershey’s Halloween chocolate tins, a tradition that has lasted since 1994.
We both thought that the company could have raised the prices to cover its costs since it was selling a premium product that was not available from local merchants. That would make good business sense. I think we failed to consider the company closed the venture because of lack of sales in the current economy. Closing a money losing operation in these current economic conditions is also a very logical business decision.
On the other hand, the Princess did say there always were Fairy Tales Brownies and M&Ms. I did remind her of Ethel M’s Chocolates as well. The Princess did allow that Ethel M Chocolates were yummy.
I was reflecting on my Internet chat partners as I was sipping on a glass of single malt Scot’s whisky over the weekend. Almost all of the chat partners that I regularly speak with are Asian born women who found me while searching for a native English speaker when they were in college in China.
I don’t count Rita in this group because she is from India and speaks or rather writes in the Queen’s English. Rita is probably better at speaking English than I am because Americans tend to readily adopt new words and phrases, even if they are made up words or phrase.
Having you ever wondered how movies get rated? I started to think about this concept when I read the local newspaper today. It has a list of televised films together with a star rating of one star to four stars with four stars being the highest rating. John Ford’s classic Western, THE SEARCHERS, received four stars and that seemed to be very correct to me. Then, I saw that BABE, a 1995 film about a talking pig, received four stars as well while the 1960s classic LOLITA only earned three stars.
Doug would probably say someone rigged the votes and stole the election.
The United States is launching an old vehicle recycling program, nicknamed, Cash for Clunkers. Since I have two older vehicles, I took a look at the program. The USD$4,500 credit towards the purchase of a new vehicle would be very nice.
The Prelude doesn’t qualify for the program because its fuel efficiency is too high. Its rating is 25 MPG and the maximum rating to qualify for the program is 18 MPG. So, the Prelude stays in the car park for now.
That left me with the Pathfinder. It fully qualifies because it has crummy mileage ratings. I could qualify for the maximum government credit and I could apply that towards the purchase of a MINI Cooper. That would mean that I would only have two small cars. I would have to rent a large vehicle if I wanted to buy something larger than a breadbox or a couple of bags of groceries from the weekly market trip.
I guess that I will stay with what I have in the car park for now then.
Be well and stay happy.
Nothing much happened this weekend for me.
The weather finally got its act together and warmed up. We finally had temperatures above normal after being below normal for sixty or sixty five days. Today it was 80F/27C at the beach with a mostly sunny sky. It does cool off nicely at night.
I found a fascinating advertisement over the weekend from a company that sells a grammar and spell checking program. The company had a survey done on the importance of proper writing in emails. Accuracy had a score of 96.8%; Clarity had a score of 96.8%, and Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation had a score of 95.2%. The scores are based on combining the survey results for the response choices of Extremely Important and Important.
I wonder how many of my students realize this.
Of course, one can discount the survey as being self serving since it is likely to help the company sell its product. That being said, I don’t think the results are all that far from reality.
I talked with the Princess on Sunday. She was enjoying her Princess M&Ms as I knew that she would. We talked about Hershey’s Chocolates ending their telephone and online sales of custom chocolate products. The Princess was devastated by the thought there would be no more Hershey’s Halloween chocolate tins, a tradition that has lasted since 1994.
We both thought that the company could have raised the prices to cover its costs since it was selling a premium product that was not available from local merchants. That would make good business sense. I think we failed to consider the company closed the venture because of lack of sales in the current economy. Closing a money losing operation in these current economic conditions is also a very logical business decision.
On the other hand, the Princess did say there always were Fairy Tales Brownies and M&Ms. I did remind her of Ethel M’s Chocolates as well. The Princess did allow that Ethel M Chocolates were yummy.
I was reflecting on my Internet chat partners as I was sipping on a glass of single malt Scot’s whisky over the weekend. Almost all of the chat partners that I regularly speak with are Asian born women who found me while searching for a native English speaker when they were in college in China.
I don’t count Rita in this group because she is from India and speaks or rather writes in the Queen’s English. Rita is probably better at speaking English than I am because Americans tend to readily adopt new words and phrases, even if they are made up words or phrase.
Having you ever wondered how movies get rated? I started to think about this concept when I read the local newspaper today. It has a list of televised films together with a star rating of one star to four stars with four stars being the highest rating. John Ford’s classic Western, THE SEARCHERS, received four stars and that seemed to be very correct to me. Then, I saw that BABE, a 1995 film about a talking pig, received four stars as well while the 1960s classic LOLITA only earned three stars.
Doug would probably say someone rigged the votes and stole the election.
The United States is launching an old vehicle recycling program, nicknamed, Cash for Clunkers. Since I have two older vehicles, I took a look at the program. The USD$4,500 credit towards the purchase of a new vehicle would be very nice.
The Prelude doesn’t qualify for the program because its fuel efficiency is too high. Its rating is 25 MPG and the maximum rating to qualify for the program is 18 MPG. So, the Prelude stays in the car park for now.
That left me with the Pathfinder. It fully qualifies because it has crummy mileage ratings. I could qualify for the maximum government credit and I could apply that towards the purchase of a MINI Cooper. That would mean that I would only have two small cars. I would have to rent a large vehicle if I wanted to buy something larger than a breadbox or a couple of bags of groceries from the weekly market trip.
I guess that I will stay with what I have in the car park for now then.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 2:44 PM
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