Quotes of the day

Windows 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 95 ... 98 ... 2000 ... eXtra sPecial ... Vista ... the newest should be "Fucking Bonkers" or "Windows 9" (if my counting isn't off)

— Paul Ford

I'd say that CSI "jumped the shark", but that would be too dramatic, it's more like "floated over the goldfish".

— Geoff Mendelson

Biting the bullet

I just called my orthopedist's office and had them start working on the schedule for my bilateral knee replacement.  It looks like being late June.

I don't feel very happy about this.  But it's got to be done.  My knees are steadily deteriorating.

Just as a reminder, most of the progress will be on my medical/health filter.  Let me know if you're not on it and want to be.

Dude! Cyberarm!

In a brief interview on Wednesday, Kamen told me what separates this new limb from past efforts is the depth of motion that it can offer.  With just two days of training, said Kamen, the founder of Deka Research and Development, a soldier who lost both arms in Iraq was able to use the prosthetics to disassemble and then reassemble an M-16 rifle.

My hovercraft is full of eels; or, labelling follies

I've been installing and/or replacing a few lights recently, including a couple of track light systems in the kitchen and elsewhere.  I picked up an electrical connection kit for one of these today, after realizing part-way through installation that the type I had wasn't going to work in my application.

What I got is labelled in English as a "End Feed Connector".  This is translated on the package into Spanish as "Conector de alimentacíon de extremo".

Now, I don't speak any significant amount of Spanish.  But, based on my knowledge of word roots in various different language families, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that just maybe, alimentacíon (food and nourishment for the body, from Latin alimentum/ailimentarius, nourishment, pertaining to food) wasn't quite the right word here.  Suministro (supply, provision), or even aprovisionamiento, is probably a bit closer to the mark, and suministro eléctrico would probably hit the nail pretty close to the head (particularly since I found that exact phrase as a dictionary example, translated as 'electrical supply').  And I have a suspicion they got extremo wrong as well ... I suspect fin or possibly punta is closer to correct.

I can't help wondering whether native Spanish-speakers giggle as much when they see package text like this as native English-speakers do when we see a prime example of "Engrish as she is spoke".