Pennsylvania got there first

Not often does a State one-up the feds and the rest of the 50+5, but Pennsylvania did that many years ago and on to the present.

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Internal language unawareness

I am thinking of a word, universally admitted to be English, that has the letters S and H together, but which is never pronounced as if it contains the [ʃ] phoneme.

Microsoft can start touching me again

After I swore at Windows 10 for getting too close, now it seems to be maliciously complying. Some of this could lead to serious loss.

I have never seen this before in a blog

Visiting by accident, the human recommendations blog of the Marion (Indiana) Publique Library, I noticed something actually unique: A total lack of datestamps.

I cannot find anything on the index page or the individual posts to show when they were written or publisht. The URIs are … found it!!

If you clique on the individual images of books, then it says when they were “published”, which means uploaded to the server.

Sadly, the blog hasn’t been updated in almost 2 years. Their idea of not making it easy to see the date makes it hard for an immediate visitor to know if it is all out of date, hence less immediately rejection-worthy. As far as I know this is unique to them.

Well that only took forever

I don’t like to hate on government agencies, especially the underfed and underfunded. This, however, is annoying to me…

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The United State Government Publishing¹ Office lets you buy books and pamphlets the various parts of the United States (but not the States themselves) have reduced to written form. I have bought several copies of the official text of the Constitution from them for ready reference.

Some publications just go to show that there is a certain amount of stodge that always goes with government, such as the bizzare choice of smiley face on this document about bridge inspections. It make it look a little untrustworthy to me, like “It’s OK, really (wink)”.

Anyway, I wanted badly to read this entertainingly titled Ebook on investment frauds from a sometime Commissioner of the CFTC with a mullet that is supposedly available free. Well:

1. There are two entries for this media on the GPO’s website, for some reason.
2. The PDF link in the one is bad.
3. I can’t find the “Add to Cart” link mentioned, even if logged in to my account.

Anyway, after fussing around (I didn’t call them up, because when I reported a spelling mistake in their ecommerce user management, it took over a month to get a reply. And it still isn’t fixed. As before, underfunded) I found a link to the PDF and EPUB files on their… FTP server.

Anyway, go here: https://permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo68567/

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1. Ex-Government Printing Office. I understand the name change, but the older one was headed by the supremely titled “Public Printer of the United States”. The new one is run by a “Director”. Boring!! ↩

Microsoft screwup in Windows 10, v. 1803

SO!

I just installed Windows 10’s April 2018 update, version 1803.

Part of this update entails removing XPS reader software that was part of all previous versions of 10, and instructing us to find an app in the Store for it.

I download Microsoft’s “Reader” app and install it from the Store.

Opening an XPS file with the new app brings up an error message… that I have to use XPS reader (the one installed with Windows).

Agfh! Is Microsoft trying to annoy me?

Union of grammar-offenders

I am represented at work by a union. A union of people who don’t construct sentences very well.

Watching the returns roll in…

I am currently staying up late for my favorite activity: watching election returns in well documented races. Right now, it is in Alabama, in the contest for the Senator to replace Sessions.

Anyone else do this at all? I know plenty do, I’m just fishing for your recollections of memorable past counts. I’ll start with mine:

There is a song, “Sitting on the Dock” that has the line about “watching the ships roll in”. I always think of that when watching the returns “roll in”.

The drudgery of creativity…

…is putting it down in permanent form. I love to imagine things, but to then write them down, is hard.

Some of it I know is the loss of fidelity that comes with moving from the mind outward, but most of it is just the annoyance that it takes time.

This is also why my posts here are scarcer than they should be.

Microsoft’s unique chemical

While perpetually scorned by people, for no real reason, Microsoft’s search engine “Bing” has a few tricks up its sleeve.