So anyway…

The Euphamism Generator is kinda fun to play with. My favorite so far is “winding the eel”, although “bumping the red banana” is pretty good, too…

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I’ve had lots of different animals as pets. Dogs, cats, birds of various sorts, fish, rats, hamsters, turtles, mice. And it is of a mouse that I write.

Spot was called Spot because she had a couple of spots, and because I thought it was a funny name for a mouse. I had her, and some other mice, before I had a cat, because it’s just not nice to the rodents or to the feline to have them where they can smell each other and make each other nervous.

Mice generally are not particularly smart, but Spot was special. She liked people, and she liked to be held. When a person went past her mousy housing (which was actually a clear plastic hamster environment), she’d hop up and down to get your attention, and she’d keep making a fuss until you picked her up. She liked to curl up in shirt pockets, although she’d just as happily curl up in your hand if you didn’t have a convenient pocket.

Spot figured out how to get out of her housing and did it regularly until we finally figured out how she was getting out. The opening she was using was absolutely teeny, and I was so shocked that she could get out of there, but I caught her in the act finally and we took care of it. But until then, she used to like to go out on adventures in our apartment. When she was done roaming around the place (usually after a day or so), she would come and look for someone to take her home. She normally accomplished this by climbing into our bed and getting into someone’s hand or just climb around on the bedspread until she got our attention (fortunately for her, if we knew she was out, we didn’t react with shock and horror the way people normally would if a mouse walked around on their bed when they were sleeping in it).

Spot lived a pretty long time for a mouse, and she died peacefully of old age. Normally, I’m pretty unsentimental about disposing of the remains of deceased pet rodents, but Spot was such a sweet, lovely little creature that I wanted to give her a more significant sendoff. I took her body across the street to the park and quietly and privately buried her under a patch of trees and shrubbery.

I still think about that little mousie. Of all the pets I’ve had, she’s one of the ones who really stands out in my memory, right up there with bigger, longer-lived animals like dogs and cats. Pretty good for a little spotted mouse, I think.

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Mouse Fresco Challenges Mickey. Hehe.

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I got an email with a question from a kindergarten student, and it was such a good question, I thought I’d share it (along with my reply). If you have other ideas or can enlighten me on the matter, feel free to share.
Q: How can unicorn mean one horn when a corn isn’t the same as a horn?
Well, that’s a good question. I’m not 100% sure of the answer, but I’ve
got a good guess.
These are the words for “unicorn” in Italian, French, and Spanish:
alicorn, licorne, and unicornio. All of those have the “corn” instead of “horn”.
“Uni” is Latin (Spanish and Italian are both very close to Latin, although Latin is a language that isn’t spoken any more), and it means “one” or “single” (you can see it in words like “unicycle” which means “one wheel” and “uniform” which means “one shape” or “one design”).
I think probably “corn” is just the Latin form of the word that means “horn”, and we still use that word. Lots of English words are really “borrowed” from other languages and I think this is probably one of them.
The word “horn” is seen in the German version of “unicorn”, though, which is “einhorn”. Ein means “one” and “horn” means just what you think. I think somewhere in the long ago past, English speakers started using the German word for “horn” but kept the Latin for “unicorn”. This kind of thing happens a lot in the history of languages.

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I got an email with no return address (naturally) that called me clueless and was also TYPED IN ALL CAPS. It was taking exception to a post I made in an online community some time last year or so (can’t remember when I posted it).

To my anonymous flamer: First of all, next time leave your email address and I’ll be happy to reply to you personally. I do have your IP address, and I know your ISP and where it’s located, so you’re not really “anonymous”, you know. I’m not going to post the name of your ISP, but I have it, and it’s in Pennsylvania.

Secondly, DMOZ most certainly IS staffed by volunteers who do not get paid for their work or the time they put in. It IS an “open source” index, just as Mozilla is an open source software project.

Perhaps you should investigate your claims slightly before sending random flames to people you don’t even know. Talk about clueless.

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I know how to contact you. I’m pretty clever about this sort of thing, and I can contact you if I want to, trust me. No, I’m not angry with you. Yes, I’ve pretty much forgiven you. Yes, I realize I was partly to blame.

But the thing is, I don’t really want to talk to you. My interests are worlds away from yours, although I suppose we have a couple of things sort of in common (nothing that would sustain a conversation longer than five minutes, though).

Part of this is me and my bad attitude, though. See, I don’t remain in or resume or begin relationships of any kind when I don’t think it’ll be worth my investment of emotion and the risk of being hurt. As a result, I have very few friends and lots of acquaintances, and that suits me fine. The people I honestly call “friend” are worthy of the name.

So, yes, I could contact you if I wanted. I just don’t want to. I have nothing to say to you, and I’m not particularly interested in what you might say to me. I think we’ve pretty much said it all already.

Please don’t bother trying to guess if I mean “you” in this post. I mean what I mean, and it may not be what you think (you’re so vain, you probably think this post is about you… ?). I write these little ambiguous entries for my own reasons, and I generally don’t base them on just one person, but build in my mind a sort of amalgam of several people who share similar qualities, not unlike the way one might build a fictional character. It may be loosely based on real people, but it’s a creation of the author’s imagination.

Although, hey, if you really want to think I’d bother writing about you, go ahead if it makes you feel better. It’s no skin off my nose either way. I still don’t want to talk to you…

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Say it with me, boys and girls. Java is not the same as JavaScript. Not even a little bit.

Java is a complete object-oriented programming language. It’s used in the form of a program that can be downloaded from the server and executed. Java applets need a Java-capable browser to run. Other Java programs will run without a browser, but may require an interpreter.

JavaScript is a scripting language, implemented as an extension of HTML. It exists as text within the page (or in an external but linked page). It is not a program, and it always requires a browser, since it is just an extension of the markup language. JavaScript’s “proper” and “true” name is actually ECMA Script.

This just happens to be one of my little peeves. The only things alike about JavaScript and Java is that the code looks (superficially) similar and their names are maddeningly similar.

I get really annoyed when I see people using the names interchangeably. They’re not even remotely the same! Yes, I really should get a life, what can I say? My lack of a life doesn’t excuse the fact that people say “Java” when they mean “JavaScript”.

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