Some Wise Words

“When wealth is lost, nothing is lost
When health is lost, something is lost
When character is lost, everything is lost”

“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until good is better and better is best”

"Don’t trouble Trouble
Until Trouble troubles you
For if you trouble Trouble
Trouble will trouble you"

Punctuation is powerful

An English professor wrote the words:
"A woman without her man is nothing"
on the chalkboard and asked his students
to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."
Punctuation is powerful

Spell checkers and homonyms

This funny poem shows how badly spell checkers deal with homonyms. It was sent in by a fellow VA to the VAIG e-list (VA International Group). There are no apostrophes either.

SPELL CHECKER (author unknown, but hats off to them!)

Eye halve a spelling checker;
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue,
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word,
And weight four it two say,
Weather eye am wrong oar write;
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid,
It nose bee fore two long.
And eye can put the error rite;
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it;
I am shore your pleased two no,
Its letter perfect awl the weigh.
My spell checker tolled me sew!

We're getting better at internet security

According to vnunet.com internet users are getting savvier about IT security. A few years ago the Love Bug and others were thought to ruin the entire internet!

The hackers have 'raised their onslaught', but people are not as worried anymore. News reports tell about the dangers of the recent Storm worm, but the damage is predicted to be on a low scale. It's true that the Storm worm and its mutants are very infectious and well spread. But as IT users are more aware of the dangers inherent with the internet, and protect themselves by taking the right precautions, malware are no longer as feared as three or four years ago. Commentators no longer predict the doom of the internet, but report objectively about the worms tactics and estimated spread.

Links:
http://mail.vnunet.com/cgi-bin1/flo/y/e27r0L2yn30X120DhR30A5
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/storm.asp
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/107009.html
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=7808&pagtype=all
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39285565,00.htm?r=1

Grammar Rules

This was seen on a writers' forum. The author is unknown.

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat).
6. Always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments. No comma splices, run-ons are bad too.
11. Contractions aren't helpful and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing is like water on the back of a duck.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is probably not the best way to propose earth-shattering ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement.
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
35. The spell chequer is knot always write.

Malicious Worm doing the rounds in Yahoo!!!

I'm in quite a few Yahoo! groups, and today I received two posts titled "New Graphic Site". This is the first WORM that spreads by only opening an e-mail!

I didn't know, so I opened them and sent a reply that wasn't very nice...(apologies to her).

Here are some articles about it:

Google News UK

Technorati tags: Security, IT, News

Windows fixing & troubleshooting

I have always loved a challenging computer mystery....

Sure, I feel like getting physical when things go wrong and keep bugging. Just like anyone else.

But the feeling of satisfaction when finally fixing it! And the things you learn on the way.

I had a small problem a few days ago. Small in the sense that it's not the result of anything complicated or the handi-work of malware or similar. But the problems it could have caused if it had happened some other time, in the middle of a big project... Thankfully, it was weekend and I had nothing else to do (kidding!)...

Anyway, it's a big problem for a translator! My language bar button had disappeared, it had become invisible!

For those who don't know, the language bar is a small button to the right in the task-bar (at the bottom of your screen). It allows you to change between languages (of course very "useful" when translating!), and get a different set of letter characters.

When I noticed it missing (wanting to type in Swedish), I did the usual thing. I right-clicked in the task-bar, went up to Toolbars, but the language bar is already ticked! So, I untick and re-tick and try in different applications... nothing!

I remembered cleaning up a little in HijackThis a while back, and since I've accidently removed the language bar button there before, I thought maybe I had done the same again. But nothing I could find in the back log files helped either.

As I got a bit lazy (well, why search for a file with a name that doesn't show it's the button I need?), I hooked up to the 'net forums for a solution. I found a translator with the same problem as me. Now, why on earth would we have the same problem at the same time? I don't know, I had some technical issues a week earlier and had done a system restore. I don't know if he might have done the same, but I know he had some problems with a new software and had done some tweaking on his computer recently. My first thought when I realised HijackThis had no part in it was the latest Windows update (we are both on automatic updates)... but I still don't have the answers.

I posted to all places I could think of (techsupportforum and many of my e-groups). I had already tried to search for clues in Google, without success, then I thought of rewording my search to "missing language bar" and Voilà! (I wouldn't have been able to write that without searching the character map, before now!):

I found three possible solutions and posted them to the translators forum (TranslatorsCafe). This is what did the trick:

Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages page - click Details
Advanced page> untick 'Turn off Advanced Text Facilities' > Apply
>on main page, click 'Language Bar'

Without unticking the 'Turn off Advanced Text Facilities', the 'Language Bar' button on the main page is disabled (greyed out and unclickable). That is why the language bar was enabled but invisible in the task bar. The solution was on Aussie Phorums (funny thing: both me and the other translator posted that we had solved it, the same minute!).

During this little "adventure", I found some really useful sites I will revisit again:

Kelly's Korner - Troubleshooting Windows XP
TechSupportForum - Free computer support for everyone, this forum is really great!
Aussie Phorums' computer forums
MozillaZine - I intend to check this site out more

Technorati tags:
Microsoft Windows language