hhmmm...3

Boxes of gloves. I use a lot of protective gloves at work. I use hand specific, because they fit my ands the best, and when you work with nasty chemicals, you want the best. A box of hand specific, should have 50 lefts, and 50 rights. So, why is it I have 6 rights left over, and no lefts? This has been the case with the last 4 boxes I ave used. I feel bad for the poor person who opens their new box and all they have are lefts.

hhmmm... 2

Idiots! There are way too many people who have no common sense. I have three for today, but I'm not sure where to start. Let's go chronologically.
Where did all the common sense go? Seriously, it used to be common, now, not so much!

My bosses boss and his boss. I had a perfectly good design made. Form, function, and practicality all taken into account. The parts were made and the installer knew exactly what to do. As this is the installers job, I had discussed the plan with him, we worked out the kinks and were ready and raring to go. Low and behold, my 'boss' opens his big mouth, takes nothing in that has been discussed and decided and changed the design. What a moronic idea. Not only did he waste my time and the time of the installer, but he wasted money, because the manufactured parts had to be re-manufactured. AND there is no function anymore. There was mobility in the unit I designed, now, not only is it immobile, there are things stuck on the shelves that you cant remove after the retrofit. Did I mention this was a moronic idea?

The JCPenney's idea of security and the people who blindly uphold it. I ordered something from Penney's and had it shipped to the store for pick-up. As the items were scheduled to be shipped the next day and the price was $1.50 cheaper. The order took 9 days to arrive in the store (should have shipped it to my house) and I had to take in the credit card I had ordered with. They wanted an imprint of my credit card. By this time, the credit card company had payed the bill, what is an imprint going to do for them? I asked, silly me. She said they would not let me pick up my order without an imprint of my card and if I didn't have it, I would need to come back with it. I asked if she would like to see my ID. No, just the credit card. I asked what she would do if I had stolen the credit card, bought stuff and had it shipped to the store because the billing address and the shipping address wouldn't match. She still didn't care!

My city. I received a letter in the mail from my city last Friday. It is time for you annual inspection of your back flow water valve. I called the city. If this is an annual test, how come I have not heard of it before and I have lived in this city for 8 years? If this is a city requirement, why isn't the city taking care of it. The dude, Marvin, called back saying they have been very lax in there annual requests within the populace and because it is on private property it is my problem. I agree. It is on my property therefore I should have to give a crap. The only person(s) who can be harmed if the back flow device is M and I. The city promises to shut off my water if this is not taken care of immediately. Wouldn't it have been nice to be informed of this earlier, instead of being taken by surprise? What if I can't afford to pay (I have to pay a mortgage before this) some guy to look at my back flow device? What if I can't afford to take time off of work to meet this guy? Seriously, turn off my water. Can they do that?

As you like it...

So, for those of you who are like me and surf the blogs to see what's out there... I started this blog for my college writing class. I have decided (until I get bored) I will be using this venue to explore my own thoughts (see previous post). I will try to be positive, once in a while, even as I use this to rage about the things I need to say, but that no one wants to hear.

Thanks for your support.
J

Things that make you go hhmm?

Out of office reply e-mails. Seriously, I am e-mailing you for one reason only. I know you are on vacation and I would like you to have the info when you get back. If you were in the office I would just walk down the hall and hand it to you. Besides, no one is so important that you need to advertise your absence. Just be gone, already. And quit rubbing it in.

Drivers going slower than I can coast on a flat surface; especially when the car is covered in skulls and crossbones, 'question authority', and Prodigy stickers. Trust me grandpa ain't listening to Prodigy.

Blog spot addresses that are for shopping. If I want to shop, I'll go and do just that. Not to mention the shopping blogs that have no 'next blog' button. I like yo surf the blogs, I just can't stand to get stuck.

Final Project

This will be my last post for this writing class. I believe I may turn it into a "how I see the world" blog at a later date.

The topic for my last post is Sustainable Development. I will be taliking about some of the things we can do to keep our environment healthy and useful for the public.

Real World Blunders

Have you ever been a victim of an inappropriate remark?
Of course. Who hasn't?
The latest blunder that has come out of my mouth was just the other day. I was working with the maintenance man at my office. He was fixing a piece of equipment for me. He dropped a loose screw onto the floor. I'll bet you can guess what I said. As I picked it up off of the floor, "Do you want a screw, Mark?" It's a good thing I've known Mark for about 15 years, as I turned a shad of red close to a beet, he just laughed and laughed.
Gratefully, we have a good relationship with each other and this didn't phase either one of us. If I had been working with someone else, the outcome may have been completely different. In this day and age, you never know if someone is going to sue you over you opening your mouth and accidentally having words fall out.

Real world: President Bush and his state of the union speech where he says," A country where our BREAST and brightest..." OK, Bush is an easy one. All over you tube you can find clips of Bush opening his mouth and some form of words come out, usually some mixed up metaphor. I have come to the conclusion Bush never reads his speeches until on stage. If he were to make these mistakes once or twice, oops. But it seems I hear something like this with just about every speech he gives. This does not instill a lot of confidence.

real world advertisments

Bad, Good, Good,Bad, and Good.

This would be the labels as you are looking at the ads.

1. To much information and very hard to read. What point is being made. Not to mention the red is alarming.

2.Sometimes grossing someone out to get the point across is required. By just saying, "Her toes fell off.", you can't understand what is happening. This picture hits you more viscerally.

3.This shows elegance. It is a statement that the watch can stand on its own.

4.The donkey is smelling the elephant's butt. Is this necessary? Is it meaningful? This doesn't make me want to pay attention to politics or the care about what is happening. By using two well known icon's it may have reached a larger audience, but the message lacks taste and intelligence.

5.The background is less fundamental to the ad as the double c. The name is what is important. The name and the iconic image of what the name inspires is what screams off the page.

Parallelism

I feel the write purposely choose to write his sentences incorrectly to make a bigger impact. There is repetitiveness and emphasis for each point the writer is trying to make.

I am supposed to pick something written correctly and rewrite it using parallels, but as I read this letter I find Mr. Lincoln used them himself. I was surprised to find such an astounding man writing so improperly. But, his using parallels really shows he meant what was said. Feelings don't happen one at a time, they come in a mad rush, stumbling across each other to get to the front of the line. Here is a fine example of Lincoln using his words to express his gratitude.


A letter written by President Abraham Lincoln.

Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mrs_bixby_letter.asp

The Craft of Research Summay (late)

Research, Researchers, and Readers: You have to make a connection with your reader. If you can't find a way to draw them in they will never read what you have wrote. Research is very important, you have to find the information from the right sources but most of all you have to have a question. You can't formulate an answer without having something to start with. a reason to write.
You also have to share information with the people you are working with. According to the book, you have to talk in abundance. By sharing and collaborating you will get a better paper but, if you don't communicate with each other the reasons for the paper may become muddy and the focus will be lost. We all have our own ideas on what to write and how to write it, but by sharing with each other we may learn something we may not have thought about.
My opinion: Communication is great, but it can be a lot of talk. Eventually, someone just has to take charge and make a decision or nothing will every be accomplished.

Asking Questions, Finding Answers: Flow Chart... Interest to topic, to questions, to answers.
Use the formula: 1. What is the topic I wish to study? 2. I want to know the why/ how/ or what of the topic. 3. This topic is significant and I with my reader to understand...

Making a claim and Supporting it: For every claim you must have a reason. It stands to reason you must explain every step of the process. You need to plan ahead so each argument is related in a clear and precise manner and each of those arguments must be held accountable. Why is it an argument if you cannot give a reason or support it.
Follow your plan, but you may need to make adjustments as you go. This is like an outline. You have an opening (this is where you draw the reader in) and you go from point to point. this will give you your rough draft. From this point it is just a manner of refining to ensure what you are tyring to say is really being said.

Integrating Sources Summary (late)

1.1 Three Basic Principles: Utilize your own writing, don't source so much of what you write so you loose yourself. Avoid ambiguity and always let your reader know whose voice it it. Point out that you are using a source before you actually use it.

1.2 Rules for Quoting: Quote only what you need and don't just quote to fill up a page. Use quotations and make sure the quote fits into the sentence you are constructing.

1.3 Quoting Blocks: Ensure the block is differentiated from the regular text.

1.4 Using Discursive Notes: This is mainly for argument papers by may be used sparingly if needed to say something but that something is not part of your general argument.

2.1 When to Cite: Whenever you use someone else's information!

2.2 when not to Cite: When using common knowledge it is not required.

2.3 Methods of Citing: Sequential notes, In-Text citing, Coding

2.4 Acknowledging Uncited Sources: Due to influences that may not be directly cited a thank you or acknowledgement is needed at the end of the paper.

3.1 Plagiarism: Plagiarism is purposefully or accidentally using someone else's work and not giving them credit.

3.2 Other ways of Misusing Sources: Misrepresentation or taking the information out of context would be bad.

3.3 special Hazards of Electronic Sources: Just because it is on the internet does not mean it is yours for the taking. You must still do the research and cite the correct author.

3.4 Disciplinary Consequences: Please see your student manual. Plagiarism is bad!

3.5 How to avoid High Risk Situations: Don't procrastinate and don't ask a fellow student for their notes when you have procrastinated. They may not know what you need to know. find a secondary source that you trust. Take notes while you are reading the material instead of afterward and take them in your own words, this will make it easier to form your own sentences later.

4.1 Placing Citations in your Paper: We use MLA, but it can be done in other ways depending on the type of written material and the end product in which you desire.

I just added this one because I liked the way it turned out.

I remember. Do you remember? I remember that feeling of lying in the middle of my sandbox. I had my Matchbox cars and my Tonka trucks. I remember the scratchies, that feeling of dry sand scraping across my elbows and knees as I built my roads with a front-end loader and crashed through them with my dump truck. During summer, the sun baked the sand into a hard, crisp surface. I would race my little red dragster up and down the hills, around corners with the tires screeching and flying out of control. Crash! Oooohhh! I moaned as I staggered out of the car, dazed and broken. My imagination would run wild at the scene of destruction: the blood, the guts! Eeewww! I remember the coarse sand in my hair, tickling my skin, as I rolled around in fits of laughter. I knew I would have to start again. I would race to the other side of the sandbox, I needed road equipment. I need to fix my sand and get back to driving. I parked my little red dragster by my dump truck. Hello, up there! My dragster would bellow up to the of the Tonka dump truck. And I would scream in laughter as the dump truck would pretend he didn’t see the little car and run right over him.
I remember how perspective changes things as you get older. I am now the tiny red car or a full-sized white pick-up truck as the case may be, parking and driving next to haul trucks that can hold 400 tons of material (that’s bigger than your house). The sand’s texture has changed, not only in feeling but it name. Now it’s ore. Driving on the same gritty dirt roads as these behemoths can leave a dry, flat taste in your mouth. I started laughing again, much quieter now, as I thought back to the ways I tortured that poor little dragster.

Seafood Festival- Real-world Grammar

I have read an advertisment about eating seafood. It was filled with facts but didn't mention the menu or the days of the special. The sentenced were written with appalingly bad grammar. This advertisment is so disconjointed it hurt my eyes to read it. It is a list of tidbits or facts but with no real point. How do I know if the seafood is fresh? And what do flamingo's ahve to do with it?

I have to assume there is a method to the madness and a team of advertisers got together to make this ad. At least one of them had to have had an english class at some point. It seems to me they choose to dumb down their language, maybe to pull in a crowd of lesser educated people. I am not sure but I think I am missing part of the ad. I will not eat there and I am so confused.

Ann Dillard Discussion Questions

1. To get in the writing groove Dillard talks about slowly titrating caffiene into herself, a measured amount at a specific rate to keep her up and motivated but not so much to be completely out of control. I would perfer to do just the opposite. I am a very anxious person with a brain that runs 900 miles a minute. For me to get into the writing mode I need something to calm me down. A nice shot of vodka would probably do the trick. As for my own rituals... I don't have a long enough attention span to create a ritual.

2. Bearing walls are in the eye of the creator. I think we both invent our own walls and we have to write for society if we want to sell our work and that will create many walls. Bearing walls are what keep the roof from crashing in, so I have always had a hard time tearing them down. I find doing to many rewrites discouraging and confusing. At some point I feel it would be better just to trash the whole thing and start all over. It wasn't good enough the first time and it probably won't be great after 20 rewrites.

3. Metaphors are very difficult for me to write as I tend to be a serious straight shooter; sometimes to straight. Metaphors sound great and all but you need to use them with some degree of decorum. Dillard's entire book was one metaphor after another. Don't get me wrong...She writes well and it was entertaining but I could only read in small doses. I kept asking myself when she was going to get to the point. In this day and age we are under the time crunch. We all have so much to do and so little time to do it.
Metaphors are useful, they complete the image. Paint it in our minds: if you will. But to use a metaphor for my own writing style would probably just end up a similie.

4. Writing is putting ideas on paper. It comes out in black and white. I don't understand the mystisism that Dillard say goes with her writing expierence. You don't pull out the magic hat, set it on your head and have word flow to paper. There are no voodoo rituals that will increase the amount of time spent in front of a computer. Every brain is just a little bit different but they basically work the same: synopsis fire and 'things' happen. Some people have a proclivitly towards certain types of 'things' and writing may be one of them. But to say writing is mystical makes me feel that maybe Dillard didn't believe in herself and her hard work.

5. I found Dillard to be very entertaining as a writer. She took situations to such an extreme you can't help be wonder how far she will go next. I think Dillard was vague when she wrote about writing because there really is no concrete way to write. Talent is a vague concept and not very definable either. There are rules with the English language: period's, comma's, paragraph's...but how do you describe a smell or a feeling with rules?

Me!

This blog is for my writing class but I found it to be pretty boring to look at. I finally got around to changing the template and I added a few pictures to make it more me. Hope that is ok.

Anonymity

Gratefully both Franklin and Douglass wrote with their own names but there were times when a writer either needs to protect themselves or new they wouldn’t get the respect they need to publish their works.
Women during the … centuries, oh, wait, up to about 1960 (and still do, I’m sure) had a difficult time getting books published unless they were romance novels. Now people use Pen names when they want to try a new genre or are trying to break into the business and have been rejected with their own name to many times.
Franklin and Douglass chose to use their own names probably for different reasons. Franklin was a well respected man. He was involved with the making of the government and was President of Pennsylvania. On the other hand; Douglass’ original last name was Bailey (although I can’t find when the change took place), he may have changed his name after so many people said that writing like his couldn’t have been written by a slave with no education.
If I were to write something I would write it in my own name. No one knows me and just by that I would still have some anonymity. I think, sometimes it in nice to share with others while still keeping the secret safe.

Real world grammer examples

While perusing the 'real-world' grammar examples that were assigned I noticed, many, comma's, added, in, the, sentences. I thought they read very badly. I understand that a point was being made. Take the Turkey Bacon Sandwich, there was a comma after every word. Comma's are pauses, if you take the time to pause after reading each word (crisp, hot bacon, lettuce, tomatoe; etc) you have time to think about each one of the words and you get to (yes, I'll say it) digest each word then you are more likely to find it interesting and are more apt to have a hankering for a bacon burger from said restaraunt.

Inventing the University

"Writers who can successfully manipulate an audience..." that is powerful. By having the capability to assume some readers are brought into the fold while others are exiled and doing it on purpose is a heady thing. By having intimate knowledge of your readers you can manipulate their minds, change their way of thinking and bring about change, even if it is only in a small way. By knowing someone for whom you will be writing and by being able to write what will intrigue them you will slowly build an audience, wether of one or thousands. But each one will compare or contrast what you have written and your readers will continue to grow.

Writing

I haev absolutly no idea what to write as I am creating a blog for a college writing class.