
DungeonmasterCal |

I paid a $31 fee on an overnight 13 cent OD. I need to figure the APR on that.
CH, can you do that for me? I'm too lazy.
No, I'm afraid I can't. I'm not lazy, I'm just no good at the arcane mechanics of mathematics.
And sorry about your wasp sting. I haven't been stung by anything in at least 20 years (knock on wood) but I was stung numerous times as a kid growing up on the farm. I hated it. I also discovered I have a mild allergy to them, so while an epi pen isn't needed, lots of Benadryl is.

Treppa |

Yeah, everybody told me German was so haaaard, so I took French in high school in order to focus on science and math courses instead of language. Then I found conversational German to be really, really natural. 6 weeks of the Berlitz course on tape, and I was ready to find the train station AND the airport.

David M Mallon |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |

Yeah, everybody told me German was so haaaard, so I took French in high school in order to focus on science and math courses instead of language. Then I found conversational German to be really, really natural. 6 weeks of the Berlitz course on tape, and I was ready to find the train station AND the airport.
My mother speaks six languages. She tried to teach me German and Dutch when I was a kid. I took to them like a duck to hot tar.

Patrick Curtin |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

So I got a call from my possible new supervisor. He was wondering what was going on. I told him I was waiting on the green light. Somehow I would have thought he would be in the loop for this ;/
The upshot is that I am trying to contact the HR guy I had spoken with to see if I have a firm committment because the new supervisor wants me on the ground in DC by the end of July
O.o
Sh*t's getting mad real, yo.

aeglos |

weather should improve today, thankfully
the boy is bouncing off the walls beeing inside all day during the daycare holidays
last friday we went with him to the playmobil fun park in Nuremburg.
they build all the playmobil classics in real life size there, like the castle, the pirate ship, all with life size playmobil figures, than there is a huge building with every playmobil toy in it for the kids to play
we had great fun
it is more like a giant playground than a traditional amussement park
and it is rather cheap, a trip to the zoo or the cinema would have been more expencive

David M Mallon |

I usually watch any shows while I'm working, so its over a computer. These new comps here don't even have a CD/DVD drive
I know, it's pretty f@!~ed-up. I made sure to buy a USB CD drive when I purchased my most recent laptop.
Mostly I just play DVDs on my [free] XBox 360 and [free] TV monitor, both of which were left by a previous roommate who was in a bit of a hurry to get the f$@$ out of Syracuse.

aeglos |

Yeah, everybody told me German was so haaaard, so I took French in high school in order to focus on science and math courses instead of language. Then I found conversational German to be really, really natural. 6 weeks of the Berlitz course on tape, and I was ready to find the train station AND the airport.
a lot of words are similar in German and English and the roots are the same: germanic mixed with latin influences
norwegian, swedish and dutch are similar enough to german for me to mostly understand writen sentences in these languages, spoken it is a bit harder

aeglos |

Sabines computer broke down and is now with an expert for data recovery :-(
all the baby pics from the girl and 70 pages of life memories from my dad are on this pc without backup
I just found my to do list from the two month parental leave in spring, all boxes ticked with on exeption:
Data backup !!!!!!
aaargh

Patrick Curtin |

Sabines computer broke down and is now with an expert for data recovery :-(
all the baby pics from the girl and 70 pages of life memories from my dad are on this pc without backup
I just found my to do list from the two month parental leave in spring, all boxes ticked with on exeption:
Data backup !!!!!!
aaargh
That's the worst feeling. Been there, paid $100 to fix :(

Patrick Curtin |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I like studying languages. I am a natural linguistics freak. It's fascinating to see how certain words morph and shift over the different language families.
I love the story of English when it comes to animals and their meat. It tells an interesting story.
After the Norman conquest, the Norman French were in control. Norman French was the 'elite' language, and stayed so for hundreds of years afterwards. Anglo-Saxon became the peasant's tongue. When you look at modern English this dichotomy is evident in the linguistics of meat. The lower class would tend the animals, therefore the animal names stayed Germanic. The upper class ate them, thus their meat names became Latinized.
Cow-Beef
Pig-pork
sheep-mutton
It tells a story without meaning to.
The same with surnames. I find them fascinating. My own, Curtin, is an Anglization of MacCruitian, which is Gealic for 'son of a hunchback'. The English surname Barnicle is actually Norse derived from 'bairn nie kell', or 'don't kill the kids', a surname of a [relatively] tender-hearted Viking. Any name with 'Fitz' is Norman French for 'son of', same as the Gaelic 'Mac/Mc'

Patrick Curtin |

In Arabic the surname 'Hadad' is literally 'Smith'. And it is as popular as Smith is as a surname. The reason that Smith is so common is postulated that Blacksmiths were a prestigious profession, and one that could always find employment and earn a living, even during famines and other hard times. As such their children died off less frequently, leading them to have an evolutionary advantage.

Patrick Curtin |

English is Celtic, conquered by Latin, conquered by German, conquered by Norse, conquered by Norman French, then went on to conquer 3/4 of the known world.
Or as James Nicoll once famously said:
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Treppa |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

I love languages, but my brain has thresholds.
I took the conversational German course before a trip to Germany (Bavaria), Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. We stayed in the rural areas of Bavaria, so I was immersed in German for a couple of weeks and picked it up readily.
In Salzburg, I spoke German with a shopkeeper to buy souvenirs, then went outside to wait for the rest of the group because the store was crowded. A group of French ladies were exclaiming over the jewelry in the window and included me in their conversation in a very friendly manner. I had six years of French in high school and college, so was able to properly praise the bijoux and was tickled to trot out my halting French. It was a bit hard making the switch from German to French, but I was managing and they were very encouraging.
Then my husband came out of the store and spoke to me in English, and my brain broke. I couldn't understand what he was saying, nor could I understand any of the languages around me. I also couldn't speak. This lasted about five terrifying minutes before English trickled back.

Treppa |

Sabines computer broke down and is now with an expert for data recovery :-(
all the baby pics from the girl and 70 pages of life memories from my dad are on this pc without backup
I just found my to do list from the two month parental leave in spring, all boxes ticked with on exeption:
Data backup !!!!!!
aaargh
D: Oh no, oh no! I hope they can recover it for you.