The weather has been perfect (for me) this last month, 70F for the highs and 52F for the lows. Those who dream about swimming pools and splash-pads may be disappointed, but the month of May was certainly a comfortable one here. I see that’s all going to change soon so I will just have to grin and bear it while the more typical heat waves begin roasting the Heartland. One thing that still hasn’t changed, the damn grass won’t quit growing. I’m still doing the dance twice a week like some old retired guy with nothing better to do. Put it this way, despite having a small, neighborhood lot (0.3 acres) I’ve decided to buy a riding mower as I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life pushing a lawn mower twice a week…

Having entered my “Old Man Maintenance” era I have discovered new ways for technology to piss me off. Being 66, my doctor has been sending me on various missions like for a heart scan and yesterday to a dermatologist for a skin cancer screening. Thankfully all is well, but now I’m interacting with more “offices” than ever and these enjoy sending me automated text messages. I knew giving any of them my phone number was a bad idea. Now I get messages a week before reminding me of the upcoming appointment. Then two days before I get another one requesting I send back a Y or N confirmation if I intend to keep the appointment. Then the day before there is another reminder. The day of the appointment there is a “see you soon!” text message. By the time I arrive I’m spitting fire and ready to kill, but that would be pointless. No one in the office is doing this. The service originates from a server farm in Mumbai. I hate this communication technology…

I regularly follow Tim Bray’s blog and note his recent gripe about two differently bad ways to compare numbers. I have a pet peeve about the frequent usage of “ton” to mean any large quantity of anything. If you write, “I had a ton of QRM last night” you will get your point across, but I will be secretly judging you. A ton is a measure of weight and you can’t “weigh” radio interference with a scale. Same goes for a “ton of money” or food, or whatever. In a similar manner, Bray inveighs against the overuse of the term “orders of magnitude” with good reason:

“Order of magnitude” - Typically sloppy usages: “AI increases productivity by an order of magnitude”, “Revenue from recorded music is orders of magnitude smaller than back in the Eighties”. Everyone reading this probably already knows that “order of magnitude” has a precise meeting: Multiply or divide by ten. But clearly, the people who write news stories and marketing spiels either don’t, or are consciously using the idioms to lie. In particular, they are trying to say “more than” or “less than” in a dramatic and impressive-sounding way. Perversely, I guess you could argue that these bad idioms are useful in helping you detect statements that are probably either ignorant or just lies. Anyhow, now you know that when I hear them, I hear patterns that make me inclined to disbelieve. And I bet I’m not the only one…

Word.