cellio | random bits

There's a parlor game going around that calls for the poster to list three things he has done that he doesn't think any of his readers have done. I think I must be too boring; I can't think of three (that would also be interesting enough to post).

I keep a log for Erik, recording anything unusual and all medication starts/stops. I started doing this because I thought there might be correlations between meds and appetite changes; none have emerged so far, but it's turned out to be useful in other ways. ("Any vomiting?" "June 2, in the morning". "You know that stuff?") So anyway... Erik's appetite had been low last week, so at my vet's direction I gave him fluids for a few days (also logged). Things got better so I stopped, but Monday he was back to not eating so I hit him again, this time with a bit more because I could (150ml). Tuesday's log entry: "oink". :-) Good to see that work sometimes... (The healthy appetite has continued today.)

I have a minor workplace mystery. Yesterday someone left me a post-it note containing a charge code and nothing else, and used my Sharpie to do so without recapping it (so it was dried out and useless). I asked the usual suspects, but no one recognized the code. Shrug. Today I came in to find my entire post-it pad and several pens missing. WTF? I have the back desk in a two-person enclosed space; it's unlikely that a passerby needed a pen or some paper and my desk was the most convenient source. I wonder what surprise will greet me tomorrow.

Language peeves: "council" is a body; "counsel" is what advisors give. "Populous" means there are lots of people; "populace" is the people. The "populous" should not be giving "council" to anyone, ok? (Both of these errors are common on SCA mailing lists.)

Language Log reproduces some careless spam from Barnes and Noble. I like the poster's method of thanking them.

Funny cat video via thnidu.

Something in our house is chirping intermittently. It sounds like a smoke detector, but we've changed all the relevant batteries and it hasn't stopped. It does not happen predictably (and when it does it chirps only once), so it's very hard to localize. Whee.

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I bet you've done things the rest of us haven't, what with your music, your conversion, your creer, your cats...

Misuse of populous is one of my pet language peeves too!

I had a chirping a couple of weeks after changing smoke detector batteries. I had forgotten about the carbon monoxide detector in the kitchen, which is mounted on the side of the refrigerator just above the floor.

Argh. I tried to construct a sentence where the phrase "populous should give council to" appeared, but was defeated by 'council' being a discrete noun and 'counsel' being a mass noun.

Yeah, but I have to have done things that none of you have done. That's harder. :-)

I think part of why it jumps out at me so much (more than other near-homophones) is that "-ous" is almost always an adjective. (Anecdotal evidence only; I haven't done a dictionary analysis.) How likely is it to be a noun?

Oh, forgot to mention that. We changed the battery in the CO detector too. :-(

I would hope that wasn't the only thing that defeated you. :-)

It was, actually. If you let me use 'councils' instead, I can construct the following (admittedly somewhat tortured) paragraph:

The people of this country live in two types of counties, the populous and the sparse. In order that the government of the entire country reflect the will of the majority, the elements contributed to its composition must vary by county--the sparse should give single advocates, while the populous should give councils to each of the particular departments of justice, trade, etc, with the advocates merely observing and the councils having final authority.

There was intermittent beeping in my apartment last week. I kept taking down smoke detectors and moving them around in an attempt to use directional hearing to no avail. Turns out that I was on call, and the pager (which is normally obnoxiously loud, enough to wake the dead) was quietly chirping to tell me that its battery was low. *sigh* It took me three days to guess that, even though it started around the time I was given the pager...

You might be able to fool it by making "council to" part of a noun phrase:
"The council to the king has been decimated by recent plagues, and is down to a single person, who is very busy. Therefore, groups that are populous should give council to the king sufficient time to ponder decisions."

Not a very good sentence, for I would use "the council to the king", but close. Vaguely.

Oops. :-)

Something in our house is chirping intermittently.

Sounds like a Dreep. This is a sadistic little invention of our friend Doug White (not precisely SCAdian, but heavily involved in the founding of Carolingia). Dreeps are simply teeny circuit boards with a speaker, a battery and a capacitor with a little randomness in it. Every now and then, it quietly goes "dreep". Bloody things can last for *years*.

He gives them to friends as gifts. Some actually leave them running in their houses -- after a while, the brain tunes it out. But it drives houseguests *nuts*...

Oh, that's evil. :-)

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