spell-checking gone wrong

From a post on the worship mailing list:

"I have to assume that your schedule of worship services...Sherbet, Passover, and whatever festival and services..."

Sherbet? Turn off the spell-checker, friend; it's doing you more harm than good.

Besides, the standard post-service food in most congregations is cookies, not frozen sweets. :-)

tools

If it's worth spending a grand or two on a computer and its various paraphenalia, it's worth spending a few bucks on the necessary support structure, like furniture. I know this intellectually, but I'm also fundamentally lazy so it took me a while to replace the piece of crap I was using for a chair at home. But I finally did tonight.

I'd been using something that was one step up from a basic folding chair. It wasn't adjustable, it wasn't quite the right height, and recently it began falling apart. I had to knock the frame back together about once a week, and on Sunday one of the two cross-braces fell out. Ok, ok; I can take a hint.

It's funny, because I'm very picky about my office chair at work, to the point where when I realized that MAYA wasn't going to give me a chair that I considered suitable, I went out and bought my own. My chair is probably the only one in our office that has a sticker on the back saying "personal property; do not remove". It's not that expensive a chair (listed for $99, and I got it for $79; I would have spent twice that), but it has what I want -- most importantly, the ability to move the back far-enough forward and lock it in place. The only kind of chair that lacks back support that I want to sit in is one of those kneeler chairs, and I haven't seen those in ages.

Buying a chair for work makes sense; I spend 8 or so hours a day, 5 days a week, sitting in it, so I should have something reasonable. But even if you only spend a couple hours a day in front of the computer, the chair matters.

I now, finally, have a decent chair at home. It's the same model as the one I have at work; may as well stick with what works, after all. And, to my amusement, it was on sale for $79 again. :-)

Now, if I could just find (or find someone to make) a monitor stand like the one I have at work...

small victories

I just, for the first time, correctly chanted my little chunk of Parsha Behar from the text as it appears in the Torah scroll -- no punctuation, no vowel pointing, no cantillation marks, tiny calligraphy. Yay!

Granted, it's one aliya of the weekday Torah reading, and in this parsha that's pretty darn short, but still -- it's as much as I did for the "adult bat mitzvah", and I learned it a heck of a lot more quickly this time and with much less help. I've got a month and a half to go; I bet I could learn the next aliya in that time. (I'm not sure I will, because it might look weird to do 2 out of the 3 and I don't think I can learn the third, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.)

And yes, I know I have to practice it periodically between now and then so it doesn't rot, but maintenance is easier than acquisition.

(no subject)

Today's paper reports that USAir has just arranged for a new promotion: accumulate 10 million frequent-flier miles, and they'll shoot you into space (for a few minutes). I want. Mind, I don't think the combined frequent-flier miles of everybody I know would add up to 10 million, but a person can dream. :-)