Ain't Complicated

Errors in grammar, usage, and spelling can be very entertaining to the reader. But you may not want to have your writing provide that kind of entertainment.

Proofread your work!

Now let me break some bad news to you — we all easily miss some of our own mistakes.

Any honest proofreader or editor who knows his stuff will agree with me on that point.

So what to do?

Get another set of eyes hitched up to another brain.

But the cost is prohibitive. And I doubt your health insurance would cover the procedure.

It would be significantly less expensive for you to hire me.

If your piece has a maximum of 500 words, I charge $5 for English and $10 for Spanish.

For more details, including qualifiers and other prices, come on over to my Proofreading Service page.

My name is Mark Roth and I approve this message.

PS: At times I even email Web sites to tell them of typos and other errors I see. This morning I contacted USA Today (One EMP burst and the world goes dark) about a typo in one of their photo blurbs. It used to say “These eectricity transmission lines….” I just checked a bit ago; they fixed it. I haven’t heard back from them, though.

Mature Content

Oh, wow!

I wonder if that title will hang up in filters hither and yon. 😯

But this is only a light news quiz.

You know you’re keeping up on (some of) the news when you know the correct ending to this statement:

“We found a way to bring innovation to a category as mature as….”

Please post your best guess as a comment.

Please don’t post the answer if you had to use a search engine to find it.

If the correct answer isn’t given within 24 hours or so, I’ll try to remember to update this post with more information.

Thanks!

Update: I posted the above at 6:22 am (Pacific) on October 27. Now it is 8:10 am on October 30. The answer is … bath tissue!

Do You Trust Google?

It turns out Google’s Street View cars found out more about Internet users than previously acknowledged. Last Friday, the company said the cars, which roam the world taking pictures for its location-based applications, scarfed up e-mail addresses, URLs and passwords from residential Wi-Fi networks they passed by in dozens of countries.

[…]

Some privacy advocates say Google’s admission highlights a common attitude among high-tech firms that rush to get out new technologies without enough consideration of how consumers may be harmed in the process.

“First they said they didn’t gather data; then they said they did, but it was only fragments; and today they finally admit entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords,” said John Simpson, director of consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “Maybe some Google executives are beginning to get it: privacy matters. The reality, though, is that the company’s entire culture needs to change.”

Source: Google ‘mortified’ that Street View cars scarfed up e-mail, passwords; privacy criticism intensifies

If they’re stealing and abusing data from people, what are they doing with the data people give them willingly?

Think: Gmail, Buzz, Maps, Docs, Search, API, and on and on!

Oh, and let this be another reminder to secure your wireless networks, OK?

One Dark, Drizzly Night….

Our two boys (26 and 16) were mowing.

In the dark.

By flashlights.

Racing the rain.

And already in the mist.

Neighbor (53?) heard their mowers.

Investigated.

Returned with his weedeater.

To trim around the headstones.

For they were mowing our church cemetery.

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word,
even in this;
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
–Galatians 5:14

(Thank you, SteveH!)