The Sourcerer

Kathleen Kowal Portfolio

I've been working on my sister's portfolio. It's nigh finished and looking good. Take a peek!

Reading Update

Still working on the Kalevala. I finished re-reading "A Wizard of Earthsea", by Ursula LeGuin, last week. I need to read some more sci-fi.

Would You Like Fries With That?

Oh, how it irks me. I know it shouldn't. I know I should have more reserve, take it easy, or pretend that I don't have enough "cultural relativism" or respect for the continued evolution of language. But, let's face it, the language is in the hands of huddled masses of blind, uneducated, morons yearning to fill their faces with quickly prepared poison.

Allow me to explain.

If you listen very carefully while bird-watching in this urban jungle of ours, you will inevitibly hear someone, for the lack of imagination or rote memory for the laundry list of perfectly acceptable alternatives, say,

"May I help who's next?"

Oh, for the love all that is holy! I don't even know which grammatically incorrect rendition of that to use. Could they possibly be thinking, "May I help whose next?". I'm tempted to go buy a nasty power drill so I can excavate their brain for what the devil they are thinking. And they're everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

Excuse me miss, perhaps you meant "Who's next?". Did that seem too impolite? Did you think that tacking on some words from the prefix of, "May I help the next person in line?", would help? Would that have been too verbose? Perhaps you were looking for, "May I help you?". Or, "NEEEEEXT!".

So, if you're going to contribute to the evolution of the language, please do something reasonable. For example, I believe Ryan Witt has started a campaign to apply the concept of encapsulation to quotes, whereby punctuation apropriate to the quote would be written inside the quotes, and punctuation apropriate to the sentence containing it would be outside the quote. Good call, man.

Anyhow, I'm sure there's something better to do right now.

File System Quotas for Cix Rant

Come one, come all. Read my rant on file system quotas.

Will Google Return My Call - Part 2

I got a response from Google regarding my internship application.

That is, I got a a box with some nifty Google swag and a nice little note that didn't quite exactly not have NO written on it in big friendly letters. Well, it's a nice hat anyway.

As I wear this cap around campus, I wonder if it serves as a warning beacon to all who know what it portends.