nerdflood

Someone on Twitter that I follow mentioned the allegedly “British” spelling of the word “grey”. I love discussing the word “grey” because it’s one of those beautifully awkward words that has morphed its way through our meat grinder of a language, and one of the few words where I have a specific personal set of guidelines that I follow for its usage.

In Old English, “grey” was actually written grǣg, using the terribly underutilized grapheme “æ“, which essentially amounts to a short “a” sound (as in “bat”). Over time, as the æ fell out of fashion due to typesetters breaking their machines attempting to set both the a and e so close in proximity to each other (I just made that up — it’s not actually true, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were?), most of the æ sounds came to be spelled with an “e” in British English, and alternatively, an “a” in the other non-English Germanic language origin variants.

Today, you could poll a thousand Americans and the divergence between using “grey” versus “gray” would likely be nearly 50/50. We have no real attachment to either spelling, and the “ay” and “ey” endings for any short word have very little variation (for instance: day, play, and stay all rhyme with whey, hey, and convey). So, for all intents and purposes, there really is no “preferred spelling” of grey. Or gray. You can theoretically use either one if you so desire.

My personal philosophy on the word “grey” is simple: I spell it differently based purely on my mood. The “e” spelling to me evokes a darker, more depressing aesthetic. “Grey” with an “e” is the traditional gloomy, overcast day, where you beg the sun to burn through the clouds and brighten your dismal countenance. “Gray” with an “a” on the other hand, feels light and whimsical. It’s the lovable old coot down the street, the amusing forgetful elephant, and the adorable cartoon mouse. There’s definitely a distinct emotional attachment to each spelling that is independent of the way the word sounds when spoken. Being a writer, I can appreciate that.

Okay, I think I’ve over-analyzed this enough.

Share this post on:

I was talking with a friend of mine about the horrors and pitfalls of our current economic crisis. We discussed such relevant topics as, how in God’s name can we afford $4.6 TRILLION worth of bailouts? And also, why are AIG executives taking taxpayer-funded retreats?

While we generally agreed on a great many debatable points, my friend balked at that last one. “That’s not really fair,” he said. “They had already planned that retreat prior to the bailout, and essentially used their own existing cash flow to pay for it.”

Wait a second. I don’t quite get that. Their own existing cash flow? “How does that compute?” I asked him.

As a response, he offered me an analogy. It went a bit like this:

Say you’re a kid with five dollars. Your mom asks you to go up to the store and buy some milk. She gives you five dollars to pay for it. You take your five dollars and her five dollars and you go up to the store and buy milk, and also a couple of comic books for yourself. Sure, you ended up spending ten dollars in the end, but you bought milk with the five dollars from your mom, and comic books with the five dollars you already had. You spent mom’s money on the things she asked for, and your money on things for you. In the end, everything is a wash.

A wash? No. I’m afraid that analogy didn’t really tell the whole sordid bailout story properly. I offered this friend of mine an analogy of my own that I felt was a tad bit more realistic:

Say you’re a kid with five dollars. Your mom asks you to go up to the store and buy some milk. She’s a bit short on cash at the moment, so she asks you if you wouldn’t mind spending your five dollars getting the milk. “But mom!” you say. “I wanted to spend that on comic books!” “Well, little Timmy. Times are tough. How ’bout you step up for mom here, hmmm?” You decide to fall back on your old standard: lying. “Oh, actually, I think I spent that money already.” “Fine, whatever,” mom says. She digs around the couch for some change, and then goes to the Chinese lady next door, and she somehow manages to scrape together five dollars for milk. You go up to the store with your five dollars and your mom’s five dollars and you buy nothing but comic books. No milk. Just comics. You come home and mom asks the obvious question, “where’s the milk?” “Oh,” you say to her. “I didn’t get it.” She’s not overly astonished, having traveled down this path before. “Well, then, what did you do with the money, little Timmy?” You say “Well, I spent it.” Not only is mom not angry, but she doesn’t even bother to punish you. All she does is warn you that next time, you had better be a bit more transparent about where the money is going.

Now, don’t you think that’s a much more accurate analogy of this gigantic monstrosity our lovely government has hobbled together? My friend didn’t think so.

It is. It truly, truly is beautiful.

Since the concept of playing with Legos is so near and dear to my heart, I found this FriendFeed thread by Iowa native Chris Pirillo (FriendFeed | blog) to be terribly interesting.

Upon reading this, it is your formal duty to bust anybody who violates this rule in FF threads. It’s not Legos, it’s LEGO. It’s not Lego, it’s LEGO. It’s not LEGOS, it’s LEGO. It’s not LEGOs, it’s LEGO. ALWAYS. </prick>

It’s actually somewhat true. Lego has always asserted that the term “legos” is not proper use of their brand name. Lego is supposed to be an adjective, and should always be capitalized: for example, LEGO toys, LEGO bricks, LEGO minifigs, LEGO universe, etc.

However, this is an archaic and ill-informed manner of operating. Essentially, Lego has attempted to force the control of their brand on consumers. Placing the burden of maintaining their brand presence on the very people that purchase their products is a practice that consumers will almost always reject — or simply ignore completely.

Brand management should always be a corporation’s job, never a consumer’s job. Sure, a smart company will allow the consumer to somehow take part in controlling the message — sometimes even without the consumer realizing they were acting as a marketing pawn. But forcing an arbitrary rule on consumers in order to protect your own brand recognition? That’s just a recipe for rebellion.

The most common way to circumvent this apparent Lego Law™ is to use the term “brick” instead. That’s why the premier Lego community is called Brickshelf and a lot of Lego-related blogs contain the word “brick”, such as the Brothers Brick. But even this is done almost as an act of defiance against Lego for their rule. So in attempting to “protect their brand”, Lego has forced people instead to simply abandon it altogether. Well done, Lego.

If I want to refer to Coca-Cola as “Coke”, there is nothing that the Coca-Cola company can do to avoid this. In fact, historically, they have even encouraged such an association through their advertising. Instead of pushing a backwards-thinking concept on their consumer base, Lego should instead be embracing the “legos” concept and encouraging people to associate the term “legos” with their products. Continuing to force this brand recognition practice on their consumer base doesn’t necessarily hurt their fan loyalty in any way. It’s not like there’s a better alternative competing lego-style product available anywhere (there really isn’t, I’ve looked – MEGA BLOKS hurt my brain). But it does more to hurt their overall brand than I think they will ever realize.

Democratic Presidential nominee hopeful Barack Obama has planned a rally tonight, right here in Des Moines, IA. The wife and I discussed it, and we plan on attending. Not only that, but we’re bringing our oldest son along so he can witness history in the making.

If this stories are to be believed, tonight’s rally will mark the “beginning of the end” of the heated Democratic slugfest between Obama and Clinton. Obama apparently plans to “declare victory” tonight, in Iowa – the first place to really declare him a winner just a few months ago.

I’m excited about this. I’ve never been involved in politics to this level. I’m excited to be there with my son at this potentially historical moment (the other one is too young to be up that late and will be spending the night at his gracious aunt’s house). It will be monumental, and I am delighted that I will be able to take part.

There’s also going to be a pre-event #dmtweetup at East Village Books, hosted by the lovely and gregarious store owner @flysupes, featuring Mario Kart and beer! Must have badge to enter.

I can already tell; it’s going to be a great day to be an Obama supporter.

It was spring cleaning today on the Nerdflood blog. I moved a lot of stuff around on the sidebars because I wasn’t liking the arrangement. There was more stuff I wanted to add, and things that needed removing. I cleaned up my “Find Me Online” list to only show places where I actually currently tend to hang out. Twitter is definitely the top spot these days, replacing any forums I used to frequent. I hardly visit Facebook anymore, for obvious reasons. I added an “Upcoming Movies” section to display my nerd cred, and a “Reading List” to cement it. And, just because I know there’s a generous person out there somewhere that will someday visit my blog, I’ve also added my Amazon.com wish list.

The left-hand side is just the various blog stuff: calendar of posts, archive, categories, etc. Below my usual shared items feed I’ve added an RSS stream of tweets from the #dmtweetup crew, ’cause they’re good people. Er, “tweeple”.

But what’s really amazing is that after using this WP theme for over a year, I’m still not ready to get rid of it yet. That’s surprising – I’m usually bored with any theme within a couple of months.

Of course, now that I say that, I’ll probably change it this weekend.

The wife didn’t like the font of the new banner, so I made yet another alteration. I’m very happy with this one and can guarantee that it will remain on the site for at least another day. Beyond that point, no promises.

It’s still a good two week until May, but I felt like putting together a new banner. The rule is no longer “new banner every month.” The rule is now “new banner whenever I feel like it.”

A couple of co-workers and I decided to play a friendly game of darts over our lunch hour today. In the process, we experienced our very own “fail“.

We were playing a certain type of dart game that I was unfamiliar with. Basically, you begin with 300 points and you continue to throw the darts, each point you gain being removed from the starting 300. The first player to get to zero exactly wins.

One of my co-workers had only 14 points remaining. So, what did he do?

He somehow managed to hit the number “14″. Spectacular FAIL.