STC Eastern Ontario Blog http://blog.stceo.net And out of chaos came order... Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:36:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 The State of the Union, an addendum http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union-an-addendum/ http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union-an-addendum/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:36:29 +0000 admin http://blog.stceo.net/?p=130 I’ve been an absentee STC chapter president for the last year, perhaps longer. I stayed on as president for 2008/2009 only because no one else stepped forward to fill the role. The general burnout of the chapter board combined with the marked apathy of the membership led to us not holding a competition this year for the first time since, well, since we started holding competitions  many, many years ago. And we’ve held no program meetings, not even the Fall kick-off. We’ve dropped into a black hole and no one really noticed. Or, worse, they’ve noticed but just didn’t give a damn. I’ve had emails from a total of about five people since the chapter year started asking what was going on with some aspect of the chapter. Five. And one of those was a non-member.

When I joined this organization and this chapter, I was full to bursting with a very annoying amount of enthusiasm. I could see the chapter fading and didn’t want to see it disappear. Unfortunately, it seems I may end up being the president (or rather the “acting president”) who ushers the chapters into the afterlife.  It’s so not the position I thought I’d ever be in.

The ship is going down, folks.

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union-an-addendum/feed/ 0 The State of the Union http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union/ http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:33:03 +0000 admin http://blog.stceo.net/?p=131 (This is a copy of the notice that I just posted on the chapter’s home page.)

We’ve always had difficulty finding sufficient enthusiastic volunteers to run the chapter. Enthusiasm is difficult to sustain in a vacuum.

Apathy

This past year’s chapter executive consisted primarily of people who hadn’t volunteered for the job but had agreed to stay on to keep the chapter going at a minimum activity level. It’s been an interesting experiment. We didn’t hold a competition this year and only one person contacted us to ask about it. We haven’t had any program meetings at all this year and less than a handful of people over the entire year have asked about it. Those are two of the key offerings this chapter has. If no one really noticed their absence (or noticed but didn’t care), then does the chapter really serve any useful purpose?

Is there a future?

We’re facing the very real prospect of shutting down the chapter. Unless someone comes forward with a full slate of candidates for the 2009/2010 board, we will be forced to take steps to dissolve the chapter, probably by the end of the calendar year. “Full slate” means at the very least a president, a vice-president, a treasurer, and a secretary. If you want program meetings to resume, you’ll also need a program manager. If you want a competition this coming year, you’ll also need a competition manager. If you want a newsletter, you’ll need someone for that as well. And they need to have a decent measure of enthusiasm or you’re just prolonging the inevitable.

I’ve opened the nominations form. You can also e-mail me if you’re interested. Nominations are open until at least June 15, 2009.

Kitty MacAlpine
Acting President
2008/2009 STCEO Board

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2009/06/01/the-state-of-the-union/feed/ 0 More fun from Failblog http://blog.stceo.net/2008/07/22/more-fun-from-failblog/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/07/22/more-fun-from-failblog/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:24:25 +0000 admin http://blog.stceo.net/?p=128 I had a conversation with a friend the other day about being careful when you order a cake from the supermarket because they will spell it exactly as it reads — if it’s misspelled, they’ll misspell it on the cake; if there’s a typo, they’ll include the typo on the cake. Similar things happen with printers and other service providers to whom you submit your job electronically. Savvy recipients of potentially problematic orders would confirm them (I would hope). One wonders which direction the translation error occurred — was it being translated from English into Chinese or Chinese into English? Obviously the software was functioning in English.

The Chinese characters to the left apparently mean (literally) “food hall” or “canteen”.

fail owned pwned pictures

see more pwn and owned pictures

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/07/22/more-fun-from-failblog/feed/ 0 Failure to communicate http://blog.stceo.net/2008/05/31/failure-to-communicate/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/05/31/failure-to-communicate/#comments Sat, 31 May 2008 17:39:35 +0000 Kitty http://blog.stceo.net/?p=125 If you ever look at the blogroll or links list on this blog, you’ll have seen the link for the Stick Figures in Peril Flickr pool. The pool consists of very funny interpretations of frequently very confusing or poorly designed stick fugure diagrams. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. Darren Barefoot’s “Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness” is also a fun source of failed instructions and documentation.

Those particular sites come to mind because I was browsing the FailBlog.org archives today and came across this additional example:

Hat Usage Instructions? Fail
more funny fail pictures at FAIL Blog

Do you really have to include instructions with a hat telling people not to wear it on their butt or feet? And really, is it our right to tell people that they *can’t* wear a hat anywhere they want to? Frankly, if someone can hold a hat on their butt, they’re more than welcome to in my books. :-)

The comments in that post led me to English Fail, a blog highlighting “User-submitted FAIL pictures of the English Language”. The submissions include images of typos, poor grammar, and bad translations. It’s slightly more anal retentive and nitpicky than funny. (Darren’s site contains funnier examples, as does Engrish.com.)

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/05/31/failure-to-communicate/feed/ 0 Order of letters not important? http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:15:44 +0000 Kitty http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/ I’m sure most of you have seen this e-mail at some point. I can’t remember the first time I saw it but I remember the two last times because both happened at work, one quite recently.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I don’t know what possesses people to just blindly forward things like that on to every one they know without doing a tiny amount of research. It takes only a quick Google search to find Matt Davis’ page at the University of Cambridge, which analyzes each sentence of the meme to explain why that particular paragraph is easy to read and why it isn’t as simple as the meme itself would have you believe. He also shows examples of the meme in other languages.

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