A couple weeks ago, I was about to submit this as a comment on a post I liked -
Even the CAD tools I work with break this same way. A tool gets updated, then a software kit is re-released with updates, and after a few iterations, regression becomes impossible. Anything important but too old to run gets partially or fully re-created. Since mostly grunt-level (actual do-the-work type) professionals are affected, the extra work is invisible!
Now, before I get too excited about that day. Here’s more background. I put a version of this comment into a grammar checker. After it caught my typical hyphen failures and a missing article, It admonished me about “passive voice misuse”. If I wasn’t so reticent about my writing, I’d consider going to a paid grammar checker. As it is, being teased by a tool about my failings is a really good way for me to learn. So, for now, that’s what I’m doing.
My speaking and writing are much the same. I jumble together run-on sentences, and I misuse passive voice. To a normal human, this is a speech pattern worthy of interruption. Amazingly, this is my experience. Who would have thought that just about every person around me was helping me error-check?
But more to the point, I also like to complain. That whole comment is a complaint. When I hear another person complain, it feels like love, so I want to complain. That way, both of our miseries will have company.
Except, I’m not upset about much, not anymore, anyway. That makes my complaint an exercise in chest-thumping. Telling the same kind of story is slightly, to very, rude. It can feel like a one-up-man-ship. My intention is me-too(!), but to a lot of guys, it’s more like, “Oh, that’s nuthin’. Here, hold my beer.”
So, I get interrupted a lot.
Even when I don’t have a thing to complain about, I complain. It takes five seconds to find something in the news to complain about. I’m a pro.
So how about that weather nine years ago? You know, when we had an early frost and a late frost, and lots of things suffered? "Sure," you say, then you go on. "We lost all of our fruit that year, and it damn near killed the trees." Well, how about that? I say.
Every year, I learn something big. So by that math, I figure maybe I'll learn a couple dozen more new big things before I die. It might be possible. That’s progress. I might ask my partner about it. Who knows?
I write backwards. It might be a multiple language symptom, for example German puts verbs at the end of a sentence, an example of how each language developed its own logic system. Czech has ten cases with each demanding a verb accordance. Mandarin is a tonal opera. Subtle yet profound cognitive differences to communicating. So my thinking in English has been been corrupted, muddled in a tossed salad kind of way. That’s my excuse for my bad grammar and spelling.