Week 2 (and 2 thoughts on grammar)

As my second week as a real office employee was passing by, I gathered my thoughts for future blogging and tried to put them into words. This proved to be difficult. Not because I didn't have the words, but I didn't have anywhere to put them.

When I was working at home, I had a text file where I stored all my thoughts and blog topics. When I worked at MOM, I just never had thoughts. On the rare occasion when an idea surfaced, I typed it into my phone, which was quite a hassle, for my fingers just can't seem to get the hang of a phone keyboard, and my phone just can't seem to get the hang of loading apps efficiently.

Now that I'm working in the office, I'm having thoughts galore! I can't stop to blog about them, and a text file will be useless to me as soon as I leave for home.

I tried using Google Docs, but that was a pain because I have three Google accounts and the one I use for my blog is not the one I use for my Gmail, and multiple sign-in is not working smoothly. Plus, the one time I pasted text from a Google Doc, it went into my blog with all sorts of undesired formatting. I tried storing all my ideas in an email to send to myself at the end of the day, but after three days of forgetting to send the email, I knew that would not be a viable option. I then tried Microsoft Office on SkyDrive, which seemed like it was going to be a hit, until I noticed how slow it took to load. Only a few seconds, but when you're used to the instantaneous nature of a local text file, a few seconds is far too long. Especially when you have to go through this process every time you want to make a new note.

I started looking into other online storage options. I'm still looking into them. I don't know why I even told you about this, since it wasn't going to be the topic of this post, but if any of you are having similar idea-storage problems, maybe you will be interested in my reviews of the different options.

Anyway, the real reason that I'm writing is threefold:

This is a pixelated pixie.

1) Immediately after my last post, I noticed another linguistic phenomenon that I just had to complain about—the spelling of "pixelated." Yes, pixilated (with an i) is a real word. But unless you're using it to describe something that's slightly demented, you're using it wrong. If you want to talk about low-resolution computer graphics, you had better be using pixelated (with an e).

2) I thought of another mnemonic to help you remember how to use "diamond in the rough." It is actually what introduced me to the phrase: the Mary Poppins lyric, "Though you're just a diamond in the rough, Bert, underneath, your blood is blue!" Well, for this sentence to make sense, you must first understand that having blue blood is a good thing. But once you realize it is, then you'll know she wasn't going to preface "diamond in the rough" with a "though" unless she wanted to contrast it with the second phrase. Thus, if blue blood is unquestionably refined, a diamond in the rough must be unrefined.

3) I wanted to share a few tidbits about my new job. Now that the work has begun, it's kind of overwhelming! We have to redesign the site from scratch and learn a content management system that no one in the department is familiar with! Sometimes I think about all the stuff we have to accomplish and I get a little freaked out and start trying to do everything at once! Since no one has any specific role in the project at this point, we're all (3 of us, mainly) just messing around to find out what works, and I keep worrying if I try this thing, I'll end up spending a lot of time doing something someone else is already working on. Once we have established a direction, I'm sure it will be easier. But then I think about how I'm supposed to eventually train people to do this stuff that I don't understand myself, and I get all freaked out all over again. On the plus side, the department will buy me any training materials and software I think I need, which is a pretty great deal for someone who has always avoided learning out of books because it costs too much.