So, what language do you speak? #tlh

So six days ago, tweeting from the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, @startrekconv09 posted the following:

After @tlhIngan re-posted (and sadly shortened) the tweet, @darinarrick replied.

I was going to jump on in, but other things got in my way. I also had more to say than could fit in a 140 character message. So here we are.

Yes, in "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS) Korax boasts that "half the quadrant is learning Klingonese". Impressive.

That word in not heard again until Quark uses it in "Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" (DS9).

The in-universe novel "The Final Reflection" by John M. Ford refers to the language as "Klingonaase", giving "Klingonese" as a Human mispronunciation.

All other on-screen references to the language simply call it "Klingon". And why not? Star Trek is very good at reuseing the same name as often as possible. Spock is a Vulcan. He was born on Vulcan. He speaks Vulcan.

And then came Marc Okrand. (Well, "then" is a relative term timeline wise...). The language that he created is called tlhIngan Hol. It simply means "Klingon language" in Klingon. And in his book "The Klingon Dictionary" the language is referred to as "Klingon".

So even though the actors seem to be using "Klingonese", the fans and the creator of the language himself, refer to it as "Klingon".

And given the similarities between "Klingonese" and "Klingonaase", especially in the way they're pronounced, I'm more likely to merge them into the same thing. I only use the term to refer to the language as used in "The Final Reflection".

I'll use tlhIngan Hol to distinguish between "Klingonese" and "Paramount Hol" (the language as mis-used by the TV writers).

Otherwise, I'll simply say "Klingon".

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If I were to list the language on an application, I would write "tlhIngan Hol".

  is how it looks in the native Klingon writing system of pIqaD.

Doing a Google search on "xifan hol" will pull up results on tlhIngan Hol.

The HTML language code for Klingon is tlh.

My Life According to Miley Cyrus

(Figured I'd post this facebook note as a blog which will forward to
fb anyway. Share it with my blog readers too)

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.
Pass it on to 25 people you like and include me (presuming I'm someone
you like).
You can't use the band I used.
Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think!
Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Follow these simple instructions: Go to "notes" under tabs on your
profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type
your title as "My life according to (band name), erase my songs &
enter your answers, tag 25 people including me (tagging is done in the
right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

Pick your Artist:
Miley Cyrus

Are you a male or female?
"He Could be the One"

Describe yourself:
"Fly on the Wall"

How do you feel:
"Beautiful"

Describe where you currently live:
"These Four Walls"

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
"You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home"

Your favorite form of transportation:
"Butterfly Fly Away"

Your best friend?
"True Friend"

You and your best friend are:
"The Best of Both Worlds"

What is the weather:
"Before the Storm"

Favorite time of day:
"You and Me Together"

If your life was a TV show what would it be called:
"Crazy"

What is life to you:
"Fairytale"

Your relationship:
"It's All Right Here"

Your fear:
"The Bottom of the Ocean"

What is the best advice you have to give:
"Send It On"

Thought for the Day:
"Nobody's Perfect"

My soul's present condition:
"Peace"

My motto:
"Life's What You Make It"

The 3's of Me

Facebook note posted as a blog (which forwards to fb) to spread the
love to my blog readers. I'm nice like that.
Or too lazy to figure out facebook...

You've been tagged. You are supposed to write a note with the 3's of
YOU. At the end, choose 20 people to be tagged.
You have to tag me so really you just need 19 more people.
If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you - but not
in a creepy stalker kind of way.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, copy then
paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 3's of Me,
tag 20 people - in the right hand corner of the app - then click
publish.)

Three names I go by:
1.  (naHQun)
2. roneyii
3. Drug Guy

Three Jobs I have had in my life
1. Drug Runner
2. Professional Klingon Translator
3. Box Folderer (guy who folds boxes)

Three Places I have lived
1. San Jose, CA
2. Plano, TX
3. San Diego, CA

Three Favorite drinks
1. Dr Pepper
2. Slurpee
3. Fruit Punch

Three TV Shows that I watch
1. Hannah Montana
2. The Wizards of Waverly Place
3. Star Trek

Three places I have been
1. North/South Continental Divide
2. The Temple
3. Here

People that text me regularly
1. Connie
2. A little bird ;-)
3. Dalyn

Three of my favorite foods
1. Milk
2. Chocolate
3. Peanut Butter Sandwhiches

Three friends I think will respond
1. You
2. Not Connie, she started this
3. I think I summed it up in number 1

Three Things I am looking forward to
1. Finish Moving
2. Translating Time
3. Miley Cyrus concert in November

Three Wishes
1. Less Debt
2. more Unicode support for pIqaD (You can't read that ---->  can you?)
3. World Peace (I was really at a loss)

Can you let in ONE member of an angry mob? [MATURE CONTENT WARNING: READER DISCRESSION IS ADVISED]

There's an angry mob outside your door. They're trying to break it down.
There's no way they'll do it on their own, your door is pretty tough.
Regardless of your defences, you're responsible for everyone's safety,
and so you stand guard.

You can hear the crys and shouts from the mob.
One of the voices begins to stand out. He's able to shout louder and
you begin to listen. You start to feel sorry for him, being stuck
outside with the mob. His words make sense. You may not see
eye-to-eye, but he has good reasons for entering through the door.

You want to let him in. Should you?

Your answer may have been "Of course not! The mob will pour in unstoppable."

Or it may have been "The safety of that one man is worth the risk of
everyone inside, let's get him in. Somehow."

At the moment, there are several groups trying to redefine both
marriage, and what is sexually acceptable in society.

Don't start screaming at me yet, hear me out. You really don't know
what's coming next.

Now regardless of which group you belong to, you have your own set of
moral standards. There are things that *you* consider to be "wrong" or
"going too far".

Several states here in the US have legalized same-sex marriage.
Several have tried and failed.
But this is just the beginning.

They're represented by that guy you wanted to let in. But there's
still a mob outside your door. They want in too.
They also feel that they need to be legally represented and protected.
Right or wrong, they want it.

Once you decide that marriage is NOT between "one man and one woman",
you have to decide what it is.

So, what is it?

The biggest voice seems to be saying that it's between "two people".
But that's rather vauge.

And why just two?

There are people out there that want to leagalize triads.

The term was new to me too. A triad is a loving relationship between
THREE partners of ANY gender combination who love each of the other
two partners equally.

What do they want? To have legal marriages. If for nothing else, the
legal benefits would be nice.

But why bother writing the word "three" into the lawbooks? We'll just
have to go back and legalize four in a few years anyway.

So we'll just leave that open.

Marriage is now a loving relationship/commitment between people.

This will more than likley legalize "traditional" plural marriage in
the process.

Everyone is happy now, right?

Almost.

You say your uncle wanys to marry his goat?
I'm only slightly joking.
One of the benefits of marriage is sex. Even without marriage, people
have sex. But "marriage" is the term being redefined at the moment, so
we'll jump onto that bandwagon.

I hear news stories. Not often as I avoid the news, but they're there;
people and animals.

So we now omit the word "people" from our definition.

That is one loose definition, but it should cover everyone.

Oh, but there's that unwritten part.
The part covered by other laws and sublaws.

Age.

If that guys uncle can marry his goat, why can't this guy's uncle
marry that little girl?
Heck, why can't he marry his niece?

And on it goes.

No matter how many people you let in that door, there's always going
to be somebody else trying to get in.

Once you unlock it, how do you choose who to let in?

Where do you draw the line?

I didn't call anyone right or wrong, I just said that they want to be
called "right". And the more you say "yes", the harder it will be to
say "no".

How hard can it be to buy a charger for an @Palm #Prē?

So back on July 15th, I was at work.

Wait, let me back up.

The third Wednesday of every month, is  (wejDIch) Wednesday.

On this day all of my updates on Twitter (which are then forwarded to Facebook) are in Klingon.

ALL OF THEM.

So, on this third Wednesday of the month, I'm about to go and start my route for the evening, and I notice that my phone needs charged.

No big deal, I have my charger with me.

Or so I thought.

You see, normally I take my wall charger with me in the car, and via an adapter, I charge my phone through the cigarette lighter.

It just so happens that I forgot it. Again.

Hey! There's a Sprint store between me and my first stop. Two actually. I'll just pop in, buy a charger, and pop out. It'll be easy.

Or at least it should've been.

I show up at what used to be a Tony Romans restaurant, and go inside. The door clearly shows that I'm inside normal business hours.

I find my way to the little sign-in place to wait my turn to be helped.

A Sprint rep pops up at the desk and says "How can I help you?"

"I need a charger" I say while lifting up my phone.

I'm then informed that they're "too busy" to help me. I can't buy a charger.

"But I really need to buy a charger."

"My phone is going to die."

"My phone will NOT last through my shift. I NEED a charger."

Not only is this guy not selling me a charger, but he continues to get rudder and rudder and then flat out refuses to sell me a charger and practically kicks me out of the store.

He says they have too many customers to get to me. That there's a line and they just don't have time for me.

What‽

You're "too busy" and have "too many customers" to help me? You are *refusing* me service?

I was NOT happy. I was SO not happy that I tweeted about it. IN ENGLISH.

Yes, I broke my 24 hour Klingon-only tweeting and yelled at Sprint.

I'm sure this shocked my followers.

The next day, I stopped at the Sprint store where I bought my phone in the first place.

They were 10 minutes away from closing, had 1 rep and 1 customer.

Great.

Before I'm even through the door, I'm greeted by name.

It's made clear that he'll be glad to help me, but he's with someone else.

I let the rep know that I'm there for a *second* charger. That I keep forgetting my charger at home, and need an additional one.

"So you need a charger for your office"

Sure. No point bringing up that my office is my car. I'm cool with a car charger or the Touchstone.

The Touchstone is this really cool charger that charges 40%? faster than the wall charger and it charges via magnetic induction. You just set your phone on the hockey puck looking thing and it charges like magic.

For $75.

I don't have much of a choice as Walmart clearly doesn't carry any other options.

So I buy it and go to work.

Two hours later, I decide to play with my new toy.

I open the box, pull out the disk, and look for the cord. And look for the cord. And wonder where the cord is.

There's no cord.

Huh?

I read the box.

It requires the cord from my wall charger that came with my phone. This is clearly a problem.

This is NOT a *second* charger. It's a charger ACCESSORY.

IT'S AN ACCESSORY TO AN ACCESSORY!!!

It is useless for my needs.

I don't have $75 to just toss around for a cool disk. A cool disk that requires me to continue moving my charger back and forth from house to car and back again.

The next day I have my wife return the charger. I've had enough of this.

I haven't bought a new charger yet.

Xx

"X" is often overlooked as a letter. It's almost at the end of the alphabet, and it doesn't start many common words.

In fact, the only thing that x "is for" would be "xylophone" and "X-ray". And I don't remember the last xylophone I saw, let alone played.

But as ignored as it is, we sure do use it a lot.

X can mean "kiss"

X is the number 10

X marks the spot

X is one of two choices in tic-tac-to

X is where you sign your name

Heck, "X" could be how you sign your name

X can replace parts of words (x-ing)

XXX means porn

XXX is also the name of an action-packed movie.

The X Games

Xtra

Xtreame

Make a mistake? X is out.

Have a choice to make? X marks the one you want.

An X with a skull on top can mean "pirate" or "poison"



Yes, it's small, it's simple. But boy is it powerful and diverse. And it's worth 8 points in Scrabble

Florida High School Refuses to Retract Child Pornography

Early one morning 17-yearold high school student Jane Doe (names of minors are protected under the law) got dressed for school. It wasn't just *any* day, it was yearbook picture day. She had planned ahead and knew just the skirt to wear. She also planned not to wear anything underneath.

She decided that the best way to avoid her panty line showing was to just go without. Noone would notice.
But when it cane time for her club picture, she was placed in the front row. Sitting down.

She did her best to keep her legs together, but when she got ahold of her yearbook, she noticed something: you could tell.

Yes, according to Jane Doe and her mother, you can see Janes private parts in the yearbook. Other students tend to agree.

Jane has stopped going to school out of embarasment.

Jane and Mrs. Doe have asked (demanded?) that the school collect all of the yearbooks, stop giving yearbooks out, and republish sans the offending picture.

Seems reasonable.

The schoolboard has refuesed.

They claim that every picture goes through an approval process before inclusion in the yearbook and that you can not see Jane's privates in the picture.

"It's a shadow."

They seem to be very strongly convinced that they are in the right, and the yearbooks will remain unchanged. They're even trying to tell the local media to drop the story--because there isn't one.

Jane and mom are still upset.



I can see both parties points of view.

Jane knows that she "went commando" to school that day. Therefore she probably looked a little harded at the picture. She feels, and therefore her mother feels, that she has been exposed and embarresed in front of the entire school.

Having naked pictures of yourself floating around is never good.



The school knows that it will be *VERY* expensive to collect and republish the yearbooks all because one girl made a blunder. Of course they don't /want/ to do it.

The shadow? The moment they admit that Jane is right, and that her vagina is showing, they *MUST* remove the pic.
If Jane is right, then the school has published indecent pictures of a minor. The school is guilty of selling and distributing child pornography to minors and adults.

I wouldn't want to be on that school board.

It would cost A LOT to ensure that EVERY yearbook was collected and destroyed. Find the negatives and destroy them.

And what happens when someone refuses?


The safest course for the school is to deny that a problem exists. Meanwhile, hundreds of students have access to one very embarasing and highly illeagal picture.

Anyone of them could be charged with posetion. All it takes is one call...