Sidewalk Chalk Art

This guy has a realy good grasp on POV and commercial graphics. The people walking by don’t see the perspective that the camera has, so most of them are wondering what’s going on…

When someone sneezes, what do you say?

Scat there! — Mom and Grandma used to say this. Thinking about it more, it’s almost a scaring away of the thing that is making you sneeze or maybe the germs of your cold. (??) Possibly to ward off the fariries tickling your nose. who knows.

Bless you. — This one is very church-worthy. A general blessing for either better fortune, a cleaner environment, peace from above, whatever it is that might make you stop sneezing all over everyone. :]
Here’s what Snopes found.

Gesundheit! — Literally “good health”, this one has always been popular. For some reason, German exclamations seem to be popular, but not regular german words in general.

À tes souhaits — “To your wishes” or “May your wishes(dreams) come true” this is used commonly in francophone culture, and if one knows the sneezer very well, it’s À tes amours, “To your loves”. I suppose a wish for your wishes is much akin to wishing you well.

CNN.com – ‘Louisiana 1927′ – Sep 1, 2005

Haunting tales o the City of New Orleans being flooded, the gulf destroyed, and people losing everything in their lives. except it isn’t today’s news. This happened 78 years ago.

Gotta start searching for a recording of this song.

It’s the holiday weekend, where everyone gets the 3-day weekend that I usually enjoy. I get mondays off because I work long hours the rest of the week. I usually use the Monday to do errands, doctor visits, etc. It works out rather well because most people are at work, and there isn’t much of a line anyplace. You can just go places and do your business and be gone without waiting.

I’ve been doing some serious study of the administation tools for MySQL databases. I see a lot of mysql database issues at work, and I got a really good book that focuses on the admin area of mysql. I will likely be making some arguments regarding that in this space soon.

Syntax versus semantics:
Syntax –
the word is from late latin, meaning “arrange together”
a) the way in which the words and phrases of a sentence are arranged to show how they relate to each other; sentence structure
b) the patterns of such arrangement in a given language

Semantics –
the word is also from late latin, meaning “signify, show, significant”
a) the scientific study of the meanings, and the development of meanings, of words.
b) the scientific study of symbols as denotative units, of their relationship to each other, and of their impact on society.

Semantics are the meanings of the sentences you are using (e.g. what you are saying) and syntax is how you are saying it, the mechanics of the sentences you are using.

So there *is* a difference between walking around, saying “It’s all semantics” and walking around saying that “It’s all syntax”

We had a picnic today with some lifelong friends-of-family. It turned out to be very mild weather, and it went rather well. The kids played hard, and fell asleep before we left the parking lot at the park, and are still sleeping. We talked about how busy we all are in our lives, and how it sucks that we never seem to have time to visit with people we know. That was all of us, mind you: the parents, the kids, their kids. Three generations of people stuck in the cycle of working all the time, mutitasking, getting too little sleep, no self-time, stress and traffic and bills, and trying to make things better for self and family.

It’s a sad state of things, really.