Divide by Null - undefined

My personal opinion on whether one should or should not use proper grammar...

If the input method is difficult (on-screen keyboard, cell phone sans qwerty), then relaxed grammar is ok.

If speed is very important (online games, instant messaging), then again, one need not be so strict.

In both methods, however, I choose to still add my apostrophes, write out "you" and "are", etc. The only thing I really change is that I don't normally end my phrases with punctuation, nor do I capitalize the first letter.

In a forum, one has the time to formulate a response. Likewise for e-mail. In these cases, much more often than not, one has access to a qwerty (or dvorak, if you're into that kind of thing o_O) keyboard. Thus, you don't have to fiddle with 2668862233777723. If you are a slow typist... well if you don't abbreviate, you can type more, and thus become better quicklier (and with better typing habits).

Now, of course, there are the people who would still misspell words or forget their commas and such on paper too. This isn't necessarily a case of laziness and most likely not a case of lazy typing. This should be a problem of one's English teacher (not to say that the person should take no blame).

People will, like it or not, judge others based upon grammar and spelling. On college applications, job applications, etc., a lack of correct grammar could ruin one's chances of acceptance. Proper grammar makes one seem more intelligent and thus more credible, regardless of how intelligent or credible one really is. This may not be a job application, mere informal chatter; however, there is also a factor of politeness. Poor grammar can severly reduce readability. Equal exchange - faster to type, but slower to read.

Personally, it's habit. For example, I have to struggle to not capitalize my I's. I doubt that I would gain much time by abbreviating already short words (u no wat i mean?).

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I was going to write a rant on some words, but I ended up writing this for a forum, and thought it would fit nicely here. This will probably become my rant space. They're fun to write, except that I want to digress and I have to force myself not to. I think I bordered on digression there, and I definitely did on this sentence.

MySpace. Chances are, you have an account there.

I'm sure most of you know about how there are stalkers all over the site and such, but that's not what I'm talking about. That can be remedied on the user scale.

I'm talking about the back-end. They're always under maintenance. They always have problems. They're constantly making changes on the main site. Why not test it first? For a site of that calibur, I think it's unacceptable. It's fine for me, because few visit me at the moment. If I get popular, I would invest in a dedicated server and upgrade the efficiency of my scripts, etc. I don't really have the money or the expertise to do that right now. I'm sure they could make some investments.

Next, customization. It's nigh-impossible to customize your myspace without advanced css knowledge. Sure you could add all those little things to make your text bright yellow on a bright cyan background with falling images of animated rainbow stars. But to truly make an appealing site, one nearly has to scrap everything and start anew.

Next is their lack of security. Jeff and I managed to find a harmless (potentially harmful) exploit regarding our names. We replaced the display name with an image. I really don't see how they could have such an exploit work... it seems reverse of what I would expect to happen. Maybe that's just how ColdFusion works? Yay PHP.

Have you heard about the MySpace "virus"? It ran awhile ago, adding the creator as a friend and adding a small notice in one's about me. It was a simple javascript script. Then again, I think IE should take a bit of the blame. Nevertheless...

Next... it looks really bad. It's so cluttered. It doesn't have the excuse of sacrificing looks for accessibility... because it's not. This probably is why it translated to the problems with user customization.

And yet there are many MySpace alternatives that improve on this. More secure, more customizable, more features... but they never caught on. MySpace was lucky. It succeeded where Friendster failed, but stayed at the top.

Just the luck of the draw, I guess.

For such a popular site, MySpace is lack-luster. It's a (insert analogy here).

Yeah, I couldn't think of a good analogy... what? It's near midnight. Time for me to sleep.

[Yeah, the last post didn't feel... right. I hope this one provides better quality.]

So the mass concert ended on a pretty high note. No pun intended. I knew that my dad would arrive 20 minutes after I call, so I called him early. Time passes and it appears that I suddenly have two missed calls. So, I get my stuff together and head outside.

My dad has a short temper. I open the door to get in and the first thing I hear is, "I don't want to talk to you." Fun. It seems that he is again missing his wraslin'. It's only a TV show. They're meant for entertainment, (but I'm sure the networks would like people to be addicted,) so I don't think one should get so angry.

Or maybe it's me. When I miss something as such, I get disappointed. Angry? Sad? I prefer to say troubled. I could live without watching some show. I consider it more of a bonus if I get to see it, not as a loss if I don't. That's probably where the difference lies.

In addition, when I'm troubled, I don't really show it. For the most part, I'm stoic. I have a continually happy-to-nonchalant face. That way, I won't make everyone else sad or angry. If I appear happy, I'm sure that will make more people happy than if I yelled, grunted, attacked, or force onto people my problems.

My dad is the opposite. If he's mad, then he's mad. He'll mumble discontently to himself; his patience drops dramatically; his tone lowers; his words lose courtesy; his actions become more forced and striking. I don't like being around him when he's mad. I get very annoyed.

But what is similar is that we both have quick recovery periods. Most won't notice that I was even troubled in the first place, so the transition is smooth. For my dad, once he feels better, he often apologizes for his anger, that he didn't mean it, that he was joking.

Fake it 'til you make it. If you're angry, don't let everyone know with a sour mood. Force a smile or occupy yourself with something productive and forget the problem. Confront it with a more relaxed mind, but thinking about being angry can only make it prolong it.

And my programming if/else mind forces me to make this disclaimer... yeah, there are exceptions to what I said, but I'm ranting here.

I visited my relatives today. One of them happens to be my younger cousin of about eight years.

I like children in small doses.

To put a long story short, my cousin can be very bossy, demanding, stubborn, manipulative, and sometimes lies jokes to get her way. I handled it by first submitting, eventually implementing passive-agressiveness (hide and seek? Ok... let me count to 560), then a short lecture when I finally snapped.

I had asked her to stop many times. The politeness in my tone and words slowly went from "uhh... please stop?" to "Stop. Now." I didn't notice, but I grabbed her wrist, and she said, "can you let go now?" I didn't. She never let me be when I asked.

At that last point, I lectured her on... well I can't remember. Her face, an uninterested smirk, a roll of the eyes, turning of the head, and a dissident "ok, whatever". I knew she wouldn't understand what I was talking about; I knew she wasn't listening, but I know she heard it, and I hope that one day she'll remember it.

I had seen that a serious tone had no effect on her current state, so I smiled and tacked on a "please?" Thinking a bit, trying to piece it all together, she said "You're weird."

I finally let go. At least I had told her what I wanted to say. In fact, she left me alone after that, so perhaps it did have an effect.

I can't really handle children. I'm too lenient at first, and my patience slowly deteriorates. They're nice, however. I think back to myself... I had a VERY protected childhood.

To sum it up, my skin tone darkened from two hours on in my cousin's inflatable water slide.

So I took my driving test today. Results? Disqualified.

Why? Ran a red light? Hit a pedestrian? 50 mph over the speed limit?

No... on the contrary... I was too slow.

I'm a very cautious driver. Even my mom thinks I'm too cautious... even my mom who is cautious as well thinks I'm too safe.

Some problems she mentioned include braking too soon before a stop light, too far below the speed limit, and accelerating too slowly at a green light. Other problems I notice that I have include following cars way too far back (3 second rule? more like 30... or really 5) and not making turns when there was a big enough gap between cars. In fact, the test administrator actually told me to turn after a certain car at one intersection. Otherwise, I would have waited for the next three incoming cars to pass, at least. I should have realized then that I didn't pass. Aside from impeding traffic due to being too slow, she didn't mark that many errors.

But 20 miles per hour under the speed limit failed me.

I was somewhat surprised to see that I failed; however, the reasons for it didn't surprise me at all.

I suppose cautious doesn't necessarily mean safe.