Correct English Grammar

It absolutely pains me to hear or read someone giving a well researched presentation of facts make a blunder with grammar. I'm usually listening or reading intently and then BOOM "your's".

"That's not a word," I think, "that's a silly mistake for someone to make that's making an educated argument. How much can I believe anything this person says if I can prove that s/he doesn't know how to use the language?"

Now I don't care what they're saying. I'll try to read the rest of the article or listen to the presentation, but it will happen again and will grate on me. It's all I can think about for at least 5 seconds afterwards and now I've lost the thread of the story. I've gotta go back and reread if it's an article, or just try to pick back up if it's public speaking.

I'm going to post some common mistakes here, just hoping that someone will read it and improve their grammar. Correct spelling and grammar will never hurt you in a professional situation.

1) it's: This means "it is" not "its" which is the possessive of "it."

2) your: This is the possessive of "you." This is not the same as the contraction of "you" and "are," "you're."

3) an: This is a different word from "and." This made reading a bit of history about the "Baghdad Battery" nearly impossible to read.

4) apostrophes: These don't allow you to make a plural. Generally the letter "s" does this for you, all by itself. If you're not sure, look it up!

5) quotation marks: These don't add emphasis. They are used to say that something is not necessarily genuinely as it seems.

6) exclamation points: These do all the emphasizing they need to with just one. Adding more doesn't change anything, but it makes you look like either a dolt or a hyperactive child.

7) question marks: Only one of these is needed to get the job done. When you have three, does it mean you're trying to ask the question three times? That doesn't make sense.

8) ellipses/... : These are formed by putting three periods in a row. Not four, nor two, nor as many will get you all the way across the screen.

I know I'm missing something here. Have anything to add to this list?

Some things are really messed up

For example, the Safe Haven Law in Nebraska.


Back in July, the law was put into effect, saying that you can drop off a child to any hospital within the state's borders and as long as you haven't been beating them, you're free and clear. This isn't a bad thing, really. The only problem with it was that unlike every other state, Nebraska didn't include an age limit on the kid. Every other state that has a Safe Haven or Baby Moses law limits the age of the child to between 3 days and 1 year. I agree, somewhere in there, you've realized you can't do this. It's not going to work. What are you going to do? Give the kid up for adoption, without all the hassle of giving the kid up for adoption.

Things were going fine, no babies were even showing up. People wanted to keep their kids. Hooray!

Then September came, and two people dropped off a kid on the same day. One was like 5, and the other like 16.

Why?

"Behavior problems."

I hate people.

Then came another two months in which another 30 something kids were dropped off. At first, they'd all been from Nebraska. Then, someone realized the law didn't require that the kids didn't have to reside in Nebraska.

"Woohoo! KIDS! We're going to Nebraska!"

I really hate people.

What really cheesed me off was the fact that people were angry about the law and not the activities of the people dropping off their kids. They called the legislators lazy and irresponsible. They're just trying to help out some babies and kids who really need help. It's the lazy and irresponsible PARENTS who should be ostracized here.

I hate people so much.

Then there's this. A basic summary: Someone from Iowa is protesting Nebraska because they passed any version of the Safe Haven law. This is coming from someone whose state allows gambling. You don't have the high moral ground here, so shut it. They then go into the price tag associated with opening up a special session to get the legislators to come back and revise the law, aka put in an age limit. (Just so you know, they did - 30 days. That's pretty much smack-dab in the middle of the logarithmic scale of similar laws.) But my favorite line in the whole article is regarding the cost to the person dropping off something else:

"
The penalty for abandoning an animal in city limits is $200 plus any cost incurred by the Humane Society to take care of it.
"

Classy argument there, WOWT.

Pushup Challenge - Closure

I successfully completed the 100 pushup challenge. It took 7 weeks total, but I did it. When I did, it was pretty easy into the 80s, and then I really started to feel it. It was probably more of an anaerobic burst of strength that did it, but I did it anyway. Since then, I haven't continued doing 50 two times a day as I had originally planned, but now do more like 20 whenever I want to. At least now I can drop and give 20 whenever I want instead of falling apart at the 6 pushup point.

I mostly stopped posting because it had become not fun because it felt more like a chore, especially while my arms hurt or were just exhausted when I was doing it. Plus, one of my friends made fun of me for having a blog entirely about pushups...

It's not, I swear!

Pushup Challenge! - Week 4, Beginning Again

Another great point about doing pushups is that they can be done just about anywhere, including my cubicle at work. Per the Pushup Program, I did 111 pushups total.

I've been trying to compress the amount of time between sets because eventually I'm going to have to do 100 contiguously. I had been pumping them out, and then taking the program's word for it when they said that you could take longer if necessary. Well, now I've realized the importance of shortening the time between sets. Looking ahead, in Week 6, I'm to do less pushups in a set, but more sets, and with significantly less time between them. Aieeee!

I've been thinking about how I'm going to try to keep up with these pushups after I've done 100 consecutively and the program is complete. I'll probably not do 100 straight every day, but instead do more like 2 sets of 50 each day, just to keep the arms in good condition. This will probably be more than I have been doing because the program only calls for a workout 3x per week, but I'll be doing them each day. Again, this is possible because they're pushups! I can do them almost anywhere! Yay!

Pushup Challenge! - End of Week 3

That's another 124 into the record books. I even did an extra 3 on the last set, going until I couldn't go any more. I'm feeling good, but I'm amped to go into this weekend for a few days off.

I actually did my pushups over at my girlfriend's apartment while she was playing a computer game, so it's a great activity to keep me busy while she's doing something else. Yay!