Minor things that bother you

[Scott5114]

We went over to the apartment of one the small group members from our church.

The group members who are large, of course, live in a different apartment.

[kphoger]

There may or may not be an adequate solution.

But the issue of awkward possessives is a minor thing that bothers me.

– What were you trying to take a photo of when that lady threw a rock at you?
– Her and Pedro's kids.
– The two of them have kids together?
– No, I mean I was trying to take a photo of her dot dot dot and Pedro's kids.
– Huh?
– Pedro's kids were there.  She was standing near them.  I wanted both to be in the photo.  She obviously didn't.
– Ohhhh!  Now it makes sense.

[ibthebigd]

When people post screen shots, but don't edit them.

SM-G996U

[Scott5114]

The fact that the keyboard numpad has no comma for a thousands separator. So for someone like me who's accustomed to typing in long strings of numbers on a ten-key/numpad, I have to awkwardly engage my left hand every so often to enter commas in figures I want to include commas.

Maybe I'll remap my keyboard so "Num Lock" is a duplicate comma key. Although then I would have to make absolutely sure that I can control Num Lock in software, just in case it ever gets turned off. (It's kind of silly to even have Num Lock as an option. Does anyone actually use the numpad-off functions anymore, when they're duplicated in between the numpad and the main keyboard?)

[abefroman329]

That's because the 10-key pad is intended for, say, transcribing figures from an accounting ledger to Excel, and not any sort of formatting.

If you're entering them in Excel, you can just format the empty cells to be numbers with commas and Excel will insert them automatically. If not, and you're only entering whole numbers, maybe you could remap the decimal point as a comma? That would have to be how it's used in countries where they use a comma instead of a period, right?

[Scott5114]

I'm rarely ever entering them in a spreadsheet though. I'm usually entering them in a plain text box, like the post box here.

This came up twice today:
- Entering monthly inventory figures in a state tax form PDF for the county assessor
- Discussing annual budgeting with my wife over Discord

In neither case would a spreadsheet have been an option. (I mean, I guess I could have entered the numbers in a spreadsheet and screenshotted it for my wife, but she was trying to read it on a phone so that probably would have made the numbers too small for her to easily read.)

[kphoger]

I use the 10-pad almost exclusively, but I'm quite used to using my left hand at the same time.  This is chiefly because I've spent years typing alphanumeric serial codes, but also because I manually type a lot of Excel formulas every day.  Therefore, using my left hand every so often to hit the comma key doesn't bother me.

[JoePCool14]

I'm actually with MMM here. If it's safe to go 80, raise the speed limit to 75 instead of lowering the design standard to match the speed limit.

If towns want to have a road with a lower speed limit,

then they should not get their way. Doing so interrupts the overall traffic flow of the entire network and creates more congestion.

If you have a road that has to provide both access and mobility, you may have to sacrifice mobility to provide safer access for all road users. It all depends on the purpose of the road.

As for freeways, the posted speed limit should be set appropriate to actual vehicle speeds to a point. Just because people can go 75 through a busy interchange with lots of weaving doesn't mean the limit should be 75. But it also shouldn't really be 55 either.

[MultiMillionMiler]

But if most of the road can handle 75, then it should be. It's common sense to slow down around curves, they shouldn't have to take into account every weaving spot when deciding a limit for the whole road. The same logic goes from traffic volumes. That was their logic for the 55 speed limit on Long Island. All that does is result in punishing drivers when the traffic is low, which is backward. Enforce traffic laws more where's there actual danger like sharp curves/high traffic volumes/narrow roads.

[kphoger]

It's common sense to slow down around curves

If you don't, you're guaranteed to flip your car.  Just look at Pennsylvania.

[J N Winkler]

– Her and Pedro's kids.

Would "Pedro's kids and her" fix the problem?

[JoePCool14]

But if most of the road can handle 75, then it should be. It's common sense to slow down around curves, they shouldn't have to take into account every weaving spot when deciding a limit for the whole road. The same logic goes from traffic volumes. That was their logic for the 55 speed limit on Long Island. All that does is result in punishing drivers when the traffic is low, which is backward. Enforce traffic laws more where's there actual danger like sharp curves/high traffic volumes/narrow roads.

That's basically what I said in my most recent post, isn't it?

Also, you don't need to enforce speed limits on sharp curves. Nature will do that for you.

[MultiMillionMiler]

But if most of the road can handle 75, then it should be. It's common sense to slow down around curves, they shouldn't have to take into account every weaving spot when deciding a limit for the whole road. The same logic goes from traffic volumes. That was their logic for the 55 speed limit on Long Island. All that does is result in punishing drivers when the traffic is low, which is backward. Enforce traffic laws more where's there actual danger like sharp curves/high traffic volumes/narrow roads.

That's basically what I said in my most recent post, isn't it?

Also, you don't need to enforce speed limits on sharp curves. Nature will do that for you.

It doesn't make sense to enforce them on long straight sections where absolutely nothing will happen because you are going 75 instead of 55. Cops should park near curves so people will see them and slown down beforehand.

[DenverBrian]

We went over to the apartment of one the small group members from our church.

The group members who are large, of course, live in a different apartment.

We went over to the apartment of one of our congregation. (No real need to denote small group.)

[kphoger]

I love how everyone's solution is to just leave out information.  That's not exactly a solution.

[J N Winkler]

I love how everyone's solution is to just leave out information.  That's not exactly a solution.

That's how you write commercial fiction--you leave out the boring stuff.

[kphoger]

As I said earlier...

But what if I really want to convey that much specificity?  For example, if my wife were telling her mother about it–who lives out of town, but already knows quite a bit about our small group from previous conversations, yet doesn't know anything about this particular member.  Just saying "fellow church member" wouldn't let her know that it's someone we already know well from small group, and that's a bit of information she might want to include in the conversation.

[kkt]

I love how everyone's solution is to just leave out information.  That's not exactly a solution.

You have basically three options:

1. Very long and overly complex grammatical mazes of sentences.

2. Break the sentences into several reasonably short sentences.

3. Decide you're telling more than you need to, and omit what isn't important to your point.

Either option 2 or 3 could be fine.

[J N Winkler]

As I said earlier...

But what if I really want to convey that much specificity?  For example, if my wife were telling her mother about it–who lives out of town, but already knows quite a bit about our small group from previous conversations, yet doesn't know anything about this particular member.  Just saying "fellow church member" wouldn't let her know that it's someone we already know well from small group, and that's a bit of information she might want to include in the conversation.

From a fiction writing perspective, there is the "So what" question.  Why should we (meaning members of the audience, in this case your mother-in-law) care about this?  What is the story value?  And there is another guideline:  defer the information until the reader (or listener) needs to know it in order to make sense of the narrative.  Applying these in combination usually gives an idea of how much to say and how to unspool it in the telling.

[US 89]

https://www.google.com/maps/@0,NaN,NaNz

[roadman65]

When the person in front of you at a convenience store has to guide the clerk to their cigar brand through the tobacco rack behind the counter.

[formulanone]

https://www.google.com/maps/@0,NaN,NaNz

NaN NaN NaN NaN,
NaN NaN NaN NaN
HaY HeY HeI
Error Message

[1995hoo]

As I said earlier...

But what if I really want to convey that much specificity?  For example, if my wife were telling her mother about it–who lives out of town, but already knows quite a bit about our small group from previous conversations, yet doesn't know anything about this particular member.  Just saying "fellow church member" wouldn't let her know that it's someone we already know well from small group, and that's a bit of information she might want to include in the conversation.

From a fiction writing perspective, there is the "So what" question.  Why should we (meaning members of the audience, in this case your mother-in-law) care about this?  What is the story value?  And there is another guideline:  defer the information until the reader (or listener) needs to know it in order to make sense of the narrative.  Applying these in combination usually gives an idea of how much to say and how to unspool it in the telling.

This reminds me of a discussion I saw once about whether a particular event happened in a novel. The writer never explicitly said that it did, so some parties to the discussion said it didn't occur–"It only happened if the writer said it happened." Some others (myself included) said silence doesn't matter if the event in question is immaterial to the storyline–for example, the same novel likewise did not tell you that any of the characters had a bowel movement on any given day, but nobody would dispute that every one of the human characters would have had such at some point during the months-long story because that is what humans do. It just didn't matter to that particular story. (Whereas in A Song of Ice and Fire, a certain character being seated on the privy proved to be quite important.)

[MultiMillionMiler]

When the person in front of you at a convenience store has to guide the clerk to their cigar brand through the tobacco rack behind the counter.

Nah, those older people who take 10,000 years to buy lottery tickets or play a millions different numbers when you are just there to get a quick pick.

[Max Rockatansky]

When the person in front of you at a convenience store has to guide the clerk to their cigar brand through the tobacco rack behind the counter.

Nah, those older people who take 10,000 years to buy lottery tickets or play a millions different numbers when you are just there to get a quick pick.

How much has the Earth changed in the last 10,000 years?  I imagine it was quite the shock leaving the store after finally getting your lottery ticket.