Selected Shorts

I’ve been so busy lately, that I haven’t had any time to blog. No great loss, though, since most of what I’ve been up to is unbloggable for one reason or another. (Some of you may know some of the unbloggable things. And a select few of you even know all of them. )

Just to keep everyone up to date, here are some selected shorts from the past couple of weeks:

1. More Pi With Your Sushi?

If you had told me two weeks ago that I’d soon witness a “digits-of-pi” contest, I would’ve thought you were crazy. Now… not so much.

Here we are, the CNET gang, eating sushi and talking about life, love and software. Bill asks Blaise whether Greek is harder than Hungarian. Blaise says he has no idea; the only Greek he knows is, “pi. 3.14159….” Christian, who’s sitting across from Blaise, continues the sequence to a few more digits. Then Blaise picks up where Christian leaves off and adds a couple more.

Sensing a wild time brewing, I suggest that we hold a little contest to see who can recite more digits. I’ll beat out a rhythm with my chopsticks; Blaise and Christian have to simultaneously say the next digit with each chopstick beat, until one of them drops out.

Briefly explaining the exciting feat that’s about to take place, I hush the rest of the table down so that we can begin. But just as we’re getting ready to start, Eric, from way down at the other end of the table, announces that he wants in on this too. (It turns out that Eric once knew 80 digits of pi.)

A hush falls over the restaurant. We start. I chop out a “4-3-2-1″ intro, and they start: “three, point, one, four, one, five, nine…” The three of them stay in sync for about 15 digits, but then they start to diverge. In the end, nobody’s really sure who won; but hey, when 3 people at a table can recite pi to dozens of digits… everyone’s a winner.

(And I’d like to assure my mother that I don’t usually participate in such reckless events.)

2. Do Russians Really Talk That Way?

Some of favorite blogs are in a language I don’t understand.

My friends blog in Russian, and I have no clue what they’re saying. What’s worse, all of their LiveJournal friends blog in Russian too, so there’s a whole network of blogs which I can’t read. (And I just know they’re talking about me in there somewhere.)

Technology to the rescue! I’ll just use babelfish to translate the blog entries. (Finally, I’ll be able to verify my suspicion that Mr. L. has a crush on Sara. ) Here’s what I learned they were saying:

по следам нашего джигита, самой лень выкладывать, а тут человек уже постарался.
короче вот вам (фото)отчёт. идём опять, хочу болгаров!!

became

on the tracks of our Djigit, the very laziness to lay out, and here the man already tried more shortly here to you (foto)otchet. we go again, I want bolgarov!!

And

какая же я сегодня ехидная все-таки. Прямо настоящая редиска.

became

what 4 today venemous [sic] nevertheless. Directly present radish.

Hmm. “Directly present radish??” I never knew that Russians were so colloquially poetic. Ну, погоди! (Nu, zayats!)

3. Know Your Audience

A few weeks ago, I used the word “cardinality” in a business meeting. Ordinarily–in the meetings I’m invited to–that’d pose no problem; my fellow pointy-headed attendees wouldn’t even notice the word.

But… this time, the room was populated not with engineers, but with business people. Pointiness factor: nil. True, they all understood what I meant, but it just wasn’t the right word to use in a room with them; and they knew it. (I could almost feel the eye rolls around me as “-ality” left my lips.)

I sounded out of touch with my audience. I admit my lapse. (Namely, that I agreed to attend a business meeting. )