In school, we were told that the ever-so-nervy Shakespeare coined about 1,600 words that became part of the English language, if I do not misquote. I can't find that number anywhere on the web (disgraceful), so I'll likely have to hurry and petition the generous (dare I say olympian?) Cecil Adams for the exact worthless number. Of course, there are those who will tell you that Shakespeare was quite the pedant, but I think we ought to submerge those rancorous bandits in anchovies.

To my amazement (and delight), I came across this list of madcap Shakesperian words.

Also, wormhole, which I say here, awkwardly, because I forgot to fit it into another sentence.

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For almost two weeks now, we've been collecting data for a little science experiment at work. It began when I dropped my soda can and tapped on it so it wouldn't explode on me. Our resident bacteria lover made fun of me, as he is wont to do. He insisted that tapping on soda cans does nothing that elapsed time wouldn't do and that I was a total dork. Unable to refute the latter, I argued with him on the former charge.

An experiment was born. Each day, two soda cans are dropped and/or shaken for a set period of time. We've determined that root beer, dropped from the top of a door and then shaken for 10 seconds makes for a pretty foamy can of soda. Then, one can is tapped and the other left alone. Both are opened at the same time and the results are measured (albeit somewhat subjectively -- we don't actually measure the amount of soda that foams out of the can).

It is interesting to note that simply vigorously shaking a can for 10 seconds produces almost no foam. Therefore, I highly recommend shaking your friends' soda cans just to piss them off. It won't foam on them and it's funny to see the looks on their faces as they shout, "What are you doing?!?" (Disclaimer: results might vary depending on altitude, warmth of soda, and temperament of friends.)

So far, the theory that tapping on a soda can makes any difference at all is simply not holding up. The theory being that a non-shaken can is not foamy because normally, all the air/gas is at the top of the can, so when you open it, that escapes first. However, if dropped and shaken, the air/gas disperses throughout the can so that when it's opened and pressure is released, the bubbles rise to the top through the liquid inside, causing it to foam out of the can. Tapping the can is, theoretically, supposed to jiggle the bubbles and make them float to the top, but I'm not so sure that tapping the top of the can actually does anything. We will eventually move on to tapping the cans on the side, as that will likely have more effect than top-only tapping.

And, of course, the results can be seen here.

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Okay, back to rock climbing. That photo, at the right? You see how there's a person way up high on that rock? That's me. This was my second climb ever. I tried to stop a little before that, but John wouldn't let me. In this photo, I'm almost to the top, and it felt really good. The worst thing was that my legs got all shaky -- Doug said I put Elvis to shame during my last climb because my left leg was seriously rocking out. The best thing was that I got to climb up the side of a cliff. Three times.


Photo by Doug Mandell

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Okay, so I clicked the link. I was thinking about it in my car, composing in my head. Writing stories. I do this a lot, write stories (or parts of stories) in my head. I forget most of them. Sometimes, I'll be compelled to write them down in a little notebook I have in my purse. Sometimes, the little notebook is no longer in my purse, and then I just don't write them down or, if I'm home, I find my journal (the one I don't let you read) and write in there. Often, though, by the time I write them down, they don't sound as good. So many things are much better off never leaving my head.

Anyhow, I got to work today and there was an email. "Click here to reactivate your NaNoWriMo account," it told me. It wasn't a demanding email at all, actually. It was more of a suggestion than an order. "If you want, you can renew your account or we can delete it but you can always get it back later if you change your mind it's totally up to you no pressure the choice is yours." Well, that's the gist of it, anyhow, in run-on sentence form.

I clicked. I'm in.

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I hurt today, but in a really good way. I went rock climbing this weekend for the first time ever. It was SO COOL! Some of the people I went with were crazy good and did things that really shouldn't be possible. Me, I did okay for my first time out and had a whole lot of fun. I even did a few things I was fairly certain I couldn't do (partially because John was belaying and wouldn't let me down, which ended up being a good thing). I only had my old school camera, so I don't have any photos yet, but I'll see if I can get some from friends who had their digital cameras and maybe post them soon.

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So, I like my new web host a lot, except for the DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. This is the second one since I signed on with them. I sure hope this doesn't keep up.

I guess what I'm trying to say is please don't attack my web host's servers. Also, if you see MySql errors on this site, or if pages load too slowly or whatever, it's not my fault. It's the jackasses who are trying to bring down the servers.

I wonder if this is what jackass chimney guy does when he's not trying to break into his house via the chimney?

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Erik sent me this today:

Pretty Weird:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

amzanig huh?

Taht's ecxllenet!

It ties into a thought I had recently about how your brain naturally fills in missing information. I was driving down the freeway with my windows open, so I could barely hear the radio. The song that was playing was faintly audible -- I could catch snatches of it every now and again, but not the whole song. But as soon as I figured out what song it was (one I knew very well), my brain filled in the parts of the music I couldn't hear. I started singing along as though the radio volume was actually audible over the sound of the air rushing in the windows.

Brains are so neat!

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I am so lame. I completely forgot over the weekend about pirate haiku and the quest for talk like a pirate underwear. Where are my priorities?!? Instead, I wasted the weekend on a home decorating project (shelving mania!), visiting with one of my oldest and dearest friends and her husband, hiking with a newer good friend, and futile efforts to catch some z's. Surely I could have fit pirate haiku in there somewhere. Arr!

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Wow. Oh wow. This, from The Edge column in one of the daily Portland papers:

Hey, that reminds us, Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up (Sept. 19), and there's still time to enter our pirate haiku contest. That's right, write a pirate haiku (or "piku") and get it to us by noon Monday and you could win a pair of Talk Like a Pirate underwear! Send your piku, along with your name, hometown and underwear size to:

The Edge Piku Contest

Fax: 503-294-7691

E-mail: theedge@ news.oregonian.com

See Monday's Edge or go to oregonlive.com for details.

Thanks, Heather, for pointing it out!!

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"I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible. Dadgum it, got to get a lawyer on this." So said Durwood Pickle, a 71-year-old Texas resident who is being sued by the RIAA. Turns out, his grandchildren were using his computer for the nefarious purposes of music sharing and he was one of the 261 people the RIAA decided to sue. Also served with papers was a 12-year-old girl from New York.

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And I thought I had a lot to do.

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They weren't Bugle Boy pants he was wearing.

Across the street from me, outside my window, was a youngish chap with a song in his head. Or I think he had a song in his head, because he just looked like he wanted to dance. He was jostling some change in his hand in time to a beat I couldn't hear. At one point, he looked like he was doing some fancy footwork, but he didn't fully commit -- it was the whispering equivalent of dancing.

It was his pants, though, that first caught my attention. They were big baggy jeans with one leg rolled up just below the knee. I've seen it before, but haven't really had the opportunity to stare. The other leg on the jeans was so long that he had to pull the fabric up so he could cross the street.

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Right. So. New hosting company. Some things are still a little wonky, but they should be getting better. It'll be slow going, but eventually (so I'd like to believe) everything will be back in some semblance of order. Maybe.

I did manage to get the archives working (see "recent archives" on the right-hand sidebar), so that's kind of cool. It's only the archives since the redesign, though. The really old stuff is gone for the time being.

Also, I created a sub-domain for Where's My Rocket Car? It can now be found at rocketcar.nerdygirl.com. Except that the it seems to be down right now. But it'll probably work a bit later.

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Some things:

• I may be changing hosting companies soon, so if this site goes belly up for a little bit, that's why.


• If you live in Oregon and can take an hour or so out of your schedule once a week, I highly recommend volunteering for SMART (Start Making A Reader Today). It's super fun reading with kids. Also, I like walking around elementary schools because I feel like a giant with those little chairs and the drinking fountains that barely come up past my knees.


• I promise to work on adding cookies to the comments system soon(ish) so it will remember you and y'all can stop nagging me.


• Our list of words made up of the letters from "planets" has grown to 144. I fear we might not make it to 150.


• I like the term "belly up."


• I'm trying to revise my habit of putting punctuation outside quotation marks when it's only a word or phrase at the end of a sentence, like in the item above. It seems wrong to me to put punctuation inside in these cases, as the punctuation applies to the whole sentence and not just the part that's in quotes, but I'm tired of arguing and most style guides say I'm wrong anyhow. It's fascinating stuff, I know.


• As Jason points out, International Talk Like a Pirate day is coming up on the 19th. Arr!


• Thanks to everyone for the haiku. You're lovely.

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Have I told you about 7 Great Loves yet? Go see it. It's not your typical theatre production. For instance, there are no chairs. The scenes are acted out in different areas of a warehouse, and you walk around and see them. It took me a couple of scenes to really get into it, but by the end, they totally had me hooked. It looks like there are only two weeks left, and they only let in 20 people per show. That's all I'm going to tell you about it. I think it's best to not know too much about shows, movies, or books before you experience them for yourself.

In other news, I'm kind of bored. Will someone write me a haiku?

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