Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter!

I hope y'all have had a wonderful Easter Sunday. It was a beautiful day. Today as I've reflected on our Savior's life and atonement, I thought of a favorite hymn of mine, Savior, Redeemer of My Soul (Hymn 112 in the LDS Hymnal). It's not very well known, but I love it. I first heard it in this arrangement by Rob Gardner, which is absolutely beautiful. The song starts at 2:14 (this was the best recording I could find on Youtube). I hope you enjoy it.



Friday, April 8, 2011

Friday's Fabulosities

Today was quite a good day, even with the wintry weather. It was snowing this morning when I left for school. I retired my umbrella of twelve years near the end of my mission, and promptly lost the new one I got, and I haven't replaced it, so long sentence short, yes, I have no umbrella. But I was alright. As I waited at the light to cross the street somebody came up with a big umbrella and he shared it with me. How nice was that! Super gentlemanly. He wasn't going as far as I was, but he shared it until we went our separate ways. AND he knew about linguistics and actually said it was a useful major. Who does that? That was Friday fabulosity number one!
On a totally unrelated note, as the semester has gone on, more and more people fail to attend Spanish class at 8...or they show up quite late. Today at the beginning of class there were three of us. And Profe. That's impressive, isn't it? I think six or seven more people came. It was kind of bizarre. Maybe the weather didn't help. It was also strange because it was all guys and me for quite a while...and there are more girls than guys in the class. It's okay. I just hope everybody shows up on Monday for our final fiesta!
Second fabulosity: for editing, we went to Special Collections in the Library and got to look at some pretty cool stuff. That's been the most enjoyable editing class I've had all semester. We saw records from as far back as 2000 BC...that one was a small matchbox sized piece of clay. Then there was papyrus and animal skin and turtle shells and metal sheets and paper and such. Original transcriptions of sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, as well as other books, first edition Book of Mormon, really old books where you can see the lines drawn on the pages so the monks can write straight, etc. It was pretty great.
Third fabulosity: I took my Spanish OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview...I think) and my interviewer was really nice and I think it went well overall. I told the story about me falling in a trash can on my mission. It wasn't smooth, but he got it in the end. Anyway, IT'S DONE! And that just leaves the written final on Thursday.
Fourth fabulosity: I took my last editing test other than the final. And yesterday I finished all my assignments so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Soon it will be over and I'll only have painful memories. Haha. Jk. If I hadn't have taken that class, I wouldn't have written my awesome paper.
Fifth fabulosity: I made cookie dough cupcakes. They're pretty good. You just add frozen cookie dough to the cupcakes and it all cooks nice, so it's kinda like having a cookie and a cupcake in one. I'm sure they're really healthy too. Want some? Come on over.
Sixth fabulosity: the word fabulosity. It's the noun form of fabulous. I like it. I made it up...but then found it out on the internet already. So it's semi-legit.
Happy Friday to y'all. Hope it's fabulous!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Fools' Friday

Ah, yes, April 1st, a day of fabulous trickery. Fun, isn't it? How many false pregnancies, engagements, and relationships were announced via Facebook today? How many people actually smelled the scratch and sniff Daily Universe today? (My roommate did. I didn't.) I think April Fools' Day is kind of fun. It's fun to hear the tricks people have up their sleeves. And I do love Google. I remember their trick from 2008:

Gmail Custom Time

Gmail's sign-in page and a banner at the top of each Gmail inbox announced a new feature, called Gmail Custom Time, that would allow its users to "pre-date" their messages and choose to have the message appear as "read" or "unread". The new feature uses the slogan "Be on time. Every time."

Around 11:00 p.m. EST March 31, 2008, on the newer and older version of Gmail, but not in the basic HTML version, in the upper right corner, next to Settings, a link appeared labeled, "New! Gmail Custom Time". The link led to a 404 error until April 1,[6][7] when it led to the full Gmail Custom Time hoax page.[8] Clicking any of the three links at the bottom of the page brought the user to a page stating that Gmail Custom time was, in fact, their April Fool's Day joke.

Google wrote that the new joke feature "utilizes an e-flux capacitor [a pun from the movie Back to the Future] to resolve issues of causality." Fake testimonials were given by "beta users"; one example is, "I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

The feature only allowed for ten pre-dated emails per year, claiming that any more "would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless."

(Wikipedia)

I rather enjoyed today's as well. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html

Did you get tricked today? Did you pull a prank of your own? Do tell. And have a happy April 1st.