Zoey the Cool Cat doesn’t much care about New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
They both have 24 hours and lots of opportunities for her to sleep, eat, and poop.
However, before she went to sleep on my desk, she wished everyone a safe New Year’s Eve.
I quit being a part of the Internet Grammar Patrol more than a decade ago. I figured if people didn’t want to learn how to construct an English sentence, or spell words correctly, or use the proper word, nothing I could do on the Internet would help them. I do wonder, though, when the poor grammar and spelling is in something that should be immaculate.
When I find a good example, I save it for posterity, not that there is, or will be, any posterity for me….
So, following, are three of the best grammar and spelling goofs I found this past week. Click on the images to get a larger version.
This first one from Fry’s Electronics didn’t get off to a good start with its description:
“Toaster Oven featuring double -inchInfrared Light-inch for cooking….”
Sounds futuristic!
As I continued reading, I discovered that it “eliminates prehating.” So that’s why there seems to be so much hate in the world. People are prehating! Eliminate prehating now!
With all the interracial problems that we seem to be having here in the United States, it looks like 3D Issue at least has the solution to the “interracial part” of your marketing strategy: Branded Apps!
Lastly, I don’t know if I want to be the seventh person….
Maybe I can eliminate prehating by getting an interracial app for use on the world’s seventh mobile phone….
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For previous posts on the Davis-Horton House, see
The Davis-Horton House, part 2
The Davis-Horton House.
The Davis-Horton House is a three-story structure with a basement, and the main entrance actually is in the basement.
Two things in that picture are unusual for San Diego, and they both begin with B: Basement and bricks.
On the brick wall to the right of the entrance was a beautiful mailbox.
They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
The basement is mostly the museum store and administrative areas. There was some pretty cool stuff on the walls, most of it concerning the historic Gaslamp Quarter (remember that the Davis-Horton House is the Gaslamp Museum). This warning sign ca. 1913 was my favorite:
The Stingaree District existed mainly between the 1880s, when San Diego was booming, to a “cleanup” in 1912-1916. However, it remained a vice district until downtown redevelopment in the 1980s.
Vice districts existed throughout the West in response to the view by politicians and police that gambling, drug and alcohol addiction, and prostitution were vices that simply could not be eradicated. Thus, restricted districts were created in many cities where such vices could be practiced openly as long as they were within the district and that no greater crimes were committed. Illegal payments from the vice trades to police and politicians were common. Possibly the most famous of all vice districts was the Barbary Coast in San Francisco.
The exact boundaries of the Stingaree District are unknown, but the Health Department in 1912 identified the District as being bounded by First, Fifth, Market, and K Streets. The map below shows the current Gaslamp Quarter boundaries (red), the Stingaree District boundaries identified in 1912 (yellow), and the location of the Davis-Horton House/Gaslamp Museum (red arrow).
I thought it interesting that, on the warning sign, only one anarchist was in the Stingaree District, and I really felt sorry for “loiters,” although I’m pretty sure they are the same as loiterers. Nonetheless, jail for 90 days for being a vagrant or loitering.
Ah, but what about “hop heads” and “those possessing hootch”?
Google and Wikipedia tell me that hopheads are people who like highly hopped beer, which I deduced to mean either “highly flavored” or “high in alcohol content.” Two other definitions, though, include an alcoholic whose choice of drink is beer, and an early 1900s American slang term for a user of opium. Since sources would not be specific, I’m going to presume that in this context it means drunks.
Hootch (more commonly now, “hooch”) is an alcoholic beverage produced by distillation. Distillation purifies an alcoholic beverage by removing diluting components, so the alcoholic content is much higher than beer, wine, or cider. The best definition I found was any alcoholic beverage that has been distilled and has an “alcohol by volume” content of at least 20%. So, whiskey, rum, vodka, gin, tequila…. In other words, every time I go to On The Border for a margarita, I’m possessing a little hooch………..
When the Davis-Horton House was renovated in the early 1970s in preparation for it becoming the Gaslamp Museum, an alcove behind a cutaway wall in the study revealed a working whiskey still, a replica of which is in the museum:
Because research on the Davis-Horton House led me astray to the Stingaree District, my next post in the San Diego Historical Landmark series will be a tour of the inside of the House/Museum, originally slated to be this post. The Museum is fascinating.
For the introductory blog post
to San Diego’s historical landmarks,
click on San Diego’s Historical Landmarks.
For previous posts in the
San Diego Historical Landmarks series,
go here.
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I have been working all day on my digital calendars for 2015, trying to get my Photographic Art blog set up as an e-commerce site with shopping cart, payment processing, and instant download.
I believe I have succeeded.
Check it out:
2015 Monday-Sunday Birds Digital Calendar
Ninety percent of all product notices will be at Photographic Art, not here, so be sure to subscribe/follow me over there!
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Many decades ago when I was but a youth of about 12, I wanted to be a “mapologist.”
It wasn’t an occupation then, and it’s still not an occupation.
However, there is such a thing as a cartographer….
I’m not sure why a cartographer creates maps instead of carts but I’m sure there’s an etymologist somewhere who can tell us, providing that said etymologist is actually studying words and not etyms. Oh, why does language have to be so complicated?
Recently, without really trying, I found an 1854 map of San Diego hanging on a wall in the historic Davis-Horton House, also known as the Gaslamp Museum. Map looks like this:
The green arrow points to San Diego, “Old Town San Diego State Historic Park” as it is now known.
The red arrow points to “New Town,” founded by Alonzo Horton. Horton thought that San Diego was too far from the waters of the Pacific Ocean and San Diego harbor. So he created New Town about four miles south.
New Town is where downtown San Diego is now, specifically the historic Gaslamp Quarter, so Horton obviously was on to something.
For comparison, following is Google Maps presenting us with the same areas. In 1854, the long water channel running alongside Interstate 8, SeaWorld, and Mission Bay were not there. Picture all of that water removed and you can see how far inland Old Town actually was.
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Even though I’m not a big fan of white Christmas lights, one of the best places to go each year in San Diego to see all sorts of Christmassy stuff is the historic Hotel del Coronado.
As you come off of the bridge and turn left onto Orange Avenue, you’re greeted by very tall pine trees decorated with thousands of lights.
Once you get to the Hotel del Coronado, there is usually live entertainment in the lobby.
There is a tall Christmas tree in the lobby, but it’s always so dark and crowded there that I’ve never been able to get a good picture of the tree. With flash and Photoshop, I do get pictures of the decorations around the bottom of the tree.
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As many people know, I’m trying to re-invent myself at the age of 59. They (and I don’t know who “they” are) say that it’s never too late…. you’re never too old….
It might never be too late, and you might never be too old, but I sure can say that it’s not easy….
I have been considering anything and everything but I pretty sure about two things:
For those who might not know, MLM is short for “multi-level marketing” which is why MLM marketing is redundant.
MLM was popular when I graduated from college back in 1977. I recognized it for the Ponzi scheme it was, and eventually it was declared illegal. However, MLM was only out of action for a year or so before they found a way around the law: offer something.
With the Internet, especially Facebook, MLM is back, but mostly it goes by the names “online marketing” and “network marketing,” and they offer doohickeys.
In other words, if you want to join my “network marketing team,” it will only cost you $4.99, and for that you get a doohickey. Once you’re a part of a network marketing team, you simply go find people to join YOUR network marketing team for just $4.99 so you can give them a doohickey, too!
So far I have not found a single physical doohickey–no keychains, rings, wristbands, tie clips, shoelaces…. Instead, the doohickey that everyone offers is a PDF file telling you how to develop your network marketing team and how great network marketing is.
Most network marketing teams want anywhere from $1.75—the lowest I found—to $200—which wasn’t the highest. One real estate network marketing team wanted over $14,000 to join their team. For that $14,000, instead of reading a PDF, it looked like you got to participate in an online class and listen to a couple of people tell you how to develop your real estate network marketing team.
The funniest part of all this online marketing, though, is when I run across a guy advertising himself as making over a million dollars a year, yet he’s wearing a torn college t-shirt from 30 years ago, sitting at a broken desk in a small room with makeshift shelves that are collapsing under the weight of a lot of binders.
I did find one guy, though, who participates in network marketing but tells it like it is. Basically:
You only make money on people you bring in
and the people they bring in, referred to as your down line.
In other words, if you don’t continue finding people to pay into the system, and if other people don’t do the same, the system will collapse because it can’t afford to pay out, to pay YOU!
In my view, if anyone wants me to pay them for the opportunity to work, I’m outta there. Even the companies that want me to pay $25 or $50 for credit checks and background checks. Nope. If you or your company can’t afford to spend $25-$50 on a prospective employee, you’re not the person or company I want to work for.
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I am working on my next post in my San Diego Historical Landmark series, a tour of the interior of the Davis-Horton House, also known as the Gaslamp Museum.
I think the following picture, created from three individual pictures, deserves a post of its own:
I had to travel quite a ways yesterday looking for San Diego Historical Landmark #10.
I’m not sure I found it because there’s no good description of where it is…. you’ll just have to wait….
I did get some great pictures going to and from, like this one of a glider taking off from the cliffs at the Torrey Pines Glider Port with downtown La Jolla in the background:
Russel Ray Photos 