Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters

 INTRODUCTION I bought a Dell Inspiron 16 model 7610 in January 2022. At the time, I only got a 512 GB SSD for my boot disk, because who's ever going to use 512 whole gigabytes of disk space, r...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/09/cloning-windows-11-boot-drive-on-dell.html

 I hate cancer. Cancer is a vicious, ugly beast. It is mean. It is cruel. It is heartless. I posted previously about my own experiences with cancer , and how I got to beat it twice, without ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/09/cancer-strikes-again.html

 On the Reddit sub AskOldPeopleAdvice, someone asked "What did people do all day before the 90s? Was it more boring than today because of the lack of entertainment and the internet?" I've seen...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/07/before-1990s-what-did-you-do-all-day.html

 After having discussed who and whom, I have some locational (toponymic?) words to discuss briefly. When's the right time to use here, hither, and hence? In the 21st Century, nobody even say...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/04/not-word-peeve-whither-and-whence.html

This one is just for fun. I am aware that this information is as useful as cursive writing in this century. Still, it's fun to know, and it may be marginally useful. In modern English, the dist...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/04/not-word-peeve-just-fun-who-versus-whom.html

We love our new home. Our property backs onto open space, and so we always have the potential for visitors of the wildlife variety. This morning, I woke up at oh-dark-thirty, like I always do, ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2024/02/todays-wild-animal-story.html

 I've noticed this in grown adults who should really know better. I've seen it in print, and I've heard it in speech. Best to illustrate by example: "When I saw it, I just really kind of sh...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/11/word-peeve-its-just-really-kind-of.html

What if we elected a woman to the US Presidency in 2024? Hillary Rodham Clinton famously ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 "None of the above, please God, please " presidential election. In o...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-woman-for-president-in-2024.html

 In 2014, I posted a picture of a castle that I had drawn, and the lesson behind the picture . That was not my first attempt at drawing a castle to teach the lesson. My first attempt had been ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-castle-original-drawing.html

If you want to be a serious software professional, eventually you will need to learn C++ (pronounced "c plus plus"). You can avoid it and dodge it for as long as you want, but it's inevitable. ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/03/want-to-learn-c-heres-best-way-to-do-it.html

 I'm not sure about its origin, but the phrase "case in point" sounds like a legal term, something that originated in a courtroom or a lawyer's brief. Here's an example of its usage. Please do...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/03/word-peeve-case-in-point.html

BOTTOM LINE AT THE TOP: Money won't cure all of the ills in education, but it will bring back a lot of the lost talent, and that will go a long way towards fixing things. NOW, THE DETAILS: A ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2023/03/why-paying-teachers-more-would-help-fix.html

 I'm reading the book Think Again, by psychologist Adam Grant, and I noticed a footnote talking about the importance of paying your workers enough. Mr. Grant was speaking in general terms, but I...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/12/on-teachers-pay-and-why-it-matters.html

 Twelve years ago, I wrote about how an old quilt made me cry as our full and busy home became an empty nest. That quilt was powerfully symbolic. It spoke of my love for the mountains, and of ho...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-new-quilt.html

October was a difficult month for me. It marked the death of one of the most influential men of the 20th Century, even though you may never have heard of him. Donald Albert Depew was born on...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/11/old-cowboys-never-die-they-just-ride.html

 Preface: This is a letter I wrote to my kids on 7 February, 2011, about a Sunday School teacher I had when I was a youth. I don't want to lose this story, so here it is. Hi kids, Here's the...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/08/that-sunday-school-teacher-from-finland.html

I've noticed a new fingernails-screeching-on-chalkboard trend in the written word, both on paper and in electronic media. It doesn't happen with the spoken word, because all three of the words ...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/08/cue-vs-queue-vs-que.html

I'm here today to talk about the practice of using "myself" instead of "I" or "me". I'm tempted to blame this one on the officious, pompous, pseudo-authoritarian, petty tyrants on the front lin...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/06/word-peeve-myself-and-other-reflexive.html

 Here's a recent one. Sometime in the last 20 or 30 years, people started misusing the phrase "set foot" by subsituting "step foot" in its place. "Step foot" seems to be a combination of "se...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/06/word-peeve-stepping-foot-versus-setting.html

INTRODUCTION Columbine, in 1999, wasn't the first school shooting, but its 15 dead and 24 injured, and the drama surrounding it, certainly caught everyone's attention. Sandy Hook, in 2012, was...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/05/about-guns-and-classrooms.html

America has a teacher shortage, and it's rapidly getting worse. Here's what we can do about it. In these post-pandemic days, teachers are no longer hailed as the heroes that, in March 2020, ove...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/05/how-to-fix-teacher-shortage.html

Okay, it's time. Let's talk about profanity. A wise man named Spencer W. Kimball used to say:  > "Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself > forcibly."  I've...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/03/about-profanity.html

 This isn't really a peeve, more an observation. Language is evolving right before our eyes. > "I went through all that pain, but it was worth the trophy."  >  > "We got first...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/03/word-peeve-its-not-worth-it.html

 I didn't think it would be possible, but I have to add another law to Zyzmog's Laws of Motion. ZYZMOG'S SIXTH LAW OF MOTION, OR THE "DRIVE FRIENDLY" RULE Everybody on the road is just tryin...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/02/zyzmogs-sixth-law-of-motion.html

TECHNICAL STUFF It's easier to do something right the first time than it is to do it over. When given a choice between creating something, evaluating someone else's creation, or fixing someone...

https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2022/02/lessons-learned-in-my-career-as-engineer.html