Things I Know

I don’’t want in any way to diminish the tragedy of the earthquakes in Haiti this week.  They are a natural disaster of the highest order.  My prayers go out to those killed and injured and to their loved ones.  I hope yours do too.  That said, Haiti is on an Island.  It shares the island with another country, the Dominican Republic.  Lots of Dominicans live in the area where I do.  If I were in charge of news coverage, I would mention that the earthquakes were felt in the Dominican Republic, but damage was minor and nobody was killed.  Also, if you want to be pedantic, and I know I always do, since Haiti is part an island and not an island unto itself, the earthquake happened in Haiti, not on Haiti.

 I own a Canon Pixma MP980 printer.  It works well except for two things:  it takes a long time to buffer a print job; and it uses more ink than I’’d like, a lot more.  It even uses colored ink when it prints black and white.  If you have one of these and it tells you that you’re running low on ink, you can buy some more, but don’’t replace any of the cartridges until the printer won’’t work anymore.  You get the low ink warning quite a while before you run out.

When it’’s appropriate to be a little silly, I often pronounce the “c” in the word scissors as a mild protest of the ridiculous ways some English words are spelled.  And in similar circumstances, I pronounce the first “x” in Xerox as an “x” rather than as a “z” too.

As I count down the days to baseball spring training, I know all the teams don’’t report on February 15^th.  In fact I’’m aware some report on the 16^th or 17^th.  But February 15^th is the first day teams can require pitchers and catchers to report and that’’s why I use it as the benckmark.