Riding boots and Haiku

I used to use Google Desktop on my computer at work, where it was great for finding the countless files that my boss and his offsider produced.  There were often several copies all exactly the same filed in different folders.  When I got this Dell computer, however, it didn't seem to like Google Desktop, and my geek son told me that there was an in-built search engine anyway, kindly provided by Microsoft.

Well, there was.

Microsoft promises much - 
Much disappointment
for the person word-searching.

I've just been reading a few of the haiku in the sample version on Amazon Kindle of Bicycle Haiku - hence the sudden bursting into miniature poetry (haiku are a bit like miniature horses, aren't they?)  This book is a series of sketches and haiku done while the author was riding from San Francisco to New York in 1979.  The author, Kevin Kelly, self-deprecatingly writes in the blurb: This book will not be a best-seller. It's a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-travelled roads, or sensitive souls really into haiku, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest -- that is for most normal people -- there is nothing of fashionable interest here.

However, Microsoft's in-built searcher now searches only when it feels like it, which, increasingly of late, has become less and less of the time.  Microsoft Word promises to identify all my spelling mistakes, too, but this resource has also become very spasmodic: on some Word files it works, on others it refuses to do so.

Microsoft promises much. 
But unconfident 
spellers daily left at sea.

And the only reason I was trying to use my in-built search engine was to see if I had anything on riding - I'd already found the Bicycle Haiku reference on Evernote, but it didn't seem to go with English riding boots which is what I was more particular about finding.   The riding boots in the picture, which are an example of the English variety, seem a little lost in the midst of their field.  One is looking off to its right, trying to find its owner; the other is snuggled close to its twin, just in case it gets left behind.  At least that's how it seems to me.

One boot surveys the landscape; 
searching.  The other
leans, hides inside itself.

2020: It's a while since I wrote this post, and my experience of Word's on computer search system is that it's much improved.

Signature line...

A lot of people put interesting things in their signature at the bottom of emails. However, Family First, the New Zealand group that aims to focus on family issues, has one that takes the cake. (I've copied it with their permission.)

Any mistakes in this email can be put down to professional oversight, hormonal imbalances or the weather. Please overlook any errors, omissions or admissions. If you should not have received this email please return and don't read.

Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email, although the poodle next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you! Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft.

However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites, whisk, and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes.

Generic v particular

Coming across the phrase 'used cisco' the other day, I had to check it out to see what it meant. Cisco, it turns out, is something that most people in the US would be familiar with, but here in New Zealand, it's an unknown term. Well, I think it's an unknown term, because it doesn't turn up in the reading matter (like newspapers and magazines) that I have contact with.

Cisco is a brand name for computer equipment, but as far as I can make out, it gets used as a generic name for computer equipment. 'Used cisco' is such a common phrase that it turns up hundreds of links on the Net. I guess it's a bit like sellotape, which started out as a brand name, but is now used for all kinds of sticky stuff. And there are plenty more like that. Hoovers as a generic word for vacuum machines, microsoft as a software word, to name just two. Dozens of words we use commonly were once more specific than they now are.

So there we go, all you people who don't live in the States. Now you know something you didn't know ten minutes ago.