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THE MOUTHS OF GIFT HORSES – Marilyn Armstrong

Fandango’s February Expressions #15

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!

If someone is giving me a horse, I promise to only check to see if he or she need massive dental work. I’m already having that problem with Bonnie and the money involved is insane. It’s more expensive than having work done in Garry or my mouth! I can only shiver with fear about HOW expensive it would be to have a horse’s teeth done.

My experience with gift horses, in the more symbolic sense, is if it sounds too good to be true, it’s not true. When a company, an individual (who isn’t family or friend) is offering you stuff for free, there’s a catch. These days, we assume it’s a scammer or hacker trying to get at your personal data so he/she/they can pawn it off on the darknet or wherever they offer it.

But even if it’s a job offer that sounds way too good to be true, take it all with a dash of salt. The perfect job is rarely perfect. All my perfect jobs have turned out to be perfect when they sounded perfectly normal on the surface and only later did I realize I had somehow managed to get a fantastic boss and the world’s best co-workers. It was never in the job description. All job descriptions sound perfect — or nearly perfect. The reality is usually depressingly unlike the description.

In short, be sensible. Keep your hopes in check until you know how the land lies. Assume that if it isn’t written in the contract, it’s mostly hot air. If you turn out to be lucky and everything is amazing and wonderful, then leap for joy and smile every day that you can continue to work there.

Rarely are the things you dream about gotten free. Even if the potential is there,  you still need to put in your hours, sometimes, years to get from pretty good to great. There’s nothing wrong with optimism, but don’t confuse it with a phone call out of the blue or a headhunter who says “this job is the best ever.” Maybe it is or will be — but maybe not.

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FAVORITE ROSE PHOTO – CEE’S FLOWER OF THE DAY – Marilyn Armstrong

February 15 – My Favorite Rose Photo

This is one of my top two rose photo favorites. The two pictures are very much alike.

I love this picture because the roses bloomed so intensely they look like the roses they put on the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Last year we cut them back very far and the bloomed, but not nearly as much as usual and I think the intense rain has prevented a lot of sun-loving flowers from blooming. It’s all mud out there!

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OMG By Marilyn Armstrong

Have any of us ever calculated the number of posts on Facebook, Twitter, and even WordPress that start out with OMG or something like it? The sentence which follows might — or might not — have anything to do with the opening OMG. My personal favorite is when the author tried to fully engage the excitement, shock, horror, fear, loathing, and paralyzing awesomeness of his personal “event.”

She says, “OMG! I’m 25! That’s so OLD!
What can I do NOW?”

I would expect, given that she or he has lived 25 years of life to its fullest, surely it’s time to make burial plans. Buy a plot of land and a nice casket or arrange for a ceremonial burning. Any amount of time living life past 25 would be an obvious waste. Really, hasn’t she done it all? Any activity from this now on would be mere repetition

While we were out on the water with Tom and Ellin, there was an emergency in progress. A man had fallen in the water and apparently was “swept away.”

That doesn’t make a lot of sense as the water was dead-calm. It was low tide with water running into shore, not out to sea. But we’ll skip all that for now. I’m pretty sure Garry has more to say about the story. He can do news and probably never said OH, MY GOD, in all his years of reporting.

What we saw were people on jet skis closing in and apparently hoping to find … what? A living guy? A dead one? If you find a floating corpse while zipping around on your jet ski, what’s your next step? IS there a next step? Can you call the Coast Guard from your jet ski? Do you watch him float away while you zip back to shore to Tweet your friends about how you saw the “totally OMG coolest thing in the WORLD in the WATER?”

However much we may feel that the news no longer really is the news, at least not like was, if you consider how the news would be done without professionals? It makes me nearly collapse with laughter.

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GOOGLY EYES – Marilyn Armstrong

I know I’ve posted this before, but I really like it so I’m doing it again! It makes me laugh every time I read it.

I woke up this morning with an earworm. Not your normal earworm. Mine was a 1920s earworm. It was a song my mother sang often and for once, she actually got the words right. Ask any member of my family and they will assure you: my mother never ever remembered the words to any song — except this one. She would sing words from other songs to whatever melody was bouncing around in her head. But she knew all the words to this one. It’s SUCH an earworm, once you listen to it, it just sort of sits in your head and goes around and around and around.

So I get up this morning and this is what I’m hearing, but without the scratches:

And by golly, the words I had in my head were dead on. Next, the obvious question arises:

How did Google get its name? – Mobilis In Mobile

The mysterious mysteries of the Internet

How did Google get its name?You may have read this kind of “official answer”: Google derived its name from the word “googol”, a term coined by then nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner. The story goes, Kasner would have asked his nephew to invent a name for a very large number – ten to the power of one hundred, and Milton called it a googol. Blah-blah-blah!

Whatever say GSpecialists, Wikipedia or Google corporate itself, last Friday I discovered the secret when I was twittering with Orli. Google was named after Barney Google.*

Just listen to Barney Google’s song. No more to say!

One of you might write an essay on how, when and why granny Brin and/or Page was singing this song.

You may have read this kind of “official” answer: “Google derived its name from the word “googol”, a term coined by then nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner but I’d bet money (and I never bet money!) that Google was named after Barney Google.” The most popular comic strip in the U.S. for dozens of years … and still around even today.
Barney Google – The History

Now you know the truth about Google and somehow, it makes a lot more sense than
any other explanation I’ve heard!