Email - what irritates you about it the most?

I attended courses and I read tips and I am aware of what is seen as good netiquette to have these days...but like...

sigh.

Why do people still say "Hi Anastacia" or "Dear Anastacia" or "Dear Miss Haddon" or you get the picture THEN yada-yada-yada-message "REGARDS WHOEVER" if I am the only one getting the email?

uhm - I only refer to friends, colleagues and close peeps of course - not the usual general business type emails that I can understand...ITS THE DAY TO DAY EMAIL IRRITATION PROBLEM THAT I HAVE!

I can see who sent the email so why say "Regards NAME SURNAME" and sometimes "TITLE" when you gonna see me in the tea room in 5 mins time.
Just 'thanks' at the end is fine or even ending at the last sentence of what you wanna say in your message/reply IS ACCEPTABLE!

Just 'hi' or 'hello' in the beginning or just don't use a FORMAL
GREETING LINE...

Eggsclamation!! price for an egg?

My favourite Easter memory dates back to the young age of no more than nine years old. I know this because we still lived in Kensington at the time and my grandmother was still alive - if you trying to calculate the time / era, it was approx 1990.

I remember being accompanied by my mom (and someone else also but that was not important to remember who it was), we went to a nearby house in my home town Kensington (in Cape Town not JHB). The entire lounge was filled with a variety of shapes and sizes and all individually wrapped up in their _____ paper (the type used for fruit baskets), there was also like a little courtyard just past the kitchen (outside but covered up)and this was another storage room filled with more Easter Eggs ...and even a choice of white or brown chocolate...*me smiles*

Thinking back to this time really makes me appreciate that time - the time of "home made chocolate" made in the home-grown style, right in your neighbours kitchen - the type that was made of cooking chocolate bought from the nearest store around the corner; the moulds that were used were the plastic ones that I bet are still available at some "babbie" stores . A "babbie" as it is called, in my mind is referred to as a muslim shop owner, selling spices, rice that is weighed off in front of you, Tambrein, henna, okka pipes, okka tobacco and all sorts of little muslim literature books etc - I am particularly thinking of the one that was inside Foodworld mall in Westridge MPlain, he was next to Namso...anyone remember?

Ya so what...I had at least 10 different types of bunnies in their unique poses, I also had a huge hollow egg, I even remember that all my eggs were beautifully packed into my white plastic container - NO, not the used ice cream containers!! This was an actual Tupperware type container, and I remember it was filled to the top, and I was VERY PROUD to have SUCH alot of eggs and I don't even think I ate them all in one go because I treasured them so much.

Back to Year 2008: So I walk into Pick n Pay and I see the stand of bunnies all nicely wrapped up in this gold and red foil wrapping and something catches my eye...LINDT!!! ITS A LINDT EASTER BUNNY!!!! My heart sank when I saw this little treasure no bigger than five centimetres high, priced at a whopping R23,99 or was it R21,99 - there was a bigger one too at something like R27 or whatever - well the point is that it was shit expensive!!!

I wasn't intentionally looking for any easter eggs as I knew (of past experience) that the price would increase the closer it got the time of Easter and so I bought mine end of January already when shops just started packing them out...yeah, another cheapy kulerd trick of mine...I am sure that if I ate fish I would have bought that with my Christmas shopping already and frozen it until today! ha ha...pickled fish Friday tommoz...

How the hell? The chocolate is REALLY GOOD we all know that and either im just a cheapy or really unaware of the price we pay for good chocolate? I must admit that I have cut down enormously since 'the A word' appeared in my face and needless to say that I try to avoid chocolate at all costs - but I still can't stop thinking about having a Lindt Easter Bunny Rabbit :-(

I want I want I want

Maybe I gonna go oogle at the festival to see whats cooking (well besides chocolate of course) at the Canal Walk Lindt Chocolate Festival this weekend!!
"Hop into Canal Walk Shopping Centre and be spoilt rotten with Easter chocolate treats, activities and competitions brought to you by Lindt."
When: 18 – 24 March 2008
Time: 9am to 9pm

YUP! A Chocolate Festival :-) YUM YUM YUM

Some useless info but kinda relevant to this topic:
I loved the Charlie and the Cholcolate Factory movie...the book by Roald Dahl was my first Big person's book I read in Std 3. My first book I read from beginning to the end without it being prescribed to me by my teacher nor forced to read in English class...

I'm SO eggcited its this time of the year...Its Oxy Cute Them time~! Boing Boing Boing me bounces off to bed...

Facebook RSS Feed Updates

Facebook has this option to import posts from an external blog so that they appear together with your Notes in FB. "Facebook will automatically update your notes whenever you write in your blog. Imported blog posts cannot be edited."

bwa ha ha ha....

Automatically as in how many hours? for what is supposed to be only minutes at least but essentially seconds?

You are currently importing notes from:
http://annastayshere.blogspot.com/rss.xml

I wrote the post called 'Alt key for special characters' and uploaded it at 05:12 (05:12PM RSA time). It is now 11:28PM RSA time and it still hasn't fed through? wtf?

so I thought that it was maybe Blogger and I done another test. I done a email post to Blogger as a test and guess what; by the time i moved from my email window to the blogger tab in my browser, it was already there! But can one compare the two or not?

Also I subscribed to my own feed; using a feed reader of course (durrr) and I can see the post link there? Hmm...

Alt key for special characters

I started seeing people using these characters in Fluff friends on FB and I thought it was SO cute. See the two examples below...
-------------------------
..:: ♦♦♦♦ Please Pet Name! ♦♦♦♦::..
http://apps.facebook.com/fluff/fluffbook.php?...

..:: THANK YOU! ::..
☺☻☺☻☺Leave your link!☺☻☺☻☺
-------------------------
(\(\
(='.')
o(_")")
Please pet Name
http://apps.facebook.com/fluff/fluffbook.php?...
Thankx!
(¯`v´¯)
`*.¸.*´
-------------------------

So as I was saying...and then I got an email from my niece and it had a hearts at the end of her message ♥♥♥♥ and i thought to myself, no ways! I am going to find out how to do this...

See, it's easy using a normal keyboard, but when you using a laptop and when you using Linux it is different. Well not THAT different...below each heading, do that first then use the codes as shown after that.

Windows + normal Keyboard
Hold the Alt Key, then press the numbers while still holding down the Alt key.

Laptop
I'm using Toshiba and the NUM lock key is one of the function (Fn)keys. So i pressed Fn F11 (the NUM lock key), then once NUM lock is on, I had to use the numerical keys from the numeric keypad overlay (as they refer to in the manual) - in plain English its that buttons that share buttons with other buttons e.g. usually the text on that key will be white and then the overlay keys are grey.

Ubuntu Linux + normal keyboard
It's the toughest cause you got to hold Ctrl, Shift, U

Smiley face 1 ☺
Smiley face 2 ☻
Heart 3 ♥
Diamond 4 ♦
Club 5 ♣
Spade 6 ♠
Bullet 7 •
Bullet 8 ◘
9 ○
10 ◙
11 ♂
12 ♀
Music Notes 1, 4 ♪
Sun 1, 5 ☼
Arrows 23 - 29 ► ◄↕
Greek Alphabet 224 - 238
Math Symbols 240 - 253


◙ ◙ ◙ ◙ That's all for today ◙ ◙ ◙ ◙

Language Usage

I live in a country that has 11 official languages. English is my first language, Afrikaans my second and I am in the process of learning the third – Xhosa.

Ndisafunda Ukuthetha IsiXhosa.

In May 2007 I done an oral examination and passed it with an ‘A’. I am a little rusty as I only start intermediate lessons this coming Tuesday. The wait has been long but at the same time it made me realise just how uninterested people can be. See, our class started with at least 20 people in it. Some dropped out along the way and some never did the oral and some failed it. All in all, three people passed and that wasn’t enough for a new intermediate class. So finally, its here and I’m REALLY excited...

Link to for more info:
http://www.uct.ac.za/faculties/ched/departments/mep/study/

Chances of you speaking to “your kind” can sometimes be slim and so what you actually saying might not be fully understood by the next person if they’re not “your kind” as different backgrounds, not being able to express correctly and not understanding your expression in the same way you do...

...Language barriers in other words...

Certain words have been used incorrectly for so many years that it has become abnormal to correct; and sometimes you have to be almost apologetic for correcting it? We have what is called “Common Spelling Errors”; it almost sounds okay to make those errors now, not so? Never mind the incorrect use of language grammar! I am guilty of talking in what is called “kulerd language” and likely to have incorrect grammar usage too.

Could that really be the reason some people who are in the advertising business are just poor at doing what it is they claim to be good at? Are they not understanding their readers, are the readers misinterpretting them, help me understand this...

It most cases in my experience, most messages are misunderstood when written in an email, a website, a sms etc compared to a verbal conversation. And yes society is swinging more towards this type of communication and I am all for it, but it can cause major confusion, anger, hurt in some cases, and it can make you feel even worse if you believe that what you are reading is what you understand it to be saying to you? You with me?

Could it also be that people just don't know common netiquette? I refer to emoticon usage (UCT people please don't get too excited, you can only see emoticons in email if you actually set your profile to view html messages because in GroupUnwise, it is not the default!),a little :-) or a :-P (My boss once asked why I made a colon, dash and P?)...and he's an HOD, one would assume that at least a professor would be aware of these things?

In my opinion, it is such a pleasure being able to converse face to face. To see the smile, to hear the laugh, to wipe the tear if necessary, to hug if needed, to argue your point, to see the body language, to correct if wrong, to ensure that you are understood, and you feel like you really are connecting to that person...

Whenever I visit Mitchells Plain I start mocking and talking with that added accent or if I feel like having fun, I talk to myself in different languages (like dialect) whilst showering in the morning – the things we have to do to keep ourselves amused if we live on our own!

I totally amused myself and laughed aloud at the adverts you can see if you follow the link…Have fun! Whilst browsing a few local sites, I saved a few to an album on my Facebook profile. (the link is the blog post title)

So much has happened

Yelloooo...is anyone still reading this? You thought the last post in August 2007 might have led to a suicide attempt? hehee...well actually, i'm back.

djhfoinq eufio'a kjkdjl;....I don't know where to start...

Lemme explain whats been occupying alot of my time...FACEBOOK! but ya, i finally got bored of that and yes i still log on to "check up" but ya...

The main points, Timothy and I no longer together so to all you single males that just been waiting for this moment, wait some more. I am beginning to be okay with this now. I miss him alot and whenever I go to a place that we once went to before, I think of him and I get sad again. See he was/is my best friend and probably one of the only people that I can fully trust. He encouraged me, spoke to me, gave me advise, taught me responsibility, taught me to save money, almost like a responsible father/older brother figure type; the one i never had...and he refuses to see me and has moved on...only two months later he moved on...quite sad.

Also, my mom, eldest sister and her fam (my immediate family) all moved to JHB :-( It's not all that hard not having them around but having to go through the above without them and other matters, it was the worst part of my life ever...

The best part of going through a hard time is realising that it is long over and realising that you actually got through it. Realising that life just really ain't that bad afterall.

The valuable lessons i have learned in the last few months was treasure special moments and don't be shy to say that you feeling happy. I also learned how to say sorry and really mean it. I am still trying it and it makes me feel good to encourage people and compliment them for a change; i admit that i was/am/can be very demanding to the extent that the other person does not matter and everything is aboout me me me. Well people don't change overnight and i sure as hell am not going to lie to you now and tell you that I'm a new person. I'm not. I'm still me, but only I am just more aware now.

So I am not going into too much detail about anything more, i wanna blog regularly again because i feel that is helps to write/type/talk about thoughts...whether or not you get feedback, it's just a sense of fulfillment to think about it and jot it down.