Net Neutrality
Some links: Link to www.youtube.com Link to www.publicknowledge.org Q-O-S Argument Link to www.njtelecomupdate.com

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What's Your Problem?

I was actually thinking about this a few months ago during a period of watching a lot of TV. I found it odd that "irritable bowel syndrome" was something that required medication. Oh advertising...

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Mid-2006 News
Hello again!

I'm going to try to pick up where my last update left off, so if you hadn't received that, you can go here (password's the same).

January was pretty uneventful from what I remember. Actually, I don't remember much of January, so I'm assuming it was uneventful. At any rate, it must'nt've been that important, and if it was I apologize. (I had never seen a double contraction until a few months ago, and I *like* it. It was actually on a mailing list I subscribe to: someone used "should'nt've" as a contraction for "should not have". The one I just did is sorta harder to pronounce, tho'. Woot.)

Let's go to February. February is the time of my dad and my birthdays. For my dad's birthday, I went kayaking with him and my mom in the Newport backbay. I hadn't kayaked since the summers of high school, when I went to Hume Lake, and it was as enjoyable as I remember it. My mom and dad shared a kayak, and I had a single one. My mom liked enjoying the scenery and paddling whenever she thought it was good, but my dad was getting a little frustrated when she didn't keep very good timing (playful frustration). We were out for a few hours, and by the end of the afternoon, my dad had decided was going to buy a kayak. I've been out with him a few times since then, in a double kayak he got from Costco.

February is also when Valentine's Day is. I didn't have one. I actually had something better by the end of February: my own bonnie lass, Margret. We decided to date again and took a trip up to Disneyland together (so that day it really was the happiest place on earth for me). Through this June, I'm happy to say we've been doing really well. Sure, we've had our problems, but the sheer goodness of our time together has made those problems inconsequential. The goodness was increased when I joined her at her sister's wedding (where she was the maid of honor) in June, having a wonderful time hanging out with her family. Her house holds two of her brothers and two of her sisters (not counting the one that got hitched), one of her aunts, one of her grandmoms, her parents, and plenty of fried food. I'm not a big fan of fried foods, but I got used to it real quick. Anyway, it was definitely some good times spent with her family.

Unfortunately, those good times won't repeat soon because Margret left me. What I mean is that she's in Italy studying abroad for six months, so I probably won't visit her family up in San Jose until she gets back. She'' be in Rome until the beginning of August, and then she's going to Trento until the end of December. It actually looks like I'll be able to take a trip over there to visit her (my first trip outside NA) ! However, the time when we'll both be the least busy isn't until December, so all we get to do is wring our hands in anticipation. In between the wringing, we still get to shared keep in contact through Skype (which works pretty well, I might add: david.romano is my screenname), GoogleChat, and Shutterfly. So although we're apart, we've been able talk quite frequently, her telling me all about how wonderful Rome is, and me telling her how work is going.

I'm still working at Parity Computing, but things have changed quite a bit. In mid-February, I was shifted over to doing software development for a new project, and so I wasn't developing only grammars anymore. I still was using regexes, but also took part in developing the software that used the regexes. Since the company has been using Java for their solutions, I am now a Java developer (my heart still bleeds Perl tho'). During the months of March and April, I worked like crazy, but since I liked doing what I did it made the hours more bearable.

Now I'm digressing a bit and telling you about the completion of my plans that I mentioned in my last update. It looks like my short-term goals are going to sorta be fulfilled. First of all, I'm going to Europe this December, second of all, it doesn't look like I'm going to be teaching abroad within the next few years, nor will I have a quick sum of money to be able to relocate easily. The last few months I decided to move back to Orange County at the start of this month (July) and live with my parents as I pursue a teacher's credential for secondary education math and a Master's in Education. I've applied to a small liberal arts college called Concordia University (no relation to the one in Canada) and will find out in the next week or so if I have been accepted. I hope to be done with my credential and have a job secured by the beginning of 2008, and I hope to be able to coach a sport wherever I teach. In my off-time (during the summer months) is when I hope to spend time abroad, traveling and maybe helping out with some missionary and linguistics organizations.

Now back to work! I knew it would be impractical for me to commute down there every day, especially with the cost of transportation, so I decided to try my hand and negotiating employment for just the summer or possibly even for part-time when classes start at the end of August. I let my supervisor know about my plans of moving up to OC (n.b. no "the") a couple months before leaving San Diego and during that next month or so my supervisors didn't really broach the subject much. However, during the last month I planned to be there, it seemed I was talking with one of my supervisors about my employment every couple of days. We came to an agreement where I would work from home and just come in in Fridays.

Before that work schedule started, and before I moved up to OC, there is still some of May and June to talk of. I believe almost every weekend I was gone doing something (must've been nice for my roommate). I worked with my dad (who's a land surveyor) up in Yucca Valley some weekends, went to some weddings, went up with Richard Ahn to visit Vincenzo di Nicola and Ben Strong at Stanford, went to Disneyland again with Margret (it was happy that time too), hung out with Margret and my family on Memorial Day in San Luis Obispo, and hiked Half Dome with my brother and my cousin Vaughn. I wa really getting tired with all the traveling, but it was good kind of tired. Anyway, the climax of my travels was taking a week off from work at the end of June and going to Chicago for YAPC, where I had a wonderful time learning more of Perl and meeting interesting people.

When I got back from YAPC, I had a memorable meetup with "one Mr. T.J. Tallie" in Old Town. We hadn't been able to hang out in a while, and we were able to spend some quality time catching up on each others' lives. The next day I moved out of my apartment (which I shared with three cool guys: Ravi, Tony, and John) up to Orange. That was July 2nd, July 3rd was a Monday I had off from work, and July 4th was, well, a holiday. Since then I've been on the commuting schedule, working from home. You would think that that would afford me ample time to do other things, but, as it has turned out, I feel more busy than ever. Work is just a few keyboard strokes away, so I've ended up still spending more time working than I originally intended. It's nice that there's work to be done, but right now there's too much for this current project and I feel I'm never getting caught up. The project is going through the end of this summer (at least), and I'm thinking of leaving when school starts so I don't get sucked into work during my studies.

Anyway, I think that about sums up the last six months. Sheesh, I wrote a lot. Maybe I should start doing quarterly or monthly updates. I hope y'all are doing well, and would love to hear anything new with you guys.

Peace,
David

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kid and his drums...

man, i love google video. Here's another one I saw that is just insane. a young kid playin' the drums like nobody's business. (offtopic but worthy of mention: wedgie is OED's word of the day today.)

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Spanish Yo/Llo

I'm teaching math review courses for different grade levels right now for the summer at Santiago Canyon College. Today was the first day of class, so it wasn't planned to be that rigorous. Anyway, the topic of language was brought up, where one student said they only spoke English and that Spanish was easier than English. I decided to insert my foot in my mouth by talking about something I didn't know a lot about: Spanish.

As a counterexample to what the student said, I asked one of the Spanish-speaking students how one says "I like it" in Spanish. Naturally, they replied, "Me gusta". I then explained how the phrase's construction is different than the way it is in English, and counter-intuitive for someone learning Spanish who knows English, and surely they would have a problem flubbing that expression. Yet I also stressed that for someone learning English who knows Spanish, it would be counter-intuitive to say "I like it," and they also would have the same problem as the Spanish-learner. The whole point is that each language has its complexities and no language is "simpler" than another, although each language may be simpler in a certain linguistic category, e.g., phonetic inventory.

I then explained that some things are just as simple in English as Spanish. I asked a Spanish-speaker how to say "I am eating food". They replied, and I transcribed it on the chalkboard as "Yo como comida". However, when I wrote the "Yo", both Spanish-speakers in the class protested that that's not how you write it, which was a real surprise to me, since I thought that part of my Spanish knowledge was sound. When I asked them how they write it, they both spelled out "Llo." I had never heard of that form of "I" in Spanish, so I asked where their families came from: one's family was from Mexico on both sides, the other's had one side from Mexico and the other from Cuba. So that just really stumped me, because I thought if I was familiar with any sort of Spanish, it would have been Mexican Spanish.

So when I got home today, I decided to google the "Yo/Llo" thing.[1] Unfortunately, I only found three sites (here, here, and here), that even mentioned "Llo". So where in the heck is "Llo" coming from?

[1] The search terms I used:

llo yo
llo yo spanish
llo yo espanol first person singular pronoun
"Yo llo"

Update:
I tried searching with:

yo llo orthography
yo llo spelling

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Fireworks are Dangerous and Illegal in the City of Ventura

Margret and I visited my good friend Joe and his wife Maria this last weekend, and it was an excellent time. On the way to catching a matinée for Ratatouille, I noticed a poster at a police station, in all caps:

FIREWORKS ARE DANGEROUS AND ILLEGAL IN THE CITY OF VENTURA

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