Peaking from geeking

[pseydtonne]

I've finally reinstalled Red Hat 7.3 on my own computer (Vladivostok). I got very tired of reading about the errors with the formatting, so I decided to live with them. Misalignments of 7 MB each in a hard drive of 32 GB is too small to matter. Everything booted, so everything should wind up okay. If not, I'll give it a big reformatting with a floppy-based Linux, copy the Win98 material fromthe old drive, and reinstall RH 7.3.

I'll feel comfortable about the machine after these events:

1. I get Opera 6 installed;
2. I go through a couple more reboots, for testing's sake;
3. I copy my email from the poorly-copied Evolution and pine directories I stashed in a Windows directory;
4. I set up the printer.

What I love about Vlad now is how quiet it is. I took out its old hard drive and, even with an extra tower fan, it's too quiet for me to hear it above the talk in my head. This is dreamy, I tell you.

I got a bunch of errands done today: changing Ceru's water (Cerulean is my betta fish), getting groceries, repairing Vlad, taking out the garbage, sorting my outgoing posts (mostly checks to deposit, which are nice things to have, and rebates, which will be nice to have in about a month).

None of this is thrilling. However, the completion of the computer tasks means I will soon have my workspace working again. This means I will be free to get coding done. This also means my need to nest will be sated, and thus I can get on with packing for the move to Somerville.

It also means I can get back to being funny and non-tech in my LJ. I fear I've become dull to read because I'm not talking in whimsical barbs. I know my buddy epanastatis is looking forward to my speaking erudite English again.

Then again, some of you have come to savor the geek rambles. How can I please both beloved crowds? I could talk about nothing either side considers its forte...

...and by the way, the word "forte" is French. It should be pronounced like the English word "fort" and not like a vague rhyme to my first name. Ergo, the sentence "Goth is not my forte." should have five syllables. Sorry about that, but it drove me nutty that even my dad got this wrong this weekend, and he's the one that used to teach me this scheisse. "A foolish consistency is the hobgobblin of little minds" said Emerson, but he wound up the brand name for junk stereos.

So instead, I'll mix it up. My mania to learn everything about multi-boot installation has driven me to drink. I learned a lot, but I'll only be able to parse my knowledge by stepping away. My last task will be turning my cousin's machine into a dual-boot, after I learn how to revise the NT Boot Loader material successfully. Next time I'll have my customers buy two drives.

I hope I didn't explode too loudly today. I'm heading to bed, glad to know a lot more but ready to tackle something else for a while.

-man of many minds, Ps/d

Comments

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" said Emerson, but he wound up the brand name for junk stereos.

may i sig this, dante? wow. :)

oh, and btw, Opera 6.02 is out, and it sucks less.

-steve

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Well, the "fort" versus "for-tay" debate is sticky at best. Merriam Webster at m-w.com says:

usage In forte we have a word derived from French that in its "strong point" sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated \'for-"tA\ and \'for-tE\ because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived 2forte. Their recommended pronunciation \'fort\, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. In British English \'fo-"tA\ and \'fot\ predominate; \'for-"tA\ and \for-'tA\ are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English.

and dictionary.com says something similar. Me, sorry, but I say "fortay" since pronouncing it "forte" feels to me like going out of my way to not split infinitives: artificial and not really based on anything. As a result, the only reason I'd do it would be to keep pickier-than-me people happy. I will gladly receive the pronunciation "fort" with no problem, though.

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

molly, you bring out the language geek in me. :)

the etymological origins of the English term "forte" (meaning "an area of expertise") are in the technical jargon of fencing. specifically, the "forte" refers to the lower half of the blade of a foil or an epee (i.e. the portion between the handguard and the midpoint of the blade), which is relatively stiffer and heavier than the upper half, the "foible" (and thus more suitable for use in parries). so rather than choosing English pronunciation based on a desire to be faithful to modern French, it might make more sense either to refer to how fencers use the term, or to consider how it might have been pronounced in archaic French (the OED shows usage as early as the 17th century).

for what it's worth, i've heard modern fencers pronounce the word both ways :p

-steve

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

And there's the rub: only the most pretentious of the pretentious would pronounce the word "foible" (which I tend to use more often than "forte") as "fwah-bluh". We're speaking English, not French.

Of course, English orthography is indeterminate enough that the ending "e" in "forte" could be silent. However, there's a functionalist reason for pronouncing it: to avoid homophony with "fort." As in:

Schmuck A: That's not my forte [silent e].
Schmuck B: What fort? I thought we were talking about linguistics!
Schmuck A: No, forte with a mute "e".
Schmuck B: What are you speaking, Spanishe with a mute "e"?
Schmuck A: No, it's French.
Schmuck B: Which is, after all, one of the Neo-Spanish languages.

Apologies to Eugene Ionesco.

By the way...

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Ep, meet Hak and Hak, this is Ep. I'd use real names, but I don't need to be chided.

-making friends, Pseydtonne