Woman Speak Translation

Men don't understand when women give directions. This is frequently because they have not been taught what the phrases we are using mean. For example, tell a man to comb his daughter's freshly washed hair "from the bottom up" and he will start at the ends and attempt to comb towards the roots. If it is explained to him that you want him to comb out the bottom 2 inches, then comb out the bottom 4 inches, gradually moving to add more of her hair until it is combed from her head all the way to the ends, he can follow the directions.


Women can not ask a man to run the vacuum and expect him to use the crevice tool on the corners and manage the baseboards, too. The request was to run the vacuum. He did that. Will he have moved furniture? Not unless he nudged it with the vacuum. And he will have made the vacuum pass once over each square foot of floor. He will not repeatedly pass the vacuum over that clump of dog hair until it finally gets the last of it. After all, he doesn't have to run a lawn mower over a patch of grass twice.


If a man asks a woman who doesn't usually mow the yard to mow, she'll run the lawn mower. Will she pick up fallen branches, trim shrubs, do a little weeding, and edge? No. She mowed, as she was asked. Put the shoe on the other foot and see if it fits.


How do you get the results you want? You make a more specific request and you talk to your partner as the two of you complete the chore together. "Honey, will you move the chairs so I can vacuum under them?" will probably work much better than "Honey, will you run the vacuum?"

Configuration Process

I've been taking it much more slowly than I usually do when configuring a new computer or a rebuild. The list of applications I use has gotten longer but that's not slowing me down. I'm simply not trying to get everything done at once. I only installed a printer this morning. Today's goal is to get Lightroom installed. After all, that software is why I got a new computer in the first place.

Another Computer?

Well, yes. When you can't update applications because your OS is too old, and you can't update the OS because the hardware is too old, you need a new computer. And I even got a new monitor. There's a chance I could run the old monitor, too. That would give me incredible screen real estate. In the scary realm, because my new monitor is 27". Plus the old flat panel? Yikes!

For now, I'm just installing applications that I want to have and I'm loading data. I finally have terrabytes of drive space on a single machine, with NO external hard drives. All of my music and all of my pictures in one location! Sort of. Eventually. Not counting local and remote backup copies. I AM a geek at heart. I have never lost data yet. Drives, yes. Data, no.

Folks are saying that they hate Windows 8. I dunno yet. There are a few things I'd rather it didn't do, but I can always change settings. A lot of things people are complaining about being hidden aren't in any different location than they always were. In some ways, I'm finding Windows 8 to be a cleaner interface.