Toubabou

Well, I wasted a lot of time today trying to get a certain web form to process correctly. I finally determined that the method was changing from “POST”, which I had set in the form, to “GET”. Considerable investigation later, and not finding the answer anywhere else, I discovered that if you specify “http://” in the ref of the the action you can only use a “GET” method. In order to use “POST”, you have to use a local action file.

Well, I’m glad it’s behind me, now. I’m not sure what other words I should put in this post to help it be found in a search…

Well, okay, that might be extreme. However, I’m somewhat dumbfounded by the email I received today.

With the launch of RagTime 6 we changed our licensing model. There will be no Solo version of RagTime 6 (see also http://www.ragtime-online.com). So that you too can enjoy this, the best ever version of RagTime, we have the following extraordinary offer: Full version of RagTime 6.0.1 Multilingual for the special price of only 249,00 EUR (instead of 845,64 EUR, including vat and shipping)

That’s right! The software that I’ve (not) been using for free is now only €250! (Or is that 250€?) Well, according to XE.com, that’s about $330.00. I can get Office at $70 more (and that’s without exploiting one of their “buy for less” options). InDesign is $700, but their upgrade is only $170. In short, I’m sure RagTime is wonderful publishing software (though I usually find that I can use something else more easily) and I’m sure it’s doing wonderfully in Europe, where it’s been traditionally difficult to get localized software at reasonable prices, but this just seems extreme.

I searched for positive reviews of RagTime on Google. Now, I understand that when you name your product after a common noun (Pages? Office? Windows?? Mail?) it can be difficult to place in the top hits, but the only reviews I could find that praised RagTime, did so because you could get it for Free. Is anyone at RagTime GmbH listening? I’ve wanted to like RagTime. Shoot, I’ve wanted to love it, ever since I read a review in SVM Mac, but I can’t love a program that retails for € 845/$1110. Not when there are so many other (cheaper) options out there — Hello, NeoOffice, iWork, OpenOffice(why do they have to put .org on it? that’s silly), InDesign, Quark (for heaven’s sake!), and even the Evil, Dark Side MS Office Suite. In my simple little world, you get to charge over a grand for your software when everyone agrees that it’s the best, and not before.

I was just looking at my last post, and realized that part of the problem I have with writing is that I am a very verbal communicator. As such, my writing can be very dry and pedantic, or it can be very vague and parenthetical. In spoken communication, I find that I try to say as little as possible until I can determine what I have in common with my interlocutor. This is probably a consequence of being a matured Third Culture Kid.

To explain the last comment less tangentially: TCKs experience a lot of occasions where they’ve contributed something which seemed obviously pertinent to the conversation, only to realize that the rest of the people present don’t have the cross-cultural experience to understand what’s been said. This can be simply linguistic (any number of cross-lingual puns, etc.) but is usually cultural or experiential. For example, I recall with great amusement and some pain the confusion I experienced in the late ’70s when boys my age were all excited about some guy called Bo Derek. And they seemed equally interested in a movie called, ambiguously enough, “10″. I finally resolved the issues, but apparently have never quite gotten over it.

There are similar situations where the subject of Africa will come up. Suddenly, I am the expert, but I eventually realize that very few people are actually interested in correcting their understanding of Africa (or anything else). Rather, they are very interested in impressing people with their own opinions.

The most dreaded question, “Where are you from?” becomes a litmus, where answering ambiguously and noncommittally allows the other to request clarification, but also allows them to nod and go on with things, indicating that it really wasn’t considered to be a serious question; certainly not one worthy of the fifteen minute response a complete understanding requires.

Well, this entry is morphing pretty drastically, so I think I’m going to wind it down. This reveals another problem I have with writing - as when I’m speaking, I tend to follow any rabbit trail that comes along, and this is even less bearable in writing than it is in speech. Perhaps someday I’ll learn control.

Well, here I am subbing for the science teacher. It’s mostly 8th Grade Biology, with AP Biology thrown in to keep things interesting. Classification of virii, and beneficial functions of bacteria. The kids are fun: “Hey, it’s the best sub!”

Looking at virii and bacteria in a creationist framework it’s interesting to note the non-pathogenic nature of most of them. It’s also fun to note the gene-therapy treatments that use virii as vectors these days.