Anal people, unite!

Saturday afternoon I took a short course titled "Become a Copyeditor or Proofreader." Amusing factoid: the guy who spoke to us is the person responsible for Hershey's Syrup spelling "recipe" correctly on their bottles. I knew there were rare other people who'd notice such a thing, but it was validating to meet a guy who writes to companies and gets such mistakes corrected!

As for my fellow students, I have never seen so much anal-retentiveness gathered in one room. Wow. I had found my tribe!

I was a little disappointed that no one there, including the speaker, could spell better than I could. :-)

I'm sure I could make a living at this if I spent a bit of time building up a resume and a portfolio. It won't pay what embedded OS work pays, of course, but if I went freelance it would be a fine supplemental job. I haven't yet decided to commit to it. I'm mulling it over.

Ringworld!

Last night rfrench and I went to the De Anza Planetarium for their show about the Cassini/Huygens mission.

- I had forgotten how much fun it is to sit in a planetarium and watch the stars roll by.
- Wow, that guy had a BAD microphone. OK, I admit I would want a mike if I were him, but that one was so bad he'd have done better to holler. At least one oldster in the audience couldn't understand a word he'd said. I've seen this sort of thing from time to time at other events. A good mike and sound system doesn't have to cost big bucks, but somehow people keep putting up with poor audio equipment.
- The best part of the show was an animated graphic illustrating the path of Cassini/Huygens from launch to just past Jupiter. The calculations, planning, and accuracy required for this trajectory leave me in awe.
- The show was written about a year ago, so actual images from Cassini and Huygens were added at the end as a slide show. They were *impressive*. MMMMMMMMMMM space!