Internet Bard

This week, online financial management tool Mint.com saved my bacon, yet again.   Financial guru Dave Ramsey says every married couple has one “free spirit” and one “money nerd.”  Our household is, sadly, the exception to that rule.  We are effectively nerdless.  Hence, managing our money has been a challenge over our 17 years (as of [...]

My son was doing his English homework the other night, and he asked me “What does ‘context’ mean? I’ve never understood that.”

I explained to him that context meant the other words, phrases and sentences around a particular word, phrase or sentence that provide clues to make it easier to understand what it means.

Since a basic understanding of “context” was essential to completing any part of the assignment, I told him, “That’s really a question you should ask your teacher when he gives the assignment. You don’t really understand how to complete it if you don’t know what that word means.”

“I hate asking questions. It makes me feel dumb.” …

This post is the next in an ongoing series, “Geek Decoder Ring.” If you’re not a geek, have no desire to become a geek, but would like to understand what the heck the geeks in your life are talking about, this series is for you. Okay, so in our last post in the series, we [...]

Last week, I had a little real-life communication mix-up.  I was trying to say something very straightforward and direct, but because our contemporary American communication style is so steeped in irony and sarcasm, irony and sarcasm are inferred even when they’re not intended. It got me thinking that if I have difficulty being understood clearly [...]

This post is the first in an ongoing series, “Geek Decoder Ring.” If you’re not a geek, have no desire to become a geek, but would like to understand what the heck the geeks in your life are talking about, this series is for you. We’re going to start out with the decoding basis of [...]