Fun with etymologies

From this Language Hat post:

Colon "part of the large intestine" and colon "punctuation mark" are both from Greek, but from different original words. Similarly, coma "cloud of gas and dust around a comet" and coma "state of unconsciousness" are also both from Greek, again from different original words. (Read the post for details.)

Fun stuff, that.

(False friends are also fun, such as the "much (en), mucho (es)" pair mentioned in the comments to that post, or "haben (de), habere (la)".)

Dropbox FTW

I must say I’m finding Dropbox rather convenient.

It’s not only good as a little backup thing or for keeping some files I like to have access to on all my computers (such as my Klingon and Lojban dictionaries), which I had previously synchronised by copying them from one place to another, in one place; recently, I’ve also put it to good use for one-off file transfers: if I come across a file at work that I need at home (or vice versa), then I’ll download it in one place, pop it into my Dropbox, and have it automagically appear in the other place, at which point I can move it to its final resting place or delete it or do whatever is appropriate.

Previously, I’d have emailed myself the link, and then hoped that I’d remember the email in the other place and act on it, and this seems better somehow.

So yay!

State of the computer

So, I got an email today at 12:15 telling me that my computer had gone into production. Whee!

Looking into my account, it appears that the status change was already at 10:30.

It’s evening, now, and I still haven’t got a message telling me it’s been dispatched, though. Meh :( On the other hand, when I had phoned to inquire how long it would typically take to get here, the chap on the phone said that if work started on it today, it could be finished “today or tomorrow”, so things are still on track, I suppose. (Shipping usually took “one to two days”, he said.) So we shall see when it arrives.

I had an idea today to call the computer “Alma”. Everyone gets to pick whether they want the Nephite meaning, the German/Latin one, the Spanish one, the Crimean Tatar one, or the Hebrew one.