Well hello, my peeps. 😊
I’m running on fumes right now. I was up until about 4 a.m. this morning working on my Modern English dictionary. Specifically, I’m working on removing all of the accent marks from the first-syllable-stressed words. Why? Because the vast majority of words in the English language have the stress on the first syllable of the word. Thus, if we make the rule that the stress falls on the first syllable of the word, and any word that doesn’t follow the rule has an accent mark placed above the stressed syllable, then we’re golden! It’s a lot like the penultimate rule in Spanish. The vast majority of Spanish words have the stressed syllable on the penultimate syllable, and words that don’t follow that rule (with a handful of exceptions) have an accent mark on the syllable with the stress if it falls on any syllable other than the penultimate. Granted, Spanish has a few rules, not just the penultimate rule, and I might end up with a few rules as well. We’ll see.
Either way, I spent a long time working on the dictionary so that not every stressed syllable has an accent mark above it–only the ones that don’t follow the first-syllable rule.
With a dictionary of over 125,000 words, it’s not a quick effort. 🙃 But I’ve managed to find/utilize some technological tricks to really clean it up in a hurry. There’s still a good bit of tedium, but it’s going a heck of a lot faster than it could be since I purchased Microsoft Office and have been working on everything in Excel instead of Google Sheets (with such a big dictionary and so many full cells, Google Sheets chokes, sputters, and freezes often times when working on my dictionary, so I started literally completely over, but I’m already making good progress.
Anyway, so it was a short night. 🙃
And then following that short night, I did a 9 car, 10+ billable hour day, most of which was by myself because I told Malaki he could head home after the third job. He’s been doing the hard work of quitting vaping and quitting chewing tobacco. As an incentive, I made a little contract with him. I’d give him $250 to quit vaping and another $250 to quit chewing tobacco, but if he relapsed, he’d owe me double in return. He took me up on it, so I gave him $250 last week when he quit vaping, and I’ll probably give him another $250 this coming week when he’s fully free of any of the nicotine/crappy stuff.
He’s killing it right now, and that’s cool. And it feels good to be able to contribute to another person’s personal progress–especially when it can make a big difference in their life. So much money saved without spending gobs of money on chew and vape stuff. And the future benefits of greater health and fewer problems.
Life is short. Life is precious. Good health is… priceless.
So… 9 cars today. 😶 I’m just gonna spout them off and not tell stories. #1. 2022 Altima, flat tire repair. #2. 2006 Chevy Colorado, leak diagnosis (he thought it was a bad engine oil leak. Nope, it was a power-steering fluid leak. He actually over filled his engine with oil because he assumed the leak was oil and didn’t actually check. #3. Overheat/coolant leak (I clamped off a hose that was leaking. I also let him know that his AC compressor was going out. The bearing was grinding something fierce. That’ll leave him stranded yet again. 😕). 4th Car was a no start (2016 Honda Odyssey van that needed a battery). 5th car was a 2006 Mercury Milan that supposedly had a fuel leak, but nope. No problems. I’m guessing he just overfilled his fuel tank last time he filled up. Everything seemed pretty good, and there was no evidence of leak whatsoever. 6th car was putting an outside door handle on a 2006 Kia Spectra. Long-time customer. The spring (or whatever it was) inside the door wasn’t properly pulling the door handle back into place all the way (the new one), but it was still functional. I also engineered a workaround for him with the inner door handle, as they were both broken. Took forever messing with the outer door handle, trying to get it to retract all the way; but I eventually just gave up. It was functional, and functional is better than not functional, and the customer was satisfied. Would probably have to replace the whole mechanism to get it to fully retract properly. Car #7 was another flat tire repair. I probably do flat tire repairs like… once a quarter, but that was the second of the day. Car #8? Any guesses? Yup, three flat tire repairs in one day. Go figure. Last car, #9, was an overheat and dying issue. I was able to diagnose the fan driver’s side fan as bad, and also it appears that his crankshaft position sensor is bad. I did my best to help me be ready to do the two repairs on his own, but i might and up doing them for him anyway, as he’s not very comfortable working on cars. We’ll see.
So… here I am. Eyes closing. End of the day.
Successful car day. Haven’t done 9 cars in… a long time. It’s either tied for my record most cars in a day or just one shy of it, I think.
Yes, eyes lids drooping… sagging… bagging…
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Love and hugs.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 