The last posting

Just saw this on Facebook - a friend had his status update as:

"...is sad, but is glad Grandma is at peace!"

To which his friend had replied:

"if we can live to that of age we have done well and seen and archived great things"

Who knows? Maybe she worked in data storage?

outweighing the benefits

In a meeting today: a discussion on how, rather than relying on cumbersome and costly auditing, we might have to just trust our delivery arm to come through with the goods:

"We have to give them the credibility of the doubt"

Frankly, it's a little more than they deserve, but probably an accurate assessment of how toothless we are...

Who needs an entire phrase?

On SBS news last night, one of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme victims was speaking out about how dastardly Bernie's deeds were.

"What he did was inconspicable."

True enough, no one saw what naughty swindling he was up to with his pyramid scheme for a very long time...

Not a language funny per se, but a linguistical observation. I am deeply concerned about tautologous usage of the word 'probably'. This affliction seems preponderant among rugby league players, where you could say they are using a transformed version of the word, prnounced 'probly' or 'prolly', which has taken on a different semantic range to the original.

The usage of the word is as follows. In a situation of absolute certainty, a footy player will invariably use 'prolly' as an adverb. An example from the radio this morning:

"There's no doubt that we're prolly flying up to Brisbane tomorrow."

I would think that this could be said on any situation. 'There's no doubt I prolly won't have a car accident tomorrow.' 'It is absolutely definite that I will prolly work tomorrow.' In each case, the speaker expresses their certainty about a likelihood. While I'm sure that this prolly isn't strictly tautologous, it could be a little completely redundant.

Hey?

And from the weekend, another colleague stated it was:

"Like looking for a needle in a haybarn"

Which depending on how many haystacks it has could be more or less difficult.

Getting pulled up

A colleague recently stated in a meeting that one of our teams had better:

"lift their socks or pull their game up"

And yes, it's good to be back.