Bounded in a Nutshell

Yesterday I got a postcard from my dental insurance company, briefly explaining how much they value the privacy of my personal information.

My very first thought upon reading it: "Who have you sold my information to, you rat-bastards?"

Today's linguistic oddity: I'm currently in possession of a computer part that I'll be delivering to its rightful owner in good time. The box lists specs and a marketing blurb in three languages: English, French, and German. I don't know enough German to comment on that translation, but I've still got enough French to find this a little weird:

S'auto-configure avec l'ordinateur hôte

It's a little more concise than the original English ("Auto-configures to host system's logic"), but that's not the strange bit. It's the reflexive form --- that s' which expands to se, and is used to indicate that the subject of a verb is also its object. But that's more or less implies by the "auto-" prefix, isn't it? Surely there's a less awkward way to phrase that.

Alternatively, "auto-" here means "automatic", and I'm growing curmudgeonly about language use as I get older.

Been a little more preoccupied than usual, which is a bit of a trick for me. Much of the extra time's been going to work-related endeavours: the conference I was organizing two weeks ago, of course, but also a bunch of other service stuff as well as the getting of somewhere on a couple of research projects and one or two new collaborations a-borning.

Got word today that a paper I submitted over the summer was being accepted, to be published next month. Gotta love small journals.

This weekend I'm somewhat impulsively heading to a conference one state over from here. Next weekend is Thanksgiving in this country, and so naturally I'm taking a trip across the continent to someplace where it's not. The weekend after that I'm meant to be back in Ontario, since someone's gone through the trouble to schedule a party for when I'm capable of being around & it would be graceless in the extreme to then miss the do. And after that there's no fixed plans, but the current intent is to do something about my wisdom teeth; presumably this means that I'll get some sleep, drug-induced though it may be.

And hence stress levels: almost down.

Have the abstract book/programme in hand; small typo in the schedule, which is annoying but hardly a problem. Sent the "dedication" flyer to Print Services today. Time was that I could spend three days straight doing desktop publishing and not feel it, but maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm selectively editing out the card-game and Scrabble breaks I took during my editorial days. Silly party favours have arrived. Still some question about who's picking up the not-paid-for-by-the-University beverages tomorrow for the reception, but for the most part my role is done as far as organizational duties go.