A Penny's Worth of Thoughts: Difference of Meaning

You hear so much these days of arguments over two interpretations of words.  Some being twisted to suit a certain perspective, others in ignorance or confusion of what the meaning actually is.  Yet, you can still find that both of those meanings can be correct, even in a general sense.

Take, for example, allergies.  If you ask most people what allergies are, the responses will typically be one of two: either they are a seasonal or context based annoyance to a person, usually of the nasal variety, or they will be potentially life threatening if not caught early enough, usually through consumption.  Does that make the seasonal sufferers pity the severe ones, or in the reverse, the severe sufferers wish they could trade off their allergens for the less threatening variety?  It's possible, though it tends to vary person to person.

The point here is that, although the word itself has multiple meanings, each meaning is held at it's equivalent value, usually after the person either specifies or explains their severity.  Why is it, then, that it is more difficult for people to agree on other such variable words?  My thought: because the meaning each side agrees with is based on their perspective of the subject, where it can be more difficult to explain why that is it's meaning due to what I would call an experience gap.  That the meaning that we understand is based more on what we are familiar with, and it is the context, or lack thereof, that throws us off.

I've had some of my own experience on this as of late, from seeing people put quotes around the word essential, as if to demean it to either themselves or to others, to me almost mentally doing it to a phrase, wait time, as I sat on the phone to a DES line seeking answers on an unemployment question, usually after a few minute average extends into hours.  In fact, some of you may have even expected me to do it just then, despite it being grammatically correct either way, if with some word change.

The sad part is, the only way I could see resolving this particular puzzle is to suggest being more open minded to the alternatives, which for many is not an easy task.  I find it perhaps even more of a puzzle to find a middle ground otherwise, as it is an issue that, outside of certain groups potentially, is rarely seen, even rarer discussed.  But it can be done.

Just ask any number of leaders you can come across in Guild Wars 2 why they use the shorthand for crowd control, or CC, as a way of requesting more damage per second, or DPS, on a single boss enemy when in squads or groups.

Just a penny's worth of thoughts, for those who can see the meaning of it.

September 6, 2011

Work was what I'm officially calling a day from hell.  Messes everywhere: dust collection clogged, press overflowed, brokens from the dryer.  Yea, not a fun day.  Also, decided to get a few test recordings on Guild Wars a little bit ago.  Aside from probably not speaking loud enough, the recording went pretty well except for a glitch.  I don't know if this is just Xfire reacting to Guild Wars or something, but when I watched the test videos, everything was upside down.  Going to look into fixing it but, just a heads up, means I'm going to start on the catch ups tomorrow.

August 28, 2011

Played some more Unreal Championship 2 today, and looking forward to the laptop this weekend.  I remembered that when I got on Guild Wars for a little bit, this week is going to be my over-time payday on Friday.  It'll be about time too.  I'm thinking when I get it, going to catch up on the Gamer Thought episodes.  Also went through the "Find Friends" thing on facebook, added a few of the ones I knew.  Probably going to head to bed after I post this though.  I get the feeling it's going to be an interesting day tomorrow.

August 14, 2011 + Gamer Thoughts

I'm combining both the video and the daily post today, simply means other than technical difficulties, nothing much really happened today.

So, long story short, the laptop I have at the moment apparently hates recording videos.  I try to record Guild Wars, it lags about two minutes in.  I start to record the video that I used today, the fan kicks on about eight and a half minutes in and the computer lags, causing an interesting distortion effect and a shorter video than I planned for.  But, you know, what the heck.  Probably wasn't going to get it perfect the first time anyway, and at least now, I can honestly say, every other video should go better than the first one did.  This coming Saturday, planning on getting a new laptop, which is much needed means this one is a five year old from Walmart computer.  If I have a little extra, might look at the webcams too, because the quality of the video with the Logitech I have isn't the best anyway.

Anyway, here's the video, and for anyone who's curious, that Umbreon completely stalled me.

August 13, 2011

It was good to see my uncle this morning and visit with family.  Helped a little on a front deck that my grandpa is building on my great grandpa's house.  I missed a few screws... but I swear they looked straight with the beam when I was putting them in.  My aunt and uncle from Oklahoma came up too, with one of my cousins.  Apparently he has glasses now.  I told him, "You know, you're suppose to move your eyes when your playing games right?"  Not that I can say much, myself, but I figured I'd give him a little bit of a hard time.  Also showed him a few tricks of mine in the Battle Factory on his Pokemon Platinum he brought.