June 1, 2004

• a few wee tweaks…

  It’s
  back-to-work day after a long weekend for most United Statesians. 
  It’s just another day for me.  I have nowhere to go except to the
  spring for water sometime in the next few days, and down the valley to
  drive the rehab van on Thursday.  It seems like I’ve always been
  out of sync with society.

  Even when I held down jobs, before this damned disease ended my
  employability in the ‘seventies, on most of those jobs I worked
  weekends.  In hospitals, bars and restaurants, only the bosses
  take off on the weekends.  On some of my bar and restaurant jobs,
  at night or on weekends I became “boss” and did the
  management/supervisory work so the owner could take off.  Then
  after my only employment was self-employment, most of that was at fairs
  and music festivals–I’d work where and when others were playing. 
  Somehow, that seems fitting–whether I just happened into that pattern
  and it molded my personality, or I gravitated into it because of my
  personality, it fits.

  I made a few changes around here today.  That’s Xanga-here, not Su Valley, Alaska-here.  I’ve
  added a new quote to my “favorites” in the sidebar, took out the dead
  link to the Folksites website that hasn’t been accessible for months,
  and made my email link show again–is the contact worth the spam?–I
  dunno. 

  Putting the email link back out there was inspired by wixer,
  who mentioned in my guestbook that she couldn’t find my email. 
  Email sent by using that link will probably get hung up in the spam
  filter at my ISP, anyway.  That was one reason I took the link off
  here in the first place:  I only clean out the “trash” at the ISP
  infrequently and irregularly, and my mail from Xangans was consequently
  always being read and answered late.

  The other tweak to my (long unchanged, same-same everyday ho-hum)
  site was also inspired by wixer’s message in the guestbook.  She
  told me about the Online Etymology Dictionary, and I added a link to it just below the Onelook dictionary search box.

  Recently, I’d seen a reference in a book on addiction to the
  etymology of addict (same root as “edict”, a legal decree:  slaves
  were legally addicted to their masters).  None of the first five
  dictionaries I picked up had any reference to that now-obsolete usage,
  and I didn’t feel like bothering to get out the microprint OED and the
  magnifying glass.  Now I have dates for the earliest known usage,
  for the earliest appearance of “self-addicted,” the sense now in
  currency, and for “addict” as a noun.  Thanks, wixer.
  

  
  
  

  
  addict – 1529, adj., “delivered, devoted,” from L. addictus, pp. of addicere “deliver, yield, devote,” from ad- “to” + dicere “say, declare,” but also “adjudge, allot.” Modern sense is really self-addicted
  “to give over or award (oneself) to someone or some practice” (1607).
  The noun is first recorded 1909, in reference to morphine. Addicted is from 1914. Addiction
  in modern (narcotics, etc.) sense is first attested 1906, in ref. to
  opium (there is an isolated instance from 1779, with ref. to tobacco).

  There’s no more news from my little corner of the edge of the fringe of
  the back of beyond right now, except that Doug just got up.  Now
  he will move in here at the “work station” where he conducts his life,
  and I’ll move over to the PlayStation2 where I veg out.  Later,
  all.
  

  • 1:05 pm
  • 12 Comments