Books read in January 2024

 Reread:

1. Vendetta in Death

How to buy a gift for someone whose love language is gifts

From a recent Carolyn Hax chat:

My MIL’s love language is gifts. I have begged her to stop giving me/the kids so many presents - to no avail. To make matters worse (for me), when she asks what I want for Xmas/bdays/any other holiday, I tell her exactly what I want (size, color, brand, etc)….and have discovered she will then refuse to buy me what I really want “because then it’s not a surprise.” So I’m stuck with her riff on whatever it is that I truly wanted and end up with something that I didn’t ask for, want, or need.

Anyway. My question is: she REFUSES to tell me what she wants and then is hurt and sometimes offended when we are left buying gift cards. She is honestly impossible to buy for (you know the type) and every.single.year. my spouse and I are confounded by what to get her. I’ve tried everything to get her to understand that I will either have to buy her a book or just give her money/gift cards. She swears up and down, “it’s fine!!” and then is disappointed. I’m at a loss. We especially struggle because my “least” love language is gifts so I genuinely can’t even empathize.

Please help. Or give me the best idea for her.

I absolutely agree with Carolyn's response that OP's spouse should be doing the work.

But, in terms of what to get someone whose love language is gifts, think of it as giving them the experience of opening a gift. Don't worry about whether the item inside is practical for her or is something she will actually use. Give her something to unwrap, with some element of surprise, that you can impose some narrative of thoughtfulness on.

 

One way to do this is to go indie. Pick some quirky local shop that you walk past sometimes or that comes up when you google "unique gifts in [city]." Walk in, tell them "my mother-in-law is impossible to shop for. I need something unique that will surprise her." Buy whatever they point you to, have them wrap it if they do gift-wrapping, and as she unwraps it give her the narrative they gave you about what it is and why it's special.

Another way to do this is to get her a bunch of smaller things. Get something unique or indie from a category of products that she uses (e.g. if she drinks tea, get her a sampler from a local indie tea shop). Look in the fancy bath item aisle of the non-cheap drugstore and buy something in a fancy-looking package with something about stress-relieving or energizing on the label. Get some of her favourite candy, and some interesting candy that you've never heard of before. Wander through the dollar store and buy about half a dozen mildly interesting or funny things. If you pass a craft fair, grab the first pair of earrings that jumps out at you. If you pass a place that sells plush toys, look for a unique animal ("Look, it's a platypus! OMG, that's intrinsically hilarious!") 

Don't stress about any of this, just grab a bunch of small items that attract your attention, especially if they're mildly nifty or they tangentially remind you of her. If you have children, enlist them in your quest and buy random items on the basis that a small adorable child picked them out.

Wrap each item in colourful or shiny paper (doesn't have to be wrapped neatly or tightly - think "gift bag with decorative tissue paper" vibe) put them all in a shiny gift bag or perhaps a dollar store christmas stocking if it's a christmas gift, and, voila, gift experience!

 

MIL's refusal to stop giving gifts and insistence on not buying the precise thing you've asked for because then it wouldn't be a surprise show that the values the experiences of "gift" and "surprise" above actual practicality and utility. So this is your permission to disregard practicality and utility and simply focus on giving her something that looks exactly like "gift" and "surprise".

Books read in December 2023

Reread:

 

1. Leverage in Death

2. Connections in Death

Horoscopes

My birthday horoscopes stopped being accurate with the pandemic, but here we go anyway

Toronto Star

You take great pride in your intelligence and ideas. You may even be a great educator or someone who enjoys solving problems. When you share your thoughts, you do it with integrity, and you make sure that you have the facts to back you up. Being authentic is important to you, and you thrive in connections with people who you can trust. Those who know you consider you to be generous, consistent and loyal. This year gifts you a chance to reconnect with yourself through experiences that foster confidence and excitement.

 

Globe and Mail

Mercury’s influence on your birthday will encourage you to chase after your dreams but you need to be aware that not all those dreams will be good for you. Target only those objectives that you know in your heart the universe wants you to pursue.

How to open the pump on Dove Advanced Care hand wash

Dove Advanced Care Deep Moisture hand wash has been a lifesaver as the eczema on my hands has gotten increasingly sensitive since this past summer. I'm no longer dreading washing my hands! (Although I still do have to be diligent about moisturizing after each and every wash.)

However, I find the pumps nearly impossible to open! I rotate and rotate and rotate them, but they just don't open like every other pump bottle I've ever owned has.

So after extensive trial and error, I've discovered how to actually open these bottles.

 

Where to grasp the pump

1. Unscrew the lid and pull the whole pump and tube out of the bottle.

2. Grasp the tube under the lid, where you can see a spring inside the tube.

3. Twist the top of the pump counterclockwise as directed.

4. Once the pump pops up, you can put it back in the bottle and put the lid back on.

 

 

Somehow, with this specific kind of bottle and pump, taking it off the bottle and grasping the part lets it open easily where my usual ways of opening these kinds of bottles don't work.

However, it would be better if the Dove corporation could adjust the kinds of pumps they use so they open like normal bottle pumps.

Books read in November 2023

1. The Crow Road by Iain Banks

2. Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665 by Patricia Simpson

Firefox's translation feature needs to be suppressed on pages that already have an official target language version

Recent versions of Firefox have a "translate this page" function that pops up if it detects that the webpage is in a language other than the preferred language indicated in your settings.

They need to figure out a way to stop this from automatically popping up when an official version of the page exists in your preferred language.

 

For example, if I, with my default English settings, end up on the French version of the federal government's COVID wastewater monitoring dashboard, a conspicuous "Translate this page" bubble pops up front and centre. 

This is a problem, because an official English version of the page exists. You can access it by clicking the English link on the top right. And the automatically translated version is never going to be as good or as authoritative as the official English version.

Screenshot of linked page, with the English link at the top right highlighted

 

People outside of translation/language intersection spaces don't always know that pages with multiple language versions exist, but they are common, especially in institutional (government, education, etc.) spaces that provide official information.

 

Firefox's translation feature needs to avoid distracting these uninformed users from the existence of the official multilingual versions that they may not even know to look for.

So how do you do that from a programming perspective?

Preliminary idea to build on: what if the translation feature could detect the name of the target language in the target language? If the user has English set as their default language, it detects the word "English" on the page. Perhaps it could highlight it? Perhaps the translation feature could say "An official version may exist"?

This wouldn't catch every instance. Some websites use abbreviations (en, fr, de, es, pl) and some websites use flags. However, there may be a finite number of ways that these are coded, or commonalities to the scripts used to switch the language, or indicators in the metadata.

Another possibility would be to have the pop-up appear elsewhere on the page (maybe towards the bottom left of the visible portion?) so it's less likely to cover the link to the official version. 

In any case, however well-intentioned this automatic translation feature is, it needs to avoid making it difficult to find the official version of the page in the target language.