Tag Archives: painting

30 Jul

eaves

Who taught: Jason

eaves

eaves

Last year, I bought a house. My first house that I have ever owned in my whole life.

It is hard to believe that I have been living in the house for more than a year. Time does fly. I plan to live there for the next three years and think about moving. Anyway, it is an old house. How old? It is almost 100 years old. Pretty crazy, huh? When I first bought it, I noticed that there are things that I need to fix or update. One of them was painting the exterior. Some of the paint were coming off and that would cause an issue to the wood.

This summer, I hired a guy, Jason, to repaint it. When he first visited my house to discuss the price, we walked around the house to see where exactly that he needs to paint. Well, I basically told him, “That part, this part!,” pointing them. Then, he said, “Oh… you want all of the eaves to be painted.” Honestly, I did not know what eaves are but definitely could see that it is the word to mean the lower edges of the roof.

Well, I do have an excuse to not to know that word. As I told you, this is my first house ever owned. Why would I need to know those words, right? So many words around the house. I think I will write a series for those. So, stay tuned.

Do you have  your house? How are your eaves? Hope they are in good condition!

01 Dec

cut corners

Who taught: Eric Goldman

facebook and privacy (source: http://www.p2pnet.net/)

One of the things that I regularly do to improve my English is reading newspapers. What I mean by “read”? I mostly read aloud unless I am in a public place like an atrium or a coffee shop.

You should definitely try to read aloud as often as you can. From my experience, it gives me a chance to not only remember words better but also pronounce them correctly with proper intonation.

Two days ago, I was reading an article of the NY Times which is about Facebook’s settlement with FTC for its privacy issue. In the article, Eric Goldman who is a law professor said, “Facebook repeatedly cuts corners when it comes to its privacy promises.” Cut corners? Does not sound good but what does it exactly mean? These were the questions that came to my mind.

Painting was the first thing that I thought of as soon as I saw this expression, cut corners. Why? When I was painting the master bedroom of my house, I was so tired that I wanted to skip painting corners. People would not really pay attention to see corners, right? Besides, it gets trickier to paint corners. To sum it up, if I cut corners, I feel like I am doing a sloppy work.

Luckily, my first impression was pretty close. Here is what it means:

Do something in easiest, quickest or cheapest way. It also implies circumvention of standard procedures or something ill-advised or even illegal.

Eric is saying that Facebook has not been really careful or tried not to follow good and thorough procedures to protect users’ privacy. What do you think? I think I have to agree with him. As a Facebook user, I have felt that some of the changes or modifications they have made did not satisfy my expectation in terms of protecting my privacy.

Oh… you do not want to cut corners when you paint. Who knows? Later when you want to sell the house, you may regret.