some ideas

December 14, 2010 at 12:14am
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Hi Mike,
I came here in 1966 as an American serviceman, joined the U.S. Navy.
I learned to speak english while I was in the service and also took correspondence course, read a lot of books in Philosophy and Psychology. I figure I should be able to explain my self in term of leterary argument. Here is my delima. Since I been watching people in the news media or even any dignitary that speak in front of camera and the whole world is watching, it get to me that they’ll say “O” instead of zero 0 when they speak of number. Please have them correct themselve. Zero is number and “O” is an alphabet. Can they not know the difference, that even me a Filipino by origin knows that this are not the same. I have an American supervisor that took him a long time understand the difference, if you don’t believe me, spell any word with an O and put a zero in it you spell check will inform you of the mistake. So does people that will say in front of camera that will say temperature will be nine “O” or ninety, instead of saying 9 zero. Thats all and
thank you. I just want to get it out of my mind. Even my own lawyer he keep saying O instead of Zero and numerous times I corrected him, he still make same mistake. Thank you Oscar Vergara

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I received this e-mail today at the address I use for my freelance work (it’s on my website, business card, etc.). I don’t know this guy. The subject matter suggests that he somehow knows that I’m a writer.

I wonder whether he found my business card on the bulletin board at Rappahannock Coffee, where I sometimes add my card to the others present. If so, that publicity gambit seems to be attracting some interesting and unexpected communications — I also got a phone call from a guy who wanted help writing a grant. He left me two voice mail messages. In both his speech was very slurred and hard to understand. Out of curiosity, I did call him back, and I couldn’t have a conversation with him. He was unintelligible (that is, not able to be intelleged).