reading comprehension

[cos]

I'm selling a Sun D1000 RAID, and posted it on craigslist. One of the people who responded wanted to come take a look at it today, and suggested he might be able to stop by Cambridge on his way home from work. The following email exchange ensued, presented mostly without comment (his emails in italics):

Anyway my schedule indicates I have time to see the D1000 after 5:30 PM.

Okay, sounds good. It turns out I will be home until about 7pm today,
so if you come here after 5:30 that should work.

I'll come have a look at the array at 7:00 PM. [...] I'll see you at 7:00 PM.

I may be heading out at 7, will you get here right at 7 or a little before?

do you get out of work earlier any other day? I prefer around 5:30 because at 7:00 PM is dinner time for me. do expect to get out of work earlier any other day of this week?

I don't have a 9-5 office job. Like I said earlier, "I will be home until about 7pm today, so if you come here after 5:30 that should work."

okay, I'll come around that time. I'll call when I am at Hampshire st. see you later.

At that point, it was 5:20pm, and I figured he was about to leave work, so I went and did other things. When do you expect he called?

Yup. 7:15pm.

I responded with, "I'm sorry, I said I'd be home until 7pm and then I'm leaving", and he apologized for having misunderstood my emails.

P.S. My new favorite fortune cookie message, received tonight at Mary Chung:
"You Are Not Illiterate"

Comments

[yix.livejournal.com]

Actually, this sounds very familiar. My friend works at a college in the Navajo nation and he told me about the strange language problems he had when he first got there. His prime example was the word "until." The use he described perfectly explains your lack of communication here. His example went like this. After his first week there, he was trying to pick up his paycheck, so he called and asked when the financial office was open. The woman said, "we're open until 1," so at 12:30 he shows up to pick up his paycheck. Repeat the same scenario two or three times before the woman explains that she has lunch from noon to 1 (sounding frustrated at my friends confusion). So what she meant was that they are open after 1.

My friend couldn't really explain why the word is used that way, but he said it was consistent and that he had given up on using the word entirely. He described other language problems stemming from two cultures who are using the same words to mean two different things. I can't remember the other examples, though.

You'll have to let me know if he's Navajo.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

The woman said, "we're open until 1," so at 12:30 he shows up to pick up his paycheck

compared to "we don't open until 1" or "we're not open until 1"

standard usage suggests (as much as 5-10 minutes of dictionaries found) that what the woman was saying mean they close at 1... "until" means generally "before" she left out a modifier. perhaps common usage does that now, but i've not seen it.

as we can see, the prior examples provides a great example of why i don't like words such as "until", "this", "next", and such, until (hah) you have calibrated with someone's versions.

when dealing with people on craigslist, managers, and other folx, i like to keep it simple "i will be here from 5:30 to 6:30. i am NOT available after 6:30."

saying "up until about 7" is incredibly vague. knowing the people we know - dangerous, i've had that mean "well, it was 6:30 and i figured you weren't coming", to even meaning that 6:00 was too late, and some thinking that 9:00 was spot on for arrival.

i picked up a phrase recently i like (from a tv show). i've used the concept before, but not with quite the impact of this: AIS - Ass In Seat. usage: AIS@1:30PM ; meaning: effectively, literally, you are in the car, ready to go (packed, fed, washed, relieved, zoom) at the indicated time. period, end of sentence.

AIS is really useful in that it's pretty tough to be vague, i think. it eliminates the "let's leave at 1:30" which means to some "walking out the door", which might entail packing, and a pleasant time spent chatting while getting the snacks together, locking up, and ... it's now 2:30. oops. also: "i'll pick you up at 1:30", which of course means that to some "i'll arrive at 1:30, and we'll figure out what to do from there... sorry, i'm still doing laundry, and i wanted a sit down lunch at , we can take off around 4 or 5, how's that?". nope. AIS@1:30 - i arrive, you are ready to go, zoom. snicker.

then there's meeting someone with trip time in between, 5, 15, 30, 60 minutes, doesn't matter. "when are you coming over" - "uh, 7" - and well, 7 is the arrival time? or is 7 the leaving time? or ... usually, for me, i'm good about the leaving times. vagaries of chance determine destination times ;) though often they are somewhat consistent. estimating duration is a bitch for me.

as for navajo, i was thinking that in some languages, computer and human, modifers and important key parts don't happen where they're useful for speakers of other language, most notably english (i think). one wonders where and what i learned early as sometimes i'll talk about something for a bit, without mentioning key things like nouns until the end :> sometimes modifiers/conditions... mmmm...

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