Cruel Irony (lose vs. loose)

Lately, I have been working on a feature that involves an animated tray icon. I am completely the suck as an icon artist, but I downloaded Axialis IconWorkshop and fell in love with it. I feel in love with it to that point that I even bought it. And who couldn't? Good features, a sexy and functional UI...

Here is the cruel and ironic part: That sexy collection of zeros and ones presented me with the above dialog. Yes, there is a grammatical error. Some people might have to read is several times to notice it. Not me though, the whole "lose/loose" issue is like a red hot spike being driven into my eye, turned, withdrawn slowly--effectively cauterizing the wound so I have no hope of bleeding out, and then repeated several times. It seems more people get this wrong than right.

Well, I am no Webster, but let me take a stab:

loose - not tight

lose - unsuccessfully retaining possession

Your PDA is safe... for now

I am sure in one of my previous posts, I struck fear in the hearts of older PDA owners everywhere. Well, they can all resume normal sleeping patterns as I have lost my beloved Motorola MPx220.

So, on this fateful Saturday, I called my Dad's house to see if he and my little sister wanted to go out for lunch. Well, my dad's brother was in Oklahoma, and he was out visiting him. I figured this was a good chance to catch up with my little sister, so I offered to take her out to lunch. We went to eat chinese at the Mustang Mandarin. I took my phone out of my pocket and set it down on the table. My little sister asked the now-in-hindsight-very-foreshadowing question, "Is that smart to leave your cell phone on the table?" Well, no one took it, but I left it there when we were leaving.

I returned to the restaurant on Monday when I realized where I had left it. The lady at the front counter asked "How many?", and I explained I left my phone here and asked if it had been found.

Now this customer service nightmare of a lady pulls out the wicker basket that served as the lost and found. It is full of crap, but I don't see my phone. She moves an item or two on top and then rather abruptly becomes very certain it isn't there. I wanted to snatch the basket out of her hand and rummage through it myself, but I felt that was inappropriate in regards to the privacy of the other people that had lost items at the Mustang Mandarin. Irritated, I left empty handed.

This is the part where I get pissed. Let's assume she didn't know anything about the disappearance of my phone and is completely innocent despite her suspicious demeanor. The cool think to have done, would have been for her to empty out the basket and gratuitously look for my phone making sure I can see it isn't there. I mean, losing a cell phone is a big pain in the ass. The brush off I got from that lady guarantees I will never go back to the establishment, bad mouth it to anyone who will listen, and curse it every time I drive by.

Accepting defeat, I began exploring my options for a replacement phone. I wasn't sure I wanted another MPx220. There had been a few times I had issues with the ear piece volume being too soft, which is ironic because my previous Motorola phone seemed to have a default volume of "Even great grampy can hear it!" Even with my former metal band member hearing, I had to ask people to speak more quietly if they ever got the least bit excited.

I ended up buying an AudioVox SMT 5600 aka "The Scoblephone" on eBay. It should arrive in five business days or so. Looking forward to seeing how it compares to the MPx220.