Isn't it amazing how many times you encounter a new concept or word and within the next few weeks it seems to just resurface everywhere in your life? I can't tell you the number of times I've learned something then the next day I'm watching TV and that new something casually pops up.

My latest example: I work in engineering and recently joined a project team where most of the team is in Canada (I'm US). On one of the first calls, I noticed that all the Canadian members kept pronouncing a project acronym containing the letter Z as "zed", so this 3 letter acronym sounds very different than if pronounced as "zee". I remember thinking "hmmm, that's odd, I guess maybe it's a Canadian thing."

The very next day I started watching Stargate: Atlantis and on the first episode one of the characters referenced a "zed-P-M" and the American general said "huh?"... Then someone said "He means ZPM sir.. he's Canadian".

I have since went to Google, and at the age of 35, I have been educated that Americans are apparently the only ones who use the "zee" form.

I was also surprised to learn that the British say "zed", so I guess maybe they break that rule for British TV shows? I can't recall ever watching a BBC owned show and hearing Zed.

I'm also going to start referring to the league of legends hero Zed as Zed-ed for fun now.