Not Since!

Not to finger point... but..

I'm no english geek (but I am somewhat of an anal-retentive prick about such things) - using "since" as in "the cable modem has been acting weird since a while" is incorrect... Being a native english speaker, the reason is not forthcoming to me (I think it's incorrect to use it in the past tense?). I guess this is because you're never really taught all the semantic rules of your native language, since you're brought up with it, not taught it. To me it just sounds wrong! (It should be "... for a while")

Could some english/language geek please clarify this?

Anyway, apart from that... McD's is a bad thing to eat on an empty stomach... making me feel slightly nauseous, so here I am stuck up at 2320 writing this blog entry.

UPDATE 2004/12/09: Thanks!
Ok, thanks to all those that responded with a clarification! Now that I think of it, I did know the reasoning, I just didn't think about it enough.. Anyway, it has nothing to do with tense - You use 'since' when you're talking about a defined point in time, and 'for' when you're talking about a duration. Compare "the cable modem has been acting weird since Monday" with "the cable modem has been acting weird for a while".

[09:21] [/Random] [permanent link]