The French, and particularly the Parisians, are well-known for their rather aggressive driving habits. Although not as bad as the Italians (and definitely not as bad as the Indians!), they're pretty awful: egotistical, stressed, always in a hurry and generally offensive, abusive and unfriendly. Of course, they're not all like that, as with all stereotypes, but a lot of them could definitely improve.
Since I drive to work rather than using public transport - thanks to the generosity of the company in giving me a car - I see a lot of really awful things. Every day, I would estimate that I see about 80% of drivers speeding, weaving between lanes to advance just that little bit faster, at least two or three drive through a red light (when it's just turned red, not when it's been that way for a while), 99% drive straight over pedestrian crossings regardless of the fact that the person on foot has right of way, drive motorbikes the wrong way down one-way streets or at speed between rows of cars in a traffic jam, double park, stop in the middle of the road to chat with someone they recognise and many, many other such idiocies.
I don't for one minute pretend to be a perfect driver, or even an excellent one. I do, however, stay within the speed limits (give or take a couple of miles per hour), stop for pedestrians and red lights and try to drive as best I am able.
As part of their manifesto, the new capitalist French government has placed great emphasis on security, both on the roads and anti-crime in general. Of course, they're also taking resources from the schools and hospitals and leaving those services understaffed, but the socialists were doing just as badly on that front as well, from what I can tell. Consequently, there are a heck of a lot more police on the streets these days than there were a few years ago.
On my drive home from work, I used to see one regular police stopping point, where they would pull people over if they were driving badly, or simply for random checks. Since the new government has been in power, I more often see two or three checks on the same route. Personally, I think this is excellent: I've been stopped by them for a random check and they were polite (not friendly, but polite) and efficient. I'd rather they stop one too many people and catch the idiots than not stop enough, to be honest.
Fines here in France are also very heavy (starting at hundreds of euros/dollars for a basic speeding offense, I believe) and are applied immediately. If you can't pay the fine on the spot, you pay more later. Police with radar-guns have a field day just round the corner from my apartment, where people are always speeding, despite the tourist (i.e. pedestrian) nature of the area.
Last night, I saw an advert for a show that was on (which I didn't watch, since it was the same one that did a report on cults and non-Christian religions and was quite incredibly badly researched): a year or two ago, a guy was arrested for killing a lady and her child while drunk-driving or driving badly (I'm unsure which). They had followed the whole process, alongside the widower, right up to the trial in which the driver was given a four year prison term.
Four years for thinking you're more important than everyone else, driving badly and killing people. That's my kind of justice. I just hope they put him in a cell with a huge guy called Bubba who wants to be his bestest friend.
And yes, I know I've used that line before. So sue me.
All I have to say today is that this picture makes me realise how lucky I am.
I hope she grows up healthy and happy.
I thought I'd get all deep and meaningful for a moment this morning. Jackie's comment on my last post is an interesting one and, once again, that young lady has started me thinking!
"Is that saying about 'life's what you make it' true?" she asks. Well, that's a difficult question and things are always more complicated than they seem at first glance, or than they sound here. Incidentally, the friend who had the nose operation is doing very well: huge black eyes, of course, but she can breathe better and is very happy to have had it done.
My philosophy of life has, for quite some years, been "Life sucks, but that's just life". This may sound depressive, but it's not meant in that way: it's more of a stoical thing. Life will deal what it will and we must take it as it comes, preferably without becoming overly cynical, bitter or angry that we aren't the centre of the world. Obviously, we can influence certain things and not others, and that's where the difficulty lies: spotting the difference.
"Life's what you make it" is not an expression I would use. To begin with, I believe that life is (to borrow an old comparison) like a huge river: there are currents that lead in a general direction, against which we can choose to fight and try to redirect ourselves or with which we can paddle and move swiftly further downstream. Some currents should be fought, but it is just that - a fight, a tiring struggle against the weight of something much stronger and influential than us. It is impossible to paddle upstream, unfortunately, so we are limited to trying to redirect ourselves, perhaps to another tributary.
In addition, there are billions of other people paddling down that same river. Some of them are nice folks who will pull alongside our boat and stop to chat or will give us a shove when we've run aground. Others are self-centred, egotistical scumbags who will bump us out of the way, splash us with water and be generally unpleasant in their course downstream. Yet others are saboteurs, carrying hammers to smash holes in our boat and try to make us sink.
To a certain extent, then, I would agree that we can influence our own lives. This is a fairly obvious statement: call it 'the Divine right of free will', 'the wonder of human intelligence' or whatever you like, but it allows us to make decisions to try to alter circumstances rather than just going with the flow of that river without a paddle (excuse the pun).
On the other hand, I also believe that the threefold rule does actually have basis in reality. I know, many of you will be shaking your heads and thinking "sheesh" or something similar, but I honestly believe that life has a way of balancing itself out. Call it 'the holistic nature of the universe' or even 'chaos theory', but every action we take comes back bigger later. I've seen it happen (yes, that could be coincidence, if you believe in it).
So, if you put together those parts of my personal philosophy of life, you end up with a desire to paddle along with life, redirecting myself gently against unfriendly currents, while accepting the generally crappy nature of reality. I also do as much good as I can around me, trusting that it will come back in the future and do me three times as much good. I may whine and complain about sacrificing myself for certain friends (and indeed, it is never good to overdo it, which I do - that's one of the biggest problems with being 'Mr Nice Guy'), but when it comes down to it, I'm happy with my life. I will not sabotage other people, either: the universe will deal with them itself, throwing them much pain and anguish later in life (and I will chuckle to myself when it happens).
So in answer to the original question: no, life is not what you make it. There are far too many factors (human and otherwise) for it to be so easy. Life's direction, however, can be influenced. You just need strong arms and a good paddle.
...a day of freedom for me!
This morning I was up before 06:00, to take a friend to a clinic for nose repair. She has a nostril that's blocked due to a deviated central thingumajig caused when she was younger. She apparently had it fixed once before, but was playing with her dog afterwards and got whacked there again: since then, she has been unable to breathe properly and has had a bit of a bump in the centre. Finally, she decided to chuck some money at the problem and get it sorted out, today. I think she's being operated on about now, or maybe it's all done.
I promised to go and pick her up tomorrow morning - they will keep her in overnight, since she will have been given a general anaesthetic - so I have nothing more to do for her today. It's also Thursday, which is the day I never see Psycho, so I have the evening to myself completely. Relative freedom.
Of course, there's still plenty to do: a day of work will lead to a meeting at 17:00 with some folks in the US, to solve a couple of minor problems with Business Objects. Then I have an appointment at 18:00, so I'll have to run off to be there on time.
After the appointment, I have an invitation to dinner with an old University friend who moved here a while ago. She stayed in my apartment for six months or so while she was pregnant and until she found a place to stay: her man came over a while after (he stayed to sell their restaurant in Sicily when she moved here) and they've been living in bliss since. Her man is a chef by trade, so I can look forward to something rather special, I think!
Some days, things are quite splendid.
Yes, yes, I know... only two entries in the last goodness-knows-how-long! What can I say? It's not due to laziness, I can assure you. To begin with, the weekends are a bit of an exception, of course, when I blog less than during the week.
Furthermore, I've been terribly, terribly tired of late. I am in need of a break, I think: everything's started getting me down, I don't want to do any work, I can't be bothered to even play games to relax. Still, I just received confirmation of two weeks' holiday (the last two weeks of August), which is great news.
Finally, I am once again overworked: testing has finally finished on one of the projects, so I am now expected to get my brain in gear and move on to Phase 2. It'll be interesting, to say the least. I think I shall call it "The Horribly Complicated Phase"...
On the other hand, I sat and watched Terminator 3 last night and was pleasantly surprised: an excellent film, maintaining the high standard of the entire trilogy. Arnie didn't look too old, there weren't too many forced jokes and references to the other films and it was all very exciting indeed! As for the ending, well... no spoilers, but I was very pleasantly surprised not to see yet another US-cinema-style 'and they all lived happily ever after': the Terminator writers have never done that, and I'm very glad they didn't start with this one!
Back to work after the weekend, which was a bit poopy to be honest. Nothing drastically bad happened to blame for the poopiness: it was just one of those weekends where I felt really crappy and down, so didn't do very much at all.
Today, I installed GIANT Company's Spam Inspector. Unfortunately, McAfee's SpamKiller started crashing Outlook every time I opened the latter with it running. This was very strange, particularly since the program reported it was conflicting with my virus checker... which is also from McAfee! Whatever: I removed it, or, more specifically, only found out that the Killer was the problem after I'd moved everything to a new laptop... d'oh!
I went looking for alternatives which would work on Windows 2000 with Outlook 2002 (the setup on any laptop from work). Spam hunting programs seem to come in three categories these days: complete with some annoyingly missing options, POP3 only and really crappy.
The last of the three is pretty easy to spot: huge, horrendously ugly applications that provide bad reporting options, bad filtering and generally work off a local database of 'known spammers'. Of course, since spammers' addresses change all the time, this is the most ineffective method.
The POP3 only utilities are generally quite good - offering filtering on message content, pretend-bouncing of emails (in the hopes of being removed from the spammers' lists) and good reporting. However, I use POP3, Exchange and HTTP email, so that would limit things somewhat. They also tend to be separate programs which one must run before launching Outlook: since I am connected all day and check for mail every 3 minutes, this is rather impractical. Bummer.
Finally, I find myself reduced to one of a very small list of available programs/plugins. SpamKiller is one that will deal with Exchange and HTTP email, but as noted earlier, it crashes my system. It also runs separately to Outlook, but integrates reasonably well. The only other program I have found for the moment (that is bearable and good enough to remain installed for a few days) is Spam Inspector.
It's missing some options, as most programs are: I'd like to be able to give it an address to automatically report spam to (rather than type it in every time if it's not on their list); I'd like to be able to choose where to put my spam quarantine folders (rather than just 'under Inbox or under Deleted Items'); I'd like to be able to bounce the email and report it in one fell swoop; I'd like it to always give me a choice whether to include a sender's ISP on a spam report; I'd like to be able to remove a false positive from quarantine with a choice of adding either the email address or the domain to my friends list automatically.
Still, all things considered, it's a neat little program. It integrates fully with Outlook (i.e. it has a toolbar and menu), which saves me having extra stuff running. It filters after mail retrieval, which means I do not need to run it before running Outlook. For the moment, the only major downside is that it doesn't seem to deal with HTTP mail. Not bad.
There's a rather nice little thread starting over at Kasia's site which will have a lot of computer professionals getting all misty-eyed and nostalgic. She's talking about 'first computer experiences': a subject dear to every one of us in the trade - or at least to all the nerds and geeks.
Personally, my history reaches back to 1981 or 1982 (as you say, Kasia, "I'm old"!) - I don't recall which year it was, precisely - when I bought a Sinclair ZX-81. This wonder of dodgy technology came with 1Kb of memory, expandable to 16Kb by adding a RAM-pack on the back. Unfortunately, said RAM-pack connected very badly, so the slightest movement could cause everything to crash. The machine came with a very simplified form of BASIC, and I have fond memories of typing in pages and pages of code to run simple games. It was truly amazing what could be done with 16Kb of memory and some smart programming: 3D Monster Maze and a version of the arcade classic Scramble are engraved upon my mind's eye.
After this, I advanced to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and a massive 128Kb of memory! Games and programs came on audio tapes, took 5-15 minutes to load, were in colour and had proper sound. Wow. Again, the machine came with a version of BASIC and, again, I spent hours and hours transcribing code from magazines or struggling with my own simple programs. I think it is probably at this stage, around 1983 (at a guess), that I first really began getting the computer bug (pun intended). The number of hours spent in retreat, tapping on that rubber-keyed marvel would dismay most parents: thankfully, mine were willing to leave me to my obsessions as long as I continued to go out into the three-dimensional world occasionally!
From the Spectrum, I then advanced rapidly through other machines. A BBC Master followed for school-work: the school I attended had just started offering a computer course in my last couple of years there, but it was all based on BBC BASIC and not on anything with PCs. By this time, I was seriously bitten by computers: before I owned the BBC machine, I had actually read the entire BASIC manual (i.e. command reference) from cover to cover... oh, dear. Still, I put in huge numbers of hours on my school projects, spanning two double-sided 5.25 inch disks with the final one, got good marks and realised that this was, most definitely, the subject for me.
On the gaming side, I also had an Atari ST around that time, which was an excellent gaming machine. It was, of course, in direct competition with the Commodore Amiga, which was admittedly slightly better for gaming but less flexible for other stuff. My two best friends also had Atari machines, so we used to spend hours over at each others' houses playing and chatting. Those two guys were like family to me.
University was a simple choice: Computer Science. That's where the programming started, and stopped. After three years of battling with Pascal, LISP, APL, Prolog, C, C++, Assembler and various other languages, I really didn't want to do that any more: purely the programming, not the whole computer thing. Since then, I have done some minor development, but it's all been very much 'macro' stuff - no serious coding to speak of.
After University, I finally got my first PC, which I built myself. I've always built my own PCs (except for the most recent one, where I couldn't be bothered any more and paid a couple of other guys to build it for me!). That's where everything turned serious: gaming obsession, computer obsession... time to get a job in computers!!
Since then, I've been a trainer, a freelancer, on two helpdesks, a sysadmin, a consultant, a contractor, a Siebel admin and have finally ended up where I am: a tech lead (of sorts) and doing a bunch of other stuff. I've never specialised. I've always worked with computers (except when I was a barman for a while). There is nothing more for which I could ask than what I have had (except maybe Winona Ryder).
In answer to your question, Kasia: I, too, am one of the lucky ones. I get paid to do what I love doing. It's rare for me to wake up and not want to go to work: I can learn what I want, pick up new applications, share what I know with colleagues I can consider friends...
...life is grand.
Some of you may remember me blathering about a young lady called Francesca some time ago. More recently, I'd lost contact with her again, since I believe she has changed jobs since our last email exchanges and I had heard nothing. I'd searched through old emails, to no avail.
Then, suddenly, a week or so ago she contacted me again: she and her man are to pass through Paris this week! Tonight is the night when I shall see her again. We're all going to go off to a restaurant somewhere and catch up with each other again, minus Psycho. I asked if she'd like to come along, but she doesn't want to - she dislikes 'Cesca quite intensely (for obvious reasons) and thinks that my old friend is aggressive and competitive with her. This is not entirely untrue, but it's also part of her humour: she's quite scathing at times.
I am now less concentrated on my work than I should be. Bah.
At least, I hope it does! It's 36 degrees in the shade here today (that's about 97 degrees Farenheit, for you Americans). It's too darned hot, especially for an Englishman who's used to rain and grey clouds! Thankfully, tomorrow has storms and ten degrees less forecast.
I'm mellllltiiiiiiing!
It's 14th July and here in France it's a public holiday. Today is Bastille Day. You may want to switch off your sound on that page, since it has a piano rendition of the French national anthem that plays automatically, but it's a good resume of what today means to the country.
Tonight, there will be many, many fireworks which will scare the willies out of all the pets in the city, and throughout the day there will be the big military parade on the Champs Elysees. The President will be there as usual and it all goes on for hours: tanks, trucks, motorbikes, everything will parade past. Of course, last year, some loon tried to shoot the President with a .22 rifle and got himself arrested, so security this year will be pretty tight. Let's hope it all goes well.
Me? I'm going to sit around and do nothing. A day off work is very much appreciated!
"Isabelle a les yeux bleus,
Isabelle a les yeux bleus.
Isabelle a les yeux bleus,
Bleus les yeux Isabelle a..."
For those of you who are not French and have not experienced Les Inconnus...
...my sympathies. You're missing something very special indeed.
Beware - monstrous number of popups on that link.
Dropping in at Jackie's blog, I noticed she'd written an entry about new computer users, or at least those who just bought internet access, apparently because my last post got her thinking. Well, to return the compliment, hers just got me thinking...!
New computer users are both wonderful and infuriating things. On the one hand, seeing the amazement in their eyes as they discover what computers are now capable of and the mass of useful content on the Internet thoroughly pleases me. On the other hand, their endless list of questions once they discover that I've been using computers for a long time and am at least a little familiar with most of the things they want to do can be so very annoying.
I've been using computers since I bought a Sinclair ZX-81 over twenty years ago (good grief, I'm old). My first PC followed quite some time afterwards: I don't remember when it was, precisely, but some ten years or more have passed since then. Internet access came a short while afterwards, when 28.8 modems were the fastest available and CompuServe was still the biggest ISP in the world! I suppose I am what you might call a mid-term PC owner: I haven't been using them for ever, but have been around long enough to know what's what.
Since I've been involved in computers - it was the one thing that came naturally and I never really had to try too hard to learn, presumably due to my love of the medium - I've introduced a few people to them. The first was my father, who picked up my old BBC Master which I'd used for school work. He hated throwing things away, so he thought he'd learn to use the word-processor. Considering his age at the time (getting on for 70!), I was impressed by his desire to learn and his enjoyment of this new toy: I taught him the basics and he went on from there to figure out most of what he needed himself. I've always been proud of him for his endless thirst for knowledge and remember fondly the fun we both had while he was learning.
The second was two of my brothers: one is in the throes of divorce and has his two sons living with him, so has rather low income. I bought him a PC while I was earning stupidly large amounts of money from contracting. His kids are of school age, so being without a PC could be a major disadvantage (both educationally and socially). Since I had my own business at that time, I bought them a stonking big machine which would be good for whatever they needed... and for gaming! He bought himself a Dummies guide and is learning as he goes, so the questions are few and far between.
The other brother has three children and is in a low income situation (well, relatively, when bringing up three kids - and fostering a fourth, who is autistic!). He now has a decent PC, which our mother bought for them for similar reasons as I did for the first. He, too, is teaching himself.
The third is Psycho, who had never touched a computer until I bought her one second-hand a year or more ago. She'd expressed a desire to learn and, being unemployed, had no money: the best way to encourage someone's desire is to provide a means to the end, so I splurged a little on an old Compaq with Windows 2000. Since then, I've taught her the basics of Windows and Word, with Excel to follow this weekend. Some twelve phone calls yesterday will indicate the rising infuriation level as she continues to ask questions all the time, but in this case I brought it upon myself and am therefore bound to answer.
Over the years, I've found that being "a computer person" is a little like being a doctor: whenever I am at a party or anywhere where people gather, there will always be someone who finds out what I do for a living and will immediately start asking questions. I've even had visiting doctors and vets ask stuff after they've looked after the sick.
Of course, this can be a good thing: when I was freelancing, the ability to hand over a business card and say "Call me. I only charge [insert elevated sum here] an hour," will not only calm the questions but can also lead to extra work. These days, since I am employed by someone else, I can't do that and consequently no longer admit to what I do very easily.
So what's the point of all this? I don't think I ever really had a point to make: Jackie just got me thinking about new computer users and how it affects those of us who have been around for a while. Their outlook on things is so very different to we jaded elders, after all.
I've been wandering around a little in the blogging world today and found a rather surprising number of people who seem to take all this way too seriously. Back in May, I started this blog for myself, for no other reason than to express some of the rubbish bungling around in the vacant space between my ears: I have been pleasantly surprised to see that some folks come back to comment regularly or even just to visit and read the utter nonsense I post.
Admittedly, this is how I see blogs myself. Some, of course, have purpose: following a particular subject or celebrity, recording events in politics or the world - in general or in their own little corner. Such is the wonderful variety of writing that has been made available by the Internet: we can all have a little peek into the lives and thoughts of others simply by visiting their pages.
However, there's a group of people who seem incapable of maintaining any form of distance or, at the very least, a reasonably polite attitude. I presume this is simply the way the world is: some of us are reasonable, others are not.
A couple of examples are in order. Firstly, any of you who visit the links on my little blogroll will probably already have noticed the manifold visits at Ruthie's from people over at cruel.com.
Personally, I find such sites as the latter amusing when visited occasionally: they are often the source of links to truly appalling sites that proliferate in the internet medium due to the simplicity of uploading a page. I take no particular side in such arguments, however, as I don't know either of the protaganists personally and therefore cannot make accurate judgements of either. Unless I have visited both regularly and exchanged communications with their owners, I have no grounds upon which to base support.
Secondly, today, Scary Ross popped me the URL to another blog where there's a real war going on. Social Reject appears to be a site with at least two regular female posters who have taken exception to comments made by visitors. To be quite honest, it's not my sort of site: people who say "fuck" all the time do not particularly impress me, especially when they reduce one of the most expressive swear-words available to a simple expression used in every sentence. However, my personal opinion of the quality of posting is irrelevant for this entry: what is important is the reactionary quality of the poster(s) and visitors.
It seems it all started with a post about homosexuality being either innate (i.e. genetically coded into a person) or a choice. A visitor commented, disagreeing with the original author in quite a reasonable fashion. The poster then, apparently, went overboard - unfortunate, since it appears to have all been a misunderstanding of what the visitor said. This has now turned into a major blog-war, with everyone getting really quite irate.
What I find disconcerting about this is not the heated exchange of views - after all, a debate can be a good thing if both sides are willing to listen - but the lack of respect and outright hateful retorts to which one or both sides always seem to reduce themselves. As one of the only (known) species in existence with such an incredible ability to communicate, I feel this is a real waste of the precious gift of intelligence.
Humans have a terrible tendency toward nastiness, it seems, and this is extenuated by the impersonal nature of online communication. Personal insults with no basis in reality, the slandering of people by those they have never met and mud-slinging matches between individuals who apparently have very short tempers are not a good way to foster any form of peace.
To put it another way, if you are going to take comments made on your blog seriously and get all upset over it, you really shouldn't be blogging in public. Write your thoughts in a diary and hide it in your sock-drawer instead.
I have decided that today is "Uncooperative Bastard Day". After three days of courses which were excellent, I attended a 7 p.m. meeting yesterday (via telephone), only to be harangued by an American colleague for not debugging a problem properly. My explanations that I had been in courses all week, had not actually started debugging the problem - nor claimed to have done so - and was, in fact, simply stating that I hadn't looked at said problem yet were ignored.
Isn't it wonderful when people ignore the sentences, pick up on a single word or two and throw a wobbler about it? Stupid ass. He won't be getting any help from me today.
I have a feeling it's going to be "one of those days" today. Last night I arrived at Psycho's while she was out, as is often the case on Wednesdays: I normally arrive, feed the cat and vacuum the apartment for her. She has a minor deformation in her back that makes her a bit fragile in that area, so things like carrying heavy shopping and vacuuming cause a significant amount of throbbing pain. Consequently, I deal with those things. Since I had already cleaned on Saturday, I figured I would skip the vacuuming last night and just chill out. Training courses are really quite surprisingly tiring, so it was nice to just sit and watch some mindless TV for a short while, with only Biscotte as company.
Of course, I didn't count on Psycho arriving and immediately laying into me, haranguing me for 'doing nothing' and basically being very disagreeable. This was somewhat surprising, particularly since I only do this stuff for her out of generosity and not through any form of obligation. So I basically told her where to get off, which annoyed her even more, and refused to be nice until she explained herself.
Apparently a difficult, stressful day was to blame. Aww, poor baby... after all, you had to do three whole things and have to actually wake up in the morning to go to an interview! Life's so unfair! I'll be thinking of all that angst while I'm dragging myself out of bed at 6:30, working for nine hours, doing your shopping, cleaning your flat, picking up your meds and the shirt you had altered, feeding the cat, taking your rubbish down to the bins and cooking your dinner... as well as doing all the same stuff for myself in the remaining hour I have before going to bed for half the amount of sleep you get every night. Grrrr.
Anyway, after this lovely evening, I got back home to find two messages on my mobile phone. I hate mobile phones, but I have to carry one for work: the messages were from the lovely Italian project manager, who has kindly arranged a meeting with the US Development folks... at 7 p.m. tonight.
So today I have the training course, then a quick run home to get to a doctor's appointment an hour later, then another quick run back to the apartment to dial in to a Belgian telephone conferencing system for a thrilling meeting. All in all, I shall probably have an hour to myself tonight: extremely annoying, since Thursdays are my "Me Day", when I make sure I have time for myself.
Sometimes, life can be a total bitch. Then again, I'm not going over to Psycho's tonight... there's always a silver lining.
The one disadvantage of having training courses this week is that, rather than going on my cigarette breaks downstairs in the company's smoking room (which, I should add, is brilliant: tables, sofas, great colour scheme, excellent ventilation system!), I go with the other students. They all head up to one of the terraces on the seventh floor of the building, so they can look out over Paris. This, in itself, is not a bad thing.
Unfortunately, I have discovered that I am a walking, talking, cigarette-puffing meal for mosquitoes. Thankfully, we only have non-plague-carrying, tiny little annoying buzzy mosquitoes here, rather than honkin' great big scary bird-sized things that suck your brains out at the same time as your blood. Still, after the course on Monday, I found bites all over me: located so far are two on my forehead (which kindly swelled a little extra to make me look like some kind of decaying zombie from a Japanese B-movie), three on my neck, one on a finger (I hate those!) and one on an arm.
I have a friend here in Paris who tells me that she only becomes mosquito-bait when she eats red meat. This is rather intriguing since, according to the lady who runs the pharmacy just below my apartment, there is nothing I can take or use to encourage the blasted things to leave me alone - at least, nothing that doesn't involve spraying the vicinity with some form of pesticide (thereby potentially poisoning my fellow students) or dousing myself thoroughly in foul-smelling concoctions! I also asked if there was some kind of poison I could take that wouldn't affect me too badly, but would at least cause the little bastards to die painfully after chewing on me: this, too, is apparently beyond modern science, or at least not available in pharmacies.
Actually, that's not entirely true: I didn't get an answer to that last question. The pharmacist just looked at me as if I were some kind of lunatic from another planet, which is surprisingly astute of her.
Thought I'd do today's This or That while I'm waiting for some reports to run:
1. Strawberries or blueberries?
Strawberries, definitely. My parents used to grow their own... very yummy!
2. "Legally Blonde 2" or "Terminator 3"?
Both! Reese Witherspoon is a wonderful actress, even if she is getting a bit stereotyped into silly roles that are a waste of her talent. The first film made me laugh, the second should do so, too. As for the Terminator films, well... unmissable!
3. Hamburgers or hot dogs?
If I had to choose, I'd opt for a hot dog, but both are fine with me.
4. Boating or hiking?
Neither, really: hiking if I had to choose. I'd prefer to walk down to a river and lie on the bank watching other people boating.
5. Suntan lotion or sunblock?
There's a difference? Ummm... I don't go out in the sun much, so never really need it.
6. "Big Brother" or "The Amazing Race"?
Neither. TV sucks.
7. Beach Boys or Jimmy Buffett?
Neither: I prefer actual music to nonsensical garbage (and who's Jimmy Buffett, anyway?). *grin*
8. Grow your own produce or buy from supermarket/greengrocer/farm stand?
I live in an apartment in the middle of the city, so I have to buy.
9. Drive with car windows/top down, or with air-conditioning on?
Top down or windows open, definitely. Air conditioning plays havoc with my throat, since I'm not used to it at all. I have to put up with it at work and it's a nightmare.
10. Go away for vacation, or stay at home?
Stay at home, every time. I have so little time to myself these days that if I can sit around with the cat for a few days, I will.
This week, I have a lot of training courses. Considering I haven't been trained (officially) on anything since starting at my current workplace some five and a half years ago, this is very much a novelty for me. That's not a complaint, particularly, since I have always enjoyed just picking up applications and learning them by using them, but it's nice to receive proper direction for once.
The training's on Business Objects, which I've been using since November - as always, I asked to start from the Beginner course and work right through all four days of training up to the Advanced Level 3. I have always considered it best to re-learn from scratch when being officially trained: I used to give courses myself and people coming in for the intermediate or advanced levels were always more difficult to teach unless they'd done the basics. This is because, despite the beginner level being very basic, unless one has been taught the building blocks, there will be gaps in one's knowledge that are annoying to fill when trying to teach at a higher level.
Of course, there's also the 'off on a jolly' aspect of the training: an extra day of not having to deal with my normal work is another good excuse for doing the basic course!
Anyway, I spent yesterday doing the beginner course and have the first two advanced levels tomorrow and Thursday. Excellent. The really surprising thing is just how interesting yesterday's course was. To begin with, the trainer was very good. He's an ex-developer and French, so he was a little hesitant in English - all our courses are in English, since they're always international - but very understandable. The five other people on the course (one Brit, one Spanish lady, one Belgian lady and a couple of Germans) were lots of fun and actually were beginners and interested in the subject.
The best thing, though, was how much I learnt - despite (in all honesty) thinking I would be wasting most of the day, I have actually learnt an enormous amount about the application. All the things I was doing by 'going the long way round', I can now do more efficiently and I've picked up at least a dozen tips and tricks on other parts of the program. I am very pleased.
It didn't hurt that the German girl was smart and pretty (and wore glasses!), either.
It's Thursday morning, just after 8 a.m. I've been awake thirty minutes or so and, since I am working from home today (as almost always on Thursdays), I am sitting here with a cup of bad coffee and a sleeping couch-potato that looks suspiciously like a cat. Why bad coffee? I dislike 'real' coffee. Actually, that's not entirely true: I like anything with a decent concentration of caffeine in it, as long as it doesn't taste of old socks. To be more precise, I prefer instant coffee, which most people consider 'bad'.
So what's this about my feet? Do you really need to know? Probably not, but hey... I never asked you to come here anyway. And now it's too late to leave! Mwuhahahaha!
Yesterday, at around 4:30 p.m., I picked up my new car. Part of the deal when I switched from being a consultant on repeating six-month contracts to a permanent employee who pays 60% taxes was that I get a car for work. In some (in fact, in many) ways, this is ludicrous: I live about ten kilometres (five miles or so) from my workplace, never travel far for work and never see clients. Quite why I could possibly need a car is beyond me, but that's not really what this is about.
When I switched from being a contractor, I basically lost 60% of my income. Of course, that's the 'raw cash' part I'm talking about: since changing, I now pay taxes here in France (instead of elsewhere), but I get things like medical cover, paid holidays, a 35-hour working week, social security and all those wonderful things that a socialist government has put in place. My employer is also quite astoundingly generous with such things as RTT and medical. RTT is complex: although officially I work a 35-hour week, I actually work a 40-hour week (officially... in real terms I probably work a 50-hour week, just because it's fun). The other five hours, I get back in training and 'personal development' days - that is, the company pays for courses and stuff. Good deal. As for medical, they cover virtually everything at virtually 100%, which is absolutely incredible. Gotta love 'em.
The thing I like the best, though, is the paid holidays: talk about a wonder of modern society! Sitting at home and being paid to do nothing? Yes, please.
Anyway, I went to pick up the car last night. I've been waiting nine months for it to arrive, which is rather a long time. Normally, it takes three months, but I'd had problems. My first choice of car, a Jaguar XJ Series was within budget and irresistable for an Englishman. Unfortunately, it was within budget as long as I didn't have anything like a CD player or sun roof. Bah, humbug. My second choice, the Audi A3 was being remodelled (and apparently the new one is crap). The five-door version, which we are forced to have, wouldn't be available for ten months. Ho hum. So I went for the Alfa Romeo 147, in black of course.
Car choices are annoying, especially if you're not a car person. I was given no budget limit, just a list of examples and a list of nine manufacturers I was allowed to choose from. It had to be five-doored, non-cabriolet and non-coupé. That ruled out everything I wanted. No Peugeot 206CC, no New Beetle and, worst of all, no Lotus Elise! I despise BMW and Mercedes - two manufacturers gone. I refuse to drive a Golf (all the little shitheads where I come from drive them). I didn't want a huge great big stonky car, so no 4x4 or saloon things. Basically, the Alfa was the last choice.
Driving home last night was a nightmare. I haven't driven in a month and the last car I drove was my old MX-5 (Miata). It was lower, shorter, faster, nippier and had the steering wheel (and everything else) on the other side! Still, the new one is nice: GPS, 10-CD changer, integrated hands-free phone, sun roof, air conditioning and all the funky doodahs. It'd be nice if the manufacturer hadn't screwed up and included a GPS CD for Germany instead of France, and if they had included the mobile phone card rather than forgetting it, but all in all it's a nice vehicle. When I got home, my feet didn't hurt: after a month of walking for 90 minutes a day, this was nice.
And best of all, the company pays for petrol. This is one gift horse I intend not to complain about, let alone look in the mouth.
I dislike travelling. I've never been one to travel very much, if it can be avoided, especially if it involves getting up early, flying to unknown places and working there. My choice of holidays reflects this: two weeks at home is far preferable to all that gallivanting around, lying on beaches, shopping and other such nonsense. Give me the ability to turn off my alarm clock, peace and quiet, my PC and a lot of chocolate and I'm happy as a sandboy.
Unfortunately, of course, life refuses to let me have such things. Psycho is already harrassing me about holidays in the UK in August (great idea... let's go over there when it's bloody hot and all the tourists are around!), which no doubt she expects me to foot the bill for, and now work is joining in.
Yesterday, someone asked me to go to Prague at the end of the month: a one-day trip to provide tech input into a presentation. This, I do not understand. "We're in a recession," they say. "We have to cut costs," they say. "Go to Prague for a day," they say. Huh?
Now I have to figure out if this is really something I want to do. Sure, it's a pretty city. I've never been there, either. It'd probably be very enjoyable, apart from the 4am start to get on a plane. Unfortunately, they need someone to talk about setting up a certain system (which I run), but the version I'm working on is five years old... not massive amounts of use to anyone, that.
It's also client-facing, which would probably mean I'd have to dress properly. This, in turn, would mean I have to shop for some decent clothes. It's all just such a waste.