the corner office

Operating systems assignment finally in the bag. That took far too long. Advanced Programming next, then Computer Theory, then Computer Graphics. I might have missed one. Either way, I start the first real bit of C++ work I've done this year. Yay!

The only other personal news to report is that I had a bit of a set-to this morning, with a cold-calling estate agent. I was polite with a... brittle edge. I tried to explain that cold-calling and pissing off potential customers is no way to generate business, surely? "No, we only do it every 6 months." Problem is, they and every other estate agent in the city do it every 6 months, and I end up getting a call a day. I conveyed this and my frustration. She sounded apologetic but I don't think she gave a toss, really, even after my "do you really think I'd use you people after you've wasted my time like this?" routine. Not that I own this place, mind you.

Ronwen says I have to be nice to the telemarketers, many of whom desperately need the work and don't particularly enjoy doing what they do. I don't know if I agree with her but she is the Boss and all, so I try to be nice and civil. I think there is a difference between poor Sannie trying to flog timeshare holidays to make ends meet and Pam Frickin' Golding wannabes cashing in on the property boom and trying to increase their mindshare so that when I finally wake up one day and decide "hmm, I think I'll re-enter the property market today," theirs is the first name I'll think of. Not bloody likely, and I feel far less guilty about letting them know how I feel. Politely (with a brittle edge), of course.

I'm supposed to be on leave to catch up on my mountain of overdue assignments. I got home from gym this morning, sat down at my PC and spent the rest of the day dealing with work stuff. It's after 4 already. Goes to show, I suppose, I can run but I can't hide.

Gym... first time back after nearly 2 weeks. I think I know myself by now... without a personal trainer, I'd never go to gym, full stop. So I coughed up for another batch of sessions with Warren. I just tell myself all the money I'm saving by not buying smokes each month helps pay for it. That's not entirely true. It would be cheaper to smoke. And life would be a lot more enjoyable. For now, at least.

Anyway, I have chosen the High Road and must stick with it. This does not change the fact that hyperextensions suck. Oddly, I always dreaded the idea of super-circuit running between exercises, but apart from the puffing and wheezing, it's not bad. It actually helps to spread the pain all over your body so each set of repetitions of whatever it is you're doing becomes less dreadful.

It was good to be back, though. One gets to recognise the regulars - the hardcore mofos and the posers and preeners and the little old ladies, and of course the gymbods who make everyone else look bad. I've also noticed that my trainer tends to go into drill instructor mode whenever we're near one of these gymbods. I was quite tempted to go up to one auntie today and just say 'listen lady, won't you please just sod off for half an hour so I can get through this session alive?'

I expected as much but now it's official - my keyring ornament is gone, presumably stolen. A chap from Impact Panelbeaters phoned up and apologised, and if I like I can pop by to see if I'd like to take one of two other keyrings they have the office. Apparently one looks just like mine but the logo is that of a hotel chain. Or else I can get a keyring with a Volvo logo, but it's an oval ornament, nothing like mine. Lucky me, huh?

Trying to be zen about it, it's just a bloody keyring, and getting that worked up over something with purely sentimental value seems a bit OTT. I've been in two minds about whether to make a big fuss about this with the panelbeaters, and I decided on the phone that I wasn't really going to waste my time. I politely told the bloke I wasn't particularly happy about the situation, but was philosophical about it and accepted his apology, and I left it at that.

Then, on my way home this afternoon, I stopped off at the petrol station, and discovered that someone even took the cheap Bic pen I keep with my petrol log book. For fscks sake!

This took me back to the one part of the apology this morning which had grated me somewhat: "this happens a lot," with the clear implication that there wasn't much they could do about it.

Nice cop-out. Our employees are thieves, and if you want us to work on your car, bolt everything down or keep a detailed inventory, right down to the frigging pens in your cubby hole.

Of course, that's nonsense. There are a lot of things that could be done to stop theft. Not to mention that simply having employees being held accountable when they don't do something they say they're going to do, might work wonders. There are also many ways to deal with a customer who's had something stolen from his car, and they got it very wrong. If I'd been given even the slightest indication that these people really, really took incidents and oversights like this seriously, this blog entry wouldn't be here.

They cost me one bad mood (actually, two: one on Thursday, and another today), a keyring ornament and a Bic pen. How much has it cost them, though? I know that panelbeating isn't something you get done every week, but how much business do they lose with customers who have bad experiences and opt for another panelbeater the next time round? The irony is that of the two recommended Volvo panelbeaters in Jhb, I chose to go to these people because when Ronwen originally called them up, they were the friendliest of the two. So there you go - they had friendly staff, and seem to have done a decent job on my bumper, but I won't go back to them if I can avoid it.

One of the things one needs for a happy Gentoo installation is a lot of cheap bandwidth. Fast is also a boon. I downloaded the KDE packages at the turn of the month, and there are already a heap of updates.

Yep, it's taken me until now to start compiling and installing KDE. During the week, I played a bit with X.org, trying to get X running to my satisfaction. My Gentoo box has a GeForce4 MX onboard graphics card, and I ran into a few hassles trying to get X running at a happy resolution (which for my monitor is 1024x768). After poring through the logs, reading up on the forums and doing some research on the net (which included chasing search engine references into the source code for the video drivers), I figured out that for whatever reason, I couldn't rely on a DDC probe to get my monitor's refresh rates. Pity, I'd thought the good old days of schlepping with horizontal and vertical refresh rates in X config files was a thing of the past. Not so, yet.

At least I'm able to get a plain ole twm session going, at 1024x768. And I know about things like DDC, and almost learned more about things like I2C buses and whatnot. I can also boast that I know a few trivial things about twm, which is something I'd normally never have done had I not stopped and mucked around on this intermediate step before rushing helter-skelter to the save haven of KDE. I'm all geeked out.

A significant moment in every man's life, the first real sign of physical change, since puberty: Ronwen just spotted and plucked out the first grey strands of hair from my noggin. There's no hiding from the truth. Those fsckers are grey, man. Grey grey grey.

Can I have my mid-life crisis now? Pleeeeaase?

This is scary. As I work my way through my lovely treaclesque tome on Operating Systems I'm looking at some rough study notes from last year, and I can't remember having scrawled them. If they weren't in my handwriting, I'd have thought I had someone else's work.

Based on current workload, my solution to the dining philosopher problem would be this: let some hard-core types burst into the restaurant, mow the philosophers down mob-execution style, then go out for pizza. That'll teach them.

So, I got my car back from the panelbeaters today. Now, I have to admit that these folks were professional, and friendly, and being one of 2 accredited panel beaters for Volvo in the whole of Joburg means they can't be useless. And I can't fault them on the bumper, which looks good as new.

Of course, it's never that easy. When I dropped off my car, one of the ladies there asked me to make sure I'd removed all valuables from the car. I said that I had already done that. She pointed to my chromed schlick-looking keyring bottle-opener thingy, which I got from the dealer when I bought my car. "Oh yes," said I, and made to remove it from the keyring. "Not to worry," said she, "I'll remove it, later." So I left it, and forgot about it. When I picked up my car, the key was already in the ignition, so I didn't notice that this ornament was missing until I got back to the office.

Thinking this lady must've kept it, I phone them up, and naturally, chaos ensued. The lady remembers talking to me about it but she can't remember if she took it off or not. They're searching high and low, and can't find anything. I have no doubt that the thing is long gone and adorning one of their employees' own keyrings.

Of course, I signed off a disclaimer and it's not like I'm going to be bankrupted by some dumb keyring ornament, but it's the principle, dammit. If it wasn't for this woman telling me that she'd take care of it, I'd still have it. On the other hand, throwing my toys doesn't achieve anything - and it's not like I never forget things myself. But it had sentimental value, and it upsets me.

And as for the waste of human flesh who stole it...

Sheesh. A whole 3 days without blogging. You'd think I've been busy or something

Ronwen rented (and I ended up watching) Shallow Hal on DVD last night. Nice movie, happy ending, all is well with the world. Nice message. I identify, but let's be honest, the movie still needed someone like Gwynnie to sell it. Which is sad, but how things work, I guess.

I caught up a few outstanding phone calls last night. Interesting chat with my mom. She works for a large insurance company. Great profit sharing these people do. Thankfully they do pay bonuses to all staff, but each staff member also gets to choose a "gift", which is valued at around R500. The range of gifts to choose from includes a food processor, a DVD player, a mini-hifi system, a VCR, and a mini Weber braai (barbecue for the non-Sefricans). Of course, the first thing people do is start phoning around to really value these gifts, and discover that they're almost all discontinued and end-of-range products, probably gathering dust in a warehouse for a year or few! Who profits most from deals like that, I wonder... as my mom said, why not just give staff the cash? The gifts attract tax anyway (the company made a big thing of upping cash bonuses to offset the tax on the gift). Since my mom doesn't want or need any of these things, it boils down to her getting this gift and then flogging it to a local Cash Converters or someone for R250 to turn it into something useful. Multiply this sort of "loss" across all employees in the company and the waste must be astronomical. As someone pointed out, a good few employees probably don't even have electricity at home. Hope they enjoy their Weber braais.

Also phoned my aunt and uncle. How's this for stupid? My cousins qualify for an ancestral visa to the UK because their late grandmother was British. My aunt, however, does not qualify for an ancestral visa based on her own mother's nationality. To get an ancestral visa my aunt has had to track down birth certificates and whatnot for her grandparents who were born in the late 1800s and married circa 1907. How daft is that?

Apart from that, I've also had the good fortune to catch up with a few long lost friends this week. It's been really great catching up with friends I haven't spoken to in ages.

Now it's time to catch up with a few long-lost text books...

Ronwen & I took my car into the panelbeaters this morning, to get my bumper fixed (it took a wee scratch over Christmas). 5 months late, but better late than never and all that. We had to head into the Deep South (of Johannesburg), to Booysens. I haven't been to any of those old industrial suburbs in the South since my auditing days. Took me back, it did.

Anyway, a trip down memory lane isn't the point of my post - the obscure weather is. As we pull up to the panelbeaters (Ronwen in her car, I in mine), the heavens opened up. It's May - we're not supposed to see rain again until Spring, but here we were in a hail-riddled deluge. Got drenched within a second of opening the car door.

Thankfully my car will be ready by the end of the week and it won't be too pricey to fix.

Driving up the M1 back to work, we turned off at Rosebank due to the traffic jams on the highway. Rosebank was surreal. With the hail, it looked like it had been snowing, and the Glenhove turnoff was shrouded in mist. Very weird!

Got to the office just after midday, had barely started my PC when we had a power failure. Eskom reckoned the electricity would be out in our area for 4 hours, so there was nothing to do but close the office and bugger off home. Which we did. What a productive day.

Well, it was time to pull finger, so we got a new telly this morning. We drove through to the Woodmead Makro to get it, on account of our local one being incinerated. Got a 72cm LG Flatron. Jeepers. Whole new range of TV experience. I'm not 100% sure if I'm happy with the sound though, things seem a bit echoey and muffled at times, especially with DVDs. I'm not sure how much of it is my imagination, not being used to the TV being in stereo, and how much can be sorted by tweaking one of the zillion settings. We'll see. Damned fine TV in every other respect.

My only other gripe is this: what's with all the silver componentry? Ten years ago silver meant "el cheapo." Nowadays a look through any of the electronics stores, and absolutely nothing is available in black finish. No TVs, VCRS, DVD players, hi-fi components, nada. Everything is a shitty silver. When did all the electronics manufacturers decide that black was out? Call me cynical, but they probably know that in 3 years' time your telly's matt silver is going to start looking the worse for wear, and you'll be more likely to head out and replace it even though it still works fine. Sharks.

A & P & L came round for dinner & DVDs this evening. I stayed at home while they all went to hire a DVD, and they settled on Jackass: The Movie. I don't think it was quite what anyone expected. I can't decide whether I enjoyed it or hated it. Some of the gross-out stuff was far too gross for me. Some of the pranks were so stupid it was painful to watch. At one or two points I thought about getting up and going to do something else. However, I also laughed my arse off during much of the movie. Strangely, of all the disgusting things these malcontents get up to, the absolute worst had to be the paper-cuts scene. That was just wrong.