long time no see

Wow, five months already...

Five full months actually. Very full. Too full.

It all started with Miss J getting a new job and me having to find a new main contract. As usual Miss I and I were going nowhere slow and had reached some kind of unsaid mutual agreement. So Miss J and I met in a hallway, one thing lead to another and before I knew it I had a drawer and her cat had me fully adopted. I knew it wasn't a good idea. And it wasn't. We may thank the Belgian politics for this one. Back to square one. 

The timing was good: I had to leave for my two weeks, and I fully expected for things to have cooled down by the time I was back. I came back with a new rank (time to find a new nick;-), and was still unpacking my bags when I learned that my father was having a stroke. 

The situation was touch and go, uncertain to say the least, and the prognosis was very bleak for a few weeks. He stayed in the ICU for two weeks, went to the neuro wing for another two, and his physical condition started to improve. Right now he is in rehabilitation and should move to outpatient physiotherapy once the house has been transformed. He is getting better, putting on weight and, physically, everything is well except for his right hand. Walking is no longer an issue, but he won't be climbing stairs soon. Mentally it is another story. He is still very confused sometimes, even though this is happening less often than it used to be. Of course, I had to somehow support my mother, not only morally, granted that she is unable to use an ATM or fill up her car. And, to top it all, I had to renew my certifications and clearances.

In the meantime, there was an inundation at my place by the sea. On the good side of things, I didn't had to look for another contract besides making two phone calls. The situation isn't completely clear on this point, but I have more than a few options available to me. 

So, what now?

• My father will be going home in the next few weeks.
• My mother is busy being herself: anxious.
• Miss J and I are still on speaking term and have found out that our respective political opinions are irreconciliable to the point of making cohabitation almost impossible.
• Miss I and I are still going nowhere. 
• I am fully certified again.
• My clearances will be renewed.
• I'll have the opportunity to meet new people and learn new things soon.

Yeah, interesting times ;-)

Country roads

... or an evening with Miss J.

How come that I always get the one I do not want and let the one I want slip away?

How come that I have never been able to reset my default settings?

Pointless things

Something I picked up there.

• I usually wear custom made shoes. When I do not, I usually have a shoe half a size lager than the other one, because my feet are not of equal length, thanks to a funny horse and a rigid stirrup.
• I do not like to look into people's eyes. Like a true psychopath, I look at their solar plexus when I feel I could be threatened, or somewhere over their head when I feel safe. I look into people's eyes when I am listening to them intently or about to do something drastic about them. 
• I hate crowds. And I hate myself when I allow myself being crowded. I like open spaces though, so I guess I do not qualify as a full blown agoraphobiac. I tend to avoid crowded covered spaces. Say more than 10.000 square feet, but I manage to feel at ease if I have a wall behind my back.
• I actually listen to Bach covers by, say, Saint Preux or such, to cringe at the disaster. 
• People who do not truly know me say I am a composed and reserved kind of guy. People who really know me say I am talented and intransigeant. I have too many faces. I usually make a favourable first impression.
• My nose is full of infectious crater holes.
• I  love rarely and far too much for my own good.
• I still believe that best and worst cases analysis are meaningful. I hate relativism and still believe in absolutes. 
• I need symbolic stochastic analysis to go over some of my preconceptions.
• I do not believe that I am holding many preconceptions, especially about myself ;-)

Talking about the revolution

Miss I and I shared another pleasant evening.

To be honest, I wasn't so sure that she would be coming, and, to be even more honest, I wasn't so sure that I wanted to see her either. Not that I wanted not to see her, just that I was still digesting our last emails. 

I was tired, feeling somewhat inadequate, lacking of something, and, up to a point I still feel that way.

The last few days weren't my best. I felt sad, and when your iPod randomly feeds you some Daho and then you suddenly feel that it has been written for you and you just want to pull over and cry it out, well, obviously, something is very wrong with you. But, in a way, that particular incident helped me a lot. Because then I realized that something was indeed wrong with me. Not that what I was feeling was wrong: I was true to myself and tried to communicate as openly and frankly as I could. What was wrong was that I was that I was trying to find answers, hoping that they would close the issue. That, magically, understanding would bring me peace. And I was unable to find answers, so no peace for me. So I decided to accept the situation as it is, acknowledge the fact that I was living it, and then try to understand something, maybe not everything, but enough to be able to understand what hit me and how it came. Accepting is easy. Easier than trying to find answers to questions you do not fully understand anyway. And then some kind of understanding began to trickle and slowly diffuse.

Right before our date, I was in the opinion that I maneuvered myself in this relationship on my own. Granted, it takes two to tango, but my expectations, hopes and fears were mine and mine only. Granted, I had done my best at expressing them, but perhaps my best is not enough. And perhaps my best is absolutely not the way to go. And, perhaps, no matter what and how I might say things, the one I have been talking to wasn't willing to hear me. I was at the crossroad between self-doubt and  loosing my bienveillance on the way to betterment. 

Here we are, without awkward moments, chatting about her new job, how things are going, exactly as if nothing happened. Well, we have enough practice I guess ;-)

Then we talked. About what we had written about the days before. She needs to establish an emotional dialogue before opening up, I need to feel a connection, share something before being emotional, that sort of things. Let's be frank, at this point, we both have opened up to a point and formed an emotional bond. If we cannot go on from there now, it is sad but it most probably is that we never will. Why? Well, communication style is a part of it. For my part, expressing my feelings is a long and arduous process where I find myself battling with words I half understand in the hope of conveying something meaningful. I am far much better at this game when I write than when I speak. Well, less abysmal better describes it actually. I thrive in regulated environments, where there is a clear and well known  boundary between who you are and who you should be. And I guess that most if not all of my past relationships followed the same pattern: meet someone, act as we are supposed to, find a mutually agreeable way to go out of context, share, feel. She goes exactly the opposite way. Besides, I have no idea of what she wants and how she wants it. What does she expect me to share when our common experience is restricted? It is truly beyond me. Perhaps are we doomed to stay at the friend level, which isn't a bad proposition but not where I expected to be. 

Anyway, this whole thing is tiring me. There may be an opening, somewhere, but I do not count on finding it on purpose. As I see things now, we will most probably stay friends, and if our relationship evolves it won't be because one of us wanted it, but just because, at some point, I'll say something utterly trivial to me that she has been waiting for. 

Right now, I am still working on what we said, I am tired, sad and neither happy nor unhappy. 

Tired, mostly.

You have no idea...

- "You have no idea what it is like what I have been through."

- "I kind of guess."

Those three days in cac weren't eleven months without a job, but the intensity more than largely made up for brevity when it comes to learn a few unpleasant things about who you thought you were, how much you need friends when you are less than yourself and about who your friends really are.

And about not letting people down when they need you most.

Among a few other things.

Loop the loop

Once again, for the third time in almost two years, Miss I and I have looped the loop.

I won't say I am overjoyed. I won't say I am content. But I won't say I am unhappy either. I am just back to planet Earth. 

Each and every time, we hit the communication wall. I still do not understand her as fully as I would like to. I do not understand what she wants me to say or do or be. She doesn't understand what I mean nor, I strongly suspect, who and how I am. 

But, this time, we managed to say what we mean to each other and what we are expecting. And to understand it. 

Which is an improvement, in a way. 

Not that I am disappointed, just that, on the onset, I was hoping for something more. 

Anyway, "l'existence, c'est la vie" (TM) ;-)

A busy week.

On Monday I had a date with Miss Bee, on Tuesday with Miss J, and on Wednesday with Miss I.

Let's cheerfully forget about Miss J: she is a nice enough person, but thanks but no thanks. Far too weird for me. And I know weird...

Now, Miss Bee is a nice person too, quite attractive in her own right, intelligent, cheerful, interesting, charming even, but... she isn't a Miss at all. No, not that kind of "not a Miss at all" :-) About to be divorced, two kids, not really living somewhere, torn between friends and families: the work. Been there, done that, I would gladly see her again but I am not up for that kind of involvement. Besides, I am not that sure that she will actually carry on with her divorce plans and my policy is not to interfere with other people life anyway. Mine is busy and complicated enough  already, so thank you, it is tempting, but I will have to pass. Nothing new under the Sun. 

The interesting part is this: as it was a first date, we exposed our most recent relationships, and I had to talk about Miss I. I said something along the line of "A kind of soft relationship. You know, when no one is really getting it moving". Which isn't true. What would have been true to say would have been "When no one dares to get it moving", or "When no one is confident enough to get it moving".

Which brings us to Miss I.

A little context first: Miss I is finally out of her predicaments, things are looking good for her at last, and we have kind of acknowledged that we have forged some kind of still indefinite bond. Which is an improvement in a way. Another step in the long and tortuous route to wild cats bonding. I know that too...

We ended up in her hallway, having one of these open but veiled and heavily subtexted talks she is so fond of. I rarely congratulate someone, but here I have to give her credit: she has been very close of making me furious. I actually had to go out, telling her that I would write her soon. I had far too much to say and not enough composure left to take it in stride. Not to say that her points weren't valid ones. She got me thinking about a few things. More than a few actually. Yes, I have already conceded it, we do have very different outlooks on, mostly, everything. Yes, I hadn't given a thought about some of my feelings, and, yes again, I dare not go further. Because, the truth is that I do not understand her as much as I would like to feel, not safe, just that I am not heading in the wrong way. The conclusion is that I am now standing right where I was in December 2008 (the 28th, to be precise), which, I gather, was the way I had been feeling for a few months then. I have tried a few things, went to investigate supposedly greener pastures, tried to bury her, to no avail. And still I do not understand what she says she is expecting of me. It is driving me mad when I think of it. The more I try, the more I fail. The more she talks, the less I understand. Still, I keep on trying. And I honestly do not know why. I am a fucking pathetic mess. What I am trying to say is that I am trying to give her some answers, because I know that they will mean something to her, but I do not even know whether or not I have understood her questions. Sometimes it feels like I am a blind man talking about paintings, sometimes like I am talking colours with someone who has Daltonism. I just do not get it. It's like the first time I picked up a Rubik's cube. 

Anyway, I do not want to give up. There is something. We both feel it. We just cannot find a way to make it to the light. Maye it is me, maybe it is her, maybe it is both of us. Maybe we need more time just to learn about each other. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

I wrote her something along these lines, as I said I would, and I am still in the dark. 

I'll see soon enough ;-)

The story of S

Once again, I have spent the last Thursday evening with Miss I. It came as a surprise, as she was supposed to have something else to do. Anyway, as usual, she came up with a conversation that acted like a long fuse, the kind that triggers the sudden realisation that you have been missing on something for years, waking you up the following night. 20+ years in this case.

She asked me about someone I went to high school with. She knew her from college, and found S quite distasteful. I told her that she once was a very good friend of mine, and that she indeed turned out to be a less than a sterling person.
S is very intelligent: math and language oriented, with a lot of people skills and a daring attitude. She had a supportive family, was quite popular, fun to be with and a great friend of mine when I had trouble adjusting. My surrogate A at the time.
Then her older sister died. Her older sister was just like her, really brilliant. I do not know, I cannot explain what happened. The only thing I know is what I saw: a family being transformed. They all stayed together, of course, but, in a way, they took her death as a failure. They lost something more than a loved one. Something good was broken, and replaced by the intimate understanding that life is indeed too short.
I'll leave it at that.
Things changed, we were still friends but not that close any more. Then we grew apart.
We lost touch a few years later. I heard of her and her family. And what I heard through different channels, some of them very public, some other informal and very private didn't really made me want to get back in touch.
I'll leave it at that too.

But, beyond some vague feelings and half formed opinions, I hadn't seriously thought about this episode and how it had affected me, even though it got me to adopt a very well defined and consequential attitude toward some people.
Thanks to Miss I and a funny dream, I now know.
Basically, I have found out what I already knew and had never formulated.

Two kinds of people get my attention: those who serve, because they believe in something bigger than themselves ; and those who hack, in a very broad sense, because they question systems that shouldn't be able to deprive us from basic dignity.

But only those who exhibit these two traits gain my respect.
Serving without hacking is being a mindless drone. Hacking without serving is being blindly self serving. You must have purpose and the means and will to question your purposes.
 
Motivation, intention, will and means. We always get back to those.

39

Happy birthday to me ;-)

Sex and fury

So, Miss I and I went to watch a film at the Offscreen Festival, and she carefully selected this. Her main criteria was that it was the first film not part of a series she could see. Right.

It tells the story of a girl intent on revenge. She witnessed her father assassination, became a pickpocket and a gambler and went on to avenge the murder. Naked. In the snow. On her way she meets a guy in love with the most ridiculous spy ever, a corrupt politician or two, her long lost mother, nuns with knives, a lesbian maid and gets whipped in a church. Yeah. Right. 

The main actress is nice enough, the score is nice for a 1973 motion picture (read: a kitsch fashion statement nowadays), and the scenery and props are just awful (read: they were laughable even in 1973). The scenery is particularly bad, with parts looking to be made for dwarves because the perspective is completely screwed. And the colours, especially the walls, are just plain ugly. So ugly it is shocking. 

The plot is good, when you consider that it is mainly an excuse for some bad (very) softcore porn scenes and bloody chambara (with bad fake artifical blood, of course, you know, the purple gruelly kind) with a female ass popping in and out of it.

Still, I liked it. It has some good scenes, isn't really boring, and is adequately played. All things being considered, if you take it for what it is worth and come to it without any expectations, it is good enough. And, the chances are you have never seen it before. An interesting experience, but not a film I'll watch twice. On some points it is better than Kill Bill. The main ones being that it is shorter, the plot is clearly an excuse for some visual carnage, and that it is just plain funny, deliberately or not ;-)

Twin Peaks vs. Grey's Anatomy

Until very recently, my only exposure to Twin Peaks was half an episode seen 20 or so years ago, and listening for hours to the score looping ad nauseam in an ex girlfriend's car for months. I progressively came to hate Angelo Badalamenti, but I hated driving more, so I put up with the music. Since then, I have been unable to watch a single episode past the opening credits.
Anyway.
I usually like Lynch, so I bought the Twin Peaks DVDs when they came out a few years ago, but I hadn't gotten around to watching then since.
Until now that is.
And I like it. There are quite a few characters that I like, my favourites being Audrey Horne and Maj. Briggs. The seer with the log before the opening credits is nice too. The story is typically Lynchian, which means to me nice for an hour or three, and hardly bearable beyond that.
And what do I do when I am bored watching DVDs? I pump iron. Then the boredom induced by the show strangely abates, as if both boredom sources were working against each other to keep me focused on something else I have running in my mind. I find this very satisfying in a weird way.

Until now, my favourite show for weight lifting was Grey's Anatomy. It is in no way comparable to Twin Peaks. Grey's Anatomy sheer inanity is at first compelling then extremely annoying. Twin Peaks has the same effect to me: its sheer strangeness is at first attractive then profoundly annoying. Add the score and the annoyance becomes insufferable. Until I pick up the weights. Then it becomes bearable again.
You can pick up Grey's Anatomy at any time, and you will understand it all. When you pick up Twin Peaks at random, you won't understand a single thing.

So, for completely different reasons but according to the very same weird process, these two series make perfect weight lifting background.

Something must be very wrong with me :-)

This is not a game

He did it.

Again.

He didn't invent cyberpunk when he wrote "Hardwired". Sterling and Gibson, among many others, were already there. 

He didn't invent "post-human-punk" when he wrote "Aristoï". Banks was already there.

He didn't invent science-fantasy or "arcane-punk" when he wrote "Metropolitan". Bradley and many others had already done that before.

He didn't invent space opera nor military SF when he wrote "The Praxis", Weber, Smith and many, many, many others had gone that way long before him.

But, each and every time, he makes a masterpiece. This guy is a kind of Bowie when it comes to SF: he takes what is currently floating around, put his own spin and create a very enjoyable and original piece.

This time, he wrote "This is not a game". Now, WJW is surfing on wave going back to Brunner's "Shockwave Rider", maybe even further. Recently, Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" renewed the theme, and even more recently there were the excellent "Little Brother" by Doctorow and "Halting State" by Stross. All of it is already in Brunner and Toffler, of course, but still, he dit it. Again. And it is very good indeed.

 

Thank you Mister Williams ;-)

Essential iPhone apps

Note: I started listing apps, then thought about linking them. The obvious place to start was the Apple web site. I have never found out how to search for an app from this site without having to launch the dreaded iTunes. As usual, a little googling brought me right on track.

Free

• Google: your Google stuff made available from a single place, but launched in Safari. Your Google apps stuff too, which is really nice.
• Wapedia: let's face it, the Wikipedia mobile site is bad. Their dedicated iPhone app is worst. Wapedia gives you bookmarks, contents table, and access to other wikis from the same interface.
• Tellmewhere: rate your favourite places, find people who share your tastes, get recommendations. It works pretty much anywhere: what aroundme could have been but isn't. Pretty much invaluable when you are lost in the city, looking for a restaurant you will like.
• Linkedin: like the web site, easier to use and integrates with your contacts.
• Kindle: Amazon's book reader.
• Kobo: Kobo's book reader.
• Stanza: Generic book reader.
• Shazam: ever wondered what is this tune you are hearing? Shazam will find it for you.
• Radio.BE: streamed Belgian radio stations.
• TV Gids Belgïe Lite: a TV guide in Dutch. As I do not have a TV nor do I speak Dutch, that's fine :-)

Paying

• Sleep Cycle: an app I have found there. It wakes you up gently when you start moving in your sheets a few minutes before your waking time. And it tells you how much you have slept, draws graphs and computes an average. My average total time is currently 4h 34m. And I was wondering why I was feeling tired these last few weeks ;-)

The one that got away

Once upon a time there was this guy who left everything behind to face a new challenge. Opportunities were there, sure, but they weren't that good. When all is said and done, there isn't much to say about retirement plan, health insurance or a new car... It wasn't the conditions but the challenge that brought the man in.
He wasn't the ideal candidate. Far from it. But, for some jobs, the ideal candidate is an HR wet dream. He didn't speak the language, had a very narrow focus, and didn't exercised leadership as he should have. As far as I understand it, he didn't even knew what leadership is, he took it all for granted.
It didn't took long for things to go sour. People began asking for reassignment ("I do not know what I should be doing.", "I do not understand what is expected of us.", "What are we here for? What is the plan?"), or just plainly quit. People depending upon his work began to ask questions ("What is he doing?", "Why is he here?", "What is his role?", "Should I go through him for that?"). Then the criticisms ("We all agreed upon that, but he doesn't know/remember/understand.", "He isn't from around here, how can we trust him?", "He doesn't know us."). Possibly, he ran afoul of some deal, picked the wrong resource or contractor, made the wrong friends, was unable to gain the trust he needed.
In the meantime, he established quality standards, reasserted the end-user responsibility in requirements analysis, brought a new methodology and new talent in.
And then he was out.
Not of his own choosing.

A few words to the wise:

• never take leadership for granted ;
• there is no excuse ;
• learn the game before playing it ;
• listen carefully ;
• talk sparingly but, for God sake, *say* something.

Sock

We had another great evening last Tuesday, Miss I and I.
Our favourite place was closed for the holidays, and I have found a very similar place through tellmewhere. Even though our menus were very different (better to take the measure of the cook ;-), the maître d'hôtel (yup, I hate maitre d';-) cum sommelier cum owner did a very good job choosing our wine. When there are meats, fishes and warm or cold food on the table, and an "alternative" wine cellar I do not even try ;-) The place is too cozy and intimate for me, but she liked it.
Of course it was crowded, of course I had made sure to leave the office late enough to avoid feeding time, but still, I managed to keep my agoraphobia under control. In fact, I have barely felt it. We had one of our most free flowing and open talk to date.
A pity it took us the better part of two years to feel confident enough to go past the dating crap.
Still another great evening in good company ;-)

An evening with Miss B

Last Wednesday I expected to spend my evening with Miss I, then it turned out that she was busy, so I went on with plan B. Where B stands for "bof", a rare occasion for English and French meanings to strangely meet.

Miss B is a colleague's colleague. We are both "available", not working in the same unit, rare enough to jump at the opportunity. Even better: we have similar clearances so we may talk shop. As a rarely speak of anything else, it is a big plus. While I was disappointed not to see Miss I, the perspective of meeting someone with whom I may have a no-holds-barred discussion was enticing enough for me to call her and arrange a meeting that evening. Our colleague must have painted me in very favourable light, because she agreed to the meeting on very short notice.

I had known about her for a few months, and what I knew from out colleague was that she was working in a non managerial position on some mundane projects, was good looking (men's talk ;-) and quite energetic: little Miss Sunshine in Macholand. Nothing really appealing to me at the time: the same things can be said of other women I had already met, and most of them were disappointments because, mostly, what they were doing was there job, without any calling or conviction. Furthermore, I already had a bad on-the-job dating experience, and, in my world, you do not date the staff. So, well, yes, I knew about her, I knew that she might be someone nice but I didn't really wanted to meet her. I had a far better person to look for anyway.
This far better person being unavailable, and me recently resolved to look for someone else, I decided to take the the chance.
It turns out that while she is indeed good looking, possesses a great sense of style, is a great conversationalist (by my standards...) and is indeed involved in what she is working at and derives great pride out of it, she is also a freaking hippie. Not that I do not like hippies, well, I do not love them, but they have their part to play. What I cannot stand is people who do not know who they are, what they are doing, and unable to be coherent. You can have reservations, but you cannot preach against what you are enthusiastically doing.
Immediate turn-off.
So, either it was all an act, and I didn't get her humour; either it wasn't and she is truly lost.
Anyway, we both had some fun, nothing to regret, nothing to be ashamed of, and that was it. I guess that I won't be calling her soon ;-)

Internet pitfalls

CD/TV is *not* the FCO channel...

Apple: the good, the bad and the ugly...

OK, I know, I said no tech post here, and declared a unconditional nerdry cease-fire. Well, there is a good thing about unconditional cease-fires: they are actually meant to be broken ;-)

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I wasn't a big fan of Apple products. My aversion was twofold: CISC suck(s/ed) (the idea is good, but the implementation was usually poor) ; Apple's OSes sucked even more. Well, I am a SPARC/Solaris guy, it was to be expected ;-)
Then came MacOS X and the iPhone.
RISC+Unix.
On a *cellphone*.
In my *pocket*.
t3h nErdZ dre4mZ :-)

So I got an iPhone, freed it, loved it, bought a macBook, picked up some objective C, and I was set. Since then, I no longer dislike Apple as much as I did. Quite a long way to go for a guy who had never used an iPod and was appalled by the crass vulgarity of Apple apps. I even offered a macBook to my not-quite-70 mother, thinking that it would be easier for her to use (and for me to maintain...). So it seems that my opinion has been fully reversed.
Not quite.
I am not a blind fan yet ;-)

The good:

You can set up an Apple product with your fingers alone. You can unpack it with your fingers alone. With a single finger even. It doesn't require a knife, not a single tool. Just a finger. Two if you are really clumsy.

It is really easy to use. Crass vulgarity at its best ;-)

Unix. Did I mention that?

It is (still) safer to use than you usual Wintel PC.

It looks good.

The bad:

• One word: maintenance.

For my computers, I have to set and reset the power and screensaver settings each and every time I update them. It doesn't happen quite as much as for a Windows box, granted, but it is still annoying as hell. Even Windows allows you to update silently, even if it keeps asking you for a reboot again and again.
For my iPhones (I have four of them and go through two each day: the battery is very short-lived) , it is worst. The OS upgrades are few and far between, true, but once you have a few apps it becomes a nightmare. And, even though once an app is downloaded and updated you can synch it on all your phones without further downloads, I have never found a way to do so with the OS upgrade files.
All in all, I would say that the maintenance process is tedious but bearable. Most people won't be inconvenienced.

• JAVA

It lags far behind Sunacle release. Most people will not matter.
I do.

The ugly:

• iTunes synch

My boy, are you ugly...
And retarded...
Is that pus oozing out of your mouth?
So far, the best argument in favour of retroactive abortion...
Ever tried synching your library on many computers?
Ever tried telling it that you want this song on that device, not using playlists (because you do not want to have to maintain them too)?
This single piece of software is the most burdensome jukebox ever. Junkbox would be more appropriate.

• iStore for apps

OK, the content is not universally distributed, and some countries have access to more, some other to less. Not really Apple's fault. I can understand that. And as long as music is concerned, you can easily find what you are looking for.
Then came the apps. Finding something there is like going 15 years back and using Yahoo categories to find a web site when you know of AltaVista. Even worst: Yahoo actually did a good job in defining its topology and classifying content according to it. iStore apps categories are a ((very) sad) joke, and the actual classification is at best haphazard.

EOL

I have met with Miss I last Wednesday, and, since then, no sign of obsession to report.
Well, I was tired and didn't make much effort, but still, it is nice to know that I can still psych myself ;-)

Short story long

or why not to date on the job...

Yesterday, I talked about how "getting involved with a colleague" was "bad for business and for her". Let's go back to that.

First, let me state that I do not date on the job. Not usually. It is already hard enough to get things rolling the right way without involving personal feelings in the first place, so better stay professional and keep it at that. But, sometimes, just being professional may lead to mutual attraction. This is what happened with Miss J.

Summer of 2008. The days are grey, and it is raining cats and dogs, interspersed by a few bouts of mean sunlight and 90°. The air conditioned office is nice and cosy. And we are busy putting the finishing touches to a challenging project while everyone else is away.
In other words: it was a very positive time of accomplishment, expected success and hard pressure. Dealing with the unexpected, changing requirements, miscommunication and missing resources was hard, but we were seeing the end of it. We were making it happen. We were doing something together, building something that mattered. We couldn't but see each other inputs, qualities, shortcomings, had to rely upon each other. Stress may break people. For us, it just gave us the opportunity to be more than good, to build a sense of common achievement. Sometimes, you do not need more to become real close to someone. I had already experienced this kind of situation, albeit in a wholly different context. And I fell flat on my nose. I should have known better.
A few dates later, it became quite evident that there was something growing. And, when I came to my senses, that I didn't wanted it. There were good and bad reasons for it. Ten years is a big gap. We didn't speak the same languages fluently, except for engineered ones. Lifestyle differences. Cultural differences. We were working daily together and I didn't wanted to bring work at home, or the other way around. And I just couldn't picture myself living through this situation. Dealing with the colleagues. The hierarchy. Then the fallout. The inevitable part where I was to be the bad guy.
But I didn't told her that.
I told her that our relationship was against policy.
Which was true. But not true enough.
By the next week she had a solution: temporary personnel reassignment. She was enthusiastic about it, the job was more to her liking and it had it all: good compensation, learning and career opportunities. To me, it just meant that I wouldn't have to see her much, and not at all during the cross training period. So I played along, and took some space. Grew distant. She kind of went along with that for a while. But when the dream job turned out to be far less interesting than she expected and became quite horrendous, she turned out to me for support. Which I provided her with.
Around the same time, I had a chance encounter with Miss I. She was parking her car. I was bringing back some DVDs. We shouldn't have met: I am never around this part of town at that time, but I was driving a colleague back home, so this day I left the office earlier than I usually do to avoid the traffic jams. We had always been friendly to each other. I liked her, we had common friends, a bit of an history, I didn't knew her much, but she was "safe". So we scheduled a date.
The next time I saw Miss J, I told her I was seeing someone else.

What follows is in here, somewhere ;-)

In the end, what have I got? Miss J is back to her old job and is turning into being a psycho bitch from hell whenever I am concerned, how sweet of you to remember the anniversary darling ; and I have managed to make me lose Miss I, the one and only "true" woman I know.
Tell me about killing two birds with one stone...

Miss J wanted to get close to me, got burnt twice and is back with a vengeance. Just because I couldn't tell her "Thank you, but it stops right here and right now because I do not love you, I just like working with you.", just because there was an easy way out: "There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.". Ad now, my dear boy, I am paying the price...

I wanted to get close to Miss I for the wrong reason. Then I learned to know her, grew fond of her. But I was thinking that she was just a pretext, a convenient excuse. Then she became a problem. Because I had taken a very wrong start. When I finally realised who she is, that I loved her, it was too late for me to regain my footing, make things right. I had the reason, I had the motivation. But I had lost the tempo. So I tried to go on with what we had, but I never really gave us a chance to build something: I started too late, was hesitant when I shouldn't have been, because at the time I thought it was at best an act, at worst a lie. And I got burnt. Or, more exactly, I have managed to burn myself.

Now, for the conclusion, well, I don't know. I am not finished with Miss I, because I do not want to. I do not want to get hurt again, so, as I said yesterday, I have a few issues of my own to address and I'll see how things will turn out. Unfortunately, Miss J is not finished with me. I'll have to live with this situation a few more months. And I do not know where Miss I stands. But I can guess. And this one I'll have to live with far much longer.

A good case of "Do as I say, don't do as I do" ;-)

Magic

The long and dreaded Pickle post. It seems that I absolutely have to write something like this each year. Well, there is no escape, so let's do it.

By the end of last year I was quite decided to put a stop to the Pickle affair. I was, and still am, convinced that she is a nice person, that her qualities far outweigh her few defects and that she is as close as one can get to my ideal woman. However, things were going nowhere I wanted them to, I was frustrated and somewhat in pain. I was feeling that I have had enough, that however nice she is our relationship was essentially detrimental to me, mainly because of my own shortcomings. So the plan was to just shut her off and go where the grass is greener. I asked for advice, even got some I was not asking for, saw other people and just tried to get over. Do I really need to mention that my endeavour was met with less than resounding success?

Then there was the new year eve. I have a standing invitation with Mr. G., and her wife, the dreadful Mrs. G., has got in the obdurate mind of her that the HR Gal and me are a perfect match. Nobody wants to cross Mrs. G. She is a red haired smiling petite Manx barely five feet tall who is usually very sociable, agreeable and polished, and who can also harbour long lasting grudges that she occasionally frees in a flurry of heavily accented Gaelic and/or acerbic and unwarranted comments. The and/or part comes from the fact that it is quite difficult to say what she means when she curses, but, from the sound of it, it must be bad.
So the HR Gal and me played her game, the HR Gal because Mrs. G is her boss's wife, and me out of abject fear. It was not so bad: the HR Gal is a great flirt, and had a few titbits of sound advice. It wasn't really the kind of chat I had in mind, but she broached he subject by going back to our last talk, so I went on with it. Most of her advice may be summed up by "Why would some things be different? Nothing is fully innate. When you know that your understanding is lacking, you learn. The 'For Dummies' series is a good starting point.". I even got a few professional references from her own library . The pro had spoken. This coincided quite well with the Kindle for iPhone becoming available, so now I am reading "Intimacy for complete idiots". I figured that it should be fitting, and it actually is :-)

Since then, the Pickle and I have met twice. And I am still convinced that she actually is a lot of what I allow myself to see. Am I deceiving myself? Possibly: I am hardly objective when she is concerned, but I am not that blind to myself so self deception is very partial. Do I need to stay in a relationship that, from my own admitting, is painful? Certainly not. So three points need to be addressed.
The first part is working on my own shortcomings when I build a relationship. I have never realized how truly I have been blessed in the past when I dated long lasting friends. A lot of things went unsaid because there was never really a need to say them: we knew each other so well already. And when I dated someone new, well, we all knew, or possibly I knew and/or was intent, from the start that it was not to be an everlasting affair. No wonder I am on such good terms with my exes: either I never gave them something to hurt me, either we do not have to. Failure as its own reward, what a nice person I am. Mr G. once told me that my foremost quality is fortitude. The Archi told me it was resilience. Great in the field, however, translated into woman speak, it must mean something like stubborn and opinionated. Not that I do not like it or wish to be any different, being me is still a lot of fun, just that I probably should consider being a trifle more empathic and open ;-)
The second part is about bringing some objectivity. Why the Pickle? Why now? So let's do some magic, label magic. "Change the brand, change the good." The Pickle is dead, long live Miss I. Miss I is not an issue, she is a person. I know what I want with perfect clarity. It is true that it wasn't so when we first started to date. Long story short: I was getting involved with a colleague and didn't wanted it to go any further because it was bad for business and for her. "bad for business and for her"(sic)... This one just shows the depth of my feelings... Anyway, Miss I was never an issue. I had one. I had to make a choice, and I made it. But I never acknowledged my own conviction and I kept seeing our relationship as an alternative, not a firm decision.
The third part is about the relationship itself. Staying in it as it currently is is clearly not an option. And seeing it as it is, namely a failure, would be an improvement. The failure is not complete, but what I have is not what I want. It is not an abject failure, but a failure nonetheless. And it is a failure because I am allowing myself to see it that way. A lot of things would be easier if I had lesser expectations. So let's cut back on that.

Looking back on the last year, I see that we haven't changed a lot, even though our particular circumstances have. We have a lot of different worries now, and, all in all, more complex lives than a year ago, because we are facing different challenges. From my point of view, I am getting richer by being confronted to them as well as by observing how she is coping. I think that we may bring a lot to each other, but not necessarily what I initially envisioned.

Now, armed with my new found wisdom, I should be able to take things as they come.
Do I need her? Well, objectively, no. I do not need her like I do not need andouillette or cigars: I can live without and I know that it is bad for my heart, but it is so good ;-)

2010

New Year resolutions, two weeks late, better late then never ;-)

I had a list of all things I wanted to accomplish this year. I had topics, schedules, milestones, control actions, corrective and emergency plans, resources allocations, scope, dependencies and priorities. A sterling job. Then I realised that it as mostly contingent on circumstances, other people decisions, or, worst of all, decisions that I was not committed to. All the hallmarks of civilian management at its best. I do not want to plan my life like a corporate project: we all know how badly they usually go.
So let's get back to basics.

1. Maintain a comfortable and clean living place for daily use. It means no more living in an office, no more escape to sanity by the sea, and use ashtrays instead of empty Coke cans.
2. No more Coke.
   
3. No more smoking at the office.

These should do ;-)

Rise and shine

Flu time.

I have been down with the flu for the last eight days. Now I am a coughing mucus machine. Quite an improvement from my previous status of febrile pus Niagara ;-)

Anyway, I haven't done a single thing in a week. I was too tired to read or talk. My social interactions have been limited to the Pickle, whom I have met for lunch once, more on that in a later post, and the local convenience store cashier to get my daily three litres of water and a family pack of tissues.

As I took some Sinutab, I have been living cat days: sixteen hours of daily sleep, interspersed by bouts of confused action. My sleep pattern is utterly screwed now.

So, what have I been doing, beside sleeping? Mostly using tissues. Then I listened to some Rameau. It would have been a nice time to start on the latest Iain Banks but my concentration was shot. Speaking of Scotland, I do not have spirits at home but I do have a few gift bottles, already wrapped. I had to make myself a grog before starting on Sinutab, and opened a gift pack. It was my favourite: Ardbeg. I decided not to make a grog with it and just have a glass. My nose was so ruined that I didn't even smell it.

I also tried to play "Empire Total War". It was a gift I received a year or so ago and never installed. I do not have a dedicated gaming machine, and my computers running Windows are all somewhat out of date. I gave it a try on a two years old laptop, the setup went well and it runs adequately with some graphical options turned down, which is fine by me.
I am a long time Civ games fan and I really like the TW series. The TW designers usually do a great job to incorporate age specific challenges in a well designed game mechanic.
Rome was great, and Medieval a big disappointment, mainly because they completely screwed the crusades. Anyway, I haven't been that far in the game, but here are a few things I have learned:
- keep at least one year of trade revenue at hand: it will help you go through a blockade;
- try to keep your army expenditure below your taxation revenues;
- make friends;
- keep at least two fleets: blockade busters and blockaders;
- money is the name of the game: always build;
- once you start on building, always build to the max;
- during a war with a major nation, first interdict enemy trading ports, then its military ones. Use your ground troop to either smash its if it is weak, or use cheap ones to devastate its towns, starting with the happiness enhancing ones, force it to spread, use your rakes to bomb its happiness enhancing building. Once it can no longer afford to rebuild them, push it into bankruptcy by devastating its economical base. Of course, you should really try to make peace before that, because there is no turning back once at this point and your enmity reaches epic levels...