There's no real way to describe today other than as bleh.

I don't really know why. It wasn't really a surprise. I knew this was coming because it began yesterday. A good deal of the time I just plain look forward to work. There's always something interesting going on and I really enjoy the discussions ranging across the team. On the other end of the scale are the days I just plain don't want to go to work. Those are so rare I can count instances on two fingers. And then somewhere in the middle are days like today. Actually, they'd only be in the middle if this was a logarithmic scale. Even days like today are pretty rare.

Rare enough so that I don't really know how best to deal with them.

I suspect it's a combination of things. I've just finished my performance reviews for the team. At 2-3 hours per review, about 5 or 6 hours of preparation time before hand, and with a team of 11 people, you do the math. I've been doing three a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) for about a month now and it's been pretty draining. But it's driven the weeks forward with a purpose. So with them now out of the way the most obvious "purpose" is now suddenly absent. So I guess it's a bit like having the rug pulled out from under you.

I don't think that's a principle reason, but it's probably not helping.

Another contributor is probably the 5 project. We're into our beta cycle now and are preparing to take a build to the first customer (on the iSeries, eish) in about a week's time. So we're in the eye of the hurricane at the moment, which is a bit disconcerting in and of itself.

But again, I don't think that's at the heart of it, just another contributor.

I don't really know what the central reason for this general malaise. I have a bunch of candidates but nothing I can put my finger on.

Maybe it's just the culmination of a week that saw one too many instances of people looking after their own "turf" with little or no consideration for anyone else, including what's best for the customer. Half a dozen more examples of people being unreasonable and unrelenting.

I really believe in doing things right. If that means fixing something I've broken then so be it. But all too often I encounter the "it's not my problem" attitude, even if it is your problem. Pass the buck is a poor way to solve a problem. It works on a local scale, but if you pull your head out of your ass and take a real look around you'll soon realise that you're just one of the banana-peelers in the forest canopy.

Then again, maybe this is all just hormonal.

I hate ...

1. People who don't indicate, or who indicate as they begin to turn (what's the point?). Am I supposed to read your bloody mind?
2. People who overtake in the face of oncoming traffic (i.e. me) apparently under the belief that the laws of Physics are repealed for the duration of the maneuver so as to facilitate their passing directly through me unharmed. I must mount the curb for you? I think not.
3. People who sit behind you and get upset (indicated by anything from flashing their lights to hooting at you) because you're not prepared to break the law (by speeding, or running a red light) to suit their needs.

God doesn't hate me. Or he's toying with me. Either are possible, I'm not going to hazard a guess as to which is more likely to be true.

Mandy and I took a run out to Stellenbosch and then on to Franschoek for lunch today. She runs beautifully, and the low end power delivery makes me giddy with delight. Pulling away from standstill is gloriously satisfying. It has to be heard to be believed. And she stands up to a cross wind quite a lot better than the F4 did.

Please, please, please can we have sunshine tomorrow? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

Thanks Mr Horner. Much obliged :-)

Huh. Who would have thunk it? 82 completed downloads of Newt since the full version became available (find it here).

I'm continually amazed at the constant (and varied) traffic it receives with absolutely no advertising. I really am doing nothing (beyond the meager mentions here) to improve its visibility.

Newt represents everything I love about writing software. It was a fun idea that turned into a fun few years worth of tinkering. It made my life easier and more interesting, and it did the same (as far as I can tell) for friends and strangers alike. And it continues to do that (hopefully) for each new first year class at UCT. And it gave me a chance to improve my understanding of something (calculus in this case).

Given unlimited free time, unlimited funding (a man's gotta eat) Newt is the kind of thing I would probably end up spending my time playing around with.

Picking up Nandos this evening I was astounded to watch a man get upset with the woman serving him behind the counter because they couldn't give him his order.

Why not? Because he'd placed the order over the phone at another outlet.

I give up. How do you argue with that? "I'm sorry sir, but you appear to be a drooling idiot."

Well, I just handed yet another tremendously large cheque over and I'm now committed.

I have to admit I had butterflies right up until I handed over the cheque. But afterwards I was excited enough to sing all the way home to bad music on a crap radio station.

I suspect the nerves were a side effect of desperately not wanting to throw away so much cash again. And the easiest way to avoid that is to just walk away. Skip the whole bike thing.

And I was definitely tempted. I kept asking myself if this was really worth that kind of risk (yeah, yeah, personal risk and all that too, but I try not to dwell on it), and if I really wanted to do this. If anything, I'm more convinced now than ever that this was the right thing to do.

So tomorrow, once the cheque has cleared, I'll pick her up and with a little luck, the weather will play ball and Mandy and I will take her out for a run.

My boss bounded into my office this afternoon overflowing with his usual exuberant cheerfulness.

He's a walking well of it. Mornings are filled with his loud, sing-song greetings. He takes delight in the round of groans he generates (certainly from me, being anything but a morning person).

It struck me this afternoon that he's a walking human incarnation of a labrador. I could swear that if a large body of water existing on the premises we'd find him doing laps at lunch time. He'd probably shake himself off in my office too.

Every year it strikes me how different the world looks in Winter. There's something different about the light, even on a perfectly clear day.

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the Sun is marginally further away from that point of the Earth during Winter. But that kind of spoils the magic, so pretend I said nothing.

It just looks colder outside.

The older I get the less I believe that adults exist.

I keep waiting for some internal switch to trip and, boing, enlightenment. Or something along those lines.

B-day approaches. Tomorrow holds the first gap I've really had this week to get to the bank to draw a small King's ransom and hand it over. Then tomorrow evening, I pick her up.

And right on time, a cold front moves in. Today was gorgeous. Tomorrow will probably be good too. But I guaran-fucking-tee it that come Saturday, the Universal being in control of all creation will stand up and empty his bladder all over my weekend.

In vaguely related news, I watched a biker get cut off by a blind (no white stick but I presume blind based on the way they were driving) motorist this morning. As I passed the side street down which both had turned I watched him overtake and give the driver a dressing down. DB1 suggested that an advantage to being on a bike is people can see your gestures more clearly. This is true, until the road swerves away and you neglect to follow because you're "gesturing". Needless to say, gesturing at anything over 20 km an hour should be restricted to Moto GP on your X-box.

Pretty random collection this evening. First, a pretty good paper discussing manifestations associated with the fact that Java is dynamically linked. A good read, especially if you ever plan to go anywhere near class loaders, or even just want a better understanding of Java.

Pretty frantic day, and the best is yet to come. Tomorrow is a solid wall of meetings of one sort or another from 9am through to 4:30pm. Not really my favourite way of spending a day. Especially not beta day.

Earlier this evening I watched confounded as a woman at the nearby Woolworths basically told off a parking attendent who tried to help her unpack her laden trolley into her car. Her argument was that he should have helped her from the door of the shop and that it was too late (implying he was only after the money; I know these particularly guys and they're actually generally pretty good about just helping for the sake of it). What I really don't understand is what she expected? Someone to push her trolley for her? The hard part, you abominable waste of genetic material, is unloading the contents of your trolley. People like that fuck me off.

Arrangements have been made for the 'transaction', but now it looks like it's set to piss down this weekend. Can't say I didn't see that coming.

Earlier today I committed to the purchase of the VFR800.

A few minutes ago I cracked the old champagne glass against the metaphorical ship that sails by transferring an immense sum of money out of our bond (eish) and into my cheque account. Tomorrow the bank turns that into a pitifully small piece of paper which I will duly hand over to the current owner in exchange for a new Machine Of Death^TM.

Maybe I'm not the target market. Maybe I fall between two groups of people: those who are satisfied by three and a half crisps, and those who have an incredible tolerance for MSG-laden wafers of potatoesque delight.

The small bags are a waste of my time. If I inhale too deeply after opening the packet there's a reasonable chance of emptying it.

The large bags are too much. Half way through I'm either on the road to Chinese Restaurant Syndrome or, if they're perkily advertised as MSG free, deep in the throes of the placebo effect.

The only crowd who've got this right are the makers of Diddle Daddle, the best caramelized popcorn in the world (yes, I've tried every caramelized popcorn produced by the human race).

I stumbled across cozahosting.com a few days ago. To be honest, I'm still not sure how I feel about this. The domain name system has been abused for so long that I've pretty much given up on the ordered, hierarchical utopia that it was meant to be.

Witness. We have top level country domains (za, uk, au, even us) but nobody within the US uses .co.us. The rest of the world has by and large remained consistent. We use .co.ir, .co.uk, .co.za, even .co.jp pretty consistently. But throw in the Ozzies and suddenly you have .com.au. Huh? What gives?

Then the Brits decided that .co.uk wasn't enough and they wanted .plc.uk and .ltd.uk. This is fine and actually still fits nicely into the hierarchical structure. But then they go and throw in .gb.net, which screws the picture up a bit.

We don't help of course, throwing in za.net and za.org.

The end result is a hodge-podge of domains with a vague, hand-wavy attempt at geographic or functional associations which can't really be trusted for that information.

And don't even get me started on .biz, .bz (which strikes me as a duplicate), .ws, .info, .cc, .name (not sure if this one is official yet) and any number of other stupid suggestions and the whole domain name concept becomes almost worthless. As it is, I no longer bother to remember the domain name for most sites I visit. I trust Google to find it for me.

So what's the point?

Mandy and I took a stroll around to look at the VFR800 I mentioned in an earlier post.

Thus far I have resisted the temptation to post photographs to avoid tempting the hand of Fate. Now I'm not sure if should post photos because, to be honest, they just don't do the bike justice. It's in immaculate condition. Absolutely incredible with 25,000km on the clock. A truly superb piece of machinery.

So a purchase looks to be almost guaranteed in the coming week, and with the one who has dominion over my life visiting family up country, Mandy and I look set for a weekend of riding. If the weather plays ball.

Standard Bank is one of the big four in South Africa. Their current ad campaign is pushing the slogan "Simpler. Better. Faster".

So why does it cost more than twice as much as Absa and take half an hour to get a bank guaranteed cheque out of them when Absa can do it in 5 minutes? And some asshole is prancing around in a spiffy suit trying to make us feel better about it? Fire him and pay the asshole who has to sign the cheque in the back a little bit more. Why do South African companies think having someone continually reassuring you that things are ticking along is an acceptable substitute for them actually doing so?

On a completely unrelated note, while waiting for the Earth to complete its current revolution at Serviceless Bank, I noticed that Sky News were running a story on the
Michael Jackson trial. I was interested to see they had footage from inside the court room, which struck me as odd because I thought the media had been barred from the court room. It turned out, upon closer inspection, to be a "reconstruction". What they hell? Do these people seriously not have enough to do that they're paying actors to replay events from inside the court room?

And do they seriously believe that they can recapture the nuances of the goings on inside there? If anything they're basically colouring the whole proceeding, unintentionally I hope, as the chosen actors elect to portray a particular statement in their own way.

Sometimes I despair that the human race is long since over and we're just the stragglers coming in after the cutoff mark.

I'm extremely disappointed with the assistance I've received from National Bank Australia. I queried their Internet Banking helpdesk with a few items and it took almost 2 weeks to get back to me.

The last response was the best of the lot. I was trying to set up a payee to make a transfer and the account number input field length is limited and as a result will not accept the account number I wanted to enter (it was one digit short).

Their response was instructions on increasing the font size of my browser.

Netbeans 4.1 has been released. I know more by accident than anything else, I don't really use or follow Netbeans. There's been a tremendous amount of hot air emanating from that part of the community.

Took a quick look at a presentation introducing some of the new features. They're punting their new "navigator" because it "helps in getting around code" and "understanding new APIs".

I don't see what the big deal is. They're basically presenting your packages and classes in a tree view that has become the de facto standard for Java IDEs. It's a basic prerequisite for any half-decent Java IDE these days.

I think the Netbeans guys know they're struggling to catch up with Eclipse and IDEA but are trying to blow smoke up the community's ass while they scramble to find their niche.

Looking on the brighter side of life, my insurance brokers have come back with a pretty reasonably quote for comprehensive insurance on the VFR. Mandy and I will go for a closer look this weekend and if all goes well I may well be able to join Mandy on a trip out next weekend.

Pete dropped his beautiful VTR1000 SP2 over the weekend. To paraphrase Mandy, at least he did it on a track day, and can still hold his head high (as opposed to being side-swiped by an inattentive motorist doing nearly zero km/h).

A moment of silence if you would.

Dragged my sorry ass home early today with a small pile-driver going at it behind my left eye. This week has truly been a week to top all weeks.

It seems the power outage earlier in the week fried my DVD player. Add that to tearing the front bumper loose leaving the drive way on Saturday (just after having had it repaired), the day I had yesterday (don't even ask; just thinking about not going into it makes me tense) and you get an idea of why the last thing I needed was a killer headache this afternoon. Especially one not even Myprodol can make a dent in.

Terribly exciting evening. A brief flickering of the lights followed by ... no light whatsoever.

But our neighbours had lights? It turns out the tree over the road had taken out one of the power cables which was lying in the road live (and unplugged).

Pretty prompt service from the electricity department. They were here in about half an hour and sorted it out in just a few minutes. Looked to be a lone soldier too. Kudos to whoever you were. It was blustery, wet and cold out this evening.

Our extremely friendly neighbours (who we've never quite managed to get around to actually visiting in the nearly 6 months we've been here) invited us round for coffee since they still had power. So we chatted for a bit and invariably (this always seems to happen) I got sucked into assisting him install and configure a modem. Plug and pray and a few random clicks and reboots later and the modem was installed. Dialing up seemed fine but Outlook Depress failed with one of it's enlightening error messages (something in the 10,000 range so I presume one of the standard Windows comms messages but how this is supposed to help my grandmother I have no idea).

It was a Windows 98 box, so no real networking tools to speak of (not even something like nslookup). But ping resolved the POP3 host name without problems. Eventually I figured out that for some reason Outlook Depress thought the SMTP server and POP3 server would both be listening on the same port. Oh, and it seemed to default to port 3 for some ungodly reason.

The final hurdle was guessing (dontcha love ISPs?) that the dialup username and the mailserver username were different (and then guessing how one derives the latter from the former).

I have always hated dialup configuration. Most of the time it's a black art and with an OS like Windows 98 you really are a bit of a masochist. Hell, setting up a wireless ADSL modem is simpler than standard dialup.

I came across this in a recent issue of Crypto-Gram (well worth subscribing to even if you're not particularly interested in security).

One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. By definition, "news" means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth worrying about. When something is no longer reported -- automobile deaths, domestic violence -- when it's so common that it's not news, then you should start worrying.

Bruce Schneier

Bruce (yup, we're on a first name basis) has a way of pointing out the not-so-immediately-obvious-but-obvious-after-someone-has-pointed it-out that I find quite appealing. This particular point is not something that had occurred to me but in retrospect it's pretty obvious. South Africa is a good example of this principle. How often do hijackings make the news? And by news I mean the headlines, or the front page, or hell, even the second page.

I've started Tai Chi again. It's amazing what your
muscles remember (and your brain forgets).

I'd forgotten why I enjoyed it so much. Apart from the attention to detail required I really enjoy the need to focus entirely on something completely unrelated to anything else I do day to day.

And I really don't mind the physical exertion, which is saying something.

It turns out a VFR800 is for sale just around the corner. Well, not literally, but very near by. And from the photos it looks to be in very good condition. Full service history too.

And within budget.

I will strive not to get my hopes up.

Mandy and I spent this morning in an act that is probably the bike equivalent of surfing pr0n. We headed out to the edge of the known universe, in the vicinity of that invisible line where the Boerewors Curtain Effect^TM starts to make itself known to spend an hour or so looking at machines built with a single aim: to drag one's sorry ass across the asphalt at a blistering pace.

There were some purdy machines out on display. A moment of near-tragedy saw a young lady almost drop a ZZR into a line of rather expensive beasties. Fortunately the two male friends accompanying her caught the bike before bankruptcy was a serious threat. That would have been embarrassing (to paraphrase Mandy's understated English manner). Embarrassing indeed.

Bah.

Both have already been sold. Crap. It's the usual nonsense. Instead of just going for it I hung back and played it safe only to realise when it was too late that I was quite keen on the VFR.

Double bah.

Now I'm just depressed.

And insurance is looking to be a bit of a dog show to boot.

Triple bah.

Nipped out during lunch today to take two bikes out for a test ride, a VFR800 (the red one) and a CBR600F4 (the black one).

Oh, and incidentally, these are the first pics I've uploaded here from my new phone. Not the greatest pics but acceptable.

The F4 felt significantly more edgy than I remember mine being. It hasn't been that long but maybe I've just forgotten it? Maybe Mandy's bike has recalibrated me in some sense. This bike also has the original windshield, whereas mine had a taller custom fitted windshield, so the windshear was more of an issue at higher speeds on this one. But it certainly moves (I'd forgotten how much power it develops).

Oh, and it's the colour scheme I've always preferred on the F4. I really like the black with somewhat subtle orange-red decals.

But then I jumped on the VFR and all I can say is wow. It's a completely different ride (and sound, very throaty) to the F4. The bike's quite a bit heavier, which makes for a much more stable ride. And it's a slightly more upright seating position (it's a sports-tourer as opposed to a true sportsbike), but since my primary aim is probably to try for longer rides that's where I've always kind of been aiming.

The VFR is also a bigger engine (800cc as opposed to 600cc) and all the writeups I've seen suggest it can hold its own against the F4. And it certainly feels like it. Twist the throttle and off you go. And you're doing 160 without even realising it. It's an incredibly comfortable ride. I can't actually convey just how much easier the ride on the VFR is. You can almost (almost) disengage your brain and kind of just watch the scenery pass you by.

And it comes with tourer like addons: a clock, external thermometer, and a real fuel readout. Until you've ridden a bike extensively you have no idea how much you take knowing the time for granted. It's quite a trick rolling your kevlar lined jacket sleeve up to figure out the time without killing yourself.

Bigger tank too. Should be able to get about 350km out of a tank (as opposed to about 240km on the F4).

Slightly pricier than the F4 (the VFR is over-budget, the F4 is under-budget) but has the advantage that I won't need to get the forks resprayed (the previous owner of the F4 was a little negligent and the forks have oxidised).

Eish, the bike I loved in the colour I wanted, or the bike I should want in a few years?

A moment of embarassment earlier (fortunately unobserved). Watching a gentlement escourt his (somewhat younger) inebbriated lady-friend over to their car, I was surprised to hear a cellphone ring that I recognized.

So what does bright-spark over here think? "Hey, someone else has the same phone as me!"

A few minutes later I realised that the sound was coming from my pocket.

*eep*

The woman who abides my presence in the house I own half of pointed out recently that we both seem to require an insanely high degree of stimulation (oy, you in back, out of the gutter).

To whit: I am currently:

1. Surfing the web
2. Writing this entry
3. Playing Colonization
4. Reading a book
5. Listening to music
6. Watching pointless television

And yet, still, there is dead space and I'm trying to figure out how to fill it.

As if we didn't need proof that there's a serious contingent of nutters over there in the United States of A(ss)merica, they've thrown us yet another bone.

Argue all you want about whether or not we fell out of the trees and, being unable to figure out how to get back up into the branches, discovered fire, invented the wheel, invented (and discarded) digital watches and all the other cool things that make up "civilization". I've deliberately excluded the Internet because all it's done is prove just how uncivilized we can be.

As if the "intelligent design" nonsense in Kansas hasn't gone far enough (irrespective of your beliefs, separation of state and church is a good thing), now we have nutters arguing that English (yes, that smorgasbord of exceptio ... er rules) was divinely inspired by some "supreme Grammarian". Yup, God gave us English so that the chosen people (who so very inconveniently hadn't learned to read Hebrew) could have his word translated into their preferred language.

Performance review time.

This is a particularly difficult exercise for a number of reasons. We never give ourselves adequate space for them. I have 11 people in my team. Each review takes 2 hours (minimum) to conduct. Preparation time is of the order of 6 to 8 hours. Best case that comes in at just over 10 full working days. And it's important to spend the time. This is one area where I really believe skimping is really a false economy (that's become a bit of a catch phrase lately).

And I feel particularly anxious because the size of my team and scope of the 5.0 project alone have made it incredibly difficult to spend as much time as I would like with every member of my team. The result is a very uneven distribution of my focus (which is perfectly acceptable if you read "First Break All The Rules" but regardless I haven't spent as much time as I wanted to with some people in the team over the past year).

And then finally, reviewing someone's performance is ... Just. Plain. Hard. Not everyone can accept criticism, even if offered in the form of constructive criticism. Somtimes people don't think about it in the right way. A good metaphor is that of a weaponsmith. One of my tasks is to make sure we have the best team possible and that the potential of every member of that team is maximised. If you're hammering out a new sword then you're deliberately looking for those parts of the blade that are rough, or slightly warped, or somehow "deficient". And that's where you apply the hammer. While you may stop every now and then to look at the marvelous way a part of the blade has turned out, most of your energy is of necessity focused on the parts that are not yet as good as you think they should be, because those are the parts that may give at an inopportune moment, ultimately resulting in a dirty great piece of metal sticking out the back of your spleen.

And we don't want that, do we?

This leave thing is terribly underrated. This happens every time I take it. I discover I can fill hours with non-programming related "stuff" and I enjoy it more than I expected to.

Odd that it's so hard to make me take it.

We spent the weekend in Montagu, just off Route 62 (home of Ronnie's sex shop, I kid you not). A weekend off Route 62 basically means wine routing. Can do. I have to admit though, one of the things that irks me whenever I do anything vaguely holiday related with other people, is their constant need to "do stuff". Crap people, you're on holiday, why do you feel a need to drive from one hole-in -the-ground town to another, eating mediocre food (not always the case I admit) and being fleeced (as a tourist you're prime game)? Stop, relax, it's not imperative that you see every inch of the area you're staying in.

Apart from that, I had a good break. I got to build a few fires (ask my cousin Andrew if I enjoy setting things on fire, or better yet, ask Skippy about Springfield), get so absorbed in a book that I forget to sleep, eat pretty much throughout the day and generally stop thinking about all of the stuff that's had my processor at 100% for the past month.

After one day back I'm not feeling significantly less pressure at work, but I do feel better positioned to deal with it. I've made peace with decisions I've made and decisions I'm going to have to make. And I've reprioritized to some degree. Don't get me wrong, there hasn't been a sudden, massive shift in priorities or a sudden crystallization in my life philosophy. Nothing that significant. I just feel better about where I stand and where I may be going. Enough so that I'm not going to include anything about the complete and utter helpless incompetence that I ran into yet again today.

How do these people manage to breathe and walk upright at the same time?