Back from Geneva

I am back from Switzerland and was welcomed by Lamia with salad and a nice apple pie. Always good to be back home...

As always, the time in Geneva passed by very quickly and I didn't seem to have enough time to meet everybody I wanted to, but I still had enough opportunities to try and help putting projects on the right track (or mess then up real good).

As for entertainment, yesterday night I was kindly invited to have dinner with some colleagues (and friends of colleagues) in a place called Qu'Importe in the Carouge district. Qu'Importe is predominantly a wine bar that offers finger food type of meals with the wine.
Not bad.
I was surprised by the weird attitude of some of the people in the group, though: where I come from you say your name when you meet someone new, and don't have people pick it out of your nose... but maybe this is the age difference.

I stayed at Hostellerie de la Vendée which is apparently a 4 star and you shell out 150 to 250 Swiss Francs for a night. Mind you, this is one of the cheaper business hotels in Geneva.
This would be fine, if the place was any good.

Problem is: it's not!

The whole place is decorated in a 70s spirit, with aggressive fluorescent lights everywhere and a weird smell in the room. Don't get me wrong - it's alright to stay a night away from home, but I would expect better if I spend so much money and I would at the very least expect that there is decent breakfast.

Definitely not a recommendation... next time I need to see whether either the close-by Ibis is any better or the Ramada which Robert recommended, whom I met on the flight back to Brussels.

11 km/h (6.8 mph)

This morning I was woken up by noisy kittens.

Not by noisy kids. Kittens. That's not the same. I am just writing this, because it might be that one reader or the other might overlook this little detail. I understand it's confusing, but let me express this in a way that even a dimwit gets it:

"kids" ≠ "kittens"

Ah. Sorry. I said "dimwit".
This should be clearer:

The funny symbol - "≠" - means: "not the same as".
We summarize: "kids are not the same as kittens".

Kids are worse, of course.

Anyway.
Given that I was up early, I arrived at my company before nine for my workout. It's nice that all the watchmen know me by now and make sure that the lights are on without me having to check.
Now, a few weeks ago I cranked up the speed of the treadmill to 10.9 km/h and today I made it a full 11 km/h.

Feels pretty great, especially because I didn't feel exhausted afterwards but really revved up.

To quote my brother:"Hmmmm. Cows. Meat. ... STEAK!!!!"

While the music of my life is still often superimposed with noisy cats running up and down the stairs at night and singing their little don't-feed-me-with-the-crap-you-feed-me-with songs, a new dissonance has entered the concert hall:

The mooing of cows.

I think I have heard the mooing since 5:21 am, when I woke up to concerning noises from below and found Mokka and Muffin taking Lamia's puzzle work apart. Upset as I was, I had trouble to fall asleep and heard the cattle crooning to the rising sun.

Turns out they also crooned when the sun was high up in the sky, when it was coming down again and when it had disappeared (read: now).

Well, at least they are not running up and down the stairs.

Over the top

This week I found a note for a registered letter in my mailbox.

Hum. A registered letter?
This is rarely good. This must be about taxation, I reckoned.

I was thus a bit surprised to see the consigner after picking it up: K+K Hotels had sent this registered letter to thank me for my recent stay at K+K Elisabeta in Bucharest and to tell me that they appreciated me "completing the questionnaire".

This is something I regularly do when I stay in a decent hotel. Actually mostly to complain about missing Wifi coverage or - when there is an extra charge for it - that the cost to get access is ridiculous.

Well, in this case my ideas and opinions were said to be "invaluable to us" and "enable us to provide a better and more personal service".

Sure - very welcome.

But why do you have to send this simple note as registered letter?

Steve Ballmer's past

Interviews from this year's All Things D Conference are live for a while now and I only went there a few weeks ago to watch Steve Jobs, really.

With Belgian National Holiday upon me today, I had some free time that I had blown with sleeping til 10:30 in the morning (with the typical cat interruptions), running, doing the laundry, ironing some clothes which were piling up now for quite some days while watching The Fellowship of the Ring and then vacuuming the groundfloor.

Then I surfed to All Things D, because there were still some interviews and demos which sounded interesting.

Most of them are not:
Mark Zuckerberg gave the impression of being close to a nervous breakdown.
Microsoft's Natal demo was interesting in principle, but the presentation (and the presenter) was rather confusing.
This was only undermatched by Dell's abysmal introduction of their Streak Mini-Tablet, which they do not even know themselves how to categorize and which is too big to make a phone call and too small to be positioned as iPad competitor. Good luck...

The other interview I was interested in was with Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie. I had read a Wired article about Ozzie's role in cloud computing which had been very interesting and I had not seen Ballmer live for a long time.
One minute into the interview I realized why: Ballmer cannot help to avoid coming across as big baboon who is over-estimating his importance on the tree he's sitting on. He's not as arrogant as Steve Jobs, but as oafish as the redneck at your favourite watering hole. It's just painful to listen to this guy talking longer than 5 minutes.

And I am thinking this, click away the annoying video, when I stumble about the following in Ballmer's bio:

After Harvard, he worked for two years at Procter & Gamble, as an assistant product manager, after which he attended the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Oh-my-god!

Well, he left after two years, but come to think of it, I have indeed seen people like him before...

I came back home, grabbed the luggage, dragged it upstairs and was not sure what the cats would have prepared for me...

Some digging in the flower pot on the kitchen window sill.
And a bit pushing around puzzle pieces.



My worries were unfounded...

Junkie

3 months ago my family doctor prescribed Biocondil, a drug to help building cartilage in the body (I think). Since then I swallowed every morning two tablets the size of longhorn beetles.



Taking tablets gives me the impression I am sick, even though these here were arguably just some vitamins. So I am quite happy that today I finally took the last two.

I don't have the impression they helped anything, by the way. I did not even get high.
At least that is what expect when I pay 53 Euro for the box.

Drugs are overrated!

Sloppy journalism

You can think about the trouble with the iPhone 4 reception what you want:

You can ask how come that the claimed collection of Phd brainpower at Apple did not anticipate the "death grip" issue when they designed an antenna on the outside of the phone's body in the first place.

You could point out that the stated 0.55% of users actually reporting this as an issue is only a recorded amount, while the dark figure is likely higher. And you can ponder whether customers will be satisfied to use the free bumper case, knowing that there is potentially an inherent technical flaw which is not really fixed.

You can get upset about Apple playing Jonathan Mann's The iPhone Antenna Song at the beginning of the conference, suggesting that they don't take this serious enough.

And you can even poke fun of a line as cheesy as "We love our users".

Since this afternoon, however, I do not think anymore that Steve's repeated complaint during the press conference that the media does not report the facts on the issue is a bit pathetic.

Just today I listened to a report on radio SWR 3 about this press conference (which I watched yesterday night) and there is a significant mistake:

"Steve Jobs hatte eine einfache Antwort auf das Problem:
'Wir sind nicht perfekt und unsere Handys sind es eben auch nicht.'"

The original quote, which can be heard in the same report, goes like this:

"We're not perfect. We know that. You know that.
And, eh... phones are not perfect."

In this circumstance it is a big difference whether the quote is that all of Apple's phones are not perfect (so live with it) or whether phones in general are not perfect (which was actually the point that was made).
Granted: a quick listener could mistaken the "eh" for an "our", but if you are halfway fluent in English - and this is what a journalist should be if he or she translates a quote -, such a slip just can not happen.

SWR 3 didn't make the mistake on their website (or they've corrected it), but even there they do not provide the simple numbers (actual complaints and return rate) Apple shared in the press conference to allow an informed discussion on the severity of the outage.

Quite a poor performance for one of the biggest radio stations in the country and it makes you wonder how many mistakes are in the reports you hear every day and you (or people in the know) simply miss them...

Cropping the head

Photo: Mom

The Scratch-Pee-Puke triangle

As a matter of course, the cats woke me up this morning at 5:21.

This is not a big deal: I wake up. I look at the clock. I curse. I hear little paws speeding up and down the stairs. I throw some socks. And then I sleep a bit longer.

Obviously I'd rather sleep a bit longer without the interruption, but fine.

Now, with Lamia gone I am the sole caretaker of the cats, which comes with certain responsibilities. These include but are not limited to...

... talk to them in a cute voice.
... brush their fur.
... wipe away the puke when Mokka once more ate too much of the fish food.

And then there is genuine worry, too.

It is a funny worry which is a mix between welfare of the kittens ("... will they be okay with me being in Germany over the weekend?") and what these critters are going to do to your house while you're not there (I call this the Scratch-Pee-Puke triangle).

Consequently, before taking off to Germany I checked twice on the cats today.

The first time when I brought over the cleaning lady from the station. I came upstairs with her because I had seen Mokka nearly throwing up earlier and I was expecting the worst.

But I could not find Mokka. Which seriously worried me.
After several minutes and three times running up and down the house, we eventually found her in a nice hiding space: behind the sofa in the study, equipped with a blanket she nicked from somewhere. No puke anywhere, by the way (phew!).

Then I checked again on the cats before I took off to Germany in the afternoon.
Again everything okay, but I have to say the sleepy "What are you doing here already?" faces, combined with a yawn as big as the mouth of a velociraptor pissed me off a bit.

Again no puke, though.
Life is good.

Still am worried what I will find on Sunday evening...

Jackpot!!!

A week ago I was sitting at Ständige Vertretung des Landes Baden-Württemberg in Brüssel watching Spain creaming Germany.

And of course I was a little sad and disappointed that our team did not make the final. But the moment the referee blew the whistle I was wondering whether this meant I would win the office jackpot.

Before the Worldcup, Francisco had organized a bet on who would be the new World Champion (which included a bet on all matches and the resulting last 16, quarters, semis and the finale). Aga was in, Ben was, Christian, Ian and some others. Even Chris, our Director!

It was also Chris who had upped the ante to a 20 Euro wager each (he's British - what do you expect?).

I was guessing wildly, used the ESPN Soccer Power Index for my match results and made some layman assumptions on who would likely make the finale.
I remembered Volker explaining years and years ago, that in the past often the acting European Champion also made World Champion.

I have no idea whether this is actually true - but this is why I bet on Spain.

My actual prediction for the finale was Spain playing England. But only Ben had also bet on Spain, and he had fewer of the semi and quarter finals right than me. Which very surprisingly made my guesses closest to the real thing.

This is why I secretly hoped that the Netherlands would loose on Sunday (despite family bonds).

And - yes! - they did!

Today Francisco officially confirmed that I had won, indeed.
And then he paid out the jackpot:



Awesome!
Nine colleagues played and the agreement was the winner would get half of the pot plus a football with the signatures of everybody. The rest of the money is supposed to be blown for drinks and stuff...

90 Euro - a 350% gain in 4 weeks.
That's not bad...

Spain vs Netherlands - 1:0

Photo: Sportschau.de

Cheese supply

Lamia's mom dropped by today for one night and to watch with us Spain playing the Netherlands. While she is half Dutch and thus cheered for the Netherlands, I secretly hoped that Spain would make it, given that I had money riding on the Iberians.

In the end I was delighted for many reasons, but one of the main reasons were the three chunks of cheese Felicia had specifically brought for me from Brittany.

Lamia: I cannot believe it: she brings
you a lot of cheese and I don't get anything?

Fantastique!
Merci beaucoup!

(... and yes, Lamia got something nice too: original crêpes from Brittany)

Germany vs Uruguay - 3:2

Photo: Sportschau.de

BBQ, rain, football and my shaky feet

It had to be this way: the whole week was brilliant weather, but when Lamia and I arrived at Aurelie and Romain's place where the logs were already nicely stacked in the BBQ bowl, dark clouds already announced what was about to happen.

We lit the BBQ anyway and the dry wood burned like a massive bonfire that was spitting big, fiery columns to the left and right. It was as if the wind was playfully caressing the fire like a man lovingly caresses his dog.

Before we had any meat, Romain offered me a fantastic Vodka Martini as an aperitif. Then there was also white and red wine. Sure thing, I was feeling tipsy 30 minutes after I had set foot into the house.

When the first rain drops fell we escaped inside and enjoyed very nice steak, chicken drumsticks and salad. As a dessert they wrapped peaches into aluminium foil, I think with a pinch of sugar, and served these with vanilla ice cream. What a treat!

All the while we could watch Germany play Uruguay.

After dinner, and after two likewise excellent coffees, my metabolism had finally wrestled down the alcohol and I was on sure footing again.

Romain and Aurelie showed us photos of their impressive Mont Blanc climb and then we called it a night.
Always nice to meet up with them.