Tania.co.za

Ja nee

(Wat skryf 'n mens nou eintlik in so 'n opskrif? Hierdie is tog 'n soort dagboek, en toe ek 14 was, het my dagboek nie opskrifte gehad nie.)

Sjoe, ek is moeg. Ek het gister weer 'n intensiewe blitskursus in Projekbestuur aangebied. Ek het besluit om nie gisteraand se kooroefening by te woon nie — ek was bang ek ooreis my stem weer. (Ek het aan die begin van Junie my stem in die Noordkaap verloor en die skade is nog herstel nie. Ek is veronderstel om 'n tweede sopraan te wees, maar kan nie meer al die note bykom nie.) Ek moet sê, dit het my nogal gehelp om dié keer die kursusbeplanning in Microsoft Project te doen. Ek het onder andere 'n spesiale kolom geskep vir "deliverables", wat beteken het dat ek die vorige nag leker kon slaap met die wete dat ek niks vergeet het nie.

Vanaand se partytjie is die laaste amptelike wegbreekgeleentheid voordat ek myself in 'n paar strawwe weke inploeg. Ek bied aanstaande week weer 'n kursus aan, en die week daarop, en dalk nog ook in die daaropvolgende week.

My woonstel is nou ook heeltemal deurmekaar, want ek het nie tyd gehad om my wasgoed weg te pak nie, en van toe af het die orde uitgerafel. En ek is ook te steeks om te vra om hulp ("I can do this myself, I can be domesticated like a proper grown up woman!"); ek gaan net moet tyd maak voor die naweek om dit weer reg te ruk. Ek sal darem vir die plaaslike engel vra om te kom my te kom geselskap hou terwyl ek dit doen (die engel wat pizza bring en koffie drink). Die eintlike ongerief lê in die feit dat my kredietkaart daar iewers wegkruip. Dis onwaarskynlik dat hy gesteel is (daar is geen aktiwiteit op die kaart nie); maar ek leen op die oomblik honderdrandnote, en ek voel baie ingeperk deur die gebrek aan plastiekkontant!

Flee feer to ed it my bog etnry

I recently saw this personal description at a dating Web site: "I am a man of charactor. I life by strong moral values and enjoy life and the challenge that it brings me. im a leader and always seek the purpose God created me for. Im humble and have alot of self convidence." (Sic.) He also described himself as "very attractive", and included a picture which proved the latter claim to be false; which also makes me wonder how humble he really is, and which, by inference, creates doubt about everything else which he said in his profile (except for the "self convidence")... But I digress. Inter alia, he mentioned that he had a post-graduate degree. Surely, then, he would at some time have had his writing edited by someone who knows how to spell (or how to use a word processor's spelling correction facility, for that matter). Why not invite nice ladies with spelling skills to edit his profile? This would be a perfect opportunity to prove the humility which he so "self convidently" asserts. After all, people who suffer from dyslexia and other learning difficulties need "self convident" representatives to create awareness of the challenges they face. I have three close family members and two colleagues who spell badly, and they all make a good deal of effort to have their public writing edited, and to improve their writing skills. But too many people just don't have enough respect for their readers to bother with improvement.

How bad does speillng hvae to get bfoere poeple sotp undretsadning cmopeltely? Pettry b ad, it smees, aoriccdng t o a Cbmridge U vinersity sutdy; bu t taht asume's taht y ou hav kompitunt rdeaers i n th e fsirt palce, w ho hav e arleaedy matsrered t he art of uncsramlbing t he mddile of t he wrod at a gnlace &switcihng 2 finettick reckognicion fr om tyme2tyme whyle ingoring shoddey pnuctuaton&grammer and sin tax. So the next question is: To how much bad spelling must a kid (or an adult) be exposed before his rate of learning to read becomes significantly impaired? There's already a furore in the education world around tween text slang — gr8, oic, ppl, etc. — teachers say it's messing up kids' ability to spell "properly". I'm not really in a position to make an informed comment, so my knee-jerk reaction is one of agreement. But let's try to be open-minded now: Isn't it just a matter of language evolving? Perhaps business letters twenty years from now will be stipped of the "Dear Sir" and "Yours faithfully" and the paragraphs in between, and replaced by a three-liner in M*X*i*t style which just gets to the point as quickly as possible (e-mail, with its simplified conventions, has already largely replaced the old fashioned business letter — until the parties get cross with each other and revert to faxed or hand-delivered printed formality). "Correct" English spelling is, after all, horribly inconsistent and difficult for people to learn unless they are blessed with superior mnemonic abilities and some exposure to the study of etymology. There's even a little-known movement aimed at changing the spelling rules of English completely to make them phonetical and consistent. In fact, I would have supported this movement if I had believed it to have a fighting chance against the traditionalists.

But I digress again. Let's at least just stick with the notion of consistency. Here's the real questoin wh ich I intneded gtteing to orgidnially, bfefore I g ot dis tracted by all the ot her isues sirounding speling: Jst h ow fzzy wil dtabase srch tools hav to ge t 4 th devolved ppl of th e fture to find th sutff they r lokoing 4? And at this point, I will stop playing devil's advocate and ask one final rhetorical question: Instead of producing idiot-compliant software, why don't we simply stop producing idiots?

Exhibition

	Pa (looking exceptionally serious) at an exhibition of his pictures in the clubhouse last night. (There were four others exhibiting too.) Ma wrote the speech about him and then chickened out an hour or so before she was supposed to deliver it, because she reckoned she would get all sentimental and emotional. So she gave me the paper and I read it for her.
	Afterwards, the people had Glüwein and soup. Since I don't drink wine, Pa got me to say yes to a glass of it anyway, so that he could have a second one! Here's Ma talking to two of my favourite people from amongst her neighbours, Lois and Judy.

Online dating

Since I know the Web better than he does and I have done this before, a friend asked me to assist him in getting signed up at an online dating service. Having got him sorted out, I decided that I would make a profile for myself so that I could login and see who's new around town and looking for friends — although I must say from past experience that finding friends via a dating site is not easy, so I wasn't all that hopeful. (Most people who sign up there are looking for a mate, and once you meet, they quickly forget that your profile said that you're not available for any hanky-panky.) I created my usual go-away-unless-you-wanna-be-friends-type-profile and the third person who clicked on me was one of Dave Duarte's friends! How's that for a small world! (I don't think he'd got to know me well enough to have recognised me without a picture, though.)

You'd be surprised how many of these people you actually run into in the world out there. I once met a guy at a party whom I recognised from such a Web encounter. I knew all about him, but he knew nothing about me, since he had never seen me, and I don't know if I had ever given him my real name. When he finally figured out where we had 'met', he wanted to know why we hadn't got together in the 'real world' before.
"You didn't like me," I reminded him.
"That can't be!" he said. "Why wouldn't I have liked you?"
"Because I told you that I didn't like you flirting," I replied.
We got on OK after that, though. It turned out he had met the hostess of the party (also via Internet dating), my old school friend, and had had a brief "thing" with her some months before, which accounted for his presence on the guest list that night.

Do you sometimes get the impression that the convolutions of Charles Dickens' plots were not so far-fetched after all?

Addictive Web site

In my mail this morning from my brother Anton:

I found this web site and ever since I've found myself going back to check what's evolving. It started 5 days ago with an ad in the Economist, where an Irish company, Steorn, challenged the scientific community to test their free energy machine.  Regardless of whether this is a hoax or if it really works, what's interesting is the discussions in the forums and the amount of press it's creating. Its a real-time mystery being played out on the Internet.
http://www.steorn.net

Touch

I wonder if he knew that he was touching me all that time. I wonder if he meant to touch me all that time. Oh, I hope he didn't mean to touch me. That would change everything, wouldn't it?

Snippets

Project Management just became flavour of the month. The site has received a steady increase in enquiries this year, but it seems to have taken a real upward kink in the curve after I removed all the DHTML. What is particularly different about this month is the number of enquiries I received for in-house short courses. I have one course per week confirmed for the next three weeks, and about eight proposals and quotations in various stages of negotiation for custom courses all over the country during the rest of September and October; and enquiries are still coming in daily. (This is in addition to the increase in individual booking enquiries for our the regular, scheduled courses.)

Upcoming events in my social calendar (hey, have you ever thought what a privilege it is to actually have a social calendar?):

Very comfortable now, thank-you very much

If I wasn't so busy, I would have written an essay now about how, when I felt very miserable and sorry for myself last night, God in his wisdom sent an angel in the guise of the drummer from a local rock band to come and cheer me up. The angel didn't offer to buy me coffee! In fact, I am not even sure that it knew why it was there. It just ate my food and brought over a whole lot of CDs from its flat, one by one, and I gave it a stack of mine to borrow, including Miles Davis' greatest hits, which pleased the angel greatly. And finally when I was already in bed with the light off, wearing my purple flannel pyjamas with the Volkswagen Beetles all over them, it came back and knocked on my door some time seriously beyond midnight to share its joy in that the graphic artist who had made the mistake on the band's posters still hadn't got them printed yet, so there was time for a correction.

They are going to have a concert on the 15th. And I am going to have the drum lessons I have been wanting for two years.

Comfortable

Why is it that some people are so eager to please you, so eager to make you feel comfortable in their presence, but then they just can't listen when you tell them what makes you feel uncomfortable and displeased?

I have some friends who, when we all go out, somehow always know that it's on an "everybody pays for himself" basis. We have never talked about it, and nobody has ever suggested anything different. That's first prize for me; I feel really comfortable when I am with friends like that.

Sometimes friends are broke, and rather than go without their company, the solvent ones cough up on their behalf. That's fine too. I have been both the giver and the receiver in such a situation, and although it's always nicer to be the able to give, I can be humble enough to receive too.

And then you get the business of paying someone else's bill. For me that's OK in business; the parties understand that the sponsorship is a sign of eagerness to get the deal, or to work together to achieve compatible goals. Sometimes it is simply a gesture of appreciation for them having given their time. If you have enough sense, you won't ever take it as a bribe.

Another version of paying someone's bill is the "let me treat you" thing. This may follow a favour, or serve as an affirmation of the goodwill and gratitude that's part of a decades-old relationship or a family bond, and is often a sign of a thank-you (and this counts in business as well); or it may simply be done to lift someone's spirits.

What I don't like is when I am perfectly capable of paying for myself, and a new friend insists on paying for me. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I am expressive enough to let that person know. They probably mean well, but why is it that so many of them just don't listen? Is it a generation thing? If I don't let them pay, there's an argument, and then they insist on paying anyway, and the next time there's another argument, while in the meanwhile they have made about sixteen incorrect assumptions about what my "problem" is and why they should try even harder to fix me up, and in the end I wonder whether it's worth pursuing the friendship at all, considering they want to live by some rule that they learned long ago was the polite thing to do, instead of having to respect what I tell them alienates me.

I realise that it works both ways: For me to reject the gesture of what purports to be goodwill is also not the done thing, as far as they are concerned. Somehow it is easier to be flexible when it comes to the rites of foreign cultures, though; the gestures and rituals of meeting, greeting and eating are fairly well explained even in phrasebooks. (You don't give a Kuwaiti bacon and eggs for breakfast and act all huffy and hurt just because he won't eat up.) It is the fact that paying for someone's drink/coffee/meal is not so well explained in our own culture that makes me dislike it. Those who insist on doing it can never give me a good enough explanation of the meaning of this rite. More alarmingly, the reason differs from person to person, which is all the more reason why it makes me uncomfortable about what the real rationale might be.

Why is the Kuwaiti traveling abroad allowed to have his bacon-free breakfast without being interrogated about his choice, while I in my own country must have my preferences pulled apart, shot down and ignored? Here's the moral of the story in its simplest form: If you're trying to build good relationships, don't do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Good news for Domino bloggers

Hmmm, nice to see that my restored DNS settings have propagated! I deliberately messed them up a couple of days ago after I had at first tried to hack one of my sites remotely via a browser in an effort to redirect an errant URL. Not easy to over-ride some things, considering I had deliberately closed some typical Domino hacker doors to this domain a long time ago; I just managed to delete pages, but not to edit the template and obviously not to change the "$$" defaults. (Now please don't think that it's an invitation to hack my site just for the challenge of it -- I only do this stuff part-time and I really don't want the pain of having to become a security expert. If you do happen to stumble into a hole, just be nice to me and tell me what needs plugging.)

Now the good news! Adeleida told me that a blog template will be included with the next release of Domino -- beta available already, developed by the guy behind DominoBlog.com! Obviously a version 7 database isn't going to run with full functionality on a version 5 server, so I have decided to take up Franco's offer of hosting my future blog for experimental purposes. We're still back in the Domino Middle Ages over here, with users on Domino 5. I don't have the time to go through the hassle of upgrading everyone now, though -- I am the one who would have to answer all the questions. Instead, I will start blogging with a Domino 7 client once it's ready, and try out the Designer client too (if I get the time -- I thought I would have got the time to try out version 6, but no such luck). We've ordered a ThinkPad Lenovo, though (they're on special at the moment), and if I have my way, it's going to come home with me at night and be used at the office as a workstation during the day. Then I will have more time to play.

Cloudy

An hour ago it was so nice and sunny that I thought I was going to be able to go out to several sites to take photos! No chance now; it is cloudy, good and proper. I wish I could plan this trip for a specific day. I remember one day (about a century ago in Internet years), when I used to visit the iAfrica site for a weather forecast, I blondely thought for a moment, "Why can't they just put up the weather forecast for the whole year instead of giving you a couple of days at the time? Probably some scheme to get you to consume more online minutes."

My day started pretty cloudy anyway. I fell asleep too late, after arguing with a friend via SMS and eventually suggesting that we meet on Sunday to discuss the issues in a more respectable manner: face to face. But then I didn't sleep well; I kept on dreaming about the things we had argued about. In one dream I was actually the mother of some apparently bi-racial baby I never even knew about until he was a couple of months old (very odd, considering that I know what causes babies, and I am innocent of that activity), and the baby produced a huge volume of urine which I caught up in a large towel to prevent it from going all over my father's furniture. In another dream I had an arrangement to go out with a homosexual male neighbour (a dream character only, not someone I know in real life) who suddenly shed his homosexuality as we were about to depart — to my great annoyance, since he decided to make me the target of his amorous advances. At half past five I got up to take Carol to hospital, and then I went back to sleep until breakfast.

I feel tired. I need more sleep. I am going to friends for supper tonight. Knowing Grace's cooking, at least that is one thing to look forward to today.

Techie job

Our ISP is short-staffed at the moment, and I am blogging about it, because the sooner they can get staff, the better it will be for us, their customers. Please visit their Web site for details. Their alpha geek attended BarCamp; speak to him first if you want to find out if this is for you.

Fiddling and twiddling with software

OK, let's be bold here. I am going to attempt to get this comments business up and running on this blog. The only problem is, to read them it appears that it uses a built-in dingetjie to launch the Notes Client (instead of a browser). And until I have a computer I can take home and configure the way I want it, I am not going to have the time to tweak this code.

Oh ja, and I take back what I said about Microsoft Project substitutes: I tried out the desktop version (Plan for Windows) of that project scheduling thingy from Twiddlebit. It does have equivalents for Microsoft's task types (in fact, it is quite nice and explanatory about the implication of the choices); however, I did not find an equivalent of effort-driven scheduling, which is a bit of a problem if you are, for example, assigning ten guys to share a workload, working under a supervisor and/or using one piece of rented equipment or rented premises. Mind you, I possibly didn't spend enough time looking for what I needed. I will report back when I can conclusively confirm things one way or the other...

Cape Town bloggers

Conrad (and wife Mignon, out of the pic), Warren, Mike Stopforth (foreigner from Gauteng), Max, Max's best friend Dee, Dave (forehead visible), Rafiq (completely out of the pic), Miguel, and me (holding the camera) at Yindees last night. Dave invited me to this get-together at rather short notice and I am so glad I decided to go instead of staying to write a Project Inception Document (which I will now have to do on Saturday), not least of all because Dave offered to make one of my dreams come true: to organise a Bladerunner party!

Yindees get a star for being willing to split the bill and allow those who wanted to, to pay separately — by credit card, nogal. Most places make out like it's a big pain to do that.