Erie

Just spent two days in Ohio at a hotel on Lake Erie. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but being there on business I didn’t really get to see much of it.

We took a ride out to Port Clinton through roads flooded with eighteen inches of water due to thunder storms. The town is right on the lake and feels like a coastal town, the sheer size of the lake makes you feel like you are at the ocean.

We went for dinner and ate some fish called a Walleye. Never heard of it before, apparently it lives in the lake. The funniest thing was a note to fishermen at the bottom of the menu; “Feel free to bring in your days catch and we’ll cook it for you”. I don’t know if I am jaded, or maybe have seen to much litigation, but it struck me that should someone bring in a fish they caught that then made them sick would they or could they sue the restaurant? They either felt this was not a risk or were very naive. I didn’t see any small print.

Anyway, I got to see a very nice part of the world; this was my first visit to the Midwest. Glad to be home though, I felt like I was in Fargo (the movie not the place). Oh, and it was nice to be offered some Pop to drink, it’s been a long time!

Hey! That’s my medal!

Standing next to me at the station this morning waiting for the train was a very loud woman with terrible hair. She was telling a man there about her work, how they make her work in groups and she is the only one that does anything. She never gets the credit for the work of course, because she has to share the glory with the lazy scumbags in her “team”.

She let everyone around know how unfair this is. She strives night and day, her boyfriend nearly left her because of all the hours she worked, and all the other lazy clowns in her group just suck up the credit. She doesn’t say anything to her manager of course, God forbid she should look like a non team player (what with this PC attitude that everyone is equal and should work together!). She complained how when she told a co-worker of the stress that her sole commitment was causing her home life, the co-worker simply said “you should have told me, I would have helped out more”. She shouldn’t have needed to say anything right? Where were the standard psychic abilities required of a modern employee?

And where was the manager? Four employees sitting around drinking coffee and surfing the internet while poor miss bad hair was struggling to complete all their work, he/she should be fired. It’s not like the stress doesn’t show in the horrible state of little miss pains terrible appearance and awful clothes.

So there you go; another example of what is dragging the western world into the toilet. “I’m the only one that does any work”, how do we survive?

Microsoft did something right?

I installed Windows 7 this weekend…..well well, it’s good innit!

I installed on my seven (yes that’s 7!) year old desktop and she’s got a new lease of life. The whole thing is faster, smoother and more enjoyable to use than Vista. I “upgraded” to Vista from XP Pro because, as you may remember, Microsoft gave away a bunch of Vista Business DVD’s as a promotion before the full release. It’s been a pain ever since.

The good thing that came out of the Vista upgrade was that I updated some hardware (RAM, video card, printer) and the whole system is now much better. These upgrades are needed for Win 7 anyway so no loss, no foul right?

I still use my newer (year old) laptop for the real stuff; my dear old PC even in its rejuvenated form can’t handle any real processing. But for web, word processing and music she is back to her old self and better!

At last Microsoft makes a right move; I never thought I’d say it again. Still getting a Mac next time though!

Bugger!

Tranmere Rovers 1 – Scunthorpe 1, so ends another year.

My heart sank at the news, I really thought we would make the play offs this year. Of course I’m used to this disappointment now, but the sting is still there.

Right, 09-10 then!

Que horas são?

I am in the process of learning Portuguese with Rosetta Stone (the language learning software that is, not the ancient Egyptian Google Translate 1.0). It’s hard.

I am pleasantly surprised with my progress however; I seem to be retaining more and more without even noticing. The most difficult issues for me as a native English speaker are the pronunciation (an R, to me ,is an R and not a flem generating exercise) and the male / female word concept (although being Welsh I do have some appreciation of this from, umm Welsh).

I hope to one day be able to wax lyrical in my new language, confident in my ability to tear down national divisions by the power of my linguistic gymnastics. For now how ever, it seems satisfying to be able to ask what the time is.

Suffice to say I would recommend Rosetta Stone. Like The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, I’m not one for endorsing products (the only Cola I’d support would be a human C.O.L.A. cost of living allowance). But this works.

See you at the Camões debating society meeting!