April 06, 2006

Insomnia

Today at lunch there must've been a dozen of us sitting around the table. I was surprised to hear that several of my colleagues have occasional trouble with insomnia. One guy I work with says when something wakes him up only 15 minutes after he drifts off to sleep, that can be it for the night. At least a couple of people have been waking up about 4 am, not able to get back to sleep.

I wonder if that's normal for people over 30. Perhaps it is. I also wonder how closely related it is to worries about work.

I then wondered later whether being this far north makes a difference. In France it's so dark all winter, then suddenly in spring it starts getting light early, staying light late. In summer it's light very late indeed, since time is set up to be two hours ahead of the sun. That's why all the bedrooms over here have shutters or blinds.

Even if you sleep in a dark room, the sun no doubt has an effect on your biological clock.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 PM | TrackBack

March 05, 2006

Whirlwind tour

Michael and Jeanne's house and garden are quite pleasant, especially considering they're 5 km from La Defense. The boys wanted me to stay longer. All told I was in Paris a bit over 24 hours.

Luke and Annie had me over for less than 15 minutes, 10 of which I spent in their shower. Annie put me on an RER back to the Gare de Lyon.

Posted by Mark at 10:26 PM | TrackBack

February 06, 2006

Hawaiian islands have it all

Andy's posted a picture of somebody snowboarding in Hawaii.

He doesn't seem to have found anyone who has experienced a snow shower at much lower elevations on Kauai, yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

Posted by Mark at 09:37 PM | TrackBack

November 09, 2005

Getting late, part II

Nathalie and I were pleased to see the picture of the newest edition to the Poitou family last night. Hope Mom (and Dad) have been able to get some rest before everybody in the family comes to visit. Her sisters sure look tickled pink.

Posted by Mark at 01:30 PM | TrackBack

November 08, 2005

Getting late

It's getting late, about 9:50 am. And Ludo's still not in the office, yet. I wonder if he's going to have some news for us soon.

Posted by Mark at 09:50 AM | TrackBack

October 02, 2005

Tower

20051002.jpg Noémie and Tim built several big Kapla towers this afternoon. So did Léa and Emma. Ludo got a photo of everybody posed around this one.

Everyone had a good time over at Véro and Ludo's. Too bad when we tried the playground we were only there for about 15 minutes before getting rained out. Emma and Diane nevertheless tried the slide. They had to change their pants when they got back to the house.

Get the rest of the story a picture of the kids around the tower over at Ludo's home blog.

Posted by Mark at 09:05 PM | TrackBack

September 16, 2005

Rain to put us to shame

Andy and Sonja live on Kauai. Places on the island got a foot of rain. Around their house, they average 5 feet/year. From the look of the fronds in the background, they haven't been getting enough lately.

Posted by Mark at 08:54 PM | TrackBack

June 12, 2005

Côte de Brouilly

Nathalie's friend Anne-Catherine had invited us to a sort of extended housewarming get together this weekend. We left Saturday after lunch since Tim had school that morning.

Anne-Catherine has moved into her new appartment west of the center of Lyon up behind the hill last September, and this weekend had friends and family come to celebrate it. Nathalie went to school with Anne-Catherine in Strasbourg. We'd not seen her often in the last few years, but did have her over once for lunch in Barraux.

Since her apartment was too small to house everyone, she rented a gîte in the middle of the Côte de Brouilly half an hour north of Lyon. There must've been 20 of us. The weather cooperated. We were outside until supper time and even after until late Saturday night, then all day today until coming back home. Nathalie enjoyed it a lot, and the kids had a good time, too. They were so occupied they even more or less behaved themselves.

Tim managed to stay up Saturday night until we went to bed at 1:45 am Sunday morning. He was nevertheless up at before 8 am. Unfortunately on the way back, although the children managed to sleep a little in the car, it was not only too warm, but we mistakenly drove right into the traffic jam outside the tunnel de l'Epine where they're doing roadwork all summer. It took us nearly an hour to cover 3 km. Radio announcers claimed it was even worse on the Chambéry side.

We're home, but it may be tough to get them up for school tomorrow morning. It's almost 10 pm and nobody's sleeping, yet.

Posted by Mark at 09:49 PM

May 31, 2005

Nationalité & citizenship

Christopher explained the difference between nationalité and citoyenneté this morning over coffee. (Coffee is a faux ami of café, by the way.) Based on an official answer, he seems to have overdone it, but perhaps I simply misunderstood.

The question came up because Nathalie's friends had asked me Sunday whether I'd acquired French nationality. Christopher says that while in France I benefit from the same obligations and protections as other French citizens, namely I'm subject to rule by the same laws. But I'm not a citizen. Nor am I a national. If I were in trouble in some other country, I'd have to rely on help from the USA, not France.

After being a guest here for 12 1/2 years, why not ask for nationality? I'm not sure how to answer that question. Woody Allen joked about it saying he wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. For a while, I figured I'd wait at least until I feel I belong. Like Kafka.

There are lots of little things I do not understand. If I went back to live in the US, though, I might have the same problem.

Maybe I should ask the administration if I can acquire French citizenship, which might be done without relinquishing US citizenship. Don't think about it, just do it. See belonging as an instrument, rather than an inherent quality. In fact if I were truly coherent, I'd have to give up my US citizenship, since I don't belong there any more than I do here.

Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM | Comments (3)

May 29, 2005

Long lunch

Nathalie invited Agathe, Stephane, and their two boys for lunch today, so they rode over from Lyon. We had a simple meal, but didn't get away from the table until 4 pm. By that time Stephane was falling asleep in one of the living room chairs, and Diane was trying to keep him awake.

We ended up driving to "downtown" Barraux and having a walk around there, since Nathalie figured there'd be more shade in town than around Fort Barraux. There wasn't too much shade, but the boys found the fountains and soaked each other. All three are thin and didn't seem to mind the heat until we'd been walking for over half an hour. Then Benjamin got something in his left eye that caused an allergic reaction. His eye swelled almost shut. We washed it out with eyedrops, and he said it was okay, but it looked like somebody'd boxed him.

Emma wasn't too exhausted to eat tonight, but Tim and Diane only wanted to watch television. Diane seems to have fallen alseep with the light on and the windows and door open. That's a far cry from what she's been doing since Michel and Colette's visit, which is getting up and bugging us until 10 pm.

Posted by Mark at 08:47 PM

March 24, 2005

Hacks, part II

Luke and I were looking at running VNC. He's working up in Paris, and I installed Solaris 10 on his workstation. He'd been running a local copy of vncserver with the $defaultXStartup set to start CDE or whatever. I wiped that off during the installation.

Then I gave him a fixed copy of a script we had on the network, set unambitiously to use twm. Luke got this running, but felt cheated.

So for him, I Googled to something on the Solaris Forum. First it says:

As for VNC, try google, lots of people run VNC and chances are, someone's already written a set of instructions.

Then later, in a script listing after a whole bunch of cases for different window managers:

*)
echo
echo "Put the crack pipe down and step away from the computer ..."
echo "You either ran startx without an argument or the window"
echo "manager you want to run is not configured in your .xinitrc."
echo "Check windows managers available and update your .xinitrc"
echo "accordingly."
exit 1
;;

A typically kind, generous response to user error.

Posted by Mark at 09:18 PM

Beauty and ugliness

Andy's wondering about beauty, specifically about the alleged beauty of highways.

I agree with him. I looked beauty up at Google. One of the definitions was:

That quality which gives pleasure upon being seen by the eye of the body or the intellect.

So a freeway or the inside of a server could be seen in one sense as beautiful, but it does depend on who's looking.

The good news is that ugliness is then also in the eye of the beholder. I'll try to keep that in mind next time I see dirt-colored air above the A41.

Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM

March 18, 2005

Lure of RSD

The lure of RSD (Rapid Slidedeck Development) is leading astray our best and brightest. Rob's been doing so much slideware and meetings his brain's going soft.

He told me yesterday that Windows is great, Linux is trailing. He bought a Dell laptop with Windows. The only intelligible thing he said was that the Windows application he had lets you remove redeye from photos with one click. According to Rob you have to learn advanced Fourier transforms to do the same with The Gimp. (Slight exaggeration on Rob's part, but in 2003 when that was written you did still have to have enough working brain cells to follow simple directions.)

Don't get me wrong, I use Windows for photos too, basically as a hugely bloated device driver for a proprietary PCI Sony Memory Stick. It's a shame to cripple an entire system just because a $30 flash memory chip.

When confronted with the inevitably obvious question for anyone buying a PC who knows UNIX but wants lots of eye candy -- So if you really just wanted it to work without hassle, why didn't you get a Mac? -- Rob of course answered that Windows was cheaper.

Windows is well monopolized. They manage to squeeze even otherwise sharp thinkers by pushing hardware manufacturers to support only Windows or more expensive solutions, facilitating slideware approaches to reality, and making things just good enough that you get used to how bad they are.

The free market at work? The lure of RSD? Laziness seems more fit to survive than the alternatives.

Posted by Mark at 08:12 AM

March 12, 2005

Misunderstanding

Phil and I misunderstood each other a couple of days ago. I thought he was talking about a song written by Bob Dylan, which Google reminds me is titled Ballad of a Thin Man.

He wanted me to sing it for him. I couldn't recall the tune, only the refrain:

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

If you cannot remember how the tune goes either, check out this mp3 cover version done live by the Grateful Dead. It's a bit approximate, but you get the idea.

Or maybe you don't, which is what I was trying to tell Phil. He told me something evident then. He said it's hard to understand the lyrics in a foreign language.

I only realized much later how nicely that observation sums things up.

Posted by Mark at 01:46 PM

March 10, 2005

Hope, love, and faith

Some Craigslist classifieds shall be beamed into deep space.

Here's one from the lost+found pile.

Posted by Mark at 09:16 PM

March 07, 2005

Mind readings

Antonia told me today she'd dreamt I was laid off.

My wife often tells me she has dreams in which I run off, cheat on her, or do something otherwise distressing.

I suspect women read men's minds. Unconsciously. They do it not because they want to invade our privacy, but because we have such a difficult time hiding anything, except from ourselves.

The mind readers, appalled, horrified, bored by what they find, then block it out. Some of it occasionally comes back distorted during the night as shadows of thoughts seen during the day are integrated into whatever dreams create.

Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM

February 26, 2005

Wild ones

Emma's had her friend, Laure, over for the last 3 hours or so. I took the first 2 1/2 with the girls, now Nathalie is handling them.

The girls were fairly quiet and reserved until Tim got back from a check up in Chambéry. Emma posed as being much more insolent than she usually is, just to show her friend that she can keep Dad in line. Other than that, they played with markers and stamps, then makeup and costumes.

By now they're almost completely out of control, just as Laure's mother is arriving. It sounds like a herd of wounded elephants is on the loose downstairs. Tim really seems to have been the catalyst. He was home only long enough to hang his coat up before the screaming began.

Posted by Mark at 05:31 PM

February 19, 2005

Out to pasture

But the pasture's going to be bleak. Gilles and I have been joking about learning to grow vegetables instead of building software. It's not a joke.

Tilly spotted the article at CadreEmploi.fr, Seniors : le chômage fatal ?.

Lots of handwringing, head-shaking, and fatalistic words from old guys at the peaks of their long careers, explaining to the rest of us why it's inevitable we'll be kicked out younger and younger.

In the US we have our irony glands excised at birth so we don't notice. All of us that can end up heavily invested in the market. Then we get kicked out by companies who need to replace expensive experienced workers with cheaper up-and-comers, thereby increasing pressure on companies to perform for investors as we move from getting paid to getting dividends. So everyone sides with the old guys explaining why it's all inevitable, those guys reap progressively huger rewards, and some of us potentially get modest financial security at the expense of everyone else.

I really ought to get better at growing vegetables.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 AM | Comments (2)

February 08, 2005

Running club?

Jerome first suggested we organize running with a coach to prepare as a group for a big event such as a marathon.

The more I speak with people here at work about the idea, the more it's clear not everybody wants to run a marathon. In fact, I haven't found anybody else who does, though several would like to do a half marathon.

More seem interested in having someone to run with and someone to help them reach their own goals, anything from running a half marathon to getting into better shape. Getting into better shape sounds like a good reason to get out and run regularly. It's what led me in the end to wanting to get into even better shape. Now I enjoy running more than I ever have before.

Marie-Odile mentioned a cardiologist who runs and coaches runners on the side. Karine suggested I ask around at local running clubs for recommendations. If it's to start later this year, I ought to get to it in the next month or so.

It's not entirely clear why this idea keeps turning over in my head, but it does. I'm fine running alone, and am not having trouble getting out there and putting in the kilometers. The showers will be more crowded than they are now at lunchtime. Yet maybe I stand to benefit the most from coaching, and this would be a good way of getting some real time with a good coach.

Posted by Mark at 02:01 PM

December 15, 2004

Small talk

People write how-to books on making small talk. (The author of that one is Director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University.)

After 11 years here in France, I realize to what extent good small talk requires mastery of the language and popular culture, especially for the wittiness-challenged. My rhetorical incapacity trips me. The overflowing wheelbarrow of my mind lurches into soft dirt and tips over. Self-consciousness raises the wheelbarrow onto stilts. The bull stands still in the middle of the china shop.

Posted by Mark at 09:48 PM

October 28, 2004

Night out

Nathalie and I went out to eat alone together last night for the first time in a while. She wanted to go to a Japanese restaurant.

You don't know how much you can appreciate a meal until you've spent months and months straight hurrying through each and every dinner with three children at your elbows. I'm sure Nathalie envies my lunchtimes at work.

It almost seems strange now to be able to finish a sentence or two of conversation without being interrupted. You find yourselves drifting off into silences now and then, mainly because you can.

The food was good as well.

Posted by Mark at 06:44 PM

October 26, 2004

For her

Idealists make terrible lovers. They can adore, worship... idealize, but lose interest in the consummated, the requited, the instantiated. What you deserve is a romantic handyman.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 PM

October 25, 2004

Wakeful

Slept terribly during the night. Maybe even Ghislaine's mild coffee was enough to wake me after a couple of hours sleep.

Posted by Mark at 06:38 AM

October 01, 2004

A walk in the forest

Went for a walk in the forest last Sunday with Ludo, Veronique and the girls.

20041001.jpg

The kids looked glad to be outdoors.

Posted by Mark at 05:38 PM

August 28, 2004

Echec et mat

Another friend of mine, who knew that I was going to have a couple of weeks alone without interruptions, and knew me well enough to know the answer to her question was an almost unqualified yes, asked me if I was looking forward to the solitude.

Neither was my friend who wrote, "You've got to be alone to write," boxing herself intentionally into checkmate, nor was my other friend doing it to me. Or maybe the latter friend was.

Losing doesn't make you work harder to become a winner. It makes you want to change the rules.

Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM | Comments (2)

July 04, 2004

Cotes du Rhone

Welcome to the photo follow up for our Weekend of wine tasting.

durban.jpg nathstu.jpg

raisins.jpg ruine.jpg

hermitage.jpg gite.jpg

coffre.jpg cave.jpg

It may not look like it, but there's still a little space left ;-)

Posted by Mark at 09:34 PM

June 11, 2004

Truth or meaning

Rob explained that Penrose, in Shadows of the Mind, argues we need a non-computational model to understand consciousness. Rob has also been reading Betrand Russell, telling me Russell's investigation of language seems a lot more tractable than Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

I find Wittgenstein about as tractable as Joyce.

Rob wants to understand Truth from a philosophical point of view. He told me aims at placing discussions of Truth in Media in an appropriate context. Before he had to go to a meeting, he admitted that learning all the background may not prove useful in lots of cases. Most professional mathematicians do not lie awake at night worrying about Goedel's incompleteness theorem. They just get on with their work.

Jacqueline has taken the boys to Spain on vacation. (Where she was mugged! Horrible.) Lonely male idealists spend too much time thinking about things. Elvis had a point there.

Posted by Mark at 02:15 PM

May 09, 2004

Sunshiny afternoon

Jesus fed the multitudes on loaves and fishes, and many see miracles in his capacity to gather up more leftovers than he started with. One might also explain this as the church potluck effect.

Each churchgoer attending the potluck brings a dish large enough to feed his party. At the end, you gather up the leftovers -- usually more than you need to feed everyone at the potluck. No veteran potluck organizer feels surprise when this happens, though he may continue to believe in the miracles of the loaves and fishes.

Our barbecue today finished with more grilled meat than a church potluck. Luckily, we had sunny weather after a week of rain. Good thing we have a large freezer.

Posted by Mark at 09:08 PM