Love It, Love It, Love It!

No, not being redundant (or, more accurately, 'at risk of redundancy'), but my new MacBook.

OK, technically it's OUR new MacBook, and I do have to fight Michele and both of the kids to get some time with it, but that notwithstanding, and at the risk of sounding geeky, it's got a really high coefficient of cool.

I've been a PC user my whole life.  No, really - I started using DOS 1.0 when I was about 8.  I remember when there was no such thing as a subdirectory.  I remember Cassette Basic.  I remember 8MB hard disks.  I remember punch cards.  OK, the punch cards weren't actually for the PC, but I do remember them, since my mom used them when she was studying computer science in college and used to take me to her classes.

When I was in college, the computer labs had Macs and PCs running DOS.  Windows only made an appearance in my last semester, and then only in some of the labs.  I always used the PCs, even when it was the last week of the semester and everyone was finishing their papers and I had to wait for one and there were rows of available Macs.  Here I must admit to being a computing elitist; I've always thought of Macs as hand holding pieces of trash.

Until now.

It's really about the design.  I'm a big design freak.  I am disproportionately annoyed by badly laid out carparks; don't get me started on the barely usable Sky+ user interface.  It's total crap. Crap+, even.  But I digress, and I'll post something about that eventually.  It's crap.  The MacBook, (we bought the 13" aluminum model through the employee discount website on an impulse just before being put 'at risk') on the other hand, is sleek, yes, but it's also got a well thought out functional design.  

First, there are two large areas on either side of the mouse sensor where I can rest my meaty paws while I type.  The aluminum stays nice and cool, so my palms don't get all sweaty and sticky, and they're just the right size that the edge of the laptop doesn't cut into my hands.  I'm sure my hand position isn't 'proper', but who cares, I'm comfortable.

Second, there's the mouse sensor itself.  I've been using IBM Thinkpads for years, and have gotten used to the little red eraser head of a mouse in the middle of the keyboard.  But the Thinkpad mouse has a serious flaw - and I've encountered this on every single Thinkpad I've used with operating systems from Windows 3.1 through to Windows Vista - the damn thing has a mind of its own.  The pointer would float across the screen even without me touching it.  When I wanted it to go the other way, I had to fight with it.  Not so on the MacBook, the mouse goes where I put it and stays there.  Period.  There are also no mouse buttons to futz with, just tap the pad to click.  Now I've used Thinkpads with trackpads before, and the first thing I always did was to disable them, because the sides of my palms would always touch the pads and move the mouse around as I was typing.  Again, the MacBook doesn't suffer from this problem.

Next, there's the keyboard itself.  The keys are spaced far enough apart that even with fingers like sausages, I seldom bonk the wrong key accidentally.  Here again, this compares favourably to my Thinkpad, whose Backspace key is blank and shiny from erasing the typos caused by its teensy little Chicklet keys.  

Now, lest you think this a paid advert for the MacBook, I'll throw in my two complaints about it here.  First, there's no Delete key.  Well, there is, but it doesn't behave like a PC's Delete key, which removes characters to the right of the cursor.  The Mac's Delete key acts like a PC's Backspace key, removing characters to the left.  Try as I might, I cannot seem to find a key combination that emulates the behaviour of a PC Delete key, so a beer to the first person who can tell me how.  Second, the X key falls off at the slightest provocation.  This is surely a manufacturing defect, which I expect would be corrected in short order by taking it to a repair place.  With all this redundancy time on my hands, I may just do that.

OK, back to the upside.

Scrolling on a Thinkpad requires a carpal tunnel-inducing hand contortion involving holding down the mouse button with your thumb while simultaneously keeping the aforementioned willful mouse pointer confined to a horizontal space roughly the width of a helium atom and moving the mouse pointer vertically with the eraserhead.  On the Mac, you put two fingers on the sensor and move them up or down, left or right as appropriate.  Good design.

In Windows, to switch between applications, you hold the Alt key and press the Tab key repeatedly until you find the one you want, then you let go of the Alt key.  On the Mac, you swipe horizontally on the sensor with four fingers and click on the one you want.  Good design.

In Windows, to zoom in or out on a photo, you muscle the mouse pointer over to some sort of zoom control.  On the Mac, you pinch (to zoom out) or, um, unpinch (to zoom in).  See - I'm getting more creative already and making up verbs.  To rotate, you turn your thumb and forefinger clockwise or anticlockwise as appropriate.  Good design.

There's very little technology that doesn't disappoint me the minute I take it out of the box.  My iPod was one.  My TiVo (God, how I miss my TiVo) was another.  My, er, OUR MacBook is the third.  Thanks, Steve Jobs!

The Axeman Cometh

So it finally happened.  The GFC (that's 'Global Financial Crisis', according to my friend Simon; personally I prefer 'Global Friggin Cockup') has claimed another victim: me.

I was not entirely surprised when I got the news last Thursday that I am being 'put at risk' of redundancy.  After all, business isn't what it was a year ago.  What has surprised me, though, is just how OK I am with the whole thing.  Now, don't get me wrong: I've been working for the last 24 years, so not working isn't something I've ever learned how to do well.  I also can't help feeling a certain sense of loss over leaving the company I've called home for the last 13 years.  Hell, I've practically grown up there.  But there is something really energizing about not knowing what comes next.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with UK labour laws, 'at risk of redundancy' means that I technically still have a job.  As far as I can work out, though, this job appears to consist mainly of sleeping in, catching up on my reading and sprucing up my resume.  They call this 'gardening leave'.  I'm supposed to use it to look for another job internally, though of course, if there were many jobs internally, we wouldn't be in this situation.  At the end of the 90 day gardening leave, I become a free agent.  I'll get a severance package and that, as they say, will be that.  13 years gone.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: I'm not bitter.  I'm not.  I was paid pretty well for my work, I got to do a number of really interesting things, I travelled a bit on someone else's dime. The company certainly doesn't owe me anything.  I'm also confident that it isn't because I was a poor performer, or because someone didn't like me, or because I smelled bad.  It's simply a case of being in the wrong role at the wrong time.  

So what will I do?  As I said, I had a strong feeling this would happen.  Michele and I talked it over well in advance, worked through a number of scenarios, and decided to pull the trigger on a plan we'd been cooking up for a while, that being to take the kids and travel.  We'd planned to do this in a few years, so the timing isn't quite what we'd have liked, but it's as good a time as any.

Unfortunately, the act of making significant decisions in the abstract and after a few glasses of wine is always fraught with danger, this decision no less so.  Last Monday evening, I noticed the email count on my blackberry starting to tick inexplicably backwards towards zero.  I assumed this meant that I would get the redundancy call on Tuesday.  As I watched the detritus of my daily work life float gently away - 700 mails became 680, then 650, then 600 - my first emotion was a tremendous wave of relief.  Finally, the uncertainty about my job, the waiting for the axe to fall, would be over and I could get on with living.  200 mails.  150.  100.  When the count reached 50, my euphoria was cut short by a wave of stomach-flip nausea brought on by the realization that I would be without a job, without a home, without any of the security I'd spent my adult life scrabbling for.  This forced me, on my journey home that rainy night, to consider what this really meant; and to conclude, logically, that having a job is better than not having one, especially when you've got kids.

Turns out that the incident with the blackberry was a total fluke.  Tuesday wasn't the day, Thursday was, and when I finally did lose my email, when that eventually happened, was completely unlike the experience of Monday night.  The temporary loss of my email was just a serendipitous event, because it forced me to think concretely about what losing my job really meant.

So for now, I'm keeping my options open.  There are other roles internally that would be interesting.  I have a strong network outside the company that I might be able to leverage.  Travelling is still a viable and attractive possibility.  There may be other outcomes as yet undreamt-of.  The possibilities are endless and I have the luxury of time to consider them.  Who wouldn't be OK with this?

The timing of the blackberry thing was kind of weird though.

...And we're back

In case you've been in a coma for the past 6 months and this is your first stop on waking (and if it is, thanks, but I hope you'll reconsider your priorities in light of your recent near-death experience), here's a quick recap of significant events that happened while you were out:

1. The US elected a new president.
2. The world economy is in the shitter.

In this post, we'll talk about Number 2.

Thanks to unprecedented levels of greed and stupidity in developed nations, we collectively find ourselves in more straightened circumstances than one year ago. Companies are downsizing, people are losing jobs, and governments are spending unimaginable sums of money in an effort to prop up their national economies.

All of this has been going on for a while, of course, but what prompted me to finally get off my ass and get back to posting was an article in today's Telegraph about Starbucks' economy contracting too. Yes, the home of £3 coffee-scented hot milk is actually closing some shops.

Here in the UK, we've dubbed the current economic crisis the 'Credit Crunch'. This delightfully alliterative moniker, which has given rise to all sorts of cute expressions (credit crunch lunch, anyone?) just paints a smiley face on a voracious beast with a very long tail. The icing over of the global capital markets isn't a short term problem, and it's not a problem that governments can fix by lending money to banks, or even by guaranteeing the loans they make. I'm not talking about mortgages here. If you don't already own a house, you're screwed for a while, but chances are you'll either stay where you are, or maybe find a squat in Mayfair. I'm talking about the corporate financing that makes it possible for businesses to continue their operations. When large numbers of otherwise solvent companies can't borrow and can't sell their equity, it's just a short trip to consumerist Armageddon.

This news has a bright side for me, though: we'll now have to learn to live within our means. It may surprise you that I've never been much good at managing money. It's not because my family was wealthy - I grew up eating chuck steak and drinking powdered skim milk - but because I've always had a job, and always had about as much money as I wanted. A plot of my earnings over the past 24 years would show a general upward trend, so if my attitude was always that if I didn't make enough this year, I'll make more next year. Demand always roughly equalled (and sometimes exceeded) supply. In short, my savings are Lilliputian considering how long I've been working and how much I've earned over that time.

For the moment, I'm still employed. That's more than many people can say, so I realize how fortunate I am. For the first time, though, I find myself having to really budget my money. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing.

One side effect of this is that I've become much more conscious of what I spend my money on, and whether I'm actually getting good value for money. A few weeks ago, several of us had 2-for-1 coupons for a restaurant near the office, so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice lunch on a Friday. The food, when it eventually arrived, was cold, overcooked and not actually what we'd ordered. Normally, I'd have shrugged all this off, complained to my friends and when the waiter asked how everything was, nodded sullenly. Not anymore, though. A complaint to the manager resulted in replacement meals and a free lunch on our return. Result! (A few days later, a different restaurant, a paper towel found in my salad, a similar complaint and a similar result...I may start bringing a bag of dead mice with me to lunch).

One problem with trying to save money - it seriously curtails your social life if that life is based on going out. This year, we're trying some alternatives, for example, entertaining more at home. Our first Credit Crunch Dinner Party was last weekend, and was a brilliant success. We had some friends from the kids' school round to ours; the kids had fun, the grownups had fun, and the whole thing (including wine) cost less than it would have for the two of us to have a decent meal out. It was also a nice way to show our appreciation for some folks who've been extremely nice to us since we arrived, wide-eyed and friendless, on these sunless shores.

At work, I try to go to as many management presentations as I can. They are sometimes boring, sometimes baffling and occasionally farcical, but lunch is provided and I almost always come away knowing something I didn't know before. In one recent talk, a senior manager discussed the notion of paradox in management and how the more senior you become, the more paradoxes you face. A junior manager may be mandated to cut costs without sacrificing quality. That's hard. But a senior one is expected to reduce costs and improve quality. That's paradox.

"Do more with less" is hackneyed to the point of caricature, but it may apply equally to personal life: can we cut our costs while continuing to enjoy the things we enjoy? We'll find out...

Credit Crunchy Pork Loin
serves 6, plus enough leftovers for about 3 nights
2kb (4.5lb) boneless pork loin, with skin
2 tbs cider vinegar
500g (1lb) sauerkraut
2 pears
3 apples

Score the skin (have the butcher do this if you can). At least 8 hours before cooking (preferably the night before), place an over rack over the sink with the pork on it, and pour about 1 liter of boiling water over the whole thing. This helps open up the skin. Pat dry with a towel and brush on the cider vinegar. Refrigerate, uncovered until about an hour before cooking.

Dry the roast well and place directly in a roasting pan. Core and cut the apples and pears into chunks and mix well with the sauerkraut. Distribute the mixture evenly around the pork.

Roast at 165C (325F) for about 90 minutes. Stir the sauerkraut mixture occasionally. Since ovens and loins vary, use a meat thermometer and take the roast out when the thermometer reads about 68C (155F). Cover the pork with foil and let it rest for about 15 minutes. Put the sauerkraut in a bowl in the hot oven (turn the oven off first...).

The skin won't quite be as hard as proper British crackling because the sauerkraut will steam the pork a bit, but it's still reasonably crunchy.

Total cost: about £26 (food prices are different in the US, so a conversion to dollars isn't really appropriate. I reckon it'll be under $30, though).

Enter the Haggis

With the empty weeks stretching out ahead of me, I thought it would be a good idea to take a trip. As my friend Clive and I discussed where to go while Michele was away, one wonderful, hazy, almost illicit name floated before us: Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, we had this discussion in Michele's presence, before she left, so no sooner had the word escaped my lips than the idea was squashed like so much fox poo on the sidewalk. After Michele threatened to take my passport with her when she left, we settled on a more, ahem, tame approach - hiking in Scotland.

At first, this seemed a most pleasant idea. "Just a walk up the mountain", Clive told me, "with a little scramble over a small lip at the top. No more than 4 meters." No problem. I could handle this. After all, I'd had an orienteering class in college, no more than, what, 15 years ago? I was looking forward to the trip, and even bought a new pair of hiking shoes in an area called Southampton Street, supposedly THE place to buy outdoor gear in London.

As the date of our departure drew closer, I began wearing my new boots to and from work to, you know, break them in. This was when the trouble started. "That brand's rubber's too soft," one colleague told me. "The soles shouldn't flex like that," intoned another, ominously. Convinced that I'd die of exposure, or at least end up with a serious blister, I began to worry about my fitness for this trip. After all, I get out of breath stepping up onto the curb, what was I thinking I could climb a mountain.

I'd also decided that as long as I was doing one thing I wasn't really prepared for, I might as well do two, and volunteered to drive. You may recall that they drive on the wrong side of the road here. The Brits will hasten to tell you that it's the "right" side, but in fact, it's the left side, so there's really nothing "right" about it. This was actually not as bad as having to shift with my left hand, which took quite some getting used to, especially as I haven't driven a car with a manual transmission since about 1994. Predictably, I stalled, over-revved the engine and generally made a menace of myself for the 2 hours it took to get from Glasgow up to Glencoe, the site of my expected demise.

I learned a number of things about Clive that weekend. We had remarkably similar backgrounds, we both enjoy a good whiskey. He has no compunction about raiding the breakfast bar at the Holiday Inn Express to prepare a lunch. And he lies. Not in a malicious way, but in a "gee, that's not how I remember it," way. The "walk" was variously steep, rocky, long and wet. And the "4 meter scramble" at the top was, in fact, about 200 feet of gravel scree which somehow clung to the side of the mountain at a 40 degree angle. Clung, that is, until breathed upon, at which it went coursing in sheets down the mountainside to clonk some unfortunate goat below. It was there, clinging to blades of grass and bits of rock with my eyelids, that I was convinced that I would die.

Of course, I did not die, as evidenced by this post. I did, however, make it to the top, enjoyed a nice cheese sandwich, courtesy of the fine folks at Holiday Inn Express, and marvelled at both the stupendous view and at the fact that I was still alive to enjoy it.

The descent was a bit trickier. Where going up was largely a matter of finding my way forward, going down was a matter of scrambling down on my belly while trying not to bash my head on the rocks or lose my face by dredging it through the gravel for 100 yards. After about 30 feet, I was once again convinced that my life was drawing to an unfortunate and untimely conclusion. It was at this point that we discovered The Path.

Apparently, some unknown but most generous person had cut steps into the mountain to assist just such novice climbers as myself. These, naturally, made the rest of the descent much easier, and I have still not stopped giving Clive a hard time about sending us up through the scree. But secretly, I'm grateful. Anybody can climb up steps. But clawing your way up the side of a mountain, now that deserves a cheese sandwich. And a haggis. And some black pudding. Both really tasty despite their off-putting ingredients. My recommendation: have a cheese sandwich and see how you go from there.

Home Alone 2

Ah, summer.

Summer has arrived in all its glorious greyness, and with it, the annual westward migration of beloved family. Yes, I'm knocking around in London by myself for a few weeks, free to stay out late, sleep without interruption, leave the toilet seat up. The instant the door shut behind Michele and the kids, I switched to bachelor mode. The house now looks like a clothes bomb went off.

But I haven't just been spending the last few weeks dissipating. Oh, no. I've been extremely busy notching up visits to a wide variety of sites, both in and out of London.

I'd gone out with some friends on the Friday after the family left, so got a bit of a late start on the Saturday. Actually, it was about 2:00 before I could summon the strength to venture out of the house. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to take the boat out to Canary Wharf and take some photos. I'd get some nice shots of Parliament and the London Eye from the back of the boat as we headed downriver, and make up for all of those boat journeys I've taken to and from the office and said, 'damn, I wish I had the camera'.

Unfortunately, there were about a million tourists waiting for the boat, and I just didn't have the patience to stand in the queue. The tube is just as crowded and disgusting on Saturday as it is the rest of the week, the difference is, instead of being rammed with commuters who basically know what they're doing and keep to themselves, on Saturday, it's mobbed with tourists who talk a lot and sweat. Finally arrived at Canary Wharf, drenched and irritated, only to get a number of pictures of rain.

The journey back was better. I got a spot on the boat without much trouble, and stopped off at the Tate Modern. This is a museum of modern art housed in a defunct power station. There's something serene about the cavernous turbine hall that appeals to me. Without children, I spent a few hours nosing around the galleries. My favorite work was called "Ishi's Light". This is an egg shaped object, open at the front, top and bottom, and with a dark polished interior. This produces the effect of a column of light that seems to float as you move across the front of the object.

I had much more energy on Sunday, which was bright and hot, so I decided to venture a bit further afield, to the town of Winchester. Winchester is famous for its Norman cathedral, which, for reasons unknown, was built on a bog, with a foundation of beech logs. The Normans may have been excellent warriors, but sometimes you gotta wonder. Predictably, the logs rotted away, and in the early 1900's, the cathedral was in danger of collapse. A diver spent 5 years digging trenches under the walls and filling them with cement, and is memorialized by a statue in the crypt.

Despite a few bright spots, Winchester is a monstrously disappointing town. The high street, while absolutely lousy with 16th century buildings, lacks even a single independent retailer. The overall feel is of a deep and abiding seediness. I felt like I needed a shower.

In fact, I did need a shower, since it was about 30 degrees (that's 85 for the Centigrade-challenged) and humid as only a country where it rains 150 days a year can be. The cathedral looked lovely. It being Sunday, however, they were quite inconveniently conducting a service when I arrived, so I couldn't go in.

This was fortunate, though, else I never would have found a hidden gem around the back in the Deanery. There, in the midst of piles of used books on sale to benefit the choir school, was a real Roman mosaic floor. Just, well, on the floor. I didn't even realize I was standing on it until one of the workers pointed it out. This of course led to a discussion of the history, and opened the door for me to ask what was up the back staircase.

I've always been intrigued by the routes in museums that the public is not supposed to use. I check doors to see whether they're locked, crane my neck to see into roped off spaces, peer through cracks in the walls. So the stone staircase winding up the back of the Deanery really got my James Bond up. David (he of the mosaic floor) kindly indulged my curiosity, and led me up the stairs.

On the other side of a massive wooden door at the top was an enormous ballroom, probably 40 or 50 feet long, and maybe half as wide, with a 15 foot ceiling. As I stood gaping around at the space, which appeared to be used for little apart from storing old chairs and spare artwork of questionable interest, I spotted a large, obviously ancient mirror on the far wall, with the letters "CR" in gilt at the top. David saw me looking at the mirror and told me that it was made for King Charles II, who, in the late 17th century, was a frequent visitor to the area, and would have been entertained in that very room.

After a visit to the ruins of the bishops palace, I headed about a mile through some fields to visit St Cross Hospital. Despite the name, this is not a place where sick people go to be cured (though one could argue that very few of the NHS-run hospitals are), but rather an almshouse, and a very old one at that. It was founded in 1130 to accommodate 13 old poor men, and to feed 100 at the gates daily. By this tradition, you can still ask at the gate for "the dole", and the porter will give you a (very) small cup of beer and a tiny bit of bread. These were not enough to sustain a hearty guy like me, so I had lunch in a pub nearby, as you do.

On the way back, I did get into the cathedral to have a look around, though sadly, the crypt was closed, so I couldn't see the statue of the diver. I did, however, attend an Evensong service, which was sung by the Thames Philharmonic Choir, complete with candles, a big, rumbly pipe organ and a vicar. It was magical, if you're into ecclesiastical aesthetics, as I am.

So having written this, I have to conclude that, despite the depressing town center, the ugly concrete buildings along the railroad tracks and the omnipresent chavs, Winchester was a good day out after all.

So there's the first weekend. Plenty more to come...

Neighbour

Our neighbo(u)r died last week. Gladys was a sweet old lady, who'd lived in the house next door 'all me life'. She wasn't much for long conversations, but by degrees, I learned that her husband died a long time ago, she had a son named Paul, and she hated the weather here as much as anyone else. She showed me how to lift the fence panel to get into our back garden when I'd locked myself out of the house. She put a nice card through our mail slot at Christmas.

She also had a hacking cough and was nearly deaf. We'd hear her in the morning, her TV on full volume, coughing like my Aunt Thelma did when she fell into the mashed potatoes. We were convinced that Gladys was permanently on the edge, so to speak.

I called the ambulance for her one day when, shortly after we moved in, I heard a crash, a few "bloody hell's" and then silence; when she didn't answer the bell, I panicked. She was fine, of course, but by the time I'd called back to cancel the ambulance, the police had arrived and I had to explain to them why I'd filed a false report. They shrugged it off and promised to cancel the ambulance.

It was on this day that I learned the value of double checking. Coincidentally, it was also on this day that I learned that no one in England ever does what they say they're going to do, so I also had to explain the situation to the ambulance men when they turned up.

Gladys fell one morning on the way to church. We got the story from her son. She broke her elbow, and then had a stroke in the hospital. She died a few days later.

Her garden chairs are stacked neatly.

Goodbye Gladys. I wish we'd had you around for tea.

Dear Tooth Fairy...

My daughter has been carrying on a running correspondence with the Tooth Fairy. It started innocently enough - a note under the pillow to express her undying love and gratitude, but quickly progressed to more labor intensive missives, like:

Dear Tooth Fairy, I am leaving you a present, will you leave me one?

and

Dear Tooth Fairy, what is your real name? _________ How old are you? __________ What is your favorite color? __________

The above questionnaire was left on the night of a recent small party, so fortunately, our friends obliged with cleverly ambiguous answers:
1) TF
2) as old as time
3) the rainbow

Tonight, accompanying her first front tooth:
Dear Tooth Fiary, please will you poke me in the nose with your magic wand so I can see you? Leave your answer on this line ____________.

Uh, oh. An IRL meeting? Simply out of the question, but what to do...

Dear Caroline, as much as I would love to meet you, the rules are very clear - no one can ever see me or my magic will be lost. That's why I only come around after you've gone to sleep. I hope you understand.

Your Friend,
TF

Hopefully, this will not render her paralyzed with fear of waking up and accidentally seeing the Tooth Fairy. Christ, the stuff I worry about...