The English are completely useless when there is snow on the ground.
Uk trains are the laughingstock of Europe.
I need to pee rather badly, yet I would still kill for a cup of tea.
Tag: work
Meeting quote of the day
MC – So there I was, stuck in that meeting, bored, frustrated and angry.
CM – That’s what the EBI pays you for. Didn’t you read the fine print in your contract?
Office Christmas Party
Katy and I invited the office bunch on Saturday for an informal xmas potluck. We discovered that 17 adults and 4 kids is pretty much the maximum that the house can fit, when the halls are fully decked. I hope that people had a good time. I know that there was plenty of food and booze, so that’s always a good place to start ;)
All pictures, and more are here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/xmas_2012/
Christmas party @ Hidden Rooms
The EBI xmas party was tonight and I think it went off brilliantly overall. The buffet line was long and some people were unhappy about the music but personally I thought it was better than last year. The venue was a lot bigger so people didn’t feel as claustrophobic. The cocktails were good and the food was nice. The things I’ll take away for next year would be to hage two buffet areas to split the queue, a bit more food (as I heard comments of the hot entrees going quickly), more people and more control over the music.
Having said all of that though, I’m really happy at how we pulled off the organization and Katy and I had a good time with Stephane and the guys from the office. I even won one of the raffle prizes, even if people moaned about a fix :-)
Off to bed now… zzzzzzzzz
What I wanted to say in a meeting
Participant: I have problems understanding your concerns.
What I wanted to say: “my concerns is that you’re as dumb as a sac of hammers”.
What I said: “let me try and rephrase them”…
Today’s scrum planning meeting
Reminded me of this classic gem:
One of the more offbeat conferences I’ve seen in a while
Ubuntu really pissed me off
I’ve been running Ubuntu on my work laptop for several years and it’s been rock solid. I got a distribution upgrade notice yesterday and clicking on the “upgrade” button was, in retrospect, A FUCKING BAD IDEA!!!
I’ve lost two solid days of work trying to get my dual-core laptop with 6gb of RAM in a state slightly more responsive than a very drugged up sloth.
The new Unity desktop is a bloated mess. Several times in the past two days, I have wanted to hurl my laptop out the window. I really don’t like the direction that Ubuntu is going. 10.04LTS was rock solid and peppy. 12.04LTS turned my laptop into a brick. An ugly one at that.
End of an era-ish
First there was Dr John, then Sam Patient, then Antony Quinn, and now Chris Taylor… Next one to go will be Phil Jones. It’s weird that I’ve been at EMBL since May 2005 and my 9 years will shortly be up (my current contract ends October 2013). Stupid rule *grumble*
Jumping through hoops
Yay, technology!
In order to make my webex online course work on my linux laptop, I need to run it through Internet Explorer running in a Windows XP virtual machine.
Yes, that is as convoluted as it sounds. The good news is that now at least I can see what the course presenter is doing, and my laptop seems happy enough to chug along.
Still, webex, get your act together! Firefox running on linux 64 bit is not an uncommon setup, considering that 3/14 course attendees are running that it!