More Software Complaints?

Ok guys,

You probably thought that now that I'm not working as an engineer anymore I am done complaining about software. Well, no such luck!

Today's complaint is about Outlook. Our IT guy came in and finally "fixed" a problem that I had, which was that I didn't have access to all of the contacts. Now I do have those which is great. However, coincidentally, the morning after he did this fix, I had 140 spam emails in my inbox. Sigh.

Spanish Vocab #2

Today I was listening to La Matinal, and there was a funny piece about a hotel survey which asked which tourists are the best/worst.

Turns out the French were the worst, being tacaño (cheap) with their propinas (tips), as well as arrogant and bad at foreign languages. The Japonese were the best, being pulcros (neat and tidy), corteses (polite) and nunca quejarse (never complain).

beca - grant; scholarship

escaso - limited; scant

juzgar - to try; judge

otorgar - to grant

plazo - period (of time)

pulcro - neat; tidy

sede - headquarters

telón - curtain

veintena - twenty; score

vial - road

One Semester of Spanish - Spanish Love Song

All I can say is: ROFL. Pls to watch. (<--- one semester of English).

Food Pictures

Just to follow up on the last post, here's a picture of some REALLY healthy food (chard and whole wheat berries):

So Much Produce, or, What's this red thing?

Back in January, I talked about the Peak Oil group and the still-forming Sail Transport Network.

The STN is group of people who use a sailboat to sail up the coast of Washington to get produce from farms, and bring it back to Seattle to sell in bags, similar to a CSA model, with the key differentiating factor being the fossil-free method of transportation.

Well, it is off and running now, and Sean and I picked up our first tote-bag of produce two Sundays ago. (No we didn't use fossil-free means to pick it up....oops.)

It was a straaaange experience going through the bag. First, we started digging in on the strawberries. They were the sweetest, yummiest strawberries ever!! Mmmm. But then, the stuff just got weirder and weirder. Turnips..... radishes..... ok I've heard of those before. Chard.... maybe? Whole wheat berries..... what?

Well, I had to prove Sean wrong of course ( he was convinced that this was at best a $25 donation to the environment and perhaps more like flushing $25 down the toilet) so I started looking up recipes for these strange new foods.

And - we ended up eating a lot of the stuff!! The parley and dill we didn't really eat.... I think we're going to get more dill this Sunday so I''ll try to give it away, perhaps.

My favorite was the radish recipe that came with our bag. (Sean didn't like it but that's ok I just ate the whole thing myself!)

I thought the recipe came fromhere but I can't find it so I'll paraphrase for anyone who's interested:

1. Slice up some radishes and cook in a pan with some chicken broth for 5 mins.
2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of honey and cook for 5 more mins.
3. Eat!

Saturday - Spanish Day

During the rare moments when I have some down time at work, I read La Nacion, the Costa Rican newspaper, to try and practice my Spanish. It's fun reading the paper cause I learn some great (and sometimes pretty random) vocab words. Here's the latest batch:

amenazas - threats

apaciguar - to pacify

aportar - to contribute

astucia - shrewdness, craftiness

cargo - post;position;office

dechado - paragon

desarrollo - development

portavoz - spokesperson

respaldar - to support; back

tasa - rate

PS. Most of these came from an article about Iran - except I think tasa came from a little blurb about swine flu (gripe porcina).

That's What She Said

I just became a fan of "that's what she said" on facebook, and most of the stuff people write on that page is not that original. Maybe it's just because it's past my bedtime, but this one really cracked me up:

Where I work we attach pens to large fake flowers so people stop walking off with them. So this one guy was writing with one and this huge flower was moving around and he said, "Man, I just can't get used this thing flopping around in my face." I had to bite my fist from telling the customer TWSS.

I can't really express how tired I am right now! I don't know how anyone can work a full time job! At all of my engineering jobs I would spend probably at least a third of the day either surfing the web, BSing with someone, or just staring off into space. Of course I felt bad for doing this, but I could just never make myself code for 8 hours. Or rarely ever. Maybe if there was a very huge and very near deadline.

But in my new job, I actually have work that needs to get done in 'real time', i.e. someone is standing in front of me or on the phone with me, asking questions, etc. It is not 'hard' work but it's just non-stop. The last time I worked that much was back at McDonalds - over 10 years ago! I am fascinated by what a different kind of tired this is. Also, I have no idea how anyone can keep a clean house, cook dinner, and have any kind of a social life while working full time.