As coisas que se fazem no escritório…

Hoje ganhei um chocolate!

E não, isso não seria nada de especial, se não fosse o modo como o ganhei.

O dia de hoje promete… :-)

Update: Título devidamente corrigido de acordo com o comentário do fornecedor dos chocolates. Afinal, não se pode irritar uma pessoa destas, certo?

Note to self #2 - Yes, skiing is different, stupid!

Many moons ago (I forget exactly how many… maybe 5-6 years ago, how many moons is that?) anyway, a long time ago I was an average skater. I wasn’t doing many stunts or going for the speed prizes, but I could hold my own on a controlled environment.
But then my wife had a semi-serious accident while skating and a lot of other, unrelated things happened in my life and the rollerblades got left in the garage for a long time.

And in that time I learned to ski and got rather proficient at it.

So this evening when I decided that today was the day I’d take out my blades and go for a short spin near the beach at Oeiras I expected it to be a bit rough. I’m older, heavier, I got pear-shapped and my reflexes aren’t exactly what they used to be, so I was thoroughly prepared to have to start from scratch.
What I wasn’t counting on, though, was that I didn’t exactly forget all the moves. In fact I forgot some of them, of course, but others I just replaced them with ski moves. And you know what? They are totally different!

Yes, braking with your skates has absolutely nothing to do with braking with your skis. This is obvious to me, I understand perfectly well the logic and the physics behind each set of movements but the problem is that my muscle memory does not. And it is in charge when I’m skating, not my analytical brain.

So there were a few close-calls, but nothing too serious. Mostly because I was so embarrassingly slow after the first descent has put me in touch with my current reality, that I even think some joggers were sniggering behind me as they approached and then decided not to over-take me. I had my headphones on, but I could tell. How nice of them. The bastards! :-)

Still, my back is making me remember that mountain-biking and rollerblading aren’t exactly the best sports for it and so tomorrow, if I can get off work early enough, I think I’ll go for a swim instead.

My my, aren’t I busy?

Note to self - check the frigging weather before leaving the house, will you?

Making a comeback to mountain biking after more than 2 years of inactivity by going to Sintra on a day with temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Centigrade before 11AM is not the brightest of ideas. Climbing Sintra is not an easy task on the best of days when I’m in top shape, let alone on a scorching day like today…

After a measly 10Km into the mountain I had to turn back and (after a substantial amount of rest) fly downhill to my car. But that part, at least, was a lot of fun! :-)

Lots of pampering the muscles will ensue (i.e. sprawling in the couch with the laptop or a good book).

Technorati Tags: moutain biking, sintra, sports

New episode of the Undercover Songs podcast

Get it while it’s hot, the first regular episode of the Undercover Songs podcast is out.

It’s actually been very fun doing this and I’m enjoying it more and more. I’m also learning a thing or two about producing an audio show.

We are aiming at having it out on thursdays so that people get it to listen to on the weekend. Hope I can keep that schedule.

Technorati Tags: cover, podcast, song

Fuming!

Boy I’m mad… So mad I just have to vent here!

If you are in a good mood, just skip this entry, it is not a pleasant one…

TVCabo, the main Portuguese Cable-TV company —and the only one to service my area as far as Cable or ADSL-TV is concerned— usually has terrible service. This is a given. But this time they’ve reached new heights!

It’s been 5-6 months now that I haven’t had decent service with either the wrong group of channels being provided or else just a minor set and always with huge billing mistakes.

Well for the last month I’ve just been getting 4 channels, the basic 4 that they are required by law to provide everyone, I think, and this is because of a screw-up between their billing and call-center staff (again!) which triggered the cancelation of my service.

Well today I got home to find a shinny new bill from them, billing me for the month’s service.

Argh! Please, please, someone give me an alternative to these incompetent asses! Please!

One whole month with only the basic service (which is totally free, mind you) and I still get billed!

Oh well, I’ll still have to delve in this long enough to write a letter to the entity that represents the customers in the PT group (Provedor do Cliente) and then I’ll just have to forget about it until next month probably…

Now if I could just give the final push in convincing my wife that we really don’t need cable TV at all… Ahh, getting rid of these morons once and for all… Ahh, the bliss…

There now, I’m feeling much better. You were very brave for reading (if you got this far). I applaud you! :-)

PS- Comments are off in this post, it is just too easy for this entry to become cluttered with loads of comments (rightfully) bashing TVCabo and there are already numerous sites out there that do that very well.

Yet another blog I’m involved with…

Sheesh, it just never stops these days! :-)

Well, but in this case I’m more of a helper/facilitator than an actual regular poster.

So without further ado, ladies and gentleman: Today was the official launch of the Lisbon Perl Mongers’ blog at lisbon.pm.org/blog.
This blog will be dedicated to news and activities of the group and therefore, the content will be mainly in Portuguese with possibly a few posts in English (when it is justifiable).

There’s not much there yet, but our fearsome leader will surely fill it to the brim with usefull news and bits of information, so stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: Perl, Lisbon.pm

Fun with music

Six days ago me and Fred where chatting about a particular cover song I had found and how funny it was when one of us (Fred I think) suggested half-jokingly that, given our love of covers, we should make a podcast about it.

You see, we have both got an interesting collection of covers and we usually point each other to particular good or funny ones so why shouldn’t we share this with everyone?

Well, it took us 5 days from that point to getting it all setup and the first episode produced and posted.

So if you like covers and you have an open mind :-) just go over to the Undercover Songs Podcast site and take a listen to Episode 0.

This has the potential to be a very funny project. Let’s see how it turns out…

Let the wait begin

That’s it, I’m upgrading my trusty old laptop. I’m getting one of these.

Now it’s only a matter of waiting endless months until I can get my hands on a model which won’t have the add-ons I wanted, but which I’ll accept anyway due to the withdrawal symptoms I’ll be showing by then.

The specs are very good and the price is well within what I expected, how could I resist? :-)

Faster than a speeding bullet?

Amazing, I’ve just received a package from Amazon with a partial delivery of an order that I placed yesterday.
But that’s not even the amazing part, what really struck me as awesome was that I received the package before I received the email warning about the shipping was sent!
Way to go Amazon! :-)

This means that my newest trilogy is now complete (Anderson’s “Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development”, Kochan’s “Programming in Objective C”, and Hillegass’ “Cocoa: Programming for OS X “).
And the pile keeps on growing…

Barcelona photos

I’ve posted the first batch of photos from the recent vacation in Barcelona up on Flickr.

For now they only cover part of the first day but the rest will follow soon enough.

The photoset is here and the slideshow version (flickr’s) is here.

As usual, it is best viewed on a Mac, on a PC the colors are rather drab.