My presentation from the GeekDinner last night:
2009-09-28-gd-fatherhood.pdf (225KB)

A bit experimental, but pretty well received. Had a few interesting chats with people after the talk.

I guess what I really wanted to do was suggest that geeks should have children, but have their eyes wide open about the underlying drivers. I hope I made a few people think before they jump, but still jump.

Another shit week in Africa..

• Having a few overseas people over for a braai in Bakoven and taking them for sundowners on Beta Beach really reminds you of what a cool lifestyle we have in Cape Town.
• Monday, resuscitated the pool, a few draughts and pizza in Obs with Andy, photo processing and a big backup session.
• Tuesday, gym, haircut at B’s, TF meeting.
• Wednesday, beer and sushi at Cappello with Jonathan, Stellenbosch with Georg.. Bohemia, Mystic, Fokofpolisiekar at Klein Libertas, Mystic again.
• Became a Thawte web of trust Notary.
• Thursday, garden services for the garden, Braai Bay in Bakoven, 20 guests, sundowners on Beta Beach. Good fun.

• “Careful, there is vegetarian stuff amongst the meat” — Debby

• Andrew and Vanessa seem very happy together.
• Ingi is no longer engaged and bicycle boy seems to be losing traction. Andrew and I are taking bids for how long this one has to go.
• Tunes of the week: Chris Chameleon Ek herhaal jou album.
• Mia’s tune of the week: Somebody’s Crying, Chris Isaak.
• Friday, cleaned up after the braai, tea with Cath on the green sofas, gym, swim, Joe’s famous tuna couscous salad for supper.
• Saturday, gym, swim, lunch at Knead with Chris, Georg, Danie and Gaby, nap, couscous salad, Mia watched Monsters vs Aliens again, watched Rushmore with Gaby.

• “If you are single, your early 30s is the best time of your life” — Georg

• Sunday, gym, swim, lunch and a nice Chardonnay at Deer Park with Gaby, dropped Mia off at her mom’s.. who was a real irritated cow, tea and a good plate of soup at Will’s.

See you at the GeekDinner tonight. I’m talking about modern fatherhood.

As expected Standard Bank did nothing about my ATM troubles other than wake me up at 7:30 one morning.. they made some promises, but delivered NOTHING. This is the 2nd time they did NOTHING.. and they are probably very content doing NOTHING.

Fucking Muppets.

A week after my Virgin Active IT systems post the problem was fixed. I had no contact from them, but I’m going to guess it’s because a Facebook friend’s wife works for VA. It’s a long shot and it could just have been luck, but my problem is gone.

Groovy.

I’ve figured out why Ubuntu’s configuration system bugs me.

Why is there a “Preferences” and “Administration” section in a drop-down menu?

Now.. is setting my screen resolution a preference or an admin thing? My guess would be admin… nope, it’s a preference.. like every user on the machine is going to have a preference about their screen res.. sure, I’m sold on that idea.

Muppets.

Please just put all these things under Settings like on a Mac.. and not items in a drop down menu.

bad trend..

root@blue[~joe/mail/../2000-old]# ls -la
total 1.7G
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2009-09-21 20:35 ./
drwx------ 29 joe joe 4.0K 2009-09-21 20:36 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 31M 2002-06-23 11:05 2000-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 36M 2002-06-23 11:04 2001-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 61M 2005-01-14 15:01 2002-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 112M 2005-08-11 21:44 2003-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 244M 2009-09-21 19:17 2004-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 340M 2009-09-21 19:20 2005-mail.tgz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 837M 2009-09-21 19:26 2006-mail.tgz

Some days I wonder if anybody ever reads this.. but then I usually remember, that’s not why I do it.

• Monday, gym, swim, bobotie at Crush, a visit to Dave‘s studio in SSW, Mia swimming lessons, tea with Naulene.
• Tuesday, Lions Head walk, burger with Jonathan at Jamaica me crazy, bumped into Henk and Elodie.
• Wednesday, tea with Alex Meiring at Neo, watched Adam at the Labia.. not bad, got Mia 3 new books.
• Thursday, gym, TF meeting, a few beers at Carlyle’s with Georg.. don’t eat the ostrich there.

• “..everyone gets their own pool to piss in” — Gerhard

• Tune of the week: Think Twice, Groove Armada
• Friday, new 26inch LCD and 1TB hdd, Helga bday at Pasta Factory, Kink.
• A night at Kink seems to always involve dogs chasing a car. The car is always there.
• Nokia’s GPS software licensing sucks.. just stops working when you really need it, no warning. Muppets.
• I bumped into an old varsity buddy.. after a brief chat he comment that “rules were never for you”.
• Saturday, walked to Glen Beach, lunch with Thomas at Greens, Andy’s braai in SSW.. food, friends and kids.. nice to see Gerjo and Misi.

• “it will be a sad day when SAB buys Windhoek” — Adrian

• I picked up the new Madeleine Peyroux album. It’s good.. but no real singles.. nothing like You’re gonna make me lonesome.
• Sunday, gym, swim, lunch at Knead.. try the cinnamon loaf french toast, we watched UP at V&A.. good, but not Monsters Inc., dropped Mia off, bumped into Marco, watched American Psycho again.

• “I simply am not there.” — Bateman

• btw. I think the new venture is making good progress. It took some time to figure out where to start.

Have a productive mini-week kids.

Bit of a blur really..

• Monday, Cappello visit to plan the next GeekDinner, gym, swim, lunch on the green sofa at Crush.. chicken mayo on rye, swimming lesson in Somerset West, tea with Naulene, tea at Andy’s, Steers for supper, photo processing at the office.

• “I want a mommy like that” — Mia, pointing at the yummy mummy swimming with her son.

• “It’s the price you pay for the life you choose.” — How to really upset an ex.

• “If only you were a normal 32yo” — Naulene, I’m still busy processing that one

• “You did much better than most men would have.” — Ingi, about Naulene

• Tuesday, tea and brainstorming with Parri at Crush.. mostly about school computer labs, gym, office to catch up on a week of work, TF meeting, dinner at Carlyle’s with Georg.. thai yellow beef curry.. very good, Waterford Chardonnay.. a long night, Georg knows all the Carlyle’s staff and there was a bday party, nice people.
• Wednesday Cliffe Dekker meeting about setting up a foundation.. nice guys, tea wit Eran at Neo, bumped into Bianca and Stephanie, watched District 9 at the Labia.. awesome, very funny.
• Thursday, my last telecon as chair of the ISPA PR working group, lunch with Cath at Sinn’s, nap.
• Friday, tea with Dave Nutter (photographer) at Neo, Winex with Cath, George’s bday at Daddy Cool, late night burger at Royal, Pierre’s bday at Julep.
• Saturday, rugby at Michell’s, Amobia wifi drive #2, Mia time.
• Sunday, braai in Bakoven with Georg, nap, Beta Beach walk, watched Matilda again.
• Tune of the week: My Curse, Afghan Whigs

• “Enslaved I only use as a word to describe the special way I feel for you” — Afghan Whigs

Try to be good.

Standard Bank ATM swallowed my card again. I’ve blogged about this before.

I’m not in the mood to share all my pain about this, but the following is clear:

A) The maintenance quality and maintenance process for Standard Bank ATMs in Cape Town is shocking.

B) Standard Bank don’t care. In all the time I spent on the phone today, nobody was interested in which ATM caused the problem or making sure that other people don’t have the same experience.

Fucking muppets.

ps. Lifestyle Centre, Kloof street.

Mostly a week in Joburg for iWeek..

• Monday, Telecoms World Africa 2009 with Cath and Gerhard at CTICC, take away pizza from Col’caccios in Camps Bay, TF meeting.
• Tuesday, flight to Joburg with Ingi and Patrick, WAPA and ISPA mancom dinner.

• “IS started out in a garage” — Marc Furman
  “but it was a 5 door garage” — Henk

• Wednesday, up early (like 6am), run, nice breakfast, iWeek day1, I gave a talk about Wireless Industry Self Regulation, dinner with Henk and Justin Spratt.
• Amusing how we only discovered that the OSA website does not really work in IE at iWeek.
• Thursday, run, iWeek day2, dinner with Dr. Ernst at Montecasino square.. ostrich steak and a nice Ken Forester Chardonnay, Talisker.. good catchup.
• I think I like Talisker the most, but I suspect it’s because of the packaging.
• Friday, iWeek day3, dinner with my Mom in Pretoria.

• “Who owns culture?” — Peter Sunde

• I’m no longer on the ISPA management committee. It was interesting, but it’s a fair amount of work.
• Saturday, brunch, flew back to Cape Town, fetched Mia, pizza at Limoncello with Georg.

• Samantha: I have to ask you a question. It’s a good one so think about it.
  If two people love each other, but they just can’t seem to get it together,
  when do you get to that point of enough is enough?
  Jerry: Never. — The Mexican

• “It’s okay. I didn’t get it the first time either. There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.” — Kung Fu Panda

• Sunday, tea, gym, swim, bumped into Matt and Oliver at Crush, braai in Bakoven with Chris, Georg, Cath and Parri, carnivore’s convention with some Stormhoek, Beta Beach sundowners.

• “I used to have loads of nice things, but I have no idea where they went” — Chris Rawlinson, about things he lost

• Thanks to Max I’m now a mentor in the UCT GSB Business Acumen for Artists program.

Be good.

This whole FICA / RICA thing is interesting. Mostly annoying and mostly punishes the people who have no evil intent. You would guess governments would be the leaders in stupid rules about managing personal information, but private companies seem to also be pretty good at doing it wrong.

Every time I go to the Virgin Active gym and swipe my membership card to enter the gym.. this big red message comes up. Something about my address details are out of date. I’ve asked 3 of the admin staff to please just remove that, it’s really annoying to wait for them to look at the message and then press cancel every time.

Their response was something like.. dude, you don’t want to open that can of worms, once you fill in your correct details you get phone calls and it’s just a painful process.. so, live with it.

My first thought was.. ok, how do I beat the system? How do I create more work for them than they create for me? I still have to figure this one out.

While I’m at it. The access control system for the kids area is broken 1/2 the time.. forcing people to write down 2 * 10 digit card numbers by hand.. where the staff never check any of this. Maybe once they lose a kid they will up their game… yes, I have mentioned this to two different club managers already.

This living the Cape Town Dream thing is hard work (-;

• Monday, photo processing, Camps Bay photo walk, played with DDWRT.
• Tuesday, installed a new sound system for the house, Keith made pasta.
• Seems Ingi is not so engaged anymore. (actually I have no clue)
• Wednesday, CTSP visit.. turns out I know our lecturer: Greg, squash with Rachel, Amobia meeting at Da Vinci’s Kloof St.. good burger.
• Thursday, squash with Alistair, 27 Dinner at Bombay Bicycle Club.. maybe the best one yet, foozball at Neighbourhood with Peter, a drink at Julep.. and some photos.
• I think we found a consumer brand for the new project: Fabbic.com
• Eran presented me with a Springleap tshirt and a few kind words at the 27dinner. Nice tshirt, good quality.
• Friday, lectured two classes at UCT, beer at &Union with Chris and Georg, drinks at Cath’s, Fail Party at Kink until they kicked us out.
• 500 FB friends mark.
• Saturday, Mia time, tea with Naulene, rugby at The Toad in Noordhoek with Cath and Parri, sunset Beta Beach walk and some Waterford Chardonnay.. Mia went for a swim, Joe’s famous tuna pasta salad, in bed by ten.
• Sunday, tea, watched Madagascar, gym, swim, smoothie, tea with Mia and Naulene at the Lord Charles, supper at Andy’s.
• Tune of the week: Perfect, Lightning Seeds.
• No quotes this week. I’m thinking this micro blogging thing is having an impact on my weekly updates.

I’m in Joburg for iWeek most of this coming week.