Friday, 2001/09/07 11:49:05 PM
What a busy day. I am on leave from work after today, and so I have been trying to finish off tasks that could be finished, and getting other people up to speed with what I am working on so they can carry the tasks forward while I am out of office.

I never knew I was working on so many things...

Then right in the middle of all this - the database has started to give trouble. Various programs being run have been aborting because of bad data blocks on the database. Administration of the database is no longer my job, I'm in charge of the application that uses the database itself now, but the database administrator is out on leave. So I end up having to liase with a couple of other people to correct this situation.

I ended up being the last of all the people involved with the database fix to leave... It feels like old times...

When I got home, I invited a bredrin (good friend in Jamaican parlance) around to have a drink... Guess what we had: 12 Year old Appleton Jamaican Rum, chased by some good old Pepsi. Yup... Rum & Pepsi... It does a body good. Or at least, it sure makes you feel that way.

Thursday, 2001/08/06 06:39:23 PM
The project is over. And it was successful.

The Reggaeboyz are out of the World Cup.
The manager of the Jamaica Football Federation, Capt. Horace Burrell called a press conference and fired the Brazilean Coach at 1:00AM. Personally, I think that he should go too. Why should the buck stop with the coach. If the coach should go, then the manager should too. Thats my opinion. With regard to the Honduran team, who put the Boyz out of contention, well, they look really great. I wonder if thats because they were playing us? Hmmm.

Well, tomorrow I go on some well desired (if not well deserved) leave. Three glorious weeks of it.
Actually, I am going to the US for two weeks, then I'll return home. As a result I have had to be up and down purchasing US dollars at various banks here. Guess what? I was withdrawing Jamaican dollars at one bank to purchase US dollars at another bank (the first bank wouldn't sell me the amount I wanted), and was given a counterfeit $1000 bill. I didn't realise it until I tendered the bill at the other bank. They acually were going on like I was trying to give them the funny money on purpose, but after explaining myself, they backed down. They gave me a photocopy to take back to the first bank, where I was able to persuade them to give me back my $1000, so you know I'm pretty happy.

By the way, I went to watch the next six-a-side match my company played in, it was pretty good. They won this one five love. It seems that they are one of the top teams in the New Kingston Six-a-Side Competition.

Anyway, I'm out... PEACE!

Tuesday, 2001/09/05 12:33:00 AM
Well, its late again, surprise, surprise. Just rocked my son to sleep. Apparently he got too much sleep today, so he refused to sleep till now. I guess thats the joys of fatherhood for you. Watched a six-a-side football match earlier. The team from the company I work for was playing another company. My company has a good team, we won 5-1. It was a nice change from the "work, home, work, home" cycle we repeat every day. Maybe I'll attend the next match...

Monday, 2001/09/03 10:52:32 PM
Well... This project I've been working on since about July is drawing to a close. I am feeling relieved on one hand, bacause the time I have to spend on that project contracts daily, but at the same time, I feel sad, because the people I was working with on the project were very nice. I will miss them.

Stayed home from work today, felt rather tired, a combination of flu and late nights I guess. Planned to apply myself to the project, but didn't till late afternoon. Prior to that I spent time generating some graphics for a website (twas more fun).

Dom was here all day, using one of my computers to generate a flyer for his business. Yeah, he really was here all day. He isn't a power user of Word, and me, I've spent 90% of my time in file editors, but not in Word. In fact, I scarcely ever use word processors. Oh, had some nice chinese food for lunch.

Ohh again, heard this tragic story today. Seems an 18 year old boy from Norbrook (where I used to live) crashed his father's BMW. Sounds like he was out with it on a joyride without permission, but apparently he didn't hurt anyone. The cops took him home to get the papers, and the boy used his father's gun to kill himself. Can you imagine how his father must be feeling. Plus I hear the cops are going to press charges against him for leaving the gun around carelessly.

Co-incidentally, when I was living in Norbrook, a friend of mine was driving his father's car. A bunch of us were in it just hanging with him for fun. He was going to pick up his brother from school, and we were listening to some god-awful rock music on the radio. I remember he turned the music way up and then he tromped on the accelerator. We flew down the road, and he was doing quite well, up til we got to the S-bend on the Norbrook Road side of Norbrook. We made it through the first corner ok, and started the second and guess what. Some women were walking up the road, and they heard our tires coming and panicked. My friend swerved to avoid them, which he did, but immediately he lost any semblance of control he had over the car. We hit the embankment at a pretty good clip and the right hand side even partially climbed it. It was a very steep hillside so you can understand that the front of the car was smashed. To make matters worse, one of the women who ran across the road ran into the side of the car just as it came to a stop and she hit her head pretty badly. She needed seventeen stitches.

We were all pretty scared about what his father would do, but we owned up immediately. After all the woman had to go to hospital. His father cussed blue murder, and he was grounded for quite a while, but we were never anywhere near thinking of killing ourselves.

I guess things really have changed, haven't they? Still, I don't know the people involved. Maybe the guy had a lot of other problems.

Sunday, 2001/09/02 12:01:15 AM
Ok. We lost... Beaten for the first time in a gazillion matches at the "Office" (National Stadium, Jamaica). The Reggae Boyz(Jamaica's Soccer team) were beaten two-one by Mexico at home, losing some sorely needed points. Its terrible!

The Reggae Boys looked good early and in spurts throughout. They went ahead in the first half, then Onandi Lowe seems to me to have put his (by now) infamous anger problems on display again. This time, he began to walk instead of running to the ball and engaged the referee in several heated discussions. He actually also got a yellow card.

The rest of the side seems to me to have tried their best throughout, but Onandi got several easy chances when he was in "Sulk" mode, and did nothing with them.

I enjoyed the match though.

Sunday, 2001/09/02 08:15:46 AM
Curses! No coffee or milk in the house... and the supermarket doesn't open 'till 10:00 AM.It's enough to put you in a black mood... The thing is, I knew about the milk at least from yesterday, but forgot.

Saturday, 2001/09/01 07:11:14 PM
There was a section in the Flair (a local newspaper section, I guess you'd call it) dealing with office affairs. Interesting reading. They were thorough, I think. They did a survey of people, and roughly 70% were against it, and 30% for. What struck me was that 90% of the people who were for it were men. The women were against it almost to a (wo)man. They pointed out the pros and cons: men like to talk to others of their "conquests" and the women have more to lose from them, i.e. the respect of their peers, etc. etc.

I have worked at my present company for a number of years, and the number of such affairs are startling. They seem to me to be like other relationships though. Some work, (quite a few, from what I've seen) and some don't. I don't believe they are evil, in and of themselves, as some others think. They must be looked at like any other relationship you might enter into. They are not to be rushed into, and you must be careful of the type of person you are becoming involved with, as you would/should in any other relationship.

I guess the only thing I would say is, if both parties are single and it really seems the right thing to do to you both, go for it. If you're married, think twice. If you still want to go ahead, think again. In short, it can be a most perilous path to tread... But then, it's perilous for married folks to get involved in any external relationships, whether they do it in or out of the office, am I right?

But the potential for embarrassment and pain is even greater in the context of a office affair. Nuff said.