The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 09 May 2007 16:28:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks, I performed Around the World with Gilbert & Sullivan with the Bournemouth G & S Operatic Society. This was a compilation concert of Gilbert & Sullivan mixed with other popular music, that went down very well and was highly enjoyable to be involved with.

Auditions for the next show, "Gondoliers" (Half term, Oct 2007) take place in a few weeks time, so I'd better get practicing those audition pieces.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sat, 31 Mar 2007 09:24:00 GMT

I've not been terribly impressed with the speed or quality of service of my Rails sites running at ASmallOrange.com. I think they are using mod-ruby in Apache, which doesn't quite work as well as it should, giving Application Errors fairly regularly for no good reason.

TextDrive are the official Rails host, as they hosted the first Rails project - BaseCamp. They support Lighttpd as a Rails Web server, which is very quick and fully compatible. They have an offer on at the moment for $99 a year shared hosting, which is not much more than ASmallOrange, so I thought I'd take the plunge and switch over.

It's taken a little longer to get Rails set up on a sub-domain, but since Textdrive has been hosting Rails applications longer than anyone else, there are a lot of good tutorials and users who can give a helping hand.

Follow up..

The Application Errors that I used to have with ASmallOrange.com stopped happening some time ago. They've obviously updated their setup at some point and fixed the issues. I still run a site on their service and would recommend it.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:28:00 GMT

Today I tried to book a ticket to go and see The Decemberists in Seattle using the Ticketmaster Web site. Everything went fine until I tried to pay for the e-ticket using my credit card issued in the UK. Lo and behold I am obliged to choose my State from a selection of US States and enter my Zip code.

This seems pretty silly since the ticket would not even be physically delivered. Given that making credit transactions in the US is ridiculously easy - my signature hasn't been checked once in the last month - it's amazing that the Web is so unaccommodating.

Bad Web design is one of my pet peeves. All Web sites should be location agnostic given the global nature of the internet. Ticketmaster have a UK presence, but the events on the US site don't show on the UK site. Seems the only way I can see the show is turn up on the night and hope.

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:16:00 GMT

I had an afternoon of sitting down enjoying myself on Sunday. Theatre, arcade and cinema respectively.

Firsly I went to see a Gate Theatre of Dublin production of Waiting for Godot at the Moore Theatre in Seattle. I'd not seen the play before, though it's reputation as a masterpiece of absurdist theatre had not escaped my attention.

The performances were highly memorable and thoroughly engaging. The play has moments of humour, pathos and tragedy, exploring memory and companionship. I can only say that I'm very pleased that I saw this particular production and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

I followed high culture with pop culture and spend a couple of hours in an arcade playing amongst other games OutRun 2 SP - which I completed on the two easiest levels. Seems a little easier than the original Out Run

Next I settled down in the Cineplex to watch the new movie Flushed Away, which is a fantastically entertaining film. It brings together the production quality of Dreamworks with the great characterisation and humour of Aardman Animation. This really does feel like an Aardman film, the wide mouthed characters are clearly related to Wallace and Grommit. Take your kids to see this movie and if you don't have kids, steal someone else's - you won't regret it (at least until you get arrested).

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:32:00 GMT

I'm always up for trying local food when I travel and Seattle is no exception to that rule. So yesterday I had my first ever burrito, at Taco Del Mar - a Mexian fast food franchise in America and Canada.

I wasn't at all sure what I was asking for, so I tried to follow Mike's lead picking a wholegrain burrito with guacamole, sour cream, beans, rice, chicken, cheese and hot sauce. My order came to a couple of dollars more than Mikes, so some of that stuff must have been optional.

When we got back to the office I had a quick lesson on the art of eating a burrito. Unwrap one end of the foil wrapping, eat the end and unwrap as you go. I later realised that these same instructions were printed on the bag.

So what did it taste like? Relatively satisfying but kinda mushy. I think I'd prefer it with a little more crunch or bite. Not bad though, interesting mix of flavours. I think perhaps the fun is in choosing a different mix of fillings each time.

Taco Del Mar's speciality seems to be seafood (as the name would indicate, so next time I might get a fishy burrito (if that doesn't sound like too much of an inuendo).

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:30:00 GMT

Well, the nice weather lasted a few days and was followed by some bitter cold (I'm told these are typical of an El Niño year) but now the rain has set in. Still I'm hardly unused to rain, living as I do in sunny England.

On Sunday, I visited the Bodies exhibition at 800 Pike. Fascinating! If you have not heard yet, this exhbition is made up of preserved human remains, disected and annotated.

It's not nearly as gruesome as I imagined it would be, but it is a little creepy to think that these people all had lives. In some ways it's like reading an anatomy book in 3D.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:13:00 GMT

My company has sent me to our Seattle office to work on a project that requires support by someone in the same time-zone as our customer in South Africa.

This is the first time I've been to the US. I've never really had the urge to visit before - there are many other places in the world that are more interesting to me due to their cultural differences from the UK. However, I've recently become more interested as I video conference with my colleagues in Seattle every day.

I'm staying in Bellevue, the office is in Kirkland and about the same distance away to the NE is Redmond, home of Microsoft.

So far I've only really seen shopping malls and fast food restaurants, but hopefully I'll explore downtown a bit at the weekend.

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:50:00 GMT

I did a very bad thing.

I forgot about a double nurse appointment at the local NHS clinic.

In my defence, I have just been told that I have a week to get prepared for a month in Seattle away from my family, and suddenly have to plan our four week holiday in South Africa this week. I'm very busy and am not very well organised. I admit I was wrong.

HOWEVER...

I received a phone call this afternoon by someone who seemed to think they were my mother. Now, I wouldn't presume to tell my mother how to talk to me, but anyone else in the world... Presidents, Prime ministers, Popes, Spiritual Gurus, Teachers, etc., do not have that luxury.

'Do you know that you had an appointment at eight forty this morning?'
'oh... um, oh s- f-, I'm really, really sorry. I completely forgot.', says I.

But that did not satisfy the almighty and clearly perfect entity at the clinic, my confession was not yet over. She explained to me how they were always over booked and my missing an appointment meant that other people may not be able to get one.

I felt suitably humbled and replied, 'I appreciate that and I am truly very sorry indeed.'

Still not enough. I was told that I would not be allowed another appointment for a new patient screening, although I could see a doctor.

Hang on...

Surely to waste a doctor's time is even worse that wasting a nurse's? Does this mean that I can never use the NHS again unless I have been hacked in half or run down? I shall put being-hacked-in-half on my To Do list immediately (which thankfully doesn't work very well as you will have already understood).

I felt that by paying approximately £300,000 over my planned lifespan toward the NHS, I really shouldn't be barred for life for missing one appointment. I've visited the doctor about four times in my adult life, each time with little pills to sort me out (often antihistamines), so I hardly think I've put an unnecessary strain on resources.

I tried to ask what I was supposed to do now, but the nurse curtly said "goodbye" and hung up on me (making Anne Robinson sound polite and friendly). I was stunned.

Now it strikes me that the person on the phone was venting her anger about the government's lack of NHS funding, at me. I don't mind being told that I've been inconsiderate, but I really can't take the entire blame for the NHS being overloaded. I will happily pay the 40 minutes of Nurses' salary that represents the time wasted by my inconsiderate forgetfulness.

The NHS is a business that happens to be paid by the government out of our taxes. That makes me a 'customer'. In any other business, a receptionist who spoke to a customer as I was spoken to would be fired.

The problem is not that the customers/patients are bad and need punishing, but that the company they work for is badly run and under funded. My previous screening was cancelled by the clinic. The only reason I asked for the appointment was because the doctor told me to - I think I have better things to do with my time.

If it wasn't a monopoly that got my £300,000 pounds , I would go to a competing business who did not treat me so horrendously. If you want an example of why public run monopolies are bad for the consumer, just look at BT or British Gas before privatisation.

If I did go to a private health care company in protest, I certainly wouldn't get a refund of monies paid.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:15:00 GMT

I thought I'd done a pretty good job of booking the hotel in Paris entirely in French (trois chambres simple pour un nuit). However, on arrival at 2200h - my colleagues and I were told at the reception of the Hotel Printemps that there was no reservation. Thankfully they had three shabby little rooms on the top floor available.

It didn't exactly set us up for a good meeting the next day and the train journey was sweltering. Fortunately, the village we went to was beautifully picturesque and within a few minutes of arriving, we felt relaxed and calm.

The second night was spent in the Quality Hotel in the business district. Usually the rule is that if something has to mention an attribute such as quality in its name, it will probably be trying to make up for a lack of that attribute. However, the Quality Hotel was indeed of high quality. My evening meal of duck with a garlic jus was particularly good.

The meetings went well and my return flight came far too quickly with not a moment of time available for sightseeing or shopping. Must revisit Paris soon for leisure rather than work.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sun, 20 Aug 2006 18:59:00 GMT

Which brings me unpleasantly to something touched upon in the white book...

When pairing, it is essential to maintain a level of personal hygiene that befits the process of sitting very close to another developer for the whole day.

So far one half of our new recruits has proved to be somewhat less than satisfactory in this area. It's hard to know - as an Englishman and a gentleman - quite how to breach the subject, but breach it I must.

I have slightly more confidence in my point of view as I've had this opinion shared by a long standing colleague.

The drinking, however, is not within the scope of my interest, having not as yet had a detrimental effect on any project that I have a current interest in. These things are often over-emphasised in our company, since the drunken antics (several years ago) of one former employee.

Anyhow, three months probation should be sufficient to determine the validity of our choices.

I wish them both the best of good luck.