Allons enfants de la patrie…

Hear you Mac read this article!

225 years ago, on the 14th of July 1789, the Parisians stormed the Bastille and freed 7 inmates (4 forgers, 2 lunatics, and one deviant).

Yesterday, I marched into the Sonoma Pétanque field to partake in the commemoration of this event and schmooze with the local deviants and lunatics.
IMG_4417I also came to munch on some food and hear Le Facteur incite the crowd to mayhem through his fierce rendition of La Marseillaise.

Due Zighi Baci (Two Gypsy Kisses) provided the musical entertainment and Michael Van Why and Sheri Mignano gave us a very believable version of a French “bal-musette”.
Le Facteur took advantage of this and commandeered an innocent woman to gyrate with him on the dance floor. Women beware of smooth-talking letter carriers!

I also showed up to play a little pétanque.

When I arrived, around 9:30 a.m. the weather was fair, but in the afternoon the temperature increased significantly and the oppressive heat made it unpleasant for everybody to play.

The contestants were as follows:

  1. Holly Sammons, Bleys Rose, Steve Van Vleck
  2. Shannon Bowman, Joan Robertson, Ken Goddard
  3. Erin McTaggart, Dave Katz, John Giil
  4. Brendan Cohen, Cliff Knuckles, Lee Hastings
  5. Peter Mathis, Chris Wood, Minette Etallaz
  6. Patrick Vaslet, Marcy Mallette, Dick Nyquist
  7. Bernard Passmar, Blaise Weist, Rita Gordon
  8. Steve Jones, Jean-Michel “Le Facteur” Poulnot, David Nickelson
  9. Alain Efron, Schon Schurecht, Dede Goddard
  10. Adair Hastings, Jean-Claude Bunand, Julie Giil
  11. Delio Cuneo, Peggy Silversides, Bandon Yukich
  12. Carlos Couto, Nina Swusdipani, Lynda Evans

IMG_4462The format of the tournament was “à la mêlée” and this time the capricious Gods of Pétanque were kind to me. They assigned two charming and talented ladies (Schön and Dede) to me and it became quickly evident that we were bound for glory.

Two 13 points games were scheduled before lunch. They would determine who would play in the Concours and who would play in the Consolante.
Our team did very well. We won both games with a score of 13/8 each time and qualified for the Concours.

Then we were summoned to lunch.

As a member of La Pétanque Marinière, I am partial to our club, but I must admit that in the culinary domain we have been regularly outclassed by the VOMPC.

IMG_4381Yesterday, under the patronage of Shannon Bowman (president of the VOMPC) Christine Piccin and her gang did an absolutely bang-up job.
According to its website, the VOMPC took 100 reservations for their picnic. That’s a lot of people and a lot of food to prepare, but Christine’s brigade came through with flying colors.

I don’t think that anybody could find fault with anything. Every dish was a success.
The lamb was particularly tasty. It was so good that the local  wasps quickly spread the word and crashed our party by the dozens.

Congratulations to Christine Piccin and her gang for an outstanding job!
By comparison, our club (La Pétanque Marinière) is an old-fashion, fuddy-duddy club stuck in the past and marinating in a stale broth.
It needs to change (especially in the culinary field) to remain relevant.

But back to pétanque.

After lunch the tournament continued.

To expedite the tourney, nine (9) points elimination games were scheduled. Personally, I don’t care for such games. It doesn’t give you a chance to recoup from a few disastrous hands and that’s what happened to us.

On our 3rd game we were eliminated from the tournament by Steven Jones, Le Facteur and David Nickelson.
I know that we could have done better, but such are the vagaries of the game.

At 4:30 p.m. in view of the heat (and being particularly anxious to watch a rebroadcasting of the FIFA World Cup finals), we opted to leave the field and head home.

The final results of the tournament communicated to me by Shannon Bowman:

Concours:

Semi-finals:
Sammons/Rose/Van Vleck vs Jones/Le Facteur/Nickelson
Sammons’ team prevailing

Finals:
Mathis/Wood/Minette vs Sammons/Rose/Van Vleck

Mathis’ team winner of the Bastille Day Concours (13/11)

Alain

PS: To look at pictures of this event and listen to accompanying background music, turn the sound on, and click on the link “My Photos” located on the right side of this page.

 

Unholy labor

Today I went to La Boulange for a cup of coffee and a “sticky bun”, and later on I drove to the supermarket to do some grocery shopping.
What’s the BFD about that, are you going to ask?

Well my friends, today is the 4th of July, America’s Independence Day and, God bless America, it is business as usual throughout the land.
Stores will remain open for at least half a day, and even though some employees will have to work on that day, they will do it willingly for the greatest satisfaction of all.

In France on the other hand, stores are denied the right to stay open on Sundays, evenings or holidays even though most of the public favors such measures.
While there is endemic unemployment, the French labor unions stubbornly refuse to endorse initiatives that could significantly reduce that problem.

They insist that Sunday must remain a privileged rest day to be spent with family.
They assert that the absence of parents on Sundays (with children left to themselves) would favor delinquency.
And finally, they argue that some bosses would not hesitate to force their employees to work against their will.

Well, what good is it to spend Sunday with family if you cannot pay the rent and put food on the table?

I suspect that French unions members have been genetically modified to become allergic to change. When their hear about it, it gives them a rash.
And just like Pavlov’s dogs they have been programmed to go on strike whenever they hear the word “reform”.

Today, the unemployment rate in France hovers around 10.5%, (one of the highest in the European Union) compared with 5.1% in Germany, 5.2% in Russia and 6.1% in the US.

Obviously there is something out of whack in the land of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” but the unions stubbornly block any reform attempts.

They still long for the glory of the Popular Front, even though it lasted less than 18 months.

Nobody can deny the beneficial effects of the 1936 Matignon Accords.

Among other things it:

  • enacted the law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid annual leave for workers
  • enacted the law limiting the working week to 40 hours (outside of overtime)
  • created collective bargaining
  • created the right to strike (that has been grossly abused)
  • ensured that there would be no retaliation against strikers.

Those measures were very positive and nobody is asking to change them. But remaining mired in the past is not the way to improve the future.

For a long time, business operated under the dictatorship of company bosses. Today the country is hobbled by the Mafia-like grip of the labor movement on the government.
Neither one is good.

Due to the intransigence of the Labor Movement exists in France the very possibility of another May 1968.

Some people sometimes ask me “Would you ever go back to France?”
Only if they get a sensible form of government and a balanced budget.

In other words, it is highly unlikely!

Alain

Murphy’s law

The easier engineers make it to operate a machine and the more difficult it will be to fix.

In other words, the more sophisticated the apparatus and the more arduous the repairs.

I started to use a computer at the dawn of the Cyber Age (the Sixties) when CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) reigned supreme over all the microcomputers.

In order to prod a computer to work, you had to enter some basic commands into the system and respectfully wait for it to perform its magic.
It was a little awkward but not extraordinarily difficult and few things could go wrong. And if they did, they were easily fixable.

Twenty years later (due mainly to Xerox and later to Apple), running a computer has become much easier.
A “mouse” allows neophytes to point and click on an icon to perform a task.

IMG_0961Modern computers are much easier to operate indeed, but due to the intricacy and complexity of their Operating Systems, their delicate mechanism can easily be upset.
And if you attempt to go under the hood and tinker with its clockwork, things could easily spin out of control.

A modern computer is like a large warehouse with a multitude of separate containers. If you want to fix something you first have to know where to go, and then what to do, and few casual operators are knowledgeable enough to do that.

Over the years I have painfully learned that whenever dealing with a computer you should meticulously monitor the health of your machine.
Ideally, you should keep a log of incidents and attempted corrective actions.
If something goes wrong, (and computers can be very testy) it is easier to backtrack and undo (if you can) what you last did.

The bane of modern computers is its excessive (and often confusing) use of elaborate passwords.
When trying to fix a problem (especially on Apple products) you will be asked again and again to enter various passwords and many people prove incapable of coming up with the right answer.

The best way to remember anything is to write it down, but scribbling illegible characters on little pieces of paper is not the solution.

Personally, I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of those pesky passwords and whenever I am urged to enter or change a password, I refer to that sheet.
And I keep it up to date.

I also keep those passwords on a USB key that I can carry with me anywhere.
If I travel  and need a password, I can plug my key in any USB port and retrieve the needed Sesame.

The secret of getting along with computers is organization, patience, attention to details… and the goodwill of a trusted computer geek.

Alain

I have shown you this video before, but it is worth watching again: