Weekly report

Hello there, here I am. Another end of Sunday, beginning of a new week. Have taken my shower, ready to go to sleep and prepare for another nice working 5 days week… Ops, this week we have Easter, so I won’t work on Friday! :-D And neither the other Monday! Cool. There’s a friend of mine coming to the UK with her husband and young son so I hope we will spend some time together over the next weekend.

This week was nice. The beginning of a new sprint in the project I’m working on, so we have presented to the users what we’ve done over the last month and they were very pleased with the results. It makes me pleased as well. We have also received congratulations from people in my company, so it couldn’t be better. The project is running fine, we’re working on breakthrough technology that isn’t available in the market yet and everyone is happy.

Yesterday instead I went to Currys to buy a printer. It has been a long time that my wife was telling me that she needs a printer and I was always leaving for later. I think that printers are so uncool that I didn’t want one of them. Yesterday, however, I had to write a letter by hand because I didn’t had a printer at home to write it on Word and print out. Then I have decided to go shop for a printer.

I was looking for an Ethernet enabled printer by a bargain price, but I think that Ethernet enabled printers and bargains aren’t compatible. I have found a nice HP printer with Ethernet and wireless by only £179, which is not expensive, but I was willing to expend far less than that.

I found them a nice HP PSC 1215, which is a printer combined with scanner and colour copier by only £69! That was a nice price. Then I decided to take that printer. As we were there, I decided to take a USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapter to plug into my wife’s notebook, so she could use external hard drives and her USB wireless NIC in full speed, as well as have more ports allowing her to connect multiple devices. The price for this card was a reasonable £29.

After picking up some normal and photo paper to try the printer out, we went home. I have quickly unpacked the printer soon to realize that I had forgotten the USB cable! D’OH! Damn me, I had forgotten that no printers come with cable and it was too late to run to the local PC World to grab one. I have then tried only the copier function, which works beautifully well. It is quick, can copy an A4 page in full colour and offers a wonderful value for money. Tomorrow I will stop by Currys again to get the missing cable and I will be able to test the scanner and printer functions.

Then I went to install the USB 2.0 adapter in my wife’s computer. When I opened the package I saw that it came with an AC adapter. I thought, hum, it looks weird. Then I have read the user manual that comes together and there was no mention at all to the AC adapter. I have plugged the card, Windows recognized it instantly and after forcing the installation of the correct drivers I tried to plug something. Havoc. It was complete mess. Plugging something in the card would mean that the computer would nearly freeze.

After playing around with the card and drivers I remembered the AC adapter. I unfolded its cable and to my surprise it was only 60cm long. After plugging it on the mains suddenly everything started to work… My thought was: What a useless piece of junk! Yeah, if you buy something for a laptop you will expect it to work without wires, don’t you??? Which is the point of having a laptop if you have to keep it close to at least two mains plugs??? Tomorrow I will be returning it to the store and having my money back. I will rather go for the D-Link adapter which does the same and works only with the PCMCIA power supply.

Despite the sunny weekend it was making, I had some work to do at home, so it wasn’t possible to go out. We have then rented three movies: Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, Shaun of the Dead and The Village.
Well, the Bridget Jones one was a big disappointment. Slow paced, poor story and it was clear that it was a trial to squeeze some more bucks from the franchise created by the first one.

Shaun of the Dead instead is great. It is a very nice satiric movie based on the original Dawn of the Dead (yeah, the original one, no that rubbish remake). Although it was a satiric movie, it captured nicely the message passed by the original Dawn of the Dead and works very well.

For who have never seen the original movie, it was a criticized view of the modern society, were we have all that brainless people waling around, behaving like each other, doing things without reasoning and attacking anyone who dares to think and be different. It is a subtle message and the end scenes of the original Dawn of the Dead leave you thinking because it is so damn true.

The Shaun of the dead does nearly the same, but without the powerful ending. It is less subtle in certain parts as well and obviously, as it is a British movie it replaces the American urban stronghold (the shopping mall) of the original movie by the British stronghold (the pub). Certainly Shaun of the dead is a good movie for everyone: the one who wants to have a good laugh and the one who wants to capture the message and think about it. Most of all, it keeps the values of the original one, and not (repeating myself) of the rubbish remake.

Then we come to the third movie: The Village. Well, I have mixed feelings about that movie. It comes from the same director of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. While the first of these three is a wonderful catchy and intelligent movie, with an unexpected ending and very nice details, the other two are… hum… not as good (I’m being nice here). Then we get the fourth one. It is an intelligent plot that makes you wonder if it is possible, but it gives you clues too early on the movie, so you realize what’s going on very early. It makes the movie lack in surprises then from the last third to the end. Overall, a nice movie, but I’m still waiting for the proper movie that makes justice to The Sixth Sense.

Ah, last but not least, my wife decided to do a nice roasted meat today with potatoes mesh and some vegetables. Very tasty. As you can expect, I couldn’t let it down on the wine and I have opened one of the bottles on my special reserve. It was a 2002 Rosso di Montalcino from Tenuta Caparzo. It is certainly a truly awesome wine. It can even surpass in quality some of the most famous Brunellos.

Today it was Formula 1 day. Nice day. For my surprise, the pilot of the day today was again Fernando Alonso. It is unbelievable the race he did. It was flawless, no errors and when he left the car he was clearly broken. I can’t imagine how he did it to the end, but his victory was well deserved and he certainly is proving that this year he is the driver to be beaten. I also have my thumbs up for Michael Schumacher. He took the F2004-M that is not a good car, did a very difficult choice of getting hard tyres loosing some performance and decided to do one less pit stop than the others. It paid him and he was able to put his car on the 7th place, giving him 2 points. It looks low, but I believe it is a good result given the circumstances, even though I think that Ferrari should stop joking and take the F2005 on the track as soon as possible or they will have a very difficult season this year.

Well, if you have read all this I should give you a medal. That’s all for this weekend. Have a nice week all and send me comments if you have something interesting to say.