At least they pretend to be sorry

I used to get terrorised by calls from SKL, a public lottery. About twice a week they tried to sell me stuff, although I already complained that I don't want to be called, although phone advertisment is illegal in germany and although I had put my name and number in their not-to-call-list. I complained again and today I got the following reply:

wie in unserem o.g. Email angekündigt, haben wir bei der Staatlichen Lotterieeinnahme Gregor eine Stellungnahme zu Ihren Ausführungen angefordert. Diese hat daraufhin bei den angegliederten CallCenter eine Stellungnahme aufgefordert. Daraus geht folgender Sachverhalt hervor:

Sie wurden vom CallCenter GCS Leipzig angerufen. Dabei unterlief dem CallCenter-Agenten ein Zahlendreher, so dass er statt der Nummernendung 662 die Ziffern 226 wählte. Das Gespräch dauerte ca. 40 Sek. und endete mit dem Hinweis, dass der gesuchte Teilnehmer verstorben sei.

Sowohl das CallCenter GCS als auch die Staatliche Lotterieeinnahme Gregor bedauern diesen Irrtum sehr und möchten sich sich auf diesem Weg bei Ihnen entschuldigen.

Wir hoffen, wir konnten Ihr Anliegen zu Ihrer Zufriedenheit klären und stehen Ihnen selbstverständlich auch weiterhin gerne zur Verfügung.


OK, so a stupid call center guy mistyped my number while dialing. I imagine the poor chaps in Leipzig, sitting at old bakelite phones with dialing-wheels, or even a plug-board... I also don't really recall to being dead or talking about dead people while I had them on the line, they also did adress me by my name (and I don't think there is somebody in Erlangen with my last name, having a 662 instead of 226 at the end of his number).

Either I accept that they think I am stupid, or I just complain uselessly. I think I'll do the latter...

The hard way...

In case you see me the next days and wonder why my right arm is looking strange: there is a reason why they teach you not to put burnable liquids on a barbecue... I tried and my right lower arm got serious burns (first degree, so cooling and desinfecting it with vodka should be sufficient, at least I hope...)

Ah, and by the way, we won the golden pineapple, the city is blocked with football fans celebrating the 3:1 against portugal.

I'll stop typing now because it hurts like hell...

So, we lost...

...what's the problem? We went further than anyone would have thought, the world cup has been and still is one big party where people from all over the world are in germany and have fun. For a couple of weeks we were a nice and cheerful nation, showing hospitality and being generally nice and cool. Now we lost. In the last minute of a good and equal game. People started frowning again. People shouted at us "How can you have fun now?". We will turn german again...

I think we lost because Xavier Naidoo was singing before the game. He can kill any heroes with his depressive whining about pseudo religious stuff. But it was a nice game anyway, if you understand german, read more here.

And, by the way, the one who tried to cheer most at the beergarden where we watched the game was an englishman.

Philosophical Aspects of Football

"Se pensamos no título? O nosso principal objectivo é ganhar o próximo jogo, pois não podemos pensar em ser campeões se não conseguirmos bater a Inglaterra", afirmou Luís Figo...

Found in Publico Online. Yes, you can't win the final if you loose the quarter final. What a strange coincidence that is...

Shutdown

So, back in HH again for the last try to install our detector. The broken modules have been replaced or repaired, additional shielding has been put everywhere and some stuff, which was put together wrongly will be put together correctly. Today was especially boring, coming in around noon, waiting for a task to do, watching a bit of football, some more waiting, then going home. Tomorrow will be either the same or complete stress.

I think I could have stayed in Erlangen, but from the political point of view I need to be here. I just feel a bit misplaced, got some confuse ideas about how many hours people in physics should work, do work and just wait... This stay here will get me more confused than I want to be. I need a holiday, no, I need to finish and leave as soon as possible.

Best Photo Evva!

English Fan
Originally uploaded by perreira.

This photo just broke the 5000 views barrier...

Most of my pictures have 20 views at most. Even the swedish girl in stockings did not get above 800. I have no clue what makes this one special... Is it somebody famous and I am not aware of it? Victoria Beckham, maybe?

5 days HH again

So, I have to go to HH next week again. As you all now from my various rantings, I work on a detector which is more or less broken, together with colleagues, some of which I don't think that they are, let's say, competent...

We will install the detector next week after some repairs and after some changes (which won't help, because they did not remove the origin of the failures but only will weaken the symptoms, if at all). As it seems, I am one of the very few who actually know how to do things I have to go there.

Just right now I got the schedule. A 6 page PDF, generated by MS Project. And a textfile with a list of manpower associated with the tasks. I got it twice. The sender sent it again, because in the first version he forgot the subject. Opening the PDF, you get a fancy Gantt-Chart, which shows which tasks follows which and how long it does take. Unfortunately nobody in management has any idea what these charts normally are used for and complain that Project does stupid things when they have a person with 500% workload working 24 hours on 5 different tasks in parallel. So they leave out the association of tasks with people and do an extra list in their favourite text-editor, there nothing turns red or changes the timeline...

My tasks (which not only I will do, but also two to three others...) will be: after 6 hours of driving to HH, be at some meetings around lunchtime probably, remove very sensitive equipment around midnight. Then on the next day at 1500 start a 24h shift installing the very sensitive detector again. Third day: around midnight cable everything up on the sensitive inside, cable up the outside, test everything, remove cables again. Fourth day, around 8 am, cable up the outside.

Just to get me right here: I don't complain about working at odd hours (although I will stay at a friend's house, who will be very delighted about this schedule...), I don't complain about working a lot of hours once in a while. What I just want to say is: nobody seems to have taken any care about organising this. It's just the naive way of this follows that. No thinking about if it makes sense to have people doing stuff under pressure, no way of possible error. If something goes wrong, this schedule is gone. There are no buffers, no checkpoints, nothing. I would expect that people who reach management start buying a book about project management and at least get some ideas... But we are physicist. We can do everthing, we don't need to learn...

Endlich mal was los...

Oranges

Today I went to a concert to collect money for restauration of the Erlangen Orangerie. The Orangerie was built sometime in the 18th century, when it got fashionable to grow citrus fruits in places where they don't usually grow... Already in the 19th century it was required for the Erlangen citizens to save the Orangerie, as it should be destroyed to make way for a hospital wing. Today the Orangerie is in a very bad state, especially the roof needs to be replaced urgently. The university, to whom it belongs, has not enough money, so they did some concerts and expositions to collect money. If you want to participate, you'll finde more information (in german) on http://www.rettet-die-orangerie.de/

Morgan Super Sport

Morgan Super Sport
Originally uploaded by stormbear.

I want one of these :-)

Cricket

Batsman
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Yesterday I went with Martin to a Cricket Match between England and Trinidad and Tobago Fans in Nünberg. Unfortunatly Phil could not join us, so we missed most of the score. But it was fun anyway. Pictures are in the usual places...

Cycling

Did some cycling after work: 17km, average speed 19.8 km/h. The drawn path looks much more oriented than I have been when I was going around, just having a vague idea where I was... (I had the map with me, but I was never sure). I also ordered a step counter today, so be prepared to much more boring stuff like "I walked 10.000 steps today..."

Politics...

University elections are coming. You can tell by the liberals spamming my blog and conservatives having ugly posters with spelling errors plastered all around university. Sometimes I am quite happy to be no student anymore.

GMT and a bit...

Found this on the World-Cup page of RTP, the portuguese public broadcast service. Seems that Portugal is in different times than the rest of europe would have thought...

A short look at the Wikipedia:
The portuguese Wikipedia is amazingly short on GMT, only saying that it was substituted in 1972 by UTC. The german wikipedia is more extense, but does not include summer times. The most concise entry is in the english one, from where we learn that Portugal is indeed in the UTC timezone (formerly GMT), but when in Summertime has UTC+1. Germany has one hour later than Portugal, so it is in UTC+1 (and UTC+2 in summer).

And for those who find that too much to read, there is also pretty pictures on Wikipedia:

Berch

Drinking
Originally uploaded by perreira.

As usual: fun.

Whose fault is it...?

Contrary to Kryptikmo's theories it's all feminism's fault.

Berch Bernd

Berch Bernd
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Memories of the times passed.

Berch

Berch
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Just went to a short visit to the Bergkirchweih. After three beers I went home. They were closing anyway...

As this was a nice quiet evening, the weekend will be hard...

Sharpness

One of the signs I have not spent sufficient time in my Erlangen Flat the last couple of months: the kitchen knives are blunt. They still are sharper than the knives found in most kitchens, but not sharp enough to be of real use. The idal sharpness is reached when a silk cloth falling on the blade gets cut in half by it's own weight. I have not yet reached this, but usually my knives are sharp enough that you only notice that you have cut yourself when you count your fingers or are standing knee deep in blood. The advantages of sharp knives are not only that cutting is much easier, it is also that wounds don't hurt and heal much faster.

So, off from the keyboard and hands on the sharpening steel. (Another word were the german is nicer: Wetzstahl)

At Home

So, I am more or less finally back in Erlangen. Again. And I will never ever go to work at the experiment again. Again. At least I don't have a flat anymore in HH. If you wonder why I prefer the small province town to the big rambling city full of oportunities and interesting and good stuff:

Today I started with breakfast at a friend's place, together with a couple of other friends, having white sausages and beer. Then I went with a really nice and good looking girl to a beer garden with a beautiful view, where I spent the afternoon (we went there with my DKW). The evening I spent with another friend in another beer garden. I did not get anything done today of the stuff I wanted to do (taxes are due, I should clean up my flat, I should prepare something for the tutorials tomorrow...)

In HH, I might have gone to a Cafe and sat there for some hours reading a book or so, but probably would have spent the day watching bad TV series. (Just for the files: I do have a few friends in HH, but I most probably would not be able to get my ass up and do something with them. I usually vegetated through the weekends, not being able to speak or move.)