It's good because it provides me a plausible excuse not to attend the company christmas party, which I usually need a day or two and a handful of otc pain pills to recover from
I'm skipping this year's company party too... on the pretense that if I have to take a train, I can't be in two places at once and I have another one to be already ;)
Coding is nice, coworkers are nice too but only because teaching me is the pet promotional project... and managers are still happy I'm female.
This week was a bit chaotic, as I have to coordinate a lot with another team that's upgrading the application I'm still building new functionality for. But we can't stop that for over a year so coordinating it is.
@rene Nice! Get the discounted chocolate coins and marzipan frogs! :D I had a chocolate letter and 50 euro's in my shoe this morning, we watched Paul en Sint on TV yesterday with cake and kruidnoten...
@Magisch Yeah, my feelings aren't exactly happy with all that either.
@Tinkeringbell they have a whole stand with roasted almonds with different coatings. I was at the council office yesterday to request a new passport (mine is expiring) and the smell was just intoxicating
I already got some homemade charity cookies to give away as presents. They have a charity drive here where people bake cookies and then volunteers package and sell them with all the proceeds going to the local charity. They're pricy (6.50€ for 200g assorted cookies) though.
also planning on getting some local honey and maybe beeswax candles
For now, I think all I need to buy this month is a new winter coat and some fancy christmas clothes to appease parents at the christmas dinner... Luckily all that can be done through the internet :D
@Tinkeringbell my company's xmas party is fun, they host a small market where you can use credits to haggle together your kerstpakket. There usually is a bookstand, wines, cheese, chocolate, random toys. I usually get a cookbook. Oh, and there's loads of alcohol.
Afternoon. Just dropping by for a quick question. It is known if the composition of the two work groups/council/clubs/[insert term here] mentioned in the Loop post will be public or kept secret?
@Hitodama Wasn't mentioned, but I'm guessing the composition (who is on it) of the working groups will be strictly secret and specific feedback of them too
I would've gone to the christmas Friday afternoon drinks at my previous office (great people there)... but that same Friday mom and me are going to be going to a concert, then we have a hotel room and the next day we'll visit a christmas market :|
@Gimby No worries. Though this room will play havoc with your metabolism, make you hungry when you're not supposed to be, it's also quite good at doing exactly the opposite :P
I was gonna say... they're really smelly... I've never tasted one but usually smell and taste are aligned so that if you taste something that smells bad, it also smells tastes bad...
@Rob It's so weird. I can't see them as anything but bread. I've eaten little mini-loaves that look exactly like that so many times that I just can't parse them as anything else. Not that I'm complaining.
I actually find that some nice smelling stuff tastes horrible though... And I still think rice waffles stink but they're really nice to eat, especially with peanut butter.
@Hitodama Wikipedia: "... Among some 100 names for the fruit across different regions are the more common English names of great morinda, Indian mulberry, noni, beach mulberry, and cheese fruit. The fresh fruit's strong, vomit-like odor has made it a famine food in most regions, but it remains a staple food among some cultures, and has been used in traditional medicine.".
@Catija the medium. I read a lot of books and reading a book is always like watching a movie in my head with all the little details and my own pace of storytelling. Movies for me aren't detailed enough and don't get enough plot across and are slow and overladen with action sequences.
@Magisch I... well, have a degree in film, so that probably tells you how I feel about movies... but I agree with this assessment about books (which I also love). Lots of my favorite books wouldn't really make good films because so much happens in a way that's difficult to translate - either the thoughts of the people or narration that explains what's going on for "outsiders" of the culture being depicted.
It's difficult to do well... and some people can... but, for example, I don't know that I think The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a great candidate for film because so much of what's happening happens in Salander's head or on her computer screen.
My mind is suddenly blank about movies that faithfully portray the books, but it is true that part of why it's so hard to get right is movies are as apple-y as books are oranges.
@Catija I reckon movies just aren't for me personally. I'm known to absolutely devour books when I get interested, usually I read them in few or one sittings. I like books that have really detailed descriptions of culture and environment too, like worldbuilding. The story itself is almost secondary to the fact that it's like taking a peek into a whole different world and understanding it slowly...
I'm severely pumped for the upcoming Dune movie. I know it is not going to do the book(s) justice but I just don't care, anything Dune is awesome. The Lynch movie, the miniseries... good stuff.
For instance the thing I liked about the Eragon books was the subtle connection level between eragon and his dragon and the superb worldbuilding in the first couple of books. In the movie it was a bunch of nothing with a 1 page fight scene blown up to the conclusion
@Rubiksmoose I can generally appreciate movie adaptations as movies rather than attempts to make movies of books... but I kinda disagree with you there... a bit... HHG was a radio play first. It didn't have a ton of description and what did exist was presented through the guise of The Guide, a narrator... which does exist in the movie.
@CptEric oh.... the hydra. The scene they actually censored in Kingdom Hearts. Also the one that originally was identical to the original Disney movie that was left untouched
I don't know why, but when I was young they used to broadcast a lot of Police Acadamy and Babe during christmas holidays... these days, it's Harry Potter..
I guess writers think "Oh this is Christmas, happy by default" so that affects their judgment or makes them lazy or both and a lot of Christmas movies end up sending the exact opposite messages
@Magisch I haven't done a ton of reading (of books) recently... considering reading is all I do all day... but when I read a lot, I was like that, too. I remember staying up really late, engaged in Memoirs of a Geisha... which has that worldbuilding (just happens to be historically based)...
@Catija That's fair. I'm no longer one that wants or values highly slavish devotion to a source book, but I was disappointed in how HHG came out in movie form. Good point about the narrator. And, as a further counterpoint to me, I guess (though not a movie) I thought the recent Good Omens adaptation was amazing and that had a decent amount of Adams in it.
@JourneymanGeek I have suspected that you have a birthmark for quite some time. And, I've never mentioned it out of respect, but your protective is quite obvious.
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@ErikReinstateMonicA No thanks, I am exhausted from only yesterday entertaining the little ones. Plus the celebration comes with a couple of weeks of mockery and slavery accusations nowadays, enough is enough...
@Gimby Oh, but grown-up Sinterklaas can be way more fun than little one's... so a few more days of that could not hurt... Although I would probably run out of words writing poems.
@Tinkeringbell It's has been mostly busy lately. Deadlines before Christmas. I need a break :D But we have indoor tennis at the office now, so that's cool
@M.A.R. And if you think that wrestling with TeX for three hours is one of the worst methods of torture in hell, you are seriously lacking in imagination :)
That said, I feel your pain. I had to typeset a page of Greek in a (long) document which was mostly in English.
