Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Drinking, Printing and Angry Girlfriends
Printing first of all. I needed to print a drawing last night, and in order to access the printer, I needed to reconfigure all of my computer network settings, and now I can't change it back, because of Window's "I know better than you" method of not letting you reconfigure domain names unless you are connected to the DHCP server.
I mean, If I leave the domain I can log on normally, without any network support, but god forbid, if I join another network temporarily, then I can't get my profile back, come hell or high water, until I'm re-verified on my domain.
Why?????
It defies logic.
Blah,
Drinking and Angry Girlfriends is kinda related, and is making a bad day even worse. Last night I was "invited" out to dinner, in the kind of "we are taking our visitors out for dinner and you WILL be there" kind of way. After running around madly after work, to try to get the aforementioned printer working and get my drawing printed out (which took 50 minutes) I had to run home (the office is 500m from the guesthouse where I am staying) and get changed, to go back downstairs and meet our guests at the hotel, (which is directly below the office).
The dinner was filled with lots of pompous self gratifying ego building as the boys from the Big Company proceeded to tell us "small fry" why we could never make a project work, and that any opinions we had on the mechanics of our process were grossly in error and that they were the only people in the world who could do it.
Despite the fact that we've already demonstrated the process and are getting better results than them.
Over the course of the night I had about 4 glasses of red wine and finally managed to extract my self from the night of tortuous conversation to walk home to bed at 11pm.
I think the physical exhaustion of the previous few days combined with the alcohol really hit my system because I felt pretty rotten this morning. I've had a couple of coffee's and quite a quiet morning, and I'm starting to feel a bit better now, but Jodie has this impression of me attending some wild orgy last night, and getting completely plastered.
It's really difficult explaining to her just how inane these types of evenings really are. I think people have this impression of mining executives as these young vibrant horny "blokes", when generally they are sad old sacks of flesh that seem intent of stroking their ego's at the expense of every other person that they have ever had contact with.
It's really frustrating, that I need to endure both the participation in such evenings, and have suspicion's cast by my girlfriend about my motives after a few wines.
Almost without exception, dinner is served with wine. Last night, the Raki (a local Turkish version of Ouzo) was being consumed by all and sundry. I managed to wrangle my way out of that, on the basis that I needed to be up early, but I did have a few glasses of wine over dinner. As it turned out, it was probably one too many for my system to process in the evening, and consequently some of it caught up with me this morning.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, when I'm insisted to dinner on evenings such as this. Not drinking at all is becoming an increasingly attractive option. It reduces the headaches the next day, both in a physical sense, and the issues that come about from my beloved, though I do enjoy a glass of good red wine.
I'd much prefer to have Jodie by my side at evenings like this, because it will allow me partake in some decent conversation over dinner rather than enduring the drivel that often accompanies the self important pomp that is so often the subject of such evenings.
I think Jodie is worried about stories of prostitutes and wild nights that has become associated with the excesses of money. I will admit (and have already talked to Jodie) about one evening where prostitutes were apparently on offer. It's a bit hard to tell sometimes whether someone is making a genuine offer, or merely joking, but irrespective there were no acceptances of the said offer from either myself, or the others present at the evening.
Of all the dinner's I have gone to in the mining industry, only twice have such suggestions been made. I'm sure that it happens to some extent in the industry, but I'm equally convinced that this is not confined to the mining industry.
Anyway, all in all it was a particularly dull and painful night that resulted in a particulaly dull and painful headache this morning.
I mean, If I leave the domain I can log on normally, without any network support, but god forbid, if I join another network temporarily, then I can't get my profile back, come hell or high water, until I'm re-verified on my domain.
Why?????
It defies logic.
Blah,
Drinking and Angry Girlfriends is kinda related, and is making a bad day even worse. Last night I was "invited" out to dinner, in the kind of "we are taking our visitors out for dinner and you WILL be there" kind of way. After running around madly after work, to try to get the aforementioned printer working and get my drawing printed out (which took 50 minutes) I had to run home (the office is 500m from the guesthouse where I am staying) and get changed, to go back downstairs and meet our guests at the hotel, (which is directly below the office).
The dinner was filled with lots of pompous self gratifying ego building as the boys from the Big Company proceeded to tell us "small fry" why we could never make a project work, and that any opinions we had on the mechanics of our process were grossly in error and that they were the only people in the world who could do it.
Despite the fact that we've already demonstrated the process and are getting better results than them.
Over the course of the night I had about 4 glasses of red wine and finally managed to extract my self from the night of tortuous conversation to walk home to bed at 11pm.
I think the physical exhaustion of the previous few days combined with the alcohol really hit my system because I felt pretty rotten this morning. I've had a couple of coffee's and quite a quiet morning, and I'm starting to feel a bit better now, but Jodie has this impression of me attending some wild orgy last night, and getting completely plastered.
It's really difficult explaining to her just how inane these types of evenings really are. I think people have this impression of mining executives as these young vibrant horny "blokes", when generally they are sad old sacks of flesh that seem intent of stroking their ego's at the expense of every other person that they have ever had contact with.
It's really frustrating, that I need to endure both the participation in such evenings, and have suspicion's cast by my girlfriend about my motives after a few wines.
Almost without exception, dinner is served with wine. Last night, the Raki (a local Turkish version of Ouzo) was being consumed by all and sundry. I managed to wrangle my way out of that, on the basis that I needed to be up early, but I did have a few glasses of wine over dinner. As it turned out, it was probably one too many for my system to process in the evening, and consequently some of it caught up with me this morning.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, when I'm insisted to dinner on evenings such as this. Not drinking at all is becoming an increasingly attractive option. It reduces the headaches the next day, both in a physical sense, and the issues that come about from my beloved, though I do enjoy a glass of good red wine.
I'd much prefer to have Jodie by my side at evenings like this, because it will allow me partake in some decent conversation over dinner rather than enduring the drivel that often accompanies the self important pomp that is so often the subject of such evenings.
I think Jodie is worried about stories of prostitutes and wild nights that has become associated with the excesses of money. I will admit (and have already talked to Jodie) about one evening where prostitutes were apparently on offer. It's a bit hard to tell sometimes whether someone is making a genuine offer, or merely joking, but irrespective there were no acceptances of the said offer from either myself, or the others present at the evening.
Of all the dinner's I have gone to in the mining industry, only twice have such suggestions been made. I'm sure that it happens to some extent in the industry, but I'm equally convinced that this is not confined to the mining industry.
Anyway, all in all it was a particularly dull and painful night that resulted in a particulaly dull and painful headache this morning.
# posted by The Puppeteer : 3:29 pm
