chrishansenhome

Today is our third anniversary. Or, perhaps, our eleventh anniversary. We went through our Civil Partnership three years ago today after what Ethel calls "an 8-year courtship".

Unfortunately, I still feel like hell, so we didn't celebrate too much. I sat in the chair in the living room drinking orange juice and watching things like "Unsolved Murders". I didn't shower until 6 pm (I felt so slovenly...) Then we went to The Well and had our Valentine's Day dinner. Home for some decaf and tiramisu.

Then we listened to some Ella Fitzgerald singing tunes by Gershwin, which really set a lovely tone for the end of the day.

In honour of Valentine's Day, you must read this blog post by shelbycub. It says exactly what I would like to say about marriage and make sure you've got a Kleenex handy.

In other news, I have finally gotten my ISEB Practitioner's Certificate in Software Test Management. I did OK (did not get a distinction, but that's OK) and now have three certificates to hang up on the wall. Now I have to make sure that everyone knows I have it (change the CV, add it to LinkedIn, etc. etc. and so on and so forth). Took 'em long enough to mark it, but that's OK.

Tomorrow it's Eucharist, then lunch with our friend kingbitch, who is down again from Edinburgh with a picture of himself in his new kilt. He does not yet have the courage to wear it as the Scotsmen do.

As our own dear Queen might say if she had a Valentine's Day televised message: "A very heppy Vellentaynes Dey to yew awl,"

...as HWMBO has commanded me to come up to bed, but the two further two-day gigs I had in Lancashire have now been cancelled. I know it wasn't my teaching, as the evaluations were uniformly positive. I believe that the customer decided that they really didn't want the training that we were providing. This means GBP 1600 has now flown out the window. I had to cancel two additional sets of train tickets, and will have to cancel two hotel rooms as well. What a pain. I just hope that the customer doesn't try to pin the blame on me.

I have had the Foundation Certificate for three years now, and of course I am a certified tutor for that particular course. I just invested nearly GBP 600 in a self-study CD-ROM for the Practitioner's Certificate, the next step up. I'm hoping that I can complete this in time for the March examination. If not, then for the June one. Getting this certificate would mean increased income, as you must hold the Practitioner's Certificate to be a tutor for that course.

I got 9 out of 10 right on the review of the Foundation material, so perhaps I'm off to a good start. The Practitioner's exam is essay questions, not multiple choice; there will be lots more work to do on that and I may take most of February and devote it to studying that material.

I will update the blog with my progress occasionally.

Today I attended Richard's funeral. I had only known him for a few months; however, he volunteered in June to become Treasurer of our Deanery here in Southwark. We don't have a lot of expenditures, but we haven't had a functioning Treasurer for a couple of years. So we were delighted when Richard volunteered. He was only 31, but was a registered financial adviser as well as being a busy volunteer at the Cathedral, which was his parish.

He warned us that he was undergoing treatment for cancer of the testicles, which was dealt with through surgery, but which also needed chemotherapy. However, he expected to come out of the chemo OK and regai his strength and life.As I mentioned in a previous post, he had a massive stroke in reaction to his last bout of chemotherapy. He died a week and a half ago on Sunday without regaining consciousness. We were all shocked and sad. The funeral was good (as such events go)--the Cathedral was about 3/4 full, which is pretty good for a regular person's funeral. He was much loved, had many friends and a large family. He had married only in January of this year, too. Such a waste of a wonderful life.

So George Bush is in trouble yet again. Not only is his brain about to be indicted (oops, I meant Karl Rove), but his nominee for the Supreme Court has withdrawn her name in the face of a barrage of criticism from both sides. I think this will be quite a bizarre time. If he nominates a diehard conservative, he may have some trouble in the Senate. If he nominates a middle-of-the-road person, he'll have some trouble with his conservative power base. How sad for him. I'm crying. Can't you tell?

Charles Clarke seems to be having some trouble with the Terrorism Bill 2005. Good for him. Half-baked ideas make bad law. As many people have observed, no law against terrorism or terrorists is going to stop 100% of the terrorists. Thus, every time there is a problem, the government will cut down on our civil liberties in order to try to stop the next attack. We will end up in a police state. While my friend Samantha was killed on 7/7, and I take buses and the Tube regularly, I would rather have civil liberties than absolute safety; there are civil liberties but there is no such thing as absolute safety and the Government is wrongheaded to try to say that there is or might be. We are led by a bunch of dunderheads. I hope that I can still say that publicly without being charged with some offense under the Terrorism Act.

Almost November. That's a bad month for me. My birthday's in November. Both my parents died in November. The best teacher I ever had died in November, as well as a very kind priest from my childhood. I often get bronchitis in November. Thank God it's only 30 days long. I don't know whether I can take any more of it.

I've finally gotten possession of the domain "luti.org". You may or may not know that the founder of Integrity, Dr. Louie Crew (another one of my heroes), also founded an email discussion list called Luti, after one of his many writing personae, Quean Lutibelle. The domain was registered by a former owner, but at the time the former owner became "former", I was not savvy enough to figure out how to deal with domain name registrars, so I didn't bother. However, I finally figured out how to do it, and am now the proud owner of chrishansen.org.uk and christianphansen.com, as well as luti.org. I am hoping that the transfer of registrars from the US to the UK will happen soon; I want them all under one roof. Then, I'll transfer my website to christianphansen.com (making it better in the meantime, I hope) and make a webpage to encourage people to join Luti. I may even put some list management software on the server and take the hosting back from Yahoo!, which is not terribly good at hosting nowadays, in many respects.

Had lunch with my chum Steve yesterday. Looks like there is a good chance that I'll have a permanent job in March 2006. Not that I'm looking, mind you--even the recruiters have stopped calling!!! But, he's working with an exciting product (a tool to assist software testing) and an exciting company. It's German, however; I may have to learn some...oh well, I hope one can teach an old dog new tricks.

Another chum, Mike, is arriving here for a weekend jaunt from Chicago. Nice to see him again; we haven't seen him for almost three years. He's bringing gifts (although not Greek): Irish Spring soap, lots of chunky peanut butter for HWMBO, three copies of a picture I retouched of my parents' wedding. Two will go to Marblehead as gifts for my sister and brother. I'll keep the third. He's also bringing some 8-1/2 x 11 picture paper so that I can print that size myself in the future. Remember, we're benighted here and only have A4 size paper. HWMBO is taking tomorrow off, bless him, as he's been working his socks off at the shop. We'll be picking Mike up then going to the Tate and God only knows where else.

Half the results of the ISEB courses taken at Searchspace have come in: all four reporting so far have passed, most with very good marks. I'm quite chuffed: it's a tribute to the good staff Searchspace have recruited for their testing department. Steve's wife Anne, the head honcho of Electromind, the consultancy that I work with and for, also passed with flying colours. She isn't even a software tester or programmer. Well done, Anne! I wonder how many of the people in Wiltshire I taught the previous week passed. I may or may not find out. It's too soon for last week's crop.

Enough for this entry!

I got a call this morning from the manager at Electromind. Another training company's trainer is ill and they needed someone at short notice to present an ISEB course in Wiltshire; was I interested? Well, for £1,200, of course I was interested. So I'm off to Wiltshire this evening and will be there until Thursday evening. Friday I'm at work for this week, and Monday through Wednesday next week I'm presenting the ISEB course at work. The week after I'm off to Wales to present yet a third ISEB course. So, I think this will be a busy month for me. Hopefully I'll get through it OK and well-compensated.

So see y'all Thursday night.

OK, I'm now back in my hotel room after the third and final day of the ISEB Foundation Course in Software Testing. What a day! What a last few days!

Yesterday, Day 2, is the most challenging, not only for the delegates but also for me. Some concepts of "white box" testing such as branch and statement testing, are difficult to explain and very difficult to illustrate. I fell down a few times on the illustrations, so I've written in the manual the answers. But I felt like a fool up there. Fortunately, the students were all quite nice about it. Looking at the course evaluations, they all rated me either Good or Excellent.

Today was a half day of lecture, a mock test, some revision (=US "study"), and then the real exam. Remember I said in my last entry that I hoped there were 26 exams? Of course, you know what happened. There were 25. Samir, the man who's responsible for coordinating the courses, decided that the last one to sign in on the first day would be the one who had to take the test later. I told him that I would not be the one to tell the poor guy that he couldn't take the test. Samir did it over the phone. I felt so horrible for him. (Not Samir, the man who didn't take the test). He and I talked about it later and I reassured him that he could take the test later without retaking the course.

After the mixup was settled, the 25 students who did take the exam all said that it was easier than the mock exam. I'm convinced that most if not all will pass (25 out of 40 correct is the passing grade).

The campus in IT City was really stupendous. It would not have disgraced Palo Alto or Mountain View. There are two buildings of 5 stories each connected by a bridge on the first floor (=US second floor). One building is meant to represent a lighthouse, the other a ship. They are extremely modern inside, all computer amenities and people amenities as well, although they are still in the "cube farm" phase, not the "open plan" phase I'm used to in London.

The cafeteria was really stunning. It was on the roof, covered by a canopy, and open to the air. The food was South Indian food, dhal, roti, lime pickle, various lentil things, vegetable stew, really lovely stuff. All the students were amazed that I liked Indian food, even up to and including lime pickle. They are convinced all Westerners and Brits and Americans in particular would not be able to eat their food. I showed them that at least one Westerner would. They asked about Indian food in London, and I repeatedly stated that London's "Indian" food is mostly in restaurants staffed by Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. They were amazed by that as well.

As one would expect, all the students wanted to know how I liked India, and how many times I'd been here. When they found out it was my first time here, they were eager to find out how I liked it. I was in a quandary: some of my experiences here have been frightening (like at the airport), some have been tedious (dealing with logistics problems that shouldn't be my problems but handled by the company that's commissioned me to deliver the course. The beauty of the countryside that you drive through to get to IT City is really lovely. But the traffic is a horror, no one uses seat belts and no scooter driver uses a helmet (or few, anyway). I saw one vespa-type scooter driven by Dad, with little Sis in front of him, Mom sitting sidesaddle at the back, and big Bro between Mom and Dad. They all looked like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Cows do indeed roam the streets wherever they want to go. There are lots of stray dogs just lying on the pavement looking like roadkill. Then they get up lazily and get out of the way.

Indians are so proud of their country. They have just cause to be: India is the home of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of non-violent protest (his face is on all the currency, just as the Queen's is on all sterling notes in England and Wales). They have rockets, satellites, a vibrant IT industry, and great centres of spirituality. As a Westerner, however, it's hard to balance this against the squalor and dirt that many people live in. In three days of being driven to and from the site, I've seen two or three accidents. Their food is wonderful, and some is even healthy (I wouldn't claim that the lime pickle is healthy). Were I to have to stay a few weeks or a month, I might be able to get used to it (but HWMBO would still be in London, so that isn't an option).

I decided that rather than try to cope with the airport alone, I would tip the "Travel Desk Manager" downstairs 100 rupees (about GBP 1.20, or USD 2.00) to get someone to accompany me to the check-in desk at the airport. He was amazed, as it was probably close to his daily wage. However, I made an instant friend and I hope and pray that my transport tomorrow will be efficient and that I'll be able to get out of Bangalore without being fleeced yet again. I tipped the driver 50 rupees yesterday and today, and got sterling service. It seems that the key to getting good service here is tipping well. It's a lesson that I think will help me cope with the rest of my stay here.

I also asked whether he could send someone out to buy me a new luggage tag, as mine disappeared between Mumbai and Bangalore, although it has safely travelled to the US three times, Singapore once, and Ireland once. He told me that the driver would take me to a shop this afternoon that would have one. The shop he took me to had luxury goods, textiles, but no luggage tags and no leather goods such as sandals or bags, which HWMBO would like me to buy but which I haven't tried to get here. Samir better know where some of these things can be bought in Pune and bring me there. I found a relatively sturdy cardboard one, and will use that for now.

So tonight I eat and pack, and get ready for course two in Pune. I'll try to keep in touch. I really enjoy the wi-fi in the hotel and being able to read email and update my live journal live, rather than taped.

I began swotting up on the course I'm going to be delivering last night. To my surprise, and horror, I discovered that my boss had sent me lots of bumpf (including the printed-out delegate manual pages with the slides on them), but had not sent me the actual powerpoint presentation itself! My blood ran cold at the thought that if I'd just put it all on my laptop and blithely went off to Bangalore, I might have been extremely embarrassed. I sent my boss an email and text message, and heard from him at around 11, very apologetic.

This morning I found not one, not two, but three copies of the slides in my inbox. He is an amateur actor, just finishing a play's run last night, so perhaps the cast party was a success.