Done!

My cunning plan worked. Simply by getting my wife pregnant and starting a blog for Baby, I have lured Noemi into blogging herself. See her first real post here. My work here is done.

on the contrary

How do I annoy thee? Let me count the ways. It looks like spouses may be naturally contrary. I can see that. As long as Noémi disapproves of this blog, I'll probably keep doing it, maybe as long as I live (after that, I'll need to look into getting an internet connection in my coffin). And as long as I urge Noémi to blog... D'oh! Don't blog, Noémi, don't blog! I forbid it!

closing time

Our bank's 24-hour online service shuts down at 10pm every night. If you happen to log in at say 9:58pm, and cross over into the witching hour, the world becomes a mysterious echoing chamber of jabbering javascript, dysfunctional data, and fun-loving flakiness not exactly calculated to instill confidence in anyone trying to pay a bill. Noémi ran into this problem last night. "Huh?" she said, as the site suddenly started answering her queries in Gremlin. I looked at my watch. "It's just gone 10. Give up, baby," I said. She tried again. "Not going to happen," I said. She glared at me. She glared at the Gremlin. Life was not being kind to her. Shame she doesn't have a blog to vent about this kind of thing, hint, hint.

free beer

Genoa is hilly. The highways around here are incredible. They plunge through the geography, bridging and tunnelling, with hardly a patch of level ground anywhere. To my Irish eyes, accustomed to the flat bog plains of the midlands, the roads here fill me with a mixture of awe and horror. A truck carrying Chinese beer turned over on the route to work today, at a segment where the tortured curve of the road convulses. The boxes were spilled everywhere. I don't drink, but somehow stuff falling from the back of a truck triggers a deep acquisitive reflex. I wanted that beer. Of course we couldn't stop on the highway. I think more companies should have their products fall off the back of trucks on highways. The audience is huge, and it sure instills desire. Maybe if I got a blog to fall off a truck in front of Noémi she'd want to blog...

bye-bye mister car

My friend Giorgio has a son, Fabrizio. The kid is 2, 2.5 I think - I'm a bit vague about the ages of children, but he doesn't have a motorbike, girlfriend, or obvious piercing yet so he must be youngish. I get a ride to work with Giorgio ever since work moved from point A (right by home) to point B (right beyond the horizon), and often Fabrizio tags along to go to playschool. Like Ford Prefect in the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I suspect Fabrizio has worked out which is the dominant life-form on this planet. When we reach his stop and his dad tries to convince him to bid me fond farewell - "Saluti zio Paul?" - Fabrizio instead says he wants to say goodbye to the car. Every time. That kid will go far. I for one welcome our automotive overlords. This all goes to show that my wife Noémi should really start blogging. Noémi, look what happens when you leave the blogging up to me! Nostalgic reminisces about the morning commute, obscure references to minor characters in nerd literature, slashdot memes reverberating outward from the Simpsons! Won't someone please think of the children!

Medusa

Noemi is discussing with a client whether the Medusa has tentacles. This is important to them. I wonder if I can make the Medusa important to my work somehow. Hmm robotics and tentacles... a winning combination!

Potential paternity

We're pregnant! Well, mostly Noemi. And how. Yesterday she cried 957 times. Today she ate 957 things. I told her she was a walking cliché. At least I tried to; today is our Italian day, so I said something like "sei un cliché ambulante". The dictionary claims there is no such word as "ambulante". I claim the dictionary is an ass. Che cammina maybe? Ugh. The problems of pregnancy. Noemi is still hungry. I suggest she blogs about it. She suggests she eat a yoghurt.