So Jef was here, Jef left and Tryphoon.com stopped!

Did any of you ever heard about Saint Clare? I didn’t! Well, until last weekend…

My neighbors hosted a yard sale and I inevitably had to pay a little visit there (mainly due to my young little monster asking for it)…

And there she was, in front of my eyes, our Patron Saint! Only in America! 

I sadly didn’t have any cash on me and didn’t buy it but I thought I’d share the news…

Sadly, we haven’t yet found the Patron Saint of File-Based Workflows!!

Well, let’s face it: A fair amount of technical knowledge; the exact title being Manager, Content Security & Emerging Distributions Platforms;

Having exhausted our internal HR resources, I was encouraged to advertise the position directly online, which returned some interesting CVs, some less interesting and some which made me wonder if the candidates had even spent the time reading the Job Description, but I must honnestly admit that the following intro totally baffled me…

“Please consider me for the “Manager, Content Security & Emerging Distributions Platforms” position. My credentials include a Master in Public Administration from Harvard and a Juris Doctorate and Master’s degree in Dispute Resolution from [another famous] University. My work experience ranges from serving as a member of [a] Governor[...]’s Cabinet to law and business.” 

The dude holds degree in 2 of the most famous Law schools of the World and has a fantastic experience in the legal field but doesn’t seem to know anything about Technology (at least, there was no such evidence on his CV).

Did my post say “Looking for seasoned Judge”? Did my post mention taking over our legal department? I don’t think so!!!

So come on, educated people, read the Job Description and ask yourself if you really think you would be a good fit before making me lose 15 minutes I don’t have!

PS: If you know of anyone who would however be interested by the position, please contact me directly!

So, the cat is out of the bag, close friends and family know and most important, Thia knows. The news has been as well on my Flickr feed for a couple of weeks, titled “?” so it is now time to let the rest of the planet know about our little piece of news…

We’re pregnant again…

ETA: Mid November 08…

Chatting with Miles yesterday, we found this excellent video of what might probably have been the highlight of a prime time show on French television. I have actually no doubt that such a show did beat any other show been aired that evening in terms of ratings.

Now, to give you, readers, a bit of background, you might all know about Celine Dion but few of you might know about Johnny Halliday. 

Johnny has (per wikipedia) “had a 45-year career in music and is one of France’s biggest stars. He has completed 400 tours, had 18 platinum albums, performed in front of 15 million people, and sold 100 million records. Today Hallyday is still seen as a top stage performer, giving first class shows in crowded stadiums. Hallyday announced his retirement from performing on 3 December 2007 at the age of 64“. Almost 3 generations of French citizens know more about Johnny than about their president or their local mayor! He is simply our national hero, far ahead of Marianne or Napoleon (for my British fellows).

Once you’ll have suffered through the video (make sure you pass the 4:10 mark, it even gets better at that point), you’ll have pretty strong idea of what prime time TV is in France and what “real” music is about…

So now, forget about the constant striking, the grumpy cab drivers, the dirty restrooms (or just the hole in the floor a.k.a. Turkish WC), the arrogance of the Parisians (I once was one of them) or the fact that French people are mainly “monoglot” and “polygamist” and imagine yourself coming home from a long day at work, switching on your TV and suffering through this! No freaking way!

This is enough for me to delay (indefinitely) my return to France! Unless Miley Cyrus sings a duet with our national Johnny! ;-P

Before leaving the place, we saw a poster in the window that attracted our attention… The 5 Chili Dogs for $5… To good to be true! Looked so disgusting that we had to try it! Our lunch already ingested, we decided to come back a couple of days later and try to eat the 5 chili dogs.

Once back to the office, I rapidly noticed a new appointment in my schedule. Monday, at noon, the 5 chili dogs challenge was booked!

Few of us were showed up (6 to be precise) but only 3 of us had the courage to take on the 5 pieces of stodgy food: Mike, Brad and Myself.

Mike was kind enough to do some research for us and came up with the fact that eating the dogs would deliver a whopping 1,450 calories. Adding to this approximately 300 calories for a large Coke (I had to wash down these things) and we are close to 1,800 calories.

I did my own homework and was told that due to my height, weight and activity (office worker), my daily intake should be around 2,000 calories. So that meal could almost be enough for a day or considered (on the strict calorific level) as a light diet!!!

And to my surprise, we all did it. We ate our 5 chili dogs within less than 15 minutes and none of us felt too bad after it. Well, I must admit that around the 4 1/2 mark, my stomach tried to complain and pain could be seen on my face for a very short amount of time! 

We now have to find what our next stupid food challenge is going to be. Any idea please, share it here!

Some pictures courtesy of “Cruftbox.com”

Services for this domain have been discontinued

Checking the source of the file, I was even more surprised to see the following result:

http://sedoparking.com/search/registrar.php?domain=facebook.com&registrar=trellian5

Wondering if I am the only one seeing this?

PS: 04/08/08 11:15PM - After further investigation, it seems that the issue was only replicated while using the OpenDNS services. Once I configured my router back to my default DNS services (in my case, Charter Cables), I was again able to log on Facebook…

So a couple of nights, willing to make sure that Jef had boarded his plane or at least had checked in, I decided to stay up until 8:00AM London time and call him around that time… As I feared, things got awfully wrong. Flight was cancelled, all United Airlines 777 planes were grounded, the earliest available flight would have got Jef in LA 2 days late… Not good…

To add to the nightmare, Thia decided to wake up and start screaming, willing to get a hug from her Daddy.

Many phone calls and some drama later, around 2AM, Jef is on a plane and on his way to LA. Not the original plane, obviously, but A plane, flying towards the US west coast! I can finally go to bed.

The result of this: a very tired Tryphoo sitting at his desk, feeling rough and unhappy…

Here enters a recent office chat during which I was introduced to a new concept called the Hammerhead or better described the ultimate “wake up” drink. Always willing to volunteer myself to try new crazy stupid great things and feeling the way I felt, I had to drink this thing!

So what is it?

As easy as 1-2-3

1/ Acquire an empty cup, a can of Coke and a double expresso (thanks to Starbucks, this is now a very easy thing to achieve)

2/ Pour Coke in Cup, add the Double expresso and get prepared for the foam

The result: Within less than an hours, both caffeine and sugar kicked in. I felt absolutely fine again, but according to some of my coworkers, this is not a thing I should do too often to them…

So not only have we found out that Microsoft might be hiding the truth with regards to Internet Explorer 8 and the Acid 2 test, it seems that the Redmond empire is not keen on eating their own dog food!

I happen to have tried this morning to perform a Software Update (sorry, Windows Update) on my Windows XP build using Internet Explorer 8 in native mode, and what did I get?!?! 

I got “Please upgrade to Internet Explorer 5 or later”!!!

Last time I checked my maths book, it still mentioned something about 8 > 5 (note, strictly greater than… not greater or equal… not lesser)!

Come on Microsoft, can’t you guys talk together?!  

But this year, we weren’t just there as  participant but as sponsors as well and Disney threw a rather nice party on Tuesday evening, right after (if not slightly overlapping) the EFF fundraiser event. So after a light indian curry (need food before booze), Mike, Yoshi and I reached the party and were soon joined by way more people…

And as you would have expected, many well known members of the blogosphere were there, including Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow (baaad father), Laughingsquid’s Scott Beale and more…

The party itself was fun except for one thing: Our party organizers (HR/PR) had insisted, despite several warnings, that every attendant of the evening would have to add a little sticker to the conference badges, reflecting their sector of activity (designer, programmer, technology, exec, etc) which was, to me, going totally against the spirit of eTech (Simply take a look at Ignite evening, no one cares about your position in the food chain, just come and share your project/opinion/point of view in a fair and equal manner). I personally refused to get the little sticker on my badge and found another way to get my 2 free drinks.

As this wasn’t humiliating enough, Mike was told in his face by some journalist that this sticker thing was stupid, bad, effin’ this, effin’ that (or something similar). Well, the journalist we are talking about is simply the  “Wired Magazine” Editor in Chief! OUCH! Hopefully the dude will blog about it and we will be able to print it and share it with the great minds behind the sticky thing concept!

At some point in the evening, I realized that someone was shooting some form of interview and as any good mosquito on a summer night, I rushed towards the light. I there met another famous eTecher, Johannes Grenzfurthner, artist, activist, Monochrom’s represenative, fully dressed in Soviet Uniform, wearing his Nikita Chrusov’s eTech Speaker badge. The prank is obvious and entertaining, a polite version of Borat, without the fart jokes! Pose, picture and I moved on to the bar.

But right before leaving the party, I recognized Violet Blue, sex columnist, writer, blogger also known for her Steve Job’s encouter at Macworld! Remembering el Jobso’s attitude when asked for a picture with her, I walked towards her group and kindly asked if I could have my picture taken with her. She obviously agreed (“I, of course, said yes (no Jobs am I)”) and picture was taken…

She then started explaining to me (after having realized that there was a Disney badge under my EFF T-Shirt) that Johannes had been kicked out of the party by our own PR people… I asked her to repeat, willing to be sure I heard correctly and then felt slightly ashamed! We parted and I went back to the guys, explaining them what just happened, unable to do anything or changed what hapened.

One one hand, yes, Johannes played prankster and it did work! He was asked to leave, he was able to put a great show on and he got more attention than almost anyone else that night but on the other hand I absolutely doubt the plan was be come and attack Disney head to head! This is eTech for God’s sake! Not NAB or the Oscars. I know we tend to be paranoid about our image and the rest, but here, it simply backfired!

Next year, HR/PR people, please do your homework and study your audience before getting pranked again!