Yes, I am an angry MacBook Pro user! Or should I say Mac user?
Why on earth do I buy a laptop? So that I can take it places with me, right?
Now when you go to different places and read DVDs belonging to different zones, MacBook Pros will only let you change the zone 5 times. Then, it’s locked. I don’t even know if it’s locked into the last zone you’ve ever read, or if it even means that you cannot read DVDs, period!
I happen to go to the UK at least twice a year, take my MacBook Pro with me and cannot read the DVDs I buy or borrow because of that feature. Why does Macintosh do that?

Apparently to please the movie industry, which still think they are in 20th century and that people do not travel. They don’t want you to choose WHERE you buy your DVDs, they want you to buy them in YOUR country.

They want to sell you a product and decide on which machine you are going to use it.
Find this natural?
Well, imagine you buy a washing-machine and on the Instructions, they tell you

Warning! You can only change detergent brand 5 times. By the fifth time, you won’t be able to change any longer!

Would you find this normal? No, you just wouldn’t want that machine brand.

With laptops, you don’t have a choice. They all are all equipped (!!!!) with this feature!

But in this case, and I guess it’s the only compliment that I’ll pay PCs, Windows is better. There ARE fixes and hacks to get rid of the zoning process.
Of course, they are illegal.
But it isn’t illegal for the movie industry to sell you stuff and choose how and where you are going to use it.

So what is left for someone like me?
Only watch French-made DVDs? Get into pirating (which is not exactly my cup of tea)?
Get a PC laptop, viruses and all, and hack it?
Any suggestions?

Recently, one of the French magazines, Le Nouvel Observateur, supposedly more intellectual than others (!) had a special issue devoted to Simone de Beauvoir and the cover, which I do not want to show here, was a picture of her, naked, seen from the back. This is what culture has become in this country, one of the women writers, a philosopher and a novelist, the first woman to have achieved the then very prestigious Agrégation, a woman who’s been a role model for my generation, reduced to a naked backside photograph. But then what can you expect when the political press tend to deal only with Sarkozy’s love affairs?

I’m just venting my anger here, but what I originally had in mind was Peggy’s meme, at Day to Day Life of a Very Lazy Gardener

The idea is to list five things in your life now that you would have never thought would be in your life when you were 25.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I am not really fond of memes, but I saw this at Kenju’s yesterday and found it interesting, so I’ll comply.

For one, when I was young, as I said before, Simone de Beauvoir was my role model. And I just wanted to be like her. A free woman who would live a free life, the way she chose, no strings attached, no bourgeois attachments, no marriage, no children, a succession of intellectual and fascinating men in my life. So if you had told me there and then that I would get married and have a child, I wouldn’t have believed you!
But I did! I met Roland, at the ripe age of 30 and we eventually got married.

Another thing is, I tried my hand at a variety of things, all having to do with languages. The dream of my life was then to become an interpreter and work in some international organization like the UN or the UNESCO, no less and do simultaneous translating.
I attended classes in a school for interpreters and translaters and turned out to be much to slow to fit the bill.
But there was one thing that I definitely knew! I could and would NEVER be a teacher. I must say that the teachers of my school days were far from being role models. Anyway, once, I was asked to substitute in a professional school as a teacher for one of my friends. What convinced me was that I didn’t have a job at the time, and that I needed the money.
So there I went, taught a couple of classes, certainly didn’t know what I was doing, but the students didn’t complain, and … I decided that this was what I wanted to do.

Till a very ripe age, I never felt that I wanted to have children. When they stuck a baby in my arms, I felt silly and awkward, infants and little children certainly didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t find them cute and I certainly didn’t experience anything like maternal instinct. Actually, that worried me a lot when I got pregnant, because I thought I would certainly be a totally incompetent mother and would never have the patience for a baby or a toddler.
Well, I surprised myself. I didn’t feel my baby’s diapers smelt as bad as other babies’ and got very interested in my daughter, although she always complained that I was not paying enough attention.

As I didn’t want to have children, it was very difficult for me to understand some of my friends who got pregnant as they were single, and decided to have the child. The raising and education of a child, with no father in sight, seemed to me some crazy goal and I thought that bringing a child to the insane world in which we lived was bad enough, let alone bringing up the said child on their own.
Little did I know what life had in store for me. On a bleak Tuesday of January, my Roland drove away to his death, leaving Julie, aged six and a half, and me, her mother, to fend for ourselves. This was exactly sixteen years ago today. A date that is like a hurdle I have to jump every year with ever renewed longing and sadness.
So raise a child by myself I did. And a proud mother I am today. Not proud of myself, because I did what I could, but proud that my daughter is such a wonderful and accomplished young woman that her father, somewhere, is certainly proud of, too.

As a little girl, and later as a young woman, I was a very keen reader. A speedy one, too, so I read literally scores of books every year. I borrowed them at the local library. Reading was just part of me. And then, somehow, I can’t even remember how or when, I lost the urge. I wasn’t interested in reading any longer. Or rather, I took to reading murder mysteries and nothing else. I couldn’t focus on anything else. And this has been going on for quite a long time, years in fact. This is really one thing I couldn’t have imagined happening to me.
And yet, in the last year, I seem to have resumed reading a little. Maybe your influence, blogger friends

I won’t tag anyone, really, but I’d love to know what Ronni, Millie, Autolycus, Septuagent, who hasn’t blogged in a long time , Naomi or MotherPie would have to say.
Claudia of Toronto, if you feel like it, I’ll be delighted to have you as a guest blogger –you do the writing and I publish it

As Ronni, who I am very sad to say, has decided to close Time Goes By, put it in her last blog,

a couple of days ago, Blogger blogs (owned by Google) no longer allow people without Blogger or Google accounts to leave their blog address on comments, instead supplying a link to sign up.

I’ve lost the heart to argue against that too, but I will not allow myself to be forced to join the Google Army bludgeoning its way toward world domination.

No one could have written it better, which makes me wonder who will express those things I feel but don’t have the ability to write, now.

So there, if you want to write your blog address in a comment anyway, here’s how to do it:
Copy and paste the following:

<a href="http://yourblogaddress.com">Your name or your blog name</a>

Replace with your own blog address and your own name

I’ve saved this on a textfile that I leave on my desktop, and when I comment, all I have to do is copy and paste.

1. More about this at MotherPie’s Blogger Comment Changes Stink. Period.

2. And one last thing, there are other commenting solutions to blogger.com, if you don’t wish to restrict your blogging world to blogger itself, you can try haloscan, when I was still on blogger.com, I used it and loved it. It is quite blogger.com compatible. If you don’t believe me, have a look at Peggy’s at Day to Day Life of Very Lazy Gardener who’s using it.
   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/12/04/bloggercom-behaving-badly/feed/ 18 Claude grumbleland.jpg http://blogginginparis.com/2007/08/24/unfriendly-skies-from-paris-to-newyork/ http://blogginginparis.com/2007/08/24/unfriendly-skies-from-paris-to-newyork/#comments Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:37:36 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.com/2007/08/24/unfriendly-skies-from-paris-to-newyork/ Continue reading →]]>

   Ronni at Time Goes By just published a story very aptly titled Elders and the Unfriendly Skies. One of the reasons I hate taking planes is that for ‘security reasons’ you have to be at the airport hours ahead of time. If you think US airports are unfriendly, just try Roissy-Charles de Gaulle for a change.
   When I took the plane to NewYork city, back in October, I booked for October 1st, I had to be there three hours ahead of time, and then they line you up like a herd of cattle, (a very large one, at that) with your suitcase, before you ever get to the boarding counter.
   If they were organised, there would be a line for each destination, but I guess that would make the wait shorter, and that is not the idea, is it? Who cares about elders, mothers with babies, or anyone else for that matter?
   And who cares about being efficient?
   So I stood in line for two solid hours. I was lucky, because my daughter and her boyfriend were with me and kept my place in line while I sat once in a while. This was all done for one man to ask me if I had packed my suitcase myself.

   
   I didn’t take this photo on the flight over to NYC, but when I flew to Manchester

   When I got my boarding card, and my daughter had helped me put my suitcase on the conveyor belt (no one will help you there, unless YOU ask), I had to stand in another line for police security. And there again, everyone in the same line, wherever you went. After taking off my shoes, starting my laptop, throwing away my bottle of Evian water, I got to the other side long after my plane was supposed to have taken off.
   They wait for you, I guess, which is another reason why planes are always late.

   That wasn’t the end, since I had to walk through long corridors till I got to the boarding gate. There I had to board a bus, be jerked around as there were no seats available, to the plane and there, climb up the stairs. When I got to my seat, I was exhausted.
   I was grateful that I had an aisle seat and that there was no one sitting next to me. But the idea of being cooped up in a space that is meant for someone the size of an eight-years old for six hours is anything but pleasant.
   I loved my trip to the States, but am not sure I’ll ever go back. Too exhausting.

   Incidentally, I cannot even remember which company I flew. Not that it would make any difference. Big companies are all awful and couldn’t care less about your comfort.

   Technorati Tags: unfriendly skies, plane trips, , airports, awful,

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/08/24/unfriendly-skies-from-paris-to-newyork/feed/ 17 Claude grumbleland.jpg OVer the clouds http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/30/disappearing-act/ http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/30/disappearing-act/#comments Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:50:32 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/30/disappearing-act/ Continue reading →]]>

   Do things play hide and seek with you? Do you lose everything? I do!
   I bought a nail clipper two weeks ago. I managed to use it once, and since then, it has gone. I still have its blue case, but the clipper has gone. I swear I have looked everywhere. What it would take for it to reappear, would be my going back to the supermarket and get another one. Then I know I’d be the proud owner of two nail clippers.
   This is exactly what happened to me. I have two spare batteries for my Panasonic FZ8. The other day, I put one on charge, and then it did the disappearing act. My friend Liliane was still here and we both looked and looked, and the battery was nowhere to be seen.
   As I am going to Manchester next week, I really needed that spare battery. I’d hate to miss a great photo, just for lack of a battery, wouldn’t I?
   So I ordered a spare battery through the Internet. And of course, the next day, the battery reappeared on a shelf where the two of us had looked several times.
   That is my daily life. I lose my keys, my Visa card, my métro card and every time I leave the flat, it takes me at least five minutes to check out what I have forgotten, lost or misplaced. And I have to admit that as I grow older, it is getting worse and worse!

   And there is no one I can grumble at, except myself!

   Technorati Tags: grumbleland, losing things, forgetfulness

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/30/disappearing-act/feed/ 12 Claude grumbleland.jpg Never look for your keys again! http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/21/fromage-please-not-cheese/ http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/21/fromage-please-not-cheese/#comments Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:07:13 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/21/fromage-please-not-cheese/ Continue reading →]]>
   

   Some time ago, I visited Deuxbydeux whose post Say Fromage, I enjoyed. It reminded me how recently, I was at my favourite cheese shop in Paris and bought one of those wonderful goat cheeses. With the fromager, we had a long talk about what Europe does to our cheese-makers and more generally producers.

   
   Just the goatcheese section!

   It reminded me of one of the farmers at Deauville’s open-air market, who used to sell the best chickens on earth and the most wonderful fresh eggs.
   A couple of years ago, to follow European guidelines, or whatever they call them, he had to buy a refrigerated if he wanted to go on selling his wonderful farm-made butter and double cream. So he did. As he is a really small producer, it represented a big investment for him.

   
   You can see the refrigerated window in the background

   Last year, European laws had it that producers had to mark all their eggs so that they could be traceable. It does seem to make sense, except that for the buyer, it doesn’t make much difference, since she can’t make heads or tail of what’s written on the egg.
   Anyway, that was the coup de grâce for Mr R. who was already pretty old and decided he would stop his egg production.
   Where do I go now to buy my eggs? Well, either I find a reliable farm and drive there, that is, when I am in Normandy, or, like most people, I get my eggs at the supermarket

   Now cheese. We are a country with hundreds of cheeses. But you in the States or outside France, have no idea what they actually taste like because you only get to taste the pasteurised kind, unless you taste them here. When I say not pasteurised, it doesn’t entail that the cheese is made in dirty or unhealthy conditions, it means that it’s made along age-old traditions, with all the advantages of modern cleanliness.
   Maybe pasteurising is safer. But in the end, won’t all those pasteurised cheeses end up tasting all alike?
   It would be too bad, wouldn’t it, and I hope I won’t live to see cheese platters like this one, disappear.

   
   Cheese plate composed by my cousin Chantal

   Technorati Tags: cheese, pasteurisation, pasteurization, markets

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/07/21/fromage-please-not-cheese/feed/ 12 Claude thisandthat.jpg Cheese shop Deauville market Cheese platter http://blogginginparis.com/2007/05/29/blog-moderation-spam-and-passwords/ http://blogginginparis.com/2007/05/29/blog-moderation-spam-and-passwords/#comments Tue, 29 May 2007 19:51:55 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/blog-moderation-spam-and-passwords/ Continue reading →]]>

   Some time ago, of A Little Red Hen posted about blog moderation and we exchanged mails about that. I said that I was willing to put up with captcha, you know those letters and numbers you have to type to prove you are not a robot trying to spam, although sometimes, they are difficult to read. I am also accepting to be ‘other’ on my blogger-friends who use blogger.
   I use WordPress and can moderate comments, although I find it annoying. However, I have had to do it on my French blog, as someone viciously started to post obscene comments on that blog. So I have been moderating each and every comment.
   I’m even willing to register on some blogs, as long as I can remain logged in. Now when I am asked to register to obtain a typekey or whatever account, remember a password, anything that cannot be done in a couple of clicks, there stops my good will.
   I get my share of spam like everyone else, WordPress has plugins that catches most of them, but I will not allow spammers to make me close my blog to commenters. Moderating is one thing, but getting a message like

   Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them.
   This weblog only allows comments from registered users. To comment, please Sign In.

   then being taken to a page to create an umpteenth account with a username and a password, no thank you! I am sorry, but I will not comment, and probably will eventually stop reading the blog.

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/05/29/blog-moderation-spam-and-passwords/feed/ 13 Claude grumbleland.jpg Grrrrrr! http://blogginginparis.com/2007/01/25/upgrade-or-mess-up/ http://blogginginparis.com/2007/01/25/upgrade-or-mess-up/#comments Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:59:33 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/upgrade-or-mess-up/ Continue reading →]]>

   I upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.1, and it totally messed up my blogroll. So, I will have to change themes, as they claim my theme is too old-fashioned to function with the new WordPress. It may take a while as it has taken me two years and a half to make it look like that, whether one likes it or not.
   So bear with me. No blogroll for a while, but some php blurb instead!
   I found a fix, thanks to a helpful hint in the WordPress forums!
   Back in business!
   Warning! Do not upgrade if your theme is not, as they say in their jargon, 2.1 compliant, which is my case. Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue how to make it compliant. So there!

   Friday! More things I noticed :

   1. WordPress 2.1 screwed up some of the code that was working perfectly before, that had been beautifully done by Meg at MandarinDesign, and changed the look of it.
      I asked friend Leo, my Photoshop expert, to design graphics, which I am going to put in place of the code. Many thanks to him for all the help and the tutoring!
   2. Also, WordPress 2.1 wiped off the surface of my blog the static pages where my “about” was and where the Saturday Photo Hunt blogroll was.

   Well, as I found, hidden among the posts, two of my static pages, that I used as trial pages, hidden away as ordinary posts, I suppose that going through the whole blog, I’ll eventually find the two missing pages, disguised as posts. Meanwhile, I have republished those two pages.

   3. AND to finish off, in spite of a new version of Akismet, I get loads more spam than before I changed!
   4. Well, there is more! I just realised that all my < div > tags were becoming < p> tags. Not sure what it does, except that it makes it very difficult to centre text and things like that. WordPress recommends a fix that I have tried , but it doesn’t seem to be working. Either I applied it wrong, or it isn’t working. Who knows?
   5. Added January 27th: I just realised that the p tag issue was the reason why a lot of the code I had copy/pasted from MandarinDesign isn’t working. Remind me next time I want to upgrade, to wait till the upgrade has been tested on OTHER people.

   So I would suggest to wait until the bugs are ironed to upgrade. Once you have upgraded, there is no going back.

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2007/01/25/upgrade-or-mess-up/feed/ 10 Claude http://blogginginparis.com/2006/11/30/grrrrr-laposte/ http://blogginginparis.com/2006/11/30/grrrrr-laposte/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:06:03 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/grrrrr-laposte/ Continue reading →]]> Grumbleland
   “Blogging in Paris”
   Blogging in Paris

    

   

   I have always hated going to the post-office to send letters or packages. Like most people, I don’t like standing in line, and French post-offices never have enough clerks to deal with their customers.
   In the last ten years, they started having robots that will weigh your letters, tell you how much you must put into the machine, and spit out a stamp. Then all you have to do is stick the stamp on your envelope and put it in the mail-box. Off it goes.
   Now yesterday, I had to post a small package, and the cost was 3,77. The machine said that you were supposed to give the exact change. I only had 3.76 in coins. Visa cards were only accepted for sums larger than 5€, and no one around happened to have a 1c. coin.
   Next to the weighing machine, there is a coin machine that is supposed to give you change. So I stuck a 10c coin hoping for some 1c coins. But the machine won’t accept 10c coins and will not return 1c coins whatever you do.
   The alternative was standing in (a long) line. So I tried a second post-office. The line there was overwhelming and the weighing machine didn’t work at all.
   Finally, I went to a tobacconist, where you can buy stamps in this country. Only, they won’t take checks or Visa there, you have to pay cash. You can’t buy stamps that will add to 3.77, so I ended up paying more for my package. I don’t mind the money so much, only a few centimes d’euro, but what a waste of time and energy!

   It occured to me later on that what I should have done was ask the machine for a 3.80€ stamp, for which I did have change. Took me a whole afternoon to get smart.
   So LaPoste is right in the middle of Grumbleland

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2006/11/30/grrrrr-laposte/feed/ 8 Claude http://blogginginparis.com/2006/10/19/angry-and-waiting-in-grumbleland/ http://blogginginparis.com/2006/10/19/angry-and-waiting-in-grumbleland/#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:35:07 +0000 Claude http://blogginginparis.wordpress.com/2006/10/19/angry-and-waiting-in-grumbleland/ Continue reading →]]> Grumbleland
   “Blogging in Paris”
   Blogging in Paris

    

   Whenever I take Mounir to the vet, I go to the reception desk, tell the clerk that I am there and wait for her to call me in my car. I have noticed that the longer we stay in the waiting-room, the more nervous Mounir gets.

   

   Yesterday morning I had an appointment for a mammogram at 10:30.
   I got there on time and asked the girl at the reception desk if there was a lot of waiting and she said that she thought there was, but that her colleague upstairs would be able to tell me more. Well, the colleague upstairs decided to teach me a lesson, saying that once I had given my name, I wasn’t supposed to get out of there and wait somewhere else. I kept calm and repeated my request, and the second time she didn’t even bother to reply. So I went out to the café round the corner, read a newspaper and had a capuccino.
   When I came back half an hour later, the state of the waiting-room was worse than it was at 10:30, there wasn’t even a chair for me to sit on.
   I waited till 11:30, went down again, and asked for another appointment, one that would be the first or the second in the morning. Got one for next Tuesday at 9 o’clock
   Why do doctors think that they can make you wait for hours? Why do their secretaries think they can be rude? Why can’t a human patient be treated just as well as a cat?
   You may wonder why I can’t stand waiting in the waiting room. Well, it so happens that the lab I go to specialises in breast cancer, so the waiting-room, just like that of a vet, exudes fear and anguish and every time I am there, I experience lots of stress, just like my cat.
   There! I got it out of my system

   
   ]]> http://blogginginparis.com/2006/10/19/angry-and-waiting-in-grumbleland/feed/ 9 Claude Twins?