Betting on horses

In France, horse races happen every day of the year and you can bet on horses through the PMU, the "Pari Mutuel Urbain". Nowadays, you can bet through the Internet, but back in the eighties, there was no Internet. But you could use a device called the "Minitel".

The Minitel was a small terminal with a modem on your telephone line. 1200 bauds download and 75 bauds upload.

So, in the eighties, I decided to bet on horses. I did not know anything about horses, but I had a plan. I bought every day a newspaper named Paris-Turf. In it, there was for each race of the day prognoses by various horse tipsters that were supposed to know what they were doing.

I wrote a program to compute statistics about the different races, the prognoses and the results of the different races. After a month of getting these data, my program started to indicate when there was a good chance that I would make money on some bets.

So, I started to follow the instructions from my program. I did that for one full year.  Sometimes I would win, sometimes I would lose. As I remember, I have bet around 60,000 francs, but I was down only 3,000 francs. It was in fact cheap entertainment.

Showing my conjugator to my father

In the 80s, as I was still in the French Navy, in my spare time, I had written a program to conjugate all the French verbs, a conjugator.

The data came from a French dictionary and from a very popular book of conjugations of French verbs. I had entered all this data manually.

You could enter any verbal form and the program would display the full conjugation of all the verbs that include this verbal form.

My father had never liked computers. I think he was afraid of them, because he did not understand how they worked.

I told him that I had written this conjugator program and I wanted to show it to him. He was very reticent but finally I was able sit him in front of my computer.

After I explained how this conjugator worked, I asked him to give me any verbal form he wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of the program.

He chose "aille". He expected the program to display the verb "aller" (to go), where "aille" is in the present subjunctive.

So, I entered "aille" and the first verb displayed was "ailler", where "aille" is in the present indicative. "Ail" in French means garlic and the verb "ailler" means "to add garlic to", for example to a leg of lamb. My father did not know of this verb and considered that it was not a real French verb.

Even after I pressed "next" and the program displayed the conjugation of the verb "aller", he was still convinced that my program was useless. That reinforced his dislike of computers.

Chroniques and Collectives

On both side of the family, my grandparents had a large number of children. When their children started to have children and there were some news that were worth dissaminating to the rest of the family, both my grandfathers started a circular letter around 1952.

On my mother's side the circular letter is called "la Collective" and on my father's side, it is called "la Chronique".

Everybody would write to my grandfathers and they would give their own news and those of their children that they had received in a circular letter that was sent to everybody who did not live in their house.

When my paternal grandfather started to decline in the sixties, my father took over. When my maternal grandfather died, my father also took over. So, his brothers, sisters, stepbrothers and stepsisters wrote to him and he published the circular letters weekly.

Originally, my father used a duplicating machine from the brand name Gestetner. Then, in the 80s he bought small self-contained word processors (from the brand names Philips and Cannon) and photocopiers.

When he started to decline in the 90s, my mother took over, still using the word-processors and the photocopiers.

We had a hard time persuading my mother to get a computer. She agreed on the condition that she would get a laptop. At this time, that made no economic sense, because a laptop was costing more than twice the price of a desktop. On hindsight, she was right. She got a used laptop and started to learn to use Microsoft Word. She was still printing, photocopying and sending the circular letters by snail mail.

Around 2000, I persuade her to get the Internet. So, she was able to send the letters through e-mail.

She is still writing the two original circular letters, twice a month. Recently, she has started another circular letter, the "Bulletin Paul", to disseminate the news of the descendants of my parents.

At 90 years of age, she still continue to publish two family newsfeeds that have been in publication for almost sixty years. She has more than 100 subscribers, from three generations, most of them receiving the circular letters by e-mail.

The publication of the original Chronique and Collective will cease when she dies or are no longer able to publish. It is possible that one of my brother or sister will be able to take over the Bulletin Paul, but nothing is for sure.

Giving colleagues subtitles

In 1995, I was working full time for the Corporation. I was alone in an office with no window. Near the door of our offices, we had an office tag displaying our names and the number of the office.

One morning, I realized when I arrive to work, that my office tag has been modified: my name and the office number were still there, but just below my name, there was a funny subtitle: Adameister.

Modifying an office tag was easy, as it was printed on transparent support with a standard laser printer.

I guessed immediately who had done that: an American senior engineer named Alan. I confronted him, but he denied it, smiling. So, I told him that if he knows who did it, he should tell him or her that the font was not correct. The next day, my office tag was updated with the correct font.

Then Alan and myself, we started to give subtitles to other engineers. We never put anything pejorative, and most people kept their modified office tags.


I tried to always put something related to the person or their name and something related to their job. Here is an example. In an office, there were two engineers that were working on data modelling: Billy Hui and Vicky Fan. I named them respectively: "The Modelling Kid" and "The Data Ventilator".


Having a subtitle became very popular. I even asked the boss if it was OK to give him a subtitle, and he agreed. He was the head of what was called the Software Factory" and his first name was Arthur. So, I named him "The King of the Factory".

Never lie to cops: Dumping stuff illegally

It was 1994. I was going to move in less than a week to Vancouver with my four children. I still have some stuff in my house that I wanted to get rid of.

I was lazy and scrooge, so I did not contract to have this stuff disappear. I had noticed a nearby construction site that was almost abandoned and where people were dumping stuff.

So, one night around 9 PM, I loaded my car with my stuff and went to the construction site. As soon as I arrived there, a police car showed up from left field. I stopped and wait for them.

One of the policemen asked me what I was doing there. I replied: "I was about to commit a crime" ("Je m'apprêtais à commettre un forfait"). The policeman was quite surprised by my answer. He asked me to open the back of the car.

They looked at it and noticed two big loudspeakers that I had bought several years ago. I believe the brand name was Braun. Yes, I told them, they are still working. So, they took them and put them in their car.

After checking that I was not dumping any medicament/drug or anything organic, they left after hinting that I was free to do what I wanted. So, I dumped the remaining of my stuff.

A third case when I was in the wrong, but I suffered no consequences when I told the truth to the cops.

Never lie to cops: Driving slow with no insurance

I was a young Navy Officer in Toulon and I was broke. I owned two cars and I was going to sell one. Only one of these two cars was insured.

As I was moving from a house to an apartment some ten kilometers away, I asked one of my friends to drive the insured car and I took the uninsured one.

I made sure that I was going well under the speed limit all the way, so that the police would not arrest me for speeding. Big mistake. In the south of France, going slightly over the speed limit is the usual way of driving. So, the police found my way of driving slowly highly suspect, and they stopped me.

My friend seeing that I was stopped by the police did not wait for me. I told the policemen the truth and explained that indeed I had no insurance for this car. They checked that the car was not stolen. They were almost friendly.

After they made sure that I owned the car and they got enough information about my whereabouts, they told me to continue to my destination, driving my uninsured car.

Later, the police went to check that I was indeed a graduate student at the Navy Instruction Center, and I was asked to present myself at the gate so that they could make sure that I told the truth.

As I remember, the case did not even go to court and I got no fine for my bad behavior.

This second case comforted me in my belief that you should never lie to the cops, whatever the consequences you imagine.

Never lie to cops: speeding on the freeway

It is my firm belief that you should never lie to cops (or to immigration officers), whatever the situation. If you do it, they will usually see through your lies and it will not be to your advantage.

Furthermore, if you tell the truth, the police officer will usually take this into consideration and you may end up with only a warning. Here is a first example.

In September 1974, I was driving from Paris to Toulon on the freeway. I had a fast car at the time, a Renault 12 Gordini, that could reach a speed of 180 km/h (around 110 miles per hour).

At some point, I was passed by a Porsche at 170 km/h. I was bored by a long drive, so I decided to have some fun and to follow this car for some time.

I new that the "gendarmes" were patrolling the freeway in fast anonymous cars, so I watched all the cars we were passing to try to detect a gendarmes'car.

After following the Porsche for some 10 km, I noticed in my rear view mirror a car that was gaining on us and that was flashing its head lights, presumably to pass other cars faster. So, I slowed down to the speed limit and two minutes later I was passed by a black Peugeot 504 break at 200 km/h. This was a gendarmes'car, with an Maserati engine. They did not make me stop then, they were pursuing the Porsche.

Fifteen kilometers later, they had stopped the Porsche and they signaled me to stop. I deliberately stopped more that 100 meters from the Porsche. A gendarme came to me and asked me what was my speed. I admitted to the truth that I was going at around 170 km/h.

He asked me for my papers. So, I first showed him my military ID card. He told me that this was not what he asked for, and I showed him my license, registration and insurance.

Then, he told me to not do it again, otherwise "next time, no gift" ("la prochaine fois, pas de cadeau") and he let me go without a ticket.

I believe there are two reasons why I was not penalized: first I admitted to the truth and second I was a military officer. The gendarmes are also part of the military, so showing my military ID card was a gamble, because the gendarme might have been upset that I was trying to take advantage of my occupation, but in this case it paid off.

Not smoking

I have stopped smoking on around April 1st 1978. I am not sure exactly when I smoked my last cigarette, but deciding it was on April Fool day made it easier for me to remember.

When we were teenagers, our parents allowed us to smoke only when we had reached the age of 15. Neither of them had ever smoked. I think that the reasons they did not forbid us completely to smoke were that they were not really aware of the health risks at the time and also that they probably guessed it would have been counter-productive.

So, I started to smoke at the age of 16. Up to 19 years old, my consumption of cigarettes was mostly limited by the lack of money.

When I enter the Naval Academy at the age of 19, I enrolled in the program to buy sixteen packs of cigarettes every month for the equivalent of one US dollar! This program has been cancelled since, of course. I also got more money so I was able to buy more cigarettes.

Five years later, I was smoking an average of 25 cigarettes a day. I realized that smoking was bad for my health, but I was addicted and unable to stop. It took me five more years and several failed attempts until I finally did it in 1978. For more than a year, I thought every day about smoking. After two years I only thought about it when I was in the presence of other people that were smoking.

I am now completely free from this addiction and I have never regretted stopping.

Testing my self-control at the casino

I don't like the idea of addiction. I have been subject to some minor addictions in my life (tobacco, TV) and I had a hard time getting rid of them. For a long time, I did not want to enter a casino to gamble, because I was not sure I would not become addicted to gambling.

In 2002, I was feeling good about my self-control, and I decided to test it at the local casino in Richmond, BC, where I was living. So, I wrote a plan:

• Whenever I win $100, I will stop gambling for a week.
• If I lose $1000, I will stop gambling forever.

I was gambling at the roulette on a dozen, starting each series of bets with $10, the minimum, and adding 50% of the total bets in the series each time I lost. Whenever I won, I would start another series.

As the maximum bet was $500 on a dozen, losing 13 times in a row will make me reach the $1000 limit, and then I would stop gambling.

I was able to stick to my plan. For 13 weeks, I won around $100 dollars a week. Then, on the 14th week, I lost $1200. So, I stop going to the casino, and since then I have never gambled in a casino, even when we spent 3 days in Las Vegas with my brother Philippe in 2005.

This exercise did not cost me any money (I was even $200 ahead at the end), provided me some free entertainment (watching people gambling is fascinating) and I was happy to realize that indeed I had enough self-control to stick to my plan and that it was very unlikely that I would become a compulsive gambler. At least, not in casinos.

The price of an espresso

The third year of instruction for French Navy Officer, after two years at the Naval Academy in Brittany, was practical experience on two ships, the "Jeanne d'Arc" and the "Victor Schœlcher". We were more than a hundred "officer students" on the Jeanne d'Arc and we had our own wardroom and our own bar.

There were two sailors that were spending their year of military service as bartenders. They would serve us our coffee and alcoholic drinks (there is no alcoholic restrictions for French Navy officers on ships). The cost of an espresso was 50 centimes, equivalent to 10 US cents at the time.

At some point, the two sailors indicated to the bar management that collecting the 50 centimes for each espresso after lunch was taking them too much time. As the bar was making an healthy profit on alcohol, and the income from the espressos was not very much, it was decided by the bar management to no longer collect the 50 centimes.

However, the consequence of this decision was very surprising: the consumption of espressos after lunch doubled! And the two sailors had to work even more making espressos than before when they were collecting the 50 centimes. So, the price of the espresso was quickly back to what it was before, and the consumption of espressos too.

I have always wondered why some of us, who were making more that the equivalent of US $1000 a month, would not spend 10 cents for a coffee, when we could not spend our money at sea.

Why did they asked for you by name?

I have never been good at writing letters. The truth is I have always hated it, as far as I can remember. Even, when I was a kid, my mother had a hard time to make me write thank you letters after I spent several days of my vacations at one of my cousins'house, what is called in French a "lettre de château".

During the 10 months I spent in the south Pacific in French Polynesia, I did not write more than 2 letters to my parents.

My mother had a brother who was a Captain in the French Navy. At the time he was head of Communications at the French Navy Headquarters in Paris. The Navy had just establish a new world wide radio channel to be used for some kind of emergencies, I don't remember the details.

One day, we received a message from the Navy Hearquarters indicating that, to try out this new radio channel from the south Pacific, I was personally to call Paris and to ask to speak to Captain Yves D..., my uncle.

Needless to say the Commanding Officer of the Trieux was very surprised: "Why did they asked for you by name?"

So, I explained that it was probably to ask how I was doing and to tell me to write letters to my parents, that were becoming anxious to learn from me.

So, I called and spoke to my uncle, and it turned out that my guess was correct.

Sir, there is a ship in sight

The year was 1971. I was 22. I was a Sub-Lieutenant (Enseigne de Vaisseau de 1ere Classe) on my first post on a landing ship, the "BDC Trieux", roughly equivalent to the American LSTs of World War II.

The Trieux was stationed in Papeete, Tahiti, and we were transporting various goods between Papeete, Mururoa and Hao.

The Commanding Officer had recently changed after I arrived to take my post in July 1971.

On every French Navy ship, there is a document called "Ordres Permanents du Commandant" (Permanent Orders of the Commanding Officer). This document is modified from time to time by each successive CO, to adapt to the regulations, the circumstances, or to the preferences of the current CO. In this document on the Trieux, it was prescribed that whenever there was a ship in sight, the watch officer was to tell the CO. The reason is that the South Pacific is an empty part of the oceans and it was very rare to cross another ship, Nay or merchant. Obviously, for the previous CO, it was a rare entertainment to see a ship in these empty waters.

I was the watch officer and at around 2AM, we detected a ship on the radar, then we saw its lights. So, as prescribed, I took the telephone and I called the CO. He came to the bridge, took his binoculars and saw that indeed there was a ship in sight.

Then he asked me why I had called him. I indicated that I was following the permanent orders.

The next day, in the morning, he changed the permanent orders so that he would not be waken up for every ship that we would cross. I am sure that he also read carefully the permanent orders document, that obviously he had not done previously.

Pour la pirogue, c'est Augustin!

The year was 1970. I was an ensign in the French Navy on the helicopter carrier "Jeanne d'Arc" that served as school for French Navy officers.

We were in Dakar, Senegal. We had rented a car and were going to visit a fishing village that was supposed to be very "pittoresque".

We turned the last bend in the road and suddenly, we were surrounded by a dozen young boys 8 to 12 years old. They were all speaking simultaneously (or rather shouting), and the first sentence we heard was: "Pour la pirogue, c'est Augustin." (for the pirogue, it's Augustin)

These young boys were working for their older brothers who were renting pirogues. I am sure that Augustin was one of the "piroguiers" we used.

After more than forty years, I still see the scene in my mind: a dozen black boys that looked like they were attacking our car with the battle cry "Pour la pirogue, c'est Augustin."

I should never had started this blog!

I know myself a little bit, and I am usually not good on performing similar tasks repetitively on a long period of time. Writing a blog almost daily is not the kind of thing I am good at.

Anyway, I have decided to continue and we will see if my resolution will last.

In the last month and a half, I had the visit of my brother Philippe for four weeks and of my son Syprien for one week.

My brother Philippe had visited me in North America three times already, in 2005, 2007 and 2009.

Syprien has not come to visit us in British Columbia for the last eight years. I have been visiting him in Maryland several times, including once in 2007 with Philippe.

I enjoyed their visit and Daisy too.

Setting up my new MacBook

Yesterday, I started to set up my new MacBook laptop. As it is a Mac, it is already ready to work. So, I was able pretty quickly to get all the source code from the Company servers and build the products. I simply had to download and install Xcode, that is freely available from the Apple web site.

I also downloaded Firefox (web browser) and Thunderbird (e-mail tool), as this is what I have been using on Linux and Windows. What took me a long time was to transfer my Thunderbird profile, so that I keep all my e-mails on the new laptop. Compressed, the Thunderbird profile takes 900 Mega Bytes! The procedure that I found on the Internet works beautifully.

This morning, I also transferred personal files. Then, I installed OpenOffice.org.

The next step was to install VMware, that the Company provided. And I have just installed Windows 7 Professional that I received from the Company yesterday.

I will have to be accustomed to the specifics on MacOS compared to Linux with GNOME. Already, I am missing the 18 (3 rows of 6) work spaces that I have been using on the Linux laptop.

Something that I am surprised to like is the multi-touch track pad. I was sure that I would need a 3-button mouse, but I am no longer so sure. 

Receiving my new laptop

My new laptop, a MacBook Pro 17 inches, was ordered by the Company last Thursday, March 3rd. I received notification by e-mail that it was being sent to me on March 5th.

I tracked the package on the FedEx web site. It arrived at FedEx in Shanghai, China, the 5th, left Shanghai on the 6th. It reached Anchorage, Alaska, on the 7th, where it went through customs. It arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, during the night and left to Miami less than two hours later. It was ready to be delivered yesterday morning, March 8th.

Unfortunately, my apartment number was not specified on the address, so it could not be delivered. FedEx called me and I told them the apartment number. In the afternoon, it was still not delivered, the reason given that there were nobody home. I certainly was home, as I did not dare to leave the apartment for one minute so that I could receive the laptop as soon as possible. There was no notification on my door, so obviously FedEx did not go to my apartment. There must be an efficiency reason why FedEx drivers do not phone the customer, but in my case it would have been cheaper for them to phone me during the morning delivery and ask me the apartment number.

So, I phoned FedEx and went to get it at 8 PM in their warehouse. I cannot really complain, as it was scheduled to arrive tomorrow Friday March 10th in the afternoon.

During the rest of the week, I will learn how I will work on this new laptop with an operating system I don't really know. Already, I have managed to install Firefox and I am typing this blog entry on the new laptop.

Getting a new laptop

My current working laptop is a Dell 15" Latitude D830, with two cores, that is running GNU/Linux. I have had it for four years. It still works well enough, except for the letter L that no longer works. I bought a wireless keyboard, so the disappearance of the letter L is no longer a problem.

I will keep this laptop, but I have asked the Company to buy me a MacBook 17", with four cores, where I will run MacOS and Windows 7. I will then be able to run three different operating systems on two machines, one in 32 bit and the other in 64 bit.

The process to get this new laptop was amazingly simple. Last Tuesday, I sent an e-mail to the president and the vice-president of the Company explaining why I would like to get this new laptop, and they both replied within less that 10 minutes "Sounds fine". That's it, no need to more paperwork, I had the approval. The reasoning is that the cost of a good machine every 3 years is less that 2% of the cost of a good engineer and it will increase the productivity of the engineer by more than 2%.

Also, there is no operating system war inside the Company. On their laptops, the president is running Windows (he used to run OS/2), the vice-president is running MacOS and many engineers are running GNU/Linux.

I expect to receive the new laptop next week.

Jet-lagged and sick

I should have known better than to "expect to recover in two to three days". I should have remembered that I always sleep rather well the first night I am coming back from Europe, because I am dead tired after a very long day where I was not able to sleep.

So, no, I did not recover quickly and last night was the first one where I slept enough.

In addition, I have been sick starting Monday evening: sore throat, fever and constipation. I have almost recovered today only.

It was not a standard cold, as my nose was not running. I used to have what I called "week-end colds", that start Friday evening and end Monday morning, just in time to go back to work. My theory is that you are most likely to get a cold when you are tired, which is more the case at the end of the week. I have not had one of those for quite some time.

And back to Miami

Thursday night, I went to the house of my brother Antoine. We were six: Antoine, his wife Marie-Hélène, his sons Adam and Cantor and his daughter Orlane. They were living in Seattle in 2000-2002, and I have not seen the children often since then. Orlane, the youngest, was polite and told me that she was remembering me. The two boys, Adam in first year at university of medicine and Cantor in equivalent of grade 11, being older, were remembering me very well.

Antoine was the sixth of my siblings that I saw during this trip. Sixth out of nine is not too bad. My mother was not in Versailles this week, so I did not have the opportunity to see her again.


Yesterday, Friday, I flied back to Miami, a ten hour direct flight. In the plane that was full, there was a group of around twenty teenagers. So, I expected the flight to be noisy. I said so to the woman on the next seat, and she told me that they were a group of high school students from Fort Myers, Florida. They were studying theater and/or French and they were coming back from Great Britain and France, where they had visited the Globe theater in London and la Comédie-Française in Paris. She was the theater teacher. She assured me that they will behave, and she was absolutely right. Later, one of the flight attendants commented to her that indeed her group of teenagers were exceptionally quiet.


I arrived at home at 16:45 and at 18:45 I was crashing, so I went to bed, after checking that there were no work emergency. I had a relatively good night. Of course, I was awake several times, starting at 2 AM, but I was able to sleep more than 8 hours in total. When we were living in Vancouver, it would take me more than a week to recover from the 9 hour difference. Here in Miami, with only 6 hour difference, I expect to recover in two to three days. Much better.

Diners with my brother and with old friends

Tuesday night, I had diner with my 52 years old brother Grégoire. He is a priest. He is currently working on a PhD in philosophy at the Sorbonne university. I don't see him very often, so we had a good exchange about what is happening currently in our respective lives.

And yesterday, Wednesday night, I went to diner to the home of Bruno, one of my comrades from École Navale, the French Naval Academy. We shared a dormitory for two years in 1968-1970. We were seven at the diner party: Philippe and Dominique, two of our comrades and their spouses were also invited. They are both retired admirals that I have rarely seen in the last forty years. We reminisce about our lives in the French Navy around the world. We also spoke about two subjects that are usually taboo in ships'wardrooms: politics and religion. It was a very enjoyable dinner party, so we left rather late, 20 minutes before 1 AM.

Today is my last day at the Paris office. Tonight, I will go to my brother Antoine's house in Châtillon and have dinner with him and his wife Marie-Hélène.

And tomorrow morning I'll will fly back to Miami. I should be at the apartment before Daisy returns from work at 5 PM.

Back to Paris

I flew back to Paris Sunday afternoon and was at the hotel around 5 PM. This is hotel Le Péra, an hotel I have never been before. I did not sleep very well on the first two nights, because there was a humming noise. Fortunately, tonight I will be in another room that seems less noisy.

I am working in the Paris office until this Thursday. Unfortunately, this is a period of school vacations in the Parisian region, and some of the engineers I wanted to see this week are not here. I will have to contact them by e-mail.

Yesterday, Monday, I went to have diner in Versailles at my sister Nicole's, and my brother Benoit and his wife Jeanne-Marie came specially from Dreux to see me. Benoit is the one of my siblings who never finished high school when he was young, became a successful farmer and is the richest of all of us.

Tonight, I'll have diner with my brother Grégoire, who is a priest, in a restaurant near by.

Wednesday, I'll have dinner with 3 of my comrades at the French Naval Academy (in 1968-1971).

And Thursday night, I'll visit my brother Antoine and his wife Marie-Hélène for diner.

During the days, I am working at the office and starts to know two newly hired engineers that were not there yet two weeks ago.

Back in Budapest

I could not read my mail on Thursday, too many things happened.

First, at 9AM, Daisy's aunt visited. Then at 11:30 we left to have lunch at Daisy's high school friend Vilma's house. A very good Hungarian meal. Then, we walked with Vilma to the Zsolnay ceramics exhibition where we met with the rest of the family. There were dozens of exquisite ceramics items from the period 1880-1920, that were collected by an Hungarian born American and sold to the city of Pecs.

Then, Daisy and myself went to the railway station to buy our tickets to go back to Budapest on Friday, before going back to Daisy's parents house. The rest of the family joined us later.

On Friday, I was able to read my mail for two hours (9 to 11AM). I had more than 800 e-mails (not SPAM), but for most of them I did not need to read more than the title and 2 or 3 lines. We had a last family lunch, then all the visitors left for Budapest: Daisy's children in their rented car, Daisy and myself by train.

The train takes a little less than 3 hours. We arrived around 6 PM and Daisy's friend Erica (that I had already met in August 2010) was waiting for us. We went to an excellent Hungarian restaurant, then to her place 25 kms east of Budapest, where we spent the night.

Saturday morning, we visited Erica's daughter who lives nearby, then went to Gödöllö where Daisy has lived for twelve years. Gödöllö cannot be transliterated in English; in French it is pronounced "Gueudeuleu".

In Gödöllö, we visited another of Daisy's friend who lives in the same street where Daisy had her house.

Then we went back to Budapest to have lunch with one of my nephew and his girlfriend who recently moved from Paris to Budapest. He is the son of one of my first cousin, from my father's side. He is an artist (drawing, sculpture, ceramics, but no painting) who lives from his art. We had lunch in a nearby café.

We left our suitcases at their apartment, then took the metro to meet with another of Daisy's friend Edit. The Budapest metro was the second one built in the world, after the London Underground. It was inaugurated in 1896 for the celebration of the millennium of the arrival of the Magyar people in what is now Hungary.

We met with Edit in a wonderful Tea Room called Gerbeault that is world renown. After tea and cakes, and walking around, we went back to get our suitcases and Daisy's sister Ili took us to another wonderful café in Budapest, located in a bookstore, where you can also buy wine. We met there with the rest of the family, including Ili's three children.

Then, we said our good byes to Daisy's and Ili's children and went to Ili's apartment to spend the night.

This morning, at 6:30 AM, Ili drove Daisy to the airport. She is flying back to Miami. Ili will drive me to the airport at 11 AM, to go back to Paris. I will work again this week at the Paris office and go back to Miami this Friday.

As you can see, I was very busy these last three days, and I expect to have a lot of e-mails to read on Monday morning! But spending this week in Hungary, meeting with Daisy's family and seeing many new things in Daisy's country was wonderful. Her family welcomed me with open arms.

We don't know when we will be back in Hungary, probably not this year.

Celebration of Daisy's father 80th birthday

Yesterday night, the celebration of Daisy's father 80th birthday took place in the restaurant "Tettye Vendéglő", on the heights of Pécs.

We were nineteen at the dinner, the two parents, the three daughters, their SOs, the seven grandchildren, two of their SOs and two parents of two of those SOs.

This was a very good and very enjoyable dinner and everybody looked very happy to be together, which does not happen often as Daisy and her children live in Canada, Scotland and now the United States.

Before the dinner, many pictures were taken in the parents' house, including one that attempted to reproduce one taken exactly twenty years before of the grand parents and the grandchildren.

As the best rating in the Michelin restaurant guide: "vaut le voyage" (this is worth a trip).

A piano concert in Pécs

I was able to work for two an a half hours this morning. Daisy's brother in law, who lives 300 meters from Daisy's parents, let me use his Internet in his house.

This evening, we went to listen to a piano concert with two young pianists, still studying in Budapest, one of them being Daisy's nephew, Adam. They played piano pieces by Scarlatti, Bartok, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Liszt. The concert took place in the amphitheater of the art high school where the two pianists were students.

There were around thirty people in the amphitheater, including twelve from Adam's family. It was quite an enjoyable event.

Geocaching in Pécs, Hungary

Yesterday, I decided to look for some geocaches here in Pécs. And I discover that there was one less than 100 meters from Daisy's parents house. So, we went there yesterday afternoon with Daisy and her father. Daisy found the cache very easily. And I took a picture of Daisy with the cache in hand with her father.

Later, I went to get another cache within walking distance of the house. I found on the map the streets I needed to follow to get there. These were narrow streets, called in Hungarian "dülö". But I had not realized that it was very steep: the slope was announced to be 30%! In fact, it was forbidden to climb, but not to descend this particular dülö.

In any case, I got this second cache, and I did my exercise at the same time.

Hungary is the fourth country where I have found geocaches, after Canada, France and the United States.

Driving a Trabant in the hills near Pecs

This afternoon, Daisy's brother in law, Beci, drove us to visit his his parents in their week-end house in the hills near Pecs, the city in Hungary where we are staying in Daisy's parents house.

There we ate "palacsintak", similar to "crêpes" in French (thin pancakes).

Then, Beci's father let me drive for 15 minutes his Trabant, a car that became famous in the western world after the end of the Iron Curtain. We went to a village called Szabolcs and back, in very bad and muddy roads. Driving the Trabant was not unlike driving Citroen "2 chevaux" in the 70's.

I was expecting an original two stroke engine in the Trabant, that was famous for exhausting a lot of smoke. However, it had been replaced by a Volskwagen engine, probably because the original engine was too polluting.

As Daisy says: "You cannot have it all".

Travelling in Hungary

I left Paris this morning and arrived in Budapest, Hungary, at noon. Daisy was born in Hungary. Her family is gathering to celebrate her father's eightieth birthday.

Her sister Ili was waiting for me and drove me to her apartment. Later, she went back to the airport to get Daisy's daughter Agi and her fiance Javier, who came from Edinburgh where they live.

Around 5:30PM, Daisy's other sister Gabi arrived with her husband Beci and Daisy that arrived from Miami.

Gabi and Beci then drove us to Pecs, some 200 kilometers south of Budapest, where they live and where Daisy's parents also live.

Later, Daisy's two sons, Peter and Gabor, arrived at 9:00PM from Vancouver. They will stay for several days in Budapest, with Agi and Javier.

Everybody will be in Pecs Tuesday night and the official celebration will be on Wednesday.

I am able to connect through the Internet with my Windows laptop, but not with my Linux one. I will probably be better connected from time to time during the week I am staying in Hungary. So, not much work will be done this week.

Continuous testing

The software produced by the Company is managed and updated daily. It is also provided to the customers on a number of computing platforms. The platforms include of course the diverse versions of Microsoft Windows and several flavors of GNU/Linux, but also more exotic platforms such as VMS IA64, for example.

To check that the software is working properly, it is built every night on all these platforms and a test suite of several thousands tests is also ran every night.

Results of these tests is sent by e-mail to a number of engineers of the Company. I personally received several dozens of these messages. Most of the "regressions" are not real ones and the fix is usually to modify or to specialize the expected output of the test.

Building and testing continuously on all platforms reduce considerably the time to produce a release, although producing a release involves still a lot of work.

New hotel in Paris

In Paris, I usually stay in an hotel near the Company's office, not far from the Saint-Lazare train station.

This time, I have decided to test a new hotel, less than 200 meters from the office, in rue d'Athènes, the Villathéna (their web site www.villathena.com is entirely in Macromedia flash!!!)

For me, the two main features of an hotel are silence and darkness. I must say that the Villathéna is pretty good in this domain.

The curtains are good. I did not hear any noise from inside the hotel. In particular, the heating system is very quiet.  And there is not much traffic in the street.

For the last two nights I have spent there so far, I have been awaken at 7:30 AM by the garbage truck. This is not too bad.

The rooms are very clean and modern. I will recommend this hotel to my colleagues.

Arrived in Paris

I took a taxi to go to MIA (Miami International Airport) at 3:30PM. When I arrived at the airport at 4:00PM, I realized that I had forgotten my passport at home. So, with the same taxi, I went back home, got my passport and then back to MIA. An expensive mistake ($100).

I was at the gate at 5:15PM, for a departure at 6:10PM.

In fact, we left the gate 30 minutes late, as we needed to wait for a group of 15 years old girls from Honduras who had a late connection.

Just behind me were a French couple with a one year old girl. I was afraid that the little girl would prevent me to sleep, but she did behave most of the night. The teenage girls, being excited to go to Paris for the first time I imagine, were much more noisy!

I did not sleep very much during the flight, but I never sleep well in an airplane, so no surprise here.

Even though we were late to depart, we were at the gate at Paris CDG on time at 9:00AM. And I was at the Company's Paris office at 11:00AM.

Travelling to Paris tonight

I am going to Paris tonight. I'll arrive tomorrow Monday, February 7th, at Paris CDG.

I will work the whole week at the Paris office of the Company.

I will also visit my family, specially my mother, and some of my friends from the French Naval Academy, that I have known for more than 40 years.

Next Saturday, I will travel to Hungary, the native country of Daisy. She will travel directly from Miami the same day. Her father is going to be 80 years old and the whole family will be there, including Daisy's three children who will come from Vancouver and Edinburgh.

In Hungary, where I will stay for a week, I am not sure when I will be able to connect to the Internet.

In two weeks, I will return to Paris, work four more days at the Paris office and come back to Miami Friday, February 25th.

Mail delivery on Saturday

I recently realized that the mail was distributed here in Miami.

Canada Post stopped delivering mail on Saturdays in 1969. When I was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1979-1982, it was already the case: no mail on Saturday.

Daisy tells me that in Hungary too, there is no mail on Saturday.

Up to yesterday, I was convinced that there was no mail on Saturday in France too, but after verification, I learned that the mail was still distributed on Saturday in France. However, in France, newspapers are often distributed by mail, specially in the country. Suppressing mail on Saturday would mean: no week-end newspaper distribution.

I still believe that suppressing mail distribution on Saturday in the United States would save money. And the United States Postal Service desperately need to save money.

Some mail order businesses, such as Amazon, do not agree with this position, saying that it would not be good for customers. But, as I said, this is what has already been the case in Canada for more than 40 years, and Amazon is doing well there.

Debugging problems remotely

Usually, when a customer finds a problem in one of the Company product, he is able to send us a small setup that reproduces the problem. We call this a "reproducer".

This allows us to reproduce the problem in-house and to find a solution.

Sometimes the customer is unable to reduce the problem in a small setup, but he is able to send us his own large setup. Then, either we construct ourself a small reproducer, or we debug the problem with the large setup.

However, there are cases when, for security reasons, the customer will not send us his setup, but will only describe the symptoms. This is when we need to debug the problem remotely.

We usually do that by asking questions by e-mail. All e-mail exchanges with the customer is logged and distributed to every developer in the Company. So, any developer may intervene in the conversation to help solving the problem.

When it is difficult to explain by e-mail, we use the phone. But we try to avoid this as phone conversations are not tracked and it is very easy to forget to summarize the conversation in an e-mail.

I recently solve a problem by remote debugging. I had to phone the customer once for fifteen minutes and exchange about 10 e-mails before I figured out what the problem was. Then, I was able to create a very small reproducer and to solve the problem.

Solving such difficult to find problems is very gratifying.

Importing a car in the United States

We had a lot of problem to solve when we imported Daisy's car, a 2009 Nissan Rogue, in the United States.

First, we were not prepared and we did not check what we needed to do to have the car legally imported. So, on November 30th, we were stuck at the border because we did not have the proper paperwork.

When importing a private car in the United States, you either need a certification by the manufacturer that the car is OK to be imported (I don't remember the details), or you need a registered importer to do the certification for you.

We were unable to get the proper paperwork from Nissan Canada, as they were already closed in Ontario when we phoned them. So, we needed a registered importer. We found one in Alberta. We had to drive back 60 km (with all our furniture in the U-Haul trailer) and we had to pay 400 dollars.

Finally, we were allowed to cross the border around 8PM. Because of this car problem, I believe that the border patrol forgot about our furniture and did not ask us any question about it.

Getting a US insurance is a prerequisite to have a Florida license plate. As the Canadian insurance expired on January 31st, Daisy did not want to get a US insurance before the end of January. In retrospect, it was a mistake as the Florida rules is that the change to a Florida license plate should be done within ten days. But nobody asked us anything. I guess they are used to see Canadian cars in Florida.

We went to two different insurance companies that either quoted outrageous prices, or asked us papers we did not have. Finally, we called Geico and the process was very smooth and the price was not too high.

To get a Florida license plate, you go to a private "Tag Agency". We first went to the closest one on a Saturday morning. After queuing for one hour, we were told to go to the DMV for the car to be inspected.

Thinking I was smart, I went on the DMV web site and I thought that we only needed a VIN verification form. Such a verification can be done by a police officer and we have a police station not far from our apartment. So, we went to the police station during lunch break, got our VIN verification form signed by a friendly police officer and went back to the TAG Agency, where there was no line on weekdays.

This was a fiasco. We were told that the form was not the right one and that we needed to go to the DMV. So, I phone the DMV and were told that indeed the car needed to be inspected by a DMV inspector. The owner did not need to be present. So, I went the next morning and the car was inspected and I got the signed form. Back to the Tag Agency at lunch time for the third time.

This time, we got our license plate. However the price of the plate is outrageous: US$320 for the default license plate. Adding the licensing fees, the county fees and the Tag Agency fees, we had to pay US$435!

Daisy says that it was the most expensive license plate she has ever bought.

How I was perceived by my children

When I started to work at home for the Company, my children were between 16 and 22 years of age.

My daughters Petunia and Elisabeth were worried by this work move. They did not understand how a business that was producing only free software could be sustainable. I had to reassure them several times that the Company was very healthy and had never lost money from its creation.

Without consciously realizing it, they had the impression that working at home on a computer was not "real" work. So, I must have a lot of free time, and as I was at home the whole day, could I do this or that for them during the day? I had to explain that I was not to be disturbed during my working hours, even though they were very flexible.

When their friends were asking them what kind of job I had, they had a hard time explaining it. At some point, Petunia told me that she was now answering that she did not know exactly what I was doing, because when she did, her friends did not believe her. Some of them had even said jokingly that I must be a spy.

No, I am not a spy. But you don't have to believe me.

Starting to work for the Company

I had known two of the founders of the Company since 1992.

In 1999, I was working for the Corporation, in Vancouver, to develop CAATS, the Canadian Automated Air Traffic System. I was starting to become uncomfortable with the Corporation. So, I asked the Company if I could work for them. Their response was positive.

My first idea was to leave the Corporation, but work for them as a self-employed consultant as well as work part-time for the Company. The Corporation did not agree. Someone suggested to the management of the Corporation that I should be allowed to work part-time. So, this is what I did initially.

I was not sure that working at home through the Internet for the Company was a a good fit for me. Working part time, I would learn if it was the case.

So I started to work 10 hours per week for the Company and 30 hours for the Corporation. And I saw that I could work alone. The main question had been: will I get up in the morning when I can do it whenever I want? Fortunately, I am a morning guy and the answer to this question was a definitive Yes.

Several months later, I started working 20 hours for the Corporation and 20 hours for the Company. And I was comforted in my belief that I could work easily for the Company.

Finally, in September 2001, I resigned completely from the Corporation and started to work full time for the Company. I have never regretted it since.

My father

Like my mother and myself, my father was the third child of a very large family.

He was an intellectual. He had a bachelor of philosophy. He missed, twice if I remember correctly, an exam to become a high school teacher of philosophy. In retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise, because he would not have been happy as a teacher.

Instead, he became a librarian at the "Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France" in Paris, a large research library, where he spent all his working life. He wrote several books of philosophy that were not successful. During his retirement, he worked as a volunteer for the "Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française".

He had met my mother and her brothers before WWII in the city of Le Chesnay, near Versailles. Their marriage was somewhat arranged, but they loved each other and they both loved us, their children.

From 1947 to 1957, they lived in Rambouillet, 50 kms from Paris, in a three level house. My father took the train every weekday morning and returned at night.

In 1957, we were already seven children, and we moved to Saint-Ouen, a suburb of Paris, in a big house. Once all their children had moved out, in 1983, my parents bought an apartment 20 kms south of Paris.

In 1996, one of my sisters died of breast cancer.My father never really recovered from his loss. He died two years later, at the age of 83, from his third heart attack.

My father and myself had our differences over the years, but we had made peace before his death.

He was an interesting guy and he was lucky to have my mother at his side.

La Poste, Canada Post and USPS

La Poste, the French Post Office, and Canada Post, the Canadian one, do not seem to have major financial problems.

La Poste (a public company owned by the French state) has a reasonably large number of establishments all over the country. La Poste is also a bank (La Banque Postale) so this contributes to its financial success.

In Canada, most postal outlets are in privately owned shops, such as 7-Elevens. There are quite a few of those, so, at least in urban areas, you are never very far from the postal outlet where you get your packages/registered mail when the letter carrier does not find you at home. This contributes to the good level of service of Canada Post.

Incidentally, the mail is not distributed everywhere in Canada. I own a house in an unincorporated area in British Columbia, and there is no mail distribution there, and thus no postal code. To get your mail, you need to have a P.O. box at the near Post Office. The P.O. box is free if this is your main residence and prohibitively expensive if this is a secondary residence.

Here, in Miami-Dade county, the near Post Office is 5 kilometers (3.2 miles) from where I live. To go get a package, you need to take your car and spend the better part of an hour.

Also, in the apartment complex where we live, if a package is too large to fit in your mail box, the letter carrier put it in a bigger box and put the key to this bigger box in your mail box. Except, when there are no bigger box available. Then, you need to go get your package at the Post Office, 5 km away. There is no attempt by the letter carrier to knock on your door to deliver the package.

From what I hear, USPS is in dire straits. I am not really surprised.

No stupid questions

Sometimes my first gut reaction to a question from a customer is: RTFM. But of course I never answer anything like that. We are always pleased with any question from the customers.

When a customer never asks anything from us and never reports any bug, it usually means that they either don't use the software at all or that they use it very little. And such a customer at some point will realize that they are paying for a support contract that has given them no support and that made them more likely to drop the contract the next year.

So, no, there are no stupid question. If a customer is asking a question that we feel he would not ask if he had read the documentation, we patiently answer the question and indicate where in the documentation he would have found the answer by himself.

There are three kinds of reactions to such an answer.

The customer may thank us and we reply that they are welcome.

The customer may apologize for asking such a trivial question and we answer that they should not apologize, because we are happy to answer any question from them; this is what their support contract is for.

Or the customer may indicate that he has read the documentation on the subject, but that he feels that the documentation is ambiguous. Then we enter into a dialogue with the customer to improve the documentation.

At the end, every one wins: the customer has the answer to his question and we have interact with the customer which makes his support contract worthwhile and then more likely to be renew the next year.

And of course we really think that there are no stupid questions, because we all have been in the same position as the customer and also asked some questions that in retrospect seemed stupid to ourselves.

Hunting bugs

I love bugs.

What I really mean is that I love hunting for bugs. The harder it is to find a bug, the more satisfying it is to hunt for it.

As is well known, any software that is not too simple contains bugs. So, the software produced by the Company does contain bugs. It is not possible to test for all imaginable configurations.

Of course, some of our customers find some of the bugs and they report them to us.

Some of these bugs, when fully described by the customer, are very easy to correct. And there has been a few cases when we reply to the customer in less than 15 minutes that indeed there is a bug and it has now been corrected. Usually the customer is pleasantly surprised.

Other bugs may be difficult to find. Of course, it is easier when we are able to reproduce the problem ourselves, specially when the procedure to reproduce it works every time. But even when we have a reproducer, it may take us a long time to find the real problem.

There are cases when the customer cannot provide us with a reproducer. Then, we have to ask him to do various experiments until we are able to find the circumstances of the bug and to create a reproducer ourselves.

In any case, I love to look for hard to find bugs.

Personally, I believe that hunting is more interesting that killing, I mean correcting, the bug.

Different cityscapes

We live in a 400+ apartment complex in an unincorporated neighborhood of Miami-Dade county, called "The Hammocks".

This is a neighborhood that has been built for automobiles, not for pedestrians. You barely see people walking on the sidewalks. I like to walk, when it is not too far (less than one kilometer), but it is not really pleasant because of all the cars that run at forty miles an hour.

The street in front of my office has 5 lanes, but it is not possible to park on the street. So, if you want to walk around, you need to find some place to park first, such as a strip mall.

At night, there is no public lighting. Daisy who works three kilometers from the apartment usually walks to work mornings and evenings. However, if she works late, she does not want to walk in the dark, so she calls me to come get her with the car.

According to Wikipedia, Burnaby, British Columbia (where we lived two years ago) and The Hammocks have the same population densities. But, in Burnaby, you see people walking on the sidewalks continuously. Here, apart from people exercising, there are almost no pedestrians.

Token: TQPVY2BZ6MTX

Working all over the world

I believe I have one of the best job in the world. A big part of it is to be able to work anywhere, as long as I can connect to the Internet.

As long as I work reasonably long enough, the Company does not really care where I am.

I have been able to make extended trips across North America in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2010.

Several years ago, my younger sister spent two years in Beijing with her family and I went to visit her for three weeks. Incidentally, she had more visitors in Beijing in two years that I have had in Vancouver in fifteen years.

I had synchronized my visit with my mother and my eldest brother who traveled from France. During the day, we would visit Beijing and around (including the Great Wall) and at night, I would work. I remember that I was quite productive and that I contributed some delicate piece of software still in use today.

It is hard to find such a job where you have no obligation of location and where you are mostly free to travel.

From Calgary to Miami in December 2010

Traveling from Calgary, Alberta, to Miami, Florida, in eleven days was an amazing experience. We left Calgary under the snow and arrived in Miami in what for us felt like summer.

Our furniture was very compact. Almost every piece was folding or easy to disassemble. Most of it, we had bought at IKEA. We had rented a U-Haul trailer with a capacity of around 5.5 cubic meters. The trailer was completely full and our car, a Nissan Rogue, too.

We made sure that things that would break if frozen were in the car, not in the trailer, and everything was in good shape when we arrived.

We had rented through the phone and the Internet an apartment in Miami-Dade County, but the apartment was not available before December 11th. As we had to leave our apartment in Calgary on November 30th, we had plenty of time, so we did not need to hurry. As we were two drivers, we could have gone in a week.

We stayed in cheap motels/hotels. We realized that every motel near the high ways has free Wireless, even the shitty ones. So, I was able to connect almost every day and work several hours in the evenings.

We visited Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug in South Dakota, the Arch in Saint Louis, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Tennessee.

For people of our ages, it was a little crazy to do this trip of 5,500 km in December, but if you never do some slightly crazy things, you are missing something in life!

Junk mail in Canada and in the U.S.

In Canada, Canada Post offers as a paid service to distribute junk mail. This is called "Unaddressed Admail". Direct marketers deliver their stuff to the Post Office for some neighborhoods and they are distributed to every household in these neighborhoods.

If you don't want to get this unaddressed or junk mail, you simply have to put a sign "No junk mail" on your mailbox. Canada Post then decrements the number of mail boxes where junk mail is distributed in your neighborhood and the direct marketers then reduce the size of the junk mail to be distributed. This way, less paper is wasted.

In the week after we arrived in Miami, I met my letter carrier and I asked him what I should do so that I don't receive the junk mail. I told him about the "no junk mail" sign in Canada. He indicated to me that if he were not distributing what I call "junk mail", he would not do his job.

Later, I discover that each piece of junk mail is individually addressed to each household with the full address, including the apartment number. No name of course, just "Resident" or "Our neighbor". I then understood that indeed the letter carrier had to distribute the junk mail to everybody, as it is individually addressed. Of course, like most people that would like to not receive junk mail, I put it directly in one of the large garbage cans around the mailboxes in our apartment complex.

I find the Canadian system much better, mostly because it reduces waste.

My ancestors

As I have already said, I was born in France. All my known ancestors were French, born in France.

I know that because my mother is an amateur genealogist and in the 80's she has established our family tree on many generations.

Both my parents had nine siblings.

I never knew my paternal grandmother as she died before I was born.

My paternal grandfather Leonce was an archivist, and he worked all his life at the Archives nationales in Paris. His last job there was the "general inspector", the second in rank, after the director. He had a house in Le Chesnay, near Versailles. He was a heavy smoker and he died, probably from smoking too much, when I was 14 years old.

My maternal grandmother had Parkinson's disease before I knew her. My paternal grandfather Henri became a Navy officer in 1910 by chance, and I may explain later how that happened. He later became an hydrographer and he ended his career in the Navy a three star general officer as the director of the Navy Hydrographic Service, that later became the SHOM. He spent most of his time taking care of my grandmother until she died. He had a house in a sea resort in Brittany where we have spent many summer vacations. He was a very kind person, but when we were young children we were terrified of him. We later realized as teenagers that it was simply a facade. He died at the beginning of the 80's.

Arguing and reaching consensus

It is often the case that there are differences of opinions between us in the Company, for example to correct a bug or to add a new feature to the software.

We always try to resolve these differences by exchanging arguments and trying to reach a consensus. Everybody's input is welcome.

We don't modify the software until we have reached a consensus that is acceptable to everybody, even if it is reluctantly.

I have often been in a minority of one, but I have accepted the majority consensus. And sometimes the consequences have shown that I was in the right, but more often than not, I was wrong in my opinion.

The opinion of one of our founders does not carry more weight than any other. And there has been multiple cases when one of our founders has been alone against the rest of the Company and have then accepted the consensus.

This is an Open Company in every sense of the term.

Supporting customers through e-mail

When the customers of the Company have a problem or want to ask a question about the software, they either do it through the Company web site or by sending an e-mail to a specific support address. If they send an e-mail, they need to specify their customer ID in the subject line. If they use the web site, an e-mail is automatically send to the support address with the customer ID in the subject line.

The support address is in fact some kind of a mailing list and the e-mail is sent to most of the Company developers. The subject line also has a unique ticket ID. All e-mail exchange with the customer or internal inside the company have the ticket ID in the subject line and are copied to the support address.

The customer receives in return to his initial message an e-mail indicating the ticket ID.

All this is rather standard. Here is something specific to the Company.

Whoever knows better the problem or the question replies to the customer. There is no procedure to decide who needs to reply to the initial message. Of course, if a developer has already received (through the support address) a response to the initial message from a colleague, he will refrains to answer directly to the customer, or he will do it after coordination with the initial responder.

Sometimes, two or even three Company developers answer the initial message. Most of the time, these responses will give similar or complementing answers. If this is not the case, then the different responders will coordinate and the one who has given incorrect information will say so to the customer.

This process ensures that most of the initial messages are answer very quickly. Fast reaction to customer problems or question is one aspect of the Company support that makes it "outstanding".

Gun shot in high school

In France, in my days, high school was called "lycée" and started in
"sixième" (grade 6) and ended in "terminale" (grade 12).

For the two first years (grade 6 & 7), I was in an establishment now called "Lycée Stéphane Mallarmé", and the next five years in "Lycée Honoré de Balzac" in the XVIIth "arrondissement" of Paris.

At Balzac, in "quatrième" (grade 8), I was 13 years old. One day, during recess, I was talking to one of my comrades, whose name I don't remember.

We were alone, and there were nobody near us. This guy told me that he had a gun, and he showed to me a small hand gun that he put back in his pocket. He assured me that he was very careful and that there was no bullet in the chamber.

Suddenly, I heard a loud noise and I saw a hole on the cement we were standing on, some ten centimeters from his right foot. Apparently, he had not been careful enough and he had pressed the trigger. We were fortunate to not having been injured.

We were both scared of what could have happened. Needless to say, he never brought back the gun to school again!

I remember this episode, when I learned that a gun was accidentally shot today in Gardenia High School in California.

Software licensed under the GPL

Many people wonder how a company that produces only software under the GPL may be successful.

There are many examples of GPL companies, starting with the Linux companies, such as Red Hat or Suse (now owned by Novell). Other well known examples are JBoss (now owned by Red Hat) and SugarCRM.

The software produced by these companies is licensed under the GPL. This means that the sources must be available and that any body may "fork" a modified version of the software. And there are indeed small or large companies that fork software produced by GPL companies, including  the Company.

The GPL companies usually have a community driven version and a Professional or Enterprise version of their software. They make their money by selling support contracts for the Professional version. They can do that, because the software is complex and not easy to maintain and their customers have other things to do than maintain such software. Hard to maintain does not mean hard to use, of course.

The software produced by the Company is used to build other software applications. There is a difference between the Professional version and the Public version. The applications produced with the Public version are automatically licensed under the full GPL, or under a license compatible with the GPL. This is not the case for the Professional version, and the applications do not need to follow the source and distribution requirements of the GPL.

A Company that trusts its customers

As the software produced by the Company is free software, there is no checking of any license when the customers use the software.

The cost of an annual support contract depends on the number of users. As there is no way to automatically check how many people are using the software, this number of users is what the customers declare.

The Company trusts its customers to declare the correct amount of users.

Prospective customers that are not sure whether the software will be beneficial to them can get an evaluation at no cost for them, with full support. The standard duration of such an evaluation is 3 months, but it may be extended for qualified reasons.

The Company is only asking the prospects that they send a short report on their evaluations. In most cases, an evaluation will be converted into a support contract.

The support provided by the Company is the same for customers with a support contract and prospects evaluating the software. It is in the best interest of both the Company and the prospects to provide outstanding support, either to have the customer renew his contract or to have the evaluating prospect buying a support contract.

Working while traveling across North America

I have made several cross-country trips across North America, and each time I was able to work almost every day. The trick is to always choose a campground or a motel with a Wifi or Ethernet connection to the Internet.

In November 2005, with my eldest brother Philippe, we went south in a 22 foot RV from Vancouver to San Diego and back through Washington state, Oregon, California and Nevada. We visited three of my colleagues from the Company that live in Washington state, Cupertino and San Diego. One month on the road.

In May-June 2007, again with my brother Philippe, we made a two month RV trip of 12,000 kilometers through 6 Canadian provinces and 17 US states. We went through Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. Then Vermont (a week at the country house of the president of the Company), Boston, New York city, Washington, DC (where we visited my son in Maryland). Then, on our way back, Saint Louis, Kansas City, Rapid City (Mount Rushmore), Billings, Missoula and Spokane. During this trip, a business meeting was organized by one of our commercials with one of our customer in Saint Louis.

We made another trip with Philippe and my companion Daisy in June 2009, in British Columbia and Alberta.

Finally, in the first half of December 2010, with Daisy, we moved from Calgary to Miami, a big difference in climates! We had packed all our furniture in a U-Haul trailer that we towed behind our car for eleven days.

The Company was made aware in advance of all these trips and, as I already said, I was able to work almost every day on the road.

This is one reason why I often say: "I am never on vacation, I am always on vacation".

My life (short version)

I was born during the forties (2 months before the end!) in France, the third out of eleven children. My father was a civil servant working in a big library in Paris. My mother (who will be 90 years old in May 2011) was a professional mother.

At 19 years old, I entered the French Naval Academy (Ecole Navale) and I spent 20 years in the French Navy, finishing with the rank of commander. I learned software mostly on my own during my Navy years. I spent 3 years as a Nato exchange officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I met my first wife in Douala, Cameroon, while on vacation in 1973. We got married in 1979, just before going to Halifax. We adopted two Haitian girls and I also became the guardian of a nephew and a niece of her.

In 1988, I left the Navy to work in a software house near Paris.

In 1994, I emigrated alone to Vancouver, British Columbia, with my four children, Petunia, Elisabeth, Syprien and Carole (not their real names). In Vancouver I worked for a big Corporation to develop the Canadian Automated Air Traffic System (CAATS).

And in 1999-2000, I moved gradually away from the Corporation to work for the Company.

In 2008, I met my companion Daisy (not her real name either). In 2009, she was let go from her sales job for a medical equipment company, and she found another job in Calgary, Alberta, in the summer of 2009. We moved there, and I continued to work for the Company, of course.

Recently, she found a better job in Miami, Florida, and we moved there in December 2010. A trip of eleven days, across eleven US states, with our furniture in a U-Haul trailer behind the car.

This is how I ended up working in Miami.

Recruiting people that will fit

The Company is not trying to grow fast. It recruits very slowly and only people that it is sure they will fit.

There are two main ways to be recruited.

The first one is to already be known by the Company founders or main employees. I am one of those. I have know the Company founders for years before joining the Company.

The second one if from paid internships. The Company regularly have interns that get paid to do real work that will benefit the Company. During these internships that last several months, they are evaluated and if it appears that they will fit in the culture of the Company, they are proposed to join the Company.

Amazingly, the turnover is almost zero. In its more than 15 years of existence, only one person left the Company. This indicates how good the Company is for the people that work for it.

A trusting Company

To be able to work as I do, and as other people working for the Company do, the Company need to trust us.

Trust is an important characteristics of the Company. Nobody is going to spy on us to know exactly what we are doing each day.

We don't even have to write monthly activity reports. For those of us in North America, we only have a one hour weekly telephone conference that lasts a maximum of one hour, where each participant explains what he has done for the last week and what he is going to do in the future.

And it is OK if you cannot participate to the weekly conference. You should simply explain why you cannot participate and give your personal report by e-mail.

Such a system of trust works for two reasons:

1. We are a small company and most people know everybody else, with the exception of the last recruits.
2. The Company only recruits people that it knows will fit well and that can be trusted.

Working alone at home

As I already said, I work at home, alone.

Most of the communications I have with the customers and my colleagues in New York, Paris, or elsewhere are done through e-mail. I also sometimes use Skype or the telephone to speak to my colleagues.

I realize that this way of working is not for everybody, as you need to have enough discipline to not slack off. I usually have this discipline, although I have been know to stray.

The Company is not checking on my working hours, and in fact I work at strange hours: as I often have insomnia during the night, I read and answer my mail in the middle of the night, for an hour or so.

I am lucky enough to not need an alarm clock and I usually wake up around seven in the morning. It happens sometimes that I wake up after 7:30 or even, very rarely, after 8:00, but it is usually because I have had a longer than usual insomnia.

And, of course, I read my mail on week-ends, and answer urgent requests from customers.

Academic and public versions

As the software is used in universities and by individuals, the Company produces once a year an Academic/Public version of the software on several popular platforms, including Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

These versions are pure GPL. While the software for the customers may produce applications that may be distributed without all the requirements of the GPL, this is not true for the Academic/Public versions: any application produced with these versions can only be distributed with all the requirements of the GPL; there must be a way to get the complete sources.

Thus, the Company is benefiting the free software community, while at the same time it is protecting its business.

Universities may participate in the Academic Program and they will then get free support. However, the only versions they will get are the annual Academic/Public versions.

A Company that produces only free software

The Company I work for (from now on, the "Company") produces only free software under the GPL (the GNU General Public License) or an allowed modified version of the GPL.

How does the Company make money?

The software produced by the Company is rather elaborate, and like all such software products, it contains bugs. So, the customers buys support contracts, so that whenever they have a problem with the software, we help them.

Help can be, for example, answering questions on how to use the software, reporting a bug or asking for enhancements in the software.

If the support from the Company is not deemed appropriate by the customers, they will not renew their contracts the next year, so it will mean a loss of revenue for the Company.

So, obviously, it is in the interest of the Company to provide outstanding support.

And this outstanding support is of course beneficial for the customers.

In more that 15 years of existence, the Company has always made money and has expanded slowly to its current size of around 70 people.

Working wherever and whenever I want

The company I work for has employees/consultants in several countries: USA, France, Canada, Spain, etc...

This is a small company, what I all a micro multinational: less than 70 people.

The culture of the company is based on trust: trust that the employees/consultants will work honestly, trust that the customers will not lie.

Because of this trusting culture, I am able to work wherever I live and whenever I decide, as long as I do work.

Before joining the company, I was not sure I could work alone at home. So, I started part time (10 hours a week, then 20 hours a week) and I realized that indeed this work lifestyle suited me.

I never had the temptation to sleep in, for two reasons: 1) I have always gone to bed early (around 10PM) and 2) I am usually excited with the work I am doing.

However, I realize that this way of working is not for everybody.

Have laptop, will travel and work

I am a traveling engineer. I work for an excellent small open source company that allows me to live wherever I want.
I have been working in Vancouver, BC (where I lived for 16 years), Calgary, Alberta (where I lived for 18 months), Beijing and France (where I was born).
I am now living in Miami, Florida (in The Hammocks to be precise) where my companion Daisy started working 3 weeks ago.