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.