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Blurrghhh!
Apr. 24th, 2004 08:55 amI woke at about 3:30 am and had trouble going back to sleep. I tossed and turned until about 6 am, at which point, of course, sleep began to overcome my senses, just as Galina started stirring.
I came completely awake while moving Natalie's car to allow Galina to go to a training seminar for some kind of stock trading software. (Ten days or so ago, Galina called from a seminar where, she said, she was going to purchase a $3000 software package for trading stocks. The idea was that she could get her money back if not satisfied within ten days. Today is the day of her appointed training session, and hopefully, she'll be able to give the package back without incident.)
It's raining, although not hard. I managed to tolerate it during my walk to the local McDonald's and back.
* * * Early on, I developed a passionate dislike of commuting.
I remember one summer during college days when, after getting into an argument with my parents, I went out to my school (SUNY at Stony Brook) and sweet-talked the housing office into letting me stay in a room for the rest of the summer. The only problem was that I had a summer job at an engineering firm in Manhattan, so my day was pretty hectic. It started by getting up at 4:15 am, so as to be able to catch the 5:07 am Long Island Rail Road train out of Stony Brook, which eventually got me into Manhattan in time to start work. After work, I had to wait 40 minutes for the train going out to Stony Brook, where I was deposited at a few minutes past 8:30 pm, if memory serves.
Do the math.
But, that was only for a few weeks during one summer. When I came back from working in Moscow and got a job with the late, lamented Plenum Publishing Corporation, I took both a bus and a subway to work, occupying no less than 60 minutes in each direction. I did that for almost three years.
Starting with our move to Florida, I pretty much always made sure I lived no more than 15-20 minutes from work, and most of the time, it was far less than that. I lived about 7 minutes from Borland headquarters, about the same from JSC and the office back when I lived in Houston full time, and live about 5 minutes from the store in Pagosa (when I'm there, natch).
From here in Pearland, I'm typically 30 minutes, door-to-door, to the MCC. The last few times I've been here, I've developed the habit of playing some (any) kind of educational stuff on the car's sound system while I drive to/from work. The last time I was here, it was Spanish with Michel Thomas. This time, it's been the French Language Builder and a French CD set from Penton Overseas, Ltd.
The FLB is also part of the Thomas language line, and it's at about the right level for me, although the amount of information you can impart on two CDs is limited. Interestingly, Thomas abandons the classroom model that he uses in the introductory CDs (and thank goodness, too!) and the end result is two hours of pretty concentrated training. My only problem was that I was beginning to listen to it too often; so often, in fact, that I was beginning to memorize sections of the sound track. I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
I picked up the Penton French course at the Sam's Club. It contains 9 CDs, plus some bonus stuff on how to learn a language and a reasonably nice CD case that will hold 20 CDs.
The Penton course starts out at zero and is in a format where a male voice says the English in the left stereo channel, there's a pause, and then a female voice says the French equivalent in the right channel, with another pause, after which the French is repeated. I'm not at all sure this is the way to learn a language, but I think it's a good way to refresh one's knowledge. About my only complaint with the course is that the sound used to separate lessons - a kind of deep bass chord - tends to rattle everything in the car, including the fillings in my teeth.
I should probably start getting ready for the day. The McD coffee is cold...
Cheers...
I came completely awake while moving Natalie's car to allow Galina to go to a training seminar for some kind of stock trading software. (Ten days or so ago, Galina called from a seminar where, she said, she was going to purchase a $3000 software package for trading stocks. The idea was that she could get her money back if not satisfied within ten days. Today is the day of her appointed training session, and hopefully, she'll be able to give the package back without incident.)
It's raining, although not hard. I managed to tolerate it during my walk to the local McDonald's and back.
I remember one summer during college days when, after getting into an argument with my parents, I went out to my school (SUNY at Stony Brook) and sweet-talked the housing office into letting me stay in a room for the rest of the summer. The only problem was that I had a summer job at an engineering firm in Manhattan, so my day was pretty hectic. It started by getting up at 4:15 am, so as to be able to catch the 5:07 am Long Island Rail Road train out of Stony Brook, which eventually got me into Manhattan in time to start work. After work, I had to wait 40 minutes for the train going out to Stony Brook, where I was deposited at a few minutes past 8:30 pm, if memory serves.
Do the math.
But, that was only for a few weeks during one summer. When I came back from working in Moscow and got a job with the late, lamented Plenum Publishing Corporation, I took both a bus and a subway to work, occupying no less than 60 minutes in each direction. I did that for almost three years.
Starting with our move to Florida, I pretty much always made sure I lived no more than 15-20 minutes from work, and most of the time, it was far less than that. I lived about 7 minutes from Borland headquarters, about the same from JSC and the office back when I lived in Houston full time, and live about 5 minutes from the store in Pagosa (when I'm there, natch).
From here in Pearland, I'm typically 30 minutes, door-to-door, to the MCC. The last few times I've been here, I've developed the habit of playing some (any) kind of educational stuff on the car's sound system while I drive to/from work. The last time I was here, it was Spanish with Michel Thomas. This time, it's been the French Language Builder and a French CD set from Penton Overseas, Ltd.
The FLB is also part of the Thomas language line, and it's at about the right level for me, although the amount of information you can impart on two CDs is limited. Interestingly, Thomas abandons the classroom model that he uses in the introductory CDs (and thank goodness, too!) and the end result is two hours of pretty concentrated training. My only problem was that I was beginning to listen to it too often; so often, in fact, that I was beginning to memorize sections of the sound track. I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
I picked up the Penton French course at the Sam's Club. It contains 9 CDs, plus some bonus stuff on how to learn a language and a reasonably nice CD case that will hold 20 CDs.
The Penton course starts out at zero and is in a format where a male voice says the English in the left stereo channel, there's a pause, and then a female voice says the French equivalent in the right channel, with another pause, after which the French is repeated. I'm not at all sure this is the way to learn a language, but I think it's a good way to refresh one's knowledge. About my only complaint with the course is that the sound used to separate lessons - a kind of deep bass chord - tends to rattle everything in the car, including the fillings in my teeth.
I should probably start getting ready for the day. The McD coffee is cold...
Cheers...
