Cold

Monday, 17 July 2000
Ireland, last week: The shower gives cold water only. Well, here I am, ready to rinse the sweat off my chubby body, but without warm water.

The control panel of the shower is unnecessary complex. One of the switches has a red and a blue state. Warm & cold, I think. Wrong! It is one of the on/off switches. I should turn another knob for warm and cold. But the whole thing is inoperative as, outside the cabin, yes even outside the entire bathroom is yet another on/off switch, with a red light. I should have switch that one, before I stood here bottom naked.

Beer belly Help, all of this is too complex. I don't want on/off switches, I want warm water. Two buttons for the Co-Fu would suffice, I would say:

  1. One for warm and cold
  2. and another one for hard/soft.
Nice thinking, but still the water is cold. What to do? Call for help? No, too much loose face. Go outside with my nude bulging belly? Not an option either. Get dressed again? Too cumbersome. Have a cold shower? Yes, as short as possible, and a better chance next time.

By now the holiday is over. In Ireland, laying in the grass, I wrote a course efficient Database Design for a prospect (www.lankelma.nl).

In SUMit HQ, for the past couple of days I've been busy to shape that course into HTML, with a cascaded style sheet for the looks. You'll find me at the big window, under a double fluorescent lamp with an extra desk lamp. Add a PC, printer, and CD player and you'll have quite an bundle of electrical cables. Help, what a complexity.

I would prefer to have one single button to switch the whole bundle on or off. A simple connector box with switch and a little red light does the job. I can switch the whole bundle on and off with just one touch of a button.

A small setback: Now, when I want to switch on the PC I'll have to switch the red light on first. Hmm, what a well known problem. Might this extra switch be a disprovement? Here I am, with my design experience, as an emperor without clothes. What a cold shower.

Till next week!
Nut