• The holidays are over, and it’s weird. In August losers like me feel like they own the city, but not the regular Paris fags are back and I’ve never felt so provincial.

• I wonder if I shouldn’t change the concept for my podcast (which is still at the concept stage, precisely, but you should a lot about it before you get started, shouldn’t you? anyway that’s how I do it, and that’s how I don’t get anything started). Are there any French-speaking geeks among the audience who spend their days like me, combing through tech news, and are free most evenings? (I have no doubt there are quite a few, but are there any I might get along with a bit?)

• I’m always a bit puzzled when I hear “And until then, good bye” (which, admittedly, isn’t often), because translated word for word into French it just becomes stupid. A look at its etymology confirms: it’s perfectly legit.

• Oh, why don’t I put <b> tags around to make those tumblog posts more readable? Yeah, <b>, not <strong>. I know, I’m stubborn.

PersonalDNA [via], an amazingly complicated personality test (in the good sense of the term — I think).

[+11h] Oh, I’d forgotten to link my personal report.

With the heat wave, the windows open 24/7 and the fan blowing full-speed on the same schedule, not to mention that I’m pretty sure my closest neighbors had gone on an extensive vacation, I’d forgotten how little intimacy you actually have in this broom closet any Paris building at all. It’s really weird closing my double-glazed windows and returning to the mumbled echos of speech and music from across the wall. Maybe I’ll just put on a ski suit and leave my windows open all year.

Is there any delivery service anymore that doesn’t pretend to deliver packages when they don’t?

I spent the whole morning waking up every half hour because I was listening to any noise coming from outside my door, and there’s usually a lot of noise outside my door on Wednesdays mornings.

3:30pm, on the phone with the UPS hotline, which seems to take the case seriously:

— But, if the problem were that they didn’t have the door code or didn’t find the floor, it would be another message?

— Yes, it’d say “incomplete address.” So I’ll file a complaint, you were at home at 1:20pm? The warehouse will call you back, but I can’t guarantee they’ll be able to come back today.

4:00pm, the warehouse calls me, and doesn’t seem to take it as seriously, and makes no mention of the complaining part of the complaint (and, yes, I could, but what good would it do):

— I’m sorry, the driver’s back, so we won’t be able to deliver your package before tomorrow.

4:20pm, knocks on my door:

— You called? You did the right thing, calling. Did you see my notification?

— Uh… no, didn’t get out. But did you come here? On this floor?

— No, I left a notification in your mailbox.

For crying out loud…

Not funny! Not funny anymore!

I’d never wanted to open my iMac, to keep it pristine, but if someone’s going to put their greasy fingers in it anyway, why don’t I get started. And now I can say: boy is it nice design. I don’t even have any clue how the three bottom screws that seem to do nothing manage to keep the box shut.

In any case, all capacitors seem to be doing just fine. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing — I have random failures (well, less and less random and more and more frequent) with no visible physical symptoms. I can so easily see myself dropping my computer off on Monday and getting it back two weeks later with a notice that “we didn’t find anything wrong with the hardware, so we reinstalled OS X because that’s what didn’t work anymore, and that’ll be $150 thank you because it’s not covered by AppleCare.”