Frisco's Weblog Webcome to my Welblog !

I recently watched the complete first season of a new British TV series named The Office (available on DVD). I have to recommend it, I think it got several awards for best comedy. It definitively belongs to the family of a new generation of British TV comedies, one of the most famous ancestor being Absolutely Fabulous. Dialogs are sharp, and the British society is not spared ;) a must see ! I have been exposed to, and influenced by Cult British TV series throughout my childhood. As far as I can remember, the weekly broadcasting of episodes from classic British series like The Avengers or The Persuaders on public television was in France at that time like an immutable ritual, for years. At the exception may be of Doctor Who, still an enigma to me... Going back to the Avengers, I have a special liking for Tara King :) Era. My two favorite episodes being Game, and Look - (stop me if you've heard this one) but there were these two fellers... Now to me, The Prisoner, produced by Patrick McGoohan, is the most significant British-Cult-Classic-TV-Series piece of art ever. The Prisoner is a Seventy episodes TV show that starts like a classic Spy story and ends with a grande philosophical conclusion, an allegory about freedom and individuality. The Final episode disturbed so much its original screening audience (more than thirty years ago), that it is still debated today... Patrick McGoohan plays himself the main character (Number Six). He is surrounded by some great actors among which Leo McKern (Number Two) and Alexis Kanner (Number 48). I won't tell you more, and hope, if you did not see it yet, that this will open your curiosity... In the past, have been actively involved in the Prisoner Appreciation Society activities (rOdeur, the French branch), and also attended to several annual Conventions in the village of Portmeirion, Whales, original and still intact location of the series shooting. By the way, my two favorite episodes are The Girl Who Was Death, and the series conclusion, split in two parts, Once Upon a Time followed by The Fallout. Be seeing you !

Sleeping is definitively overrated... You actually do not really need to sleep that much... I guess it takes a baby, or two :) to find that out... So lately, every day 7 am, baby gives me the choice between complaining alone in the crib, playing with me, or falling asleep immediatly in my bed, next to me, for about 1 to 2 more hours... This smart cookie got me, the slightest hope of getting few more minutes of sleep around 7 am in the morning is priceless... Baby knows that... But - I - got the choice... who's the boss...

Hey, I should have introduced myself much earlier. I am an engineer employed by Sun Microsystems (daa...) in Menlo Park campus, CA. I am now working on Sun Cluster product. Before that, I was working on Sun's Netra High Availability Suite project (actually not Fundation, but Framework, but that is a long (and quite disapointing) story). And before that, I worked on Sun's Embedded Realtime OS Chorus, in Paris, France, for a while (actually you might wanna have a look at Jaluna, if interested...). This year is my fifth year at Sun ! I graduated in 1999 from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse France, with a Ph.D. on Dependability of Microkernel-Based Operating Systems, whithin the Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance groups at LAAS-CNRS Laboratory. My most recent (well, or less old should I say) contribution to a paper was in a Special section on "Fault-Tolerant Embedded Systems", IEEE ToC, Vol.51, in 2002, I was also contributing author for a book, published by Kluwer Academic, in 2003.

Hum, so this is to be my first post... I cannot think of anything more important than my baby sucking is foot for the first time this week :) THAT is an achievement... I am a proud daddy :)