Tales from a Lost PDA - Good Times

Posted on 2008/12/10 15:59:15 (December 2008).

[Wednesday 10th December 2008]

I have received several comments (not on the actual blog I am afraid) from the people that I know and that read the blog occasionally. A lot of enquiries have been about the actual PDA, what model it is, how did I take it apart and so on.
Frankly speaking I think that these are quite boring questions, I am finding these files much more interesting that the actual “box” that held them, but I will not indulge further and give some information about the PDA itself.
The culprit is a Palm Pilot M500 model, from what I could see from the net it’s a quite old piece of hardware. The external casing was quite scratched and looked pretty worn out, but it has a sort of fake leather “purse” so that’s why I think that it was lost rather than thrown away.

Password locked, there was little that I could do, I have tried to reset the Cmos battery (required opening it), but to no avail. I have tried other systems that I have found on the net to no avail. Fortunately the user saved his data on the SD card (512 MB = pretty old too), so at least the documents were saved. SDs are still pretty usable and it didn’t take long before I had the contents of the memory stick on my hard drive.

All the stories have names of companies and people, but those are better not to be disclosed in public I guess…

The sure thing is that all the tales that I am going to be posting are “real life” episodes. It’s so evident looking at how Mr.X (you remember, the unknown writer) is writing.

--

Good Times

I remember when I started working for Bigfashioncompany, it was all bells and whistles, all spanky and fashionable (well, what do you expect)? Life smelt like a million dollar, and certainly the company was doing extremely well.

I remember that the first day I arrived ONE and HALF hours ahead of time to the office, I was so scared to get lost or to be delayed for some reason… The result was pretty disappointing, because the lady at the reception made me wait standing there for almost all the time, since she never saw me before and of course my principal was not in the office yet.

I remember the moment he walked through the door and said “… Ooooo Mr.X finally you are here, I hope you didn’t wait for a long time!”, to which I replied, half happy for his arrival and half captured in total bliss by the new experience and the new world before me, “Oh no problem Mr.Slaver, I really just arrived (please walk all over me, did you cleaned your shoes with my tie?)…”.

I remember that he didn’t have a clue to what I had to do the first day. Of course my entrance was not very well planned.

I remember that I didn’t even have a computer to work on!

I remember the first phone call with my agents, it was all so new!!

I remember that Mr.Slaver was always right, he always had the right ideas!

I remember that eating at the canteen was difficult at the start because I wasn’t part of any group of people.

I remember the day I entered one of those groups and food was so much better!

Well… food was crap, but the company made it nice!

I remember the design meetings where I didn’t understand a word of what was said.

I remember my colleague explaining the collection to me… ME, I didn’t even know what COTTON was!!

I remember that time was going so fast that 8 hours never seemed enough.

I remember my first trip, with a huge suitcase and absolutely no knowledge of what I was selling.

I remember that clients would add up that “little bit more” that helped production without having to fight too much.

I remember numbers in the “black” and bonuses.

Those were good times! Well, ok, I am getting old, and soon things changed for the worse…

There's an almost poetic quality to these texts, and a very familiar style of English. Is that just because you've done the translation - I assume these were originally in Italian?

I can't help but think this actually seems to represent your own experience at work as well...!

Posted by John at 2008/12/11 01:45:45.

John: Originals are in Italian, translated and re-adapted by me. I like the idea that someone can spot my "style" in English, I am totally flattered :D

Posted by Lox at 2008/12/11 08:23:35.

Is comment posting still problematic?

Posted by John at 2008/12/11 21:30:36.

I think I might have found the problem - there was an unusual character in the title.

Posted by John at 2008/12/11 21:38:04.

I edited the XML file for this entry manually, and changed the '-' character.

Posted by John at 2008/12/11 21:38:31.

John: Which bit of the post is wrong? Where is this character? I am wondering because I do not want to put it again and create the same mistake...

Posted by Lox at 2008/12/11 22:29:22.

Post a comment