That’s what some idiots in the park outside decided to take advantage of. They hurled an egg through the open window, so that it smashed against the wall and ceiling. Then they ran off.

We were lucky: the egg hit the ceiling above the bookcase, not the bookcase. It dripped down the wall behind the bookcase, but not onto the books. It just clipped my beautiful Book of Kells, but only one edge of the cover got eggy and nothing made its way into the pages.

Still, after taking all the books off the shelves and wiping up behind them, picking up the bits of eggshell and mopping the carpet, the apartment smells distinctly eggy. Tomorrow will be worse, I presume.

And indeed, Dutch translations of tricky idiomatic phrases such as “a preliminary stab at” (“inleidende poging tot”) or words like “iconoclasm” (“schoppen tegen establishment”) might be quite useful, for an essay in a Dutch library. On the other hand it’s a Dutch philosophy department library, so I would hope that not everyone needs the final two paragraphs bracketed and “more and more general; conclusion” helpfully added in the margin.

The paper is Donald Davidson’s A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs,¹ on the problems that malapropisms pose for Davidson’s theory of language. On the eighth page I find the marginal note “Who is Mrs Malaprop?”, and indeed reading back it seems she’s introduced with “…I thought that the word ‘malaprop’, though the name of Sheridan’s character,…”. I hope my anonymous annotator figured it out in the end, since it adds a lot to the central notion of the essay.

(They seem to have been rather hasty with the pencil; in the following essay the phrase “ketches and yawls” is given underlining and a question-mark, although it’s immediately followed by a definition.)

I must confess that I’m still mystified by one addition though: the word “proposal” is heavily circled in the sentence “Here is a highly simplified and idealized proposal about what goes on.” My inner reading voice pronounces this as “Here is a highly simplified and idealized PROPOSAL about what goes on,” and my PROPOSAL for whoever is responsible is that they CEASE, immediately and forthwith, WRITING in LIBRARY BOOKS.

Notes:

1. I got out of bed at sparrow-fart this morning for our reading group discussion, only to discover that it’s next week.

Not that I normally would, only the back tyre sprung a leak during a thunderstorm, and that was the closest place I could lock it up under shelter.

And not that it got stolen, either. Instead, some klootzak slashed the seat and both tyres open with a knife. The seat I can tape up, the tyres are gonna cost to replace.

I’ve been saying for about a week now I should pick it up and fix that back tyre. There’s a lesson about procrastination somewhere in there.

And lost it.

They were awfully apologetic when I went to check out, and got me to write my mobile number on a sheet of paper (in case they found it later that day) along with my postal address (in case they didn’t).

Then they lost the sheet of paper.

So they sent my residence permit to the Dutch embassy in Brussels.

Who hopefully haven’t lost it, but at this point I’m not willing to make any bets…

That’s the genius of Dutch design on display, that is. Just try spelling your name on that, let alone a seven-letter random code! And what is that arrow doing? My suspicion is that they added it after focus-testing showed that people had difficulty understanding the system: “Perhaps it will help if we show them where the alphabet starts?”

Dear Tikitu De jager, Christmas is approaching! Still need to find some gifts for your loved ones? We show you how to find unique gifts on eBay. Also, find out how you can send money home with PayPal and stay in touch for free with Skype! Seasons greetings! PayPal

The funny thing is, I could have sworn I asked them not to spam me. But…

This PayPal notification was sent to [ my address ] because you chose to receive All Policy Change Notices.

Oh. Fair enough. I suppose the policy that’s changed is that “Policy Change Notices” no longer contain notification of changed policies.

I still can’t make up my mind if this is phishing or corporate stupidity.

Case for phishing

• They misspell (mis-capitalise) my surname (“De jager”) while it shows correctly when I log in to paypal.com.
• Can anyone really be so soulless as to take “please send me all Policy Change Notices” as an invitation for Christmas spam?!
• The links in the newsletter go to email1.paypal.nl, which is not www.paypal.com which is where I log in. (Ok, paypal.nl is legit. But a DNS lookup site tells me that subdomain doesn’t exist.)
• Said links include a session identifier, which would suffice to identify me for the phisher site.

Case against phishing

• The got the correct name and email address for my PayPal account. That’s not as easy as it sounds, it’s not the name you’re looking at. (It’s not so very difficult either, though, and the email address is an easy guess.)
• They don’t ask for any information or even that I go somewhere to “confirm” anything. The links are apparently continuations of the articles, or things like “Get Skype”. They all go to that email1.paypal.nl though.
• And if email1.paypal.nl doesn’t exist, how are they getting any information at all, let alone useful information?!

Result…

I’m confused. Anyone know anything about this? Legit and really bloody irritating, not to mention braindead stupid? Dodgy and diabolically clever? It’s got me puzzled.

Update

The PayPal spoofline says it’s fake. But I’m not sure I believe them — the email is clearly a form letter, and it looks to me like it just ripped out the urls from the email and checked whether they were registered to PayPal. Which they apparently aren’t, but I still can’t get past one question: how does it help a scammer to direct me to a non-existant website? (Hm. How does it help PayPal? Good question. No answer.)

Thank you for bringing this suspicious email to our attention. We can confirm that the email you received was not sent to you by PayPal. The website linked to this email is not a registered URL authorized or used by PayPal. We are currently investigating this incident fully. Please do not enter any personal or financial information into this website.

That’s not a typo.

There’s construction work going on near my house, for about two blocks on both sides of a major street. One of the two cycle lanes is blocked off with portable barriers at each end. It’s a bit odd they chose that side to blockade, because off the side of that lane is a three metre fence, and on the other side of the that fence is where the construction is going on. It’s even odder, given that the only construction I’ve seen actually in progress is on the other side of the road entirely.

So that’s the cycle lane I was using, on my way home at seven in the evening. Whether they’ve blockaded the correct side of the street or not is kind of a moot point by then, since the construction crew have knocked off and there’s not a soul in sight, except for the cyclists doing like I’m doing, taking the short way home.

And except for the five police officers and one motorcycle traffic warden, waiting at the dead end.

I honestly thought there was something going on, an accident or at least a traffic diversion. But no, all they wanted from me was ID. So they could fine me 20 euro. (While the dude was painstakingly filling out the form —not the sharpest knife in the drawer— I saw one of his compatriots letting two tourists go their merry way, after they protested that they didn’t understand what the signs meant. I fumed silently and refrained from asking them how they thought they should enterpret a crossed-out bicycle, a detour arrow, and a barrier across the lane.)

After I accepted my fine I asked the guy what the deal was. “Well,” he said, “you’re not allowed to cycle here,” and pointed at the signs. I said I understood that, but I wondered why not. “They’re working on the road here,” he replied.

I looked at the road, conspicuously devoid of workers — indeed, entirely empty now that some kind soul had gone back to the open end of the block and closed the two metre gap in the middle of the barriers. I looked back at the officer, with that dreamlike feeling that the person you’re talking too is seeing an entirely different reality to the one you’re inhabiting. “They’re working on the road?” I asked, and checked again to be sure: still lots of road, still nobody working. “Well,” he said, “you’re not allowed to cycle here,” and he pointed again at the signs.

I took my fine and went home.

(If this sounds a little bitter, well, it is. Due to some unexpected costs —which I’ll blog about when they’re ancient enough history that I can laugh at them, instead of weeping— I’ve spent the last week eating potatoes even more than I usually do. Today is payday, but to usher that in by paying the same amount in pointless petty fines that I spent all week on food, well, it’s left me in a bit of a bad mood.)

The problem is, the new system has some usability issues. I just got an email explaining some of these problems, and the hoops we have to jump through to avoid them. For instance (emphasis in the original, terminology slightly altered):

>Then you get a table. In this table, put 100 in the percentage column, delete the > ‘dingleberry’ and put the relevant dongleberry in the column ‘dongleberry’. Don’t try to > use the search function [intended to look up dongleberries --tikitu] but use the number > from the attached list with dongleberries. Then click ‘copy’.

I’m not sure what’s funnier: that we have to fill in the 100 percent by hand (there’s even a note in the usage handbook that this is the only value possible for this column) or that our poor long-suffering administrators had to send us a list of dongleberries because the search function that was intended to let us look them up instead sends an empty claim request to the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and terminates your session.

But my absolute favourite was,

> In general, do not use the help functions. They are not very useful and may cause the > system to crash.

(In case it’s unclear: I don’t know who to blame about this, but it’s not the long-suffering administrator who sent that email. In fact, I’m hoping that due to her efforts I might actually be able to submit a claim next week. I just can’t help wondering how much the university paid for this work, and what on earth they thought they were doing when they decided to make the entire staff alpha-test the software.)

Update 20/2: our faculty newsletter today had an entry about this system. It included the following sentence:

> De ondernemingsraad FNWI signaleert dat veel medewerkers van de faculteit de moeilijkheden > tamelijk gelaten accepteren, in de redelijke verwachting dat kinderziektes bij een dergelijk > systeem normaal zijn en binnen afzienbare tijd overwonnen kunnen worden. (Emphasis mine.)

If I’m translating this right, the section I’ve highlighted says something like “the reasonable expectation that growing pains are normal for such a system.” And I’m left again gobsmacked at the level of either BS or plain incompetence that’s on display here. If our policy-makers don’t know the difference between “growing pains” and “widely deploying untested software” then they shouldn’t be setting policy about software use. And if they do know the difference, then they should know better than to do it.

I have in fact received a letter saying that my residence permit has been approved. I had also made an appointment to get a sticker in passport, which I could use to get my sofi number. So I arrived this morning at the appointment, only to be told that such a sticker in fact constitutes an extension of a previous permit while a new one is being considered, and since the new permit has now been approved (some three days earlier) I couldn’t be given the sticker.

Ok, so I should be able to use my brand new permit to get a sofi number instead, right? Not so fast, Joe: the permit has been approved, sure, but it won’t arrive for another month. During which time I have… um, well, no evidence of its existence apart from the letter, which the nice man at the IND assured me would not be sufficient to request a sofi number from the tax office.

So I spent the morning on the train for nothing — I’m just glad I live relatively close to Rijswijk, it could have been a four hour journey. (Yes, you can only get these stickers in one place in the country.) And it cost me 17 euro, which I consider a bit excessive given that (a) I didn’t get anything out of the trip, and (b) because I don’t have a sofi number I’m only drawing two-thirds pay, and since tomorrow is two-thirds payday I’m now down to a total balance of €15.40.

I’ve been looking forward to real employment for so long, I’m getting tunnel vision.

To become a fully paid-up member of the University staff, I need a sofi number (which identifies me throughout the EU for taxpaying purposes). I went today to apply for this, and was told I need a visum or residence permit that includes a work permit (unlike my student visum) — if I’m not working, I don’t need a tax number, so they won’t give me one. However I can’t apply for a working visum until I have an employer…

I think this vicious circle is breakable. I think I can convince the University to fill out the visum application without having a sofi number. The downside of this plan appears to be that this will leave me as a formal employee of the UvA, but not actually being paid anything.

Somewhere, some faceless bureaucrat is laughing at me.