I haven't tried that many tabs but I have also been using FF on 64 bit Ubuntu: it starts virtually instantly and is a lot faster and leaner than previous versions.

I used to think that too, my boss would ask me to re-schedule holidays, be contactable etc. and of course I would regularly get at least one phone call when I was away on holidays. Then one day, I told them that I was going away for 2 weeks and that I would be on a ship in the middle of the North Sea with no access to email or phone or any communication medium of any sort (well, the ship could be contacted by radio for life threatening emergencies but that was only given to my next of kin). Guess what? They gave me the time (a couple of hours) to properly hand over to some of my colleagues so that they would ensure that there would be no need to contact me for two weeks. Issues did arise while I was away but because the hand-over had been done as it should have been, all of them were dealt with properly, the ones that really needed my attention were dealt with adequately in such a way that it could wait for my return.

The best thing out of that experience is that the colleagues who filled in for me learnt stuff in the process and proved that they could handle more responsibilities. The consequence was that management became a lot more relaxed about people taking leave and also used it as a way to get people to work on areas they had little knowledge about and increase their skills and overall knowledge of the business in the process.

Generally speaking, if people have an easy cop out that consists in calling you when they don't know an answer, they will do it. If they find themselves in a situation where they can't call you, they will usually work out the answer themselves. It is less efficient short term but more efficient long term because it helps share the knowledge and skills. If the gap in knowledge between you and your colleagues is so great that you can't be away for a couple of weeks without drastic consequences, then your management should do everything they can to narrow that gap because it means that losing you (because you resign, have an accident or any other reason) is a massive risk.

Easy to do for those of us who take public transport to work: 1 hour on the tube (underground) on the way to work + 1 hour on the way back + 1 hour to unwind at night before going to bed. Of course the time on the tube is not as efficient reading as the time at home due to it being crowded but it still adds up very easily.

No because if it's really sensitive, I don't communicate it via email.

You can look at geothermal all you want but when it comes to France, you may find a distinct lack of volcanic activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanoes_in_France. So although you could use geothermal heat pumps, that's not practical to do on a large scale.

At the end of the day, a sensible energy policy has to be based on local conditions. For France, you're probably better off using a combination of wind (near the coast) and solar (in the South) with possibly a small geothermal capacity in the Massif Central (which wouldn't necessarily help as it's one of the least populated part of the country).

You're never too old to learn. I'm in a similar situation to you: I learned a number of computer language and now, being almost 40, I don't do any programming at work anymore, I just do fancy diagrams. That doesn't prevent me from maintaining my programming skills in my spare time and learning new stuff. In the past couple of years, I've dabbled in Vala http://live.gnome.org/Vala, Python (to create scripts and desktop apps rather than web apps), re-acquainted myself with ANTLR and played with a number of other languages. If you want to have a go at an interesting variety, get yourself a copy of "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" by Bruce Tate: http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks.

I name my servers after towns of the world, following a similar naming scheme in a previous company I worked for. I try to use unusual names to keep people interested. It can also be very good to slow down people and get them to think twice before connecting to an important server: szczecin for instance :-)

Indeed! For the record, Vala was actually inspired by C# so any Java / C# / C++ developer should need very little time to pick it up.

Oh and if you have any issues when importing your F-Spot database to Shotwell, please file a ticket so that I can fix it.

Yes and no. The best way to do it I reckon is to start by building a standard compliant CSS and test it with standard compliant browsers (Firefox, Safari, etc).

Then when it completely works on those, test on IE and for the parts that don't work on IE, use one of the many well known hacks that will provide IE with different values. The best hacks make use of tag selectors that either only IE understands (because IE has embraced and extended the specs) or only IE doesn't understand (because IE doesn't implement the specs fully). Then you can isolate IE specific code.

Doing it this way, you promote the use of standard compliant browsers because you design primarily for them and it will work in all of them. but at the same time, you cater for the vast majority of IE users.

For more information on suck hacks, go and see sites like A List Apart.

You might argue that it is a pain to have to add IE specific hacks but don't forget that HTML/CSS is not meant to provide exact layout. So if something looks slightly different in different browsers but is usable, don't bother with a hack, just leave it as is. If your layout is flexible enough, this should be what happens most of the time.