Insight! Work follows the now famous cycle of life; ups and downs, peace and hate, work and lethargy. The hate is on. I believe God hates peace around us, and every once in a while he forsakes Monday night wrestling to watch us.

All the fuss got triggered yesterday when some people from SITA came over to visit our department. Unlike the usual visits these very tall people visited each and every office and introduced themselves to us. I felt like a zoo animal with these huge people staring at me as if I'm green. (My shoes were white because we were test flying some paper airplanes in the field a few minutes before, but that isn't enough to justify the strange look).

Naturally this behaviour stuck us as pretty odd so we rightly so asked our boss what was the reason for this visit. With the wicked look of a desert ranger hiding a glass of water from a thirsty traveller, she replied that it was a secret and we weren't supposed to know.

Poll …. Do you think this is stupid / irresponsible / banal behaviour?

• Yes
• No
• Are you for real?
• You must be mad!
• Oh my goodness!
• It's about bloody time to start looking for another job mate.

At this response my better half, which is also a much better fighter than I quit from her office naturally offended. Like anyone human we were curious about what was happening behind our backs, and most probably directly related to us.

The first e-mail in the inbox this morning addressed to the three of us from our boss, requesting that we should not start rumours about yesterday. This mail hit my better half more than an ice-cold bucket of water in the morning, so she went directly to our manager demanding an explanation. As usual he tired to calm things down and proposed a meeting for 10am.

Thankfully the meeting was cancelled because our interplanetary pal strategically left on leave. Most probably God was at a meeting at this time also, so he had to rearrange our schedule slightly. The meeting then started at 3.30 with the usual bullshit introduction. When we had our turn to talk I was honoured to start first. Being uninvolved and uninterested in the whole situation I had nothing to say so I passed rounds. My Miss reiterated her flurry of aggressive e-mails and was satisfied. Next came our interplanetary pal's.

[Brief side note - Living in outer space he is an extremely relaxed and calm person with absolutely no emotions and attachment for work. I've known him since the first years of University about 6 years ago, and in these six years I've never heard him speak louder than 60 dB (Decibel Scale)]

As soon as our manager offered him the opportunity to speak, he gradually rose from a slight whisper to outrageous yelling at our boss. He took us by surprise and I almost started to tremble at his outburst. At one moment, he got so pissed of that the smashed the door and left the room. At this our boss infuriated and screamed over the threshold of pain (aka 130dB). Upon realising that there were people waiting for another meeting outside the office he returned back to the meeting table and slowly calmed down back to normal. Our boss stood powerless watching everything and vainly trying to calm the situation, which was simply brilliant.

It actually turned out that the outburst had nothing to do with the SITA visit. Instead our favourite pal got blamed for something he wasn't responsible for and our top management was informed by the bastard midget who was waiting for the next meeting.

To end the working week splendidly I've got the opportunity to meet my work colleagues again at a wedding of one of our technicians. Everybody needs to make some sacrifices in life and this is my sacrifice for the month.

At least today was a funny day. I've just returned from the daily outing with my village friends and we had a friendly humours discussion on the merits between males and females. The discussion coincided with today's Ally McBeal's episode; a woman sued her employer because he promoted other colleagues who slept with him instead of her. She accused him of sexual abuse against her because she didn't want to sleep with him. The whole episode was hilarious especially when Ally kicks a prodigy child because she though he was her 'usual' fantasy child.

Work was not that bad either. I asked for the one month leave in September and it was not refused. I had to spend an hour and a half bullshitting my boss and faking interest in her holiday, but at least she didn't bitch too much. Hope she relaxed and did her job during three days closed in a four star hotel.

I've been researching the multitude of shopping options in Singapore. From my general impression Singapore has two things - food and shopping. Prices for the digital video camera are about 230€ cheaper than home. I think I've settled for the Canon Mv700i or Mv730i, being MiniDv cameras with a good 18x / 20x digital zoom respectively. Unfortunately Sony (the other major player in camcorders) doesn't produce MiniDv cameras with a zoom greater than 10x. I was in a big dilemma between the MiniDv and Digital8 format but at last I favoured MiniDV. It is more modern and very slightly better than Sony's proprietary Digital 8, although Digital 8 works out cheaper. I'm still undecided from where I'm going to buy the camera since buying it in Singapore doesn't give me enough time to learn how to use the camera properly. On the other hand 230€ is quite an amount of money.

I've been doing some origami models and yesterday I've used 'real' origami paper for the first time to fold a squirrel. I had to remember the basic folds once again but it seems I've regained the hang of them. Now I'm practicing some airplanes for tomorrow at work.

The festive week has come to an end with only four beers down. This gives a clear picture of my enthusiasm for life this week. The official notice that dad lost his respected position in the company to an outsider was a known issue, yet it hurt reading the letter posted to all staff.

I could hear people whispering behind my back and stop talking as soon as I hit the door knob to enter a room. These are apparently insignificant things yet they make their mark over repetitive occurrences. Coupled with this, that sly smile on the management's faces made me want to rip their hearts out, liquidise it and drink it for breakfast.

I cannot help not feeling sorry for dad. He's been through hell this year especially after the crisis declaration when the company's accounts were put to light. All his efforts and energy were sucked up by work. He was a rare animal at home. All those dreaded hot meetings with unions. The Memorandum. Eating and Breathing work. Now this is his great reward.

This whole affair stinks more than a rotting carcass. The person responsible for bankrupting our subsidiary company got promoted to what is probably the most influential of senior management. The enthusiasm I had for work last week wilted down to earth after experiencing the corruption and external manipulation beyond anybody's comprehension. There are by far too many influences behind each and every decision with powerful people and money involved to ever believe that fairness and justice will ever play a part at work.

The only benefit I see in all this tragedy is that now people will drop their masks when dealing with me. It is the prefect time to see who treated me differently because of my father. I am, and probably always will be always in doubt as to whether people really value my work, or else say so only at face value.

I tried to smudge my depression by doing different things this week. The only high energy activities were a game of squash and volleyball, otherwise I was left will little more to do than watching loads of TV and reading about Malaysia. Last Thursday I went to my first Bachelor's party which consisted of a rabbit dinner. The night cost a hell of Lm10 which is extremely expensive by any standard. Being the good boy that I am I refrained from going to see the Russian girls show, which most of my sex starved colleagues drooled over all night and the rest of the week.

With the orient holiday in the horizon I regained an interest in Origami. This actually started by flying aeroplanes on Friday afternoon along with my interplanetary pal. I managed to make the longest distance ones for the record. I must check out the following toys/crafts from Malaysia:-

• Origami Paper
• Mahjongg
• Tsunami Puzzles
• Chinese Cards

At work I launched the telephone directory input application. I managed to stretch it for about 3 months, and given what happened this week I felt really good. A new project is now hitting in my direction in a very heavy way; the computerisation of the normal business processes such as leave application, vacation and duty travel applications, etc. This is a though nut to crack and I'm trying to save some work by looking for a workflow application framework. Although I didn't have the time or eagerness to do extensive research I found Oracle Workflow and Open WFE as potential frameworks.

My worry of the week was the camcorder choice. This is living up to its expectations as far as difficult choices are concerned. I started out looking for an analogue video camera because I was of the impression that analogue video was better than digital since it is in the beginning. Actually I had two mistakes on this account; digital video has been around for some time now, and digital video is supposed to be better than analogue. There are half a million different digital cameras from were to choose and I still have to determine the best one for my money. Another dilemma is whether to buy the camera from Europe or wait till I get to Singapore.

I'm leaving for a deep night sleep hoping next week will be better than the last.

I found the following paper airplane sites to help me win future plane throwing competitions:-

Paperplane.org

From the longest paper air flight Guinness holder Ken Blackburn

Alex paper airplanes

Some nice plane designes

Joseph's Palmer Paper Airplanes

Four good ones

Amazing Paper Airplanes

Some model designs that actually fly

Don’t worry I have not abandoned my blog, if anything I abandoned home as I barely spent 8 hours in the past two days (sleep included). This week is the freest week of my life; our boss went to Tunisia, my mate’s parents went to Disneyland Paris and my brothers are in Ravenna, Italy.

We are eating away our time researching Malaysia & Borneo. The place looks marvellous with all the best ingredients for an excellent holiday Nature, Food, Culture and Shopping. We are planning to arrive to Southeast Asia via Singapore which ties in perfectly with my birthday present … a camcorder!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

The camcorder surprise came on the same day the newcomer to our department verdict, was taken. From the minute my ex-pal left work, the boss started a quest to find a replacement. She finally found a slave from the finance department, and since then I’ve been battling to keep him out of my office. According to her brilliant spatial reasoning, the best solution was allocating him in my office even though there is a free unused office in the building. After the heated debate two weeks ago, the verdict was taken last Monday. I am moving to the empty office and the newcomer is moving in my current office. The manager reasoned that he doesn’t want to ‘waste’ an empty space should someone else come, so he made me change my double room. I’m happy that I got what I wanted and will gladly sacrifice the whole of day to move all my staff. Let's see the boss's reaction when she realises that her idea was dumped.

We've lined up a new travel project this week – Malaysia and Borneo next September. Like all initial phases we started by getting the latest version of Lonely Planet. The layout of the book has been completely revamped, and I think LP hired a new person to select the photos in the book as they were much better than usual.

While on the topic of photographs, today I decided to part with my Portuguese team desktop wallpaper, and got some marvellous pictures from National Geographic. These images are too nice not to share.

This week I browsed through a couple of computer helpdesk and tips sections and was amazed at how many things you can do with the SHIFT key. Here are some of the shortcuts and uses I found for the shift key on windows:-

• Pressing [Shift] when inserting a CD-ROM disables auto-run.
• Pressing [Shift] and [Del] will delete a file without sending it to the recycle bin.
• Pressing [Shift] + clicking a program icon in explorer will start the program in the background, i.e. control is not shifted to the newly opened program.
• [Shift] + right click on file will add the "open with" item in the popup menu which enables you to change the file association or bypass it.
• [Shift] + click program folder opens the folder in windows explorer.
• [Ctrl] + [Shift] + Drag file to desktop creates a shortcut to the file
• Pressing [Shift] and clicking on [File] in Microsoft word brings two new options Close All and Save all which perform the said operations on all open files.

With all these novel uses of the shift key, I've decided to abuse this key and see what happens, maybe I'll manage to blast of something.

I managed to find some funny shift jokes too:-

Q. My shift keys have little arrows on them. Does that mean the *real* shift keys are located above them, and these keys are just little signs to point them out?

A. Nope, they're the Real McCoy. The little arrows mean "up", as in "look up at the screen". Your keyboard is telling you to learn to touch type and quit staring at your fingers.

Q. There are two shift keys, which should I use?

A. Avoid unnecessary wear on either shift key by alternating between the two. Keep track of your usage of each key so that you press them in equal amounts. Your keyboard may be equipped with a small notepad; you should use this to make little tally marks in two columns for each time you shift. Remember, it's better to go to a little trouble than wind up with a broken shift key.

Q. Why are there are no "shift" keys on my keyboard, but there are two keys labelled "hif"?

A. Again, you may want to consider cleaning your keyboard, and washing your hands more frequently for that matter.

Read more at Unleash the power of shift.

This week was a hard programming week at work and I had to reface the hardships of database programming in Java with JDBC. On Monday morning I decided to solve the quotes problem when inserting and updating into the database. As in most programming languages, SQL gets quite upset when certain special characters are used incorrectly. In SQL's case the single quote (') is the trouble maker because it has a special use to enclose a character / string value. If you've got a field and a user types in a single quote the single quote must first be "escaped" by inserting another quote, before adding it to the insert statement. So for example insert into remarks value ('I don't want to drive'); must become insert into remarks value ('I don''t want to drive');.

My first attempt at solving this problem was to use the replaceAll() function in Java to replace all ' by '', for each field. This method is cumbersome and not very elegant, so I had to look for a better solution. The answer was to use the PreparedStatement object instead of the Statement object to update values in the database. Apart from solving the quotes problem the PreparedStatement pre-compiles the SQL statement passed as a parameter, thus making it faster than the normal statement. For more information of the usage of the PreparedStatement object see Sun's Java JDBC basic tutorial.

While I was learning how to use the PreparedStatement object I stumbled across a new connection leakage error. The actual error was: ORA-01000 maximum open cursors exceeded. To help me analyse the fault better I found two SQL statements to document the number of open cursors in the database:-

SQL Statement 1: List of al open cursors, users and the SQL executed.

select user_name, status, osuser, machine, a.sql_text
from v$session b, v$open_cursor a
where a.sid = b.sid;

SQL Statement 2: The number of truly open cursors.

select a.value, b.name
from v$mystat a, v$statname b
where a.statistic# = b.statistic# and
a.statistic# = 3;

The culprit for the error was that I was had an unclosed PreparedStatement well hidden inside a loop. Although it was not so difficult locating the error, the problem was not fixed immediately by changing the code, so I started going around in circles looking for problems that didn't exist. The reason for this was that Oracle frees the inactive connections every 15 minutes (this might be dependent on a database parameter [INITSID.ORA]), so the open cursors had to be freed before the code could work.

This week I had very little time to experiment with common applications but I found a quick way to load Adobe Acrobat faster i.e. without loading the plug-ins. To do this all you've got to do is press [Shift] while the program is loading. Apparently this feature also works with other programs that load plug-ins.

Some links:-

Calciomercato.com

This is the most complete source for summer football transfers, covering most of the European clubs. (Calciomercato means Soccer Transfers in Italian)

Perry-Castaneda Map Collection

Need a map? Go here.

Awstats

The best open source web log analyser around. I compared it to analog and webalizer but they are too featureless against awstats.

Ofofo

Photo storage and sharing by Kodak

Today I was at a meeting and since I'm an IT guy somebody asked me how to insert the Euro symbol into an e-mail or document. Ashamedly enough I was stuck for words, since I always bypassed this problem by using the EUR or E abbreviation. To prove that I'm a good boy at heart I did some homework on the subject.

Since the introduction of the Euro is relatively new not all operating systems and applications will automatically support the Euro character. The following key variants were tested on Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 on an English layout keyboard. The tests worked on Word, Outlook 2003 and notepad so I think that they should be applicable to most applications.

Most modern keyboards have a printed euro near the number 4 on the numeric row (above the letters). Now, we all know that we can get a dollar by pressing [Shift] [4] but how can you get the Euro currency symbol? Here are all the options that worked out for me.

• [Right Alt] + 4
• [Right Alt] + e
• [Ctrl] [Alt] + e
• [Ctrl] [Alt] + 4

Apparently the [Right Alt] key (also known as [Alt Gr]) is a shortcut key for [Ctrl] [Alt] in this case. On my keyboard there is no euro symbol on the keyboard but the above key sequences still worked fine.

If this approach fails you can always used the ASCII code value for the euro. This can be achieved by holding down the [Left Alt] button and on the numeric keypad (the numbers on the right) type 0128.

The last issue is how to display the Euro in an HTML document. The correct numeric reference is € and the correct entity reference is €. However keep in mind that old browsers will not support the newly introduced character. An image with the Euro symbol or the EUR abbreviation will probably be the best solutions for now, to ensure a uniform page display.

I got a mail by Seth Dillingham on how to type the Euro symbol on Mac OS X:- "... on Mac OS X, the euro symbol is typed with option-shift-2 (also known as alt-shift-2)."

Let's face it, most of the time we computer people are pompous farts who hate to RTFM (Read the fucken manual). We prefer to fiddle with the software first, rather than taking the patient approach to handle such a fragile artefact. In an era where we are faced with yearly updates of the same new software (Office, Windows, Acrobat, FIFA) the urge to plunge directly to work is irresistible. Yet, no matter how deeply we may indulge in the intricate details of such complex creations, the designer always manager to surpass obvious logic and hide one or two wonderful features. With this thought in mind, this week I've decided to give more credit to the efforts of these programmers and explore some of the new and obscure features of commonly used software.

The morning tracks lead to Acrobat and I couldn't resist pressing the "Read Out Loud" option. Hilarious! Now stop for a second and take a look at your keyboard. Which is the whitest key? If the windows button figured amongst the likings of the scroll lock then here are a few tips you might use.

[Windows]

Open the start menu

[Windows] + [D]

Minimise / restore all windows

[Windows] + [E]

Load Internet Explorer

[Windows] + [F]

Find all files dialog

[Windows] + [M]

Minimise all windows

[Windows] + [Ctrl] + [M]

Reverse previous operation

[Windows] + [R]

Open the run dialog

[Windows] + [Break]

Open the system properties dialog

[Windows] + [F1]

Open windows help

[Windows] + [Tab]

Cycle through buttons on the task bar

I hate it when I'm right in the wrong occasions. Although not as drastic as imagined, the great blow for the family's saviour arrived only one day late. I dreaded such an outcome from the notice of the challenge more than four months ago, and my fear was confirmed in advance today.

Just as I returned from the Friday swim, I found him eagerly anticipating my return staring at the box with his mind imagining his degraded future. We've just spent two hours in deep emotional expression, during which I was trying my best to be of comfort. The power and intensity of conversation in depressive circumstances is remarkable. I believe it has all to do with the presence of mind and effort put into the conversation, which follows instinctively in an attempt to sustain the upset person.

The long awaited news officially broke out – somebody is coming to replace my old beloved pal at work. The logical follow up to the news was that they want to place him in my room, something I've been dreading from my ex's departure. We've got a saying in our country "if you're prepared you're half there", and I didn't mean to lose the solemnity of my room without battle.

As part of the plan to ward of potential intruders, I had already placed 3 PC's on his table to imply that I'm using it, and the hint hit the target. Another point in my favour was that there already is an empty room left by the secretary, so there is no question of lack of space elsewhere. To this they responded that they intend to user the spare room as a meeting room. This is plain pure bullocks, because we only have small meetings which are well hosted in our rooms, or at the manager's meeting table which suits the purpose fine.

The debate continued for some time, and in the heat of the argument I managed to impress myself. At one time I got so taken over that I bluntly told my boss "why don't you station him in your room?" With great pride and conceitedness she replied "I expect that in my position, I must have a room all by myself", to which I replied, "The reason I prefer to be alone is that since I'm less distracted, I feel that I'm more productive". The bull fight ended here however the verdict is still pending for tomorrow.

After the over active morning we had two good news; we've got a wedding and our boss is going to Tunis. Fingers crossed maybe she'll come back with a newcomer in her uterus.

My four day food abstinence gloriously ended yesterday with a pizza meal with my ex-pal and his miss. We've been wanting to meet for some time and at last our busy schedules met. It was a great night, getting up to date with each other's lives and describing our Romania holiday.

Word: dogged
Meaning:

1. Stubbornly persevering; Tenacious
2. Sullenly obstinate; obstinately determined or persistent

Synonyms: dour, pertinacious, tenacious, unyielding
Usage: The sulky spite of a temper naturally dogged. -- Sir W. Scott.
Comment: An apt description of my brother

Life seems to be so normal that it is feeling sinister. I'm waiting for the life disaster time bomb to explode any moment. Death and sickness are creeping from the horizon towards the present. The myriad deaths and heart attacks afflicting people indirectly related yet close enough to know about, are burdening my thoughts, and reality is not so promising either. My parents have hit the fiftieth mark, my loved one's parents even more, and three of my grandparents are now in their late eighties. I think I must busy myself more and think a little less.

I've been pestering these blog sites for the past two days so I thought they were worth mentioning:-

• Defective yeti – This site has great content seeping out of every orifice. If you like anything ranging from opinions with humours observations, book and movie reviews, board game reviews or just a good read you should point your cursor through this link.
• Jeffrey Veen - Jeffrey Veen went touring to Costa Rica and is reading "the art and science of web design" so you must visit.
• Trek Diary – A more static site than the rest but has a number of diary accounts on wild life places on my to visit list, Borneo is up now.

Word: indemnity
Meaning:

1. Security against damage, loss, or injury.
2. A legal exemption from liability for damages.
3. Compensation for damage, loss, or injury suffered

Synonyms: recompense, reimbursement, remittance
Usage: Having first obtained a promise of indemnity for the riot they had committed. --Sir W. Scott.
Comment: A word generally used in contracts

The first e-mail of the day soothed yesterday’s match disappointment, by proclaiming the jackpot victory of 375Euro to my better half. I didn’t do half as bad as I expected arriving in 5th place, but since I made the right companionship choice I will be getting a free Slavic meal after my bowels are settled.

Quarter Finals
Portugal vs  England  2(6)-2(5)
France  vs  Greece  0-1
Sweden  vs  Netherlands  0(3)-0(4)
Czech Republic  vs  Denmark  3-0

Semi Finals
Portugal  vs  Netherlands  2-1
Greece  vs  Czech Republic  1-0

Final
Portugal  vs  Greece  0-1

About two weeks ago while browsing pipes.org I happened to come across a detailed paper about Sherlock Holm’s smoking habits. The detail and variety of such a minor event in the context of the whole story, lured me to download and read some of Sherlock’s adventures. I'm now in my third story and I have given up trying to listen to "A place to hide" in favour of the English Classic.

This small lesson might come handy in the Marketing 101 class. Lessons in Marketing for women

1. You are at a party and you see a good looking man. You go up to him and say to him “I am great in bed” - That is called Direct Marketing
2. You are at a party with friends and you see a good looking man.. A friend of yours goes up to him, points at you and says “She is great in bed” – That is called advertising
3. You are at a party and you see a good looking man. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you ring him and say “Hi - I am great in bed” - That is called telemarketing
4. You are at a party and you see a good looking man. You get up straighten your dress, go up to him and buy him a drink. You lean in his direction straighten his tie, touch his arm gently and say “Ah yes, and I am also great in bed” - That is called PR
5. You are at a party and you see a good looking man. He comes up to you and says “I heard that you are great in bed”. That is called product awareness
6. You are at a party and you see a good looking man. You go up to him and persuade him to take your friend home - That is called selling a product
7. He however is not satisfied by your friend’s performance and rings you – That is called after sales service
8. You go to a party and on the way you realize that inside all the houses there may be good looking men. You climb up onto the verandah of one of the houses right in the middle of the neighbourhood and scream at the top of your voice “ I am great in bed!!!!” – That is called SPAM!

Three weeks ago we were in Romania watching the first Euro 2004 game between hosts Portugal and Greece. Today the same game will repeat itself in a slightly more important context as the final. The surprise of the finalists is very aptly outlined by William Hill, since there was only one person who bet on a final between Greece and Portugal for a 1/250 bet.

Like all the recent football tournaments the share of surprises has contributed to the suspense and beauty of the tournament. Italy, Spain and Germany got knocked out during the qualifying round while France and England didn’t make it to the semi-finals. What we're talking about here is 5 nations all in the top 8 of the European Nations FIFA football rankings. Greece stand only in the 18th position with only Bulgaria behind in 20th position, from the teams qualified for the Euro.

What happened to the big names Totti, Raul, Beckam, Vieri, etc. Have these players lost their sense of patriotism and national pride, in an age where the club is more financially rewarding then the national team? Does their salary justify such a great national flop? Aren't these player's able to work in a team, or is it that the manager with the limited time to control such busy players didn't find the right team balance. On this point, the last World Cup comes to mind when coach Guus Hiddink took hold of the South Korean team 2 months in advance before the world cup to write his name in the semi-final, controversy apart.

The poor performances of the favourite teams and the results obtained by their less quoted adversaries bring an obvious question; what did the big teams do wrong, and what made the little ones succeed? The most logical answer is teamwork. There is little doubt that on an individual level most major teams have better players but in a team of 11 players the collective whole is the one that counts. All semi-finalists (except Holland) showed great team spirit with humble players ready to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the team.

The soccer-long dilemma of who's the most important between the players and the coach definitely tilted towards the coach during this Euro. Both Luiz Felipe Scolari and Otto Rehhagel illuminated the soccer world with their different perception of the game to reach the same goal. On one side the Brazilian coach with a flamboyant fancy football game exploiting the best characteristics of his talented players. On the other side the German 65-year old dusted the man marking manual from his shelves and reminded the Italians how they should play defensive football.

Biggest pity: England
Most Deserved Result: Italy's failing to qualify
Most disappointing player: Totti
Man with the iron undercarriage: Scolari
Best Player: Maniche
Best Youth: Cristiano Ronaldo
Best Goal: Rui Costa 2-1 goal against England

Try to guess this one; What managed to keep me away from my PC in a whole day locked up in my room? … gastrointestinitis. After all the praying to get sick, I spent the whole Czech Republic vs Greece football match vomiting every quarter of an hour, and was confined to bed for the whole of yesterday. What's more this virus spreads like the sasser, because even my better half got the virus just by watching the game together. Thinking on the positive side, this is a good way to start my summer diet after three days drinking only water.

I was meant to write this review on Thursday but I had to safeguard the PC from my vomit frenzy. On Wednesday we watched Monster (review) starring Charlize Theron and Cristina Ricci. The movie is based on the true story drama of America's first female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. To play the part of Wuornos a hooker turned serial killer, Charlize Theron transformed herself beyond recognition to great effect. The story starts with the friendship (love) between Wuornos and Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) who escape together in search for the American dream. When the hardships of life fail to cease, Wuornos restarts her old hooker job to get some cash. One day one of her johns gets violent and she kills him as an act of self defence. This experience starts a snowball effect, adding the victim count by another 5. Since the film is based on a true story there's little suspense and a lot of drama. On thing is crystal clear though, Charlize Theron fully deserved the Oscar for this masterpiece. 4 Stars for the movie / 5 stars of Charlize performance.