blogs

Wow ! http://www.drupalbook.com/
"Pro Drupal Development" by John VanDyk & Matt Westgate
Both well known Drupal developers. I already ordered my copy ! Shipping date 24th April. The book will be very helpful for the http://www.visiondynamics.info and http://www.visiondynamics.nl site. The first time I ordered from the German http://www.amazon.de (handy to be able to read the language from our neighbours). BOL.com didn't have it listed yet.

Hopefully I get the book a bit on time. There's a lot to do. Of course a lot of info, how-to's and documentation is available online. But a book that contains (almost ?) everything is an easy to carry and always available format ... very nice ! See my comment at: http://drupal.org/node/137201#comment-222976

Yesterday I worked in Eindhoven. It was Hannah's first day at her new school. She really did well. I was so proud of her: when we walked in the classroom the teacher already started. All the children were sitting in a circle. She introduced Hannah and asked her to choose an empty chair. Hannah walked promptly to her seat of choice and sat down as if it was the most normal thing in the world. When asked about her age she replied without hesitation: "4 jaar". We (Fran and I) stood at the door a bit not knowing what to do (the introduction wasn't flawless, the head teacher was not present), but when we left Hannah remained calm and in her chair. A boy whose mother left a few minutes earlier was bawling furiously and had to be put in the hall to calm down.

Yep, last working day of the week. I'm completely knackered and it's only 6:01 in the morning...
Anyway no use to complain, I'll start putting together a presentation for the meeting at 9:00. Time enough if interesting articles like the link below don't distract me too much.

Nice article, found on Slashdot:
"Man Is Born Free, But Everywhere He’s Working for a Jerk"
http://nymag.com/guides/2007/officelife/30010/

I heard the word "knackered" yesterday on BBC2, in a beautiful documentary where children were filming their own lives within their families etc. Let's look for a link:
My Life as a Child

Yesterday in the early morning I left my bike in front of the closed door of the bike storage plage (fietsenstalling) at the station. Wondering if I would ever see it again. Well, luckily the staff stored my bike plus the others (a few more bikes were already parked there when I came). So very happy about that, today the place was open as usual.

Yesterday my mom visited us. She went with Hannah and Franny to the swimmingpool and they had a good time. Hannah is still afraid to push her head under water. She slipped and fell down with her head under water which resulted in a good cry. All three of them were very tired when I got home. Franny made a delicious noodles dish with fried chicken and egg. We also discussed the latest trials and tribulations within the family. There's a lot going on and we have to make our own choices and not let us getting dragged into something.

Whoops, there's a 'stop train' in front of the intercity I'm sitting in. Ah well, I'm between Tilburg and Breda, so we'll catch up.

The new stainless steel thermos is working really well ! decent coffee for a small price compared to the 'brew' you can buy at the station for 1.50 euro. I can almost buy 2 weeks of coffee for that amount. Ok, that sounds stingy, but I'm still Dutch ;-) and 4*5*1.50=30 euro's a month, that's what I pay for my phone !

Anyways, the bike shelter was closed this morning ... a few more paying customers put their bikes in front of the closed doors, hoping the staff would put them inside. They are supposed to open at 04:45 and I arrived on 05:25 ... I really hope I'll see my bike again when I get back in Eindhoven in the afternoon.

do what whatever I want to do. I can carry my guitar to play like them old days in the train. I can browse the net with laptop/phone combi. I can sleep, drink coffee, have breakfast, blog.

Talking about blogging... The last post was 3 years ago, so I've some catching up to do. Yesterday I was leafing to some old diaries of 1998 etc. Nice to read my scribbles and remembering the things that were so important then.

Much has changed, much has remained the same.

Anyways, good to start this up again.

It's Tuesday evening in my second week. I'm sitting in my favourite cafe, with free wireless internet !

I've got my credit card sorted out last week, picked up my rental car from the airport and things are generally ok. The food at the Indian restaurant was excellent, made me feel like eating at home. No burgers/fries/ketchup tonight.

At work things haven't been going as smoothly as I hoped. Yesterday I found out that the measurement equipment was not working properly. Luckily with the help of the German service desk and people at the office here we got it working again. It was a bit scary to open very expensive measurement equipment and to adjust screws to get the optics aligned again ... but anyway, after that I just had to disassemble another piece of equipment that wasn't working either. Next time I've to ship anything I'll make sure it's packed in a triple set of boxes minimum ! A double set is just not enough to survive the trip.