I don't know if it's the weather [1], Matthijs being at home full days now that he is graduated [2], me sleeping badly [3] or something else but I'm extremely moody [4] at the moment. Nobody can do anything right in my eyes and the incompetence of some people, which they display just as much as normally, grates. I can get really worked up about the smallest things and even get into bouts of shouting. Perhaps I just need a vacation [5].

[1]

It's bleak. Here in Enschede there is some snow, but it is just very disappointing. Only 2 cm, which leaves the grass visible and the streets really slippery. Nearly fell twice this morning on my way to the supermarket. It does not look like a fairy tale outside, just very cold. The sky is grey, not even a tiny sun. And this old building does have double glass windows, but that doesn't help much when the draft is coming in via the not-so-well-closing frames.

[2]

Matthijs graduated with a 9 last Monday. He graduated together with an other guy, Christiaan, and they did their presentation together. Matthijs explained the basic principles in simple terms, almost child-speech every now and again, while I completely lost track when Christiaan told his part. Of course I'm a n00b when it comes to embedded systems and such.

The 'party' afterwards was good. We had to wait quite a long time before the committee had decided what the grades would be (both a 9!) but we had something to drink and snack while waiting. When the diploma's were signed there were some sketches from the current and the old Inter-Actief board. We had a good laugh. Chinese food for dinner, of which we have a 4-person meal in the fridge now, ended the evening.

[3]

[4]

And when in that mood you should try cloning a virtual machine hard-disk (.vdi file) (release, remove, clone via command-line, copy to different directory, link to virtual machine again), upgrading VirtualBox (crash), downloading IE7 (on virtual machine) and IE8 (host) and FF 3.0 while your mouse has just been hijacked by the upgrade of some VirtualBox feature. 5 reboots later....

[5]

Yay, finally got confirmed that the days between Christmas and New Year are off. We just need to 'stand by for emergencies'. Which sounds like I work at a fire brigade or hospital or something, while it's just web design. Really 'emergency' is quite a relative concept. Let's just hope nobody planned a deadline just before Christmas. (Our company doesn't really take 'testing' into account of deadlines).

I could really use the time off. I've got a list here of 11 sewing projects of which a few got my creativity tingling and some have to be finished before the next Moots. Also I'd like to play WarCraft 3 again for a while. Where the h*ll did I get the time last year?

Looking forward to this evening. We'll have a nice dinner (home-made) with chocolate mousse for desert and afterwards we're going to the Christmas concert of Musilon.