Wens' blog » Day to Day

Utterly knackered

Wenslauw — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:40:21 +0000

One of those weeks. A 4 day course from tuesday to friday. Of course the company had an event on tuesday, so I wasn’t home until after midnight on tuesday, well, wednesday. Well, I could have come home earlier, but the poker clinic (!) after the corporate stuff and great Italian food took a bit longer than expected. Still it did mean that I spent most of the week exhausted.

I met some interesting people at the course. Some Australians who work for Tomtom, an Italian guy living just a few miles away from me and a few other.

The other days I had to do some things for work too. My client is a seriously f’ed up company that currently has a sort of take over going on. One part of the company is taking over the business of the other half… If I were the CIO I’d fire some people, but in this company these things just happen and nobody does anything… This gives us some opportunities to pull some work our way. So I had to give some information to sales.

I still have to get some mails out, but hey, it’s saturday and the week was long enough. So screw it. There’s always Sunday.

Today I’ll be busy enough with visiting a friend from Rotterdam. He moved to the Netherlands about a year ago and he’ll be leaving soon, so I’d better take the opportunity to see him a few times before he leaves.

Tonight we have a party of my close friend A. She and her boyfriend will be moving to Ethiopia for a year. He has the opportunity to work at the university there.

Twitter and terror

Wenslauw — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:08:15 +0000

It was fascinating to see how people responded on Twitter to the faked elections in Iran. The people on Twitter were among the first to report on what was going on in Iran. Quite a while before the conventional media caught on. Twitter users even started bashing CNN for not picking up the story. #CNNfail became a heavily used tag for a while. It is true that Twitter brought the Iran situation to the attention.

Something just didn’t feel right about it though. Call me a cynic, but I couldn’t believe that so many people were suddenly interested in the fate of Iran. I think it’s quite safe to say that before these elections most of the (Twittering) world couldn’t have cared less about what happens to Iran.

I wasn’t very surprised when I clicked the profile of a few of these ‘protesters’ and found quite a few could be considered Valley girls and boys. The majority of them American I wonder how outraged they were about the last couple of American elections…

Twitter is fashionable and what’s easier than supporting a good cause from your arm chair?

Close to home

Wenslauw — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:42:39 +0000

When we returned from Berlin and left the highway close to our home we saw something remarkable. In no time the city had turned a body of water near our house into a recreation area. A few hills, a beach and a picnic area with those typical one piece table and seats constructions. All in all a plan quite well executed. We’ve spent a warm evening there with two salads and a rather mediocre wine. The bad wine didn’t spoil the atmosphere. It was warm, we were lying on our towels on the sand and we were enjoying the food and each other’s company.

This picture was taken on the other side of the water. This other side is an area is nature reserve area with a few paths running through it. They weren’t used very often as we had to thrust our way through the thicket in the beginning.

This arrangement of table and chairs is on a private part of the nature reserve area. It looks like they’ve been standing there unused, but that’s just because the weather hasn’t been good enough.

That nature reserve area was quite a discovery. It’s narrow and long, but you do get the idea you’ve left the city behind. Despite the fact there’s a highway nearby that’s full of cars day and night.

Interesting house

Wenslauw — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:55:24 +0000

This house is just a short walk from mine. I’ve seen it before on previous walks, but I either didn’t have my camera with me or I passed in front of the house. The road there is quite close to the house, so it gets rather personal when you take a picture. The front of the house does have a rather huge window though on the first floor (second floor you Yanks, I guess), which makes it look very nice. Well, it’s not in this picture. You’ll have to settle for the backside.

Sleeve length

Wenslauw — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:40:54 +0000

After trying on the jacket of the suit I bought in Berlin I found out that the sleeves are too long. They have been altered, but they’re still too long. It’s not the first time this has happened to me. I whined about this to a friend and he said it’s for keeping the fingers warm, cos it’s so bloody cold in Northern Europe.

So I started googling for a tailor, but the first 5 hits were from people trying to sell their secondhand suits online… Which makes you wonder, who buys a second hand suit…

Ah, I might try it at the tailor at the airport mentioned below. Easy to drop it off there and pick it up a few hours later…

Spring has sprung

Wenslauw — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:06:47 +0000

The first bottles of Prosecco and rosé wine have been drunk. The sun has shown itself and the pheasants, bunnies and hares have started running around on the fields around my house and offices again in large numbers. I’ve sailed again and it was warm enough to be in swimming clothes. It’s clear: spring has come. Finally…

Cowboy Frank

Wenslauw — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:31:23 +0000

Somehow my webcam fell of my desk and I seem to have stepped on it. It wasn’t in the manual, but it’s clear that it wasn’t designed to handle that kind of weight… Quite a pity as I was about to start using it again after not having used it in years. My parents and brother are thinking of getting webcams, so my parents can see their grandchild more regularly. The distance makes popping in a for an hour or so quite impossible. So as I’m a tech buff, I started wondering what webcams have to offer these days. It started googling a bit and the first site I ended up at was that of cowboy Frank. Here’s a man you can’t catch in a cliché. He’s put a lot of time in doing reviews for webcams and he’s done quite a few so far. It seems Logitech still makes the best ones. I’ll just get a Logitech again, I guess.

A talk with my mentor

Wenslauw — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:47:49 +0000

Everybody working in my company has a mentor. Even the president of the company. It’s a good system that works out well in several ways. Together with the mentor you set your goals for the year and he or she helps you keep track of the progress you make in that year.
You can also discuss the more personal side of work with your mentor. For example how you are coping with the workload and the travelling. He can be a mirror and give you some perspective on your situation.
Some perspective is what I really needed in January after I had a bit of a breakdown. I started having severe chest pains, pains in my heart and I suffered from hyperventilating. Seemed like I was getting a bit too stressed out. I had a good talk with my mentor and decided to take things a bit easier. It’s not always easy to do this as your own view on the situation is often not very clear.

Last friday I spoke to him again. We’re both working at the same customer, so it’s easy to meet up. We set some goals for this year and talked to each other about what it is like to work for this customer. It was interesting to hear how he felt and that he has the same experiences as I have.

We also talked about how it is to be a consultant for our company. I was happy to hear he has similar experiences. I told him I find the life quite hard. You’re away from home at least 10 hours a day (including the travelling, if you’re lucky) and several times a month you have to leave work early to take a 3 hour trip to the main office. Often not returning home before 11pm. One of those meetings in the beginning of the week completely messes up your week and you’re left exhausted until the weekend comes around and you have some time to sleep in. And usually you’re not done when you finish that day of at least 10 hours. You have to study and work on company projects too. My mentor told me my experiences are rather common in my company. Good to hear, I thought I was just being weak.

Blood pressure

Wenslauw — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:59:30 +0000

This morning I had my blood pressure tested again. It was ok this time. A good thing to hear. It will be tested once more and when I then return to the doctor I will also get the result of the examination of my blood and urine. I might not be in such a bad shape after all.

New window

Wenslauw — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:29:03 +0000

At the moment I’m having a new window put into my passenger door. It seems the paint is damaged too… Well at least this place has wifi. Next I’ll drive to a dealer to see what we can do about the navigation system. I don’t want the same great system again, because it will just get stolen again. Pathetic that I have to change my behaviour for the scum of this earth.