Dear mom, we love you, we miss you!

I will be working on our “newest” application, written in Delphi and with a Firebird database, both of which are new to me. These first few days, I have mainly been busy getting to know the software (and my colleagues of course), but I am very anxious to start programming and do some “real” work!

Of course, we are very proud of this little baby and happy that all is well with both mother and daughter. Also Marijn is very proud to be a big brother now and all he wants is to hold and cuddle his little sister and to cover her in kisses.

Check out some more photos on Picasaweb.

While Irene stayed at the old place, I already went to our new house, because the very same day, the kitchen would be installed. A case of Bad Planning ™, I fear, although not entirely our own fault.

Around noon, the movers arrived at our new house, after they had picked up a lift to hoist the 40-or-so boxes with books (and much more) to the second floor.

It was a very busy day, but the movers were great, very careful and tidy, and they worked very hard, the entire day, until about 6 pm. But in the evening, we could sleep in our own bed in our new house. We’d moved!

Ten months after construction was started it’s finally finished now. Although, it’s not quite finished yet, there are still some things that have to be done, but that will have to wait till after the holidays. But at least, in the mean time, we can start painting, cleaning, et cetera. We plan to move on September 17th.

Coincidently, this picture was taken exactly one year ago today, before they started building. So what do you think, does the house look like the drawing back then?

My old laptop had become soooo slow. Even after completely reinstalling Windows XP, but hardly any other software (yes, a browser, office suite, and a few more), it still seemed ten times as slow as when I bought it. I blame Windows for that; obviously XP is not what it was five years ago.

Anyway, I searched around, mainly at laptopshop.nl, and was about to order an Acer (Aspire 5738G, to be precise), when I saw that Dell had a discount on the Studio 15. The specs were similar to the Acer and now the price was almost the same as well. I chose the Dell.

The main specs are:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 (2.1 GHz)
• 4 GB DDR2 memory
• 320 GB 7200 rpm SATA hard disk
• 512 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics card
• 15.6″ widescreen display (1366 × 768)
• DVD +/- RW drive
• Integrated webcam
• 9-cell 85W battery

The only thing that bothers me, not just with this one, but with similar laptops as well, is the low resolution of the display. Even the one I am working on right now, which is five years old, has a 15″ display with 1400 × 1050 pixels. If you want something like that right now (1440 × 900), you have to go for at least a 17″ display, or be willing to spend some more money on a Sony Vaio.

Anyway, if all goes well, my new laptop will be delivered next Wednesday.

Update (2009-7-22): my laptop has arrived. This afternoon, two packages were delivered at my door:

Some first impressions, after working with it for a couple of hours:

• Microsoft sure did a great job in creating the most annoying piece of software ever with User Account Control (UAC).
• Vista takes some time getting used to. Yes, I was still running XP on my old laptop.
• The first thing to go was the Windows Sidebar. The second was the Dell Dock. Yippee for all the free Dell software you get pre-installed on your machine.
• I already mentioned the screen resolution. The widescreen is nice, but the vertical size is quite limited, which is most obvious while browsing or working with digital photos. BTW, where did this resolution of 1366 × 768 come from?
• The battery life, so far, is great. The extra large 9-cell battery has worked for about 5 hours, although I haven’t actually measured it exactly. But even when it was at 0%, it kept working for another 15 minutes!
• Finally, this laptop is quite a lot faster than my old one! But then again, it would be strange if it wasn’t.

On the outside, the house is almost finished. The scaffolding has already been removed. Part of the windows and the doors still have to be put in, but it’s really starting to look like the pictures we fell in love with.

On the inside, some of the walls have been plastered, most of the wiring is finished, and they’re busy installing the bathroom. In the mean time, we have been planning what has to be done after we get the keys, i.e. the walls, the floors and the kitchen. This will still take a couple of weeks, so probably, we will be moving sometime around September 15.

On Saturday, we had agreed to help a friend move home, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help at all. I could hardly walk, let alone carry boxes. In the afternoon, Irene said I felt warm, and we decided to go to the hospital.

To make a long story short: from the blood test it appeared I probably had an appendicitis, so I was scheduled for operation that evening. Normally, this would have meant I could have gone home the next day, but during the operation, they found that my appendix had burst. Instead of leaving the next day, I had to stay in hospital for five days with intravenous antibiotics.

I have been home for a week now, and I’m getting better and better. I am up and about, although standing or walking still hurts after a few minutes. My appetite in hospital was really terrible, I hardly ate at all, but luckily that’s (almost) back to normal now. I’ve also started working for a couple of hours a day, and hopefully next week I’ll be able to work full days again.

So, we too wanted to go ice skating, but I too had to buy new skates first. We finally went this Saturday.

Apart from the fun of ice skating, the cold weather also provides some beautiful natural winter scenes, and the opportunity to try to make a few nice photos.

Construction of the house was started almost three weeks ago. The first piles were rammed into the ground (what is “heien” in English?) on October 10, and since then, the concrete foundation has been poured, the water outlets have been set up and the ground floor has been laid.

In the mean time, we have bought ourselves a new kitchen! We’re still thinking about all the changes and optional extras: where to place the sockets and light switches, do we want an outside tap or an electrical garage door, do we want hardwood stairs, et cetera. We will have to decide about a lot of these things next week. And after that: project bathroom! I’ll keep you posted…