Morning sun

Two pictures taken on a cold but sunny morning:

Almost winter

Unfortunately this really short autumn is almost over and couple of days ago we had the first night with below-zero temperatures. What a mess, I really hope the winter will not be as bad as last year, when we had a really long one.

At least it produces some nice, albeit cold, mornings:

Freezing

One of the coldest mornings so far this winter, what a mess. At least it didn’t snow so far, at least not here. Everything is dry and today we even have clear skies, very sunny. Still it’s cold as hell and we are not amused at all.

Want summer, or at least spring! ;-)

Summer is gone, life goes on

Unfortunately the warm days of the summer are gone. I still see sunny days every now and then but it’s cold and we’re starting here to have temperatures below 0 during the night. We didn’t even have much of an autumn, it kinda jumped directly to winter. Don’t know if I should be happy or not about that, I am not crazy about autumn either, at least not about the rainy part anyway.

At work it’s still kinda ok. Besides the fact that I  have to go back and forth each week, the project is interesting, challenging and gives me the chance to work with technologies not easily available in most other places. It’s a great place to learn things and I would say it’s the perfect working environment to be in if you’re studying for CCIE, the Holy Grail of Cisco Certifications (Service Provider part).

Which is exactly what a couple of my colleagues are doing but it’s not easy at all. This is one exam (a 8-hour lab actually) where it’s not enough to just know stuff, you have to know it perfectly and be able to work fast because you are constantly under time pressure. And trust me, it’s not cheap at all, you end up with thousands and thousands of euros invested in books, rack rentals, boot camps, the lab itself, etc.  Needless to say, this is hardly doable without the support of your company. And on top of that, the pass rate is very low. It is said that less than 10% of people taking the lab pass it the first time. On average, one needs 3-4 attempts to pass it. Kinda bad, eh ?

I am probably at the stage where I could attempt it but I really have no time for it, not when I am gone most of the time. Maybe later. I will just focus on other professional certification in the meanwhile.

Vacation is coming at the end of the year, which is something I am looking forward to. Probably we won’t go anywhere but some time at home is not bad either. Speaking of vacation, there is one thing that annoys me at my company. They ask us to give a vacation plan for the whole next year. I have 28 days of vacation and I have to plan them ALL one year in advance. I can understand their point of view in a way, that they need some kind of overview when people are gonna be gone, but I still think it’s very weird. How am I supposed to know what I will do in one year ? Something might come up and you might need to change the dates but you can be shit out of luck if someone else in your team has it planned in that time.

They say that this is just for “planning purposes” and that you can change it but we all know that once you turn it in, it’s pretty much fixed, there is no change because you most likely conflict with someone else. I didn’t use to have this in my former company but it was a bit easier there I guess, less people in our department so less chances of conflicts.

And at the end, something unrelated. I came upon a very interesting article from cracked.com: “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable” (via). It’s a bit long’ish but it’s well worth it.

Bad weather is back

Weather was a little bit warmer for a while (and by that I only mean couple of degrees above zero) but then it all went to hell again. This is what I was seeing yesterday from my office window:

Bad. Today it calmed down a bit and it looks like this:

I am tired of winter. I am tired of snow. I am tired of cold, wet, ice and cold wind. I am tired of negative temperatures. I don’t want much, just couple of degrees above zero.

Tonight I get home after 20:00h so there is no time to do anything. Tomorrow we have to go to all kind of places, shopping, etc. On sunday we have a bit of relax time but starting with monday, we’re at it again. I am still home for that day but it’s going to be a busy day.

In the morning I have to go to the old apartment, we arranged with a company to come and pick up the last of the heavy furniture pieces. Then I have to drive to the capital city of this Kreis where I will apply for my new driving license, because I can’t do it in my own village. Of course, it’s not free: 41 €. Then back to Hertz, where I rented again a van for a day. Then back home, pick up the mountain of trash bags, old electric equipment, old wood and so on. To the dumpsite place, back to Hertz and then finally at home. The day is probably over by then ;-) Great.

Cold Morning

Bleh !!

Cold

Last week was extremely cold, with highs during the day of -3C or -4C. I am not even talking about nights, it went down as low as -14C. Last week I also started work after my nice “vacation”, which was not really that much fun. At least for me; it started with a dead power supply of a Cisco 7609 (followed shortly by a disaster in the replacement procedures) and with all kind of problems and bugs in the GetVPN implementation which currently takes place. I have no reason to believe the next week will be any different.

Otherwise things are kinda hectic. The renovation goes well but it’s still a lot to be done. Meanwhile the apartment on the first floor is starting to look better. Next week we will start working on the second floor apartment, where there is a little bit less work so it’s possible that we finish before the end of the month. I took the last week of January off and I already rented a van for the moving, an 3.5t Iveco Daily. It’s going to be extremely fun.

And because I was dumb and didn’t realize at the time, in the first week of February (immediately after I moved) I will have my SNRS class. If I would’ve thought for a bit I should not have agreed with this so soon. And on top of it, it takes place all the way in Utrecht, Netherlands. Well, nothing I can do about that now.

In other news, “Stargate Atlantis” is over, I watched yesterday the last episode :-( I’ve seen pretty much everything from the Stargate series: SG1, Atlantis as well as all the Stargate movies released so far. The next franchise will be “Stargate Universe” but that’s scheduled for release only in August 2009 so I still have to wait some more. That sucks ;-)

Slow blogging

Lately I have been kinda busy with the renovation which means I haven’t written much. We didn’t really have a Christmas nor a New Year; I can’t wait for this month to end and see myself moved. We’ll still have a lot of work to do but at least this step will be finished.

Free piece of advice: don’t ever move or renovate your house/apartment in winter, it really sucks. The weather here didn’t help either because it was quite cold (2C max during daytime and -8C or lower during nights), it getd dark soon and you don’t feel like doing anything anymore. And last night it started to snow again. Excellent, exactly what we needed. On Wednesday I start work again, more shuttling back and forth between here and Munich. I hope that I can get vacation the last week of this month, when the actual move will take place.

Meanwhile:

Yep, that’s the future: energy savings lamps. All incandescent light bulbs from our house will go away, even though these new bulbs are more expensive. A 20W bulb like the one above (which gives out the same amount of visible light as a 100W incandescent bulb) costs somewhere around 9 €, if you want it with natural light. Which is highly recommended because there are many studies which show that natural light is good for our general health. If you want it with “warmer” light then you can get it cheaper.