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.

After the weekend

I started the week after an extended weekend, from friday to monday. I usually work 4 days a week so I can play a bit with the free day. It’s not so bad but I still have to do my 40 hours a week, which means 10-hour days. Eh, nothing comes free.

And as I was saying in a previous post, winter arrived: snow, wet snow, cold rain, ice, etc. And before this, on friday, we had really strong winds. So strong that it blew our sunblind/umbrella thingy off the balcony :( I dont have a picture with mine but it looked something like this:

It was not small at all and the legs were kinda heavy. After a powerful gust of wind I heard a lound bang and when I looked out of the window, the sunblind was gone. I got out and I saw it stuck in the garden of the next house. I got it back but the legs are now bent, some pieces are broken and so on. Well, not much I can do now. It’s my fault I guess, I should’ve anchored it somehow. We could not have taken it with us anyway, it’s too big to fit anywhere in the new house. But I guess we could’ve tried to sell it to the new tennants who will come here.

We also went to the house to do some more measurements. We realized that we will have problems with moving the furniture. The doorways are too narrow, so are the interior stairways. Most of the things we can dismantle but the couch we have in the living is one piece and it’s not fitting at all. Freya is trying to find a couch which we can get upstairs and look decent at the same time, not an easy job as it turns out. She must know by now all furniture selling websites and she still didn’t find anything decent.

Oh, and the idiot who is selling the house is still making us problems. On the 28 november (on a friday) the house transfer is supposed to take place, where we get the keys. Our bank should have the money in his account by then but the dude (according to the lady at the agency) will only check his account friday morning and then he leaves in a 3-week vacation! Which sucks because we can’t afford to wait 3 weeks if the the money get to his bank one day later. And we can’t meet with him on friday anway, since I only get back home friday evening. We have an appointment on saturday with the lady from the agency, we’ll see how it goes.

In other news, I started playing Fallout 3, very nice game ;-) But Freya is right, I should take it easier with playing, there are other things to be done too. But from time to time, it works. And at the end, something funny:

via GAS

Winter is finally here

Bleh.

And it seems it’s gonna last at least the whole next week, with low temperatures and more snow.