And just so much more in love… what a wondrous feeling… Rissa and I just spent three of the most amazing weeks together, living life as a couple, enjoying the simpler pleasures of a "coupled" life like – going grocery shopping together, shopping for clothes, cooking for each other, visiting different cities, or just lazing in bed, watching movies curled up in each others embrace. It has been just the most unforgettable, beautiful time spent with the love of my life.

The three weeks seemed to have flown by, with nary a thought. We visited Brüssel, Amsterdam, Aachen, Köln and of course found things to do in Heerlen as well! Short version – el popo Limburg -> bad, Italian Ristorante here -> good! Contact me for the longer version. It is a bummer though that we did not get to meet any of my friends and colleagues here, due to ill health on both our parts. Oh well, there is always a next time.

The exciting news is that I am off to US in a week! First to Seattle for an IMS conference regarding the Enterprise Services v2.0 and then to NY to be with Rissa and her family. It was the prospect of seeing her in eleven days that basically kept me from being a wreck at the airport when I went to see Rissa off to her flight. It was just a heart-rending feeling to come back to an empty house.

Luckily, work has kept me busy and bereft of thoughts the past few days. I have a meeting coming up with the resonance group on Wednesday in Utrecht, and as a result, need to prepare a couple of mockups and wire frames to show the practitioners to gauge their idea of support in the design of instruction. It has taken me a full day to get the ideas going and then modeling them in a tool of choice.

Which brings me to the paucity of GUI tools for Mac! I really am used to relying on Visio for my GUI mockup needs, and could not find a Mac equivalent on a short notice. Omnigraffle Pro seemed to promise a lot, but does not deliver. The OS GUI tools are rather basic, and though are vector graphics based, they do not scale well!  So I was really up against a wall, due to the lack of a Windows system. I could not in all good conscience format my Hackie into a Vista/XP machine, it would be just too much work for a few mockups.

The solution was easy. Since I had retired the server from existance after the famous HDD crash of 18-06, it was lying in state, in mourning if you will. I decided to bring back the PIV system to life, but instead of hooking it up to the spare LCD screen I have, I decided to hook it up to my LCD TV, 32" of screen real-estate! It took me most of Saturday, but I now have a media center PC. The OS of choice, sorry for this, but – Vista! I tried XP, but it just wouldn’t work! Vista on the other hand looks gorgeous on my LCD TV! As if it were made for that! Kudos.

Hats off to you my beautiful Rissa, for having convinced me against buying an Apple TV. Glad, just so glad I listened to the sweet voice of wisdom in Köln. Would’ve made a monumental mistake. The Media Center PC does everything well, and more! It doesn’t require me to change my Media files to iTunes format! Gott sei dank!

Now the problem – No Powerbook! I had given the Powerbook to the fellows at Saturn for repair, and they have sent it to Apple store in Germany to diagnose and eventually repaire the lappie. All good there, but since I leave for the US in a week, I don’t have a laptop to shine! My work laptop is b0rk3d and noone seems to know how to get the keyboard working again, and I don’t have an idea about the liberties I can take with the loaned laptop! I really am in a quandry here. Will have to talk with the ICTS on Monday about my options.

Well, the Rant goes on, guess more updates as the days go by, and if time permits. Watch this space for some pics from when my darling Rissa was here. They are uploading now.