Another prolonged wait till the next blog entry – for this I apologize. I haven’t been doing so peachy health-wise of late. A nagging cough, cold and a wee bitta fever, and here you have it, the ingredients for a lovely cocktail of germs. For the more squeamish amongst you, I apologize again. I did manage to get to work on Monday and Tuesday though. It was rather quite nice to be back after a while, even though all my thoughts were aimed at NY and the beautiful love of mine whose company I enjoyed ever so much the previous weeks. I love you Rissa. : )
Monday was rather hectic, as I tried to cope with the humongous backlog of emails. It took me the better half of the day to get back into the groove of things, replying the important ones and marking the not-so-important ones for later processing. The meeting with the supervisors (yes I say supervisors with an S since YMI is back in the office) went well, though YMI gave me some more fodder for thought, which basically translates into – gotta slog through the weekend and redo the journal article. The Innovatium event went well, I am told by Marlies, so we wait for the participants to contact us. Kennisnet got in touch with us right before I left on vacation, though we haven’t heard from them since. I was supposed to contact him on Wednesday (i.e. yesterday) but I was unable to, due to reasons of ill health… oh joy!
Tuesday was just as hectic, with me trying to locate new papers to detail and investigate the ontology based tools for IMSLD, incorporating the top-down approach to the design of UoLs. A lot of work has been done in this regard by the Japanese, though I am yet to find any finished tools regarding the same. Well, the search continues. Today I shall search further if health so permits. In the evening I attended the IMSGLC Enterprise Services v2.0 conference call. As OU is a contributing member and I believe can contribute a lot once the main charter is finalized and ratified by the technical committee. The authors seem to be leaning in favor of LDAP in addition to WS, at the incipient stage. It was a very informative discussion, one that I really enjoyed participating in, to the best of my knowledge.
On the home computing front, my main installation of Vista had been just driving me up the wall, ever since that last incident when I managed to fubar the install by installing some third party stuff that had an adverse reaction and started shutting down services at random points in time. I was about to switch to OSX86, when I realized that MSN in OSX does not support the webcam, and not being able to show or see my love’s webcam, that is just not acceptable. So back to Vista I went, installing everything back from scratch. It never ceases to amaze me how fast Vista installs on my C2D system. The whole process takes not more than 11 minutes – Which is really amazing considering that XP takes twice as long to install. But OSx86 was such a tempting install since Howard demonstrated the OSX Server on Tuesday – simple web services and Blog services that he could host with the click of a button. Due to this lack of support for USB Cameras, I am continuing to stick to Microsoft. Argh : ( I miss the .Mac service so much! Everything JUST worked in OSX, without inasmuch thought to how and why… oh well, I read that with 10.4.9 Apple has rolled out the support for USB Cameras for iChat. So I guess I shall wait it out till 10.4.9 is released to seeders (ulp) and install once all is hunky dory there.
On a sadder note, today marks the last working day for the Frenchman. I am saddened by the thought that we shall not have the pleasure of his company at the Apecage anymore. I was unable to attend the going away party that the fellow colleagues arranged for the Frenchman, and that I regret. I wish thee, Frenchman, fare-thee-well and much luck in your future endeavors. Keep us in your thoughts and in your mailing lists buddy boy.
I have completely moved to Gmail. After resisting the phenomenon so long, I finally decided to take a look and discover the features aplenty. The result – I took the plunge and migrated all my mail from my exchange server to Gmail, an endeavor that took the better part of 2 days, to move 4500 mails and attachments; moved all my contacts, calendar details to Google managed servers. It is just so amazing, how well Google has integrated itself with ubiquitous services, like for instance 10 minutes before a meeting etc, you can choose to be informed by SMS and/or email. It sends you a daily agenda list to your mail each morning. Google notebook is a great addon, right into your browser allowing you to capture parts of a webpage for later review or just jot down random thoughts etc, right into a field in your browser. The main benefit of Gmail I believe is the plethora of services it offers in a ubiquitous manner. No matter where you are, you have access to your mail, notes, documents, pictures in an instant. I, for one, am not regretting the move from Exchange at all!
On a completely unrelated note, I regret having missed work today. The namesake is out on a witte donderdagloop with the OU, a 13.5 kms walk from Sittard to Heerlen, interspersed with delicious vlaai and coffee, and finally ending at a pub in Voerendaal. Oh damn, I wish my health hadn’t quit on me so! : ( Hope he has fun with the Research AIOs!
I bring this blog log to an end. Plans for the day? Recuperate and work a wee bit, and let Marissa work! She has an exam coming up on Friday, and I will try and stay quiet as a mouse and let her study! She is also hosting Easter celebrations at HER house J and the last thing she needs is me humping her leg for attention ; )
I told my uncle and aunt in Canada about our intentions and our plans, and they could NOT have been more ecstatic about the same. They couldn’t stop laughing in delight and beaming, asking me about my beautiful love Rissa! They have given us their blessings and I am just so happy for that. It is like they are my other parents – that’s how close I am to them. To get affirmation from them, of Rissa and my union, though wasn’t so critical, but just feels so right. Oh I love thee so, Rissa.
Ok am off now to give my aching body some rest and perhaps watch the remainder of Wrestlemania 23, as I read through the Holistic Design book that I had ordered days ago!
Tim@1343