A new hope

Yeah, the title is borrowed off an old 70's sci-fi flick ;) One year has ended and another has begun. Good thing to start the new year with pneumonia, that way it can certainly only get better. New years resolutions? I was too tired yesterday to make any. All I hope is 2009 will be a good year for each and everyone!

Memories revisited!

Sitting here on the train to Stockholm and listening to some great industrial electronica on my iPhone; Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Laibach, Einstürtzende Neubauten! And on top of that, re-reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer isn't just a book... it's a work of art! A state of mind! This all certainly brings me back in time! All the details in Neuromancer that I had forgotten since the last time I read it (certainly over 15 years ago...); Tessier-Ashpool, Wintermute, Lupus Yonderboy etc, brings a happy sensation to my mind...

Some time passed

Since last post I have had a wonderful vacation in London. Me and my wife went there to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We went to see Sound of Music, French & Saunders and a play by Harold Pinter, "No mans land". To have fully enjoyed the latter you should probably have had a bottle of plonk... it was a good performance, but the play made little sense to me.

Now, the current project, how did that go? Not very well, the client in question filed for "reconstruction", I guess that is almost the same as "chapter 11" in the US. The reason is that their client  has filed for chapter 11 protection and won't pay them. So, we might not get paid for all the work put in over the last months, sigh.

Last week I was "home alone" with the dogs, both the wife and our son were away so I spent the week working from our countryhouse, just lovely! We even got a good load of snow, the dogs just loved it! 

Almost time...

...to close the store and go on vacation. Still problems that haven't been solved in the project I work with. But, pardon my french, I don't give a toss! It's not my fault this project has gone belly up, it's the total lack of project management and specifications. I'll probably get my fair share of the whip when it goes around, but I have a few lashes to give back too!

Went to watch hockey tonight, and the local team HV71 just doesn't cut it this year, unmotivated players, poor game feeling and no goals, guess they won't be keeping the cup they wo last season.

Getting late

... again! I'm terrible at going to bed in time. I should have been in bed hours ago, but there is always this and that to do before finally switching the light off.

Tonight I "just had" to move the dog club's pages onto a new web host. And convert the outdated MS-Access database to MySQL... and that meant I had to go through a quadrillion pages and change the connection string (Since some [idiot] thought that was a wise way to do it a few years ago :sigh:). Now I can start converting the legacy .asp pages to php!

Also, getting ready for vacation! I'm off with the wife to London for a week from saturday, our 10th anniversary... Time flies! I'll try to Twitter from London, as I don't expect to spend a lot of time by a computer!

Work... and work...

There is certainly a big difference between work and work! Last month (and a bit of this too) I have worked quite a lot. I don't complain, it's part of my job to have these periods just before the launch of a project. But still, it isn't fun. But only the other day I took up a project of my own that has been lying resting... [In fear of dissapointing myself I will keep the details of this specific project to myself for the moment ;) ]

Wow did it feel good to do this! I stayed up til 4:30 am last night coding on this project, and I expect to do the same tonight. All that I thought was lost coding for my "daytime job" was suddenly there again! A great feeling!

Yesterday I recieved the written result of the weekends SAR excercise. Wow! It went better than I had anticipated. There were some boxes that were checked in a way that I didn't agree fully with, but the overall result was better than expected, so not only did we pass, we did so with flying colours too! I'm extremely proud over my dog!

Search and rescue

Yesterday I had a Search and Rescue excercise. It was the annual checkup, to see if we are good enough to be "in service" for another year. This year we also had the local "Defence Force Dogs" doing their bi-annual check at the same time, so there were a lot of people that met up early in the morning.

After the usual welcomes and greetings we were ordered to set up a temporary basecamp in the designated area. Quite soon we got called to our first assignment;

We had to come, one at the time, and do a small search. This was quite an easy starter. The figurant was hidden in atrailer and was found quite easily.

Back to basecamp and wait. [Waiting is an important part of the excercise too, but a boring part!].

The second assigment was a bit trickier. The area we had to search was smaller, but it had people lying close to eachother and the surcaes were slippery. So we had to be were catious, both for our own concern, the dogs and the figuarants. In this they also tested "handling". We, and other people, had to carry our dogs during a few sections of this search. The purpouse is to to see that the dogs doesnt show any aggression while being carried.... Have I mentioned Tasha is a rottweiler? No worries, she's the clamest and nicest rottweiler ever! She has never said a word in anger!

Back to basecamp. [Did I mention waiting can be boring?] As soon as you get back to basecamp, you check your dog for injuries; Scratches, paws, tail, dirt in the eyes etc etc. After that you rest. Resting is imortant, you never know how long you will be called out for next time! An hour, two hours... 24 hours! Anything can happen! So rest is important.

Next assigment was different, tracking (nose down on the ground, as opposed to searching where the dog work with the nose high in the air). We were called to a wooded area half a kilometer or so from the basecamp. Since we haven't trained any tracking for almost two years I think Tasha did rather well. It wasn't perfect, but good enough!

After that it was time for lunch for all the people involved, they had lunch near/in our basecamp so we joined them too, eating our own lunch.

After lunch we had to move to another area, an industrial area 15km away. This time we had to search an industrial building and the surrounded area. Serach inside building is always tricky, the scent can end up in very strange places due to ventilation ducts carrying and blowing the scent far from the actual person. Of course Tasha found all persons and did it very well!

The last area was the biggest search for the day. After having worked all day we now had to search a big industrial area one by one. Again, Tasha excelled! I'm very proud of her! She is at her best after a day's work!