In the last few days, or rather, last few weeks, a lot of things have happened.

The first of all is that was offline - again - for perhaps a week in the end of December because the error messages my computer was displaying were getting so numerous that I decided to reformat the harddrive. Unfortunately, the reformatting resulted in a crashed operating system. A technican later told me that somehow the computer had also erased its digital signatures which was why it kept refusing to reinstall the ME recovery version. Whatever. It took some days until the technican responsible for the area had the time to take a look, then he installed another operation system, warning me that that was only a temporary solution and that it was a copy of his own OS - and that I should go online only as a last resort so as to not get him into trouble. So I kept from reinstalling everything that wasn't exactly indispensable and waited for the promised CD that should reconstruct the digital signatures.

Then there was Christmas, and I drove to my parents in Bavaria. I spent 1 1/2 weeks there, and it was a nice, quiet, relaxing time that did wonders for my mood. My father somehow didn't infect me with his flu virus, my brother and my sister-in-law showed us their new apartment, my mother and I cuddled the rabbit, the Christmas goose was as excellent as always, I met some old friends I hadn't seen in a while... I loved it and only wished I could stay longer. The only irritating factor was the failed repair service on my car. I paid 535,- EUR for it, and what happened? The car refused to start when my father turned the key in the ignition the day afterwards! It had to be towed back to the garage. We later learned that the supposed 'cleaning' of the valves evidently had obstructed said valves. Very competent, truly.

Together with mareen I then spent the days around New Year's Eve and New Year at gwendolen's; we went to see Lord of the Rings III - The Return of the King together, watched TV, irritated Gwen's budgie, drank all her orange juice and even managed to possibly infect Mareen with the Magnificent Seven virus, although I still hope she'll reconsider her leanings towards Chris/Vin slash. After all, Ezra is far more deserving of Chris' affections! ;-P

I managed to avoid all human and property damage during the fireworks, and was later relieved to learn that my car hadn't gained any further bumps or dents by burned-out rockets.

I forgot to give Mareen some of my painkillers (she feared she might have a headache the following day), and - evidently in retaliation of the universe <g> - managed to have one myself.

By then, I was back home. The CD with the digital signatures still hadn't arrived, but the technican finally sent me the relevant files per mail (by then I had in despair already re-established my connection to the internet, but not reinstalled Netscape, so I still couldn't access the e-mails saved in my inbox).

On January 4^th, after a veritable marathon of reinstallation and restoration, I had my computer running again. Yay. I got bumped back to earth immediately, though, because my DSL connection is still bumpy and BitTorrent and eMule only work perhaps one out of fifty times; the other 49 times they shoot down my connection to the 'net. I wish I knew why; I suppose it has something to do with the DSL card's CAPI driver. Stupid piece of trash.

The timeline I'd promised myself I'd keep to - 01-01-2004 - is shot to hell now, of course; I wanted to have the new version of my homepage finished and uploaded at that date, but due to all the time I had no computer available, I still have tons of coding to do. I guess I should settle for 01-01-2005. *sigh*

My tax return forms for 2002 and 2003 are still on my 'to-do' list, too, because for those I also need the computer. Lovely. I hope it's not too late to hand in the former.

Last week I spent a nice evening at esda's; we watched Sherlock Holmes, speculated wildly about the slash factor of the various actors that have played Holmes and Watson so far, and expected her poor computer to deal with programs it had never even heard about before. Heh.

On January 6^th, we had a shock at work; a shock that still paralyzes a lot of my colleagues, and rightly so. We learned that our office will move to Berlin before 2008, and that everyone who works there, save a few hundreds of people, is supposed to follow. A lot of my colleagues have spouses who work in the area, have children who go to kindergarden or school here, have relatives, parents, friends. A lot of them have built houses, with several still paying back the loans. Are they all to be uprooted for a stupid political decision whose sense escapes everyone with a modicum of intelligence? Communication has never been as easy and effortless as today; we have telephones and computers, a private network, and furthermore a good public transport system as well as a large road network. There's no need for an office to be situated in the capital for it to be able to work well with other agencies seated there.

I hope we'll soon learn more about the planned timeline of this move so that I might apply for a position somewhere else. I don't want to move to Berlin. The city's far too big, too expensive and located too far north; I'd like to see my family once in a while without spending more than, say, 6 hours a weekend on the road. I might be interested in a job in Stuttgart, Frankfurt or Munich. Which means I'll have to move again. Damn, I like it here! I have friends here, I like the area with its big, but not too big cities that offer just the right number of shops, cinemas, restaurants etc. But since I don't intend to wait until the last possible moment, I'll have to bail out while there are still chances somewhere else, which may mean next year already. Damn it all.

For the time being, I try not to think of it. I have my planned Hornblower songvid to distract me - nika_d has agreed to help me with the vidding process since my computer says it's overcharged with so difficult a project (despite the fact that with its specifications it should be a piece of cake for the infernal machine) - and I can't begin to say how grateful I am. If it turns out as well as her O.C. one, I'll be ecstatic!

Furthermore I spent this weekend at mabiana's, and we treated ourselves to a musical, 42^nd Street at the Apollo Theater in Stuttgart, and a classy dinner afterwards ("Goose Salad à la Provence" with fir honey vigrainette, consisting of various salads, smoked goose breast, walnuts, cranberries and toasted bread croutons). Too bad the Grand Cafe Planie is so far away from where I live - I'd have loved to bring my parents there. Yumm. Loved the weekend.