life

I've got internet at home again since yesterday. It sure makes life easier...

Last week has been a stressful one, for reasons I'll come back on later.
This week had started better, but since yesterday my Internet connection stopped working^[1] (for the same reasons). It isn't when until such thing happens that you realize how dependent you've really become on it, even for simple matters as looking up contact information.

[1] So this and the previous post were written from my with my parents-in-law.

Today I read in an online news source that the Royal National Institute for Deaf People is advising people to wear earplugs in clubs and asking for more stylish earplugs to be designed so young people would want to wear them.

This looks like a backwards way of dealing with the problem; why not campain to have the clubs' (and pubs, and concerts) sound level reduced so people don't have to wear earplugs? When gardening, you also try to eradicate the weeds' roots...

Or, as it's said, history repeats itself. Today I sold my motorcycle (wait for the “blade” photograph to pass by).
Again it wasn't really old, just 4 years; but it too had over 54000 kilometres; time again to release it.

I didn't quite get the money of it that I wished for, but then again, for a bike with that mileage you can't really be picky about what people pay for it. And in hindsight the fireblade seems to have been a bad choice; there's a lot of them on sale at least over here right now.
Note to self: try to get a less popular bike next time, it pays off when trying to sell it.

Actually I've already made the choice for a new bike (though I do not know if my choice follows the rule I just laid out). But it's been a hard choice; which is a story in itself. And that story is for another time.

Again, I must say it feels strange. While this wasn't the first bike I sold off, I feel a little melancholious about it. I guess that's just part of selling any bike. Assuming you've build a bond with the machine. But then again, any real motor rider would build such bond. IMHO.

Mid august, “responsability” will get a new meaning: my wife is into the 15th week of our third pregnancy.
We actually already should've become parents last november, but almost halfway through the first pregnancy the child had stopped growing and was diagnosed with trisomy 13, because of a hereditary Robertsonian translocation that Veerle turned out to be having. Short of waiting for the pregnancy to spontaneously abort, the only way to deliver the child was induced labour. We already knew from the karyogram that had uncovered the trisomy syndrome that it was a boy, though it was impossible to see that. The little fellow was about two thirds the length he should've been, and weighed about one third the normal weight.

We visited a fertility clinic a few weeks afterwards, but were told that the actual chance of us getting a healthy baby was a lot higher when we would naturally conceive than through in vitro fertilization. The only advantage of the latter method would be near elimination of the 50% chance to a failed pregnancy of natural conception. (For clarification: due to the translocation, there's a two-in-four chance that a conceived child carries an incorrect number of chromosomes; such embryos have a near-zero chance of making it through the pregnancy)

By the end of summer, Veerle was pregnant again. This time however it lasted for only seven weeks, after which the foetus died. Examination of a tissue sample again uncovered trisomy 13 syndrome. And it was again a boy.

Now it's the third pregnancy, and almost three weeks ago a chorionic villus sampling was performed to determine if this time the child would be healthy. Although a FISH (“fluorescent in situ hybridization”) test performed in the first two days showed no sign of problems, it was only after the liberating phonecall that came in yesterday that we could take a deep breath and smile. The baby has inherited the Robertsonian translocation though, but that doesn't lessen our joy.

As a side effect of the karyogram, we also know the gender weeks before ultrasound might reveal it. However, I haven't secured the necessary permit to disclose this information. I'll tell everyone in half a year from now...

Well, I don't know John Brougher well enough to judge his wisdom, but today I read Slow down the queuing and it was so recognizable. Especially the symptoms of bookmark queuing and tabbed browser sessions.

And, independently, (mainly guided by tips from a number of other "personal improvement" blogs) I had come to the same resolution of the problem. So there must be wisdom at least in his article...

Last evening when I left work it was snowing but only lightly, what fell did not really stay lying on the roads. I decided it was safe enough to still drive home by motorcycle.

A few kilometres further, suddenly thick flakes started falling out and soon I had to open up my wind shield because I could not keep up wiping it my hand to remove the snow that stuck on it. Off course, even at 30 km/h it is not exactly funny to get icy snowflakes into your eyes. What was worse, by the time the snow started falling seriously I had gotten onto the highway and I could not immediately turn around or get off.

Since it was snowing steadily and heavily, a several cm thick carpet started building. After another few kilometres I had to pull aside because I could no longer keep my bike on track and I called for an uncle who owns a van to come and pick me up. So he did; when we drove off it turned out that only one or two kilometres further along the road it had hardly been snowing and a carpet had not started building up yet.

To make up for the annoyance of yesterday evening, this morning the sky looks beautiful.

There has been a lot of wedding going on Planet Debian and Planet GNOME over the last couple of months, almost like another meme. Or maybe I am just seeing more of it than I normally would because I am getting wed myself today.

The weather is cloudy, but it's not raining at the moment. For the time being, that's better than it has been for most couples over here who wed in spring and summer this year: it has been raining a lot, only the past few weekends have been really good. Obviously I still hope the sun comes through though.

People have been asking me a lot lately if I was nervous about it. I wasn't, and I'm not now either. I am rather excited however, a lot more than I had expected to be. I do not even know why really; just the idea of finally being joined together, and announcing it to everyone, I think. One thing I do know for sure, which is that I'll enjoy every moment.

Matthew, what kind of zebra are you and your wife driving then?

The Sisters Of Mercy headlined the Lokerse Feesten yesterday, and we went seeing them.
This festival is not like a regular festival — it is rather a series of festivities in the town center than a large scale festival. The entrance is fairly cheap and it is possible to buy a ticket for the entire ten days. As a consequence, there are usually a lot of locals attending, from all ages. A few songs into the show, these folks started leaving, which was good: before, the terrain was packed with people; afterwards it was still full but not overcrowded anymore.
Possibly because of the cheap entrance, I also saw a small group of Germans attending the show.

As for the set itself, I think it was quite good. Sound was a little bland at the start, but halfway into the first song this was corrected. All songs I recognized lived up to expectation: Alice, Mother Russia, Flood I, Lucretia... Only Temple of Love was a but unusual, but I did not expect it to be the same live than it is on record. The show finale was Vision Thing, and I think it was the apotheosis of a great evening.