Well, alright.. ONE more thing I disagree on.

You are a Gender Nazi. Your boundary-crossing
lifestyle inspires awe in your friends and
colleagues. Or maybe they're just scared you
will kick their asses for using gender-specific
language. Either way, the wife-beater helps.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla


These quizzes are all full of shit if you ask me.

Happy New Year !

Well, the last day of 2003 just started, and I just first of all wanted to tell anyone reading this collection of recent rantings Happy New Year !
And about that.. there sure are a lot of people I know that keep checking back on what crap I've written lately. It's definately getting awkward - especially after that lil' ear infection-inspired outburst of honesty, things are kind of weird with a few people. Definately not least of all my family who are all open and honest about everything now, which I'd kind of rather see not being the case. I know the whole 'My mom read my blog' thing was a hoax, but I'm kind of living it, and therefore still not telling a few things. I believe it's for the best: people wear masks around others and choose for themselves what to reveal to whom and what not to reveal. A blog makes it a fully public matter, and the only way to blog honestly is if you bear the illusion that nobody reads what you write. I guess that will always be the great thing about a 'real' diary as opposed to blogs: you can hide your diary so nobody reads it. You can even get a safe for it if you're truly paranoid. Of course, given this, how can anyone truly and honestly write everything about themselves in a (public) blog ? You've got the whole world potentially scrutinizing what you are all about, and if you're like me and don't even want to get NEAR to fame (I've got enough arguments of what it can do to your life without having - thankfully - experienced any of it) blogging can be a pretty scary thing to do.
Just a thought that crossed my mind as I watched a movie tonight while eating a pizza. The movie was High Fidelity, and it made me realise where I was, in the seemingly neverending sinus one of my deepest feelings keeps going through. Truth is, I've loved someone for a very long time now. She doesn't know it, and if it is up to me, she never will. A few rare people know who I'm talking about (and are probably sick of hearing about her after all these years). In a way, how I feel about her has been the cause of a lot of things in the past half a decade. But no matter what changes in my life, it seems I can't get rid of this constant yo-yo'ing feeling between loving her and hating her. Probably I never will. I've come to terms a long time ago that I'll never be with her and it's in fact most DEFINATELY for the best that I'm not going to. But feelings don't listen to reason, do they ? Head and Heart are a lot further apart than anatomy suggests - a saying I came up with soon after I first met her. In any case, the movie made me realise that once again I love her. Guess I'll just have to sit through that some more.
But as I said, you likely have no clue who I'm talking about, and if you do, you're likely sick of hearing about her, so let me just update you all on the ever exciting events of my life, after which I'll post this message, break out some booze and down it gracefully, and sleep like a rock.
Monday was unexpectedly still a bit stressful, even more so since there are a few issues that I took responsibility for to fix, that I am at a loss with now. I thought I had found the answer on how to fix them, but I was definately mistaken, and I just had to forward it to colleagues that hopefully resolved it on Tuesday. Then on my way home I drew half of a new Grim DotCom page, which I finished later that evening. My brother and his girlfriend graced me and Viktor with a visit (due to a certain cellphone from Philadelphia I promised to lend to an appreciated colleague who's going on vacation to the States, and I forgot to take with me when I visited them) and my kid brother proceeded to beat me at pool on my own pooltable. Stayed up wayyy too late finishing drawing that page and then scanning it, and right after that in my infinite wisdom decided that sleep was - FINALLY - perhaps a good choice of action.
I slept in till 4 in the afternoon and really wasn't ready to crawl out of that bed yet, but I remembered I had to get a few things while the stores were still open. Amongst which were a few picture frames to finally hang up some of the original drawings of various comic artists I happened to have lying around the house (the drawings, not the artists), and new calendars, since mine and Viktor's were gonna run out on Thursday. Just my luck: I tracked down about ten potential businesses that might have promotional calendars, and found that only one of them had any, and they were even down to their last few. So we have one calendar for next year - in the light of our, obviously, booming social lives *cough* I think it might be good to try and scrounge up another one tomorrow (or, I suppose by now, today) sometime during the half day.
I went downstairs to draw some more but found out that I've gotten to the part of my storyline-list where there's a greater and greater lack of readymade storyboards. Great.. this means I'll actually have time to DRAW and no storyboards ready. The good news is that I definately have over a 2 month backstash again now, so I just have about 14, 15 more pages to do (besides one every week in 'regular' production) and we're back in business with my half year stash. We're talking major luxery here: a half year backstash means I can spend more time on other projects or activities, or take vacations, etc., which is nice. It also allows me to put more thought in the developing storyline that I'll now soon get into with The Grim DotCom, where everything's taken up a notch. You'll see - again, I'm not getting into details, because it's just more fun to tease and get you all to keep an eye out for the new episodes.
So I only drew one figure and then decided I really should get more storyboards ready soon. Again the house was too quiet for this, but it was 11 30 by then and there was no sense in biking out to the Cul de Sac or another noisy atmosphere if I have to get up for work at the usual time again later this night. So I just continued to watch the movie (which, by the way, was ok) and, well, after that I decided to put some thoughts on digital paper. Which you are reading now.
So now that we've gotten to that point of my evening, I'll bid you all goodnight and fix myself a Dronken Vis or two to help me get to sleep. I doubt that I'll write anything anymore later today, so I'll see you all in 2004. *Bows* Later people !

Ambassador Of Krap

Holy Krap, this was one hell of a weekend (not really in a good way)... Let me see if I can describe most of it. Let's start with the remainder of that last Friday...
As you may have guessed, I was supposed to draw some more. So I did - and finished what I got so far, with time left so I figured I'd take up drawing another page and try to get TWO pages total done this week (considering the weekend I was in for, that was the absolute maximum I would have gotten down regardless of the effort involved). So I get out the storyboards 'plan' and look up the next page that was supposed to be done. Staring with nothing but sheer amazement on my face I read: "Another joke about the guy that keeps getting killed. No storyboard yet". CRAP !!
For anyone who's unfamiliar with my method of approach for the Grim DotCom, let me break it down for you like this: Once I *have* a storyboard (the rough-draft concept of a page) it takes me somewhere between one and five hours to draw the page, then at least five more to scan, edit, colour, layout and letter the page and get it to the smooth, finished result that ends up on the website. That's about ten hours per page, once I have a storyboard ready.
Storyboards are a different process altogether; Drawing I need to be doing in relative peace and calm, and the editing I need to be doing around a computer with most of my preferences, fonts, standard colour variations etc. in places where I can quickly retrieve them. Storyboarding however is the actual 'coming up with the joke', which I can NOT do in a quiet environment. Most of the storyboards so far have been written at work, or in the train/bus, or in the Cul de Sac. I need some distracting chaos around me to be able to figure out the exact 'beat' of the joke, as well as the text, what references I want to cram in there, the positions of the characters, their expressions, etc.
Since Viktor was off to his mother's for a Boxing Day dinner, and the cats were behaving rather well for once, it was definately not the right environment for the creative juices to start flowing. So I shoved a sheet of paper and a pen in my jacket pocket and headed out to the Cul de Sac.
When I arrived there it was pretty busy (which is good) but there were a LOT of familiar faces around. Consequently I got treated to a lot of Dronken Vis, despite my protests that I was 'at work - seriously !!'. And no Dutchman can refuse free drinks, in the end, so I drank a few more than I should have to come up with a good joke (though still way less than necessary to get to the 'drunken stupor' stage) and once I had the joke written down, I headed out to home. A lot of people who know me still don't know how I am when I'm focussing on a concept - I am not a very sociable guy when my mind's working its REAL magic, folks. If I'm somewhere and I'm working, I'll still talk and whatnot, but expect my mind to drift and for me to head out as soon as the work is done. I simply am not there for social reasons at times like that. So if anyone was offended with my suddenly heading out without so much as a goodbye, I'm sorry - that's me, deal with it.
Anyway, I went home, and went straight to sleep. Saturday was, after all, the first day again in this Catholic country, that I was able to get groceries again, and my supplies were running low. So that's what I did on Saturday - that, plus a few direly needed chores around the house. Then came the evening and I had to go to Breda, because my brother's girlfriend DID celebrate her birthday THIS Saturday. I didn't stay late, my dad drove me straight home (which, in retrospect, was a timesaver) and I went straight back to work, drew half of the page that I wrote just the previous night. Exhaustion set in and I went upstairs, but was foolish enough to check my mail and the status of Probeersel.com first.
Blink Blink.
There's no comic on the main page. WTF ??????
I was barely able to keep my eyes open but this definately was an issue that needed resolving asap, so I jumped straight into the code. I figured it probably had to do with the fact that this is week 1 of 2004, even though it's still 2003, and the code might not comprehend that. Sure enough, that was one bug, but there was something else wrong that caused for the code not even to figure THAT bug out... I'll boil it down to the simple cause that took me nearly three hours to track down: as a string, "week52_2003" is HIGHER than "week01_2004". So the code could only conclude that week 1 of 2004 was LESS new than week 52 of 2003... I had to turn a large part of the system and the text-based databases around to get that fixed, but hey, at least these two bugs are now permanently OUT of the system. Needless to say I went straight to bed after THAT - I think it was 5 or 6 or so...
Rolled out of bed at 1 30 to get straight back to drawing, then scanning and editing, and then it was evening: another family party lined up. ARGH.. So my brother dropped by to pick me up and off we went to another part of the country and one of those hell-hole family parties that show the corny, scary heart of Dutch main culture and will never cease to make me reconsider my country of residence. As I put it to my brother and his gf on our way back, if an angel came down from above right then and there and told me that hell was this, 24/7, I might just better my ways. Then again, all of my friends would be there so I'm sure we'd THEN be able to turn it into something cool instead.
Got home at around midnight, only to get straight back to colouring and the rest of the process. At 3, I was done (with both pages I set out to finish that week !!) and after uploading etc. I shaved, showered, hopped into bed at around 4, and MUST have fallen asleep at some point after 4 30. Of course, to get up again at 6 30...

Now, this morning was REALLY interesting. When I woke up I did not hear my alarm clock as such, but it suddenly was a radio alarm clock that was very, VERY loudly playing an interview with me telling the interviewer how hard it can be to get up in the morning. I sat up groggy after switching it up with a slightly embarassed panic ('Nooo, not THAT interview, I hope my roommate didn't hear that'), then looked at my alarm clock in amazement and realised it *is* just a simple 'beeeeep-beeeeep-beeeeep-beeeeep' machine. I concluded that I was not awake enough to deal with this world yet so I set the time for 6 50, 20 minutes later and curled back up under the covers.
A strange déjá vu-like feeling creeped upon me as I sat up and tried to set the alarm clock at 6 50 and it wouldn't coorporate. It wasn't until the time switched to 6 51 that I realised that AGAIN it had gone off and AGAIN it hadn't registered in my mind as having done so. Now, tell me - to be that asleep (or psychotic ?), tell me that does NOT make an interesting morning.
Bumped into Jaap and his object d'amour in Tilburg Central, at which time I spouted a few anecdotes from the collection you just read, since that was all I was mentally capable of at the time. Jaap can't make it to the New Year's party (He is 'claimed' by the other party just mentioned) so I have an extra ticket for anyone who hasn't got any yet.
... could be time to run into that Mystery Lady again ;)
Anyway, I'm now at the office with nothing but caffeine in my veins, and we'll see what the rest of this day will bring. Oooers, look, gnomes. And goblins.

Show Me The Comics !

Well, darn - I haven't gotten round to finishing the comics page I've been working on the first half of the week, yet. I suck. But I have my reasons.
On Wednesday, I became unexpectedly busy with something that might just mean I get to combine my non-paying job with my paying one, in a way. We'll see. I won't go into further detail right now because nothing is quite sure yet, but it's worth mentioning at the least.
Then that evening me, Viktor and Jaap all went out. I was drop dead tired to begin with so by the time we got home I just poured Liptonice into my body until there wasn't anything but caffeeine running through my veins. Then I went into a rather weird night of sleep that didn't end till about 8 the next EVENING. I got up, and after a while of lazying about I cooked, ate my meal at the TV with Vik, and then felt tired again and went back to bed. I slept in till 1 30, today, too.
But really, I'm INTENT on finishing at least that one page, and if in any way possible (and I think it will be) finishing more of them, AND editing them on Sunday. The only problem there is... well, remember last weekend ? That I thought I was overbooked ? Yeah.. that's THIS weekend. Yay...

So I'm afraid I probably won't blog anymore till Monday, folks - See yas then.

Thar She Blows ! Thar, Thar ! Tha-haar.. No, Thar. Look !

I was mistaken. The Weekend From Hell is NEXT weekend.
Yes, that's when my brother's gf's celebrating her bday, and that's when the sunday thing hijacks most of my Sunday. I found all this out much to my surprise.
Let me quickly run this by you slowly - there's some aspects to my life involved in these tales that I might not have gotten into before, so I really should tell you more.
Friday evening I spent editing and editing and editing some more, because I finally finished the character design on the new character. The episode will appear online somewhere halfway February and you should really keep an eye out for it - the new character will be interesting, AND it's definately someone you know.
In any case, I'm very glad I got that done - the next step is that in the next page, this new character *is* the only character starring in it. That's gonna be interesting to do when I've only drawn this person successfully once so far.
Having said that, I retired early on Friday night (didn't end up going out) because I was quite tired, slept quite long, and got up at a very reasonable hour on Saturday to go to 's Hertogenbosch and try to find a good present. There I heard there was a big signing session with a lot of well-known comic authors the next day, which of course I really should have gone to because I know like half of them and it would have been fun to just chill. But I'll get to that.
I missed two opportunities to go to Breda (where my brother and his gf live) and by the time I would have been able to go it would have been 9 30, which means I wouldn't have been at their place until about 10 30, and then I'd probably have to hurry straight back to catch the last train back to Tilburg, so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble anymore and called them to explain I wasn't going - they replied, oh, but it's NEXT week, man. ARGH.
So after thinking 'DAMNIT' I suddenly realised I had an unexpected evening completely to MYSELF. I spent the first part of it watching some stupid movie (I think it was Dungeons & Dragons or some other lame-ass Star Wars / Lord Of The Rings / Indiana Jones-combo ripoff crap flic) and when he decided to turn in for the day I made an impulsive decision to go to the Cul de Sac.
Right - I'm wondering now, how much have I ever posted here about this bar ? You have to understand that in the past decade I've gone through about a gazillion Great Changes. There are people in the world that have been through a lot more but I've definately had more than my share of life-altering situations and choices. And from the moment I went to Tilburg - well, technically, from the third day I ever spent in Tilburg - the Cul de Sac was there as a sort of home base for the turbulence that my life was otherwise. It was called ZOAP back in those days, but half a year later it became Cul de Sac and in the end, nothing much has changed except the name. It's a rock version of Cheers really - in the sense that everyone knows everyone (and sometimes they're glad I came).
I hung out there for a while - thought I recognized the Mystery Girl there, but she looked different, so I wasn't sure; I ended up asking this girl if she studied Philosophy, and her shaking her head pretty much verified that it wasn't her.
I have the usual anecdotes from that evening - my favourite is that I walked into the bathroom, two guys were occupying the peeing section and one guy was very busy looking into the mirror. He pulled me next to him and told me to look. I was like, ummm ok - what are we looking at ? as he pulled expression after expression. So he replies "I'm trying to impress this girl, which look works best for me ?" --- you can't make stuff like this up, man. THIS IS MY LIFE.
Then there was an employee 'afterparty' which is always fun. I got to hang out as well which was cool - got home at about 7 30.
That caused most of my Sunday to be spent asleep - then I caught up with some Worst Case Scenario because Joep's been slacking on the Lord of the Rings theme week (as semi-expected) and ended up doing some site management work (with aid of Sionnain I might mention) and I concluded my weekend with some sleep.
So now I'm sitting in the office with only half a week ahead of me (Xmas and all, you know) and I don't even feel like THAT. But at least you're all caught up with the eternal nonsense again that my life is made up from.

I Hate Family Holidays !

Ok - let me start off by making a strange statement here.
I am glad I haven't bumped into the mysterious train girl again yet - why ? Because I'd have likely asked her out, not realising how overbooked I am right now.
Let's see.. I just got back from Amsterdam a few hours ago, where I spent the night on Wolfgang's couch (which, by the way, is quite comfortable compared to some of the other couches I've ever slept on) after going out with people from work for that Christmas dinner/drink.
I have to cram as much of trying-to-draw-the-new-character-right in as possible, because tonight I have people who want to go out, then tomorrow it's my brother's gf's birthday, and if I'm not mistaken I'm booked on Sunday, too - also a family thing. Though THAT I might have gotten confused with next week --- in any case, I hate this time of year, because you can never keep decent track of all the things you're supposed to do, let alone that you have any time to yourself, or for other social gatherings n such.
Really, folks, I'm starting to feel like the Hilton in this season - I'm overbooked. Think I need to throw some guests out so I can actually get some drawing done, too.

Most Unexpected Turn Of Events.

Perhaps I am an incouragable pessimist, but I really did not expect most of the issues at work to be resolved anytime soon anymore - not before the weekend, and perhaps not even before the fireworks go up and it's 2004. Especially because we seemed to have little to no influence on getting them solved.
HOWEVER - once again, things within ING managed to surprise me: Three of the major issues that were causing loads of problems, have been SOLVED. It started with an issue that we didn't even expect to be able to solve anytime soon, when suddenly a colleague of mine told me we could now solve this, sometime this afternoon. As we went ahead and solved this for a small bulk of users, about an hour later we receive news that another major issue - which had been dragging on for two weeks - had been solved as well. And then the third.
I'm writing this at the office but I'm off work right now - we're having our annual christmas dinner in the department, but due to late booking we can't get a table in the restaurant till 9. It's 6 30 right now - I'm basically waiting for some colleagues to drop their work for the day and join me in heading out to that place and get semi-drunk before dinner.
I don't know if I can make it home tonight though - latest time I'll have to be at the station is just before 11. We'll see. In any case, it's the weekend, and it started off quite well, at least work-wise. I guess that's all I needed to say here. Later, folks !

Why Do People Allow Companies To Do This To Them ?

As I'm standing here, bent over, twelve or so different roles crammed up my ass, with a mediocre-at-best paycheck, marinated in some fresh dose of stress, I can't help but wonder...
Who the hell made it acceptable for bosses / companies to pull all this crap on us ???
I mean, really, folks. Look around you at your place of employment, let it truly sink in what you're doing, then ask yourself - what FOR ??
If you have an answer you honestly feel you believe in, please let me know what yours is. I sure am starting to lack the answer here.

Anyway, I've definately not finished the new Grim DotCom page that introduces our mysterious new character, yet - I can't get his likeness right yet. It only adds more annoyance to being behind on schedule - but I'll get it right.
I'm also starting to give the Probeersel CMS more thought - to be honest, I still feel we might not have to switch to PHPnuke but can salvage the situation by developing the original application I had up, further. Perhaps I'm deluding myself, but I think PHPnuke is just waaaaayyy too general in setup - Probeersel.com is such a specific environment that we'll likely be developing a shitload of new plugins to accomodate anyway, so why not just go for a more specifically designed (though plugin-enabled is nice, might want to look into incorporating that) application that meets our needs more exactly ?
Ahwell. I'm no developer, when it comes down to it, and I *have* put the matter in Gregory's and Tom's hands, so I really should just trust their judgement. But I personally would be sad to see the current setup completely gone. I think it works in many, many ways, and quite well - if you'll pardon the bugs that are still in there.
Who knows. Maybe I'll strap on my coding shoes once more and give it another go. It couldn't hurt, I suppose. But FIRST, René, FIRST catch up with your damn comic.

And Now For Someone Completely Different.

It's funny - get a rather drastic change in haircut and people suddenly seem to think you're a COMPLETELY different person. I had my hair cut rather short on an impulse on Saturday, and people are STUNNED when they see me like this for the first time. Blinking, looking again, not quite being sure who this person before them is despite the fact they've been working with him for over three years. It's funny but it gets old really quick. I'm still the same person, folks, get over it. I should just throw a tennis ball at anyone who stares, that'd remind them of who I am.
So yeah. Not much to report - there's no Worst Case Scenario since Sunday, this is all Joep's fault. He's emailed them to me too late (on Sunday, when the first one should have gone online) and this never even arrived, then on Monday evening (around 11 !!) he was supposed to email them again but instead he - on my advice - tried to upload them himself but of course didn't follow any naming standards, so they never got uploaded. Don't blame me, therefore, because I've reminded him countless times. If there aren't any episodes this week, it's all him. It was supposed to be Lord of the Rings-theme week, and he's not quite doing a great job so far. Ohwell - I don't care, it was agreed that I'd have this week off it.
In any case, I have work to do for now, so perhaps I'll update more later. Cya folks.

Stereo:=- -=:oeretS

You guessed it.. they cleaned my ear and it worked.
The other one's still a bit messy (they couldn't get that one clean) but I can hear great again so I don't care one single bit.
I don't want to be online long so I'll keep this brief. I think I direly need a nap, then I need to get started on editing those comics (yes, I've been procrastinating) and perhaps eat something, because Joost and Viktor are interested in going out tonight.
And I don't think I would really mind, either. So I guess this might very well be the last you'll hear from me today.

Later folks !

Whoa, Where Have I Been ?!

Yes, I haven't blogged yesterday and even today it's getting kind of late. It's not that nothing has been happening, I just haven't gotten round to it, really.
I've been starting to edit and colour the four new Grim DotCom pages on Tuesday night, until quite late in fact, but I didn't get as far as I'd hoped. So I'm gonna take another stab at them tonight, since everything's set and ready on my laptop now to resume working on them (so I don't have to scan anything anymore right now etc.). Other than that, I've printed out some pictures off the Web because I'm about to introduce a new character into the series, which is a semi-contemporary historic figure. Since it's very much a public figure I better make sure my drawn version resembles him a bit. You'll see (if you read the comic, at least) eventually - I'd rather keep to myself who it is, right now.
On Wednesday work was crazy again, but there was a light starting to come into view at the end of the tunnel - which is shining brightly into my eyes today since most of the crap is starting to be resolved finally. Good stuff !! Sure makes my work a lot easier now :)
In other news: The plugged-up ear is starting to make noises - meaning that whatever's plugging it up is definately softening up and has room to move around. Since I'm having my doc's appointment tomorrow to have it cleaned, it'll either come out tonight in the shower or tomorrow in Waspik, I expect. So perhaps by tomorrow night I'll actually have stereo audio in my head again ! I can't wait !
Although Í'll admit two things: my left ear has adapted valliantly to work for two, and that'll be weird when the right ear clears up; and secondly, I had just started to find enjoyment in the fact that I could shut the world out by sleeping on my left ear. I'll miss the peace and quiet, I think. But I think it's really time I got round to hearing things again.
That about sums everything up.. didn't do much drawing or editing last night because I kind of wanted to take one night off the stuff, so I popped in my new Bruce Allmighty dvd and chuckled the night away.

Back to sitting here and barely being able to wait to start the weekend, folks - see ya later !

And I Met Her At A Full Moon

Wow, do I have a story to tell this time - forget all the crap about how it goes at the office, even though there was plenty more where that came from. I'll start today's story off at the fact that I've been drawing again.
That's right, I've been focussing on The Grim DotCom again, and in fact I've done most of my drawing in the train the past two days. I've got four episodes fully drawn, which (after scanning, editing, colouring and lettering) constitute a month's worth of episodes. Not too bad for two days - the only two reasons I'm not drawing more right now is that one, I need to do some research before I continue into the next two episode because a rather special character will be introduced (and besides, I kinda want to scan etc. these and put them online so I'll have comics lined up until halfway FEBRuary instead of Jan) and two, as I said, I've got a story to tell.
So I'd just finished the fourth page in the train when it arrived in 's Hertogenbosch where I have to transfer to get back to Tilburg. After a few minutes the train arrived, and as I walked to the first coupé (I exit on station Tilburg-West and the first coupé always stops right near the steps, so it saves me a little bit of time and walking) I walked past this girl who was sitting inside. She had a pretty interesting look in her eyes, not quite focussed but not completely dreamy either. Cute, definately. She looked quite interesting as well, so the thought crossed my mind to get one of the three seats near her, as I walked into the coupé. Of course I figured with my luck, three people would steal those seats rightaway before I could get to them, but amazingly enough, nobody sat down there. So I did - of course.
My original plan was to first draw some more (I have an 'org chart' to do for the revision of The Grim DotCom's 'about' page) and then perhaps start a bit of a conversation with her. I took out my drawing folder and scribbled down 'The Grim DotCom' and immediately a voice spoke from behind me: "So, you're still drawing comics, huh ?"
I'm thinking "Oh fuck, who's THIS ??"
Turning around I did recognize him, but anyone who knows me well enough can guess that after some seven years of not seeing this fella, I semi-forgot his name. "Rob, right ?" "Rolf, close enough." "Riiiiight... how are you ?"
We exchanged a few sentences like that before I figured, ohwell, forget drawing or talking to that girl, I guess I'm screwed now anyway. So I told him to change seats, and sit in the group of seats next to ours, to make talking a bit easier. As he moved there, the girl voluntarily cleared her bag off the seat across from me so he could go sit there - and had a bit of a mysterious smile on her face.
So we chatted for the remainder of the ride, he's working in the medical field now, and he was bold enough to enquire what I'd been doing the past six years. Yeah - that's definately a 20 minute story, even if I stick to the most minute summary version of it. Meanwhile she keeps grinning from time to time (which a semi-empath like me can't help noticing).
We arrive in Tilburg, and Rolf asks if I was still planning to move out of Holland and to the States (as I was around the time he knew me). I said no, Tilburg's definately my home now, and went on a small summary of what's so wonderful about this city. Of course I also brought up the bar Cul de Sac and all its wonderful characteristics. Again, she smiled, which gave me a clue she might actually know the place.
So we get out at West, and so does she. Course, I still figure I'm screwed and never ever get the chance to talk to her again. So Rolf bids me farewell and heads off to the bicycle stands as I make my way to the steps to the bus stop. Barely even noticed she was walking right along side of me. Then she suddenly says "I'm sorry, but I just HAVE to say this. The contrast between him and you was hilarious !"
To cut the rest of the story a bit short (sorry, people *grin*) she and I talked for a while until my bus arrived. Turns out she's a Philosophy student in Nijmegen (Nijmegen Uni's philosophy faculty always shared some of its resources and professors with Tilburg Uni and vice versa, so "small world" applies here), she's quite interesting, outspoken, seems to have a great sense of humour (and observation), so I said "would you mind if we continued this discussion sometime perhaps ?"
"Sure - I go to the Cul quite regularly too, so I'm sure I'll see you there !" --- mind you, without any empathic or other signal that indicates an "I wonder if that's ok with my boyfriend"-kind of hesitation.

Somehow I don't think this'll be the end of this story. In any case, it sure made my day, and as I left the bus around the corner of my house, I noticed the bright full moon and grinned. Then I realised she never told me her name and grinned wider. I may no longer be able to fall in love anymore, but I still have it.

Testing, One Two...

Nope, still no audio on the right side of my head. Going on ten days by now, yay... Ahwell. At least there's no swollen, throbbing burning infection there anymore squeezing the ear shut. Only a large plug on the inside anymore that'll no doubt eventually come out. It'll be strange, being able to hear again. Especially now that my left ear is getting used to processing large amounts of data to compensate for the loss of one ear - I can 'hear' to my right and even locate most sounds, but it's all my left ear doing the hearing. It's truly bizarre, once again I've adjusted.
And as for other testing, there's some interesting stuff going on with that server at work, it doesn't quite work well yet. This'll prove to be another interesting week.
Anywho, I spent a large part of this weekend working on The Grim DotCom for once again, it was good to dive back in there but I've only done two pages, really, and they haven't even been edited, coloured and lettered yet, so all I've done is draw and scan, really, which is only half of the work. I figure I'll try to catch up with as many pages as possible as far as drawing is done for a while, then edit the whole lot and kick it online. That should see me over for a while again. Who knows, maybe that way I'll be able to rebuild my half year of backstash. That'd be sweet :)
But I'm getting ahead of myself. After all, I also have a daily comic to tend to and whatnot.
Oh, and there's been a baby born in the Royal family here yesterday. So now it's a miracle if the newspapers and TV news can get any actual NEWS in anymore, since it's all baby, baby, baby, mom, mom, dad, government, etc. that we hear. As much as I hate babies to begin with, this one I already hate even more. So, hi new princess, please fuck off and give me my TV programmes back. I mean, you're born, big deal. The Dutch Royalty is just a big puppet show if you ask me, anyway. And we tax payers (yes, I pay taxes, though for the love of me I can't figure out exactly why anymore.. it's kind of like watching TV and wondering why you still pay for cable) PAY for their maintainance and shit, too. Ahwell - I guess most of this country must really like puppet shows. I for once could go without.
OK, I've ranted, now let's start off the week. Later folks.

Now Bow And Kiss My Feet

The funniest part about third line technical support, especially when your job mainly involves knowing the organisation and what's going on reasonably well and being able to explain it to even the biggest nitwits amongst your clients, is the amounts of 'Thank you' responses you get. If I had a buck for every Thank You email I've received in the past three years, I bet I could spring for a bowling night for our department. It's kind of bizarre, too - people thanking you for their patience with them, or praising your knowledge, or thanking you for a completely clear explenation, etc. whereas all I really apply is a healthy dose of common sense. I mean, realistically, I'd easily claim anyone could do my job. However, as I explained before, the amounts of people that lack any common sense (not just in technology, but even in general) in a corporate environment can be mind boggling. And with every praising email I have to suppress the urge to email back "Yes, yes, many people have told me before but it never hurts to point out yet again that I am amazing and Great with a capital G. You may praise me some more now. Feel free to do so. I'm framing your reply for my Hall of Praise."
Seriously, all my job requires is a minimal knowledge of some graphical programs, user knowledge of our applications (the rare moments that I get to do any admin work at all are usually very unchallenging), a healthy, down-to-earth common sense, a certain readiness to do your best to figure out what a client is talking about, and a large amount of knowledge of who is who and what's going on, which you can acquire easily just by paying attention to the things discussed around you and on the Intranet. To me this is basically how everyone normally runs their own life, right ? But hey, it pays the bills and gets me Thank You emails. I'm not really complaining, just felt like writing down how strange my job really is when you really think about it. Most of the time I'm merely sort of a traffic cop, making sure things that arrive in my inbox end up with the right people who'll take care of it.
Anywho, back to getting praised. Later folks.

.. And There Was Much Rejoicing.

So yeah, on Tuesday I went to the doctor to have my ear checked. Naturally noone bought that it was an ear infection, no matter how much I insisted that I was sure it was one. So the assistant was trying to wash my ear out ,then looked into it, then called the doctor after all. She comes in, looks, and says, 'yep, thats an ear infection' NOOOOO -- REALLLLLY ?!
Sorry, but I hate how sure these doctors are of themselves as opposed to what my body tells me. They think their own consult much more valuable than direct signals - after all, a judgement made on the other side of the phone is infinately more clearly to be true than the actual signal that the right side of your head is hot, burns, throbs and aches like hell. Ear infection ? Oh come on, surely it's merely that your ear is plugged up. Come on in and we'll flush it out, no big deal.
Anywho. I got a neat little bottle with ear drops that are supposed to be some kind of very light acid and smells suspiciously much like vinegar. And I got it on Tuesday, when really the worst of the pain and swelling clearly were over already. So I don't know how much good this'll do me that my body wasn't already working on, but what the hell. It's three vinegar-smelly drops a day and I suppose it can't hurt.
Still can only hear on one side though. It bugs me - my left ear is trying desperately to compensate by attempting to get twice the information it usually gets, so it feels like I'm having a huge traffic jam of info on that side. Also, it's been compensating with my sense of audio direction - I can actually tell again when a sound is on my right, but my brain fools me into thinking I actually hear it with that ear, which I don't. It's my left ear figuring it out and sendin the signal ! Truly bizarre experience, man, I tell you. Try it sometime, being deaf on one side for a week when you're someone who adapts to new circumstances fast. It's mindboggling.
Anywho, today's an interesting day. The next few days we're shutting down one of our major servers. So clients will be on the phone by the dozens today I'm sure, because even though we sent out an email explaining that for two days services would be down, nobody of course actually READS their email, when it's so much more fun to act surprised about this and get really indignant with us.
So that'll be loads of fun, and the fact that I won't likely be doing most of my usual work since that requires that server. We'll see what to do today. I now have to run off to a meeting with a client, though. So talk with you later.

Stupid Machines.

So I'm still amongst the living, though the maintainance these bodies require is pissing me off. I'm in a reasonably annoying amount of pain in my right ear due to what I now pretty much know for certain to be an ear infection, and I've made a doc's appointment for tomorrow. Until then, I'm drugging my body with heaps of aspirins and nicotine until I get home and can break open some booze.
Yes, I'm in the office, and yes, I'm insane. But my direct colleague is never in on Mondays so someone has to take care of this crap. Besides, if you don't count the agony in my right ear and the fact that I'm now completely deaf on that side, I don't feel ill. Staying home would drive me nuts !
Oh, for those who are interested, Probeersel.com artist Satan is still alive, as well ! He emailed me yesterday to let me know, and it was good to know because I've grown fond of the ol' bastard, as I have of all Probeersel artists. Besides that, his comic took off to a promising start and I want to see more ;)
Alright, back to being in pain now. Later folks.