Power-party

Last week was a scary week at our apartment. On monday, our electricity started to show peaks in voltage, which caused our lights to occasionally flash brighter and dimmer. As we advanced further into the week, it became intenser and even caused some household appliances to shortcut.

Thursday evening, Christmas day, was the culmination of the whole fiasco, when suddenly the lights in our living room went down. Then we heard something click in the kitchen, at which point I tried to turn on the lights there. They immediately went down too. Suddenly I smelled a distinct burning coming from the living room. We got out the flash lights and saw smoke coming out of our printer.

I immediately shut down the main circuit and called the technical services of our electricity provider, and they sent someone by to come measure the voltages. I also called our landlord to let them know about the problem. They promised to drop by as well -- on Christmas day none the less!

The guy from Electrabel, our power supplier, measured no abnormalities in the power coming into the building, so from their part it was all okay. However, at our apartment, he measured 400 volts on the sockets (where it should be no more than 220V). Since there was nothing he could do, he left and we waited for our landlord to arrive.

At around 22h, the landlord, his wife, their daughter and son-in-law arrived at the scene, and immediately set to work, trying to figure out the problem. At 23h30, they found and fixed the problem: an old powerline (I believe they called it 'line zero') had burned and caused a shortcut.

The resulting damage beyond repair includes:

• 3 cable modem adapters destroyed
  
• 1 cable modem destroyed
  
• 5 lightbulbs destroyed
• 1 halogen lamp destroyed
• 1 printer destroyed
• 1 computer screen destroyed
• 1 computer 6.1 surround speaker set destroyed
• 1 radio alarm clock destroyed

All this happened with two kids in bed, in pitch black darkness, while we had planned to leave on holiday for a week the next day. We are very grateful, though, that our landlord was kind enough to leave their home on Christmas day, to come and repair it as soon as possible. That way, we were still able to sleep a little and be gone in the morning.

Right now, we're still on our holiday, so I hope everything will still be okay when we get back home in a couple of days...

Week of Bad Luck

I think I just had my unluckiest week of the year.

• On monday, while driving from work to the train station, I got hit by a car. Well, perhaps 'tagged' is a better word; while driving along a bicycle path (with right of way), a car from a crossing street didn't see me and tried to advance slowly onto the intersection, when his bumper hit my left shin. I lost about a square centimeter of skin.
• On tuesday morning, after a night of severe freezing, I slid with my bike on the road and hit the ground. I still feel my ribs and hip when put force on that muscle.
• That evening, when returning from work, I noticed that one of my brand new bicycle lamps didn't work anymore. Apparently, I managed to leave it burning inside my pocket for an entire day, effectively draining the batteries in one go.
• While trying to remove that same bicycle lamp from my bike when I arrived at the train station, it was stuck in its placeholder. While trying to force it out, it suddenly sprang out, making two small cuts on the inside of my wrist from scraping it across the sharp borders of that light holder.
• On wednesday, I learned that our daughter was allergic to milk. It's the reason why she's been crying of belly-pains all the time. My wife had to stop the breastfeeding, and we had to buy special milk powder for our baby girl.
• On thursday, our son had a really bad day, throwing his books and toys towards his sister whenever she ate. He ended up 5 times in his box that day, as punishment.
• On friday, the monitor of our computer broke down.

In hindsight, none of these incidents actually got me down, though. I took them all with a good laugh, except of course the allergies of my daughter.

There were some good moments too, by the way. The new milk for our daughter has its effect; she has no more pains, is gaining in weight, and seems a lot happier now. We've also bought a new, 20-inch flatscreen for the computer yesterday, and on wednesday, we finally restarted our D&D campaign at work, after almost three months of downtime. So it wasn't all that bad.

Looking for D&D players

The D&D campaign that I was playing with a couple of friends for the last year has unfortunately died a slow death. Due to some major personal changes for almost all players, it was getting very difficult to get everyone together on a regular basis. Furthermore, interest waned as the story progression was grinding to a snail's pace -- at best, we played for four hours every two weeks.

Now that our daughter is born, our free time can be shaped again around our busy lifes. I'm hoping to fit a new D&D campaign in there, preferrably a little more intensive than the previous one.

So, this is a call to everyone who is interested in playing a new Pathfinder RPG (which is a slightly modified D&D 3.5) campaign. I'm looking for 3 to 5 players who

• live near Dendermonde, Belgium;
• can find the time to play one evening (or afternoon) a week;
• would like to play seriously for an extended period of time -- it's a full adventure path, which is going to take at least 2 years to finish.

If you meet these criteria, and are willing to meet new people in a friendly and fun environment of gaming, drop me a line. Also have a look at the Obsidian Portal wiki I've set up.

I can't wait to hear from you!

Aim for the moon ...

... because if you miss, you may hit a star. -- W. Clement Stone

The purpose of life, if you ask me, is not so difficult to discern. The way I see it, it's to have dreams and try to make those dreams come true.

However, it's important to realize that the collection of dreams you have is not set in stone. Some will turn out to be unreachable -- this we have to face. Some will eventually be reached, whether in a matter of weeks, or over the course of several years. And, what's most important, new ones will flare up. And it's not just dreams coming true that make you happy, it's just as much the journey itself that can be rewarding.

In my life, I have seen a couple of major dreams realized in the last few years. The two most important ones are having a family, and getting a job as a game software developer. The next dream I'm chasing is that of finding a safe and comfortable place to spend the rest of my life. I even got a relatively new one to enjoy: to some day be able to make money from drawing and painting.

I look forward to chasing them, even if I might not succeed.

A fresh perspective

Finally someone who's given some thought about all those environmental and 'Save the Planet' issues. George Carlin can really put things in a right perspective; we can all learn a little humility from this guy.

Time warp

I've been back at work for a couple of days now, after two-and-a-half weeks of paternal leave and an extended weekend.

When I first got back in the office on wednesday, it felt like I've been gone for just a couple of days. However, when I think of the two weeks of emotionally strong moments with my newly expanded family, it seems like it's been two months.

Can you imagine how chronically challenged I feel when I think back of those two weeks while I'm at work?

A new life

Yesterday around noon-ish, our daughter Cato was born. She's a healthy daughter, weighing in at 3.730 kg, and measuring 52 cm.

We have a blog going at http://cato-vanherle.blogspot.com. I apologize to all non-Dutch speakers: it's in Dutch. If you would like to know what's going on, drop me a line (either here or on Cato's blog) and I'll give a quick English transcript.