Ups and downs

It hasn’t been the best of weeks, although it did end on a bit of a high note.

It started off with one of my PCs dying on me. The major problem being that it was the one where I store all my important files. Luckily, it’s a Linux machine, and both the /home folder and all the important documents are stored on the second hard disk. Technically being able to retrieve the files is a breeze.
Still, although Goris is now trying to figure out what’s wrong with the machine and I was able to access the drive from my other PC, although the hard drive is EXT3 and Windows doesn’t really support that (sorry for the geeky comments here), I still wasn’t really happy with fifty percent of my processor power disappearing from one second to the next. Not even talking about the pecunia this will cost me.

Early in the week, we discovered there had been a leakage down in the common basement. Nothing really serious, although some of the water had trickled into our own basement.
Later in the week, the problem appeared to have been solved, until I got back from fitness on Friday and found the stacks of boxes, stored in our basement, to have fallen over because of the bottom ones being soaked.
Of the five boxes that had been soaked, three didn’t contain any really damageable goods. Most of it was just clothes. The two remaining boxes however contained books, one of them being stuffed with comics. Many Heavy Metal and 2000AD comics now have morphed from valuable collectibles into worthless mushy paper. Very annoying.

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The weekend was better. Saturday afternoon, I talked to several people working for the local Delft government and I might be able to do something more structured, and sponsored, with both Beeldenstad.net and the newly created CityTour. The future will tell.

Saturday night, Betsy and I enjoyed a ballet. ‘Coppelia’. Funnily enough, although we don’t ‘do’ many ballets, we had ‘done’ this one, back in Mongolia, last year, of all things. The show was pretty good, performed by the Budapest ballet company with the music by the Hungarian national orchestra (or was it the other way around?). We liked it, but most of the audience went wild.

On Sunday, today, I went sailing with Jim. Well, that is, we toured the ‘Haringvliet’ with a sailing boat, but we did most of it using the motor, not the sail. The weather was nice, lots of sun, but the wind made ita bit fresh.