GTD tasks for Microsoft Mobile

Thursday : 28 Dec '06 - 13:30 | damen default Only one comment |

I am still looking for a good way to setup my Outlook and my Windows Mobile phone to handle tasks as defined with the GTD system. Currently I want to try out this one:
http://www.smartertasks.com

But if you have any helping tips or links for me, feel free to hand them over

How good is dusja.net

Tuesday : 26 Dec '06 - 22:34 | damen default No comments yet |

Just have a look, I just found this site called the slut-o-meter which determines how many 18+ hits google finds for your entry. And so I did a short search for dusja... just have a look here

Rebuilding my office laptop

Monday : 25 Dec '06 - 11:12 | damen default No comments yet |

Currently I am cleaning up my work laptop in order to have it reinstalled after the holidays. This machine has been in use for about 2,5 years now, in which I installed so many different kinds of software and development tools that it is really too slow to work with anymore. Ofcourse I've had the discussions with my collegues, about to do or not to do. Cons are definitely getting my machine up and running with the tools I need again, getting all links etc working, the whole nine yards..
But than again, since my current job is clearly transitioning from development and technical consultant towards more and more powerpoint and project management, I decided to take the risk He, at least it gave me a good excuse to do some research on setting up my machine for my needs in such a way that is is easily transferred to other machines.

One of the good things I discovered for this was the Thunderbird Portable eMail application of Mozilla. This gives me the opportunity to install it on my flash drive, so I can have my personal email client always with me Another thing is that I am currently extracting all my important links to an filebased link overview, if you have tips for me in this direction, please let me know!

Weihnachtsstress

Friday : 22 Dec '06 - 22:08 | damen default Only one comment |

BTW: Who sees the important detail in this picture?

I just found this interesting poem on the web, describing this season for what it is for most people.... pure stress!


Weihnachtsstress
von Monika Peschel

Als im August in den Geschäften
die Pfefferkuchenzeit begann,
da fragten viele mit Entsetzen:
Kommt denn schon jetzt der Weihnachtsmann?

Seitdem sind Monate vergangen,
nun ist es wirklich fast soweit.
Es öffneten die Weihnachtsmärkte
und in der Luft liegt Heimlichkeit.

Längst sind die Wunschzettel geschrieben,
der Stollenduft zieht durch das Land
und auf der Suche nach Geschenken,
wird selbst am Sonntag rumgerannt.

Es gibt so vieles zu bedenken,
damit man wirklich nichts vergisst.
Und mancher wünscht sich schon seit Wochen,
dass alles bald vorüber ist.

Dann ist er da, der Heiligabend,
der Weihnachtsbaum ist bunt geschmückt.
Jetzt gibt es nur noch den Gedanken,
dass auch der Weihnachtsbraten glückt.

Die Feiertage gehn vorüber,
man übt sich in Besinnlichkeit.
Doch um sich wirklich zu besinnen,
bleibt einem viel zu wenig Zeit.

Gestresst von all dem Weihnachtstrubel
schwört sich dann wieder jedermann:
Im nächsten Jahr wird alles anders!
Na, hoffentlich denkt ihr auch dran.

Holidays

Thursday : 21 Dec '06 - 16:18 | damen default Only one comment |

Yes... I made it

I wrapped up at work, left my desk clean and tidy and got even home early today. Now that is what I call a good start for the weekend.

If my session with my manual therapist (for the problems in the spine) goes alright this afternoon I will be even more happy :-& Luckily I booked a massage session directly afterwards, so I can really start my days totally relaxed

I also got the good news yesterday that an old roommate of mine (Huize Maupertuis) got his first son, so we are all very proud of them

Funny work

Tuesday : 19 Dec '06 - 18:41 | damen default No comments yet |

Have a look at the stuff this guy made, somebody really knows his flash.... or has serious mental health problems

Who wants to have it?

Sunday : 17 Dec '06 - 23:04 | damen default Only one comment |

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110069774650

Cool background images

Sunday : 17 Dec '06 - 20:29 | damen default No comments yet |

Just have a look at this site called Mandolux, which has an amazing archive of desktop images, especially designed for double monitor desktops. And because I had a conversation with Manu about having a second monitor at home, and she did not object, no, even was enthusiastic, this site will be really interesting for us

Cleaning up

Sunday : 17 Dec '06 - 16:55 | damen default Only one comment |

We're trying to get some free room in our house

http://www.quoka.de/hifi-audio-tv-video-foto/cds-dvds-videos-lps/cat_66_7299_ad_8540806.html

Ik heb een blender!!!!

Thursday : 14 Dec '06 - 21:09 | damen default two comments, already |

Youpie!

update: hoewel.... eigenlijk hadden we er al eentje

Nice dawn

Thursday : 14 Dec '06 - 19:18 | damen default No comments yet |

Have a look at these photos I just took with my phone out of our office window... not bad for a december afternoon

Dentist

Thursday : 14 Dec '06 - 15:57 | damen default two comments, already |

yesterday I went to the dentist to get two teeth fixed. The mad man insisted on doing it without anastasia, and after about 20 minutes of drilling, fixing etc I had my new teeth.... not all that bad

Christmas Feeling

Sunday : 10 Dec '06 - 21:12 | damen default No comments yet |

Now this is the right idea for Christmas (click for larger image)

Vooruitgang

Sunday : 10 Dec '06 - 18:02 | damen default No comments yet |

Mocht je een minuutje tijd hebben, lees dan dit stukje even... erg vermakelijk

http://www.amsterdamcentraal.nl/archief/2006/12/9/vooruitgang

Jet lag after Microsoft visit

Sunday : 10 Dec '06 - 15:39 | damen default No comments yet |

Just yesterday morning we returned from our visit to Microsoft in Redmond, WA, and currently the first signs of a good old jet lag are showing up. The funny thing was that I had no problem getting to sleep yesterday evening, probably because the trip was quite exhausting. But this morning it was a different story, even though I slept 11 hours straight I could not get myself into gear and out of bed. I'm curious how it will be tomorrow, we're having a meeting at 9am

Ok, the jet lag is doable if you look at the experience the trip was. We have had great discussions with some of the people at Microsoft and gained a good insight of their roadmaps and plans for the future. Also we were able to verify our ideas and architecture and took back some points of focus for the next steps in our project. And then on top of that I had the change to visit the States for the first time, quite interesting and I really liked the city of Seattle. Also the food was great, but it really seems to be true that if you want to eat healthy you have to spend a lot of money. We had fish several times, including crab, salmon and on our last night I had some kind of sushi-like tuna steak, all very delicious.

I'm already looking forward to the next trip, not only because of the shopping we did (see photo below):

Dus

Sunday : 10 Dec '06 - 13:35 | damen default No comments yet |

Dit is een heel duidelijk voorbeeld van een 'dus'... vaak hebben we problemen dat uit te leggen, maar Pieter heeft hiermee wel de spijker op de kop geslagen

Source: http://pieterh.blogspot.com/

Mental health hotline

Saturday : 09 Dec '06 - 16:34 | damen default Only one comment |

Just check this out, really the thing you would need during depressive christmas season

http://www.ham-radio.ch/Movies/PhoneLine.mp3

Update from the MS workshops

Wednesday : 06 Dec '06 - 04:13 | damen default No comments yet |

Today we had some very interesting discussions here with people of Microsoft. We had the change to discuss our architecture and software design with Don Smith, member of the Patterns and Practices group; with Shanku Niyogi of the asp.net group and Brett Hill of the IIS7 team.
All very interesting, we learned a lot and finally have a good feeling on our architecture

Hard work

Tuesday : 05 Dec '06 - 16:05 | damen default No comments yet |

So, currently we are at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA and trying to solve some of the technical questions we have for our current project. During these breakout sessions here at the technology adaption center I really noticed what a jet lag can do with you... at the end of the day we had quite a heatened up discussion one one topic, and you could see nobody was acting rational anymore on that subject. So we cut the discussion short and will start in a moment again

Further there is not much to mention, on Sunday we visited the space needle and went out for sea food in the Seattle docs. I must say, eating crab is a lot of work, but it really tasted superb!

I feel just like Alice :-(

Monday : 04 Dec '06 - 22:48 | damen default No comments yet |

Big american shopping experience

Sunday : 03 Dec '06 - 23:17 | damen default No comments yet |

Ok, we really did it.... somehow we got into this typical american shopping fever and bought some stuff...

• 2 pair of jeans


• one sweater


• one leather jacket

I also went to the apple store, but then decided that I did not want to spend so much money on an ipod.... bad luck apple. Perhaps also better because we're visiting Microsoft tomorrow

arrived safely and had first bad and good experiences

Sunday : 03 Dec '06 - 16:17 | damen default No comments yet |

So we arrived safely yesterday (Saturday) evening at the airport here in Seattle and my first experience with the USA was really not that good. Because we were flying business class we were able to get out of the plane and in queue for customs (does the word homeland security ring a bell....) very quick, but somehow I really had the wrong queue. Of the 15 people in front of me I am sure that 10 had serious language problems, missing bionic information or wrong passports, because in the end they started getting people of the end (!) of my queue to other, already empy, ones and I was really the last one out... grmbl..

But after that life turned out ok, we got our rental car and drove towards the town of Bellevue. Two of the team were staying at the Doubletree Hilton, and because they said it was booked out we only managed to get a room in the Coast Bellevue Hotel. But luckily, when we dropped off the two collegues at the Hilton we asked if there were any rooms free and they still had two single rooms for us, so fortunately we are now all in the same hotel.

So yesterday we fought the jet lag with a time difference of 9 hours and went out for a real american burger Yes, it was good, tasty, fat and unhealty... all the good stuff a burger needs.

Currently it is quite early, somehow that time difference is strange for the body, but after a quick swim and good breakfast we'll see..

Internet is soooohoooo slow

Saturday : 02 Dec '06 - 23:43 | damen default No comments yet |

Just have a look at these ping times, I really think I have to put in some complains here, because the wireless lan connection here is quite slow

Now this is cool!

Saturday : 02 Dec '06 - 17:12 | damen default No comments yet |

Just imagine, you are sitting in the business class of SAS and flying somewhere over the atlantic, while surfing the web and writing this blog entry...

Yep... just call is childisch but I think it is quite cool... free high speed internet access through wlan in the plane... Now this is more like it!

Trip to Redmond, WA

Saturday : 02 Dec '06 - 06:49 | damen default No comments yet |

In about three hours I will take the plane to Copenhagen and from there we will fly directly to Seattle to visit Microsoft in Redmond for a week long deep dive session with their architects and development team. It will sure be very interesting, one of the people we already met, an italian guy that works in Redmond, called Vittorio. We met him last week here in Germany and it was fun working with him, quite a guy and fast at getting to the core of our problems...

I'll let you know how things are running!

DSL upgrade

Friday : 01 Dec '06 - 18:28 | damen default Only one comment |

Yeah, and now it works. I will just let the pictures speak for themselves, but I just received my new wireless router that can handle DSL 16Mbit and it really rocks: