raymondpoort.com

I am at Oslo airport, ready to board for my flight to NL and I just discovered that I forgot my wallet at home, ggrrrr! Luckily Kissy is flying on Friday and she’ll bring it. 😉 I also discovered that I don’t need my wallet that much the coming days (most is prepaid with plastic ;)), a bit strange experience since one normally holds on to the money religiously…oh well, all part of the ‘let go, let go, let go’ principle! 😉

So, how many do YOU recognize? 😉

Jawaharlal Nehru: “Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.”

Ars Technica: “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted a few things about Redmond’s mobile operating system: the company screwed up with Windows Mobile (he says it won’t happen again), he wishes version 7.0 was already out, and that there’s more talent working on the next version.”

It is almost one year ago that I saw Steve in our office, below the picture I took with my iPhone; hehe, indeed light years ahead of Windows Mobile.

It always feels good to come back home, even when it’s just for a couple of days; quite a lot of traveling back to my ‘old’ homeland these days.

I stayed with my parents last night, so in a way I flew from home to home today. 😉 Since I was so close by, I went to see my sister, brother in law and nephew; the little guy was walking around like crazy, cool! The news of the day however came later in the evening from my brother; they are expecting again!! So I’ll become uncle for the third time!

The baby should come around April 20 2010, close to Patricia’s Birthday on April 22 and mine on the 23th…oh well, we’ll see, it’s great news anyway!

Hehe, what a way to kick off the Breast Cancer Awareness month…men will *love* this ad! 😉

Next to the visit to Southern Netherlands yesterday, I am in NL to attend a management meeting/workshop today and tomorrow. And that means two days of intense meeting and discussions, oof (but good!)…what better way to end a day than to visit one of our customers (Heineken) and enjoy the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam! We’ll be on the way soon and I’m sure it’s gonna be nice…beer please! 😉

The main part of the day was spent on the road, driving from Amsterdam to the South of NL. Reason being was to visit a customer for whom we deliver a highly customized satellite terminal. A LOT of work has been put into it by a team of very skilled colleagues over the past months, making the end result really impressive!
Wow, these are the things that make me proud to work for this company!

Morrie Schwartz: “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

For the few who didn’t realize; summer is over and a new season started today.

And I just realized that the fall in the past years has been a true season of change for me:

In the fall of 2006 I decided to quite my job and take some time off. The new position that I started in the summer of 2007 (in Norway!) uhmm, no longer existed after the company got restructured in the fall of 2007, and my positivity turned that card in the fall of 2008 when I got a new and much anticipated position within the same organization!

Hmm, I’m wondering what the fall of 2009 will bring me…! 😉

We had our first cultural experience and a nice welcome to the small community we live in (Gjerdrum); two amazing guitar players performed in the local ‘Kulturhuset’ (cultural center); Jørn Hoel & Steinar Albrigtsen, they are world famous in Norway! 😉

Their voices match perfectly, the guitars provide a rich sound (Jørn seemed to play the same guitar as I have, the Tanglewood TW145 SC!!) and they’re good fun also when they are not playing, ha, comedians…all in all a great show, I’m glad we were invited tonight!

We will have the first dinner at the new table tonight; Willy & Katka are coming over and will have the honor. On the menu is risotto with garlic gamba’s as the main course, we will start with champagne and have some excellent white wine with the food…yeah, this evening is going to be splendid!!

Yesssss, THE furniture is IN!! So THE couch, THE dining table with THE chairs are in DA house! 😉 (and damn, ain’t the couch HUGE!)

It takes quite some time to put all the parts together (most of it is actually unpacking)…the couch is done, the dining table and chairs are left for tomorrow.

hehe, it was no big surprise that we had to wait some weeks longer than expected, but it all was good since the fireplace was fixed only last week. Well, well, it means that most of the big things are done, I can concentrate on a shitload of smaller ‘thingies’, typically the ones that take months and months…;)

The latest and greatest iPhone OS, version 3.1, has been out for over a week (made available at Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event last week. There is not THAT much new stuff in it, at least not for my ‘old’ first generation iPhone 2G, but I at least will fix a SMS vulnerability and hopefully also the SMS app itself (it crashes every now and then).

Thanks to the iPhone Dev Team (again) for releasing an update to their PwnageTool which makes the jailbreak and SIM unlock possible, I am updating my iPhone as we speak!

Oh, and speaking about iPhones; there is exciting news…in a couple of weeks orso! 😉

Back home, where the peismann did a great job and my baby and three cats were waiting for me…yeah, it’s good to be back and I am really looking forward to some relaxing days at home! Hmm, and I actually realize only now that the exhibition made me work 10 days in a row (not to mention the nights ;)), and there are still two days to go this week…no wonder I’m tired! Ray – out…

Sylvia Robinson: “Some think it’s holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it’s letting go.”

Oh, and another thing; there were elections in Norway today, voting has ended so I guess the result will be known soon…which reminds me; I should get some more knowledge of the political landscape and situation in Norway, being a house owner and expecting to live in the country for many more years! 😉

I didn’t plan to spend another day at the IBC exhibition, but the time’s now to talk to suppliers since there’re here!
So, that has been most of my day, oof my feet are sore…;)
Luckily there is a bonus; Willy invited me to a dinner party thrown by Conax, the company he works for. The theme for tonight is ‘Casanova’ and that means that everyone is one of Casanova’s ‘bastard’-childs and attending the gathering after his death…hehe, it’s great to be part of this theatrical dinner experience!!

I’ve been using my Facebook status in the sidebar of the blog to display where I am at the moment (handy for friends and family). It worked great for almost a year, but failed recently after Facebook changed some of their policies making the status RSS feed no longer available. 🙁

And unfortunately, my Facebook page is not among the ‘lucky’ ones where the feed can be retrieved my browsing to http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php, click on ‘Subscribe to Notifications’ and then change the word ‘notifications’ in the URL to ‘status’.

Has anyone found a work-around, or alternative??

Attending the IBC exhibition is as expected interesting. We’re with quite a number of colleagues and are catching up with current and possible new suppliers. There are some interesting new developments in the market so there’s enough to see, making a day at the show quite intense…I’m knackered!