There are still working on demolishing the office building opposite ours.

Yesterday there was a huge cloud of dust when I came back from Starbucks to get some coffee: they used an explosive top bring part of the building down.

Here's a picture of about a week ago.

Monday morning is an important deadline for the project I am working on. We want to deliver a new release of our software, with a lot of new features, that is ready to be tested by the customer.

Our company has a strict quality process for such a release that includes a separate, professional testing team and 'certification' of the software to determine whether is good-to-go or not. It's been quite busy the last day, but we've made very good progress. This is the first release that will contain functionality that I've designed, and it's exciting to see it getting ready for its interaction with end users.

Sasha left to New York this morning; of course I'd rather be with her and her family in NJ but there's no way I could leave this weekend.

Tonight I was home earlier than the previous few days, and it's great to have some time off. It's the first night I'm alone in a long time. I'm assembling the furniture, which is very rewarding to do, with a glass of triple beer, incense (wierrook) burning, and while listening to relaxing music.

The Ikea things we bought last Sunday were delivered Thursday morning.

The people from our apartment building let the delivery in, and even signed for it, so we didn't have to be home. It's a great service of our apartment building, because Ikea doesn't deliver in the evening and only gives a very wide delivery window ("between 2 and 6").

On the receipt it said that our delivery was over 200 kilogram in weight... the biggest item by far is the new couch.

I was home very late Thursday night, and it was very nice to see all the new stuff in the living room. Spend an hour around midnight to assemble a chair; very relaxing.

Sunday we went to Ikea. The shop is located in College Park, Maryland, which is north of DC. it's quite a distance from where we live and it's one of the times that it's really inconvenient not to have a car. Especially on Sunday public transport is not always available. However, we figured out a decent schedule, and it tooks us about an hour and 15 minutes to get there. It was fun anyway; traveling together.

Ikea is a wonderful place to go shopping. We were there two months ago. There were so many things that we just never had time for to get, and it felt great to spend the whole day choosing how our apartment will look like.

The most important piece of furniture was the couch, and we also got a beautiful bookcase. On the way back we brought most of the small items with us. Tomorrow, Thursday, the large items will be delivered -- it's gonna be really fun to change the apartment with the new furniture. I'm really looking forward to see them in our house.

Work's been pretty busy this week, and will probably be so until Monday. Still having a lot fun though and learning a lot, which compensates easily for the long days. Very sad news from my mother's school this weekend.

Saturday we visited Tala and Mouayed. Tala is a colleague of Sasha, and they got married a few weeks ago. We were invited for a lunch party that was organized for them.

The lunch was outside of Baltimore. It was really fun to meet so many different people, and the party was beautifully organized.

We were back in DC around 19:00 o'clock, and we went to do some shopping that we didn't have time for during the week.

The metro in Washington D.C. is implementing a new system for the information on the signs on the platforms.

Last weekend I saw it for the first time: instead of showing only one train at the time on the display, they now show the coming next three trains.

The system is not perfect yet. Below you can see that it says "No passengers, Boarding" -- but the train is full with people.

I am used to drinking a lot of water during the day. Especially when I'm at work I tend to basically drink non-stop.

I've always had the habit of drinking a lot of water when I'm working at the computer. I think it started in Middenmeer. My brand new 386 computer was installed in my bedroom where I also had a sink. To get water was as easy as pushing the chair to the other side of the room and fill my glass.

At home I drink from a huge glass, and I used to do that at Chess too. Now I don't have a large glass at work, so I have to keep walking back and forth to the water cooler.

The water cooler at work has recently been replaced. We used to have one that worked with large bottles, that were delivered every two weeks. The problem with that, was that all the bottles were empty long before the new delivery arrived. Since a week we have a water cooler. This one is connected to a tap which gives the best of both worlds: a non-stop supply and freshly cooled water.

I like to pride myself that within three months in my new job the water systems had to be replaced because it couldn't catch up with demand.

So yesterday was the Superbowl day, and I must admit that we didn't even see the game. Yesterday I was chatting with a close friend in Holland who was watching the game, even though it started at midnight Dutch time.

A big news item after the game are the TV commercials that were played in the breaks. Even the Wall Street Journal had an article about that today. On Petra's website I found an article with many of the commercials online.

Today was a regular working day of course, after a busy weekend. The things I did Saturday and Sunday paid off and I also learned quite a lot about our software in the previous days.

It's been quite a busy weekend. There was something I wanted to finish at work, which took me quite some time yesterday and a few hours today as well.

I like it that Sasha came with me to the office, she was also working and it was much nicer to be together. Tonight we treated ourselves to a very nice meal; we had dinner at Cafe Asia. As an appetizer we had the best dumplings I have ever eaten since our trip to China -- very fresh and with a fabulous soy sauce. I've had lunch there a few times, and the food has always been great.

Tonight is also the evening of the Super Bowl, a big American football match. Most bars have the match on TV screens, but it wasn't as busy as I expected; it was nothing compared to the soccer championships in the Netherlands.

It's about three months ago now that I left my previous company, Chess-iT in Haarlem, the Netherlands. I've had a very nice time there, so it was sad to say goodbye, even though a great adventure was awaiting me.

On one of my last days at Chess there was a small meeting to say goodbye to me and Serge, a colleague who was also leaving Chess per November 1st. We both received nice presents, and there were speeches with kind words.

Chess gave me a great book by Martin Kers with beautiful photographs of Haarlem. I also got a set with coffee, chocolate and a small coffee machine. I brought both the book and the coffee machine to the U.S.

Chess recently put a job advertisement on Monsterboard.nl; they are looking for a software engineer. If you're in that business, know J2EE and live around Haarlem, be sure to check it out.