As I stated previously, I’m changing hosting providers. And … today is the day So the site might not work correctly over the coming days as things are changed and such. It’ll take a few days for the domain to actually transfer to Lunarpages. Wish me luck …

Edit: Well looks like I’ll have to wait a day to get started, Lunarpages wants to verify some stuff first. I’ll use the opportunity to tell a bit about my weekend

On Friday it was time again for the Queaso GetTogether with barbecue. This time Kristof and Dimi talked a bit about Maven. I think for a lot of .NET programmers who were there, it was their first contact with “the other side”. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice barbecue, I was stuffed. We also got a cool Queaso polo-shirt, I was the only one wearing it though

Saturday was a busy day. I wanted to watch the live stream of the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational. But just as it was about to begin the guy who came to give us a price estimate to put down the terrace arrived. I managed to get back before the ending of the opening ceremony but missed the Diablo 3 announcement. Still, I’m very excited for that game ! Afterwards Kristof and I drove to the MediaMarkt so he could buy a Roomba, one of those automatic vacuum cleaners. I’m getting one of those myself eventually, but after we move. The WAF is a bit low at the moment

We then drove to Glabeek, to the barbecue Wenti had organized for her birthday. Took us an hour longer than expected to get there thanks to a monster traffic jam. The barbecue itself was very yummy and the weather was being very cooperative ! Her parents (where the barbecue was located) live in this really secluded area. Tom2 & Kaat were there also, hadn’t seen them in a while either, so that was nice. I was planning to take my camera so I could post some pictures but I forgot

And then we come to today … where I had planned to move all my stuff to my new hosting … so much for that plan, boohoo !

Good news, I finally managed to get hold of some wedding pictures of Els & Kristof. JP was kind enough to provide me with a ton (and I mean that literally) of pictures of both the wedding and Kristof’s bachelor day.

I’ve updated the bachelor day gallery to include the new ones and made a separate one for the wedding. I would like to point out though that I’ve been very selective in choosing which ones to upload. There really were A LOT of pictures so I’ve deleted pictures of people I don’t know, sorry for that but I have to think a bit about my webspace I’m thinking of switching to another hosting company though, so hopefully I won’t have to make such decisions in the future. In any case, enjoy !

Other than that, we put down the floor in the last room upstairs, so that is finished. We still need to do some finishing touches like put the edges on the wall above the floor but that’s not super important.

That’s it for now, gotta run ! Ice-cream awaits me !

I installed a new plugin today. Tom1 uses it on his blog and it looked rather neat so I had to give it a try. I’ve tested it in Internet Explorer 7, Safari (Iphone) and Firefox (2 & 3). Only in Firefox 2 I can’t seem to get it working, but I’ll do some more experimenting Hope you like it !

Lots of stuff happening on the house front, yay !

We made good progress on the floor upstairs. Only 1 more room to go ! We’ll be finishing this up next Saturday. I even put down some of the boards myself, resulting in Katrien going into panic mode. So much for having a bit of faith in the boyfriend aye

While she and her dad were continuing to put down the floor, Kristof and I went to pick up the wash-basin. It had finally arrived (it was only like a month and a half overdue). Now we’ll just need to find someone to install it. Because, let’s face it, if I do it myself it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Handy people reading this, drop me an email

Other progress is the fact that our kitchen is getting close to being completely installed ! Normally they were going to install it tomorrow but on Monday morning at 8:30am the doorbell rang … I was at work so Katrien went to answer it and the installing people were there, telling her they couldn’t enter our house. Duh … Apparently the store had called to my old cellphone number to let us know it was going to be a few days earlier, we only told them not to call that number anymore like 3 times before that. I wouldn’t have wanted to be those installers who had to face a very tired and therefore grumpy Katrien Waking her up early in the morning is a baaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea

Other than house stuff I didn’t do much. I did get my ass kicked by Dana on Saturday evening in a game of Mario Kart on the Wii. We played against each other over the internet. She knew too many tricks I didn’t, so I’m practicing a bit to get even ! Enjoy your victory while it lasts Dana ! There will be sweet revenge

On Sunday evening I went over to Jan’s place for a short board game and some poker. The game was a race track thing, it was actually quite fun (and I won ! ). The poker didn’t go so well but I didn’t lose that much

You can find some new pictures of the house, including the installing of the kitchen, here.

Yesterday was another day of working in the house. Both Arwen and Katrien’s dad were there to help us out.

2 things needed to be done, the floors in the bedrooms had to be put down and the giant pile of earth in the backyard was to be moved. Katrien and her dad started with the floors and Arwen and I went to play in the dirt. For the occasion I had rented a small bulldozer / bobcat. Katrien wasn’t too happy about that, she claimed that we were going to move the pile of earth by hand and that the bobcat was overkill. Knowing how big that pile was I disagreed and rented it anyways

So off we went, filled with courage and boyish grins on our faces, happy to be able to drive the little bobcat. Arwen started, lowered the loader and charged at the pile of earth … Only to collide on it almost like it was a brick wall. I took a video of one of the attempts, you can see it below.

To make a long story short, the pile of earth was as hard as rock and the bobcat didn’t have enough traction and horse power to do the job. I even tried digging in it with a shovel but I only got like 2 cms deep on my hardest thrust (now that would have been fun to do by hand … NOT :p ). Luckily another part of the pile wasn’t as hard so we managed to move most of that side, but still more than half remains. We’ll see how we fix this, the construction company screwed us over big time by putting it in the back of our garden.
Arwen did have his fun though, almost tumbling over at one point and another time he released the earth when it was above the bobcat, having the roof covered in dirt

Katrien and her dad made good progress though, the master bedroom is done. So I’m guessing 2 or 3 more days and the floor upstairs should be done. Yay !

In the evening Arwen and I went to a barbecue at Chris and Valerie’s house. The rest of the guys were there too (Bouw, Peter and Aaron). It was both very yummy and cozy Bouw and Arwen tried to get me drunk by filling up my glass when I went to the toilet but I just refused to drink it, too bad for them We concluded the evening by a game of Tekken on the Playstation 2.

As promised here are some bobcat videos:

Arwen learning how to drive it:

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Arwen trying to grab some dirt from the pile (pay attention to the last part and the back of the bobcat):

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I’ll start with some news about Milan, Arwen’s boy. He had surgery last week. First and foremost everything is fine with him and the surgery went great. It was a planned one, he had to get an artificial bladder (he was born with an open bladder and then it was decided he’d get this surgery at his current age). From what I’ve heard it’s not that big an issue anymore these days, no one should even notice he has one so that is good news.

Other than that, my last (work) week was uneventful. On Friday I did go to the house, my dad was there also. He put some wooden boards on the attic so we can walk on it and on Friday I had to help him carry those board upstairs so he could do his thing the day after.

On the weekend itself I went to visit Valery. We mostly played on the Wii. That Boom Blox game that Steven Spielberg attached his name to is pretty fun ! The concept is simple, yet original. Either you have to try to smash a tower down and the more destruction you do the better or you have take out 1 block each turn and make sure the rest of the tower doesn’t collapse. Very fun in multiplayer We also played a bit with the Wii Balance Board. Had to show her parents the new gadget, we had a good time watching Piet trying to hoola hoop … and fail miserably

Valery’s parents went out to a restaurant and left the 2 of us to fend for ourselves. This was a good opportunity to try those premade mashed potatoes Valery had been talking about for a long time. This was also the first time I actually saw her cook a meal, so I was a bit unsure of what to expect Don’t get me wrong, she’s always made killer (no pun intended ;)) brownies, so I wasn’t expecting to die on the spot or anything In the end the meal was very yummy, and those premade mashed potatoes aren’t bad at all. A bit more salty than how I usually eat them but a lot better than what I normally expect from something that comes from a bag. And there’s the added bonus of not having to skin your potatoes, good stuff ! She can cook for me again definitely ! *ducks*

We also spent some time trying to find her a decent laptop. The demands we have on it aren’t that spectacular but still no luck. It’s amazing to see how laptop specifications can be so incomplete or just hard to find a good overview of. You’d think someone on the planet would make a good site about them. Since I couldn’t find any I told Tom4 of the idea, he’s been looking a concept to make a site about, but I doubt he’ll take my suggestion

On Monday I had a day off so I slept in. Katrien and I then visited the house to check on some stuff. We have a meeting with the construction company coming up next week and wanted to see if there are some things we need to bring up. It’s all still moving along nicely.

I also went to the doctor. Since I changed jobs, my health insurance moved to another company. I had to fill in some papers where I had to say if I recently had surgery and stuff. I filled in that I had an eye surgery for my lazy eye 4 years ago. For those of you not knowing, my eyes didn’t look in the same direction, so they fixed that. It was purely an aesthetic thing, not a medical one. I even wrote that down on the papers that I sent to the health insurance company but they insisted I have to fill in this whole pile of documents and get a medical examination. I called them up and managed to convince them to let my normal doctor do it instead of having to go to a specialist. All this was really quite unnecessary, at the time of the surgery I was actually insured at their company so they have all the information. Ah bureaucracy, you gotta love it.

In the evening we went to eat a typical student restaurant where they have the best spaghetti ever. As usual it was very yummy And now it’s back to work !