Yes, summer is here, hot weather, ice cream (outside!!), brighter days, the whole shebang. Such things make my spirit lighter, even though “hot” around here means sun with anything above 13° Celsius (around 55° Fahrenheit), or above 15° C (59° F) without the sun. The picture above is of me enjoying the sun, composited over a panoramic view over Brosundet (the sound between the two main city islands in Ålesund), both taken on my way to work today.
Then again, although I don’t usually experience such things, today was also what could be called a “typical” Monday. About 10 minutes before I was due in a teleconference meeting (over the Internet – via WebEx), my laptop started to slow down on me. Every browser window or new program I wanted to run/open took at least a few minutes just to show some activity. This meant that I was also unable to connect to the meeting and participate. When I finally got to a point where I could connect, the meeting was already over. Shucks, indeed. Thankfully, I was able to get a second meeting, with a summary of the first, about 45 minutes later. This gave me enough time to reboot my laptop completely, just to root out any programs running in the background that was causing this slowdown.
Even if the client contact and I have such a good tone that we could brush it off in the end, such breakdowns in technology do darken my originally bright day.
On a brighter note, I was able to secure myself one ticket to see the sneak preview of the latest Harry Potter movie on July 13, just three days before I leave for USA. I just wanted to get it out of the way before I go, and in the time leading up to the movie premiere, I’ll be watching all 7 of the previous movies, 6 of them on DVD. I admit, I’ve downloaded “part 1” of this two-parter illegally, rather than getting it on DVD, but that’s because I want to buy these two parts as a complete set, and not separately. I assume these last two in the series will be sold together as a boxed item once the last one is ready for release on DVD and Blu-ray.