Rain and other great things...

For a while during my youth, I was infamous for making really odd comparisons. People would get whiplash when they turned to stare at me when I used an analogy to illustrate a point. Many of these comparisons were cynical, or even a tad morbid. But most of the time, when people thought about them they grudgingly agreed that they were spot-on.

In a similar vein, I once came to the conclusion I'd rather freeze to death than burn, or less dramatically said that I prefer cold to hot. Which brings us to the recent weather, where we had heat and sunshine in doses that weren't fun anymore (though I do admit I've learned to enjoy sunshine some more ... I biked to work a couple of times and spent an afternoon out the back to read a little). If you live in Europe or visited recently, then you probably got a dose or ten of that. People died in this heat. But yesterday, it got colder, and today it cooled down even more and started raining.

Thanks, God. It's wonderful to hear rain pitter-patting on the ground, to feel the cold, humid air, all that. There's something else that's great (besides sun and rain, both of which I wouldn't want to do without no matter my stated preferences):

My dad. And not just because he's lending me his working iBook for WWDC so I can actually follow along in the hands-on sessions. I'm cobbling together a solution for him that involves a cloned copy of his hard disk and my external screen, but he's always like this. When I need help, when something is really important to me, he just nods and comes through. Even if he'd really need that machine to do that newspaper of his.

I know there are many people who have problems with their family, who don't talk with their parents anymore, who don't agree with their siblings. And I'm happy for every day that I'm a part of this family.

Of course there are other things that are great. Like my friends, colleagues in theatre plays (though those groups often intersect, I'd be missing very important people if I didn't mention both), and I also include a few people that have "talked" with me via iChat and e-mail for ages.

Aforementioned Carbon Copy Cloner by Mike Bombich, just because it made it possible to follow through for once and saved me hours babysitting dozens of installers.

Then there's the readers of this blog and the visitors to this site and the users of my software, because just often enough someone e-mails me and tells me what this or that snippet or this and that app did for them and revives my interest at the moment where I'm fighting a bug of all bugs and want to throw it all down.

Okay, enough touchy-feely. Back to software. And if any of the above are at WWDC, be sure to get in touch, we should have a drink together!