2006: a retrospective (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

My memory is truly horrible: I usually cannot remember what I had for dinner two days before, let alone remember what I did last week. To jog my memory I thought I'd go through all my old blog posts and through my calendars. Just to make a list of all the big stuff that happened to us in 2006.

The year was started at Peter and Wendy's new year's party. The traditional get-together couldn't be held at our place, since we had only just moved into our new house. We didn't have any real furniture yet and were sleeping on the ground. That didn't leave much room for dinner guests and sleep overs :)

We took dance classes (ballroom and latin), both for fun and for exercise (which the both of us really need). The classes were a lot of fun and most of people we met were actually rather friendly. Unfortunately we dropped out close to the end of the year. Partially due to restricting agendas, partially due to laziness and a lack of discipline.

We learnt that we will not be having children any time soon. Doctor's noticed a few things in our health department that will be detrimental to our chances of having kids in the near future. Naturally, this diagnosis came as quite a shock.

The law suit revolving around Marlijne's father's inheritance dragged on, with the judges finally making the call near the end of the year. The whole matter is now only weeks away from being completely resolved, but in the end it means that both we and Marli's brother will be losing quite a lot of dosh.

Halfway through the year I completed favorable negotiations with my employer Snow, which resulted in me landing an indefinite contract with them. This means more stability for us since I will not have to plan for possible unemployment in 2007.

Around the same time we celebrated our two years marital anniversary. God time flies! :)

Over summer Marlijne decided to drop out of college, in favor of dealing with our personal issues. These will take up quite a lot of time and effort, which would take away a lot of concentration from school work. So instead of studying, Marlijne's taken up a part-time job at the local branch of Ulla Popken, a fashion store for plus-sized ladies.

At the end of summer we ran Anime 2006 with our friends. The festival was a _huge_ success and I have to say it was our best festival to date! While organising the festival is very gratifying it also puts a huge load of responsibility on my shoulders. After A2006 I decided that it had become too much to bare for me, so I accepted another position within our organisation. At the end of 2006 we also greatly expanded our staff which should help us a lot in organising A2007.

Getting DTV (digital television) has greatly expanded our "TV experience". This sounds horrible, like we're always watching the boob-tube, but that's not what it's like :) Anywho: DTV has returned TCM to me and also gave us access to BBC3, which has introduced us to both the modern-day Doctor Who and Torchwood. We've started following these two series almost religiously since they are so totally great!

Over the course of 2006 my love for coffee has kept on growing. I started the year only liking the dark, bitter liquid but these days I _love_ the life-giving juice :D We've been experimenting with all kinds of different kinds of coffee and we received a wonderful coffee maker from my dad as a birthday gift.

I entered our apartment building's Board Of Owners as a staff member. This has given me a few responsibilities when it comes to caring for our building and it ensures that I get to have a proper say in how the maintenance will be handled over the next few years.

I've developed three interesting friendships: I had become much closer to a colleague of mine at KPN (trying to support her through a rough patch in her life), I've met and gotten closer to Floor (a lovely girl I met through Animal Crossing) and I like to believe that I've re-found my friendship with The Saint (with whom I shared my college years).

Through my employer I've been taking part in a course targeted at developing stronger communications skills. Through this course I've learnt of a few of my character's short comings that I hope to ameliorate over the next few months.

I've become more active with work-related issues outside of working hours. I've started visiting meetings at Sun and I've started going to conferences on UNIX and sysadmin topics.

After thirteen months I left KPN to go work at another client of Snow's. The two to three weeks that I spent at the Snow office waiting for an assignment taught me one important thing: there are boatloads of work out there for a proper UNIX sysadmin and I've have more than enough marketable skills. That should give me a little back-of-the-head support, should things turn sour :)

My best friend Menno has taken up a job abroad, leaving us separated for at least four months. Now we've gone without each other for such a long time before, but it's still not something we particularly enjoy :) I greatly respect Menno's efforts though, since he has gone out there to live his dream.

Thanks to the tips of a few fellow sysadmin bloggers I'm reading Time management for system administrators. While I have always taken great care to work in an orderly fashion and to plan my work meticulously, this book has helped me to schedule my work in new ways. By applying only a few of the tips from the book I've already improved the way I work each day. I feel much more relaxed!

Now that I work relatively close to home I've decided to ride my bike to work. While this inconveniences the colleague that was car pooling with me, it gives me a chance to get in some much needed exercise. So far I've only done it for one week, but it already feels great!

Over the course of 2006 we've seen way too little of our respective families. We should really try to meet up with them more!

And finally, there's this website of mine :) At the beginning of 2006 it was still a hoky mix of HTML and CSS working in horrible frames. The past twelve months have seen this site go through the following phases: HTML + CSS -> PHP + CSS -> search engine optimization -> XHTML compliancy -> mySQL database for all blog posts -> commenting feature for blog -> RSS feed for blog -> tagging -> more flexible archiving.

Going back through the whole list and seeing all these things placed in a calendar perspective makes me realize how weird time flows. On the one hand a year seems oh-so-fscking long, while on the other hand blog posts from three months ago seem like they were only made yesterday.

Now... On to 2007! Posted in: 2006 , big events , my life , retrospective