Back on the air

or, at least, no longer in the air…

I’ve been moving between the US and Netherlands for the past week, a mix of business, family, and friends.  It’s usually difficult to get time to write while I’m on the road, but the issues compounded this week with both computer- and connection- issues.

My Sony Vaio Z, a honey of a computer when it works, decided not to after a bump to it’s rear corner, necessitating a trip home to California for some touchup.  The backup Asus Netbook hasn’t been out for a spin in months, so there was a lot of upgrading and reconfiguring needed before it was ready to take the load.

KPN, meanwhile, satisfied their June 28 date for connecting the apartment building to the Internet, but, as usual, failed to connect the apartment to the building socket.  This required the usual hunt for internet connections to jump online a couple of times each day to do minimal e-mail exchanges.

As a result, banking, social networking, travel, and blogging all suffered, perhaps  benefitting writing documents, reading, and thinking.   My academic advisor at Cambridge always held that I should be spending at lead 50% of my time by the river just thinking, resisting the urge to solve all problems with online searches.

In any case, I’m back in the Netherlands in time for a truly brutal spell of hot weather in Maastricht.  The only compensation is that I am back in time for the big football game against Brazil this evening.