Agylen

In a few hours, we’ll be leaving for the mountains (to the only valley in the whole of Europe where it didn’t snow an inch for the whole of December, incidentally) so don’t expect much from me until January 9th, 2006. I’m bringing my laptop with me, but mainly for downloading photos, as connections, if available at all, will be spotty, slow and unreliable.

So, Happy New Year everybody and see you in 2006!

Just like Andrew, I’m flying to Amsterdam via KLM, so I’d like to do this Internet Check-In stuff as well. Unfortunately, I’m flying thursday morning and Internet check-ins aren’t available until 30 hours before departure, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if my ticket is eligible. On the other hand, I don’t have a printer at home, so I’d have to ask my wife to print the boarding pass for me at the office. All in all, I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Update: I was able to check-in for my outbound MXP-AMS flight (and also to choose a nice seat, thanks to SeatGuru) but not for the trip back from Amsterdam. God knows!

While I was in Rome, the furniture shop delivered the rest of the furniture I had bought for my home office, so I came home Friday to find it all mounted and in place. The cupboard in particular is really gorgeous. You can see a couple other photos on Flickr.

Next phases will comprise repainting of the walls, finding a carpet and a new set of curtains.

My new Herman Miller Mirra chair has arrived! I still have to tweak its many knobs until it fits perfectly my body, but I can already feel the difference with respect to my previous nondescript chair. I can sit for hours and not feel a hint of fatigue or pain. Great chair!

Still waiting for the rest of the furniture…

I couldn’t agree more with Dave Winer:

It’s one thing if they let you in for free, then sure, show a few ads. But I paid to see the movie. Sorry, you don’t get to run ads if I pay. Maybe if they stop running ads, people will start going to the movies again.

Last Sunday night we couldn’t find anything better to do than go watching Star Wars Episode III. The evening was too damn hot to go for a walk or otherwise stay outside, so we opted for a movie: at least there would be air conditioning.

The problem is that it cost us 20€ (7.50€ each for me and the wife and 5€ for the kid) while we could have waited three or four months and got it from the Blockbuster store right across the street from home for less than 4€, keep it for three nights and not be forced to watch 15 minutes of ads before the film started!

The movie was just above mediocre, and don’t get me started about the cost of the popcorn!

We were also subjected to 15 minutes of trailers. Having seen the “War of the Worlds” trailer, I really want to see it, but for sure it’s going to be in DVD, even if special effects are not the same on the small screen.

After the chair, today I’ve also probably found a cupboard and a table for my new home office. I’m pretty much sold on the Polka Dots cupboard from Horm, but I’m still relatively undecided on the table. The Bello! is nice but maybe a little small.

Together they make up a very nice combination (click on the image to enlarge it) and the price is much less than what I had anticipated, given the price at what designer furniture is typically sold. Assuming I can make up my mind on the table, I am going to place an order for them by the end of this week.

Alright, now that I’ve settled on the iMac for my desktop system, it’s time to think about the furniture of my new home office. Priority #1: The chair. As I was in Milan this afternoon and had a couple of hours to spend, I looked up the address of the local Herman Miller dealer and payed them a visit.

By the way, I hope to help them with their ridiculous Google ranking (which is to be expected, given a Flash-only website, what nonsense!) by giving them a link. Will I get a bigger discount after this? I don’t think so, but it’s worth trying ;).

Amenities aside, I did a brief test of the Aeron and Mirra chairs and what can I say? I’m hooked! I don’t want anything else now. I will probably buy a Mirra, especially after having read this review at Pixelsurgeon. Compared to the Aeron, if offers less choices of size and finish, but is much cheaper and equally comfortable.

I also learned that Herman Miller manufactures a number of very nice furniture pieces, so I’m going to peruse the catalogs a bit and then ask the dealer for an offer for the furnishing of the whole office, hoping to get more favorable terms this way.

This is my last post about religion, after part I and part II. Unfortunately, I have to pick on dear friend Matthew:

The Silent Penguin: A growing girl: “I'm the non-religious member of the family but my wife and I came to an early agreement that we would do our best to always show our children both sides of the coin so that they can then choose their personal view on the subject when they are ready to do so.”

I'm almost exactly in the same situation as yours, Matthew, even though my daughter is a little younger than yours. I consider myself an atheist, for all practical purposes, yet my daughter will have her holy communion, like all good catholic girls.

But I won't say this is because I want to show her “both sides of the coin”. With all due respect, this is BS.

First of all, there aren't just two sides to this coin. Assuming one side is atheism, why just pick christianity — and of the catholic variety — as the other side? Why not protestantism, judaism, buddhism or islam?

Second, even if there are many sides to this coin, she will be presented with just one. When our respective daughters come home from their religious teaching (I don't know how it's called in English or German, but here we call it the equivalent of “doctrine”, from Latin “docere”, which is also the root for “indoctrination”, by the way) where they've been taught about the Immaculate Conception and such, are we going to expose them to the alternative view and tell them that “it ain't necessarily so”?

Come on, we're not kidding anyone, are we? The reason you and me are allowing this is because we are conformists, not for ourselves but for the sake of our children. We don't want our daughters to stand out because they're not having their holy communion. Such is the strength of a popular religion.

And of course we don't want to have a fight with our wives ;).