With the ongoing relaxation of COVID restrictions, the office is slowly reopening and I am now travelling to Brussels twice a week. I still have to wear a mask on the train, but the expectation is that this restriction will be lifted next week. Apart from that, it’s surprising just how normal everything feels.

While it is nice to see people again after a two-year absence, I can’t honestly say that I missed anyone. This, as a colleague suggested, may be an age thing — I have never had, nor wanted, a social life based around work and, living with a family of five makes it impossible to feel isolated. If I was still single and living alone, I may well have felt differently.

I didn’t miss the commute, though, and standing on a packed train while trying to avoid ending up with someone’s elbow in my nose reminded me just how much I didn’t miss commuting. Oddly, the journey home is always worse than the journey in.

There are, of course, some advantages to being in a shared office space, the main one being that it is a lot easier to resolve confusion and misunderstandings when you can wander over to someone’s desk and hold a face to face conversation.

It may be related to the fact that I work in corporate IT, but I do find it surprising just how much is simply not understood. The thing is, you never realise just how much people people didn’t understand until you are looking over their shoulder while they try to do what you have just explained.

That said, this is not something I need to do every day, and I really didn’t miss the commute.

I also didn’t miss the experience of discovering that the only coffee machine in the building has stopped working. This never happens at home.

As the year draws to a close, now seems as good a time as any to look back over my most popular (more accurately: most read) post of the last twelve months. As ever, my most read posts overall are technical notes written the best part of a decade ago, but if people still find this stuff useful, it’s all to the good.

Of the posts that I actually wrote this year, the most popular (surprisingly enough) is COVID-related. Specifically, when I announced that I was fully jabbed. Of course, I’m even more jabbed now having recently received my booster.

Oddly enough, the second most popular post of the year is Jabbed: Part One, which goes back to when I received my first dose of Pfizer.

Brexit was mentioned on this blog a few times, even though it received a lot fewer mentions than in previous years. It seems fitting, therefore, that my third most popular post is also the last time I mentioned the B-word to mention that a crisis had been averted.

I am still watching the Brexit-related news but I find myself have much less to say. The reason, I think, is that even though a lot of stuff keeps happening, it’s the same stuff happening over and over again. There are only so many times that you can mention the sheer stupidity of leaving the EU, or the fact that now it’s done there’s no way back, without both feeling and sounding like a broken record.

On the subject of going around in circles, COVID. And in March, I mentioned that 2021 was starting to feel like 2020.

On a more positive note, we did take a step towards eating more sustainably with burgers for all. That’s insect burgers, which we can make using mealworm.

And I can’t go a year without mentioning the weather: Flooded. Fortunately, I wasn’t.

Way back in January, Donald Trump tried to organise a coup. In After the meltdown, the climbdown I made (or tried to make) the more general observation that authoritarian impulses exist everywhere — we all need to be paying attention.

Remember OS/2? I did: Digital Nostalgia

Then there is the ongoing discussion about green energy and why nuclear power plants are necessary. I still it’s insane that the Green parties in Belgium want to burn more gas in order to decommission the nuclear power stations we already have.

And last, but certainly not least, is what I said back in May: Don’t Panic!

And with that, all that remains is to wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for 2022.

It’s that time of year again, when COVID restrictions are tightened and we congratulate ourselves on having seen Spider-Man on Tuesday, before the cinemas were closed.

Today is my last day at work until next year. I have two weeks off which we will all be spending at home, around a table, playing games. The boys started expressing an interest in Dungeons & Dragons a few weeks ago and we have agreed to give it a try while we have plenty of time for a few lengthy sessions. I’m not sure who is most looking forward to this.

In other news, I had my COVID booster yesterday — Moderna this time. They really have the process working smoothly now: it’s literally a case of walk in register, get jabbed and go.

Life goes on, the freezer is full, and the presents are all wrapped and under the tree. We’re ready for the next two weeks, so all that remains is for me to wish anyone reading this a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the season.

I spent most of yesterday struggling with an application to which I needed to make a few small changes. And the changes were small, which is why I found it so incredibly frustrating that the end result didn’t work. I tested and tested and tested again and, while all of the individual components worked perfectly, it completely failed when I tried to put it all together.

Today, while out walking, I suddenly realised why it wasn’t working. I won’t bore you with the details, but it relates to the difference between Development, Test and Acceptance environments. What is more interesting is just how much I can solve when I let my mind wander.

I really need to get out more.

I’ve been a bit quiet over the past week or so, both online and off, and there’s a reason for this. On Sunday 9th May — Mother’s Day in Belgium — I discovered, quite spectacularly, that I suffer from hypertension and have just spent the last week and a half in hospital.

This proved to be quite a surprise to me because I never get ill. Over the course of my career I have take a grand total of one day off ill, so I was slightly shocked to be told that I have been suffering from this for the past ten years. The doctors were surprised, too, and I have found myself having to answer several slightly incredulous questions.

The main challenge for the hospital has been finding a combination of drugs that can safely keep my blood pressure withing reasonable levels. Having concluded that the best combination for me is all of them, they have finally let me go.

Not surprisingly, I’ve done very little — well, nothing — while in hospital and have a bit of catching up to do. So if you suddenly see me popping up on week-old blog posts, now you know why.

Take care of yourselves, folks, and make sure you see a doctor more regularly than I do (did). You never know what might be lurking.