Getting back to normal

Been a fun filled few months...well not really, work work and work have been getting in the way of pretty much everything, not just school work, which is all encompassing at certain times but the fun home stuff occasionally has reared its ugly side.

SDK bugs, miscommunication and on occasion sheer inability to figure some things out has made a lot of the "fun" work quite frustrating. Of course its a learning processs and I have learned a lot, but still I have spent a lot of time with furrowed brow trying to understand why the cosmos is so against me.

But these things do eventually get overcome, with help from others or realisation of the solutions.
I submitted a delayed but impressive milestone delivery on Friday after a mega effort of coding and SDK bug hunting, and feedback from the clinets is very positive. Having broken the technical back of this project I can now throttle back a bit and focus on polish and content issues which will still take time but I don't expect them to be anything like as intese or frustrating.

As well as a restful weekend, I've had a few chances to engage in one of those social life things again...its been fun going out with old friends and meeting some new ones. I foresee a lot of nice new things happening in the coming months. 2012 will be a turning point for me I think. Lots of big changes in most aspects of my life.

I am now incidently officially a Dutch company or something like that, I had to register with the local Chamber of Commerce or Kamer ven Koophandel as its called here, to sign up with the tax office and get my dutch VAT (BTW here) number so I could invoice for my work.. Within days I had accountants cold calling me after my bookkeeping business...oh dear!!

Thats now done with help from my long time (since I got here) tax advisor and getting a few of those invoices paid will finally let me sort out my credit card which the bank insisted I clear before they will transfer the mortgage into my sole name. That then finally cuts the last of the "legal" ties with Bina which will allow us both to move forward as finanically seperate entities, somethings considered important here...
For me it'll mean a bigger finanical load, well it has done since she left and I've managaged so far, so not going to be able to indulge my GAS quite as much but clearing the decks now means more that adding to my collection.

I don't plan to do a huge amount of freelance work, it really has been quite tiring getting back into it, but then again, the fact I don't really have a decent pension plan might make it something to consider as a tuck things away plan...and of course it is good relevent experience for the day job which may be needed when the subject of getting a masters comes up next time as it will...but thats a rant for another day.

I still find this policy of insisting on a masters to be short sighted and counter productive.. In time, (hopefully a long time)  when the core group of current people from industry have moved on and all that are left are the academics that are now being hired I wonder if the quality we have managed to achieve with so much hard work will ever be the same......no point dwelling on it..not yet.



Ahthankyew