July 2007 - Posts
Sunday morning at 09:20 hours GMT+1, My wife Sandra gave birth to our second daughter Nele.
Her full name is Nele Ann Sara van Dooren. She weighs 3.06 kg, and is 48 cm long. Both the mother and the daughter are fine.
Nele had been very active Sunday evening, and for longer than average. At 9 PM, Sandra told me that something was going on inside.I called my parents to tell them it was time to come and get our oldest daughter Kato so that we could go to the hospital.
At 23:15, my mom and my brother showed up. We installed the car seat and I went to wake up Kato. She was a bit groggy from being woken in deep sleep, but also curious why her grandmother and godfather were there so late. We had started preparing her for several months now so that she understood what was going to happen.
We did not know if she understood, but apparently she was very talkative in the car on her way to my parent, talking about how mommy and daddy went to the hospital to get the baby out of mommy's belly.
The birth process took 12 hours, from the 1st light contraction to the last painful push. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the strength and self-control Sandra showed during labour.
Here she is: the newest apple of my eye.:
As I already mentioned before, it's a small world after all. (Hearing that annoying Disney tune yet in your head J).
I am writing an article about C++/CLI in which I use a quote from my fellow VC++ MVP Kate Gregory. I did a quick search to find her blog in order to link it to her name in the article. I read a couple of blog posts and to my surprise I found one in which she mentioned a blog post I wrote earlier in which I talked about the viability of C++ in this day and age.
In my blog post I mention that I think VB is ugly and that most people in the C++ forums would agree with me.
Apparently there is at least 1 VC++ MVP (Kate) who likes VB. That is at least 1 very skilled and well respected C++ programmer who likes VB.
So I hereby concede that VB is a full fledged member of the .NET programming world, and that there are even C++ programmers who like it. Just as long as I don't have to like it.
Just a couple of hours ago I received 'The E-Mail' I was hoping to get: The confirmation that my MVP award is renewed as of July 1, 2007.
I am glad I still qualified. These days it is becoming harder to provide meaningful answers in the public newsgroups because of a very simple reason. The traffic has dropped significantly last months. It seems that the online web forums at http://forums.microsoft.com are on the rise.
I am currently participating in the VC++ forums, primarily because the amount of traffic is a lot bigger.
And I have a number of articles still in the pipeline. I don't know when I will release which article though. In 2 or 3 weeks time my wife is having our second baby so I assume I will have one more non mask able priority interrupt J.
Anyway, it will be nice to visit Tech-Ed Barcelona as an MVP. Hopefully the Microsoft people and MVPs I met last year will also be there.