My life has been quite stressful this week. This is not only an excuse for not posting, but a real state of mind. The main source of my stress is work; I don’t think it’s been that bad for a long time. Mostly a couple of very big important tasks that I don’t get to during office hours because of a lot of other management tasks that get in the way and are usually more urgent.

Once again, I have to spend most of my weekend working, and probably next weekend will be the same.

This time it really got to me. I spent much of the afternoon crying on SkySurfer’s shoulder, feeling that I have a lot work to do, which stresses me so much that it numbs me. This, in return disturbs me from concentrating on my work which only stresses me more because the work is not being done.

I am guessing the next couple of weeks will be very quiet around here, mostly due to my workload, which will both keep me away from blogging and prevent anything interesting from happening in my life.

Hopefully, this will not become a permanent state, or I might go mad.

The Webblogs Awards 2004 are upon us, with many new and exciting blogs and related sites to go through and find new gems. Things are a bit busy at work at the moment, so I haven’t had the chance to do any reading yet today, but I hope I’ll get to check out some of the nominees soon.

Go explore and cast your vote!

A soar throat and a bit of coughing is the kind of sick I’ve learnt to live with, but a broken signalling handle?!

No, it’s not me; it’s Benten which is poorly. When I bought it the signalling handle was already not fully functioning and wouldn’t stop automatically when the wheel is turned. That was OK; it gave me a bit of a feeling of riding a scooter, which is fun. However, today the handle broke completely, and half way home it decided to just rest its heavy head downward and keep the left signal on. I tried to hold it up or keep it straight for a bit, but it was just too tired.

Tomorrow morning Benten will be checked in at the local Subaru garage. I hope it won’t hurt too much.

It was a quiet weekend. Finally a bit of relaxation and catching up on sleep.

We went for a short walk in the park yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home. There were some things that just called to be immortalised.

In the evening we got to feel a bit sophisticated by going to a film in the Tel Aviv Cinemateque’s British Film Festival. It was Bright Young Things, and I didn’t realise that it was the opening film of the festival and that Stephen Fry was going to talk about his movie. Needless to say, I was quite excited to see him on the stage. The movie was not bad. The story was a bit lacking, but the directing was brilliant with some extraordinary atmosphere scenes and very good acting.

In other news, Oded started a blog. Still very early days, but he’s working on it. There are already some nice pictures in the gallery.

This weekend SkySurfer and I took advantage of the good weather to make a catch up trip and complete some of the sightseeing we missed during our Northern weekend.

This time we stuck to the Western Galilee, visiting the grottoes at Rosh Hanikra and the old city of Akko, and finishing the day by visiting friends in Haifa. It was a good day, and I was knackered by the time we got home. I think I’m going to need a bit of rest for a change.

SkySurfer’s friend in Haifa is a photography enthusiast, and was very happy to talk with me about my photography and teaching me a few tricks, so I’m hoping the content of the photolog will be improving. Meanwhile, make sure to check out the photos from our catch up trip.

At an important session at CES on Friday, a panel of industry experts has finally given a voice to women consumer’s plight to be treated seriously and with the required respect. Finally what we’ve felt for so long is being put on the table and encouraged to improve.

Luckily, I tend to purchase my gadgets online, preventing me from the horrible exposure to pushy salespeople described in the BBC News article about the CES session, but the mistreatment of women as electronics consumers has not passed me by. The industry is pointing all its sales effort in selling to “Toys for Boys” to men, ignoring a very important slice of the consumer market, technology savvy women who spend more than $50 billion on gadgets in the US only.

The frightening trend is also encouraged by the technology media, with magazines such as T3 or Stuff (links are not provided in protest), who constantly decorate their cover with scantly clad women holding the featured gadget as an obvious way of attracting male audience only.

It is about time the industry and its representatives will start treating women with respect and stop insulting our intelligence with the stereotypical idea that women do not understand or do not enjoy technology.

Maybe now copy protection will finally be proved as the disgrace it really is.

A Belgian consumer group has finally filed a law suit against major record labels claiming the copy protection technology also stops them from playing their legitimately purchased CDs on some devices and making legitimate back-up copies.

I can fully appreciate their sentiments. I haven’t yet had an incident in which such CDs have damaged my hardware, but they do disturb my listening in some situations. The player that is bundled with the copy protection software is very buggy and lacks many of the important features that can be found on other players, such as WinAmp or even Windows Media Player. For example, when I try to listen to music at work, using my PC, the copy protection player keeps “eating up” CPU resources, making it impossible to use the computer for work at the same time.

Copy protection indeed sucks. I hope that law suit makes a good precedent.

I’m feeling a bit down at the moment.

It’s the weekend, and the morning was sunny and gorgeous. Instead of spending my morning in the park with SkySurfer, I had to head to the office in horrific traffic in order to try and get some control over a very long tasks list that has been stressing me out in the past few weeks.

The place is empty and quiet, and I’m listening to Sea Change, which makes me want to shed a tear. Maybe it’s not a good album for a day like today.

In addition, I was checking out the snow pictures of Portland, and realised that I so much want to travel again. Go to places I’ve never been to before, enjoy the quiet snow and the holidays season where it’s celebrated, and just be somewhere other than here.

I have mentioned My Love many times before, but it’s about time I introduced him properly.

My love is SkySurfer – a lovely man who has been making me happy for almost three months now, spoiling me rotten and even doing his best to get along with Sebastian.

As the nick name suggests, he is a former real sky diver, who has jumped from many planes and cranes, doing many things that I would never dare (including dating me ). He also likes fast cars, gadgets, computers and I think he is madly crazy about me too.

Please welcome SkySurfer to the world of Deviant Brainwave.