I've been playing with Ruby this week. It's like a next-generation Perl, with most of Perl's standard modules and functions converted to classes and methods, giving a truly object-oriented scripting language; much more true to the notion than Python.

It's a little odd learning to think in terms of Ruby's constructs, but I'm having fun and I like it a lot.

I got a copy of Kylix Professional for Christmas, too, so I should really start playing with that and reawaken my old love of Pascal and Modula-2.

Homesickness for Amsterdam is becoming acute. I'd love to get home for a while, even just a few days. Since the introduction of the Euro, I wouldn't even recognise the money now.

The USA is starting to feel much like a job that I've outgrown and need to resign from. The sense of adventure and novelty value that were strong when I first came here have evaporated. What to do? Our immediate future is here (Sarah's job is going very well), but I definitely want to start thinking about how I might engineer our smooth migration back to my homeland in the not too distant future.

Plans for the wedding are proceeding apace. I need to build an RSVP system out of CGI scripts and MySQL to take care of the invitations. So much to do, so much to think about.