Brian Marick blogged about dealing with culture clash and listed some actions a project manager might want to take in order to help make things go smoother in the long run. Most of the suggestions are directly applicable to any software project.

After getting my share of exercise, I just wanted to sit down and relax a bit. So, what does a geek do to relax? Surf the net, of course.

Among the stuff I ended up reading was this story about the makings of Half-Life 2. It's weird, really, since I never really got into Half-Life 1 (actually I'm not even sure if I've ever seen the game). I did get quite hooked up to Raven Shield, though.

Phew. I helped move house this weekend. On Friday, I picked up a rental and headed off to IKEA. We came out approximately $1000 poorer in total from all sorts of new furniture and drove them to the new apartment. The 93-kilogram piece of a bookshelf was a piece of cake compared to the 67-kilogram dining room table, which we ended up ordering a home delivery for... I could've sworn there was a typo and it was really a 167-kilogram package :)

Come Saturday morning and it's time to go shopping for miscellaneous stuff like a couple of new bedsheets, a trimmer, a drill, some screws and bolts, a shaving machine, etc. I meant to buy loads of long underwear too because it's starting to get sub-zero up here in Finland but I forgot those. I'll be in deep remorse for that tomorrow morning when I step out to 0° Celsius and it's blowing at 50 feet per second... In the meanwhile, Kirsi, the one who was moving, started packing things at around 9am (too tired to do it on Friday).

The move itself went as usual. Lots of carrying boxes. Lots of small stuff. She's a she. You know the deal. She had a box full of cosmetics she didn't even remember having. Sigh. Finally, it was time to put together all that new furniture. It went easier than we expected (Kirsi's coworker had bought the same bookshelf and had told her it's "a real *itch" to put together...) but one standalone shelf didn't include the necessary screws so we had to leave it for some other time. I'll probably go and put it on the wall next weekend...

I should've done laundry today. I also should've vacuumed. I also should've eaten real food. I should've done lots of other things. I just wasn't up to it yet. For someone who rarely gets exercise, moving house is more than enough for one weekend.

Now, let's see if I still have enough energy to move this carcass of mine from this sofa over to the bedroom...