Some people might have been wondering why it has been so quiet on the RIFE front and also why I haven't been blogging more regularly for almost half a year.

First of all, I started working at Terracotta in April 2007 and it has taken me a few months to get comfortable with the code-base, the concepts and the architecture. The technology is truly amazing and my colleagues are extremely smart and friendly. I've been learning a lot about concurrency and clustering and made a couple of friends that are already very close to my heart.

Then, in fall last year, it seems that fate decided to show us that life can't always be smooth sailing. I'm not complaining, we have been surprisingly fortunate for many years but this series of unfortunate events followed up on each-other so quickly that for the first time in history I truly took an effort to write sincere New-Year wishes to my friends and family. Wishing someone 'good health' and 'joy' got a whole new meaning.

First, I had a motorcycle accident and my girlfriend did so too a couple of weeks later. We weren't significantly hurt, but it does shake you up for a while.

After that, our youngest daughter almost lost her eye after hitting her head against the table corner. She has nothing permanent except for a small scar in the corner of her left eye.

A few weeks later, we were all evacuated out of our house with carbon-monoxide poisoning. Our oldest daughter escaped death by a couple of minutes and we had to get intense oxygen treatment to reduce the CO levels in our blood. People, really, get CO detectors! CO poisoning is NOT something that only happens to others! You can die from it in a matter of minutes! I installed the detectors now and had the source of the CO leak fixed.

Just after that, my father was found on the floor of his kitchen by the police. They forcibly entered his house at my request, since he hadn't been seen by anyone for several days. He's got permanent brain damage due to many years of alcohol abuse and will most certainly live the rest of his life in an institution, not remembering 99% of his life and constantly confusing dreams and reality.

Finally, I lost my dog after she escaped from the enclosed field at the back of our house. After calling all animals shelters in the area, alerting the police and putting up many posters, someone finally contacted us saying that they had found her.

All in all, after looking back, I actually consider ourselves lucky. All of these events could have had severe consequences, but finally the outcomes were all much more positive than what they could have been.

Happy New-Year to everyone! I wish you a soothing 2008 with lots of joy and pleasant surprises, and also an excellent health for you and your loved ones!

I'm getting back in the saddle. I will be working on RIFE again and will be blogging more frequently.