What I've Been Up To

I've been focused on work and family for the past couple of months, but I have not been entirely without bloggable activities.

• My dear wife an I discovered we both like Commissario  Montalbano.  Twenty-two almost-two-hour episodes in a row we are now in withdrawal.  The series has interesting mysteries, an exotic (for us Anglo Canucks) location and culture, and interesting and likeable regular characters.  Yes, there are English sub-titles.
• We also like Commissario Brunettei.  This is a Bavarian TV production; they are (my wife assures me) faithful to the books but, after watching Montalbano, I find the German actors less convincing than I did at first.  Subtitles; you don't so much notice that they are speaking German while you are reading them but when you head to the Kitchen you suddenly notice how they are speaking.  
• I've started taking intro Italian lessons.  Notice the common theme here.
• I've also been reading intensively on the Italian Renaissance.

 So, little of direct gaming relevance but all good fun nonetheless.

At work, I have learned the basics of a scheduling product called Control-M that is definitely new-to-me.  I've also started programming in Perl, which in the role of a "next step up" scripting language is great fun and very easy to use.