# Good Things

OK, let's just focus on the good things.

## Health

My intestines are clean, the desease has not returned meaning that I
do not need to take any meds. I have to inject B12 and take something
to bind the bile acids, but that's it. No cortisone and no
immunosuppressives.

Furthermore I can use my leg again. I was at the clinic where they
examined it using two different ultrasound machines and found only the
residues of the thrombus from four years ago. It must have been a
superficial vein thrombosis.  
Fortunately I have no pain now, it is only slightly swollen.

## Packages

On Sunday we spent four hours preparing the Christmas presents for the
rest of our families as this year no one will visit us and we won't
travel either. Our parents are getting old, we do not want to risk
infecting them. And really we can't afford to visit them as they are
living in another EU country which means quarantine. I could work from
home, but my wife cannot.

We got lucky with our packages as we brought them to a Packstation, a
self-service package booth run by DHL. A truck was parked nearby and
as we put the boxes into the compartments a man approched us and asked
if he should take those boxes too as he was emptying the Packstation
just before we arrived. Oh sure, we replied, so the boxes were already
en route to their various destinations on Sunday. We were a bit
surprized that they work on Sundays, must be because of the many
packages sent before the holidays. The truck had no sign of belonging
to DHL, but that is no real surprize as DHL and the postal service
employ a great number or subcontractors.

## C

As the end of this horrible year is approaching I thought I could
automate creating phlog post archives, so simply moving posts from the
previous years into their own sub-directory.

I also though why not do it in C? Then I was a bit confused whether it
is worth the effort for something you run once a year. Wouldn't it be
easier just to do it by hand? Or with a small shell script?

No. I have to use VBScript in my daily job and I am super happy when
an occasional C# task is assigned to me. I also do some TypeScript
mainly for automating some tasks in VS Code.

So I used pure C and it was real fun. Of course a shell script or even
Python would have been easier and completed faster, but I really liked
using C. My first and only C book is from 1996 and apart from using C
in school I only did some small microcontroller projects with it. 

Last year I found a great [C book by Jens Gustedt][0], but I did not
read it. Maybe during the holidays...

When I'm on vacation I always am full of project ideas, but never
manage to complete any of them... At least now I completed my phlog
archiver, but I am only going to run it at the very end of 2020.

## The Two of Us

As I mentioned we do not expect to see anyone at Christmas, so there
will only be the two of us. My wife had her last day working today,
from tomorrow on she is on vacation, too.

[0]: https://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/