I note that my last blog post has been quite some time ago. I assure you, that's not on purpose, it's just that I've been both busy databasing and away from the office.

We had a very pleasant first two weeks of May in Central Ohio, visiting with Christy's parents. In exchange for their tolerating that their daughter lives 4,000 miles away, we spend every Christmas and sometimes an extra week or two with them. It's not a chore, I assure you, quite the contrary in fact. It gives me an opportunity to practice my American accent - I've been caught saying 'warsh' where the 'r' is really not needed - although according to an exchange-student-coordinator friend of Christy's parents it's obvious I'm not American as soon as I open my mouth <- insert disappointed look here ->.

Visiting there has the added advantage of being able to make useful 'stuff'. Christy's father is a very accomplished woodworker with an extensive workshop. Oddly, he's very indulgent and happy to help me with my weird hobbies (I need to bring him some catapult plans sometime).

Any modeller will know that in due course, you end up with a huge collection of paints. I usually store them in drawers at my desk, but that's not very handy when you're working on a model. The predictable result is that my desk is permanently hidden beneath a clutter of jars. To solve that problem he helped us build a four storey carrousel for a total of 60 bottles of Vallejo paint. We actually have well over that number of jars of paint but this allows us to keep the most common ones within reach. It works perfectly!

Apart from that and general 'hanging out', I spent my vacation reading. First of all, I thought Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities was extremely interesting and should be required reading for anyone who thinks that Victor Davis Hanson's reading of hoplite battle is the only one. The other books I read were not on Ancient Warfare (it was a vacation!), but Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, Detzer's Donnybrook (yes, I like to read US History while I'm there) and Klein and Cathcart's Plato and a Platypus walk into a Bar were all great reads. All in all a very satisfying vacation.

The weeks before and since have been dominated mostly by databases. You see, we prefer to invest in the product, not in a 20,000 euro Customer Relationship Management system. And since I'd built some very extensive database systems previously for the Dutch Journal of History and the Nijmegen university Law Department, I figured I'd give it a shot. The great advantage of building such a system ourselves is that it is perfectly customized and if something doesn't work, we can change it on the spot. The disadvantages are twofold. One is time. The reason I haven't blogged much recently is that working on the database requires most of my limited brain power. The second is time as well. Because we built it ourselves, the database goes through long phases of testing that always take up more time than expected.

The end result, however, saves us even more time. I'd dread the idea of having to manually remind all our individual subscribers to renew, for instance. The database does that for us now. I do need to make the database realize that a new subscription bought right after an old subscription ran out is the same as a renewal. The database as yet is too dumb to figure that out, so my apologies to those who renewed by buying a new subscription and were then reminded to renew.

Rest assured however, that if you send a query from the website or in response to an automated email, you will always get an answer from a human being, normally within 24 hours and often much faster.