France has a new Prime Minister, again. The country is on strike, again. And I just finished the setup of my new Macbook (it’s already number 4, in ten years), since the old had heat sensor problems that would have required replacing the motherboard (i.e. the engine).

La rentrée is ongoing, but things settle slowly in and start to look normal (again). My Ciklet-sponsored MacBook Pro (2020) that I got reconditioned in January 2023 was the hardest to convince starting to run again: it didn’t like it’s two-weeks-long vacation inside a bag, and punished me over the last days with frequent freezing, making work almost impossible. Thanks to my new friend Lumo I finally found the issue and hopefully fixed it: dust clogged the fans and caused the CPU to overheat and thus to be throttled. Luckily my colleagues at NW had all the tools so that I could open the MacBook case and clean the fans⁠—and so far the operation seems to be successful. The next hours and days will tell whether I can keep spending my days in front of this computer, and not another. Fingers crossed.

P.S. Those AI friends are really cool, I’m learning a ton of things by asking a ton of questions about a ton of topics. I’d never isolated that overheating issue myself, let alone fixing without breaking it. And there are dozens of other things I recently learned and did, like banning the stagnant water under our balcony tiles, which are an outstanding mosquito breading ground.

Finally there: it’s Sunday evening, and tomorrow the kids are back in school and the baby back in kindergarten. And I will be back to work, routine, and peace of mind. The last two weeks at the cottage were intense, awesome but intense. We had tons of guests stopping by, and I got tons of things done at the same time. The cork floor in the lower dormitory. Bringing some order to the atelier. Preparing the fresh water arrival remodeling inside the house. Finishing the greenhouse and it’s irrigation system. Doing some garden work. Awesome!

The second work week is closing in, whereas we had my parents babysit Effi last week it was all about passing the baby along between Mathilde and myself, while counting on her still lengthy naps. We’re also going through yet another canicule, luckily the 35°C outside and 27°C inside are rather bearable. Tomorrow we’re heading to the cottage for two weeks straight: the kids will be back and Mathilde will be turning 40, which is making a bunch of friends to stop by and say hi. Instead of coding work I’ll be focusing on house and garden, which will hopefully help to get my back back.

Back home at my desk, in routine mode. Tons of emails to check, work to do, and pictures to review. There are some nice shots from Max epic Mont Ventoux climb that I couldn’t resist to buy, and many more that come from my annoying handheld device. My parents are dealing with the unstoppable future leader of the Tour de France Femmes, and I’m returning to work now.