I found that sometimes it is difficult to find my thesis, though it is published online at the library of Utrecht University.

For anybody interested in reading it, it can be found at the library website of Utrecht University.

Of course, the contents of this thesis are nice, but a lot of people also like the cover:

It has been quite some time since my last post already again. During my PhD years I really got used to the fact that I had loads and loads of spare time besides work. The main reason for this was that I was living about 15 minutes biking away from the university.

Unfortunately, at the moment I have a lot less time to work for example on SynCE or other things. There are two main reasons for this:

• At the moment I have a commuting time of about 1.5 hours (one-way…. another 1.5 hours in the evening going back)
• All the spare time that I have at the moment is spent on looking for a house

Whenever the second reason has been solved (i.e. we found a house), automatically the first one reason will disappear also :) Currently still in the process of searching though :)

One other major difference in my current working life, compared to my life at the university, is that I am forced to use Microsoft Windows, while at the university I was running Linux fulltime… Although I am customizing my windows computer in such a way that I can start working faster and faster with it, often I get reminded to why I was working with linux all of the time (and still am at home): weird things sometimes happen with the microsoft products…

Although I am not the biggest fan of Microsoft products, I do have to admit that Outlook (despite some weird issues) is a rather nice program. Fortunately, for all the things that Outlook cannot do, you have the option of writing the required functionality yourself in the extremely powerfull macro language provided. During my high school years I did quite some VBA programming to create al sorts of nice things for Microsoft Word.

I already created some nice additional functionality for outlook, some of which I will put online later on (when I have some time, but hopefully before I found the house :). One of the nicest features I added is the possibility of checking each message you send for possibly missing attachments. If you are sending an email that contains the words “attach”, “enclosed”, “bijgevoegd” (=attached in dutch :) ) and the message does NOT contain any attachments, you still get the option of cancelling the send and attach any file you forgot to attach. Though I did see that similar macros already existed, I have tried to make my macro a bit smarter to prevent false positives from happening (i.e. the macro thinks you forgot an attachement, but this was not the case). I will try to put this enhanced version online either this afternoon or this weekend.

Since at the company I work for not everybody is having the same outlook version, but most people were interested in using this macro, I ran into the stupid issues of deploying outlook macros. My current macro set is working for outlook 2002, outlook 2003, and outlook 2007 without any modifications. The users only have to copy the latest vbaproject.otm file from the network drive to get all the latest functionality. I even do a check whenever outlook starts whether the version of the macro the user currently has is the latest. If not, after a confirmation of the user, outlook is closed and the two folders where the user has to copy the vbaproject.otm to and from are opened. I wished I could do this part automatically also, but so far I have not found a possibility for this (i.e. updating the vbaproject file while outlook does not have to closed).

If anybody has a good idea on how to do this last thing, please let me know.

After just a bit over 4 years, last wednesday there was the grand finale of my time as a PhD student: the defense of my thesis, entitled: “Column Generation Algorithms for Machine Scheduling and Integrated Airport Planning”

First there was the dressing up, not only for me, but also for my two paranimfs (My dad on the left and my brother on the right).

Here everything was still relaxing, not too much pressure. After this we got inside and I had to wait in a little room till the start, when the ‘pedel’ would get me.

After I got to the room, there is the defense of my thesis, which lasts exactly one academic hour (i.e. 45 minutes :) ). During this time I must answer questions from the opposition (while my both paranimfs have the comfortable job of just sitting down for 45 minutes ;) )

After the 45 minutes, the pedel comes into the room with the message “Hora est” (it is time). After that the opposition goes back to a separate room where they will discuss whether I am worthy of the title. After this meeting, they come back and below is the picture when I receive the degree certificate out of the hands of my promotor Jan van Leeuwen:

So from this moment on I am entitled to call myself dr. Diepen :)

And before I forget, last monday, just two days before my defense, the friendly gate planners at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol gave me an awesome present: A two hour visit to the tower at Schiphol!!! Since I already had been once on the platform with the gate planners, the tower was the only ‘great’ place at Schiphol I did not visit. I have to say, the view over Schiphol from 67 meters up is in one word: AWESOME!!!

I did have my camera with, but unfortunately it is not allowed to put these online. So you will just have to take my word for it, it is really nice :)

The last couple of weeks have been rather busy for me. First of all there has been the fact that I had to have my PhD thesis finished to get everything to the printer to be able to make it in time for the oral defense of my thesis on the 10th of September. Luckily this all worked out and I got everything in time to the printer.

The fact that I am finished with my thesis meant also that my contract with the university has ended (well, actually, it is the other way, I had to finish my thesis because my contract ended :) ) and this means that I was looking for another job. After filling in my resume on Monsterboard, I got presented with a possible interesting possible vacancy right away. After I sent my resume to the company and had the first and second interview, I signed the contract three weeks ago and will start to work at Paragon (http://www.aimms.com) from monday the 25th on already :)

Luckily the start date of my new job still allowed me to go on holidays, from which I returned last monday. Justyna and I decided that we wanted to have a really relaxing holiday again and not having to do anything. This meant that I lived for almost two weeks without a watch and paying attention to time in the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, even if you have a watch, it does not help you that much there, since they have a different concept of time in the dominican republic, namely dominican minutes and I still don’t know how many ‘real’ minutes one dominican republic minute is, but it is quite a lot ;)

Only a couple of times I had to be present at 8:15 in the lobby (well, dominican time that is, so the bus was never there before 8:45 ;) ) because at that time the bus arrived to pick me up to get to the dive-center. During the vacation I made another 7 dives and I have to say that I really like the diving. Two years ago we also went on vacation to the dominican republic and there I got licensed. After that I didn’t dive anymore, but I have to say that everything went without any problem. The only thing is that I still don’t understand how the dive master (Carlos) was able to stay underwater without using almost any air. After we surfaced we all had about 50 bar left, while he still had 140 bar left. We all had to get a second tank, while after the second dive he still had enough air left to do even a third dive. That was really amazing :)

After we got back last monday, I found an email that my PhD thesis had arrived back from the printer. I really have to say that the result is really great and I am especially happy with how the cover turned out. Now the only thing left for me to do before I finally get my PhD officially is the oral defense at the 10th of September :) Can’t wait for that day now :)

Finally, I will look into an easy backup script for my website, since I don’t want to have this issue of a crashing harddisk happen again :) On the other hand, shit happens ;)