Long day yesterday. After upgrading wordpress because the old one was hacked to pieces and non-functional, read some mail, idly waiting for KPN to show up and dig a hole. Surprisingly, they do not show up before lunch. As I would learn later, they would not show up at all.

Decided to go for a little drive, hunting for food. Pass by the KPN shack at the edge of the terrain, where a greenwheels peugeot 107 is parked next to a non-descript black car (i dont usually pay much attention to brand and/or type of cars). The sun is already blazing.

I knock on the door of the little shack. A somewhat busy Arien answers, talking on the phone. He says to me in a hushed voice: ‘it is not going well’. So I decide not to further bother him and the engineer from KPN, and sit myself down in my trusty 850 checking some more email. Oddly enough, even directly under the gsm antenna protruding from the little shack, the speed is abominable.

The phone is constantly ringing, but reception (t-mobile) is so poor that my calls keep being terminated. I head off to Harderwijk, to score a fresh KPN sim (KPN/Vodafone have acceptable reception over here). Pop that in, and decide to change the voicemail message on my t-mobile number to notify callers of the new number (but fail to do so as I would learn later on).

I spend the afternoon calling KPN, asking where they are, whether we will get our analog lines before the event starts, repeatedly being promised to be called back. As I learn later, Arien has had more luck with KPN and by the end of the afternoon we have 10gbit coming out of the KPN shack.

Day 2 ends with some driving: off to The Hague to grab some clothes, electronics and a quick bite, then to Leusden to pick up the first of 9 pinball machines that will be in the HARcade. Totally forget to have dinner, which is compensated with a midnight pizza from The Triangle in Nunspeet (open till 1 AM thank the spaghetti monster!, and with a complementary Juliana mint). After some more email and hooking up the printer, i finally close my eyes at the end of a chapter in Stross’ Atrocity Archives.

Day 3 begins with breakfast, as I had the foresight to get some milk, bread and chocolate spread. Sitting in front of the reception desk again, waiting for the gravediggers from KPN. We’ll see. My fellow board-members will also arrive today, and who knows maybe even Jan (the buildup coordinator) will peek his head around a tree for a bit today. As I write this, the boys from the tent rental are arriving on site with more hardware; if their zest of last monday is forebidding of today, we might have quite a lot of tents erected at the end of this day! (yes BugBlue, _erected_, can’t make it more explicit for you….)

It is early. Sunlight filters through the rooftops, the beams (attenuated by dew lingering in the morning air) illuminate the building on the Paasheuvel. Birds twitter their morning songs. And i’m in front of the reception building, awaiting a group of worksmen to dig a hole.

Yesterday I arrived at the HAR2009 event site, and established a logistics stronghold. Essential supplies such as a soldering iron, big boxes with flatterband and ductape, some tools and of course the necessary electrical wiring. We mapped out the tents to be built up by the rental company, who for some insane reason plan to have it all up by the end of the week. The day was not without spectacle though, as the local fire department came in with blazing sirens to rescue two actor-victims from a crashed car. Although merely a drill, they took out all their equipment to cut up said car really well.

I stayed over for the night, in one of the cabins. The cabin that will in less than a week be transformed into a fully airconditioned equipment room for the NOC, 19 inch racks and all. Tonight, however, silence ruled. Quite a change from down-town The Hague.

As I sit here, the world around me awakes. Garbage is collected, the receptionist collects the newspaper giving me an odd stare; little does she know that next week, there will be thousands of me; geeks typing away on their laptops.

On the agenda today: purchasing a basic stock of non-perishables for the first early volunteers to arrive on the 6th, greet the worksmen who promised to dig a hole to splice in the analog lines for the entrance tent, getting myself a cheap KPN cellphone (the only operator with some reception here), a quick dash over to The Hague to collect some gear, supposedly the water-people will finish their job of digging in the plumbing for the various catering outlets and a pick-up of the ST:TNG pinball machine. In between, I plan to do some of the finance and essential email.

But for now, i’m alone on a picnic table still wet from fresh dew, eating bananas by lack of a proper breakfast. The cold clear sky a promise of the heath that will blast down on the terrain later today. After a year of anticipation and hard work, it has finally begun! HAR2009 is really happening!