weblogs work

After the disturbing news my colleague with cancer got (cancer cell in her blood) and the blow in the face my colleagues and I felt when the news was announced, she will be at the yearly daytrip.
At that day the oldest colleague (61) will resign. For that we made a birthday calendar. Maybe we should fill it with our birthdays. Now each block (total 12) has made an own front for one of the months on the calendar. Of course there will be a present, a fake fake present and a present of the Service under which we're working.

Weblogs in New Orleans seem to work during the hurricane. Telephones and mobile phones didn't work. I just noticed.

How was your Monday?

Mine was okay. I had a day off work. It was my day to get some sleep, to cycle a little and almost forget to pay my taxes.
I called the taxman because there is a inregularity in the way I should pay.



At the river I saw plenty of geese






Also this specy, probably family of the camel.
On the background there are some Dutch cows. I love those cows. There are fewer walking around on the land but still they are part of the context. However I must admit that the animals didn't have my interest shooting this picture.

Yeah, and there was hurricane Katrina. It's unbelievable what nature can do. And Fysics can explain.

Woke up at 8.30 am.

I was going to be a wonderful day. I made 2 croissants and had my yogurt and I didn't forget my pill.
I read the newspaper (opinions and an article for instance about foster parents and families) and a magazine with an article about youngsters in their twenty's who change believe from Christian or Atheist to become a Muslim.
The article gives the answer. It's only a sign of time. In the sixties the Marxism came up and the seventies had Bhagwan and Hare Krishnah.
In fact this mixing of cultures is good. It gives more understanding.
In the Netherlands we have the multicultural society. After the murder of Dutch right wing politician Pim Fortuyn by an animals rights activist and the murder of Theo van Gogh by a Religious Fascist this multicultural being of the Dutch society is changing rapidly. The firm language of certain politicians against defenders of the multicultural Holland. It's almost a slapstick and you could laugh if it wasn't the reality.

I had my cycle tour today almost 3 hours against a fierce wind. Happily I'm not in New Orleans in the next 48 hours. Take care....

Just a normal Saturday.

I took it the easy way. I finally put together my bike. At 6 pm I went for a ride. It turned out to be an intensive short one, 1 hour and 1:30 minutes. Tomorrow at 1pm I'll have a long intensive bike-ride. So I store the stats on IPOT and go to bed.

Weekend

Summer might be back for a week. According to predictions in the middle of next week temps go up to 27 degrees C. I like that because in the evening I got to ride twice. The weather might be just fine for cycling.
What I got to do now is go to bed on time. That means now. Enjoy the weekend.

Bad weather

Due to bad weather a short update. I'm not living in Switzerland nor Austria or Germany (Bavaria), what a water. The rain the got there didn't fall in Portugal. The thunder storm I saw here passing my house was huge. Happily it missed my house, however I can hear the rain slashing against the window and the wind blowing while the thunder finds it's way east.
extraordinary, it was a relative fresh day with stable weather. Maybe this will is a signal for a weather change. According to the weather service there will be summer again after the weekend, Monday 25 degrees C.
Well I bought new tires so I can cycle again. Still have to polish my bike some what. Tomorrow I can do that too, after doing some photoshop work for a colleague who resigns Thursday.

Work first

I'm ready for some sleep I think the last 2 weeks I didn't went to bed until 11.30 pm. In weekends I always make it late. So I got no time to recover. My colleagues can see that now I think.
So what I got to do is care more about getting enough sleep. This evening I only have to clean the wheels of my bike. There will be no television and a little internet.

Bad luck

It was a strange day indeed.
The day started with rain. The last time I had to go through showers to work is what I wrote in this blog. If you can find it!
That's not a bad thing but it had to be dry in the afternoon because the 1 hour cycling time trial was going on at 7 pm. On a slippery road riding is dangerous.
In my mind I had a complete scheme what to do today. Only parts were accomplished.
At work I would have a meeting with someone else. It just slipped through. At 2 pm it was still nasty weather. I would take away a meal from a Chinese restaurant. It appeared to be closed on Tuesdays. I came on time at the cycle track but I was one hour to early, happily the weather changed for the better. When I bought a starting number (10) I still had to wait 20 minutes.
The last 10 minutes before start I was riding down the track and felt that my back tire had a strange vibration (aluminum cycles conduct every malfunction very good). I checked my tires and didn't notice anything.

2 minutes before start I heard the air in the tire suck out. I tried to air it but it came out with the same speed.
What had to be the highpoint of the day became the (almost) deepest point in my cycle history. I mean I never had a flat tire since the one in the first year of my Giant (bicycle brand), almost 8 years ago.
I cycled more than 28,000 kilometers and my second flat tire prevents me to race my race. That's bad luck.

(Now my bike is de-montaged. The wheels are apart from the frame. I'll buy 2 new tires and clean the wheels, the brakes and so on)

Time to imagine

I was home early due to running a batch on the main computer system. At 4 I went home. Because of the good weather and the fact that I didn't have to do anything but my laundry (still waiting) I went for a walk through the neighborhood.

I stopped were I made the panorama above. It's an old river, canalized however, but long ago it was a branch river of the huge undiked Rhine. It was the border of the Roman empire. It's just 500 meters from my house... When I was learning that kind of facts at school years ago, I would not believe that I would now in 2005 live on that border. This is where history is written. Here the fights between the Romans and tribes on the north side of the Rhine (Germania inferior) took place. Imagine it, it is only 2000 years ago.

Who is she?

This weekend was again one with cycling in the middle.
Today I cycled with Ledig Erf. I kept low profile (stayed at the back of the peleton) and came forward when the hills came up. Then the peleton broke in several parts.
In my group also a girl did her work on head of the pack. But we couldn't keep up with the quickest riders. Though I thought that on the river-dike I saw the front riders. Back in Utrecht it appeared that some of them chose the short distance. For one time I didn't, it must be the girl. She cycled very strongly. We were with 4 men. But when we were back on the track to Utrecht she was the only one who could follow me.
I've seen her before I think, but who is she?

Saturday

Click these photo's for a larger image



Sail Amsterdam is going on this weekend. I think I gonna cycle to the IJ-haven, the port were the Tall ships are. It will be very crowded so I think on my racing bike I don't have any chance to see anything. In spite of that I'll go on my bike. When I'm back it must be 100 k. Still got much to do. Got to go to the grocery store, do my laundry and of course got to cycle.

The ride to Amsterdam was good. The front wind I had all the way to Amsterdam didn't mind. I saw some of the ships and made a few pictures.
Back I rode a higher tempo but I did it with ease. I stopped to eat some bread and drank ice tea and coke cola.
Before I went to A'dam I gave my tyres the right pressure at the cycle shop. A young woman with an old second bicycle tried to put some air in the tyre. It seemed that she didn't know how to handle the pump. I offered her my help and put some air in. She was pleased but one second later a loud bang told me that the tyre was gone. It was old and rotten. She had to buy a new tyre.

And at 19.25 pm we had rain. I catched a falling raindrop on my balcony.

Bad news

When I arrived at work my colleagues who were already there were in a good mood, as far as that's possible in the morning.
I was in the mood too. Tonight I would race possibly on the course and I wanted to make something of that in spite of poor work to do. When I had my first coffee and another one I heard some serious talking on the background. Everyone was listening to a phone call of a colleague with Bea our colleague who fights breast cancer.
The phone call has a short history. Let me tell you.

Yesterday Bea visited us after her holiday in Greece. She is battling cancer for 2 years (this is her second time being bald) now. The last year she has pain everyday. Between 2 chemo therapies she went on holiday for 2 weeks. In the second week she got problems with sitting and lying. That was very problematic. Certain areas of her back skin started to get as hard as a turtle shield. Back in Holland she has been transported to hospital immediately. There she was told that it could be an infection and that there might be some cancer cells too. Her skin was examined yesterday. This morning she was told the result.

I didn't hear the telephone call and I asked a colleague what Bea said.
I heard it and I couldn't say anything possibly I turned pale or something.
It seems to be lymphatic gland cancer -translation might be wrong and I'm not medical skilled-.
I heard a colleague say that this might be her death sentence.

When I came home after this horrible day. I called my mom. I hardly could tell her what happened, my emotions were still there. I couldn't get rid of them at work.

Well, tonight I rode some kilometers for myself just to get rid of the emotions.
On such moments you realize how unfair life can be.

cycle

I gonna cycle tonight. Tomorrow too I think. Go to my ipot.

Next week I gonna have a short holiday. I'm gonna cycle from Sealand to Groningen.
Later more about that.

Rectification

The man who received an sms-message (I wrote about it the day before yesterday) from a passenger aboard of the plane crashed in Greece has told it was a fake message. He just wanted to have media attention.
The message he received was fake. It was written by himself. What a miserable joke!!
April 1, foolsday, is far away, but it feels like being tricked.

The coming days are sunny in Holland. Temperatures will rise up to 25 degrees Celsius. I say this because the last 4 weeks we haven't had any decent weather for a period longer that 4 hours. Temperatures were below 20 and as children have had their summer holidays and parents have booked their holiday too, everyone is complaining about the weather.

time to go to bed

Sorry for the spell errors I made. Sorry for not perform a spell check. (esp. Sarah, she hates it.)
Last Friday I did my utmost on the cycling track, and there was my new unofficial record: 35.350 kilometers/hour.
I rode it on the cycling track and that is just wonderful. I should join a real cycling club or something. Real training, real cycling tours for the (B or C) amateurs.

Today I worked and did some telephone calls. After work I went to the bankoffice to have a chat about my thoughts, questions and their answers. I heard before that the bank has developed a new fund investing in property. To decrease the present danger of value decreasing below 100% the bank invests in bonds and property. Guaranteeing a 100% refund after 8 years, upward potential of property and annual dividend.
I de-invested some money from a property fund and also I'll invest in India. First of all only 100 Euro. Just start small. Nobody sets up a big business in one time.

22.45 pm, time to go to bed.

A planecrash and the devil

...went down to Jamaica.

About the planecrash in Greece. It seems that the bodies rescuers recovered have been froozen. This is really a bad death. Imagine, coldness, low pressure, uncontrolled plane and witnesses aboard who sms'ed relatives that they're gonna freeze to death. The pilot is already blue the message said.

Sweet dreams and enjoy life.

After seen Kill Bill, hear this.

Family..

Around 12 pm my mother appeared at the doorbell, carrying a huge cake. Half of it was for my brother.
I made some coffee and already bought some cookies, to be sure. My mother brings often a cake with her.
After the coffee, some talking about nothing, work, some (french) croissants and bread, my mothers friend was on the balcony. Then she saw an opportunity to discuss the matter between me and my brother. We had a fierce disagreement 15 months ago. Since then we didn't talk. I should contact him. He also needs me as a brother she said. In the past in case of disagreements he was the one who contacted me she told me. In other words now it should be my turn.
A weakness of my mother is that she finds it so hard when I'm at their place and she gets a telephone call of my brother if he could come. She is afraid of a confrontation and the tension that goes with it.
I don't like the tension either. Silence, neglecting can be seen as tension too. That's how adults bully, often they don't know.

Since Saturday my blog has one viewer more from Canada than Great Britain.
Holland still leads by the United States following closely.
By the year's end the US will lead. It's amazing.

Weekend, family

What's a weekend worth when it will be rainy, windy and miserable?
That's a moment when your mother invites herself.
I thought that they would go on a short holiday with the brand new camper but they won't. Now they come over here a couple of hours on their way to The Hague.
I could say pass my door please, but isn't that denial of your own mother?
She remains my mother, in spite of the past.
I've been to her place in May. In the midst of July it's time to go back I thought. The weather prevented all this. Now initiative is at her side. That doesn't happen very often.
My sister complained a lot about her attitude. She's so selfish my sister told. But I don't see it like that. She's always willing to help but on her own conditions. She want the best for her children. (don't all mothers want that?)

My sister though misused that helping hand.
The last thing my sister told me was that a girl or woman goes her own way and doesn't stay with her own mother. She chose the side of a Tusenian Frenchman and the family of that man is more important. She said that she preferred the North African culture above the Dutch culture. Okay, on can respect that.....though the way she said goodbye/farewell wasn't really respectful. If something end with a big bang it might be for her more easy to forget.
For me she already slipped away in 10 years or so.

So Ocean, sometimes it's good to stay close with your family and sometimes your in-laws get your best friends.

Between the Beatles and the Stones

The Beatles, I never saw them perform or it must be as a little enfant with the roof concert in London. On January 30 1969 the Beatles performed together for the last time, live, on the roof of Apple's London office.
The Beatles weren't politic at all.
Later I listened more and more to the Rolling Stones. Still no politics.
Then I got the album of Coldplay, politics indeed.

The Stones can't stay behind now in sweet neo con they sing

You call yourself a Christian,
I call you a hypocrite,
You call yourself a patriot,
well I think you're full of shit

Everybody sticks around these 23 words.
The record with this song must be a mega hit in September. However several men won't buy it.

Sometimes I ask myself who is the ax of evil, the evil empire?
It is the unbelievable convervative neo right wing in the United States of America, under which Mr. Bush senior and junior can be shared.

Say we want a revolution....
I want to breakdown your constitution...
Mr. Bush, maybe it's hard for you to be a family man and take your responsibility...

working, cycling and investments

Today I cycled with the Nightingale-riders. We rode out of town through the countryside. The first part I was a front rider. Together with a teammate we maintained an average of 36 k/hr. But after 15 kilometers it went wrong. One rider fell and came with his hand in the wheel of a rider in front of him. We called for medical assistance but it took 20 minutes for them to come. Luckily there was a cardriver who saw it happen. She could provide the unfortunate with an improvised cushion and another driver had a cloth in his car.
When the ambulance arrived the driver parked his car for savety on the middle of the road.
A cardriver who didn't like that too much tried to pass the ambulance knowing that she couldn't get through. When she did it the second time I asked her to keep her patience. She told that she lives very near and wants to go home and then she tells about the BMW parked on the road so that the ambulance has no space.
(The BMW was the scapegoat, people always try to find one)

The lady had no reason. Later an Italian teammate told me that he didn't like that lady. He didn't many words for it -een kutwijf-. One member down on the ground with 7 cyclist, 2 medics and 2 cardivers around him and she complaining that she can't pass. Beyond any reason.

Well, the stocks are surging (are going up). I wanted to make a switch-order tonight but it's too late now. Tomorrow I got to go to work again.

The eagle has landed.

Well the astronauts have had een wonderful spacetrip and they're save on the ground.
NASA, well done.

The funny thing is that they build a ship of trillions of dollars, hesitate when the craft has to land somewhere else due to bad weather and have worries about the ship going back on the back of an airplane and the cost of that operation.
Just go for it NASA!

Penguins....

Wait a moment for the -gif- to load itself.

The space travellers will return.

NASA must be pretty sure they will, else they didn't send 7 people into space. As NASA waits for better wetter it seems they get free publicity and they only want to be sure of optimal conditions.
For most people this kind of travel is still beyond imagniation. Every news item will be consumed. When this morning the news came that the landing was postponed I heard it from a distance. It was like the shuttle crashed again. Immediately I turned on the radio but no news about the spaceshuttle.

Does anybody remember Skylab? It fell back down to earth in western Australia. There was one casualty, a cow. But was the end of Skylab. I remember it quite clear as the prediction were the unmanned craft could hit the ground in Europe.

Yesterday I wrote about robotics in the space exploration. Well, on the NASA site you can read about the next mission which sets off next Wednesday.

Beyond Mars

I am anxious to know how the return of Discovery will be. It's a pity that I ain't got internet-access at work. (It's not work related for me.)

Without spaceshuttle there will be no international spacestation. The international community can't finish the building. Russia can only send men to the ship to keep it alive and to prevent it falling to the earth. So much prestige depends on NASA.
In fact the space station is a waste of money. Is that my Calvinistic view? It must be.
Robots exploring space are much more cost efficient and human lives won't be sacrified.
What is the reason that we send humans into space? We live in an era in which we are much more advanced in technology.
The answer is the prestige and nostalgia, we did it decades ago and we can still do it.
It's like a 7 times Olympic gold medal winner who has to motivate himself to win the 8th gold medal.
We should set new goals with new means; Robotics. We've had Mars, now we should go beyond. (note: mars is still a planet too far for Europe)

60 years ago

1945; The bomb fell, destroying the life's of many.
So blame science for it. Scientist knew what they were doing. They were working on the A bomb and they could imagine the destroying power of it if it worked.
When the war in Europe was over, parts of the east were still occupied by the Japanese. Development of the bomb was not too late to make a final end to the war.
So on August 6 1945 "Little Boy" was thrown on the centre of Hiroshima. And this always affects children

2005; Japan knows the effect. We know the effects and still we use nuclear power to deter possible enemies. Japan doesn't, the nation has become a victim instead the instigator of war. They are free of nuclear implements of war. Still Japan is seen as an powerless nation, though it's the 2nd large economy. They should have more power in international bodies like the Security counsel and so on.



I bought myself a decent microwave.

The food was good. (not microwaved yet)

Friday, threats, Hiroshima, little boy

It's Friday, time certainly flied this week. Everybody has a holiday. Work has to be done between September and May.
A colleague, said I'm growing in my job. My co worker should ask himself if the work suits him. Is he qualified for it? I don't know.
The colleague who complimented me said that she has suspected more of my co worker.

Last Tuesday I had a conversation about the Access-application we work with. The man I spoke with said that my co worker waits too long to contact him if he has a problem. My co worker always tries to solve problems with access on his own. When we discovered a malfunction in the application or in the datastoring I was overloaded with information.
I tried to communicate that Wednesday to my colleague. Thursday I was told that it was perfectly told in advance. I also learned that she wanted to change the system of following the quantity of wheelchair's at our clients and warehouses.

Tonight a terror expert of the Pentagon told Dutch TV that Amsterdam should take extra safety measures against threats between August 15 and September 15.
It seems that Al Evil (Al Qaeda) communicates with internet. It means nothing to westerners, but to followers it stimulates the moral.
The Madrid, Istanbul and London attacks were predicted.
What does Nostradamus prophecies say?

Yes, this morning starts the commemmerance of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.
It's a pity for the 140,000 men who lost their life. A little boy who fell on the ground did something that should be forbidden.
"Little Boy" was the codename given to the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on Monday, August 6, 1945. It was dropped from a B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay piloted by Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets.
Look here for more.

Time saver

I don't know how, but yesterday I published my daily blog with the top searches of the hour and the visitor came in. Extraordinary...

Today I ate some Chinese food. No not really Chinese, however very good. It felt good that the quality instead of quantity of the food was good.
I might try some more at Lin Far. It saves a lot of time....

top searches

I read that Technorati estimates the number of weblogs at 14.2 million now. Everyday it increases with 80,000 new blogs. Amazing knowing that I got 5 blogs.
The top-searches for this moment are:
1. Toronto
2. “Paul Hackett”
3. “Air France”
4. “Mighty Mouse”
5. “Leonard Clark”
6. “Intelligent Design”
7. Linux
8. Oscon
9. “Six Feet Under”
10. “Office 12”

People won't find my blog because I don't write about those topics. Intelligent design will come close but that's all.
When you look at the macro phoptographs on this site some people think about ID. I don't, however I find it beautiful to see such a small flower with that fine structure. Everything seems to work and looks sound. Nature is amazing.

About top searches, in my home town after a year the body of possibly Ilona Nemetz, a woman in her thirthies, has been found. She was buried in a park near a school in July last year. Ilona dissapeared and that was strange. She got a lot of media attention and the autorities did whatever they could. It's almost like the Natalee Holloway dissaperance on Aruba.
If the body is really Ilona's than next step is to find her murderer. That shouldn't be too difficult.

Cricket

Tonight I took a picture of the first cricket on my balcony sitting on the sunflower. It feels like summer if it starts to make some noise. It's funny but in France I didn't hear the typical sound of crickets either. Even if it was much warmer during my holiday in les Vosgues et Alsace.
Maybe August will bring some hot weeks with an abundance of crickets.

I wanted to invest some money in India. ABN AMRO has a relatively new fund and it suits me. It's called the Fidelity India Focus fund. However as a risk avoiding small investor I should not buy stock related funds but bonds related ones. So I invest half an hour to find suitable funds and as a result I have to say goodbye to the Fidelity adventure.

11 years ago the whole stock market was booming and I saw it as one great adventure conquering the world on my own behind my desktop.
Reality seemed to be some what different 7 years later (2001). For me too, it's called the bubble. However it didn't hurt me as much as the bad management of certain CEO's of reliable companies in later years.

Pakistani, Indians, Australians and Brittons do play cricket don't they.
Maybe secret services do play it too.

Complaining

I can complain about my house,
about the weather, my work, my health lately, my sister and brother, my father and mother, my relatives, my solvability, even about the world's situation. But I won't. I said more or less a few things about them or it but complaining, no I did not.
But in fact really I think about it a lot. Maybe I am complaining in my head and someday the tension has to get out and my head will explode like the Cracatoa vulcano in 1883. Hopefully it won't.