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Today must be some unannounced ‘test’ day for both Kristel and myself, things don’t seem to stop…

She just called me that she was at Hertz, trying to pick up the

reserved rental car and het VISA Credit Card was blocked!!!! WTK, damn!!

Apparently her Credit Card info was stolen and misused in Rome, so VISA blocked her card…?!?

After making phonecalls around the globe they were willing to unblock

the card temporary, so she could rent the car after which they directly

blocked the card again.

Pfewww, another stressy hour for her as Kim dropped her of at Hertz and already left, there was no other way to go.

Since we were able to manage the situation, I think fortune turns and I WILL make the flight tomorrow! YEAH BABY YEAH!!

Sometimes things don’t happen as you planned…

Warning…this will be a longgggg post 🙂

I started of so good this morning, got up at 6am (aahhhhhh! Was lucky

to get at least ‘some’ hours of sleep!), packed the last things and

left home around 7.30am. No traffic jam (amazing, even for a Saturday

:)) and cam e at the airport around 8.15. First bummer, it was supposed

to be THE busiest day of the year, yeah…indeed, it was! Anyway, made

it all the way to the check-in and got asked the flightnumber for the

connecting flight in Frankfurt (to Calgary)…the nice lady at the

check-in counter couldn’t trace it for me (WTF???)…how should I know?

I’m on a (crew)standby ticket! Kristel didn’t pick up the phone, so I

had to place a wake-up call to Rob & Stef and ask them to check it

on the Net (pity my boss doesn’t allow  GPRS). Long story short,

we managed and I got on the plane to Frankfurt!

Part 1 of 2 succeeded, the day looked promising…

I enjoyed a mere 3.5 hours transfer in Frankfurt and arrived at the gate…ooch…BUSYYYYY! 🙁 🙁

Flight was completely full and already overbooked and I was left behind

with 14 others….DAMN! This means that ALL plans had to be

changed…and, no Canada for me today 🙁 : (

Got in contact with Kissy who obviously was as disappointed as me!

Together we decided my best option would be to return to Amsterdam and

try other flights from Amsterdam on Sunday…my first day off was well

spend, trip to Frankfurt and back, sjeez!!

One would think things can’t be easier; return back to Amsterdam after

making sure my luggage was following me. Well, Murphy joined me on my

flight…bagage reclaim in Amsterdam airport dropped shitloads of

luggage except mine!!!!

It turned out that the bags were still in Frankfurt, waiting for the

Sunday flight to Calgary, WTF again! Can’t people just for once NOT

screw up???

No drama, it just took time (and time and time)…hopefully my bags

would still make it back before I planned to leave on Sunday, so I

could take them with me, NICE!

By now I am back home with a ticket for tomorrows flight in my pocket

(again the cheap crew-standby fare). Was just called that my bags will

be put on the Sunday Frankfurt-Calgary flight afterall. Only thing I

have to do is make it on my flight from Amsterdam (via Vancouver to

Calgary)…easy rigth? Orrrrrr….euhhh, I already know by now that the

flight is full and 9 other standby passengers are having higher

priority…guess I need some help from the cosmos tomorrow!

All in all a nice day, saw Frankfurt airport and it seems my bags have a higher chance of making it….amazing!!

So, wish me luck…no further postings means good news!!

btw. my alarmclock is set to 6am again, people who know me will perfectly understand my feelings 🙂

Dudes & dudettes, it’s time for my holidays to start! Canada, I’m on my way…time to see Kissy again! YEAH BABY YEAHHHH!

3 weeks of driving ‘n hiking through the wonderful nature of the Canadian Rockies!!!

Don’t expect many updates, then again…you never know! 🙂

Catch ya’ll later!!!

William Newton Clarke: “Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821 – 1881): “The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”

As most people in the blogosphere know, Dave Winer

is the ‘Big Daddy’ of weblogs (created the RSS format on which blogs

are built). Now he is working on a new project, the OPML Editor!

OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language and is the driving

file format used for outlines and outliners. Outlines basically provide

a way of presenting (digital) information/lists in a structurized and

hierarchical form, whereas outliner applications give you the means to

read and edit your outlines.

More info on the OPML website…

Back to the OPML Editor;

Dave has done it again!! He released his OPML Editor (we’re at v0.55 at

the moment) which is providing a great way of working with outlines and

use those outlines for your blogs, podcasts or just good’old plain

websites.

I have downloaded and installed the application yesterday and directly got the feel of it…5 minutes later: BOINGGG!

Perhaps the power of OPML and Dave’s OPML Editor is not so apparant in

the beginning, but I believe this will become an integrated part of

‘Web 3.0’, ‘Blogs 2.0’, ‘Podcast 1.0’  🙂 🙂

Will be playing more with this soon (after my holidays though!), so stay tuned!

In response to Google Maps, Microsoft released Virtual Earth last

Sunday. It will be interesting to see how these kind of services

progress in the future.

Microsoft will however need to work hard on updating their database, two of the most visible errors:

– A painful one! the Twin Towers, still in downtown Manhattan

– this one must be on purpose, ah? Apple HQ in Cupertino is wiped out

Arthur Rubinstein: “I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”

YESSS…it’s my last week in the office before my holiday in West Canada!!

No doubt it will be hectic @ work for the remaining 4 days, but all for

the better cause…3 weeks of doing nothing and enjoying amazing

nature, YIPPIKAJEEE!

We’ve rented a car and will cruise in a weeks time from Banff via

Jasper NP to Vancouver (basically the northern route).  The plan

is to spend around one week at Vancouver Island and then return to

Banff via the ‘southern’ route…can’t wait!! 🙂

Will bring all camping gear with me as we’ll mostly be out camping

(& hiking ofcourse!). Luckily one’s allowed a travellers friendly

64kg (!!) on the flight, wonder who wants to be my caddy. 🙂

OK, OK, it took me some days to recover…have to say, life will never be the same after Pohoda 2005!!

Robbert and I met many new ‘dudes and dudettes’ :)…friends for life?

Who knows, but for sure very interesting people who which we had a great

time with!

Some photos can be found here.

Our ‘neighbors’ on the campgrounds took them…thx Michal (aka Smok), Eva & Veronika!!!

Our own pictures can be found here

(on my .Mac-page to avoid too high traffic on my own domain…sjeez, m

getting crazy of the bandwidth-crap that my provider puts me through…)

Am going to the Bazant Pohoda 2005 tomorrow! It’s a pop/rock festival in Slovakia, which I went to (one day) last year after visiting Slovakia for work.

Will go together with Robbert, heaps of fun. We’ll leave at 5:30am (brrr) to drive ‘just a mere’ 1250km tomorrow.

The festival is Friday and Saturday, Garbage and The Prodigy are headliners, GREAT!

We’ll have some time on Sunday to visit Bratislava and drive back to home sweet home Monday.

It will be pretty intense, but am really looking forward to this short

break. Feel I deserved it, having working my ass off the last months!

Was kind of ‘lucky’ to get my car back from the garage today at 17:30h

(pffff!!!)…pity though I couldn’t drive the Mercedes rental to

Slovakia 🙂 well, the Laguna is also a great car for these kind of

trips!!

No updates expected the coming days, just partying in da field! 🙂

Catch ya’ll laterrrrr!!!

Fear is one of the strongest yet negative forms of energy, strangly

enough it seems to be the most ‘popular’ way of feeling nowadays.

So-called terrorists are trying to feed some more into our communities…well, we’ve got news for them: we’re not afraid!

Mainstream media jumps onto the podcasting-train…CNN is one of them.

Subscribe here…for those who have no clue what podcasting means, check this out!

It’s amazing to see how the Londoners are picking up everyday life

after the brutal terrorist attacks last Thursday…their mayor sums it

all up: “you will fail“

So, am going to the hairdresser tonight…life just goes on, even after ‘black’ yesterday.

Wish me luck! 🙂

CNN.com: Near simultaneous explosions rocked the London Underground network and at least one bus at the morning rush hour.

Please don’t tell me this is happening all over again…

First picture from the Rockin’ Park festival…more to come later!

ZDNet.com:

The European Parliament has rejected a controversial measure that would

have created a single method of patenting software throughout the EU.

Kissy uploaded new pictures, check’em out! Can’t wait to go there!! 🙂

NASA.gov: Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July With Deep Space Fireworks.

Where science meets Hollywood? It’s like Armageddon meets Independance Day: ID4!

Unreal if you think about it…