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My ‘mother in law’ arrived with her friend today. They will be staying for some days and then explore the beauty of Norway for a week, it will be amazing!

The plan was that they would take the family car for their trip to the west, which should normally be OK, since the car was repaired recently…well, apparently not! Even at a second checkup last Tuesday the garage didn’t find anything unusual, but still the friggin’ automobile broke down completely today; again steam and oil everywhere and this time it seems for real…the car was towed to the same garage, we’ll see what they have to say tomorrow…if they don’t fix it, or arrange something I would say: SUE them! Or else, screw them…

Forgive me my foul mood, but I just watched Netherlands being kicked out of the Eurovision Song Contest…jeez, I don’t know why I watch this show, it’s purely political…Moldova to the finals, people c’mon!!

I went to Tusenfryd (wiki) tonight, an amusement park just South of Oslo. It’s heaps of fun riding those rollercoasters (Speed Monster was the best), the sun was shining and there were hardly any queues for the attractions, quite unusual for these kind of parks…yeah, good times!

Oh, and special thanks to my former employer for free entrance, hehe! (they rent the park for all employees two days a year)

My colleague brought me something special from sunny Zimbabwe: a 50 BILLION dollar note!! And yes, I *am* aware that the actual value according to the bank ain’t all that much, still it’s great to have it!

The note was issued on May 15 2008 and expired December 31 2008…and as I wrote in January this year, in the mean time a 100 TRILLION dollar note has been released! I heard that they actually take off several 000’s every now and then and increase the value of the million…sounds strange, eh?

Another interesting thing is that it turns out to be cheaper to use (old) dollar bills instead of toilet paper…HUH?!? So people literally WIPE their asses with dollar notes!!! Hahaha

(full size pictures in my Flickr photostream)

Damn, my Kef Subwoofer (PSW 2010) broke down. 🙁

It seems to be the same problem as two years ago (a noisy buzz whenever the sub kicks in). Last time it got repaired under warranty, provided by my audio specialist, Art’s Audio…I’ll give Arthur a call tomorrow, who knows how far his service reaches! 😉

We’re having an after-ski party with the Trysil–gang tonight, everyone will be there except Per&Ingrid, unfortunately (but I’m sure that Berlin is nice too! 😉 ).

I’m looking forward to the gathering; hehe, we’ll be drinking prosecco wines, having some delicious sushi and indonesian food, enjoying a 2 hour slideshow showing all the 1791 pictures from that one week in Trysil! Most of all however, I’m really looking forward to be together with some amazing friends!

NY Times: ‘Infectious-disease specialists say they understand the logic: surviving the current, apparently mild strain of the virus may be protective if a more virulent strain emerges next fall. But they are generally against it.’

Are they competely nuts???

Thx to Jason Calacanis and Mahalo Answers for the original link.

Yay! I will see the group that I went to Japan with in the Rotary Group Study Exchange (GSE) program, now 5 years ago…we have a lot of catching up to do, it will be great!

You can read more about our amazing trip on gse2004.nl.

My dad is having his Birthday today, congrats!

64, wow…and just one year from the ‘official’ retirement age of 65 in NL. Oh well, he retired some years ago (and has never been as busy! 😉 )

It got quite late last night, so it was good to enjoy a relaxed and lazy Sunday. Muriel, Esther and Saskia, who visited us this weekend, left halfway through the afternoon (it was great to have you girls here!) and I’ve been playing with iPhoto the rest of the day…the ‘Faces‘ feature is really a lot of fun, and making a Slideshows is a breeze, iPhoto in that respect is one of the most complete and fun photo management software packages that I know of.

Next step in my Norwegian cultural integration; attending a concert of an all-norwegian band! So, tonight I’ll be going to the CC Cowboys concert in Oslo. I look forward to some quality Norwegian lyrics, and hope I can understand what they sing…oh well, the beers will taste good anyway! 😉

It was a stunning 20 degrees today, and since it was Labour Day I had the day off from work (as a dutchhead it still feels strange to NOT work on Labour Day 😉 )…anyway, with temperatures like this it is *about* time to change the winter tires for some sticky summer rubber. Gonna test-drive tomorrow!

What a day…no, it’s not important to mention that I bought tickets for the CC Cowboys concert on Saturday. No, it’s not important to mention that I filled in and sent my tax report (just in time)…what does matter is that it was Queensday (Koninginnedag) in The Netherlands today, and some *dumbass* decided to ruine to festivities, killing at least 5 people and injuring many more, by driving his car through the crowd, intending to crash the open car that the Queen was in…I’m silent… 🙁

It has been quite some time since the last issues with one of the cars, so I guess it was time for some repairs…unfortunately.

And of course Murphy decided to strike twice in one week; the bimmer got a 25cm crack in the front window, which had to be replaced. The family-car decided to completely give up last Saturday. It had to be towed to the garage after the motor turned into a steam engine, spreading cool fluid and oil everywhere…it turned out to be a broken waterpump, and some more. 🙁

Total damage for the two events: around EUR 1000,-…darn, I love these weeks, NOT!

(and it wasn’t even time for the Renault to breakdown, as August 27 has become its yearly breakdown day…)

I don’t expect SPAM to ever go away, and luckily most sophisticated tools these days will hide spam related items from everyday use…and, what you don’t see does not exist, right?

Well, it’s still there, and recently I noticed a shift in where spam hits within my domain; the email spam went up 30% compared to a year ago, the comment spam on the blog went down dramatically and is back to where is was before the sharp increase that started last year. Email still seems the way to go for the beloved spammers.

Oh well, I’ve always been a great fan of spam…the canned meat that is. 😉

I bought tickets for the Lowlands festival in August, a festival that I wanted to go to for the past 10 years…it’s finally gonna happen, yay!

I’ll be going with Robbert, Tom and, uhh, about 54997 others…did I already mention it was a popular festival? 😉

Headliners (announced so far) are The Prodigy, Artic Monkeys, Basement Jaxx, Bloc Party and there’re many more to come. Besides music the festival also offers a huge variety of other amusement such as literature, cinema, stand-up comedy, street theatre, etc.

The full name for the festival is ‘A Campflight to Lowlands Paradise‘…well, camping is what we’re gonna do, and paradise it will be then!

The ones following me today on twitter already know my result on the Skarverennet race: I finished! Not bad, eh? Considering that I am dutch, so without cross country blood running through my veins like the norwegians, without too much practice, so basically NO technique! 😉
I have to admit, it was pretty tough and the only way to get to the end was to take it easy today. No drama, I wasn’t competing to get the best time, main goal was to finish and I did! Leaving me completely knackered now, with a party coming up at the cabin where we’re staying with 11 people…I’m gonna try to hang in there and then probably collapse at certain moment…tough times. 😉

I am packing my things for tomorrow big event; Skarverennet, a 38km cross country ski race, oofff…wish me luck! 😉

I noticed that coincidentally today one year ago was the first time I ever tried cross country skiing, nice.

Guess what??

It’s my Birthday today!

And even though the day itself doesn’t mean that much to me (I find it always amazing that one becomes a full year older in just one day 😉 ), I noticed that I made a tradition of posting the event on the blog…

So, Happy Birthday to me! 😉

Could it be true?

The establishment, aka Energy Elite, will most likely do everything to ‘proof’ this to be a hoax…remember, there are always two sides to a coin.

CBS News 60 Minutes: ‘When first presented in 1989 cold fusion was quickly dismissed as junk science. But, as Scott Pelley reports, there’s renewed buzz among scientists that cold fusion could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production.’

Click on the link above and watch the video.

Some related articles; Wall Street Journal, LowCarbonEconomy.com and Wikipedia. Interesting stuff!

There is very special and outstanding talent discovered in each episode of Brittain’s Got Talent. Last week Susan Boyle stole the show, and this week Shaheen Jafargholi got spotted. Only 12 years young and gifted with SUCH a voice…amazing, he IS the new Michael Jackson!

(although I feel that the show was staged; Shaheen started with a bad performance of an Amy Winehouse song, got another chance and then topped it with the superb MJ performance…a pity to see that TV will always be TV…and produced…)