raymondpoort.com

It has been above zero this whole week, causing the snow tunnel we made last weekend to collapse and the color of the roof to turn from snowy white into tile black. It ain’t spring though yet; winter is expected to come back this weekend, colder temperatures and fresh powder…it will be slippery on our hill, bbrrrr!

Related to the Quote of the Day I just posted; today 2 years ago was my first day of unemployment (by choice!), which I still consider to be one of the best choices I made, a result of me ‘taking control‘. A lot happened in just 731 days, and it all feels good. I am happy to conclude that I *am* indeed running my own life!

The driver of this car must have been REALLY in a hurry to buy some of the new Mac goodies that Apple introduced yesterday; he decided to park his car  *in* The Mac Store (an Apple reseller)! 😉

Looking at the interior, it seems that this was the Eugene Mac Store.

Not too many people saw this one coming, normally the rumours are floating around the net for WEEKS, but this time the first indication of new Apple product updates came only yesterday…Apple today introduced a new Mac Pro (the superduper, top-of-the-bill, killer machine), new iMacs (I wanna have 😉 ), new Mac minis (finally updated, so this product is not End-of-Life!), a new Airport Extreme basestation and a new Time Capsule…well, well, THAT is what I call a Super Apple Tuesday!

There are many sites covering the specs, so I will not list them here, click on the links, or visit apple.com and check it out yourself.

Finally, my question/complaint has been picked up: I’m in a hotel with free WiFi!! And all  I had to do is travel ‘all the way’ to Gardermoen (Oslo airport) to get it!! 😉

I like the fact that at least some hotels get the point and deliver the basic needs of a person booking a (pricy) hotelroom business wise…in 2009 one should (at least) get; electricity, warm water, a decent bed and WiFi internet access, all included in the room charge, right?? 😉

I recently discovered TweetDeck, a handy tool to access the Twitter service from your desktop. It has some great and useful features that make it a lot easier to manage the Twitter stream; you can for instance split the main feed into topic or group specific columns.

The proof is in the eating of the pudding, and I am a lot more ‘twittering’ when TweetDeck is running, compared to having the twitter.com website open.

Our friends Andre and Susanne are visiting us this weekend with their two sons, Cas and Benjamin. A full house, or…uhh, well, only 3 out of 5 bedrooms are taken now, so there is still place for more! 😉

Anyway, it’s heaps of fun to have ‘m here!

Cas, who turned 4 last Wednesday, LOVES the snow and since there is so much of it, we have spent most of the day outside, IN the snow!

I reckon that most peeps have had enough time to solve last weeks Einstein’s Riddle, so here’s the answer:

The German owns the fish!
Ow, and he lives in the green house and smokes Prince cigars… 😉

Damn, it must be the time of the year…since yesterday I have problems with my wrist, I can’t move it too well, and I have a feeling in it which is quite similar to the mouse arm thing I had last year. Uhhmm, last year? Well, it is actually one year ago to the day!?!

Weird…is this a coincidence, or some sort of sign?? Hmm, at least it keeps me away from the pc as much as I can, so…I’m done posting, it’s over and out for today!

Gmail is DOWN at the moment!

So, what to do when you can’t access your email, and want to know if this is a local thing or internet-wide??

Well, do a Twitter search. Twitter is becoming THE social network for breaking news and online alerts!

My results on the search term ‘gmail down‘ were overwhelming:

(as you can see, there were more than 500 new results within 5 minutes after doing the search!)

An nice visual alternative is Twitterfall where new tweets matching your search are falling down on the page.

A nice one to start the week with:

Do you ever wonder about people who say they are giving it more than 100%?
We have all been in those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.
How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?
What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

Let’s say that:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98% (pretty good but not enough)

and

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
(yeah, we all know knowledge doesn’t really count these days)

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
(we’re getting there…)

And,

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

…AND look how far ass kissing will take you:

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it’s the Bullshit and Ass Kissing that will put you over the top!!

The internet, a place where one can find everything, and more… 😉

Today’s results: I ‘found’ U2’s new album ‘No Line on the Horizon’ in high quality mp3…same for Brad Pitt’s latest movie ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ in DVD quality, and last but not least; I updated my iPhone firmware to v2.2.1 with the infamous QuickPwn-tool, so it’s still unlocked with the jailbreak… 😉

Hmm, this internet thingy seems to expand like the universe. it’s borderless!

We were at Tore & Romy’s Birthday party in Sørkedalen, a somewhat rural area just outside Oslo, tonight. On our way back, a quite exciting drive on a very, very snowy road, we ran into a group of moose…amaaaazing views!!

It was at the exact same location where Tore and Romy saw 10 moose some weeks ago. They recorded the drive-by and uploaded it to YouTube, funky!

NASA: “Comet Lulin, named after the observatory in Taiwan where the discovery-photo was taken, is now approaching Earth…It is a green beauty that could become visible to the naked eye any day now…The comet makes its closest approach to Earth (0.41 AU) on Feb. 24, 2009”

Check out this amazing photo, taken by amateur astronomer Jack Newton:

The title of this post is actually a bit confusing in relation to the riddle/puzzle below since it was most likely not invented by Albert Einstein at all. Still, it’s a nice one.

I will not reveal the answer today, you’ll get some days to solve it!

Oh, and I am apparently belonging to the happy 2% who was able to solve it (without cheating!). 😉

——————————————————————————
Einstein’s Riddle

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage.

The question is: Who owns the fish?

Hints:

Einstein is said to have written this riddle as a boy during the 19th century. He said 98% of the world population could not solve it…do you belong to the remaining 2%? 😉

——————————————————————————

It’s not hard, you just need to pay attention and be patient. A tip, take a piece of paper and start writing down the options and clues you have.

The word of the day is: ’dessverre’.

The meaning is  ‘unfortunately’…and unfortunately there is no relation or association with dutch, english or any of the other languages I know, and that makes it kind of hard a word to remember.

Everything fell together tonight, making it possible me to see a match of my favorite soccer-team, ADO Den Haag! Tickets are normally only sold to people with a clubcard and biometrical photo, but they made an exception for this match and a photoID was enough to buy a ticket! It was also the first time I saw them play in the new stadium yay!
Den Haag (The Hague) won 1-0, a great result, especially since one of their players got a red card early in the game, so they were 10 players against 11 most of the time. It’s great to be back in NL, some days at least. 😉

I’ll attend the launch of the New Skies NSS-9 satellite tonight!

Well, I’ll not be physically present at the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana 🙁 , instead I’ll go to the launch event organized by the satellite operator, New Skies, in NL. The launch window opens at 22:09h UTC / 23:09h local time, if you’re interested there’s also a live webcast, starting at 21:49h UTC (22:49h local time).

Oof, I still remember the last New Skies satellite launch, now two years ago. I was in my hotelroom in Norway that night, watching the launch via the live webcast…and the rocket exploded during launch!!! Quite spectacular, but obviously a bad thing if you’re ‘in the business’ like I am…

I *LOVE* surprises! And especially the one from last night: I got a ticket for the Buena Vista concert in Bratislava!! Really terrific to see and hear these ‘oldies’ performing on stage like youngsters!

Check out the video I took last night (the original 121Mb file is here):

(sorry for the WAY overmodulated sound!)

And for the techies; I shot the video using Jay Freeman’s (saurik) Cycorder on my (jailbroken) iPhone. The size of the .mov file was 8m30s / 121Mb…a bit too big for posting on the site, so I converted it (online!) to .avi via media-convert.com (which worked like a charm!). The size dropped to 39Mb, quality loss was acceptable (it wasn’t too good to start with) and it is here for all to enjoy!

One day, long, long ago,  there lived a woman who did not whine, nag, or bitch.

But it was a long time ago, and it was just that one day.

The End