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Helen Keller: “The highest result of education is tolerance.”

Sven Kramer’s goldrush at the Vancouver Olypics has ended after he got disqualified for not switching lanes during his 10,000m race today…Svencouver became Svencrossing…

The mistake was caused by his coach Gerard Kemkers who pointed Sven halfway the race to the inner lane while he should have taken the outer lane.

The fact that Sven Kramer skated one of the best races of his life, putting everyone more than 4 seconds behind and obviously good for gold, does not count…it would have been, no, should have been the all time 100th Olympic Gold Medal for The Netherlands, and yet it is not.

Damn, it’s pretty tough to get over this for a top athlete who is training for four years for this event. And I’d say it’s even tougher for his coach Gerard Kemkers…this is not the first time that he has to swallow the disappointment of loosing an Olympic medal; he himself fell during his 10,000m race in the 1988 Calgary Olympics which cost him valuable seconds, he came in fifth and missed a guaranteed Olympic Medal…

Well, I wish both of them good luck in getting over it…hopefully they’re able to focus again for the Team Pursuit later this week.

I recently joined the Facebook group  ‘I dont care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!!‘ after my Facebook newsfeed got flooded with updates from friends who apparently got addicted to FarmVille, FishVille, Zoo World, Mafia Wars, etc.

Today I found a way to hide these updates from my newsfeed, thank God (and Mashable )!

I will still be a member of that Facebook group though, since I think people should be smarter about what they publish on their wall, if only they would follow the instructions from Tim Baker’s blogpost for instance…

…and I don’t mean Dan Brown’s last novel ‘The Lost Symbol‘…nope, I refer to the ancient Egyptian symbol for protection that Jaap and Sonja gave me some months ago; the Eye of Horus (see picture), a symbol that I really liked.

Unfortunately I lost this symbol today…

I guess it is protecting the nature around Uvdal now!

Stephenie Meyer: “I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”

It was a be-au-ti-ful day for a ski trip; dry and -15 degrees but no wind, a lot of snow and well prepared tracks, sun allover and great company!
The pictures below speak for themselves!

With the snowy mountains so close by, it is very popular among Norwegians to go skiing for the weekend. This is called ‘fjelltur’ – mountain trip (or ‘hyttetur’ if you’re staying in a cottage).
Not a bad idea if you ask me, and it’s our turn this weekend; we just arrived in the Uvdal area (close to Geilo) and will enjoy both alpine an cross-country skiing the coming days, it’s gonna be funnnnn!!

Norway just won their first Gold medal at the Olympics, Marit Bjørgen won the Cross-Country skiing Sprint, heia Norge!

So The Netherlands and Norway are even now (in Gold at least) as NL already won their first Gold medal last Saturday; Sven Kramer is still on track to turn the Vancouver Olympics into Svencouver after winning the 5000m Speed Skating!

I was halfway writing a blogpost to make mention of the fact that it has been exactly one year ago today that Adam Curry recorded his last Daily Source Code, DSC#821. And that it would be great to have the show back, or at least have an anniversary episode…or convert it into something like a YSC, Yearly Source Code!

…it must have been channeled through, since I hear Adam say TODAY that he actually plans to go back into DSC-mode (he mentioned this in the No Agenda #173 podcast of February 11)…well, that is FANTASTIC news!

I am sure that many with me will appreciate the return of the Rachmaninoff intro, Metrosexual moments and other special moments (still giving me a boost of energy!), Red Pill Blue Pill stuff (much of that in the No Agenda show actually, higly recommended if you are interested in an alternative view on the news!!), adventures of the Delta Sierra (the Cesna 172 RT airplane which is up for sale actually!), Trinity (the 1984 yellow Mercedes station wagon running on biodiesel), Charles the drunken Londener, Comic Strip Blogger, Adam’s PCPQ (Prostate Cancer Prevention Quotient), Fubar Friday, Mashups, Jan Polet’s HitTest and more, much more!

So Adam, what’ya say? When can we expect the DSC coming back? Perhaps a DSC#822 today, for old times sake?

Barbara Hall: “Because you are in control of your life. Don’t ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.”

It seems that Valentine’s Day is a popular day to have a Birthday; 5 out of my 185 Facebook friends have their Birthday on today! Statistically there should be 1 Birthday every two days, so 5 on one single day are a many!

I guess that the love and affection associated with Valentine’s Day has something to do with it?

And for my Norwegian friends; perhaps the celebrations (and drinking) on May 17, the Norwegian Constitution Day, has some effect? After all, May 17 is nine months before February 14!

The father of the Frisbee, Fred Morrison, died last February 9 at the respectable age of 90 years.

The story goes that he got the inspiration for this flying-saucer toy in 1937 at a Thanksgiving feast in Southern California. He and his girlfriend, Lucile “Lu” Nay, entertained themselves by tossing a popcorn-tin lid in the backyard. The lid eventually became dented, ruining its aerodynamic potential, and the resourceful couple snatched a cake pan from Mr. Morrison’s mother’s kitchen.
Cake pans, it turned out, were sturdier and flew better – so much so that one day, when the two were flinging a pan back and forth on the beach, an impressed passerby offered to buy it. The pan had originally cost a nickel, the stranger offered a quarter – and that exchange was enough to whet Mr. Morrison’s entrepreneurial appetite.
“That got the wheels turning,” he told a Norfolk, Va., reporter in 2007. “There was a business.”

Quite some business indeed; who hasn’t thrown a frisbee once at a picnic or on the beach?

The Dutch selected the song to represent NL in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest (held in Norway btw.). Wow, what an amazing song…NOT, aahhhhh!! It is so not my type of music…a terrible song, shitty lyrics,

And…we’re back in NL again! This year has been a pretty steady ‘one-trip-a-week-to-NL’, or at least, it feels that way…no complaints though!
For some reason January and February have been like this the last couple of years, you would say I should be used to it by now, eh?

Winston Groom: “My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”