| What's going on in theme world? |
[26 Aug 2008|11:39am] |
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Led Zeppelin II |
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It's been some time since I last updated, so I figured I'd give it a shot again. Last Saturday, the international high school I went to had a reunion. I would post a Google Maps thingy, but realized they moved while I was enrolled, and have moved again since. Now that I'm writing about it, I realize I didn't notify any of my fellow alumni about it (leave a comment if you want instructions on how to be kept up to date); having said that, I saw the pics and almost nobody I know was there. I doubt if it was any fun.
Anyway, the reason I didn't go was that I had a great cocktail party at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lacoxinha's. They made like eight different cocktails, some of them were less than amazing IMO, but most of them tasted good, and some of them tasted great (I want the recipe for the purple one!). Halfway through, I felt like going to fall asleep on the spot, but ended up as the last to leave, just as in Ye Olden Dayes. I had a great time!
I applied for a position at work. I currently work for a big Dutch phone company, where I handle incoming calls from people who need tech support for their land line. If there's something that requires further analysis from an expert, I send it on to the second line, which is where the position is I applied for. I had an interview already, which went great. It lasted an hour and a half, and at the end the interviewers said a second interview was coming up for me, and I think that says a lot. I do hope I get the job. In fact, the more I talk to those guys, the more I feel like I want to work over there, rather than where I am now. It's a nice feeling, but if I don't get the job, I'm not sure I'll still be happy where I am right now. Then again, that's a bridge that can be crossed when gotten to, I suppose.
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| The Raven in limerick form |
[06 May 2008|07:42am] |
There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says "Nevermore."
source (check out their top 150!)
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[13 Apr 2008|04:48am] |
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Anybody know what Thandie Newton looks like? How ya like them apples.
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| Fitna |
[28 Mar 2008|04:51pm] |
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Right, so that anti-Islam movie by that "extremist" Dutch politician has finally been released. My worst fears have been allayed, because my expectations turned out correct. Thorough as I am, I decided to check the five quotes from the Qur'an for accuracy; two of them were taken out of context. The other ones, however, seemed every bit as severe as Wilders asserts they are.
As I had guessed, Wilders seems to put the finger right on what's wrong with Islam, and tries to make it look as if all Muslims agree with the extremists. Aside from that last part, Wilders is very clever and thorough, because he's smart enough not to speak himself; he lets the religious speak for their own religion. What this allows Wilders to show, is the irrelevance of apologists' comments that Islam is a peaceful religion; evidently there is a large faction of Muslims that doesn't explain its religion as peacefully as the apologists do. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to take all that many extremists to upset democratic society. Unfortunately, too, the problem does seem to lie in the religion itself, as well as its manifest. And even more unfortunately, extremism does not seem to be exclusive to totalitarian Muslim countries.
All of those unfortunate facts do, in my opinion, warrant a film like Fitna. I'm glad it got made, because I definitely agree with Wilders on the reasons that speak against Islam, if not on his imagined "Islamic tsunami" that will take our country by storm unless we try to stop it. I'm also glad because it shows the disgusting hypocrisy of the CDA party, as well as the SGP party; apparently it's not right to question someone's religion if you happen to be a Dutch politician, when in fact we live in a country where matters of religion and state are strictly separated; criticism of religion should therefore not be publicly denounced by parliament as if it were our policy to condemn it. Aside from that, separation of church and state means that having a party in the cabinet with openly Christian values is, in my opinion, shockingly hypocritical in and of itself.
Which leads me to my next point, pointed out to me by Mr. Pechtold of the D66 party: Wilders seems to lament the destruction of our oh-so tolerant Jewish/Christian heritage by those big bad Muslims, but does not seem to mention what the morals that that "tradition" slash "culture" (neither of which Wilders ever defines or elaborates on) seemed to have produced not fifty years ago: women were not allowed to vote, abortion was out of the question so pregnant teens would throw themselves off school stairs in desperation, floggings by nuns were common, antisemitism abounded before the War, slavery and apartheid were not publicly questioned, instead of proper care we had insane asylums and bad hospitals, et cetera. When Wilders says we're a country whose Jewish/Christian tradition has always led us to be tolerant, don't believe him. In fact, I could go on and on about our so-called tolerant country's past.
The central point of Fitna is, that perhaps it's time for a cultural revolution to start seriously questioning Islam, after Nazism and Communism. I think we should start by including any and all other religions, and then start to, as the Dutch say, stick our hands into our own bosoms by finally ending the myth of all-encompassing Dutch tolerance. Let's finally start picking at that big beam in our country's eye.
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[24 Mar 2008|11:59am] |
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| Movie meme |
[18 Feb 2008|11:54pm] |
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I got this meme off kelleigh. Have fun with it!
- Pick 15 of your favourite movies.
- Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
- Post them here for everyone to guess.
- Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
- If you decide to cheat, I guess you'll have to live with your guilty consciences! Dorks. Who cheats on MEMEs?
( under the cut )
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| That's that, then. |
[06 Feb 2008|08:55pm] |
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Well, so much for my beard. For those of you thinking of growing one: bear in mind that cutting it off can be inconvenient. I managed it pretty much painlessly and only cutting myself twice, though.
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[25 Nov 2007|11:59pm] |
I've started the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. It's a long read, but it's amazing. I'm halfway through book 4 now, and the series consists of 7 books in total, so I guess you could say I'm halfway through. cavegirlk says they get a bit weird after that, though. What I've read so far is very good, however, and I don't seem to be able to put it down.
Work is getting worse by the day. Can't wait to start working for my dad. It's coming closer now, which is good, and it seems as though both me and my dad want me to start as soon as possible. We'll have to wait though, and that sucks.
Installed Ubuntu, and it seems to work well. It's got a few quirks I'm not happy about, though: sound isn't working and neither is my network. Shit, I WANT to go over to Linux but can't because of things like that. Thinking of maybe trying Fedora or Mandriva. I'm also thinking of hacking my Network Administration tool to fix the network problems I'm having, but if I'm honest I think I would probably just fuck up my system...
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| Bert Rothstein? |
[02 Nov 2007|01:02pm] |
It's not normally like me to post YouTube videos but I thought some of you guys might appreciate this one.
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[01 Nov 2007|01:01am] |
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A series I've never heard of, that looks bad even from the trailer, and is advertised: "David Duchovny is back"... And they expect me to want to watch it? FUCK no.
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[26 Oct 2007|04:37pm] |
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You go out to get a few birthday presents for your friends, and then whang bang, no more credit. Well I have credit all right, two people owe me a total of about €1,500, that's over $2,000. I think I deserve a raise, but my boss seems a little too confused about when the next interviews are, so I think maybe it's time to quit beforehand. I've really had it with my job. It's time for it to improve fast, or it'll be no more nice guy flexible Toon on the shop floor.
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| Cantor's diagonal argument |
[16 Sep 2007|11:35am] |
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The other day, I was on Wikipedia when I noticed that the featured article of the day was about Georg Cantor, a German mathematician. Those of you who are interested in things like infinity, and numbers that go on and on after the decimal point, should read on behind the ( cut. )
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| good news |
[26 Aug 2007|11:43pm] |
I'm getting a new job soon with my dad. I applied for a new job at work, one I didn't want, or expect to get. It was basically a "if I don't squeek they won't hear me" type of thing, and the resulting job interview confirmed my suspicions: although they appreciate my capacities, they don't have room to use them. Although they have shown not to care about expenses when it comes to courses and things like that, and that they like me and appreciate me as a co-worker, still I get that. Well, I really enjoyed working there, and no hard feelings, but bye-bye all the same. I'm working a stupid job there for little money, which was fine until that interview because now there's nothing on the horizon anymore to compensate. So now the carrot dangling in front of me is gone, I think I'm going to start hopping in a different direction.
I told my dad just that, and he said, "well come by my place next week and we can talk, because I think I have some good news." So I went and heard that a system he's been developing together with a didactics expert has drawn two big clients. One of them is really pushing my dad and his partner to get going, and the other was going to visit a big e-learning conference but decided not to, and to go with my dad's system instead. These are big companies, with lots of users. So although they mean revenue, they also mean time consumption because my dad would be stupid not to use the time and money he now has to go and find more clients. However, he still has a web hosting company to run and he needs help with that. So as soon as those big clients start generating some cash flow, I'm going to leave my employer to work for my dad!
In other news, I've been talking to a guy I know whose band may be looking for a rhythm guitarist... So I may just be in a band soon! That should be a very valuable learning experience... I'll keep you all posted about it.
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| hello from Lacanau-Océan |
[20 Jul 2007|06:48pm] |
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I'm posting from thecming in Franc I'm stying at. The weather is great and surfng is fun. But the real reason I'm posting is that I'll be buying DH at midnight tonight, which, if I'm not much mistaken, is one hour earlier than the rest of the world (nyah nyah)...
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| hmmm |
[12 Jul 2007|11:14pm] |
What a weird sensation. I'm going on holiday to France tomorrow for a few weeks; it's been almost 15 years since I've been further than northern Belgium on holiday. Top that with the fact that I'll have to somehow acquire DH in France, since the day it comes out is smack in the middle of my holiday, and then add my recent purchase: a ukelele. I hope I'll be able to bring it to France because it's such a quirky little instrument. I don't think I'll be able to play anything decent but I think I can teach burt_777 how the tuning works, he should be able to do just fine.
See you all in a couple of weeks!
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| Muggles with beards |
[28 Jun 2007|11:15am] |
I've grown a beard, a short one. I'm thinking of shaving it off again, though... Hmm. It's hard to get the beard to go even, it's hard to trim it without inadvertently achieving a Himalaya effect. Also, I'm not sure I'm happy with the way it looks.
I'm re-reading the HP books to prepare for the last one, and one thing struck me as odd. How come Harry almost gets expelled when he casts a Patronus charm in Little Whinging, or even when Dobby casts a levitating charm in a living room, and Voldemort can cast an Unforgivable Curse in the middle of a Muggle area, on a Muggle and just get away with it?
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[31 May 2007|03:49pm] |
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There's a Dutch expression for what the LJ people did: ostrich politics.
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| What a week. |
[20 May 2007|02:35pm] |
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Two weekends ago, on Friday night, my phone rang. Thinking it was a friend trying to get me to come to town, I didn't answer. I did check my voice mail after and it turned out that my mother, who I'd only seen once in the past ten years, was in hospital with cancer. She'd had an epileptic attack the day before and was rushed to hospital, where she'd had another one and was admitted. They did a CT-scan, found something in her lung and little specks in her brain, took a biopsy of the lump in her lung and determined that it was a tumor. They weren't sure what the specks in her brain were, whether they were metastases (offshoots from the tumor) or abscesses (infections). The doctor would later inform me that they weren't so much doubting whether or not they were really abscesses, as hoping they might be abscesses. They did an MRI to be sure.
In the mean time, it was Saturday and I was on my way to see my mother, not knowing how to handle a situation like this. I was perfectly calm but a little scared; the last time I'd seen my mother was a very emotional time for her and I was kind of scared of literally killing her of shock. So I went into the corridor where my mother was, and explained it to the nurse but she said it would be ok. I went into the room and said "hi" and gave her a hug, and she started shaking so I knew she was crying. Man, she was a sight... She looked all grey and weak. She was unable to really talk, she could gibber a little but she was basically too weak to say a clear sentence, I was told that the day before, it had been better.
On Sunday, she started having trouble drinking, and later in the afternoon swallowing became hard, too, so they fed her through a tube. On Sunday night her blood oxygen was a little low so they gave her oxygen through a tube in her nose; on Monday, when I was sitting next to her, I noticed that she wasn't breathing right so went and got a nurse, because it didn't look all kosher to me, turned out she was having yet another epileptic attack. They had to give her morphine after that; not so much for the pain, but to make breathing easier for her. 15 minutes into her dose she was sleeping like a baby, where she'd been struggling just to keep inhaling before.
Me and her BF had a talk with her doctor, who said that there wasn't really much they could do. There had been a lot of damage; radiation might have been an option, but that's very heavy, and would not relieve her a lot. If they had been able to give her a few days of being able to clearly talk and say goodbye to people they might have done so, but in this case it was no use. Me and my mom's BF decided to order a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate--if she has a heart attack or something, don't try and bring her back) both because it's what she would have wanted and because it felt right to the both of us.
I went to see her on Tuesday and that night, at 1:05 PM, she passed away quietly and easily, aged 54. So in less than a week, I went from rushing to meet my mom after years of avoiding her, to helping arrange her cremation.
I don't really know how I am. I feel numb, it's almost like it hasn't happened. Part of me is glad that I'm so calm, but part of me feels that it's kind of strange to be so numb, as if there are feelings under the surface that are reluctant to come up. Well, if there's a blow to expect, I imagine it'll come whether I try to stop it or not so I don't really think about that. I'm just trying to pick up my life, which is going well, and I guess I'll see what happens to me.
Rest in peace mom.
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| Right. |
[01 Apr 2007|09:31am] |
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Just posted a friends-only post that was kind of gloomy. Having got that off my chest, though, I just took a stroll outside when it got light, as lacoxinha recommends. Next, I changed the strings on my guitar. I'd never changed nylon strings before so I'm pretty proud of myself. Ate a banana; as Groucho Marx once said, "time flies like the wind; fruit flies like a banana" and so do I.
Life still sucks, mind. But my mind is a little bit clearer now. I would really like a bite, though; I'll take care of that right now.
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