Guus Bosman

The 12 finalists for American Idol were chosen last week. Antonella Barbara was rightly sent home, surprisingly Sabrina Sloan had to leave as well.

This week's show brought few surprises. The ladies are consistently better than the men, with LaKisha Jones and Melinda Doolittle taking the lead. Both are extremely strong singers, but I think Doolittle is more likable and has a better chance of becoming number 1.

Somehow Sanjaya Malakar made it through this week to the next round, perhaps because of his new hairstyle. He and Phil Stacey are probably next to go.

The plane landed in Newark on schedule this morning. At the airport we went to National, a car rental place to pick up our car. We got a Toyota Corolla... so small! I could hardly fit in the driver's seat. Later I adjusted the wheel so at least it wasn't on my knees anymore but it was still pretty tight. Last summer when we were buying our car we were also considering a Corolla; I'm glad we went with its bigger brother, the Camry.

From Newark it was a 20 minute drive to Secaucus. It took slightly longer because I took a wrong turn, but over-all the trip went smoothly. We met with Jonathan, Irena and Ilana and spent the late morning together. In the afternoon we all went to New York, and I drove!

It was really nice to drive in New York City, and it was very different than driving at home. I quickly got used to it and I enjoyed it a lot. The distance between cars, I learned, should be as small as possible ("bumper to bumper") and the horn is there for a reason. I think I managed quite well to adjust and also kept the car and everybody in it safe. We went for a walk in Soho and we had a good time together. We parked 2 hours and payed $24.00... another difference with North Carolina.

A few weeks ago I had my first appointment at my new dentist, and today I went back for some additional things.

The office is right next to ours which makes it convenient to go for an appointment. I really like their service -- very professional, very friendly. They gave me a tooth brush and and little tube of tooth paste.

In lighter news, a Duke graduate has invented a beer-tossing machine:

"It took the 22-year-old Cornwell about 150 hours and $400 in parts to modify a minifridge common to many college dorm rooms into the beer-tossing machine, which can launch 10 cans of beer from its magazine before needing a reload."

This morning I switched my website from PHP Nuke to Drupal.

Most work in the migration was writing a script to transfer the articles, specials, book reviews and comments from one database format to another. The script converted 121 users, 1693 stories, 42 book reviews, 30 topics, 65 specials and 1999 comments.

Now there is a lot of tweaking to be done over the next couple weeks. It's great fun to get to know Drupal, and I'm really happy with my choice.