October 2005 | Guus Bosman.nl

The Daily WTF

Thu, 10/27/2005 - 2:13pm

Joris sent me this great website a while back: The Daily WTF.

They describe "curious perversions in information technology" -- funny coding errors and the likes.

Today they had an absolutely brilliant piece of code:

enum Bool 
{ 
    True, 
    False, 
    FileNotFound 
};

Wind & rain

Wed, 10/26/2005 - 8:45am

Fall morning. This weekend our apartment building switched from airconditioning to heating -- right on time, it's really getting cold.

Yesterday Milan, Sasha's father had a birthday and today it's my grandmother's birthday too: congratulations to both of you.

We saw Seinfeld yesterday on TV, absolutely brilliant. I especially love Kramer a "hilariously outrageous, completely insane character", who almost killed a whale in yesterday's episode.

Hotel Rwanda

Tue, 10/25/2005 - 8:05am

Hotel Rwanda. A while back we saw the movie Hotel Rwanda at home.

It was a very gripping film, about the horrible period in Rwanda in 1994. It's based on a true story about a hotel manager who uses his influence and skills to safe the lives of many people around him.

The story was double as gripping because of the superb action by Don Cheadle, who is very convincing as a hotel manager whose life dramatically changed as the horrific events unrolled in Rwanda.

Sunday afternoon

Mon, 10/24/2005 - 8:15am

Friday night stayed at Jonathan and Irena's place (thanks a lot guys!), which was fun. We had a couple of beers in the evening. Irena just came back from Charlotte, NC, where she had been a week for a week for a her work.

Slept in Saturday morning, and Jonathan later gave me a ride to the busstop in Secaucus. The bus I took to Times Square got stuck in traffic (again!) and I made it just on time. Another long, bus trip, but no work this time, I read "the Secret Life of Bees" instead (marvellous story).

We spent our weekend nice and quiet. It's nice and sunny and I spent some time on the balcony on Sunday, but it's really getting a bit chilly.

Annual meeting PvdA New York

Sun, 10/23/2005 - 2:07pm

Ruud Koole. Due to the traffic I arrived in New York at 7.00 pm -- an hour late. The meeting I went to New York for was scheduled to start at 7.00 so I wanted to get there quickly.

Friday night is not a good night to be in a hurry on Times Square: it is crowded with people and virtually impossible to get a cab. I had to go 51st Street and to make sure I wouldn't start running in the wrong direction I called the only person I know who in two seconds can accurately tell you what direction to go to in Manhattan. Jonathan told me to go to 6th Avenue, and I made it right on time for the annual meeting of the PvdA that was held in the Netherlands Club.

Ad Melkert. Last week I found the site of the PvdA New York, a Chapter of the PvdA, a national political party in the Netherlands.

There were three guest speakers. The first one was Ruud Koole, chairman of the national organization, followed by Ad Melkert and Bernard Mucci. It was very nice to see these familar faces in the U.S. I especially liked the speech by Ad Melkert. He is an executive director of the World Bank now, and was the parliamentary leader of the PvdA a few years ago.

The chair of the local PvdA chapter started the evening with a good speech, followed by Ad Melkert. Mr. Melkert referred to a proposed immigration bill by McCain-Kennedy.

All speakers mentioned Van der Louw and Adelmund, two prominent members of the PvdA who passed away last last week.

The third guest speaker was Bernard Mucci, an ex-Tyco executive who described the work of the charity he is now working for, the United Negro College Fund. It was an interesting evening, and certainly worth the bus-ride (English summary). At the end of the evening I bought the book that was presented.

I was starving -- it was almost 22:00 o'clock and I hadn't had dinner yet, nor a very good lunch. It was a Friday night so I allowed myself a burger-with-fries meal in T.G.I. Friday's.

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Bus ride to New York

Sun, 10/23/2005 - 1:08pm

Eastern Travel departure point in Washington D.C. Friday I left the office very early, and took a bus to New York at 1.00 o'clock. I had bought a sandwich in the morning from my favorite place near work, Tivoli. When I wanted to eat it in the bus I saw that the cheese had gone bad! A big disappointment.

I had a great seat in the bus, right behind the bus driver. I enjoy that spot because it gives you a great view of the road and there's no seat in front of you so there's more space for a laptop. There weren't a lot of people travelling and I had two seats for myself. I spent the afternoon working. It was a good opportunity to clean up my mailbox: I had about 2000 messages that needed to be filed, deleted or dealt with. The only thing missing in the bus is an internet connection -- perhaps in a year or two, three. I reviewed some documents and spent a lot of time on the phone, it was quite a productive ride.

Unfortunately Friday afternoon is probably the worst time of the week to travel to New York. We left D.C. at 1.30, but didn't arrive in New York until 7.00 o'clock, an hour later than the schedule had said. It took more than an hour just to get from the turnpike to the Lincoln tunnel... Apparently it was the first time for our busdriver to travel at this hour, he was not very pleased with the traffic either and got rather cranky at his colleague who kept on calling him to see where he was.

I listened to the same CD about four times, and I had a few MP3s on my computer that I listened to as long as I could take. I really want to get a noise-cancelling headphone one of these days.

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The Interpreter

Thu, 10/20/2005 - 10:29pm

The Interpreter. Yesterday we rented The Interpreter on DVD, and we had an enjoyable evening watching it.

It's a good movie -- pleasantly tense, not too predictable and with a good story.

Most of the story is situated around the United Nations building in New York, where Nicole Kidman is an interpreter who overhears a secret conversation. It turns out that she also has quite a history herself.

The language spoke in the movie is Ku, of which I had never heard before. One of the extra's on the DVD was an interview with the director, Sydney Pollack, who mentioned it was a fake language.

Fall

Tue, 10/18/2005 - 10:00pm

Fall. The summer signs on our building have been replaced by a fall theme, the outside swimming pool has been closed for a while... getting ready for the fall.

Today I went to work with my coat -- I hadn't used it for a long time, but it's that time of the year again.

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RSS feed

Mon, 10/17/2005 - 9:15pm

RSS feed in Firefox. A few days ago a colleague showed me Sage, an extension to Firefox to read RSS feeds in your browser.

RSS is a technical protocol that allows users to read a website's latest articles in different applications, for example a stand-alone reader. Extremely useful or not, my father's website has it so I had to have it as well.

For those who are interested, a RSS 2.0 compatible feed is now available here.

Computer desk

Sun, 10/16/2005 - 11:07am

New desk. Friday evening we finally bought a desk for the computer in the bedroom. It's really so much nicer, a real desk. We got it from Crate & Barrel, a shop a few blocks down the road.

We have been living in this apartment for almost a year now, so we need to think about the lease for next year. We received a letter from the leasing company with the rates, and they propose to increase the rent, quite a bit. Unlike in the Netherlands there is typically no maximum on the rent-increase: you don't like it, you leave. We'll see if we can negotiate the price. The price per month is different depending on the length of the lease you sign. Generally, the longer you stay, the lower the montly rent.

Yesterday evening we made pancakes, for the first time since we're living here. They came out really well. The first ones were a bit thick, but once we got the hang of it they became nice and thin. I made one with raisins, my favorite, and we had blueberry jam and feta cheese for the others.

Guus Bosman

software engineering director

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