Guus Bosman

software executive and technologist

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dutchusa

Tallest people in the world

Sun, 09/17/2006 - 1:44pm

A friend sent me this interesting article: Dutch are the world's tallest people.

From the article:

"With their protein-rich diet and a national health service that pampers infants, the Dutch are standing taller than ever. The average Dutchman stands just over six feet, while women average nearly 5-foot-7."

"The Dutch were not noted for their height until recently. It was only in the 1950s that they passed the Americans, who stood tallest for most of the last 200 years, said John Komlos, a leading expert on the subject who is professor of economic history at the University of Munich in Germany. He said the United States has now fallen behind Denmark."

For the record -- I am 6"2 or 6"3.

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driving

License plate

Sat, 09/16/2006 - 4:02pm

License plate for our car.We received the license plate for our car in the mail.

The car had a temporary (card board) license plate, and I replaced it with the real one the other day.

In North Carolina a car needs only one license plate, or tag, on the back of the car.

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plants

Tropical plant

Thu, 09/14/2006 - 7:15am

Tropical plant. It's a bit awkward that the title of this article is "tropical plant", but the fact is that I don't know the name of the plant that we bought. On the label it says "assorted tropical", so that's not much help either.

Anyway, after a week of it getting used to our apartment I've put it in a bigger pot.

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plants

Plant revival project (2)

Tue, 09/12/2006 - 7:15am

The plant before.On Sunday I tried to revive the ill plant I bought last week. More than half of the plant was affected by an illness of some kind.

I took the plant of out of its pot. Some of the stems were dead, and a few more had large black spots on the part between roots and stem. Perhaps it was some sort of fungus. I threw away the stems that were visibly affected, and placed the healthy parts into separate pots. I felt a bit like a plant surgeon.

I hope that, by placing the cuttings in separate pots, at least one will get to survive. I've placed them on the window-sill where they'll get plenty of sunlight.

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dailylife

Paula in Oslo

Sun, 09/10/2006 - 2:47pm

Oslo.My cousin Paula is staying in Sweden Norway for six months for her study.

She now has a website where she writes with a lot of humor about her adventures in Oslo with fjords, roommates and Holmenkollen.

It is not snowing in Norway yet, but apparently there are plenty of langpootmuggen (crane flies).

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plants

Plant revival project

Wed, 09/06/2006 - 9:11pm

Starfish flower.
This weekend we bought a few plants for in the living room. We went to Lowe's, a hardware store with a garden center and we got three large plants and two small ones.

I was very happy to see a Starfish flower, the same cactus that my grandmother gave me four years ago. It was the last of this type they had in store, and it's in pretty bad shape.

I still bought the cactus. It's a nice challenge to see if I can get this plant back into shape or if it will die within a few weeks. Currently it's on the bar, and I'll leave it alone for a few days so it can adjust to the temperature in our house.

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plants

First plant

Sun, 09/03/2006 - 1:56pm

First new plant in Durham.Yesterday we bought our first new plant in Durham.

Unfortunately we had to leave two plants in Arlington, but they were quickly adopted by other people on our floor in the week before we left.

This plant I saw the other day at Kroger, and it's a type that we used to have in Haarlem as well. It's dense, compact and has a nice light green color.

Yesterday evening we went out in Durham, in a bar called Satisfaction. Around 10.00 pm they started a karaoke session, which was surprisingly very entertaining. I did not get on stage (a next time) but we song for many hours. A fun evening, we were home around 2.00 am.

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ourhouse

Our apartment

Sat, 09/02/2006 - 2:20pm

The livingroom of our new apartment. The pictures of our apartment that I placed on Wednesday morning are some 3 months old.

Of course our house looks much different now we have moved in, so here are more recent pictures of our apartment.

In the future we want to get paintings or pictures to decorate the walls, and soon we'll get some plants and new lamps as well.

The weather is amazing today. Yesterday the sky was still cloudy after Ernesto (Petra has a good picture) and it was unusually cold but today is a wonderful day.

I don't spend much time outside during the week, so it's nice to work on my website on the balcony in the sun. It's a long weekend: Monday is Labor day.

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northcarolina

Ernesto

Fri, 09/01/2006 - 7:15am

Ernesto.Last night the tropical storm Ernesto made landfall in the south of North Carolina.

Originally it looked like the storm could go to the Raleigh/Durham area, but it stayed in the east part of the state. Except for a lot of rain last night we luckily didn't have a lot of problems with Ernesto.

Yesterday evening we went out to play some pool. It had been a while since I played that, but it was a lot of fun.

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ourhouse

Looking for an apartment

Wed, 08/30/2006 - 7:45am

Looking at the kitchen in apartment 7302, our final choice.It's almost 3 months ago that we went looking for a home in Durham.

We did most of our research online, and after many hours of internet browsing we selected a number of apartments that we wanted to see. Our main choice was the Belmont apartments: close to Duke, nice apartments and good amenities.

We took a very early flight on Saturday, and although our first flight was cancelled we arrived on Raleigh/Durham's airport around 9.30 am. We took a taxi to Durham, and we were impressed by the green next to the highway -- a lot more nature than we were used to.

We spent many hours at the Belmont apartments. The lady gave us a lot of keys for many apartments, and we saw them all. We quickly decided that we wanted something on the 3rd floor, and because the floor plan of most apartments was the same, we mainly choose on location and views. We took a lot of pictures to help us choose.

Ultimately, we found a place we liked and signed the lease that day. We stayed in a hotel in Cary for one evening, and Sunday morning we travelled back to D.C.

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