Yes, 5:30 is really early... but Groningen is really far too.

Ha! I did it again, it's 8.00 o'clock and I'm at Chess already. I woke up 45 minutes before the alarm and I felt nice and fresh.


A 'scary' thought is that when I woke up I immediately thought about a programming problem at work. During my sleep I found a (nice) solution for it. Very useful, but does it mean I don't have a life anymore?! ;)



News in the morning was all about the war of course. The thing with wars is that they are very difficult for journalist to capture in a meaningful way. First of all both sides of course strive to spread as much propaganda as they can, and second most journalists are clearly no experts on war-strategy. Me neither of course, but at least I don't try to discuss on TV the loyalty of the Special Republican Garde, the opinion of the Sji'it people or the deeper strategy of the Americans... Well, everybody his own profession I guess.

Although I believe that a war to remove Saddam Hussein is justified and necessary, it is a day of sadness today.


Let's hope that the war will be as short as possible.


When I woke up many TV channels had special editions about the war. Even the Economist.com website, which usually only gets updated around 15:00 o'clock seems to have been updated during the night. They have a picture gallery.


Started ridiciously early today... it's 8.00 o'clock!

We just came back from Oma Bosman. We had a (very delicious) dinner with her. A relaxing evening.


When we came home we saw that the cactus is blooming again!

In the last weeks I saw many jokes, movies and cartoons about the coming war in Iraq.

Not all of them are very tasteful, but this particular one I found quite amusing. Have your sound on (Quicktime).

Balkenende does it again!

See this nice parody at Baatsen.com:

"Het moest maar eens afgelopen zijn met dat gekibbel."

We went to see Chicago yesterday. The movie was very nice, enjoyed it a lot (see this trailer).



It had been a long time since we went for a movie in Amsterdam on a Saturday night, and we quite underestimated how busy it was! First to Pathé de Munt, where there was a huge line. They have this nice system that shows how many tickets left for each movie. When we entered the line there were 37 available places, but every minute there were less and less. In the end we decided to go to another theather when we realized the tickets would be over before we'd arrive at the ticket-booth.

At Tuschinksi (right around the corner) we were told that there were exactly 2 tickets available but on the front row all the way on the right. Well, that wasn't exactly what we wanted.

By that time it was 20:30 already, but we saw that at 22:10 in Pathé Arena Chicago would play as well. Although it's a very nice movie theater we were a bit uncertain if the situation there wouldn't be the same. However, when we came there at 21:00 it wasn't extremely busy, and we were sold the 7th and 8th ticket for our movie. We had a beer (and of course popcorn) in the main foyer, watching people.

As I said the movie is definately worth seeing. Maybe it was not as good as Moulin Rouge, but comparable.


When the movie was over we had missed the last train and the last metro to Centraal Station... we were very relieved to catch the last Zuidtangent, which brought us through the 3 cities we have lived in: Amsterdam-Zuid Oost, Amstelveen and Haarlem. Home at 2:00 o'clock.

I'm at JUMA now, working on the reports on 2002.


Five years ago I wrote the payment and inventory software for this shop, and they are still using it every day. It's nice to see how this small project worked out.

Most of the reports are generated automatically each month. The official yearly financial and inventory information need some extra attention, so every year in February or March I'll go there. It's very nice to do, the atmosphere is very friendly and relaxed.

This time for sure: the spring has started! Hurray!

It's a very beautiful day here in Haarlem, yesterday as well.

Let's hope we'll have a very nice, warm and sunny summer this year!

Idols: Thank you Guus Bosman.nl!

You're welcome.


Read it here.