Liberté, égalité, fraternité

For those that don’t speak French: the title of this post is based on the national motto of France (and Haiti) and means: “Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood)”. The origins lie in the French Revolution (1789–1799) and I always found it a very nice motto. Men and women are all equal – regardless of age, race or country of origin. The reason I bring this up is that I was amazed to find out that in the USA there is no law that says you have to pay women an equal amount if they perform the same work as their male […]

Occam’s razor

Here’s how you spark a true Internet meme: you spot something funny in an old B&W 1928 Charly Chaplin movie, post it on the Internet (YouTube) together with a ridiculous explanation. And with this simple post the guy gets over 4 million hits and a lot of debate, varying from plain stupid to intriguing. Just watch this video from this guy called George Clarke  (if you can make it past the annoying self-promotion – just skip it if you need) and hear and see what the fuzz is all about: So, did that make you go “Hmmm”? Don’t you think, […]

One light bulb

Say you are a landlord, and you rent out apartments. One day you walk by the building you own and you see that one of your tenants has left on a 1000 watt light bulb in one of his rooms, consuming an extraordinary amount of electricity, dimming the lights in all other appartments. Now, would you turn of the electricity to his whole apartment, knowing that this action will also turn of his fridge, aquarium etc., or would you try to notify the tenant first and let that tenant turn the light off himself but risking that it might take a while before that […]

In a Galaxy far, far away…

This June I wrote about getting a new smartphone.  I was about to buy an HTC Desire, when I (fortunately) decided to wait and see what Steve Jobs had to present on the Apple event that was taking place later that week (June 2010) . It happened to be the launch of the infamous new iPhone 4. I really got stoked about the iPhone 4 and so I decided to wait for it before I would buy an Android phone: I wanted an iPhone 4 badly! However: a few days after the official launch of the phone, reports started to […]

Dutch Skies

Yesterday I had the privilege to hop along with our CEO in a Lancair Columbia 300 airplane. Together with two fellow co-workers we made a very fun trip from Lelystad Airpoirt to Eelde (doing an instrument approach) and then flying back – on visual navigation – to Lelystad Airport via the city where I work: Purmerend. The weather was pretty nice, although we had some low clouds and overcast on the way to Eelde. However on our way back we flew towards clear skies and enjoyed the whole experience. Man, there is nothing cooler than seeing our own country from above. It’s so interesting […]

Welcome to “Wildersland”

Today we are one step away from the worst government in Holland since 1940. A government kept hostage by a right-wing nut case who’s abject anti-Islam political agenda will divide our country, drive our citizens to the boiling point and make our country a prime target for lunatics. So what is going on then? On Saturday February 20th this year, our government fell, after arguments over the Dutch continuation of a military mission in Afghanistan in 2010. The four parties that formed the government up to that time, consisted of the CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal), VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), […]

Home again

So, I am home again after a relaxing three weeks of vacation in Florida. We – as in me and my girlfriend – didn’t do that much: just chill, watch trash TV, catch a movie, eat out, shop, swim and enjoyed each others company. I certainly enjoyed my trip. Florida is very nice although it aways takes me a few day to get used to the 90+ (= 30+ celsius) temperature and the 90+ humidity. This time the weather was very nice even though we had almost 1 week of cloudy weather (kinda perfect for me). And I only got bitten […]

A flight attendants exit strategy

Let me tell you something. I fly internationally frequently. And ‘flight attendants’ – or as we know ‘m: stewards or stewardesses – do not  have the glamorous job people might think they have. Sure, if you look no further than the surface you see mostly young, attractive people flying all over the world to cool places. And people generally envy them for that. Well, reality is that they are mostly playing babysitters to annoying people. People that don’t obey the safety rules on a plane. People who are rude and get abusive because they experienced a delay of simply because they had to much […]

Hunting mice with a rifle: mice win

Hunting pesky rodents can be more dangerous than most people would think. If you choose the wrong tool for the job and couple that with bad decisions and poor judgement; it can end in a tragedy. As was the case with a  52-year old dentist from Holland who tried to get rid of some mice in his vacation home in Jumilhac-le-Grandin, in the French Dordogne (July 26, 2010). Aggravated by the noisy mice that inhabited his French home, he decided to take matters into his own hands and hunt ‘them pesky mice’ down. However; instead of using the usual tools for […]