“Slaves can’t be fired: they get sold” As I mentioned in my latest blog my company is cutting jobs. This week, thursday the 26th to be exact, it’s “bijltjesdag” as they say in Dutch. Roughly translated this means it is the day when people will get ‘the axe’ – a nice euphemism for saying they wil get a pink slip. As I explained before I can’t be ‘fired’ in the legal sense of the word. They can just say they will not extend my current contract. In which case I will not get any unemployment benefits and will roughly have […]
It’s all in the game
It’s all in the game One last post on the verge of another month. Lately I have been very busy with another hobby of mine: online gaming. I play this game called Soldier of Fortune II “Double Helix” rather vigorously. That’s why I haven’t been writing or posting a lot in my Blog. Playing games is a way of escaping reality I guess. Things are not going so well at work at the moment and releasing the stress by killing some people (virtually of course) is one way of dealing with it. The reality is that the company I’m working […]
Freedom and justice for all
Freedom and justice for all Today is Liberation day in Holland. And although it’s not a national holiday anymore (God knows why?) a lot of people have the day off to celebrate the fact that the Allied countries (mostly the US) saved our butt in WWII. There are a few open-air concerts today and of course the TV is filled with the usual movies like “The Longest Day” and such. Looking out of the window of my work (its cold, clouded and looks like rain), listening to an oldie (A Forest, The Cure) on my iTunes, makes me a bit […]
Queen’s Day; the Dutch national garage sale day
Queen’s Day; the Dutch national garage sale day Ok, for those not familiar with the ‘Dutch way of life’; today is Queens Day. We celebrate the birthday of our Queen (well, actually the birthday of our Queen’s mum) and this is a national holiday so everyone has a day off. We celebrate this by means of the largest outdoor garage sale you can imagine. Everyone cleans there attic or garage and tries to sell all the rubbish they didn’t want to throw away with the garbage. But that’s what most of the stuff is: garbage. You’ll find the most stupid […]
When looking back one is always right
When looking back one is always right Nothing is easier than looking back on things and analyzing them. Such is also the case with the war in Iraq. People that were against the war (like me) are afraid that many innocent people will get hurt. But now it seems it’s a walk-over for the US. I wonder how much longer the war will last.
“There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action – J. Von Goethe (1749-1832)”
“There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action – J. Von Goethe (1749-1832)” With the war going into another day, this is a truly interesting quote that popped into my mind. The Iraqi’s seem to be able to hold back the US and British army more than we expected and this will make it more and more difficult to tell when this war will be over. Just a dream? In the night the war started I woke up in the morning from a dream I had. Well, actually it was more of a fragment of a dream. The fact […]
11 hours, 11 minutes to go
According to my countdown clock we are now 11hrs, 11 minutes away from another Gulf war. At least, that is what we think: given the circumstances the US and Brittain (I keep forgetting them all the time) might attack earlier. This morning I spoke to a friend of mine who is an officer in the Dutch army. He said that it is no accident the US did choose this date to attack. According to him it is an advantage that it is full moon right now. Even though the US troops are technologically very advanced, they can use the extra […]
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
With a new Gulf war on its way in the next 24 hours, I can only think up this quote from this famous British philosopher who also was a know pascifist. Who are we to decide for another person – let alone another country – what is right and what is wrong? Now, we all know Saddan Hoessein is an evil dictator who exploits his own people. However, starting a war is not the solution to the problem, since it will hurt innocent people that have part in anything going on. That the war was coming was obvious: and I […]
Tripod’s messing up!
Tripod’s messing up! For those that know my webpage a bit longer and have visted my webplace more often, know that I had my share of problems with Tripod. Ok, its free and you get 20meg of diskspace (10 more than with my own ISP – UPC) and 1 gig of traffic for free a month, but they do mess up a lot. Very annoying! Well, they did it again! they deleted my vandegoor.tripod.com account! I have no idea why except when I tried to access it I got this message that the user was deleted becasuse of some violation! […]
“A true Gadgeteer”
“A true Gadgeteer” All right folks, I have a confession to make: I’m a slave of modern technology. If something cool and new comes out, I just have to have it. Ok, I do not own a state of the art plasma TV or stuff like that (I am not a millionaire), but I do own 2 Pc’s, 3 PDA’s, 3 phones, my car is equipped with GPS, I have internet via cable (and my own network), I work with Windows, Linux and OS X, etc. etc…. So when I finally saw the brand new Sony Ericsson P800mobile phone this […]