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Diary, March 1996


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  24  25  26  27  28  29  30
  31


Friday, March 1, 1996

(nothing here yet)

I created this entry, and all other files for March, but then did not know of anything sensible to write, and kept looking at the above note for the rest of the day. Now there is something here, but does it count as a vaild entry. I probably are going to remove this entry, next week.


Sunday, March 3, 1996

This was written with a Toshiba T1000 laptop, which I bought second-hand a few weeks ago. The first thing I did, was writing a program (syncd.c) to transfer files between Linux and DOS floppies.

(Follow-up)

Rain Man

Yesterday evening Li-Xia and I watched the movie `Rain Man' on video. For me it was the third time I saw it, but for Li-Xia it was the very first time. (I think it is the only movie that I saw it twice in a movie theater.) I would definitly regard it as one of the best movies I know off. It is hard to say whether I think it is the best, because sometimes it is very hard to compare movies with each other. Rain Man is about two brothers, who although being very different share a common problem of not knowing how to express emotions. There is not an obvious answer to who is the most normal person, although Raymond definitly behaves abnormal on first sight.

Raymond, is a very talented autist. Again the third viewing made me think about my own `autistic' tendencies. Don't get me wrong, I am not in any way claiming that I am autistic, as I am clearly not. I was a very quieted child, and could intensly play with toys for an hours. (Yesterday, when my parents visited me, my mother recalled this fact. One of the interesting things of getting children, is that it brings back many stories about your own child life, when you discuss the development of your children with parents.) It was only discovered when I was 7 years that I was near-sighted. Because of this I lived mostly in a world of my own, until my early teens, and displayed behaviour (as talking to myself alot) that in to a much higher degree is also found with autistic persons. I feel also that it took me a very long time (until my mid-twenties). before I learned to relate to others at their level. Often I feel that writing diaries (thus also this one) is also a spin-off of this.

(follow-up)

Annabel

Last night we heard Annabel cry around two o'clock in the night. Because she became quiet after some time, we did not look at her. Sometimes, when we go to look her, she does not want to sleep anymore for a few hours. This morning I went to her, after she had made some noices, and I found her sitting her bed covered with her kotch. It was clear to me that it had been in the middle of the night that she had thrown-up. Then it also turned out that she was dirty. Li-Xia and I spend at least half an hour to do the initial cleaning-up. (After which I could just make it to church in time. Li-Xia stayed home to take care for Annabel.)

typing in bed

I typed this while laying in bed, with the laptop on my stomack, pressing the keys with my fingers from the sides. I still have troubles with finding the keys, so I have lifted my head, such that I can read they keys.


Friday, March 8, 1996

Telegram style

Both Annabel and I have been ill since Sunday. We are recovering now.

I found a page containing:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY onLoad="document.mailme.submit()">
<!-- Howdy! yeah, the code is pretty darn simple, eh? Soon 1,000s of
     people will be scamming email addresses in this manner. At least we
     discovered it first. The real trick to make it stop? Put a bogus email
     address in your browser's "email reply" ent. Or leave it blank-->
<form method=post name="mailme"
      action="mailto:xxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxxxx.xxx?subject=scammed address">
<h3>Viewing this page automatically submits email to an address
    which then sends you back email to prove it grabbed the message.</h3>
<input type=hidden name="scammed.the.address" value="did it">
</form>
</BODY></HTML>
I made a page like it. Please try it, and by doing so send me an email, saying `Hello'.

Yesterday, when I worked again (a little), I had many ideas for things to tell. Now I cannot remember them.

Maybe I should make a graph with the quality of my diary entries, compared to the day of the week. I sense there is a strong correlation.

This week Robert Reeves contacted me. He is writing a paper about the benifits and drawbacks of making your journal availible to the public. He is especially interested in the web published diaries like this one. He is also the first one that told me that he read the whole diary. He even gave me a list of broken links :-).

Henk de Velde is trying to break the record for solo sailing race around the world. He is keeping a diary on the net about his progress. (But the pages are in Dutch.)

The InterNetKrant of today, said (in Dutch):

GELUK VAN VROUW BEPAALD DOOR HEBBEN PARTNER
Niet een kind of een baan, maar het hebben van een partner bepaalt het
geluksgevoel van vrouwen. Die conclusie kan worden getrokken uit de Algemene
Welbevinden Index van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). Vrouwen
met baan en partner maar zonder kinderen blijken het gelukkigst te zijn.
Krijgen zij kinderen, dan vermindert hun topstemming.
It says that happiness of woman is determind by having a partner, not by having chikdren or a job. Women with a job and a partner are the most happiest (according some quality of life index calculated by Statistics Netherlands). If they get children they become less happy (for an obvious reason, I would say from my own experience).

I Heard of another ELIZA.

What about trying FreeWalk? (Only works if you are on a SGI IRIX 5.3, which I am not.)


Sunday, March 10, 1996

Preaching

This morning Gerhard achter de Molen, one of my favourite speakers spoke during the sunday morning service. He has the same profession as
Jesus Himself; he is a carpenter. His preaching is simple but direct, and often he brings something with him as an illustration. This morning he showed some slides (made by himself, I guess), with a song about the love of God. He also showed a robe with knots, and explained how God had been removing the knots in his own life.

He based his preaching on a text taken from Haggai:

These are the verses that touched me most, but to understand why, you might have to read the book yourself.

Afternoon nap

At two o'clock, I laided down on the couch with my Toshiba laptop on my belly, in order to do some programming on html2tex. Some small change needed some thinking. I was tired, my eyes closed, and I felt asleep, with the laptop still on my lap.

Fire

Around four, we wanted to leave, and I saw a truck from the fire-squad driving through the street, and some youngsters hanging around. That ment that there must be some fire close-by. When I walked to the living room (which is not on the side of the street), I saw that the field we look-out on, was on fire. It was only dry grass that was on fire, not something to much to worry about. Just before I left I saw how the fire-squad people were handing out some kind of special brooms to some boys to help them exstinquish the burning grass.

(follow-up)


Monday, March 11, 1996

Snow in bright sun light

Susan came in to tell me that it was snowing outside, while the sun also was shining. And indeed, when I raised the blinds, I saw the snow. The sun was shining brightly, be it a little pale.

China

It seems there is a serious conflict between the two Chinas. I just found a protest from Taiwan agains the PRC on the internet.


Tuesday, March 12, 1996

English Proficency Test

Fill each of the numbered blanks in the following passage with one suitable word.

One question that is often asked is whether people can be induced to commit criminal acts under hypnosis. (1) fairly recently scholars tended to think (2); they argued that an order instructing a person to act in a way which were very much (3) to his moral and ethical ideas would not be (4) out.
However, a number of experiments have recently (5) conducted that show this conclusion is not universally true. In one (6) experiment the experiemter demonstrated the power of nitric acid (7) the subject by throwing a penny (8) it. The penny, of (9), was completely destroyed and the subject was (10) to realise the tremendous destructive power of the acid. (11) the subject's view of the bowl of acid was (12) by the experimenter, an assistant substituted (13) it a like-size bowl of harmless methylene-blue water, (14) continuously boiling by the presence in it of minusclue droplets of barium peroxide. The hypnotised subject (15) then ordered to throw the dish (16) the assistant, who was present in the same room. (17) these conditions it was (18) to induce various subjects to throw (19) they considered to be an (20) dangerous acid into the face of a human being.

Possible spelling mistakes in the above are:

and I will send you my answers. (Need Browser that supports mailto from action.)

Meindert

This afternoon Meindert, one of my old friends, phoned. We do not talk so often, but every time we talk we cannot stop. We discussed the benefits and problems of being married. He is single at the moment.

alt.spam FAQ

I took the
alt.spam FAQ and reformated it while reading.

In love

Just before I left home, I phomed Li-Xia to tell that I was on my way. While putting on my coat, I suddenly felt very much in love with her, realizing how much I love both her and Annabel.


Wednesday, March 13, 1996

Addison-Wesley going down-hill

In their new `Computing' catalog they announce a book with the title
Love Online, A Practical Guide to Digital Dating by Phyllis Phlegar.

About words

Hanspeter Schmid wrote something about Mamihlapinatapai.

Cola and Tea

Did you every try to pour cola in a glass that you have used for tea for a long time? It is an interesting experiment.


Saturday, March , 1996


Sunday, March 17, 1996

Today, Floor Vogelaar preached about `Hearing God's voice', based on the following verse: One of the things he said was that God speaks to us through our thoughts, that our thoughs are mixed with the thoughts of God that He speaks to us through His indwelling Spirit. This reminded me of what Andrew Rilstone said about the ideas of C.S. Lewis about the nature of the bible on the alt.books.cs-lewis news group: In the same posting, Andrew also wrote:

Zuster Bouwman

After the service I talked with Zuster Bouwman. `Zuster' is the Dutch word for sister. She is the only lady in our church that is generally addressed as `zuster', probably out of respect, because she is (one of) the eldest woman in our church. Some of the younger people who grew up in the church have the habbit of addressing some of the older people with `uncle' or `aunt', followed by their firstname.

I had walked up to Zuster Bouwman because I had not seen her for some weeks. When she saw me, she walked up to me and grabbed my arms with her strong hands, and told me that she thanked God that she had recovered from he illness again. She told me that she had also felt spiritually weak when she was ill. She told me, that I should not think that they (she and her husband) were so strong spiritual, and that they too often felt weak. But by saying this she showed how strong she realy is, spiritual wise, I would say.

(follow-up)


Wednesday, March 20, 1996

Yesterday, some people from our group gave a talk about Java. Today I found an Java page solving pentomino puzzles. It only finds one solution. I once optimized a program for a similar kind of puzzle, called the Soma Cube. I am not the only one worked on this.


Revelations on the Treshold of the Spring

After a long night
	a beam of shining light
Rude awakening
	to find all the sorrows
		- forgotten 
		and not seen in the dark -
	in my heart
No time 
	to rub my eyes
Just time to go

	Where do we all go?
	Why do we all go
	Do we go?

This is what
Susan found at the bottom of an email that she received from Olli Pihlajamaa. When I asked him, whether I could put it here, he replied:


Saturday, March 23, 1996

Late at night, I switch off the light, while Li-Xia is reading a book, and I said: 'I switched of the light. Did you notice?'.

Li-Xia replies with: 'Which light?'.


Monday, March 25, 1996

Michael Wayne Dunahee has been missing for 5 years now. I can not imagine how I would feel if my child would be missing.

Mad cow disease; who to trust?

It is interesting to see, how two authorities claim the opposite: There are risks all around us, and it seems that advances in technology, does not give us a happier life, with respect to dealing with these risks. But even the experts do not agree!


Tuesday, March 26, 1996

Butter

Somebody posted the file `
buffer.jpg' in the alt.folklore.computers newsgroup. A rather of the topic posting, but very beautifull indeed.


Thursday, March 28, 1996

Algebra

The last week, I have been trying to find some mapping to some kind of execution rules to the process algebraic language LOTOS/TM. The problem is that we do not have a LOTOS/TM rewrite system at hand, which means I have been doing the rewritting by hand using cut-and-paste. Makes me rather dizzy after a while.


Friday, March 29, 1996

With the increasing complexity of computer systems and software, they start to behave as unpredicatble as anything else around us. From the start of the week my favourite editor, aXe, crashes with the message Error: Cannot perform malloc, whenever I open an editing window, while it has been working for more than a year now. One of the system administrators just walked by, to tell me that they have not been able to locate the problem. It seems that nothing has changed, and that I am the only one who has problems with it.


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