Sunday, October 1, 2000
Israel and China
To important countries had something to celebrate something
important today. For Israel, it is new years day of the year 5761.
It is a year of rest for the country, as it is every
seven years. But it started with violent street fights that have not
been seen in Israel for a long time.
In the People Ruplic of China, they celebrate the start
of the new China. Also here there was trouble. Some people of
a forbidden sect demonstrated on the Tianamen square and were
arrested.
Monday, October 2, 2000
A liquid cup
A "liquid cup" within my employer is a special
cup to measure liquid samples inside an X-ray spectrometer.
To get the best analytical performance, the cup should
be as thin as possible. For this reason the bottom of the
cup consists of a foil. For practical reasons you have
the assemble the cups by yourself. You simply get two
short tubes that fit inside each other. To make a cup you lay
the foil on top of the larger tube, and push the foil to the
bottom by inserting the smaller tube. This results in a cup
with a very tight and smooth foil at the bottom.
If you blow against the bottom of a liquid cup it makes
a funny noise. The tone lowers as the foil gets warmed-up
by your breath, and then rises again when you blow softer.
Blowing in the cup gives a different sound again.
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
I went out to count the mushrooms on the grass in
the garden
this morning. I counted 21 mushrooms, some of them as large
as 3 inches. The caps are mostly a light yellow with a brown
spot in the middle. It looks like it are the same mushrooms
that were there last year.
(follow-up)
QNX Demo
Today, I downloaded the QNX Demo
floppy, containing the real time QNX operating system,
a windowing system, a complete web browser, and all the
neccesary stuff to connect to the Internet through a modem.
All of this on a single bootable floppy. And it doesn't
require a hard disk.
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
Crying
We were just outside Enschede driving to Almelo this morning
when Annabel started to cry,
stating that we had forgotten to bring her "cuddling animal"
along. Today it is world animal day, and because of this the
children of her class were allowed to bring along one
"cuddling animal". She demanded that we would return to get
it. I was in no mood for returning, and also if we would
return, it would definitely mean we would be too late
for school and work. Finally, I agreed that she would
be allowed to bring it tomorrow. But still she felt very
terrible that she would be the one child without one.
Thursday, October 5, 2000
Wedding day
Tomorrow, it will be seven years ago that we got
married. I mentioned this
to my colleages, and ask "Why is it always the man who
is supposed to do something special for his wife?"
The answer to this is rather simple if you think about
it. A woman will never forget to remember the
anniversity of her wedding day. The man will almost
always forget it, if not reminded by her. I remember how
my mother on that day would say
something like: "O, if but he does not forget about it", and also how
happy she was when some flowers were delivered at our
home.
This afternoon when I came to the day care centre to
pick-up Annabel and
Andy, I found Andy having
great joy while watching some children play a game
of hide and seek in the hall. When he noticed me, he came
to me, but then quickly went back. Lately, he has improved
a lot. Before the summer, the experts still labeled him
with a "autism related" development disorder. He indeed
did not interact much with other children. Lately, he is
much more communicative, also with others. Now it looks
he also is getting interested in other children.
Saturday, October 7, 2000
Of course, we had decorated the living room in honour of
Andy's birthday. When he saw these he was happy. We
sang "Lang zal ze leven" for him, and he clapped his hands.
Then we gave him the presents. He was particularily happy
with the cars he got.
In the afternoon, Dick Bruna, the creator of
Miffy, visited a book shop in Enschede. An
exhibition of his drawings was held
in this bookshop,
because of the childrens book week, which
is held every year around this time. We went there, and
bought two books (including "Ezelsoor", which he especially
wrote for this years childrens book week) for Andy, and had
Dick Bruna write something in it.
Tuesday, October 10, 2000
Christmas cards
It has started again. Today we received an email saying:
Dear colleagues,
it'll be Christmas soon and we may/have to send out Christmas cards.
This year we'll do this as following: I would like to know from each of
you how many cards you want to send. This number should be WITHOUT cards
for our NSOs and local agents because we will send cards to them centrally
from Marketing Services. The cards for the NSOs and agents will be in my
room during 2 weeks and can then be signed by anyone who wants to do so.
The necessary number of cards will be ordered by Marketing Services and
will be delivered to the resp. persons in order to be sent by her/him.
I hope that the above is clear; if not give me a call or e-mail.
Last year, we received this messages for over five times.
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
While driving home just outside of Almelo on the highway,
we saw the start of a rainbow. Quickly it grew into a
full double rainbow.
(follow-up)
Thursday, October 12, 2000
Het Instrument
"Het Instrument" is the Dutch anual exibtion about
analytical instrument and industrial automation (organized
by FHI), which was
held in Utrecht. I went there with some of my colleagues.
Our company
also had a stand with one of the instruments that use the
software that we developed. Of course, this stand was the
first one we visited. Then we looked at the stands of
our competitors, and other companies making similar
analytical instruments, just to get some ideas for where
we should direct the development of our software.
In the afternoon, my colleagues started gadget hunting.
The first thing we got was a
Tangle toy from the
Fieldbus Foundation. Then they noted some people walking
around with the kind of flag which you put on children bikes
such that they will be visible form behind cars. So at some
points they handed me two such flags. Both of them also had
two of these flags.
When the exhibition was going to close, we decided to walk
around in Utrecht and to have some dinner. There we noticed
that many people watched the three of us walking with six flags.
Of course, we went to "De Slegte"
bookshop
and later to another big bookshop.
Then we started looking for a pizarria and walked around the
city. Then I got some feeling that at some place there was one,
as something deep from my subconsiousness. And indeed when
we walked their, there was one in a cellar with just one door
at street level. We did eat pizza there, and walked back
to the central train station still with our flags in our hands.
We just missed a train and decided to wait for the next one.
But then we started talking with some people, when suddenly
one of us realized that the next train was about to arrive. We
ran down to the platform only to see the train leave. This
ment we had to wait another half our.
(next visit to De Slegte)
Friday, October 13, 2000
Shipping of the first MagiX
This afternoon at 3 o'clock we had a little celebration with the
first shipment of a MagiX spectrometer. Afterwards, all the people who had been
involved received a black shirt saying "it's MagiX!" in red.
Because I had to leave early, I happened to be
one of the first
getting one of these shirts, and the very first to put it on.
When later, I showed it to some of my colleagues in another
group, one of them acted as if he had to vommit. Appearently,
my enthousiasm is not always interpreted as such by every one.
This afternoon, Annabel had a
birthday party for some children from her school. Tomorrow
will be her sixth birthday party. She had been looking
forward to this for many weeks. At this age, birthday parties
are really great events. Because we live in Enschede and
she goes to school in Almelo (where I work as well), we
organized a party with McDonalds in Almelo. They had a great time.
Numeco
Today, we received an "open letter" from
Dr. M. Rath, which happens to
have his headquarters very close to my employer,
the company I work for,
about Numeco having bought
Rexall-Sundown for 1.8 billion US dollar. The letter goes into
great detail explaining the possible corrupt and criminal
nature of Rexall-Sundown. More about this can be read
on the
Health-Through-Integrity web site.
Our son Andy still used
"Nutrison Paediatric Multi-fiber", which is produced by
Nutricia, one of the
companies that Numico consists of.
(Later, Dr. Rath was forced by court order
to withdraw these accusations.)
Monday, October 16, 2000
A day off
Today, I had a day off, because Li-Xia
had to go somewhere for the whole day, and Andy
had to stay home in the afternoon. I also had an appointment
for him to get his flue vaccination. There was some
confusion about where I had to go, so I happen to walk
into the local
community center "De Helmer", where
I saw some parents with their children sit and drink
some tea and play around. I do not know why they were
there, but I would have loved to join them. This made
me realize how busy I am with all my work.
Tuesday, October 17, 2000
Complete rainbow
Again, we saw a rainbow
at almost the same spot as last week. It surely is rainbow time.
Thursday, October 19, 2000
Steel factory
With some colleagues we went to visit a customer
at a steel factory. This was my first visit to a steel
factory. We did not see much of the factory, but
the laboratorium that we had to visit was above
the place where they bring away the slag from the
steel furnaces. We were looking down from the fifth
floor into the big pots full of very hot slag. So
hot that you could clearly feel the heat radiation.
At some points the slag glowed so strong that you
could barely look into it, without getting spots
on your eyes. It was a really impressive experience.
And then to realize that we are living on top layer
of slag on an enourmous ball of molten iron.
Satursday, October 21, 2000
It was a very soft and warm day for this time of
the year. Many people were sitting on the terraces
in the center of the city.
When I discovered that the curly kale season had
started again, I did not hesitate to buy some
immediately. So, we had
curly kale hotchpotch this evening.
(follow-up)
Satursday, October 28, 2000
Mushrooms in the front garden
When we went out for the city, Annabel
said she that there were some Mushroom in the
front garden. And indeed, she
was correct, there they were some on the small poles
that border the garden from the pavement. They were not
of the kind that were earlier this month
on the grass in our back garden.
(follow-up)
Sunday, October 29, 2000
If I would live in the U.S.A. then I would vote for
Ralph Nader. Tonight, I saw a TV program about him.
I have to agree with him on many points, but that is
not so strange, because I live in a country where many
of the things he goes for, have been implemented for
many decades. And I agree, our system is not perfect
as well. I think that a two party system as the one
in the U.S.A., is not very democratic, not as democratic
as a multi-party system, where non of the parties holds
the majority of the votes.
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