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It's all grey but not really cloudy, more like mist that lost it's footing. Slowly the misty condenses into clouds. Which take a smaller volume so there appear seizable gaps filled with some blue stuff. While it doesn't get real hot the humidity remains very high. Late in the afternoon/evening the concentration gets so high that the water falls out again. Serious showers, lots of puddles and tons of mud is the result.
Current temp is 22.7°C in and 13.7°C out.
With L coming in the support is manageable, leaving time to make some good progression on the sapification. Of course now R wants to test the outgoing orders. So that's a whole bunch of unplanned work dumped into the pool again. I almost could see the bottom but it's gone again.
I suppose we may finish all of the sappification some day. But the way it's going now I can only tell that it will be somewhere in 2006.
Dinner is rice with ham and leeks.
That should be enough to know that I went running again. Nicely in the rain with much cooler weather. By running faster I end up just as exhausted as usual though.
Thursday 2005-08-11
The morning looks promising with lots of pale blue and a few grayish clouds. The amount and size of clouds does however go up all the time. With a good splatter of rain in the early afternoon. Still the blue is not wholly defeated.
Current temp is 23.1°C in and 8.7°C out.
Fun with support is that the users throw a problem your way. After fruitlessly searching for hours you call back in order to admit defeat. And they don't remember the problem anymore cause they solved it themselves. Nothing wrong, nothing to see here. Just move on now, Go go go.
Thank the gods we still have the sapification that is throwing up old but real problems now and again.
No dinner? Well, I didn't feel like making much, just a bowl of soup would be enough. But then I saw the pack with sardines in the fridge. Not eating them now means throwing them away tomorrow. Can't do that now can we. Yep, I was brought up with the idea that throwing away food while people elsewhere are starving is a sin.
So I sharpen up my appetite. And a knife, for very finely chopping of some garlic, chives and a carrot which I paint -with some olive oil- onto the cleaned de-boned sardines. The ideal way is grilling them but it's already very late and with the rain outside and all that's not convenient, so I bake them in a pan. A bad idea basically cause the fish oil -sardines are oily fish- doesn't drain and fish oil has a strong taste that all but kills the spicing.
Still the fish itself isn't bad and the fresh garden beans are delicious.
Friday 2005-08-12
Difficult to tell whether it's a rainy day with clearings or a clear day with showers. We get them both. Temperamental stuff.
Current temp is 20.4°C in and 11.2°C out.
Shopping between showers. Wine, fruit, vegetables, coffee and some more groceries.
I spend most of the rest of the day cleaning up computer stuff. I don't make backups on tapes or CD/DVD. I do however copy things from one box to another so I always have my data stored somewhere. It works well enough but of course it's not a good strategy. The end result is lots of old files all over the place. So I need to do regular clean-ups.
Dinner is rice with sweet-sour sauce. Not much but nice and simple. Ideal for an evening with a giant lack of appetite.
Yep. I have not been ill these last couple of days but I am neither feeling well.
Saturday 2005-08-13
Rain. All day but not continuous, more like in half hour shifts. Thirty minutes rain, thirty minutes dry, thirty minutes rain, thirty ... etc. The strange part of the weather is that sun and clouds also do time shifts. But with a different interval, more like twenty minutes. So the rain and clouds nor the dry and sun coincide. Really disconcerting.
Current temp is 21.8°C in and 9.6°C out.
Hmm, didn't do much of anything. Shifting some books and papers around the house mostly. To no real effect, mostly.
For dinner I made pizza. The long and hard way. Starting with flour and oil and water, and tomatoes and salmon and cloves of garlic. But I did end up with a verrrrrryyy goood one. Yes it takes time, I spent over an hour mixing and shaping the dough, chopping onions and garlic, thin slicing salmon and tomatoes, shaving cheese and the rest. But it was time well spent.
A perfectly crusty dough, not just the sides but crusty all over with a nice soft fresh salmon topping with partially melted shavings of parmesan and gruierre cheese. And the rich smell of basil and rosemary and garlic.
Of course I spoiled the effect by eating way too much of it. But once started I simply could not stop.
Sunday 2005-08-14
Rain again today. But of the more conventional type. That is lots of drizzle, some showers and a few dry spots. All conducted under an overcast sky with just a couple of thin blue cracks.
Current temp is 22.0°C in and 13.9°C out.
Maria Ascension is an official holiday here.
So I take a day off. Didn't touch a computer today (this and yesterdays post were typed tomorrow... :) . Nor a broom or dusting-cloth or anything that could be considered work. Reading books and magazines isn't work is it? And snoring?
Dinner is rice with mixed vegetable, some carrots, broccoli, tomato, paprika, etc. all surplus bits from my brother's garden.
Monday 2005-08-15
More clouds than blue in the morning but when the sun finally gets up -she's becoming lazy of late- all those clouds disappear with a puff. And that puff is the only cloud like stuff remaining for the rest of the day. Now the moon is out, big enough to overpower most stars with her reflections.
Current temp is 22.4°C in and 11.5°C out.
R become over active and adds another set of file to the Sap patch. And after a bit of programming he starts to realise our chance of having a working product by the end of September is all but shot.
Of course you can drop the all but once support is taken into account.W is back but only for half a day. He is still officially on holiday till next week but he is back home now and he planned on coming in a few half days. Of course once he is in C pounces on him pressing for finished work.
I wouldn't be surprised that W takes his holiday as booked -rest of the week off- rather than come in and be pestered.Oh well, for about an hour today we were on full strength.
Dinner is chicken, flamed out with Whisky, in an improvised sweet-sour tomato sauce with ginger. Served with rice. Very good.
Tuesday 2005-08-16
Hello! The only cloud like thing in the morning as the sky slowly lights up is a brilliant shining aircraft trail. No other form of cloud is to be seen all day. Which gives a nice unobscured view of the almost full moon now.
Current temp is 23.1°C in and 18.1°C out.
Just a normal amount of support and nothing too difficult at that. But the calls were perfectly spaced, with just enough time in between them to get into gear before the next call interrupts and brings you completely out of focus. Damn.
Dinner is chipolatta sausage -BBQ- with red-cabbage. The cabbage is a surplus from my brother's garden. Well, he took half of it and gave me the other half, in exchange for a bunch of beans.
O_O
Apparently those righteous christians don't like porn to be fenced in. ( http://news.com.com/Bush+administration+objects+to+.xxx+domains/2100-1028_3-5833764.html ) Or maybe they realise it's easier to hide their .COM bookmarks from their partner.
Windows and Linux running on a Sony PSP ... ( http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000480054324/ ) With the x89 emulation stuff used I suppose you could run OS2 or DOS as well.
Being pissed off at you phone could be a good thing in the future. (http://www.iop.org/news/980)
Wednesday 2005-08-17
The only thing that slightly colours a pale and dull red is the thin mist this morning. The rest of the sky turns from black to purple to blue. Three days of warm sunny and almost wind still weather, means it feels like a stem-cooker. It is not very hot actually but the humidity is killing. There are some clouds forming on the spot in the afternoon and while it feels like a thunderstorm is brewing it remains calm and moist.
Current temp is 26.5°C in and 25.4°C out yep, that is outside at 23:00 hours!!
Support is nagging as usual. But quite some problems now are non-issues that become issue because the people normally solving them are on holiday. And not only here but also at the clients. Every body makes mistakes in orders now and then so there are procedures to notify and rectify them. But when people on both sides of the line are vacation-sit-ins the problem is shoved off onto IT.
Dinner is not rice with ham and leeks as usual on Thursday -after running-. Nope, in stead I eat red cabbage with Frankfurter sausages. No Haute cuisine but hey, there is left over red cabbage and those sausages are ready in just as much time as it takes to heat up the cabbage (2.5 minutes).
o_o
You see, those big meteors are not really dangerous ... . ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/17/dino_death_volcano/ ) The problem with the old Indian volcano is that it's not as spectacular or sexy. It doesn't call up a sense of immediacy, and violence that a big meteor could have. Not front-page quality for the general news.
Personally I was never impressed with the impact theory. Smelled more like Hollywood than science. (It also smells a bit religious, killing off all the big dinos all in one single blow, nah, a divine decision does things that way, nature doesn't.) While the volcanic theory sound less sensationalist I still think it is suspect of too much show.
My biggest concern is the survival of small mammals and birds. Especially birds are high on the danger list cause they are always on high metabolic rates which makes them vulnerable for sudden and moderately long lasting environmental disturbances. I would expect them to become extinct first in case of a sudden change like a meteor impact or repeated sudden changes caused by erratic volcanos.
One of the problems with these big sudden environmental change theories is that there is a distinct lack of 'indicator' species. Most -serious- nature conservationists measure environmental changes by counting a few indicator species that are very sensitive to change. Most of these are insects and amphibians and fish. We don't see many fossils of those -not surprising, they are small and non-spectacular so no one is actively searching for them- and when there are are some, we still don't know enough about the actual animals to use them as indicators. The best indicators we have are typically microscopic organisms in marine sediments and they are only rough indicators for the land environment.
Nope, Meteors are too far out for me, volcanos are borderline possibilities. My bet still goes out to a viral or bacterial cause. Nothing far fetched or spectacular about it but sadly also next to impossible to prove.
Intel-panic (admitted). Trying to catch up with AMD was never the problem, but doing it on order and schedule of the marketing dept was. ( http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25499 ) Curious, I still fit in my high school trousers. ^_^'
About time really that Intel comes up with a new architecture. ( http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25496 ) Also about time they start to actually use the ideas and companies they bought out. Let's just hope 'for Intel) that they can keep the marketing people out long enough to get the product finished.
Thursday 2005-08-18
Lots of smoggy orange mist while the sun rises but there is no trace of the clouds that were forming last evening. All blue again but the air is so dense that we don't actual suffer from bright sunlight. It's a dull orb rather. Sure enough the good weather is over. Just a couple of hours after sunrise it gets cloudy and by noon we get some mighty hard showers. With the odd follow-up shower later in the afternoon.
Current temp is 24.1°C in and 21.1°C out.
While getting up I broke my alarm. The off button broke so now I cannot turn it off. Snooze still works but that is of course useless, I am not staying home to press that every ten minutes. Well, life without alarm is good too. ^_^
Support is all quite. Untill 11:30. From then till 18:00 the problems roll in, one after the other. But the users are nice, leaving just enough time for a sip of coffee in between the calls.
Dinner is rice with some unlabeled fish from the freezer. Not bad with some beans.
O_O
When someone reviewing says that Solaris is "a Linux-like operating system" you realise time is just an endless loop. ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/16/solaris_x86_not_too_shabby/ ) I don't think Solaris is going to replace Linux. But it may well stop people jumping ship towards Linux
Intelligent design is fun. Really. ( http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2 )
Friday 2005-08-19
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