fifo.nl

Well I’m posivitely flabberghasted. Here’s why.

I’m one of very few people, I imagine (perhaps I’m wrong), who’ve never considered being overweight as anything other than their own fault. I blamed lots of factors in my life, but nothing which I had no control over. I thought it must be the eating pattern I had when living with my family (my mother is overweight as well), combined with the lack of exercise. Since I only tried to go on a diet once and failed miserably at that, I figured I simply wasn’t trying enough.

Yet I don’t eat lots of food, like people have always assumed. I’ve witnessed the astonishment of many friends as I claimed to be full while they expected me to want at least a second plate. I’ve never liked those responses, yet I can’t blame them. If I saw a fat person I’d think exactly the same. The problems I have with eating are a) I need more vegetables b) I need to ignore things like one-euro-snacks at train stations c) I need to schedule my eating pattern a bit better. These factors are reasons for being a bit overweight, but not for being like me. I gained weight over the last couple of years, doing nothing at all different from when I didn’t gain much weight before. Oh and you might not believe this, but I actually tend to forget to eat. Or drink. It doesn’t make much sense really.

A few weeks ago I had an introductory meeting at my new physician. A few days before that meeting took place, my dad collapsed from heart failure, and he was admitted into the hospital. It was bad but he’s still alive and back home, thank goodness. It’ll take about half a year before he gets to go back to work again. When I went to the meeting with my doctor, I was more than a bit shaken up by this (I don’t want to go down that road) and I told her about that. She asked if anything was bothering me and I started about my weight. I’d get a dietitian and a blood test to rule out certain malfunctions in my body.

Parallel to this story, is another story about my dentist who told me ‘hey you don’t have much saliva’. I said ‘well I have next to no tears either’, which was determined last year. He ordered a test at the hospital to exclude a disease which might cause both, called Sjögren. So Friday morning I went there and the surgeon asked me about my weight, and I thought ‘not this again’. He asked me about a number of other symptoms which I could confirm. Really, talking to a dental surgeon about your digestion is the weirdest thing ever. Then, he explained he asked me this because he thought my thyroid (NL: schildklier) wasn’t working as it should be, and there should be a blood test to confirm that. Well of course I’d already had that blood test a few days earlier. The results were just in and they confirmed it: my thyroid is working too slowly.

With my thyroid not doing its job, a diet wouldn’t have helped a thing. If I get a cure for my thyroid, I get a cure that will help me lose weight, decrease my paranoia, depression and fatigue, and fix other more minor problems I’ve had. Now all I need to do is wait until I get to see the doctor on Wednesday, and I will be a lot wiser for it. With a cure I might just lose weight for the first time ever. I can’t wait!

Ik was vergeten hoe geniaal, hoe goed, hoe briljant Brigitte Kaandorp is. Ik heb dan ook al heel lang niets van haar gezien. Maar (onder andere) dit stukje greep me.

Well this is quite annoying. My alarm clock doesn’t function anymore. That is, it works fine, it would still scare the shit out of all the customers like it did that day in the store when I bought it. But nothing wakes me up anymore. I’m supposed to wake up at 5:00am, but there are a few scenarios that occur almost daily. Option one, I switch off my alarm clock in my sleep and I wake up later. Much later. I’ve only once overslept later than 7 am, but I generally oversleep at least an hour. Today I woke up on my own at 7. Option two, I snooze. And snooze. And snooze. And snooze. Until it’s at least past 6. Then I think, ‘wait how many times did I hit that button?’, and I calculate it must have been at least 6 times… but I never recall any of that. And then there’s option number three, I switch on the radio in order to wake up a bit and I end up falling asleep to the sound of a lullaby (when you’re tired, AC/DC songs are lullabies too).

Well apparently this means I have some catching up to do when it comes to sleeping. I realise now that I have been so incredibly sleep-deprived for so long, that it’s made me accept that 4 hours a night with regular disturbances in the middle of the night was all I got. Now I go to bed at 9 or 10 pm and I don’t even wake up at 5. This started me thinking, because I have two options: panic and try to keep up with the ‘get up at 5′ schedule, or take that extra sleep and go to work later. Given my flexible work times I’ve decided to go for the latter, which means I’m actually awake when I show up for work nowadays.

In the mean time, I’m going to have to find a new alternative for waking up in the morning. I’m considering getting me one of those Philips Wake-up Lights, but I don’t know, that’s mighty expensive for something that might not even work for me. Currently I’m quite out of other options though. A wake-up light, a foghorn, a bucket of icy cold water over my face and a marching band in my bedroom, now that might work. Hey percussion dudes, you might want to try a little harder. And bring more drums.

I’ve been professionally translating for a while now and I’ve had my business since June 2009. Ever since, I’ve been longing for a job with regular pay and benefits like a pension and the ability to fall back on welfare if I have to. It’s not that I hate running my own business… well maybe it kind of is. There are a few things I really wish I didn’t have to do. The drawbacks:

- Looking for work. This hasn’t been an issue for me so far, but I dread the day on which I can’t find a new project. Times are tough and I’m not very experienced yet. The irony of companies asking for experience all the time is not lost on me: I need to get experience but I can’t get a job because they all require the experience I still need. The lack of job security can really get to me at times. How will I pay the rent if I can’t find work for a couple of months in a row? I won’t and I’ll have a problem.

- Managing my money. I’ve always had a hole in my hand, a black hole no less. Money disappears into it, nothing much comes back and I wonder where the hell it all went. Usually I find out I spent it on things like that one gadget I loved or nights out in Amsterdam, stuff like that. Putting aside half of what I see coming in has proven difficult for me, even though I thought I had it all figured out. Moving to Castricum made me take money out of that account, because I needed stuff for home improvement. I need more discipline when it comes to keeping money for taxes and BTW (VAT) in my account.

- The paperwork. Since my financial skills are quite poor already, I got myself a bookkeeper. She handles my mom’s bookkeeping as well so we drive over to her house once per quarter and we dump our paperwork. I would never have got it right by myself. Of course, a bookkeeper isn’t free so I earn a bit less each month. The paperwork still does take extra time; the so-called non-billable hours can fill up that fifth day of my working week. I need to invoice, which is quite easy but still takes time and then I need to check, double-check and double-double-check whether I get paid. Which brings me to:

- Agencies, ugh! IBM pays agencies after 70 days when they invoice. The first agency I worked for told me “yeah we can’t pay you until after 30 days” (this got me into some serious trouble in June last year since I didn’t know payment would take 30 days). So I settled, neatly put ‘pay within 30 days’ on my invoice. They did pay on time, except for with the last invoice when they ‘forgot’ to add the traveling expenses.
Then I switched agencies, and I was told “yeah unfortunately we can’t pay you until after 60 days” (which -again- got me in trouble, since I moved at that particular time). I complied again, even though I don’t know if agencies can even do this. So far, they’ve consistently not paid me on time, so the term lasted (almost) 70 days anyway. I made a reminder e-mail just to make sure they actually pay me after those 60 days. It got me an out-of-office autoreply today.

I hear people who love having a company, but I don’t understand them much. Sure, you can deduct almost all VAT on stuff you buy and you get to browse at the Makro store, but those are about all the benefits I can see. If I got a regular job, it would be much easier money-wise and I’d actually be done working when going home. Also, I like job security. Though I have to say, mentioning to people that you run a business is simply awesome.

This morning I got quite pissed off by an article I read in Sp!ts. After a report in the dutch TV programme Zembla about how medium Char Margolis (apparently only known in the Netherlands) uses cold reading to ‘speak to the dead’, it would seem that she’s back for more. This time she talks to victims of several disasters to get them in touch with their dead relatives. As remarked in Sp!ts, apparently people forget very easily. Wasn’t it already established that she’s a fraud?

Char is not the only person fooling us Dutch people. We have another Uri Geller show coming up and then there is Derek Ogilvie. I have to be ashamed of myself and say that even I believed that guy for a while, until I remembered Char and the Zembla report. I wondered if similar reports exist about Derek Ogilvie, and indeed they do. In a blog post by a spectator of his show the skepticism is quite clear. But this guy is better than Char. Cut the scenes for his shows right and you have a guy who knows that the wallpaper in the second room to your left on the first floor has been torn apart.

But all they do is guess. James Randi, the guy who’s trying to uncover all these frauds, tested Ogilvie and he only got 1 out of 20 tests right. Randi has a reward worth US $1,000,000 for the first person to pass his test. He has yet to meet the first person to pull it off.

So we know all of this. We know Uri Geller, Char and Derek Ogilvie have all been unmasked. So why do we still believe them? Why do the networks and these clowns still make money out of emotional people who are willing to believe anything? The answer to that is the same as the answer to why religion exists. It soothes people, they’re lured into a false sense of security. Your loved one is with you, don’t worry. What is his name? Oh is it a she? Does the name start with an R, E, or a T? Tina? Oh no of course, I meant to say Caroline. She’s with you. And she says you should give me more money.

Yesterday it (finally) came to my attention that apparently in Castricum there’s a plague of brown rats. Afraid of ending up writing an FML, I visited a meeting that was held last night, during which people were informed about the status of the problem and measures already taken. This meeting also allowed people to ask questions and make suggestions. The representatives were 2 members of the town council, a member of KAD (who get rid of plagues) and Rentokil (who cooperate with KAD).

Now, I was wondering why I should go there since I haven’t seen any rats or signs of rats, but I thought I’d better be safe and check it out. The good news is, it probably won’t concern my area since all the houses there are new and have proper sewers. But most of the people I saw live in the older part of Castricum. Through the sarcasm and anger I heard several (shocking) facts:
- These people have been dealing with this issue for fifteen years. For the longest time, the town council got complaints but haven’t responded. Juicy detail: upon the question of how many complaints there were and how they were dealt with, there was no reply from any of the represented parties. I got the impression they haven’t been very adequate in the past.
- In cases where Rentokil did show up to fix the problem, they did their job poorly and they were apparently unsuccessful.
- The old sewers are made of glazed stoneware pipes (NL gresbuizen), which is a weak material and has disintegrated at certain places. That is where the rats can exit the sewers. Apparently these pipes should have been replaced years ago, but that hasn’t happened. One lady complained the maintenance in her street was now 6 years overdue.
- It took ages before people even had an inkling of where in Castricum this problem is going on. Of course the people who live in it know, but it would have been nice to know how widespread this problem is. There was no map, only a small indication of places that have been investigated. This brings me to the next point.
- Three neighbourhoods have been investigated. Actually only two-and-a-half, since one neighbourhood was only partly investigated. All the places they checked showed clear signs of rats. They would NOT admit, however, that it was an actual plague.
- In 1998, the Dutch government decided that consistently checking for rat plagues was no longer in their best interest. Since then, there has been no consistent data about the existence and/or nuisance of rats in the Netherlands. The reason why they cannot call this a plague is because they have no actual recent data indicating ‘normal’ values to compare against.
- The focus of this meeting was very much primarily put on what people have to do in their own homes in order to prevent rats from entering them. There was no insight into what the town council is going to do about the problem in public places, or if the sewers are finally going to be replaced.

People were very angry, and rightly so. I haven’t seen even one rat or met any of these people and this outrages me too. This is one big pile of negligence and governmental failure. I just hope this problem doesn’t move towards where I live.

Sometimes, in between slowly forgetting the finer Linux commands, working a lot and no longer tinkering that much with stuff anymore, I find myself wondering: am I still a geek? You see, I take pride in that part of me that likes to figure out how stuff works. Also it’s a lot of fun to do ^_^

Anyway, the other day I got quite annoyed since my internet wasn’t working. I’d checked everything: cabling, the AirPort, the connectors everywhere, the works. I found out there’s a problem with the type of modem I have (an Ubee) and kindly asked someone on irc to help me out. This only made it worse. Basically, if I attached my MacBook directly to the modem it was fine. With my AirPort it wouldn’t stay online for even a minute. After the fix on the modem I got quite desperate and two other friends of mine came over late at night to help me out on location. They tested more: on my other router, a Belkin, it still wouldn’t work, until they cloned its MAC address. Since my AirPort doesn’t do that, we would have never found this out if I hadn’t had the other router. After that it was a matter of asking the guy on irc (serial) about that and he found out there was an IP conflict with another customer. If I hadn’t had these connections I would have never found it, and helpdesk people would have been equally clueless. Likely I would have moved to another provider in the end.

So I can’t solve everything. I needed to tinker. And I did! After my interwebs were fixed, I pulled some cable through the wall, attached some connectors and fixed a UTP wall socket, so I will no longer stumble over cables in my hallway. So I haven’t lost my touch after all ^_^

UTP Wall Socket

I love being a geek ;)

Following a gajillion discussions on IRC over a long time, I started thinking about my history with mobile phones. This led to me googling for about 2 hours straight, because I couldn’t find my first phone ever. Until I did! It was the KPN Pocketline Wave 200, but almost none were sold in the Netherlands. Originally it was a Trium, and this took me ages to find out. On this picture the logo above the screen says Trium, on mine it said KPN. It was brilliant, it worked well and what I remember best were the sounds the buttons made (which I recall were impossible to turn off).

I also found all the other phones I ever owned. In a nutshell:
Number two: a KPN Pocketline Swing, which was my mom’s phone when I still had my first phone. I didn’t have this one for long, I only got it because my first phone broke and I handed it back when I bought the Siemens.
Number three: a Siemens A55. Dreadful thing, it unlocked in my pocket because unlocking only required holding one button, and it’d call people. Sorry everyone who ever received a phone call from me around 5 years ago! I took care of this one: I accidentally left it in my pants, which I then washed.
Number four: a Nokia 6230, which was easily the best phone I’ve ever had. It was easy to figure out, the buttons worked well and never broke, and it was a really sturdy phone overall. I bought a new frame for it once, and it was as new again. Drawback: the battery went dead in several hours at the end. Also, I was kinda bummed out about the fact that I didn’t have a 6230i, which had an extra button in the middle and more features/more storage etc.
Number five: an MDA Vario (HTC Wizard). I was tired of T9, and I’d decided that a phone with a keyboard was what I needed. I also found that Windows Mobile is quite versatile, even if it’s buggy and slow. Even if I had to reboot my phone every once in a while, I was happy.
Number six: an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II). So I figured, why not another one? This one was (a little) faster, had extra internet options, etc. Also, I got PocketScumm on it and I played Monkey Island ;)
Number seven: an iPhone 3G. This one pretty much speaks for itself. I went along with the big hype and got it too. Ny next phone won’t be an iPhone though; this one has WAY too little battery life and Apple is being an ass on certain things any other decent phone does offer these days, like tethering. But it’s cute none the less.

So there we go! I wonder which one my next phone will be ;)

Zoas de meiste ve jullie wel zulle wete, ken ik oftig bar vreemd prate. Vezelf doen ik dut niet altoid zo overdreve, maar ik ken het West-Fries woord veur woord leze en begroipe as ik het hoor, en ok skroive as ik m’n best d’r veur doen. En toch is ‘t zonde as ik niet ‘te bed’ ken gaan, of as mense me lillek ankoike wanneer ik zeg ‘woi benne deer weest’ in plaas van ‘wij zijn daar geweest’.

En nou ben ik verhuisd en hew ik geniesse mense meer om me heen die ok een woordje West-Fries prate. Deer heb ik een oplossing veur krege: een kelender!

Da’s toch nag ‘n stukkie West-Friesland in m’n huissie.

I finally moved to Castricum, but this is not quite how I expected my first week to go…

On Saturday my dad, my brother and me moved all the stuff to my new house. The roads were slippery and it was very cold, so that was an extra hazard. All went well though, and after soup and bread for dinner at my parents’ house I took a last car full of smaller things with me. What I hadn’t considered was that these ‘small’ things would take me 13 times to move into my house. I was done at 23:00h, and immediately went to bed.

Sunday was my only free day, and I cleaned my kitchen and moved in most of the stuff. Then Monday I went to work… which naturally took ages. I received a ThinkPad so I could work at home, which is what I did. I worked extra hours so I could keep my appointment with the eye doctor yesterday. The good news: apparently they can find nothing wrong at all with my left eye. The bad news: it’s still not okay, not by far. It hates light and it constantly behaves as if I have a migraine.

So I got home, and I felt extremely chilly. I decided to sleep it off, and a few hours later I woke up with a huge fever and everything in my head and all my muscles hurting. So right now it’s early morning, it’s Christmas, and I’m really sick. I wonder if I can make it to my parents, or whether I should… it might not be good for them.

My new house is still awesome, even through all the mess I’m still in. A couple of closets should fix that soon. In the mean while I live with boxes :)