Month: May 2003

Although the door was barely ajar, I was having a heck of a time holding it back. My wife was pounding and pushing with an amazing force, heaving with an animal grunt. Finally I had to give away, she was too strong for me. In the purest of rage that I have ever seen in her bloodshot eyes, she pushed me back with Herculean force and came at me with amazing speed and agility. I had an instant of time to notice her hand raised above my hand, but then in the very same instant it was all over with. With one swoop downward she had thrust the glinting knife deep into my heart.

It's not everyday that you get murdered by your wife.

My blog entry called Crackedty-crack continues to amaze me. Recently it has suddenly become very popular for some reason, now with a record of 27 comments. How do people find out about it, probably Google. Hard to believe but true. Alot of calls for help from various poor souls addicted to the unappreciated art of cracking your fingers.

I finally got around to doing it after having putting it off for weeks, months, maybe it has even been a whole year by now. Shame on me, bad father, lazy bum. Ironically enough, the whole process took me no longer than thirty minutes or so, and there was minimal stress involved (probably the main reason I had postponed it for so long in the first place).

So what is it that I finally did? I hung up Sabien's new lamp from the ceiling that's what. She had this baby shade from when she was little with smiling moons on it, and she has grown out of it years ago. Doesn't seem like a massive chore now does it? A definite improvement, that's for sure.

Now what the heck is going on with the Internet nowadays and how can I as a full-fledged though home-grown e-business consultant keep up with it all? Let me pause one second and make a guess. Web Services, that is what it is all about. At least that is what they told me all day at the Web Services seminar I attended in Rotterdam.

If you are as interested as I am in the new hype and want to jump on the band-wagon as quickly as possible, then I recommend having a look at the W3C Web Services Activity site for more information.

Microsoft is doing it, IBM is doing it, BEA is doing it, everyone else is doing it also, you can even create your very own Dynamic e-Business Application Using Web Services, so beware.

Okay so today I went off into the deep end and let go of a massive email campaign to improve the exposure of good old GishTeq. This morning I let loose around 200, and depending on the reactions to this bulk I will send off the other 950 soon afterwards. Perhaps maybe some of you fine readers and/or bloggers received the mailing also. Hope you liked it and didn't think right off that it was some kind of Spam attack.

My old friend Splog was quick to respond with compliments, and I really appreciate that so thanks.

If you just happened to miss out on this historic event, then I invite you to check out the mailing yourself: Had a serious look at your web site lately?

Here's a little Perl snippet which will place commas in any number string right where they belong:

sub commify
{
    my $text = reverse $_[0];
    $text =~ s/(\d\d\d)(?=\d)(?!\d*\.)/$1,/g;
    return scalar reverse $text;
}

So for example, by calling commify("13245766") the value "13,245,766" will be returned.

All the little commas right exactly at the correct positions using a simple regular expression. Pretty amazing language that Perl is. Does it make sense?

Although it is officially Sunday the supposed day of rest, I received no less than eighty-four spam emails. This is really getting out of hand. I use McAfee's SpamKiller which manages to filter out alot, but it doesn't get everything. For your entertainment, I have collected a random sampling of the titles:

CASH Expert - Get a CASH Advance in 24-hours! Stephanie Clemons - Hi ocrrfelurvw ecxycn 12cashmaker@yahoo.com - Att:$10,000 - $30,000 Income Per Month11162 Live Younger - Restore hair color kiffin and growth bvcasdcv@inrs.fr - re: Largest RX Inventory Available Online! All Approved Autos - Confirm Your NEW Car Loan Check these girls out - This could be someone you know Dreammates - View photos of singles in YOUR area Home Loans - Find a Mortgage or Refinance - Rates still low! Tyisha Tjia - A lean, fit and young kiffin Ester Samuels - Get larger nuts and penis Marvin Harden - 50% off Viagra! Chris - Secret Business Ideas! We show you how! Dr. Moore - H.G.H. Anti Aging Formula - ON SPECIAL!! Peter N. - Stimulate Your Love Life Belinda Thayer - In Debt? Get Help NOW Billie Carlton - increase the length and girth of your penis Adele Bynum - Improved sexual performance Francesca Snyder - Get PRESCRIPTIONN Meds to Your Door Cubism - Juan GRIS . (1887-1927) . [ADV] Newton Mays - Kiffin.gish, Get ready for the summer

I am already lean, fit and young, the length and girth of my penis is more than sufficient, and I have been ready for summer since last summer. I could do with some more money though, and those secret business ideas might be interesting.

Seriously now, this is really getting out of hand and someone should do something about it. The only answer is some kind of international legislation and air tight lock-down. These people need to be dealt with in a hard and aggressive manner.

In the Layman's Guide to the Banach-Tarski Paradox, an explanation is given to the seemingly impossible claim that it is possible to take a solid sphere, cut it up into a finite number of pieces, rearrange them using only rotations and translations, and re-assemble them into two identical copies of the original sphere. In other words, you've doubled the volume of the original sphere.

So who am I trying to kid walking around the house in my short-sleeve Stanford T-shirt, green shorts and bare foot? I mean, it's pouring down rain and cold outside. Inside the house, it is not what you would call tropical weather either.

You see, I was born and raised in sunny California, and this beachcomber attitude continues to course through my veins, keeping me going through hardships. I refuse to give in to lousy weather.

It's nearly summer by gosh and I am not going to bundle myself up and just disappear now am I?

Both hands tied behind my back, my eyes blind-folded, big iron balls shackled to my ankles, deep beneath the ground in some murky dungeon. So what's happening?

My local ISP floundered again and my good ol' Internet connection was down for most of the day, that's what.

On my way up North to Utrecht, I had the car radio blaring and I was singing right along:

"...Boys in bikinis
Girls in surfboards
Everybody's rockin'
Everybody's fruggin'
Twistin' 'round the fire
Havin' fun
Bakin' potatoes
Bakin' in the sun..."

Alright, who can tell me where these great lyrics come from?

This morning I found myself inadvertently bending over and removing various pieces of fluff and other minuscule fuzzy items from the carpet on our stairs. So what does this mean?

So why that beautiful woman lying naked in bed under those silk sheets over there wants to seduce me in the first place is beyond all my possible reasoning. It does not make sense. Just thinking about it makes me nervous, and I certainly do not wish to be unfaithful to my wife. In fact, I kind of feel embarrassed about the whole situation. Am I crazy? Why did I ever come here in the first place anyway?

Now without warning, she throws off the covers and exposes everything for what it is worth. She has beautiful, round breasts, a flat abdomen which tapers away nicely to her bared hips, and she looks very enticing. I am not sure what it is that she expects from me, what I am supposed to do.

Then I discover what it is all about.

Rising high right out from that ever so secret spot between her thighs is a very tall and thick oak tree. This oak tree goes up high into the sky as far as my eyes can see. Even though this is taking place in some bedroom in the middle of nowhere, there is no ceiling, only a blue sky with a few clouds floating around, birds fluttering by.

She is motioning me to come closer, and she explains what it is exactly that I am expected to do. As I approach her, I can now see clearly that the trunk of this massive tree is solidly implanted inside of her womb. The sturdy slab of wood rises from right out of her vagina and curves upward at a sharp angle! What I have to do is simple, though nothing less than precarious.

You see, she expects me to climb that tree for some unknown reason. She motions with her wide-spread hands, her empty palms facing upward, pleading for me to make the journey. Now or never. Fortunately, the branches are pretty evenly spaced apart. They come out at the sides of the trunk at just the right spots so that it is fairly easy for me to reach each rung of this natural wooden ladder with branches and leaves. I grip the lowest branches and raise myself up, higher and higher. The rough bark scrapes my belly and bits and pieces fall off into my hair.

Although this all seems pretty precarious to me, her seductive smile and erotic voice is too much for me to resist. I hope my wife does not mind that I am doing this, but there is no choice right now except to do it. Like it was always meant to be. What would my wife think when I told her that I had climbed this tree? Not your everyday average tree, but one growing out of the vagina of a most enticing seductress naked below me. As I climb higher and higher, I can feel my weight and movements trembling the branches and the leaves ever so slightly. But it will all hold. It will certainly hold pretty well, I am sure. I am rooted to the earth through this woman's womb and it is safe.

How high can I climb? Will this amazingly beautiful woman be able to hold me up and support my weight as I climb higher and higher? The massive piece of wood wavers, but I continue.

I am already nearing the top, and all in just a matter of a few seconds. Time is not important. The essence is time, time which remains motionless. Below me, I can see the whole world continuing as if nothing has changed. No one notices me, though when one thinks about it logically, I should be sticking out and be spotted by the droves of passersby. Hey, look up there! What's that guy doing in that tree? I realize that I am not wearing any clothes, but I am too high up now for any one to notice that I am naked. As naked as I was the day that I was born. Yes, my birth has something to do with all of this, that is clear to me.

Now that I have reached the top, I realize that there is no turning back. I am stuck here forever and will never be able to leave, to climb back down. Why had I let myself be seduced by this mysterious woman? Reaching the top was effortless, though the decision to start climbing was at first a difficult one. Not so much based on reason as some inner emotional calling.

Might as well get used to it now that I am here. I am now enjoying the view and trying to accept all of this for what it is. For what it was always meant to be.

[ » Discuss this dream at the Jung Page Forum ]

Both of us were having problems falling asleep, and it must have been nearly one o'clock in the morning. All of a sudden my wife broke the dark silence by speaking her mind.

"You know," she said. "I just thought of something really strange."

I mumbled back, pretending that I had almost fallen asleep when I hadn't really. "And what might that be?"

"Well, can you believe it that in just four years our two oldest children will have left the house for good?"

No answer from me, I had to think it over. Hard to imagine, I had to admit to myself.

She continued, "That's a weird idea, don't you think?"

Yes, a very weird idea. Four years is not that long of a time at all.

Seems like the older one gets the faster time flies by. As if the speed of time grows exponentially as the years go by. Doesn't seem fair now does it?

On Saturday, May 17, 2003 at 16:00:34 (PDT)
the hit-count for Gibberations is: 15000.

Putting off the inevitable is the usual way to make things look better than they really are. This is done as long as it is possible without making people feel suspicious, though in their hearts they really know and fear that what seems to be happening is really happening. At this very minute.

Take the recession, for example.

Everyone here in Europe knows that the economy has been slowly but surely failing for the last couple of years. But no one wants to admit it. It's like if you give in and end up talking about ghosts and goblins they will certainly come out at night to haunt you. Haunt you for good or for worse.

So you better be careful, or else.

What I am getting at is the following. This morning I woke up and took a long and relaxing shower, nice and hot. Then, after surreptitiously drying myself off in routine fashion, I meandered downstairs for a quick breakfast bite. As the usual traditional approach demands, I then threw open the newspaper, the Dutch one called "de Volkskrant." Even though in my heart I would have preferred not to do that.

Over there, in the bottom right corner, in the form of a small nonchalant article trying not to overexpose itself (in fear of economic ghosts and goblins coming out at night, of course), the recession was made official.

In fact, the article even started that way. Something to the effect that "the government has announced that it is now official that there is a recession" and so forth and so forth until the article ended abruptly before it was actually meant to end. Alert minds like myself notice things like that.

I finished chewing off my bite of breakfast, swallowed real hard, and meandered my way back up the stairs. Time to return to my lush and expansive office suite in our attic which is really just our bedroom and my laptop in disguise.

This afternoon I will go to the Banen- en Opleidingsmanifestatie Gouda to see if there is anything to be had for the future. Don't get my hopes up, but that is no reason to stop being optimistic about things. Although I am a still a so-called startup entrepreneur in the lucrative world of e-business, officially I am what they call a "baanzoekende zonder werk."

Seems I unknowingly kicked up quite a discussion at the 802.11 Planet Forum when I started up a thread called Roaming to my neighbor's wireless network....

You see, I used to think my wireless home network was something unbelievably fantastic. Until that is my neighbor decided a couple of weeks ago that he wanted one also. Jerk.

Now I spend much of the day resetting my laptop so that it stops roaming over to his wireless network instead of mine. For some reason there is no way to prevent my laptop from switching to other networks if they are present in the area.

Alright then, what next?

Today is my oldest son's birthday. Lennart turned sixteen years old, hard to believe.

In America, it would be a really big deal because he would (hopefully) be getting his driver's license. In Holland, it is a big deal because he is now officially old enough to drink.

In my mind, I see Lennart as a loving and generous person, and I feel very honored to be able to (try to) be a good father to him.

Alright so I admit it, I have been a naughty boy lately. Desperate to find customers, one often resorts to conniving means, seedy methods bordering on the immoral. Oh well.

You see, I figured why pay one of those companies out there on the Internet tons of bucks for email address lists, or pay them even more to broadcast mailings all over the world when I can do that myself.

I am a pretty smart guy, sometimes. At least that is what I fool myself into believing.

So this is what I did. I wrote a subscription mailing list at GishTeq which allows potential customers to sign up for mailings and newsletters. Later, one may even modify personal settings or opt-out altogether by unsubscribing.

Now the trick is getting people to sign up. Why don't I scan the Internet, collect emails and sign them up myself? When they get the first mailings, they can always unsubscribe.

I created another Perl script which can scan certain sites and scrape off the emails. If possible, it can even log in to subscriber lists and automatically scan these web pages also.

All I do is give the script a site url, start it up and there it goes. Ten minutes later or so I've got my list formatted as CSV so that I can even import it into an Excel sheet for future reference.

You probably won't believe me either if I tell you that with this technique I have successfully harvested more than one thousand warm leads.

Here's a hint (if you know Perl). Use the use LWP::UserAgent module to get the contents of the page and then scan it. See anything interesting, scan deeper via the internal links. Poke around and see if you can find anything interesting. Is there a user id that is passed around? Try all values of that user id from say 1 to 1000 and collect the results.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w # scrape_agogo - intelligent script for scraping email addresses from website use LWP::UserAgent; use HTTP::Request; use HTTP::Response; use URI::Heuristic; use strict; my $website = "http://www.someplace.com"; my $cmd = "/cgi-bin/progname.pl?id="; for (my $id = 1; $id <= 1000; $id++) { scrape_id($id); } sub scrape_id { my $id = shift; my $url = $website . "/" . $cmd . $id; my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(); $ua->agent("Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"); my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url); my $response = $ua->request($req); my $content = $response->content(); # This you have to make yourself, or pay me alot # of money to create a tailor-made solution. do_something_smart($content); }

Sorry, I've been a bad boy. But I want to become famous also.

So here is a provocative maxim to make you think a little:

Real success that lasts is built upon a path of many failures.

True or false?

In my never-ending struggle to enhance and expand my computer graphics skills to an even higher eschelon of expertise, I was just playing around the other day with some of the newer features of Photoshop (splicing images), when I came up with the following.

Just run your mouse over the picture and the various elements to see what happens. By selecting a child of choice and clicking with the mouse, you are swept away to the relevant web page.

The fearsome foursome ready for the kill.

Just thought someone out there might be interested and enjoy the picture of my fantastic kids as much as I.

So what's a man supposed to do nowadays? You wake up extra early on Saturday morning just so that you can spend some more time with the wife and kids. You manage your way downstairs, and what do you get? Not a good morning how are you doing? Nor a how did you sleep? Nor a nice weather outside isn't it? Nor even a so what would you like for breakfast dear? The kids remain glued to the boob tube which is blaring. The wife is too busy with everything else, and she barely has time to snap a question in your general direction. "So when are you going to comb your hair? It looks awful?"

You know I have come to the very same conclusion that a thousand men before me and a thousand men still to come have made and will make until kingdom come thy will be done until and then all over again. For you see if there were ever to be the right time then that time would be now and or never or something like that. Much to be had don't you think so why ignore this fantastic possibility, does not make sense does it? The very same conclusion and yet it all sounds so new, never here before nor so bizarre in its purest form of uniqueness never to be had again in some future time or place. Done again and again and again until.

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At the touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

-- James Wright