Month: March 2007

On a daily basis, much of my time is spent in one or another traffic jam, mornings and evenings, making the voyage to and from work a sluggish proposal involving much patience combined with unrealistic waiting and thinking alot and day-dreaming.

The only sane way to deal with this potential frustration is a kind of pure acceptance where one fosters an approach of enjoying the moment to the fullest. At least while it lasts.

Yet another traffic jam (near Woerden).

Thinking and preparing, listening to classical music or Neil Young or the BBC World Service or Led Zeppelin or listening to nothing at all and just enjoying the surrounding green Dutch countryside, staring and analyzing the frustrated folks in the other cars around you (look at that guy cussing and pounding his steering wheel), meditating and relaxing, that is really what things are really about.

Not easy, especially if one is in a mad rush to be on time for an important meeting, but there is nothing else any sane person can do except create the world around them, slow time down in the mind and hope that that so-called important meeting is not so important afterall.

Bye the way, in case anyone is interested, in Dutch a traffic jam is called a file (pronounced as fee-la).

A small integer value returned to the parent process when a child process completes. It is an 8-bit value that, for historical reasons, is further limited to the range 0 through 125, with values 126 through 255 assigned special meaning for abnormal process completion. Conventionally, a zero exit status means success, and a non-zero value, some sort of failure.

So there I was looking at those kids over there, walking along the usual path I took early in the morning. A bunch of kids running around every which way, pretty much a complete chaos. Not that I cared.

Each one running every which way with no sense of who is supposed to do what. Not that it mattered that much, random interaction which seemed to work out just fine, as long as I wasn't watching it all.

Not that I thought that I could make a difference, but as a passive observer it was interesting to watch nonetheless.

Watching passively and letting it all happen no matter what, so what does it matter?

Everything will turn out for the better, even if I do not concern myself with matters as much as I would like to do in the near future.

Perhaps we should be dancing and shaking each others hands rather than worrying all the time and getting stressed out.

Whatever is meant to happen will happen anyway so let's make the best of it.

Or so I was saying yet again.

Being afraid of cars is one thing but having to run away and hide behind the nearest tree or bush or stone wall whenever such a vehicle happens to pass by is a major handicap. Cannot play around freely without wondering and worrying all the time. Looking around, wondering when the distant intersection will reveal yet another monster on wheels is not easy to deal with. To say the least. Bad enough seeing the glint of metal in the distance, let alone the approaching drone on wheels, that mighty machine and the person pulling and pushing various extensions and pedals and whatever to get it to work and continue on its merry way. Making matters even worse, there is this unknown person supposedly directing the motion of this car while in fact things are much less under control than one might expect. Swerving to the right and to the left, anything can and will happen. So it's best to be prepared just in case. And that is exactly why I choose to duck behind the tree in the hopes that this never-ending stream of vehicles will ignore my presence and continue on the path on which it was originally meant to be. Six years old and going on fifty, that is the way it has to be. Watch out and be careful.

There is much too much violence in the world right now, and it does not seem to be getting any better as civilization advances through the ages. Blowing people up, putting bullets through heads, chopping off hands and tongues and whatever, where will it end?

This seems very strange considering that the main push behind evolution dictates that survival of the fittest will result in change as well as improvement as well as a natural pursuit of harmony and living together.

If we continue to kill each other off of the face of the world, then we are going against the grain of nature trying to decide things for ourselves.

Which does not make much sense, so what next?

A little known fact of life is that each and every one of us has the ability to create the world around him or her.

As a child this was a very apparent talent to me, and I used this creative power wisely while molding the unassuming chaos around me to fit my immediate needs.

When I was growing up, this ability seemed to elude me more and more often, and I wasted much energy trying to regain a comfortable hold on reality without really knowing what I was doing.

Now that I am grown up, or so I hope, I am convinced that it is possible to influence the world around me although it is increasingly more difficult to replay those scenarios of the past and make sense of what was never meant to understand.

Why is that fat guy running down the street as fast as he can? He can barely lift his feet, the blubber above his waist is jiggling madly, and he is huffing and puffing. In a hurry for some unknown goal of which I am unsure. Should I ask him? Probably not, let him make it just in time without me distracting him for the sake of curiosity.

Do you believe
In what you see
Motionless wheel
Nothing is real
Wasting my time
In the waiting line
Do you believe in
What you see.

- Zero 7, Simple Things

The sun was expanding itself into a huge orange ball on the horizon. The lower it descended the larger and brighter it became. I could have stared at this wonderful scene for hours on end because it was so impressive. However, not wanting to become blind by staring too long at the beauty before me, I decided to look the other way. That is when just in time this fantastic orb descended half-way and in no time became nothing. Disappearing below, and then what?

And if you feel that you can't go on. And your will's sinkin' low
Just believe and you can't go wrong.
In the light you will find the road. You will find the road.

...

And if you feel that you can't go on. And your will's sinkin' low
Just believe and you can't go wrong.
In the light you will find the road. You will find the road.

- Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti

For some strange unknown reason, since I changed ISP and started using a different SpeedTouch wireless access point, my Internet connection occasionally gets drop. My wi0 driver doesn't reconnect like it is supposed to which is pretty aggravating to say the least.

So when this happens I can use a simple script that I wrote which will in one go reconnect everything like magic as if nothing happened in the first place. Here it is:

I ordered my very own Tux Droid and cannot wait to be the first person on my block to own one.

This nice gadget will give me a good excuse to learn Python better in a creative and fun way.

Caught off guard I wasn't looking when Luca snatched my reading glasses from off the table. Later that evening, I happened to find them on the floor under the dinner table, chewed up with both lenses scratched and the frame contorted into a nearly impossible shape.

Carefully I bent the glasses back to the original shape (almost) and can see with difficulty through the criss-crossing scratches. You'd think that I would be mad and want to kick that mutt in the the side, but I have come to terms with having a pet and accepted the implications and limitations.

That's life with a dog in the house.

I really do not feel like going to the neighbor's big party this evening, but in order to avoid discussions later about why I didn't come I will show up for a couple hours and make the best of things. Chat and laugh and listen and tell a couple of jokes once in awhile.

This is what I gathered during my late evening walk, looking around and trying to figure things out, a somewhat typical image but much more than one would expect.

It is pretty much a question of observing the beauty of nature and balancing that awareness with the way one imagines that things are supposed to be.

Whatever the conclusions, one thing is for sure and that is that this picture displays perfectly what I am talking about.

At least that is what I hope.