Month: June 2007

One of the many highlights in life is the purchase of a new car. That's exactly what I did this afternoon, and in the end I feel pleased with the purchase made. As a family man I need a second car for the sake of convenience and feeling good about things.

Something simple and not too expensive just to get us around when required. Trying to resist a feeling of greediness but still enjoying the extra freedom allowed.

Everywhere I look there is graffiti all over the place. All of that paint and so much late night energy spent waving spray cans this way and that. For nothing more than merely attempting to cover up flat surfaces with something slightly less than meaningful. This activity arises from young searching minds wanting desperately to express themselves in some creative yet intrusive manner. Maximizing so-called impact within the boundaries of youthful hopes and disillusions in a fairly unpredictable world. The chaotic three dimensional world is collapsed to the two dimensional and somewhat less chaotic surfaces presenting themselves vertically to the unconcerned passerby.

I just happened to hear about this fine artist while listening to radioparadise.com one late evening. Nitin Sawhney creates music which is soothing to the soul, his Indian and mathematical upbringing producing profound subtle female vocals strengthened by sitar and tabla background sounds.

You might want to check out his website for more information: http://www.nitinsawhney.com.

I've been listening to three of his CD's, namely: Human, Prophesy and Philtre, the second of which is my favorite up until now.

Here is a partial list of friendly addresses for individuals perhaps needing support in escaping from religion:

• American Atheists
• American Humanist Association
• Atheist Alliance International
• The Brights

These are just a few sites which you might be interested in, although the challenging ideas that they present may make you stop and think about things.

Whatever makes sense that is, which when you think about it makes sense as long as you are honest about the way you think.

This is tremendously good, I believe.

Just call me Mr. Scrum Master from now on, please.

As of today, I completed the (grueling but fun) 2-day Certified Scrum Master training course given by the renowned founder and promoter Jeff Sutherland.

The highlight happened at the end of the day when Jeff Sutherland himself handed me my official certification and we did the secret handshake.

Another day, another record. Ran the treadmill for eighteen minutes and achieved an amazing 3.83 kilometers, which is 2.29 miles or an average of 7.66 miles per hour. Not bad I guess.

I am sitting in the train, and I'm not so keen that it is raining pretty hard outside. In about ten minutes or so I'll be arriving at my final destination Station Gouda. Meaning that if the precipitous climate does not change shortly, I will have to cycle home in the pouring down rain. Unprotected by my rain gear which I unknowingly left at home figuring that the really great summer weather we had been having up to now would not change in the near future. Little did I know at the time that the world climate is becoming more and more unpredictable these days. "Dames en heren, Station Gouda..."

After several weeks now, I finally got my X.org environment up and running after my ill-fated 7.2 upgrade mess.

The last obstacle was a mysterious error which popped up every time I ran startx, namely:

Yuk! So how did I fix this? The answer is simple: I simply commented out the following line in the /etc/xorg.conf file:

Seems to be something wrong with the OpenGL file included with the FreeBSD NVidia driver I downloaded and installed. I'll have to deal with this at a later time if ever.

In his new book, Richard Dawkins continues the great God debate in spectacular fashion, although he has the tendency to hit hard at those poor souls who unthinkingly base their beliefs purely on blind faith.

Although from the scientific view of things he makes sense with his convincing arguments, he has the tendency to really go out of his way to put down believers endlessly. I'm not so sure the effort is really worth it.

If there truly is a God, then it really doesn't matter anyway whether or not this book is true. I read it purely for its entertainment value (and hope that in the end God will not strike me down because I am reading for fun).

I should have never gotten started with the X.org 7.2 upgrade.

Two weeks later and my poor FreeBSD laptop is a complete mess, despite me having followed the upgrade instructions to a tee.

I'll give it one last try this weekend and see what happens.

Perhaps it is finally time to migrate over to Ubuntu.

Half the people in this train are sleeping or at least their eyes are closed and that's how it seems to be. I wonder why. Have they all had such a hard day at work? Slept so lousy last night? Perhaps hung over to one degree or the other? Exhausted with life and in search of something new? All I know is that I should not waste too much of my time being concerned about these issues and need to concentrate more on the more urgent needs. Close my eyes and doze off into wonderland.

With the warmish sun beating down through the semi-transparent window of the train together with a few splotches and other smudges here and there the temperature slowly but surely exceeded the limits of what is comfortable and what is not for a passive observer of external happenings. You can stare as long as you like at the nice landscape and the green grass but if nothing happens then it is probably time to look elsewhere.

I opened up my can of beer in the train and accidentally sprayed the poor guy sitting next to me. He jumped as if I had poured a bucket of ice on him, leering angrily back at me as if he had been doused in slime. Sorry about that young man.