Month: January 2010

The famous golfer Ben Hogan used to say, "The more I practice the luckier I get."

He used to train himself hours on end and hit thousands of balls until his hands blistered and bled, feeling that this was the only true road to golfing perfection.

Lucky for him that he already had developed the right mind, which is most of the work.

One of my favorite scenes in "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is when David finally finds Cristina wandering aimlessly on the frozen lake:

...

I followed the tracks as far as the park that bordered the lake. A full moon burned over the large sheet of ice. That is when I saw her. She was limping over the frozen lake, a line of bloodstained footprints behind her, the nightdress covering her body trembling in the breeze. By the time I reached the shore, Cristina had walked about thirty metres towards the centre of the lake. I shouted her name and she stopped. Slowly she turned and I saw her smile as a cobweb of cracks began to weave itself beneath her feet. I jumped onto the ice, feeling the frozen surface buckle, and ran towards her. Cristina stood still looking at me. The cracks under her feet were expanding into a mesh of black veins. The ice was giving away and I fell flat on my face.

"I love you," I heard her say.

I crawled towards her, but the web of cracks was growing and now encircled her. Barely a few metres separated us when I heard the ice finally break. Black jaws snapped open and swallowed her up in a pool of tar. As soon as she disappeared under the surface, the plates of ice began to join up, sealing the opening through which Cristina had plunged.

...

There's more and it gets better and better, but I don't want to spoil it all for those who want to read this fantastic novel.

This is just one of many gripping parts of the book which takes place in the old, shadowy sections of Barcelona and surroundings. The story is an excellent read, although you will probably want to reread certain sections in order to get the most out of the darker and more mysterious chapters, trying to figure what's real and what's coming from the author's fantastical mind.

That's really weird, it started raining and all of a sudden all of the snow which has been lying around for weeks on end completely disappeared, just like that. Driving in the car with the sun blaring in through the windshield, it almost felt like Spring was coming. I thought great, now I can finally play golf again. So I rush on over to the golf course, but it's closed! The melted snow had flooded most of the greens and fairways, making it unplayable and slushy. Darn it all, better luck next time.

According to a recent global environmental performance index, the Netherlands rates as the 47th greenest nation, whereas the United States is way down the list at number 61. Iceland is easily at the top of the list, and in last place we find Sierra Leona.

At least we're better off here than in the States, but things could be much better if we all put our minds together.

Every once in awhile, I start receiving the following daily email notification from my web server:

newsyslog: can't notify daemon, pid 569: No such process

If I don't do anything, the very same message will keep on arriving in my mailbox every single day for the rest of my life. The solution is probably pretty trivial, but I cannot figure out what is causing this to occur. I've already wasted way too much time digging around in the innards of my FreeBSD box trying to discover something unusual, but to no avail.

Not that such a trivial warning means the end of the world, but it really bugs me for some reason. I'm impatient and easily aggravated by inconsistencies. Just kill everything by rebooting the system and hoping that it will not come back (but it always does).

$ sudo shutdown -r now

The following email which I received this morning looks really authentic, so should I respond in order to find out more?

I am Captain Ted Anderson of the US Marine Corps (U.S.M.C.) On a Monitoring and Peace-keeping mission in Baghdad-Iraq. Please there is a serious business I have for you. There's a consignment I want you to receive on my behalf. I shall give more information when I hear from you.Thank you and keep it secret.
Regards, Capt Ted Anderson

Well for the time being I'm not really up to any so-called serious business, sorry.