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No words, just yummie food and a superb atmosphere with co-workers 
A few weeks ago I was driving home from groceries, when I passed by a house that was completely hidden by trees and foliage. Curious as I was, I decided to check it out.
As you can see on the photos below the door was covered in moss and the windows were so dirty on both the inside and the outside that it was almost impossible to see inside. The furniture was covered in spider webs and there was a crapload of newspapers and books scattered all over the place. It gave me the strong impression that it was abandoned, and still in pristine condition.
Today I was driving home from a seminar with my co-workers Thom and Reinout. I told them about the “abandoned” house and we decided to check it out. After we arrived and were on the doorstep, Reinout said “There’s someone inside”. At first I said “Nah that’s just the hood of a lamp”, but after inspection there was indeed someone inside. An elderly, bearded man was reading a newspaper in one of the spider-web covered chairs. That was quite bizarre. Apparently someone lives in that house 
Almost a year ago, I wrote about a piece of art called Son-O-House. By coincidence I was in the area today with my new apprentice Reinout, and happened to have my HD camera and fish-eye lens with me. Time for an update
On Saturday I always have a fixed ritual. Around noon I drive to a parking lot in the town of Waardenburg, where I buy a bit of fish. After eating the fish, I usually take the scenic route to a supermarket, do my groceries, and then take the scenic route back home. It’s a fixed ritual and I like it.
Today, after eating my fish, I drove a bit on the dykes along the Waal River. Near the town of Vuuren I came across an old, burnt down house. “Super!”, I thought, “I can make some kick ass photos for my blog here!”. So I parked my car alongside the road, and decided to wait with getting out till a guy and girl, that were walking on the dyke passed by. Of course, Murphy’s law never ceases to exist; and so, instead of passing me by they walked up to the burnt down house, crawled under the fence and went into the house. What the… did I just get cockblocked by a bunch of horny squatters?
I don’t know what they were going to do in the house, but they were carrying a couple of bags. Maybe they were going fishing in the pond behind the house, or maybe they were going to do some kinky stuff there. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. All I do know is that I’ll have to come back to the house some other day to make some nice photos. The girl had a nice butt though…
I’m driving home from the datacenter right now. My boss wants to move to another datacenter, because the other one is cheaper and provides redundant uplinks. We’re looking to move two full-size racks; one for ACES Direct (ICT retailer, my main employer) and one for Direct Movie (Video on Demand hosting, the other employer). For the Video on Demand hosting I’m probably going to rebuild the web servers from scratch with load balancing for the new datacenter, so they fully benefit the redundant uplink.
That will be a fun project, I think 
After embarking on a shopping spree in Rotterdam with my parents, we ran across a parade of motorbikes. Apparently it’s an annual event where some motorbike club takes handicapped children for a ride. Sounds cool, and the kids seemed to have the time of their life
Right now I’m enjoying my meal at a restaurant called “De Beren” in Tilburg, The Netherlands. My dish of choice was the “Mixed Grill”, which consists of a tenderloin, a chicken filet, an entrecote, a sausage and half a comb of spare ribs served with some fries, salad and vegetables. All this goodness for the reasonable price of € 19,90; it just seems too good to be true.
After dinner, we’re going to watch the new star trek movie, I’ve heard good things about it, and so I can’t wait to see what it’s all about.
One of our distributors organizes an annual exhibit for its customers. On this exhibit they offer various manufacturers to show their new products, and do some social networking with the customers. My apprentice Jack and I also attended the exhibit. It was fun, the entrance was free, and the food was free and abundant; so it was a good exhibit as far as I’m concerned.
- 2 Baseball caps from Symantec
- 4 pens from Trend Micro, In focus, Lexmark and Kensington
- 4 condoms (don’t ask...
) and a red plush dog from G-data
- 2 lollypops from some random girl that was walking around.
- 2 “thermos” coffee mugs from Trend Micro
- a toy walkie-talkie set from Microsoft
- 4 golf balls from Cisco/Linksys
- a keychain from Plextor
- a can of peppermints from Fujitsu Siemens
- 5 cookies from Lexmark
- a plush scarf from Kensington
- a keychain from Kensington
- a cloth bag from Gigabyte
If you ask 1000 people if they would rather spend their vacation in Jamaica or the Sakha Republic, 999 people will say they would rather spend their vacation in Jamaica. 998 people will say this, because they haven’t got the slightest idea as to where this Sakha Republic would be; and the one person that does know where it is, will most likely rather go to Jamaica, for one very simple reason.
The Sakha Republic is a Federal district in The Far Eastern Federal District (Eastern Siberia), and is probably best known for the village of Oymyakon where the average temperature in January is between -40°C to -50°C (as opposed to +40°C in Jamaica). The village is known as the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth, and on January 26, 1926, a temperature of −71.2°C was recorded.
“Wait a second... you said 999 people…”. Well yes... because there is always that one person who would rather go to Oymyakon: me. I’m a total sucker for scenery. Sure, Jamaica has very nice beaches and nice views… but in my opinion they’re nothing compared to the beauty of ice. Let me show you why.
As I was driving to the mall this morning in order to do some groceries, I noticed that everything was covered in tiny ice crystals, and immediately fell in love. I decided to take a small detour and make a little trip along the riverbeds of the Meuse River to make some snapshots.
Click here for the full album.
It’s Saturday, the weather is shit... you’re bored... what do you do? Hmmz... Aha! Yes, of course! Lets gather up the House Ajira clan(tm), and go visit a Christmas market!
We went to the Christmas Market at CentrO, which is the largest shopping mall in the whole of Europe. It’s located in Oberhausen, Germany.
It was way too crowded, and therefore quite hot and sweaty, but it was fun. Lots of nice foods (bye-bye dieting...), some funny furry purses, smelly wooden balls, and other stuff you probably don’t need, but hey who cares?
After strawling around, and stuffing our faces, we also visited the local cinema to watch “The day the Earth stood still“. But this being in Germany, of course it meant that the movie was redubbed with German speech, which was a whole new experience on its own.