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We managed to take some time to watch the lunar eclipse, around 9:05 PM. Interesting red colours: no serious. First thing on my mind was that it looked like the Pepsi logo. There was only a bit left to be covered but it was too cold to stay out. Some of you in North America may have noticed that too.

For work, I was doing some stuff in Access: I’ve basically finished most of the routines but have to tie them together in a macro so that someone can fire off a pretty report. It has been a while ago since I did some Visual Basic coding: the last time I did something like this was when I was asked to help out the Androids in Blue (the guys from Andersen Consulting). I did so, for a couple of hours. Afterwards they refused to pay me for the time spent on their coding. My teamlead (who was an Android too, but one of the good guys) told me not to bother next time.

I appear to have run into my first cold, as I’m coughing all the way. I need some Buckleys.

It’s cold outside, there’s no cloud in the sky and it’s going to be a perfect night for tonight’s lunar eclipse. Most likely you have heard about it, since the media here has been right on this very topic since the start of this week.

Hunting for images, I made a startling discovery that most relevant pages regarding lunar eclipses suffer from heavy traffic. Apparently mr. Fred Espanak is the guy to go for (‘Mr Eclipse’). For example this site in Australia refers to him. He appears to have a site at NASA but his MrEclipse.com site is plain molasses. Which is too bad, since he has a couple of interesting pages how to shoot photos of lunar eclipses (Google cache to the rescue).

Thinking of it: how come that these events are attracting more and more people?

Good news and bad news always go hand in hand. Hundreds of others agree.

It looks like that the immigration process is finally getting together. My application was stuck for so many moons that we almost thought to give up the whole idea. It was a nightmare, so many times. There were sweet dreams, so many times. It was a step by step race, where every minute counted. Every year counted too. It took patience and hard decisions.

The bad part? The door is wide open and that’s so confusing. We’re not used to the new situation yet and in a way, it’s scary. Undiscovered country. Thanks Canada: let the fun begin. Programming that is.

One thing that just popped in my head. As a programmer I like playing word games, or basically, play with languages. English is fascinating, particularly if compared with a strict language like Dutch or German. There are so many ways to obfuscate things in English sentences, or say things to get your message through.

But back to the topic: a lot of people ask me questions that start with ‘How do I do [this and this or so and so]’. I can’t stand those questions, because the person who asks these kind of questions implicitly implies that he/she thinks that he/she is not capable of solving the problem. Trust me, everyone is capable in doing some extensive brain work. Some people need more time than others, but on the overall, our problem solving ability is fascinating: I mean, someone taught you how to do those shoelaces (a pretty complex problem), right?

So: Think about it again and refine your question into ‘What do I need to know to solve this particular problem’. How you get to know this, I’m willing to show. But, how you do it (and how to get there) is your call.

I‘m currently overlooking the backup of precious code and data to a CD: I grabbed a BackPack (MicroSolutions) from work. Quite an experience to install those drivers too: the old MyNote resisted to let any new hardware install on its W2K partition. I ended up pumping data to Elsie (Mom’s PC) via FTP. I haven’t had time to install Linux yet on that PC: I refuse to install Caldera’s Linux Desktop on Elsie, as I once did before on Gayle’s old PC. Alf’s Debian CDs, once dropped here during his last visit, are (alas) not working due to a (known) bug in the installation script.

I think there was over 100 MB of old sources and executables. I feel like a hamster, who’s desperately trying to keep those old projects.

There was a power outage, that lasted from 12:30 last night to, well, about 1:30 this PM. Over 12 hours.

Pretty annoying, because this time it didn’t have to do with mother Nature. Around 11, we decided to find a place that served breakfast, and eventually, we found out that only the eastern part was hit by the power outage. Maybe it’s time NS Power sends an apology letter to its customers. ‘Thanks for the patience!’. Earlier this week they patted themselves on their backs for handling the power breakup so well after the Juan storm (PDFs available too).

   “We are proud of the work our people did to quickly restore power. We also recognize that some other things could have been done better and some lessons have been learned”

Did they really learn something?