By Guus , 11 April 2007

The website has been down for over 3 days -- the longest outage in years!

A power outage in Middenmeer, combined with my parents being out of town were the root cause of the outage.

Thanks to Jaap the various problems have been resolved (thank you). The resignation of the Minister for Energy in the Netherlands has been demanded.

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By Guus , 8 April 2007

a term for certain birds often used as food by humans

By Guus , 8 April 2007

Of astounding force, volume, degree, or excellence; marvelous.

By Guus , 7 April 2007

Kroger on Saturday morning.I tried to go to the Farmers' Market in downtown Durham this morning but I couldn't find it. Today's the first day that the Market opened, it will be every Saturday morning throughout the summer.

Since a few months there is a Starbucks store in Kroger, the supermarket we usually go to, and I went to pick up two cups of coffee.

In a few weeks there will be the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and last night we saw video clips of some of the participants. It promises to be a wonderful show of bad musical taste again. It would be awesome if we could see Terry Wogan's show somewhere, although the chances of that are slim...

The Dutch participant, Edsilia Rombley, won't stand a chance with a boring performance. The Bulgarian participants, Elitsa Todorova & Stoyan Yankoulov, aren't too bad, but to win the competition more extravaganza is required. Titles as "Push that button" or "Shake It Up Shekerim" are more likely to score high, as is the "vampires are real" act from one of the small European countries.

Kroger on Saturday morning.

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By Guus , 7 April 2007

When I visited the Netherlands in October 2006 I bought a few Dutch books and had them shipped by mail. One of the books had the intriguing title 'Ik mis alleen de HEMA' -- 'I only miss the HEMA'. The HEMA is a Dutch low-price department store chain, a little bit like Target in the U.S.

The book is a collection of stories of people who left the Netherlands in the last 10 or 15 years. Some of the people were successful, others returned home when their plans didn't work out.