"While the term Jake Brake technically only describes Jake Brake brand engine brakes, it has become a genericized trademark and is often used to refer to engine brakes or compression release engine brakes in general, especially on large vehicles or heavy equipment." Compression release engine brakes may make a loud chattering or machine gun noise while being used, which has led many communities to ban them. There are signs on the side of some freeway offramps, or at municipal boundaries, that will say "No jake braking", "Engine brakes restricted", etc.
Friday we made it just in time to our car when a huge lightning storm hit Durham, including the trail around the Duke golf course where we were walking. The storm stayed above Durham for at least 1,5 hours that night.
Today my run brought me on the trail again, and since I now have a phone with a camera built-in I took a few pictures of the storm damage.
This weekend we did a lot of preparations for our coming guests. Ettie & Gerben and Jaap & Mieke will be in the USA soon! We're looking forward to it, and now the house is getting ready also.
A warning for high warning a little down the road.
When we visited the Amsterdam Historical Museum last year I bought De Geschiedenis van de VOC. This book by Femme Gaastra deals with history of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company.
My first experiment in growing herbs was not entirely successful. Of all the seedlings I planted, only one grew out to a full and healthy plant, the others didn't make it. I'll try it again.
I'm not sure of what type the surviving plant is, we'll find out over time.
We didn't go to the official fireworks in the Bull's stadium last night since the weather was really bad. We went for a walk around the Duke golf course, and about half way we heard a thunderstorm coming our way -- we made it out just in time before the rain began. There was a lot of lightning, at least one per minute.
A month ago I read Die Verwandlung by Kafka. It had been a long time since I read a book in German. Kafka is one of my favorite authors and reading this book was a great joy.
The language of the book is so beautiful, and it's really nice to be able to read it in its original language. The opening sentence for example, is a classic beauty: Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Note that in English the word Ungeziefer is often translated to vermin, an interesting choice. Would a Dutch translator use ongedierte?
The story was touching and absurd at the same time. A google on the book shows that there are many different explanations for what the story "really" means, and I'm glad I enjoyed it as much as I did without trying the understand the deeper meaning.
Today is Independence Day, so a day off. In the evening we'll go and see fireworks, but during the day I did some Ruby programming. I really enjoy this language!
To connect to our corporate network I use a Cisco VPN client and I ran into a small but annoying issue. The window of the VPN client wouldn't "Restore" anymore, I could only have it open Maximized or Minimized.
I did a scan on the registry but ultimately I found the settings that I needed in vpnclient.ini. The offending items:
Internet Explorer doesn't like it though: "expected identifier, string or number". It turns out that the extra comma after "increment:" throws IE off. Debugging JavaScript used to be a total nightmare 5 years ago, but tools like FireBug and www.jslint.org made development a lot more productive.
We came home from a great weekend in Asheville. We visited the Biltmore Estate for the first time, and it was gorgeous. 
Friday 
My first experiment in growing herbs was not entirely successful. Of all the seedlings I planted, only one grew out to a full and healthy plant, the others didn't make it. I'll try it again.
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