I received a call at about 13:22, from IT-Pro. Short and sweet was the message they delivered. `You ordered a MacBook? I’m calling to say it’s in and you can pick it up.’ At 13:38 I was there, and at 13:44 the payment went through.
I hope my girl is very happy with it. Pictures to follow soon.
Update: Pictures
It seemed like a good idea to post a list of thing I’ve got to do. That way, certain people who provide gear and stuff can see what they need to order and bring along. So, in no particular order:
Ok, that should keep me occupied during the summer. Anybody experienced enough not the render the place fubar is invited to help. I’ll provide the food (BBQ preferably, weather permitting) when the job is done.
Ah well, I’m about to have green grass and I already have a pretty girl, so the song must apply. Since Friday, June 16th, I’ve noticed small patches of grass coming through the topsoil. Three days later, the leaves have grown immensely, and more than a green shine is clearly visible. I am wondering though, if the lawn will be covered uniformly, because the rain of the previous week has put a few dents in my carefully levelled land. One can now see leftovers of footsteps, the handle of the rake going back and forth, etc. Most grass leaves are visible on the higher ground, not in the valleys, so to speak. We will see what happens in the next few days. We still have eleven days to go.
The building my office is located in, has some flaws, it seems. It has been raining for the last hours, and the water on the roof outside my window is rising. Said roof shows no sign of any drainpipe being attached to it, but there is one pipe coming down from the top of the building. I expect the water to hit the top of the roof you can see in about two hours. I also think that our window is just a bit lower than the roof. Ah well, the office needs cleaning anyway.
Nine thousand five hundred kilo. Six cubic metres. Dirt. Three wheelbarrows. Two Shovels. Three men. Four hours. Thirty minute break. One pizza. One bottle of Coca-Cola. Goal: levelling the land.
Those are the statistics of the evening hard work, when we moved the new earth to the garden. The neighbours were friendly enough to come and chat, but none offered any help. Ah well, so be it. In the end I think we would have too much earth, but as thing turned out the next day, I was sadly mistaken. It took me a whole afternoon to clean up the twigs from the bushes, and level the earth some more, pack it, using a concrete wheel thingie, and rerake it.
On Sunday, I levelled some more, planted sticks and attached bags to keep the birds at bay. Finally, I got round to sowing grass seed, sufficient for 100 square metres (we only have about 60 square metres for the lawn). It was also very hot, so I had to give water twice a day. I ended up with this:
Some students refuse to grok even the basics. It saddens me that some do not even try to load their program into a Haskell environment, such as Hugs or GHCi. I’ll not say who wrote the following code, but he/she got very few points. None, in fact. Can you distinguish all the languages thrown together?
78 minimal2 c endconf tempconfs bestc {
79 while ((length tempconfs) != 0)
80 do
81 -- Eindconfiguraties hebben geen verder onderzoek nodig
82 if isFinal (head tempconfs)
83 endconfs = endconfs ++ (head tempconfs)
84 tempconfs = tail tempconfs
85 -- Als een tussenconfiguratie al een hogere kost heeft dan de
86 -- goedkoopste eindconfig, moet er niks voortgerekend worden
87 else if betterCut bestc (head tempconfs)
88 tempconfs = tail tempconfs
89 -- ... en anders berekenen we de volgende configuraties
90 else
91 tempconfs = (tail tempconfs) ++ followers (head tempconfs)
92
93 -- Beste configuratie uitfilteren
94 foreach conf in tempconfs:
95 if (betterCut conf bestc)
96 then bestc = conf
97 return bestc
98 }
Of course, most code submitted was quite good.
The garden fence is up. Now we await payment from the neighbours, who promised to pay half of the costs we made to make sure we can no longer see each other.
If anybody needs some rocks, stones, or junk to burn, drop me a line. There’s plenty of it still awaiting removal.
Next step is the final levelling of the land. Tomorrow 9.5 tons of garden earth (6 cubic metres)will be dropped on our porch.
I did it. Order a MacBook, that is. White, 2.0GHz Core Duo, Superdrive, Glossy screen, 1 GiB RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, Localised Keyboard. The Glossy Screen because I refuse to flood the Apple banc account even extra for a Black MacBook with a Normal Screen. The Localised Keyboard, because the machine is a present (albeit paid from the common savings account) for my woman.
Let’s hope she’ll enjoy it. Now, the waiting period begins…