Archive for December, 2004

Sojourning the planets

Monday, December 27th, 2004 | Personal | No Comments

I just finished reading Sojourner: An Insider’s View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission by Andrew Mishkin – a telltale of the efforts to get the little rover, Sojourner, to the face of Mars. An intriguing tale of problem-solving, natural sciences humour and intrigues of the workplace.

Albeit the story starts out a bit messy it all comes together well and particularly the second part (of three) of the book is fascinating: the problem solving of the actual rover – designing it, troubleshooting it and all the other fun engineering puzzles you play with when developing something.

It is altogether a book to enjoy… if you are into the natural sciences, of course. Readers from other fields can probably read it as a fascinating adventure, but many of the – this is how we got around this problem – will not be terribly interesting to those.

So, pick it up if you get a chance.

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More tonsils

Sunday, December 26th, 2004 | Personal | No Comments

Ok, so just how much fun can one guy have with having his tonsils removed? Obviously a lot. This seemingly trivial, and non-complicated procedure can go wrong rather easily. Wednesday my wounds started bleeding and I had to be emergency hospitalised and have surgery once more to stop the bleeding… yay. So out cold for another 7-10 days while recovering from this one. At least I am slowly starting to be able to speak again. You gotta look at the small joys in life, right?

For interested parties, I don’t recommend getting your tonsils removed unless you really have to. In case you’re in doubt.

Oh and a merry christmas to those of you celebrating that.

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Tonsils

Saturday, December 18th, 2004 | Personal | No Comments

Had my tonsils removed tuesday. Slowly getting better… slowly. I have no idea why I couldn’t tell myself that getting cut up voluntarily was a bad idea. Pains. Not fun. Hope I’m well for Christmas. Ida’s been an angel looking after me. Always nice. Miss solid food. Look forward to a juicy steak sometime soon after Christmas.

The bells be chiming

Wednesday, December 1st, 2004 | Personal | No Comments

The day came when there was no more postponing it. Ida and I got engaged sunday (yes I am blogging this today, because it would seem too geeky had I done so sunday). So, despite the traditions having been blown to pieces (yes, she asked), then as tradition holds true the wedding should stand within a year. The proposal fell on our five and a half year anniversary day, for those who might be interested in some trivia about our relationship. We are both very happy and look forward to what life brings us next.

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