Jan-Piet Mens

An aircraft company discovered that it was cheaper to fly its planes with less fuel on board. The planes would be lighter and use less fuel and money was saved. On rare occasions however the amount of fuel was insufficient, and the plane would crash. This problem was solved by the engineers of the company by the development of a special OOF (out-of-fuel) mechanism. In emergency cases a passenger was selected and thrown out of the plane. (When necessary, the procedure was repeated.) A large body of theory was developed and many publications were devoted to the problem of properly selecting the victim to be ejected. Should the victim be chosen at random? Or should one choose the heaviest person? Or the oldest? Should passengers pay in order not to be ejected, so that the victim would be the poorest on board? And if for example the heaviest person was chosen, should there be a special exception in case that was the pilot? Should first class passengers be exempted? Now that the OOF mechanism existed, it would be activated every now and then, and eject passengers even when there was no fuel shortage. The engineers are still studying precisely how this malfunction is caused.

(from.)

Charlie is finally back in the garden, after having been away for many weeks during the cold and the snow. He's getting ready to jump onto the roof.

He brought two friends with him, but unfortunately I couldn't get a shot of all three together.

By Lena Gieseke. (Thanks, Nic.)

I've completed and submitted my article on NanoBSD, the "miniature" FreeBSD. At 3000+ words, turned out a bit longer than I had expected, so I hope they won't chop too much of it.

NanoBSD works wonders on PC Engines' ALIX series of boards, so I've used some of those as examples for NanoBSD usage. I contacted PC Engines for permission to use one of their photos, and Pascal Dornier, founder of PC Engines, went a step further and shot some custom photos of their equipment for me. Much appreciated.

If all goes as planned, the article will appear in issue 5 of iX magazine end of April. I'll keep you posted.

A cowboy appeared before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

'Have you ever done anything of particular merit?' St. Peter asked.

'Well, I can think of one thing,' the cowboy offered.

'On a trip to the Black Hills out in South Dakota , I came upon a gang of bikers who were threatening a young woman. I directed them to leave her alone, but they wouldn't listen. So, I approached the largest and most tattooed biker and smacked him in the face, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring, and threw it on the ground. I yelled, 'Now, back off or I'll kick the crap out of all of you!'

St. Peter was impressed, 'When did this happen?'

'Couple of minutes ago.'

Hated by many, and unfortunately still in widespread use, IE6 will be burried today. Web developers particularly hated IE6 because it was a tremendous mess. These two images show, on the left, how any normal browser works, and on the right, the car crash that IE6 produces:

A funeral will be held Thursday at the Forest Room 5 bar in Denver. Services will be hosted by Aten Design Group. Click for the venue. Please note, that funeral attire is encouraged.