First national strike in Belgium under way

Today, there is a national strike of the public sector in Belgium. The unions are striking  for a reform in the pension system. An overview of the changes:

• The earliest age you can retire is pulled up from 60 to 62, except for personnel of the NMBS,Arcelor Mittal and some other companies.
• The bridgepension is replaced with a waiting premium (The name changes that's is it)

The changes will take place from 2016 onward, with exception for companies that are in financial difficulties, they will enjoy exception until 2018.

So for a change that barely is a change (and way under what the EU asked) the unions are willing to shut down our country costing the economy an estimated 500 a 750 million Euro a day.

Belgium: upcoming national strikes

On thursday 22 December 2011 the public sector in Belgium, will be on strike.
If you pass through Belgium by either land,sea or air expect some serious delays. As the rail network will be shutdown, there will be no navigators for the ship and noone will be present at the airspace control center,the last means no planes will be able to navigate safely above Belgium.

This get repeated on January 30th 2012 but the private sector will be called up as well.

So what are they striking about well simply the legal age for retiring is pulled up from 60 to 62 years, and that's pretty much it.

It's like the unions saying we don't want budget cuts but please give us so much tax that we won't be able to afford to work.

The Sims 3 patch 1.29 bringing nothing but trouble

Okay last week EA came with patch 1.29 for the Sims3 series, one of the things it did was enable the ingame commercial ads, that would have normally have been part of the base game 4 years ago.
(You can turn them off tough)

Well, alot of people have been trouble since, for me on the dot 30 minutes after loading a game the program chrashes, if I safe often I can avoid losing much but its hatefull.

Last workweek of the year has started

So I started the last week of work of the year 2011. Next week I'm off.

Snow and alot of it, luckely it doesn't stick

Well yesterday it started snowing, and severly; My windshield was cooling and damping faster then my heating system of my car could warm it up.

Luckely the dreaded snowcarpet stayed out.

EvE Online: 2012

Well, my fate for 2012 has been more or less decided, I've been offered a mining director position in a corp I know, the operations are most likely be hi-sec but I hope that after a while I'll be able to sink my teeth back into 0.0

EvE Online: Looking towards 2012

With 2012 coming I new EvE years resolution comes, but what will it be.
Well for one thing I won't be able to forfill the 2011 one untill late january 2012 (thanks to split off from the FTC)
With only 2 weeks left in this year, I'll be starting to put out some feelers on people that might accept me in the coming year.

EvE Online: Mexallon rising

A while ago I talked about mexallon rising. Well I've now seen it rise very fast I'm worried about inflation.
In the roughly 2 weeks since the launch of Crucible the price of Mexallon went up 10%.

Today its sitting at 34.31 isk per unit according to the eve markets, at this rate we might see it hit 40 isk by the end of 2011. While it's doing a wonder for my ore supplies value I'm worried we could see a hyper inflation,and I'm already noticing empire miners bots/macros or real people ditching the stabler ores for the ones that contain Mexallon, where this will go is everyone guess now, the way the price is rising now demand must be high but i'm worried about when the supply will meet the demand.

The evolution of Mexallon since Crucible was launched

JUST IN: Attack on civilians in Liege,Belgium

In the last hour a man in his 40, threw several hand granates and fired several gunshot at passerbies at the place Saint-Lambert,in the Walloon city of Liege (Belgium).Resulting in 1 death and 10 injured, after which the man commited suicide.

At the moment no further information is known.

Problems with The Sims 3

Since anno 2070 is experecing a lot of server problems lately, I 've returned to the Sims 3 as my secondary game (besides EvE Online), offcourse annoyingly the Sims3 has some annoying problems as wel.

Like the family tree breaking up every time you go on holiday. I've been using twallans mastercontroller to fix the familytree but its not a permanent fix.

Belgium Elections falsified 1 year before they take place

Next year, around october 2012, there will be local town and city council elections in Belgium. It is assumed that the NV-A will advance rapidlly, more so cause the other parties dropped the NV-A during the last federal negociations, also many Flemish are tired of the same old song. The Flemish parties besides NV-A promise change, more Flanders and we get the opposite, more Belgium, more bureaucracy and more inefficiency followed by more taxes.

Now with less then 1 year before the next town and council elections the old grand parties are forming so called 'city list', coallitions that include all 'democratic' parties except the NV-A.
This not illegal, parties are allowed to form coallitions, but in the way they do it now looks a litlle more like rigging the elections.

The sum of the expected outcome of the elections for the parties is over 50%, so in the cities they form these cities list they'll be assured to continue, while it is expected that the NV-A could go as high as 40% in most cities.

So all and all this is another proof that democracy in Belgium is evaporating, with even the traditional Flemish parties not even intrested in defending the Flemish

Belgium political crisis bis the budget and how to cut it

Belgium might now have a government but that doesn't mean the crisis is over far from it.

The NV-A the largest political party both in Flanders as in Belgium, was pushed into opposition when it became apparent that they were not willing to sacrifice their ideals for a few cabinets in the new government.

Now that they are the opposition their doing what the opposition does oppose. Right now discussions are going on  in the parliament over the budget for 2012.

The NV-A is furious that 33% of that budget are new taxes for the common man and 20% new taxes for the banks and energy sector. Yesterday the banks announced that they were looking in ways to increase there revenue in Belgium by charging more for certain 'services', so those 20% taxes will just be added to the customers bill. The rest of the budget are either virtual budget cuts or reform that won't be implied until 2018.
In the meantime nothings been done to the size of our bureaucracy, it has never been so large or so unevenly divided.

There is 1 person per 24 who works for the government in some capacity in Flanders, in Wallonia it is 1 in 5.

The new federal government consists out of 13 ministers and 6 state secretaries, all who get a netto wage of 10.000 euro per month. The Walloon parties call that this is the smallest government ever, in Belgium. This is not true only 6-8 years ago you had one with 15 ministers and 3 state secretaries.

The fact that there some many state secretaries is a compromise cause there more Walloon ministers then Flemish (6 Flemish 7 Walloons), just when all Flemish parties had called to not accept more state secretaries.
A state secretary has the same tasks as a minister, he or she also has a cabinet and personnel, but no direct power, if they need to get something done they have to ask a minister to do it for them.

It took 540 days to form this government, but most don't believe it shall live longer then 50 days - 6 months tops for that she's to unstable, has a to small a majority (3 seats) and they can only shout insult and denial when the opposition points them to how pore the entire situation is.

EvE Online: Mexallon rising

Well this week is seeing something intresting on the EvE Online markets, a sharp rise in the value of Mexallon.
And this isn't an understatement.

The above graph, made thanks to Microsoft reporting services and my SQL server database, represents the evolution of the price of Mexallon starting on January 1 2011 until today December 9 2011.

At the moment it looks like we might end with Mexallon being worth more at the beginning of 2012 then it did at the beginning of this year.

The rise can possibly be explained by 2 things:

1. The new tier 3 battlecruisers being produced en masse
2. Minerals output off drone regions dropping due to subtle changes made to drone anomalies

For me it means my stockpiles of ore are just increasing in value without me lifting a finger

Deinstalling Oracle, pain in the ass to speak off

About 6 months ago I had a huge project from hell, it involved transfering a 57 Gb Oracle database from Oracle to SQL Server, tables, stored procedures, ect...
It took ages to get the database running in the first place,client in Singapore,client previous IT support company also over there, client previous IT support company not happy about losing the contract.

That IT company send us the backup files to create our own copy of the database, but no further info, no name of the database, no version number, no passwords, not even login names. It took me 3 months of constant emails to find out all that stuff.

For those not familiar with oracle, the backups of any database in Oracle can only be installed on an Oracle of the same version,patchlevel and operating system as where they were made on.

SO after 3 months of wasting time we had that data and we tried to do a database create, funny enough we then saw the files were unusable. An Oracle database has to be offlined in order to make a working backup, here they had simply copy pasted the datafiles.

So we angrily went to them and got new files and got it running and eventually transferred to an SQL server database, but not without some further strange problems.

Well now we come back to the title of the post, I no longer need the Oracle installed on my machine at the office and have been trying to deinstall it for weeks now.  The deinstalller runs OK, but at a moment it seems to just stop and not continue, and if you exit the deinstaller it all gets rollbacked. So the deinstall does not occur.

Car problems, attempted break in on Monday

Is there then no end to the string of car related problems I've been having.
For those who reading this they might know what I'm talking about and for those who are just here let me link what happened before:
30 seconds between my car and the one that got hit
Car problems, did I get hit on monday or is it an isolated defect
Car problems, turned out to be an isolated event

Well a new problem presented itself on Tuesday morning, it was easily fixed but it was a bit unnerving.Cause of what it was the first thing which came to mind somebody had attempted to break into my car.

The window of the seat behind the driver was down an inch and the rubber isolator, had a downward dent. Like someone had tried but failed to pull the window down.

I know it had to be on Monday, since I park my car in our garage at night and that's locked on at least 3 different places, also if they had broken into the garage why would they go after my 18-year old Rover 412 instead of the 2 Rover 75's of my dad that are practically brand new (We do love our Rover's).

On Monday however my car was parked from 7AM till 6-6:30PM at a rather small and dimly lit carpool car park. I didn't notice it on Monday cause it was already dark outside and when I parked in the garage I didn't notice it cause I wanted to have my dinner.

So in the end nothing was stolen and the car wasn't damaged but it's once again an issue with the car, and they are beginning to weigh on me.

EvE Online: Solar Fleet Resets Legion of xXDEATHXx

Yesterday, news hit that Solar Fleet would reset Legion of xXDEATHXx.
This means that the DRF is virtually gone and that my old corp the FTC is now sitting inbetween 2 alliances that may go at war with each other again soon.

Saint Nicolas is not the Dutch/Flemish Santa Claus

Years ago I saw a Simpson episode, the one where the family watches a Christmas show done by the students of Lisa and Bart's school.

One of the acts showed the diffrent Santa Clauses across the world, in which they presented Saint Nic(olas) as being Santa Claus in the Netherlands (and also Flanders). This not true. While true that Saint Nic passes in early december (6 december so today) does not mean he is a replacement of Santa Claus.

Saint Nic comes every year with his steam boat from Spain to give gifts to good children and punish the bad ones. He is helped by his black petes, persons with black skin, he rides a white horse and has a donkey to carry the gifts.When I was young, it was customary to leave a carrot for the donkey and some sugar lumps for the horse and nicknack cookies for Saint Nic in a shoe.

The real Saint Nic, was a person who lived in 3th century Turkey. He became a saint for rescuing children from a demon (Most likely a pheadophile,slave trader, ect.. (I do not approve of these things but I like to point out the possibilities)). Near the end of his live he setlled in a village in Norhten Italy, which was then part of Spain, hence the assumption he comes from Spain.

Saint Nic come around on december 6th each year, to the children its told cause its his birthday. More is far from true, the original Saint Nic died on a decembe 6th.

The tradition of Saint Nic was established to introduce christianity to the german tribes,it now is a part of the common heritage of the Netherlands and Flanders.

As for Santa Claus, we only got to know him when american culture became predominant and through the Coca-Cola adds.

New Belgium goverment: a scam

In a few hours Belgium will have a new federal goverment, 540 days after the federal elections.
Why did it take so long, when from the start there were 2 clear winners.
The NV-A in Flanders and PC in Wallonia. Well, first the PS and most of the Walloon parties like the way Belgium is and don't want to change it, while the NV-A and a large part of the Flemish voters wanted very big structural reforms. After 365 a coallition of the willing ejected the NV-A from the negociations and they contoniud based on a proposal that went far below of what the Flemish wanted.

So now there is an agreement and a goverment, but don't be fooled by the words of the politicians who are in it. Nothing will change and for the Flemish things are only get worse.

1)BHV was split, this was the root cause of why the last goverment fell back in 2010. However the way they split it now will not solve the long term problem, with French speaking citizens in Flanders demanding more 'special rights' and their own represenatation in Flemish parlement.
2)The index, a system thats exclusive to Belgium that cause wages to rise or drop based on prices of certain goods and services. The EU wanted changes to this system so that the Belgium can still compete. This remains unchanged.
3)Europe asked for changes in the pension system, these changes have been agreed on but will only be implemented from 2016-2018, so when the next goverment will be at the helm.
4)The deficit for 2012 had to be 2.8% or lower, this was achieved but only by 'virtual' cuts and real-life tax rases. (I speak about virtual cuts cause of why they did so. In certain goverment expenses they normally take an estimated of how it will cost in the next fiscal year, if the costs turn out lower the money left over will not be spend. What they did now is just lower the estimate)

This goverment doesn't have a majority on the Flemish side of the country, that while the Flemish make out 64% of Belgiums population. The Walloons even refuse to give up any mp's, leading to a goverment comprising of 7 Flemish mp + 8 French/Walloon mp's (the 8 include the PM Di Rupo who still hasn't shown to be able to rise above his party or the Walloons), as compensation the Walloons propose that the Flemish get 3 extra vice-pm's, so this goverment could be larger then the previous one, be less efficient.

And that in time of financial crisis's.

So for these reasons, to many to write down, the new Belgium goverment,Di Rupo I, is a scam and doesn't
even deserve being called a democratic goverment.

Misfile: Character intorduction Emily McArthur

Emily 'Em' McArthur is the second victim of the Misfile.
In here case her age turned down from 17-18 to 15-16, at first Rumi
congratulates her on the extra time she has received but he sure regretted it moments later.

Emily was raised by her mother, never have known her father. Her mother got pregnant during senior year.

During the 2 years that got erased, she'd spend studying and foregoing most social activities. Her ambition was to get accepted to Harvard, which she was just the day before the Misfile.

After the Misfile she tried to get back on with studying but she couldn't seem to focus on it any more. She soon realised that the friendships she had pre-misfile were not 'real' friendships and that the ambition to go to Harvard was pushed onto her by an overzealous mother.

She became close friends with Ash,the other misfili see Introduction Ash Upton. During their summer vacation at Ash's mother in Cape Cod she started to realise she might have feelings for Ash, near the end of book 15 she started trying to get them beyond the 'just' friends stage.