Assume that I’d wanted to travel from Geldrop to Roermond. Easy enough, I’ll just check the journey planner to see how long it will take me. By default, the planner gives me the following advice:

I was a little surprised at the journey time. I had expected the travel time to be a lot shorter. Taking a closer look, I noticed that the journey planner wants to send me to Weert and let me stand around in the cold for 20 minutes to change to the Intercity service to Roermond. Just out of curiosity I decided to look up the same route but via Eindhoven, because I know that changing trains there means a lot less waiting time. To my (delighted) surprise I saw the following:

The total time is 10 minutes less then the previous advice! I suppose there could be a few explanations for this behaviour; the first example is cheaper and it’s the most direct route towards the destination. For me personally, a cheaper route doesn’t matter as I have a year subscription that allows me to travel on any train to any destination! So, my little tip of the day is to never blindly trust on the advice of the journey planner!

Think of all the things that can be done in the 10 minutes that I’ve just saved! Woohoo!

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The first ever weekly will be my new desktop background rotation! A good many months ago I had ordered a figure print of my World of Warcraft character, Grognak. I already had a really nice picture of him and I decided to make a few more, so that I could let them rotate as desktop backgrounds! After many failures, I managed to make some good shots:

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Once I had transferred the photos to my computer and had them configured as my background, I set back and admired my work and decided I was satisfied. This also triggered the idea of introducing The Geek’s Weekly here on Storm in a Jar as there are bound to be many more of these geeky moments!

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I experienced what I unmistakeably think of as the smell of summer; a slight whiff of cigarette smoke combined with various smells of (fast) food! For some reason it reminds me of the summers when I was a child and went to the beach with my mum and dad. Around lunchtime my dad would always take us (my brother and I) with him to get some wonderful, but unhealthy, food. Inevitably, a number of people would always be smoking near us.

It doesn’t matter where I am, whether it’s in town, on a race track, or the beach. The combination of warmer temperatures, blue skies and the smells of smoke and fast food spark these old memories of summer and beach. The first time when all of these factors combine into one moment, I will realise that another year has turned and summer has come upon us again.

Can a sandwich be made of a single slice of bread?!

I had a most interesting discussion with my colleagues at lunch today. We were debating about sandwiches and when one had the right to be called a sandwich. Yes, you’ve read that correctly! I’m not quite sure how we came to this topic, but at one point one colleague was arguing that a sandwich was made of two slices of bread and others that a sandwich could be a single slice of bread as well.

Personally, I was on the side with the single slice. I mean, what else could it be called if I take a slice of bread, put some cheese on it and fold it up? Only half a sandwich? One of the colleagues of the opponent side nodded vehemently at this, exclaiming how he and his wife always argued about it. As an example he added that whenever his wife asks him for a sandwich he gives her two slices of bread and she will complain she wanted only one. I’m not one to mix into someone else’s marital disputes, but secretly I thought his wife has every reason to complain!

I don’t think our lunch came to a close with a satisfying answer. The topic is still open to debate for me and I’d love to hear someone provide the correct answer, including their reasoning, to this dilemma! Can a sandwich be made of a single slice of bread, or not?!