Irolan

Hi everyone,

so today's Valentine's Day. Did you know that this day was made commemoration day in 469 and removed from the roman calender again in 1969? Originally, there were church services to bless married couples. Valentine's Day gained its popularity mostly from extensive advertising by the flower and candy industry.
I just came home from work. I go by train, so I see a lot of strangers every day. In the morning and in the evening, an employee walked through the train, offering chocolate hearts to all passengers. Nice gesture, I thought. During the ride, I saw several men with flowers - mostly roses - to bring their girlfriends (and maybe boyfriends), fiances or spousses. And I saw several women who were just given flowers, smelling them, being happy about the flowers. And that makes me think.

You know, I'm single, so I don't have a special somebody right now. That's mostly because I'm not someone who goes out a lot for parties or stuff, and I'm not actively looking for someone either.
However, seeing all these guys giving flowers to girls, I thought, that's something I never see during the year, only at this very date of February 14th. If I had a special somebody, would I wait for a day brought to us by the industry to give that somebody flowers? Flowers are a nice way to say I love you, or I care for you. Or both. And it's kind of a shame that many people seem to only give flowers only once a year, because it's custom. If I had a special somebody, I think I wouldn't wait for Valentine's Day to give her (or him for that matter) flowers once in a while. I'm sure that somebody would enjoy the flowers on other days as well. Maybe even more, because on other days, not everyone does it, and they would less expect it.

Just a thought.

~Raen

@)>--;--------

So, everyone mourned for the recently passed away Steve Jobs. His death is very sad, he was a great man and did an excellent job making Apple what it is now (or at least playing a big part in the process).
However, nobody talks about the other great man who died recently: Dennis MacAllister Richie, who died at age 70.
Now, most of you may now wonder, who is that man and why should I know him? The answer is simple, Richie was a Unix pioneer. He was the primary inventor of the C programming language.
C was the first high programming language, without C, other programming languages like C++, C#, Java, etc would not have been possible. There are entire programs, even operating systems written solely in C. The Hello World programs most programming languages are presented with were implemented to honor Richie.
In my eyes, Richie's work is even more important than Jobs'.
So, if you honor Steve Jobs, you should also honor Dennis MacAllister Richie, as Jobs' success would also not have been possible without Richie.

Just saying.
     ~Raen