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How I was falsely accused of drug dealing in Amsterdam

This is one of the stories my friends like to tell about me. During 2001 I was in The Netherlands for about 10 days. Mostly I spent my time in Amsterdam with my ever-traveling friend, Katz, who was there already for a few months when I got there.

Katz took me to places that she liked and introduced me to some of the regulars. One of those places was a coffee shop, and one of the regulars there was called Gevin, who was a pretty cool guy. One day, as I was playing chess with Gevin (I repeat, I was playing chess with Gevin!), he pulled out of his bag a huge plastic bag full of Marijuana and put it on the table, right in front of the cameras (which are mandatory by law).

Turns out that it’s pretty common for dwellers of Amsterdam to traffic drugs for profit if the chance falls upon them. What’s very uncommon was showing that to the cameras. I had no idea about this, and kept playing chess. Later on one of the waitresses dragged me outside of the coffee shop and told me that the cameras captured me dealing drugs in the coffee shop. Of course I chose the only logical course of action – I demanded to see the tape (I really wanted a copy of that). But she said we can only do this in the police station, so I gave it up because I didn’t want to waste my vacation time in a police station. Eventually I was warned not to do it again, and that was it.

So my friends think it’s kind of funny that pretty much the only person they know, who never used drugs, got accused of dealing them. Not only that, I got accused of doing that in Amsterdam, where it’s legal to use soft drugs.

Actually, I think it’s pretty funny, too.

By the way, the drug policy of The Netherlands determines that Cannabis is illegal to use, unlike what most people think. However, they do have a non-enforcement policy.

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Microsoft’s Next Generation Shell – Monad

Monad Shell (MSH) is Microsoft’s next generation shell for Windows. It’s a new scripting language, which is based on the idea of small commands that can be used together to create powerful scripts.

The shell is very impressive by itself. However, as part of their .NET strategy, Microsoft lets you import .NET libraries and use them from Monad scripts, which gives the programmer a lot of power.

ArsTechnica has a guided tour of Monad. It’s lengthy, but worth the read.

(For the computer language geeks among you, I will say that the new language is mostly procedural but also has functional properties, which makes it even more attractive.)

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Open Office 2.0 Is Out

Open Office 2.0 has been released, in case you didn’t know. I installed it and played with it a little, and I must say I’m very impressed. Unfortunately, I have little use for Office-type applications, so I didn’t test it thoroughly.

Open Office 2.0 has many interesting features, like importing Microsoft Office documents and exporting documents as PDF. In general, Microsoft Office users will feel pretty comfortable using Open Office, as the menus and toolbars are organized pretty much the same.

Hebrew support is very good, although Open Office doesn’t come with a Hebrew dictionary out of the box.

And the best thing, of course, is that Open Office is free.

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Where’s The Remote

Straight from the useless gadgets department comes Where’s The Remote. Unlike what you may think, this device will not actually help you find the remote. However, it will constantly nag you about returning the remote to a base station, which is the Where’s The Remote device.

Kind of like being married. (Just kidding)

(via Engadget)

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I got “Their Law”

I picked up “Their Law” at the post office today. I was so excited, I had the CD out of the jewel case by the time I was back at my car. Since the first CD contains well-known singles (which I’ve already listened to millions of times), I skipped it and started playing the bonus CD. From what I’ve heard so far, IT ROCKS!! I can’t wait to get the DVD that I ordered.

“FUCK ‘EM AND THEIR LAW.”

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Dave Barry

Dave Barry is by far one of the funniest people alive. I have a few of his books, the first of which I bought at a bus station, as preparation for a long trip. In addition to books, Dave also maintains a weblog, which has daily links to funny stuff on the Internet (Dave Barry and his readers, who supply some of the links, can find something funny in just about anything).

Dave used to write a weekly column for The Miami Herald. Unfortunately, he took a vacation from writing the weekly column, but in the link you can find Dave Barry classics, which are still hilarious.