Bloggers@large

Today was my last day at work. Under normal circumstances I probably would have felt good about that. But I guess my mood is at an official low for this next millennium. I slept barely last night – thanks to a casual yet devastating phonecall at 00:45. So I woke up feeling like I had a huge hangover. To match my mood the weather has changed into regular Dutch autumn: falling leaves, dark, cold, windy and rainy. The sort of Dutch weather I always joke about that is avoided best by commiting suicide by hanging yourself from a nice, big […]

Tomorrow is my last work day. Just like last time (at Lost Boys) it crept up on me completely unexpected. You know how they have this warning on mirrors that they use on cars? The one that says: “Warning: objects may be closer then they appear”. Well, I think they need to print that on calenders: “Warning, dates may be close than they appear on this calender”. So the last few days I have been busy tying up the proverbial ‘loose ends’. Today I was quite busy sifting through all my paperwork etc. I always have so much stuff I […]

Allrighty then. I have got a new job. As I wrote previously I got fired AND hired on the same day (last friday). Then some other company called me to ask me for a last-minute job-interview. Yesterday I went to talk to them and they ended up doing me an offer this morning. And, after some contemplation (I could hardly sleep last night), I decided to take it. If all goes well I will start at November 1st as a projectmanager there. What a twist of fate! I wound up being able to choose between two nice jobs! I could […]

So there I was. Unemployed. But the twist is bigger than you expect. In the previous weeks I had been looking for a new job. And guess what: the same day I got fired, I got hired! How did all this happen? Well just read on.. It all started when I got back from my vacation on July the 18th. I just started working 1 day and we had a sales meeting on the 19th. Our CEO announced there that our figures were off the scale (in a negative sense), so technically speaking we were bankrupt. However, there wasn’t any […]

What a day it has been! Yesterday they announced at my work that we’re going to fire 33 people. Since I survived the previous 4 reorganizations, I did not really expect that they would try to fire me as well. I mean: I’m one of the few (if not the only one) at my work that has any knowlegde of Internet and Internet applications in general. Then again: the way they announced it kind off made it look like a lottery. So low and behold: they fired my complete department (“solutions”) and sacked 35 people in total (2 of them […]

Ok, so I am a bit late with this subject, but the fallout of Katrina (no pun intended) occupied most of my blog the last weeks. Anyway: afterall there was something stirring at Apple. But it wasn’t the big one (it has been rumoured that Apple will come with it’s own video iPod or iTunes Movies). Instead the hoopla was about yet another iPod, the Nano, and the Motorola Rokr, the first Phone with iTunes. Just weeks before that Apple tried to create a stir by claiming they “reinvented” the mouse by introducing “the mighty mouse”. Now, it so happens […]

Some pretty surprising news today, when eBay announced its plans to buy Skype, the peer-to-peer VOIP enterprise from the same guys that launced Kazaa some years ago. The deal has the makings of the kind of bilion dollar deals that were made at the highpoint of the Internet hype in the end of the ’90’s. Like many others I do not get the deal at all. However, according to eBay’s own justification of the deal, “markets are conversations” and “enabling the conversation” enables the market and eBay is the new market. And if trust is king, then being able to […]

Blogcast #5 2005-09-11 19:00 approx. 30 min. show. Today’s shownotes: 4 years after 9/11 Katrina music: “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp Dutch judicial scandal

While Katrina was dominating the headlines all over the world, another scandal has occupied the Dutch media: the story of an innocent man (31) that was convicted to 18 years imprisonment for the murder of a 10 year old girl. A murder that he did not commit. A fact wellknow by the district attorney and the NFI (national forensic institute, the Dutch equivalent to CSI). Still, they put him in prison. More disturbing: there is evidence that this happens more often than we all think. As it turns out the DA knew all along that the person he was going […]

Since I wrote about Katrina’s aftermath, the looting, raping, shootings etc. a lot has happened. For starters, Bush got of his ass and kicked everything into gear. Now the storm has passed, stories keep pouring out and videos from tourist that got trapped are also published on the net. It is mind-boggling that more than 1 million people were evacuated and at least half a million – if not more – are homeless, jobless and left to their own devices. Amidst all this one photo that I saw on flickr struck me in particular. It shows the whole drama in […]