Bloggers@large

Good things never last forever. It’s an old saying and yes it’s true. In fact: if it’s good it should not last too long because even good things get kinda dull after a time. I mean: who would like to eat steak every day? I’m sure a lot of people – or should I say: women – in Holland shed a tear when they watched the last episode of Sex in the City tonight. And I am not ashamed to admit it: even I did. Even though I did have this “love-hate” thing with the series. Probably because I am […]

Ok, I ran to the store today and in some kind of stupid moment of weakness I bought Half-Life 2. I got home, popped in the DVD (yeah, this baby steals some 5gig harddisk space from you) and started to play… NOT! As it turns out this f** game is attached to some a**hole program called “Steam”. Well, it’s more a virus! Without it you can’t play the game at all! And, for starters: even though its an OFFLINE game, you need to be ONLINE to pay it! Also, for some dumbass reason it needs to download something (God knows […]

Last week was one of those uncommon weeks: lot’s of problems going on in Holland and some personal stuff as well. For starters we had a huge incident related to terrorism. Some cops tried to raid a house in The Hague were some people lived that were suspected terrorists. Unfortunately for them these guys were prepared and the walked into a booby-trap. This wounded three cops. After that the men threw a hand grenade at them. After this the police had to call in the military and soon the whole block in which the apartment was, became the focal point […]

This has not been a particularly good week. As always with events that happen far away, you don’t feel that affected. Things only get a meaning once it gets too close for comfort. Such is the case with the brutal murder of the Dutch columnist and movie-director Theo van Gogh. The murderer shot him several times while he rode along on his bike. Then he used a knife to cut his throat in the same way the extremist do this in all those videos in which they show the killing of hostages from Iraq. After this he calmly stabbed another […]

Today – exactly 911 days after some political extremist killed Pim Fortuyn – the Dutch Democracy was dealt another blow by someone with extremist views. Just like the murder on Pim Fortuyn on may 6th 2002, this act of violence leaves the Dutch democracy in a state of shock. Have we become another country like Israel? Are we going to be the next “Northern Ireland” of Europe? The following is an exact copy of the news as represented by CNN Europe. Muslim row filmmaker ‘murdered’ Tuesday, November 2, 2004 Posted: 1707 GMT (0107 HKT) AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Controversial Dutch filmmaker […]

Remember those guys & girls from your old highschool? Ever wonder what happened to them? Well, in Holland you can take a trip down memory lane if you like and find out what did happen. When you visit www.schoolBANK.nl you have a good chance to find out what actually did happen to those people. I knew of this website before, but I never really thought it was going to be a succes (they make you pay). But low and behold: they do have a lot of people that registered (including me). Downside: if you want to get their e-mail they […]

I could not resist blogging this story: State Employee Fired For Using State Property To Search For Aliens. It is about this guy that ran the Seti@home program on his work mainframe. The guy ran the program only on weekends and on weekdays between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., when the server wasn’t being used. For those not familliar with Seti@home: this program uses grid computing to process the data from the Aricebo research facilty. Obviously some companies just look for excuses to fire people. I have no clue what kind of policy they had (if any) but I guarantee […]

Regular readers of my blog must have noticed that I avoid writing about my job and the company that I work for. Besides a close circle of friends I guess not many readers know where I work. My reason is simple: I firmly believe that one should keep their work an private live separate to avoid all kinds of irritating situations. Well, I guess this blog is going to be the first exception to my own rule, because sometimes work influences ones private life in such a way that keeping things separate becomes pretty damn hard. Or you might call […]

I just read the following article about ‘shock jock’ Howard Stern and I couldn’t help laughing my ass off. So, if you want to find out how talking on the radio about ‘blumpkins’, ‘balloon knots’ and ‘performing a David Copperfield’ can cost you $27,500 in federal fines, you should definately read it. In case the link stops working, you can also read the full transscript from the FCC here. Guess this is another example of some narrowminded twits in action. ps: If someone can explain me what Howard meant with the “strawberry shortcake” or a “Dirty Sanchez”, I would appreciate […]

I just love those useless titbits of information. Like this one: who invented the smiley in e-mails or for usenet postings? Well, you can find the answer (believe it or not) at a Microsoft website:The First Smiley 🙂. I really did not know it was already used in 1982 ! ps: finally those guys at Microsoft are researching some usefull things ;-P