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This is my blog. It is simply a way of expressing myself, nothing more. It's in English because I have quite some friends in other countries who read this - or so they have me believe. If you would like to contact me, please mail me at rendv at yahoo dot com (trying to avoid spam there). ________________________________________________________________________________ Captain's blog, stardate 06/02/05 Well well well, this has been a long time... I finally managed to bring up the courage to write something down in my very own blog. I started my own company with some friends, and I have to say that it took A LOT of work to get started. All my time went into it, 6 days out of 7, 14-15 hours a day. The seventh day was there to rest :-) I gotta say: home office rules! About the operation: I'm better, thanks for asking! I'm not the man I used to be before the operation, but I'm getting close and I'm not complaining because not being able to walk must have been the worst experience in my life. I can walk again, I can't do any sports yet but maybe in the near future that will become possible again. The only thing that I'm still struggling with is that when it's cold outside I get cramped up and I start limping again. But hey, doctors said that could take up to a year to get fixed, so I'm not too worried about it. Yet. Captain's blog, stardate 14/09/04 Oh come on! Another version of Star Wars 4, 5 and 6? I think George Lucas may have milked this baby to the last drop back in 1997, when he released the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition. Which I bought, on VHS back then. I am a fan, so I was happy I could buy these things. But for a 'remastered' dvd version I'm not paying a penny. He kinda lost me after 'episode 1'. Which I bought, of course. But I didn't buy episode 2, because I fell asleep during the first time I watched it. Never thought that would happen. Two weeks to go before I have to get back to work. But with all that happened I haven't had a vacation yet. I guess I'll have to take it... ehm... in two or three weeks. After all, revalidation is not holiday, like some people seem to think. By the way, anybody want to see my scar? I think it's incredible that they removed a vertebra through it. And the guy who closed me up performed designer sow-up work! Captain's blog, stardate 07/09/04 I can walk up the stairs again without leaning against the wall or dragging myself up! Isn't that great? It's funny how I get incredibly happy when noticing that I can do stuff that I couldn't do anymore before the operation, however simple those things may seem for "you normal people". Like typing, or writing for that matter. Or typing in a text message on my cell phone. Or basically anything that requires anything else than sitting down. I went to the hospital for a first evaluation talk. 20 euros well spent. Doctor: "how are you?" Me: "OK" Doctor: "getting better?" Me: "Yes" Doctor: "Good. See you again in three weeks." Nice. Captain's blog, stardate 29/08/04 Getting better every day. I had the operation done, I didn't particularly like my week in the hospital, but I'm getting better and better. I also have a very nice and sexy scar in my neck, about 7 cm long and about 4 cm on the left side of my Reinhart's apple :-) What have they done to me? Well, one vertebra was deformed (stenosis) which caused it to push against my bone marrow. The double hernia then made that a hell of a lot worse, imposing immediate surgery. The doc removed the bad vertebra, but of course you need a form of substitution or else your head would fall down. So they gave me a titanium bridge from the vertebra above the bad one to the one below it. This is called 'fusion', and means that I now have only five separate vertebrae instead of seven. Consequence is that I will be less flexible than 'normal people', but hey! I can walk again! I got six weeks revalidation, I'm in the second now. I feel ok, weren't it for the pressure on my neck that gets worse as I'm proceeding and makes me wanna lie down all the time. I guess that's revalidation for ya. Never had so many people visiting me. Thanks for that, you guys! Appreciate it :-) Captain's blog, stardate 5/08/04 Well, people, I went to the hospital for my final examination today. A SEP (Somatosensible evoked potential) test. The doc stuck a needle in my forehead and in the back of my head and then gave me electric pulses in my hands and feet. The pulses find their way to the brain along the spine and they need to do this within a certain time interval. They are then captured in the needles and a computer then draws a nice graph curve of what happens in your body. A pulse in a lower limb needs to find its way to the brain in under 45ms, a pulse in your hands need to get to the brain in under 20ms. Turns out I have a textbook curve and at least that part of me is ok. But still, my operation is moved to next Tuesday instead of in two or three weeks. Good news in one way, not so good news in another. I will be fixed sooner, which is good, but I will also be operated sooner, and I'm scared of that. Focus on the good thing, dude, focus on the good thing. Captain's blog, stardate 27/07/04 Great. I FINALLY know what I have. I've been limping around for a while now, and I had no idea why. No pain,no visible wounds, nothing. But apparently I have a very bad wound in my neck. I have a serious (and double) hernia, and it needs to be repaired asap. I've never seen a doctor act so fast, he'd only seen me for like ten minutes and already called the hospital to order some further investigations. Some nurse guy stuck me in some sort of gigantic microwave oven to get a MR scan. That oven is actually like a gigantic magnet that allows them to visualize everything inside a human body. While I was waiting for the results of the scan I was sent to another floor for the next tests. A nerve test! Some doctor stuck needles straight in the muscles in my hands, feet, arms and legs to see how everything reacts. Not good, apparently. I appear to have a big fat hernia that is pushing against some nerves and (worse) against my bone marrow, which prevents my brain from receiving the correct signals from my legs. This causes hyperflexia, a situation in which you overreact to stimuli. Basically, when the doc tapped against my knee with the little hammer, I reacted like in a slapstick movie, by almost kicking him in the nads. Almost, I said. This also causes me to limp and walk like I have a handicap of some sort. Basically, I need to be fixed. And fast. Operation will be next week, I guess. Fingers crossed! Captain's blog, stardate 22/07/04 Hurrah for Gentse Feesten! There's parties all over Ghent, concerts from all great Belgian bands (even some foreigners here and there), parties all day and all night, and this for ten days. So why am I not there, you ask? Well, it's day 6 and it's RAINING. There's thunder and lightning. It's been 29 degrees all day long, so something had to happen. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose and the gates opened up. I was just about to pull the plug on all my electrical equipment (which I have a lot, being a nerd and all) when it stopped. You might wanna check out the official site and Boomtown's site. Captain's blog, stardate 12/07/04 A week. A whole damn week. That is how long my Telenet modem has been broken. I've called them on Tuesday to get it fixed, it's already next Monday and still no joy. I'm paying for this, guys!!! Not happy. I took a week off work because I had more than enough of it all, and of course it's just theeeeeeen that my internet connection gets busted. Oh well, I switched off my computer for four whole days, and that must be the longest ever, since when I bought my first pc. Had to switch it back on yesterday, to get the pictures of Dieter's birthday party off of my digital camera. Great party, Mieke taught us all how to fold and eat fajita's. Mexican food is good ànd educational :-). Captain's blog, stardate 20/05/04 Never happy and never enough. I have now 590 gb of hard disk space. No wonder there's things I just can't find anymore. Speaking of getting lost on your hard disk, this is it! Oh and, hurrah for magnetic screwdrivers! I installed a wireless network card in my server (kinda makes the other one redundant) ànd I finally managed to install the mobile rack thingies in the server: I can now swap hard disks without having to open up the whole box. I just switch off the server, pull out the one disk, put another one in place and voilà: online again. Ideal for testing - I have decided not to install any beta crap on my system anymore. Also: this system allows me to try any flavour of OS (linux and the likes) on another disk. I have of course VMWare on my other pc (yes, I am a nerd) where I run Knoppix from a virtual cd rom and red hat from another partition. Captain's blog, stardate 10/05/04 Spam. Don't we all love it? We're selling the antispam solution by McAfee/Network Associates, so my boss asked me to install it here. I didn't really think about it earlier, because I don't get any spam at all in my company mailbox. Of course, I'm not listed on the website, I'm not in a mailing list, I never use my address to subscribe to anything, I basically never use my mail address for anything that would get me spam. I use a separate hotmail or yahoo account for that stuff. And you know the great bit? If you subscribe to whatever you need to subscribe to using your hotmail address, and then let them spam THAT mailbox, you never need to be annoyed about receiving spam, and if you use the hotmail spamfilter and set it to the strictest level of filtering, you only receive mail from people in your contact list: so all spam is kept far and away from your mailbox! Why didn't anyone think of that sooner? I've been playing it like this for years now. (Touching wood though) Anyway, the McAfee spamfilter is something that can be installed on Exchange 2000 and 2003, but not on v5.5. And which version do we still have here? Right, v5.5. But of course I found a solution, I got us a free spamfilter, ORFilter. It's up and running and now it's I'm eagerly awaiting the first spam message! And of course if you're waiting it always seems to take longer. Captain's blog, stardate 30/03/04 Being a nerd is expensive. It's getting a bit ridiculous, too. You should see all the toys I have in my apartment! I'm turning it into a laboratory, with all the computers and pda's and hard disks with a ridiculous amount of storage space, and printers and scanners and wireless stuff... dear lord. Playstation, video and computer are all connected to the stereo, so that I have great sound from all devices. And then you buy a new pc, a pack that has everything in it, and you get yet another pair of speakers. And yet another keyboard and mouse. Wireless, again, of course. I definitely needed that. Just bought one a couple of months ago, duh. And guess what: the new pc came with a Radeon 9800 VGA card with a double adapter, so I can connect two monitors to my pc and have a cool extra large desktop. But then I have to get another screen of course. And it should be the same as the one I already have, right? Why is everything so expensive...? Captain's blog, stardate 01/02/04 We partied hard last night. Greg turned 27. Imagine that. That can only mean one thing: I'm pushing 30. Never thought it would happen. All of his friends chipped in and we got him 'a man's toy': An XBOX! I managed to get a couple of games with it, so Greg, you're warned, I'll be over there all the time to play! We started out surprising him in a pub he doesn't go too often, so I'm guessing he was expecting something alright. His lovely lady Fran brought him, everyone was already there. We expected him to be there at 23h30, and at 23h10 I realised I had forgotten my camera. Damned! Raced home to get it (luckily I don't live too far away). I got back at the pub by 23h30, only to find out he was already there. Double damn! Oh well, we partied hard anyway. Happy Bday man! Captain's blog, stardate 03/01/04 It's been while since I wrote in this blog... But I'm now giving this site a complete makeover, so I might as well check in and wish all of my friends a happy 2004! All the best for the new year. Captain's blog, stardate 16/09/03 Yes yes, I know I'm letting this site slip away very slowly... Writing something down every single day is just not possible, not for me. I'm just not 'that kinda guy', I guess. And no, my life is just not interesting enough. However, maybe it is. But not everything is up for publication, or what did you think? Now that summer is gone and almost forgotten I will be spending a lot more time in front of my pc again. Today we had reasonably good weather, 25°C if I'm not mistaken. But as usual I spent it indoors, helping some big multinational to set up a good and safe antivirus infrastructure. What? Yes, "something with computers". I have also bought a big comfy chair to go with my new monitor, I'd say I'm almost settled. The only thing I need is a new printer! But I've needed that for months, ever since I sold my old one last winter. Never got to buy a new one. Goes to show how much one needs a printer really. I went to Spain this summer, I'll stick my pictures on this site some time later this week. I have some friends who live there, which makes Spain a little more interesting for me than for everybody over here who looks disapproving when I say I went there on holiday. No, it's not all about lying on the beach during the day and going out at night (a bit is of course). We went to see Tarragona again (wonderful city, see pics) and Siurana and Prades. Check back later for pics of those. I have of course taken my digital Sony, but for the occasion I ordered a new, 256mb memory stick. I ordered it from a site in Germany, because there those things cost about half of what we get to pay here. I thought I'd order it a week before we left for Spain, should be enough time to send a package from Germany to Belgium, right? Well of course they were out of stock, so I received my memory stick when my holiday was a week far. So I have only taken about 90 pictures, and then I didn't have any more space left on my camera. Which sucks, because I've seen a lot more and missed lots of opportunities to make nice pictures. Anywho, I now have a 256mb memory stick on which I can store 298 pictures (in full rez of course), so I'm al set for my next holiday! Captain's blog, stardate 10/08/03 19h30 and it's 41°C in the sun. About 33-35°C in the shadow. How normal is that? Well, unlike everybody else, I'm not going to complain about it. People are never happy, are they? Give them rain and it's not good. Give them very warm and dry weather and it's not good. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess. Well, I'm just going to ride it out and enjoy it! It is true that Belgium is starting to become a land of extremes in weather situations. We hardly ever get a 'normal' summer or winter any more. But then again, what's normal anyway. Captain's blog, stardate 9/08/03 Still over 30°C here... I'm going to Spain next week. I'm starting to wonder why, the weather is great over here! I could just as good have gone to Blankenberge just like everyone else :-) I spent the day at the Blaarmeersen in Gent. My head is burnt, and by jove that hurts! The rest of me is still white as white can be, courtesy of my job I guess. People who are always inside are quite protected from bad rays, but the downside is that working on your tan takes time and pain. Captain's blog, stardate 16/07/03 Sooooo warm here... For the last two months we've had a great summer, averaging about 26-29 degrees. Yesterday at 5PM though it got as warm as 34°C. I was dressed in black (black shirt and pants, I went to see a customer, can't wear my hawaii outfit then :-)) and when I got into my black car that had been standing in the sun all day long I thought I was going to pass out. Must have been 55° in there. Normally when I open up all the windows and drive around a bit, it cools down reasonably quickly, but now it was so warm that the car wouldn't cool down. Not a bit. And it's 30° in my apartment. Not much better. But I'm going to the seaside in half an hour! Thank god for airco! We have airco in the office but it's not working. One of them doesn't do anything, the other blows warm air around; what's the point of that? So it gets really warm in the office, and apparently you don't have to stay there when it gets warmer than 30°C. I'm taking my thermometer tomorrow! Captain's blog, stardate 25/06/03 Ik haat het als ze kinderen gebruiken in reclame. Enfin, toch als ze die kinderen dingen laten zeggen die anders nooit in hun zouden opkomen. Vervelende reclameklier: 'Zeg es kleine meid'
Yah. Right. Very realistic. Ze doen zelfs geen moeite meer om het geloofwaardig te maken! Captain's blog, stardate 23/06/03 Ghent lived up to its reputation of a party town again. The City Parade was in town on Saturday, and we all had a gay old time :-) Lots of drag queens, although less than I had expected. 133.000 party people were dancing around in the streets to the deafening beats of pumping techno music. There was one big huge cloud of pot smoke protecting us from the scorching sun rays (it was scorchio). Surprisingly few agressive people, that was nice. In short, I had a good time dancing around, but it wasn't exactly the Love Parade. More like the publicity parade. And it was way too hard to get a drink somewhere. For those of you who know carnaval in Aalst, it was just the same: dressed up people, 35 trucks driving around and playing loud music, a good atmosphere. But it was a lot shorter, which was good actually: it ended at 23 o'clock, and those who wanted to continue partying had to take it to a club somewhere. I didn't, but I ended up in the Video of course. Captain's blog, stardate 11/06/03 The training went ok. Not great, but ok. It's kinda cool actually, getting to teach people stuff that they could learn about if they'd read the manual.. They usually don't have the time to read manuals, especially when they're 550 pages. I don't have the time either, but my boss scheduled a training so I didn't have any choice. Oh well. "De Bevalling" is on. Four kids and counting. Some people should be stopped after the first. Ugly dumb people enough already. Captain's blog, stardate 10/06/03 The weather is great, I particularly like the warm nights. Still 27° C in the appartement. Ain't it great? Tomorrow is the day. I have to give a training to a couple of customers, and I had to read 550 pages of product guide (call it a manual) and a 110 pages installation guide. That's a lot. Double the fun because I had to read it on the screen of my laptop! I refuse to print it all out because it's such a waste of paper and ink - and for what? You only read that once. Just not worth it. And why oh why can't I go to sleep at a normal hour? It's 2AM again. My colleague who lives across the street has been sleeping for more than 3 hours already. I don't understand how he does it. I just can't live without that last stroll through the city... Captain's blog, stardate 8/06/03 Three days later, the pain in my muscles has gone. Finally. I'm so ashamed about my physical shape, I should really do something about it. I want to be lean and mean, but I think I'll never be any of those things. What sort of sport should I go do to get flexible? Ballet? That's the first thing that comes to mind. And a very twisted mind it is. I can see myself wearing a pink tutu - no I can't. It's all lies, all of it! The heat is probably getting to me. Yes, that's it. 27° in my appartment. The weather in Belgium is no good, it's always either too hot or too cold. And they call that a 'moderate' climate? Anywho, Spain is calling. I'm going to Cambrils again, the last two weeks of August. Ha! Free is in Ibiza right now. I wonder in what shape he is now, he's been there for a couple of days and I don't think he'll hold back in any way. Party hard, dude! :-) It's finally happened, spam has found the way to my telenet mail address! I haven't subscribed to any website or whatever, I haven't given the address to anybody that's involved in anything funny, I can't think of how that happened. And all of a sudden - bang! E-mail about naked chicks and webcams and about how they want to show their young and tight bodies to me. And then to think that it's sure as hell a dirty old guy who sends the e-mail. I believe the exact word here is: blerg! Captain's blog, stardate 5/06/03 I just went running for the second time! It all hurts now. Maybe it's a little bit too warm to go jogging. I think I must have run for three km (maybe less) and I thought I was going to die. I have now studied 156 of 550 pages. Due date is next Wednesday, so I guess it will be a working weekend. Captain's blog, stardate 30/05/03 It was warm, today. I tried to pump up my tires of my bike, but to no avail. I had the brilliant idea to buy a really cheap mountain bike in some megastore, turns out I'd better paid a bit more to get a decent bike, because this one sucks big time. It's too small, the 18-speed gear stuff doesn't work properly and if/When it does, there's 12 gears I never ever use. Now the best part are the tyres: big tyres with deep profiles. And with very bad nozzles: if you pump them up, you have to be REALLY fast to screw on the thingie because otherwise the tyre is flat in 1/30th of a second. And so I had to start over pumping a couple of times. I hate that bike. Captain's blog, stardate 29/05/03 Finally I met someone I could really talk to! Even in a pub, very late (or early) in the morning! You wouldn't expect it, but I had a really nice talk with a guy, about politics, religion, art, music (he's a drummer). For years now I've been complaining about how superficial people have become, and it just feels good to meet someone you can have a nice conversation with about almost everything! Great. Saw 'Dogville', the least I can say is that it's a weird movie. I had seen 'The Idiots' so I knew what I could expect, but it's... ehm... different. Nicole Kidman really is a great actress. The movie is about a girl ending up in a small mountain village. The people of the village accept her and let her live with them (how generous) until they find out that some criminals are looking for her. Then the village people (huh huh) get scared and feel like they deserve to get rewarded and make her work for them because they find they deserve something back for all their generosity. The movie is long, unamerican, at times a teenie bit boring, but after a while you get curious and want to see what will be next. It's like a fairy tale but it ends in a big tough statement. Not everybody will see it but the movie shows how even the nicest of people turn into evil monsters if you push them hard enough. The film is made with almost no decor, extremely 'low-budget'. Quite refreshing after having seen the orgy of special effects, called 'the Matrix Reloaded'. The scenery is weird, it's as if the film was shot in a big sports hall, the houses are drawn on the floor, the dog is not really there but is also drawn on the floor, and it takes a couple of minutes getting used to. Captain's blog, stardate 28/05/03 Traffic jams galore. Mid-week weekend and every true Belgian wants to use his god-given right to go to the seaside. At the same time. This obviously results in saturated roads, traffic jams from Brussels to Ostend. And of course, I wanted to drive from Erpe-Mere to Ghent, so I got into this heavy traffic. As I was standing there on the E40 I took the time to take a look around at the people in the other cars. Elderly couples in Daihatsu's, younger couples with little children in Astra station wagons, men with big moustaches and women with big glasses, ready for four days of big fun in Middelkerke. All so typical. Oh well, if that's what makes them happy, I'm jealous. Captain's blog, stardate 26/05/03 WinAmp 2.91 is crashing about two times per hour. Get the hell off my pc! There, v2.90 is back. With a nice aqua skin on it. Everything is better than that standard WinAmp skin! I'm want to become a Photoshop grandmaster! And a Flash grandmaster! But I'm just not creative enough I guess. And it's soooo hard... Captain's blog, stardate 25/05/03 "Statues", the new Moloko cd, is a very nice cd indeed. "The Matrix Reloaded" sucks. It's just a big commercial for cars, bikes and special effects. They sold out, that much is clear. Don't spend your money on this piece of crap. The reasons why people went to see the first Matrix were studied very well (viewers liked the fighting scenes, all the effects, and Trinity), and the makers must have thought: "let's do more of the same" (actually, so much more of the same that it gets very, very repetitive). There are some story lines that could have been worked out better, it felt like some of the bad guys has more to offer but it felt like their role wasn't 'finished'; for instance the white twin (white rasta type) seemed to be to strong for Neo and his friends, so at a certain point you think: 'now I want to see how they're going to get out of this one', but they just disappear after a while. I'm not satisfied there. The original Matrix was a good movie with a good cast and a good plot, with some special effects thrown in to make the movie a trendsetter. The Matrix Reloaded is a commercial about special effects, with acting and a story thrown in as an after thought. Sold out! Captain's blog, stardate 23/05/03 Two days no blogging: Wednesday my network connection was down - thanks a lot, Telenet - and yesterday I was in Holland for a meeting until late. Conclusion: stealing of idea's and taking someone else's credit is common in the corporate world and chinese food is a lot better in Belgium. Be the first or forget about it. I took the E17 to Antwerp three times this week. Life on the road is great, but not when they're opening up the road to perform who knows what sort of reparation and everybody has got to drive on one lane. The Belgian driver is so narrow-minded, they all seem to think that they have a god-given right to be the first and they drive each other off the road if necessary. They are all so strange, these drivers. When there's no traffic they drive 100km/h on the second or even third lane for kilometers on end without even noticing that you're right behind them trying to get by, and when there's a traffic jam all of a sudden they have to be somewhere straight away and don't let you 'zip' in (RITSEN MENSEN, hoe moeilijk kan het zijn?). Another thing is that during rush hour, traffic can go fluently until it starts raining. At the first drop of rain you see the brake lights coming up ahead of you, and all of a sudden everybody has to slow down. I don't see why, when you're doing 120 and it's raining just a little bit, it will not make any difference if you slow down to 100. Terrible. Oh well. Saw a very good movie Wednesday: Lilya 4-ever. It's a movie about a 16-year-old Russian girl that gets abandoned by her mother and who has to survive on her own. Her girlfriend makes some extra cash by selling her body to ugly old geezers, but she doesn't want to do that. But she needs cash urgently. No food, no heat, no nothing. Very good movie indeed, from the maker of 'Fucking Amal'. Captain's blog, stardate 20/05/03 Ieuw ieuw ieuw - Jon Bongiovi in Ally McBeal (don't get me wrong, ik ben er per ongeluk tegenaan gezapt). Ziet er slecht uit maar naar het schijnt zijn zijn shows wel wreed goed. Who cares anywho. Ross: "What are you, a child?" Joey: "YES!" Friends still kicks ass, it's funny on so many levels :-) (and it's damn recognizable). Mom and dad left for Crete today. "Of course I'll take you guys to the airport at 7 AM, which is probably the worst time of the day to drive to the other side of Brussels." Oh well, I had to go to Charleroi anyway, to a customer. He was surprised to see me so early (8h20). Funny. The more I read in Michael Moore's book, the more I'm surprised that the Americans haven't killed themselves yet (some high school students tried but didn't get very far). Did you know that American schools allow companies like Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper to sponsor the tests? Did you know that a kid got expelled for wearing a Pepsi t-shirt on Coke day? COKE DAY? IN HIGH SCHOOL? Schools are allowing children to drink cola in class because the more cans they sell the bigger the bonus they get from the companies. I can understand that they need to find new markets to sell their stuff, but what happened to decency? Captain's blog, stardate 19/05/03 Jan Leyers zijn centen zijn aan het binnenrollen - hoe melig zijn muziek ook is, Idool was een magistrale zet. I spent the day on-site today. The customer was a very nice guy, but not really interested in what I had to tell him. So I know he'll call in tomorrow to ask me questions about just about everything I told him today. I should start moving my body. It was raining and I ran to my car, and oh my god, what happened to the muscles in my legs? I'm sitting down too damn much. I should have a job that requires me to stand all the time, instead of the sitting job I have now. If they ever fire me I think I'll look for a job picking fruit somewhere in an exotic country or something. :-) Going to the gym, I'll try to get some movement in my legs. Maybe I should start playing basketball again. By the way, viruses come faster and faster, there's yet another new one: W32/Palyh@MM . Get your scanners updated or suffer the consequences! Captain's blog, stardate 17/05/03 I ate ostrich today. It doesn't taste like chicken like I expected, but more like horse steak. Very good eaten. Happy birthday mom! Love ya. I have to get up early tomorrow to vote, which is compulsory over here. Belgium is a democracy, so the people are forced to go and vote. It's funny how you see politicians 'in the wild' in the days before the elections. And all of a sudden they're all these superfriendly, social beings. Don't you just hate them. Captain's blog, stardate 16/05/03 Weekend again. I wish I hadn't gone out till 5AM yesterday. My friend got out of bed at 3PM today, I had to go to work so had to get at 7h30. Ouch. Oh well, years of training taught me how to get through a day like this one. Came home by 6PM and fell asleep until 10 or so. The last couple of days I took a 'hacking' course. I was introduced into the world of hacking, cracking, phreaking, spoofing, defacing, scripting, and so on. So now I have a general idea of how a hacker breaks into a machine somewhere and replaces a webpage with his own. Quite fascinating, but not easy. And you need a lot of patience. Not my style. Going for one drink, maybe. It is weekend and tomorrow I can't go out too long because sunday is voting day. Captain's blog, stardate 15/05/03 "Stupid White Men", a book by Michael Moore. Get it. If you're only half as interested in the American's banditism as you should, you just have to read this book. It explains everything in detail, from how Bush won the elections to who's who in the US government. Michael Moore is the director of 'Bowling for Columbine', a film/documentary you should have already seen about gun-crazed America. It is about time we (= the world) open our eyes and help people like Michael Moore stop the stupid Americans that screw up our planet. Our last bit of breathable air will be polluted by Americans, who pollute themselves as well (cherry on top) but they don't care because they're sitting on a stack of money and THEY can afford new lungs when they need them. We on the other hand are boned. Boned I tell you! Captain's blog, stardate 13/05/03 Keeping a blog is harder than I thought. Someone who does other things than play with his computer doesn't always find the time to sit down at the computer and add an entry, not even a short one. Anywho, I went to see a classical concert yesterday: 'Rosias Kwintet': piano, cello and three violins. It was super! A new virus broke loose yesterday: the FIZZER virus. You'll see: it always happens when I'm not in the office but visiting a customer and when my colleague is on holiday, like now. A lot of customers called in for information, but I had switched off my phone because I was in a meeting. Captain's blog, stardate 09/05/03 'Have a little faith in me'. I'll try, maar niet als hij blijft vals zingen ze! En die jury blijft hem maar bewieroken, gewoon om misselijk van te worden! Ha, nu Natalia. Mooi mooi mooi! Captain's blog, stardate 08/05/03 In the category refreshing journalism: Salam Pax's blog. An Iraqi talks about the war like it really is/was. After months and months of 'coloured' news, it's nice to hear something from the horse's mouth: someone who's been there (and is still there for that matter) lets us in on his life. We all want a blog and don't know what to write in it, but this guy has a story. He has something to say. You should all read it! Captain's blog, stardate 06/05/03 It took me three hours and a half to get to Brussels this morning. Normally it only takes two hours to get there, now it took me THREE HOURS AND 30 MINUTES. Work wasn't too bad, I didn't have a full install to do, just some repairs and stuff. Moreover, the guy I was working with is a cool young fellow, someone I can talk to. The trip back home went a bit smoother: only 1h30. First online movie to be downloaded here. It's about hippies and/or hackers and/or nudists. Dutch-spoken, should be cool! Captain's blog, stardate 05/05/03 The girls turned out to be worse than the guys seemed at the beginning and Reshum is gonna kick Leon out because he broke the pact! Temptation Island: so bad it's good again. Well, good is maybe not the correct word. Going to a customer in Brussels tomorrow. Life on the road is cool, but that damn traffic in Brussels I can do without. Captain's blog, stardate 04/05/03 The weekend has passed by very quickly again. Going to work tomorrow. I can't wait till the end of August. I have taken two weeks off work and I'm going to Spain again. I need to go on holiday somewhere else, but I have some friends in Spain and I like seeing them again once in a year. I'll be 30 next year, then I'm going to Vegas to party. I'd better start putting some money on a separate account for that :-). However, K wants to go to Russia with me next year. I'll have to think about that. Can't do both in one year... Midnight again... Just a quick game on the playstation and then to bed! Captain's blog, stardate 02/05/03 Took half day off. Every body else seemed to 'make the bridge'. We had a day off yesterday and a lot of people preferred an extra-large weekend. I thought I'd go to work because it's usually really calm on a day like this. Too calm it was! Decided to split. Changing the site again. I added a page with interesting links for them people who are interested. Might be a bit on the technical side though. Note to myself: if you take half a day off work 'to get some paperwork done', then get some damn paperwork done instead of playing with the internet! Captain's blog, stardate 01/05/03 Didn't have the time to write anything yesterday. I went to a customer in Luxemburg so most of the day I was in the car. Luckily, this time I wasn't alone. I can tell you, after 100 times the same drive to Luxemburg (the country, not the province) you get really (REALLY) sick of it. Traffic jam in the morning and traffic jam again in the evening, that's what you get when you pass Brussels during rush hour. Captain's blog, stardate 29/04/03 Boiler broke down this weekend. The plumber was supposed to come and repair it today, he would give me a ring when he'd be coming over and then I'd go home and wait for him to show up. Of course I was on the phone with someone else when he called, and he did not call me again, so I still don't have any warm water. It's funny how hard it is, taking cold showers. If you think about it, there surely must have been a time when warm water was not available. Did people wash with cold water back then or didn't they wash at all, because cold water on your warm body is horrible? (Note to myself: stop losing time thinking about stuff like this) The Secret of my Success is on. Not interested. Waiting for Dharma and Greg! I'm going to Luxemburg tomorrow, to see a customer. Trying to fix broken things. Usually I go to Luxemburg for two days at once, but this is sort of an emergency thing and I didn't have time to arrange a visit to another customer so I'm going over for one day. One long day. It's a long drive and the fact that I have to cross Brussels doesn't make that any better. Traffic and all. You can count on traffic jams and a drive that's about an hour longer than it should be. Coming back in the afternoon wno't be a picnic either since Thursday is a free day, meaning that half of Belgium has taken Friday off too and will be taking the family to the seaside. Thus resulting in a terrible traffic mess, of course in the direction I have to go. Time for Dharma and Greg! Yeay! Nope. Dharma and Greg pushed back to 1:10 AM. Great. Well I ain't staying up for that! Captain's blog, stardate 28/04/03 Haha Temptation Island is on... I can't believe what some people are willing to put themselves through! And yet... must... watch... can't... not... watch.... Plastic boobie girl thinks hormone boy wants her for her personality. You'd think at 27 years old they'd know better, right? Well here's news: they don't! And him... if you look at his girlfriend, you KNOW why he likes plastic boob girl :-) The rest of the day was quite tiresome: after a more than two hours' drive I arrived in Wellen (Hasselt), where I had to go be the consultant type guy, at 5:30 I left again and got home by 7h30. I'd hate to have to do that every day again. I kinda like living at 800m from the office and now it's still cool to occasionally get on the road and drive to customers. I ate a whole box of cookies again. Why do I keep doing that?! And why can't I stop eating after two three cookies, like a normal person? Captain's blog, stardate 27/04/03 And I slept, and slept, and slept... Had a really calm day. A sea without ripples. And playing with my site a bit, trying to get the layout straight on all pages. HTML is easy until you try to do the more difficult stuff. Then it gets really hard real fast. Captain's blog, stardate 26/04/03 Not sleeping enough can't be healthy. I mean, for years I have refused to sleep more than 6 hours a night, most of the time I make do with 4 hours. "Why?" I hear you ask. Well, life is short, and I want to live and enjoy every minute of it. Sleeping seems to be a damn waste of time. So I go to bed at around 3-4 AM and get up somewhere in between 7-8 AM. That should be enough, IF you lead a nice regular life. Which I don't. I like going out, and these days people don't leave their houses until it's well after midnight. I would like to go out earlier but it's a bit silly to be in a pub at 9 or 10 and sit at the counter all alone. I go out because I want to meet people, not to be some lonely barfly. Speaking of which, Charles Bukowski has written some good books too. Personally, I'd say Herman Brusselmans has read some of Bukowski's books and then said 'I can do thàt' and then copied Bukowski's style. Anyway, about going out: I was in the US of A a couple of years ago and there people hàve to go out early because at midnight they can order their last drink. Last call is about six hours later over here. In a more or less normal pub I mean. People who are used to going out in Belgium shouldn't go to the States... This is where I've been: First Avenue, Minneapolis. For you youngsters who've never heard of this club: the videoclip to Prince's hit Purple Rain was shot there. My damn boiler broke down. That spells cold showers for me until the plumber can get here to fix the thing. Why do things break anyway? My hard disk at work broke down yesterday. It was a 45-gig disk and there must have been 6 gigs of music and at least 6 gigs of software on it. Not to mention my documents, manuals, backup of e-mail and so on. Stuff I should have backed up on a server, which I didn't because I don't trust servers. Captain's blog, stardate 25/04/03 People, don't do drugs in Singapore! If they catch you, you're dead. A friend of mine who tends to disappear every now and then has been living in Singapore for a year now, and apparently that country is all about drink, drugs and rock'n'roll. Until they catch you smoking your 'therapeutic and doctor-prescribed doobie'. Then they kill you. By the way: I installed Red Hat 8.0 on my test machine again. It looks great, it works fine, but it's a damn pain if you want to install some additional software on it. Of course, it comes with just about everything a man could need. But since I'm not your average man, I want to install extra stuff! In this case: Nessus Security Scanner. It kicks ass, once you get it going. Captain's blog, stardate 24/04/03 Turned 29 today. A dark day in history. The fox is getting old. The hairs have been gone for a while now, the funny business remains. I am taking off to the Video for a drink, even though I'm very tired. I spent the day with a big (BIG) customer, trying to convince him that our product is the best and suggesting he give money to us and not to any other company who happen to do the same thing, more or less. Looks good, but the prize has not been won yet. We'll see what next week brings us. Man, I should have taken tomorrow off! Update - 2h39 It's official: Bailey's is vuiligheid. Captain's blog, stardate 23/04/03 Nice Guy Eddie is a character in a movie. "Reservoir Dogs", to be more precise. So no, I'm not such a nice guy, and my name is not Eddie. I just like the movie and thought "Nice Guy Eddie" was a cool nickname. That's all. If you need more information on this or other cool movies, see this site. There's a bunch there. By the way, Greg and me playing Vice City again. He's damn good at video games, I'll tell you that. We're at the stage where you have to kill a bunch of mobsters, but they keep on getting away. Greg almost got them all though. Almost. If he'd had half a minute more he'd have finished the mission. I guess that one will be for tomorrow. First I have to host a seminar. I'm talking about McAfee antivirus software (which is kinda my job) and SurfControl, for all those bosses who want to know what their employees are doing - where they're surfing to and what kind of e-mail they receive. This MailFilter can actually discover nudie pics inside an e-mail! It looks for skintones in a picture, once they get over a certain percentage the software decides it HAS to be a picture of a naked man/woman/whatever and sends an e-mail to the boss, telling on whoever receives that kind of smut. Big brother is getting closer and closer! Update: The seminar went well!
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