Hi all. The lack of updates overhere is getting a bit out of hand, I know. It's just that I've been not very well for the last couple of days and therefore haven't been computing that much. I'll get back to you soon, promise.

Hi all. When I was at Bas' place last Thursday I installed another Nascar MOD for him, the 1988 Aero MOD, and two new add on tracks. Not that we were having a track shortage of some kind, (or somebody must believe that no less then 86 tracks might not be enough to last a racing weekend) or that we were getting bored from winning on all of them all the time. (oh yeah, sure we are ... ;-) But all these mods we have can be divided into two categories: Nascar and non-Nascar. And with non-Nascar I mean stuff like the Trans-Am MOD for example which, by the way, doesn't contain a single Trans-Am so where that name came from ... beats me :-) With the big Nascars I love 'doing' the ovals. These big tracks like Daytona, Indianapolis or Talladega are a joy to drive. Incredible speeds, 40 cars on the track at once and a couple of hundred laps to go. It just doesn't get any better than that. Or does it? The biggest difference with the non-Nascars (we'll call them TA's from now on) is that we run those on so called road courses. 'Normal' tracks if you like. More the kind of circuit you'd see at for example Formula One races. The TA's car pack consist of Dodge Vipers, Chevrolet Corvette's, Ford Mustang and Jaguars. Running the TA's on these road courses is so much fun, I can't begin to describe how much. (But I sure will try some day, believe me :-) It's a little like Grand Prix Legends, only bigger and bolder cars. Imagine a big V8, a six gear squential gearbox and killer brakes and you should get a decent picture. The two new tracks I installed for Bas' Nascar were Le Mans, in the GPL 1967 layout, and a new track called Old Ring. When we did a few try out laps on this track we both did lap times of about 2.07.xx ... something, instantly liking this track very much. Bas then said that he thought that with a little practice we should be able to beat the two minute limit on that track some day. Me being the always skeptic one thought that would take quite some practice then since it's not a difficult track to learn but to go really fast it would require lot's of laps. Well after doing quite some laps yesterday I'm pretty proud to announce that my current fastest lap was a 1.50.xx something ... so I guess Bas was right after all :-) What a confidence that guy has in our driving skills sometimes, really great. We'll be doing more and more laps there so there should even be some more time to win. Predal to the metal,

Hi all. I just woke up and yes I can see that is a 'bit' too late when you realize that I was supposed to start at 07.00 this morning ... But don't worry, I already called my colleagues so they know what's keeping me. Well I got to go now, get myself to work asap. I'll talk to you guys later :-) Going, going, gone,

Hi all. Nothing serious to post here this time but I just found some quite funny quotes on racing on the internet and wouldn't keep them from you: Murray Walker: "The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical" George Robson, Winner of the 1946 Indy 500: "All I had to do is keep turning left!" Murray Walker: "Alain Prost is in a commanding second position." Dale Earnhardt: "You win some, lose some, and wreck some." Murray Walker: "With two laps to go then the action will begin, unless this is the action, which it is." Alan Kulwicki, on racing Saturday nights as opposed to Sunday afternoons: "It's basically the same, just darker." Murray Walker: "There are four different cars filling the first four places." Steve Ruchin: "Race fans, I had inferred from my one trip to the Brickyard 400, fell into one of two categories: tattooed, shirtless, sewer-mouthed drunks, and their husbands." Murray Walker: "... the lead is now 6.9 seconds. In fact it's just under 7 seconds." As you can see Murray Walker is the big 'winner' here. At home I have a huge list with all kinds of remarks said by him. He's just so darn funny usually :-) I just love quotes and one-liners so if you have anymore, please feel free to mail them to me. Quote & unquote,

Hi all. I'm awake ... no really ... I promise ... I'm pretty sure I am ... Zzz Zzz Zzz ... All right I know I shouldn't have watched snooker last night and to be honest I didn't watch all of it. But that was only because I fell asleep on the couch again :-) Yup, that was me ... Actually the 'sleeping' part of sleeping on the couch is not that bad, it's comfortable enough. However the waking up part isn't. Aargh ... I feel just about every bone in my body now and it will take weeks, if not months, to recover from this little escapade. Okay okay, maybe not that long and I do feel a little better knowing you're reading this and probably feeling sorry for me (duh! as if ... grow up Biek!) so we'll be okay sometime this afternoon. I think ... After a nice sleep tonight it will all be fine in the morning. Wait a minute! Tonight there will be snooker again of course. And tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and ... Oh man, looks like I'm not going to get much sleep these upcoming weeks ... More coffee, I need more coffee!!

Hi all. We have just scored another nice victory with snooker again. Six to two was the score versus the Brand 3 team which is quite good considering they are a couple of places higher up in the competition ranking than we are. Even my back supported me all the way only to give/cave in a little when I was waiting to go home, so great timing! It's fine now after a good but very short night sleep. Which brings me to the second part: watching snooker :-D When I just got home the BBC was broadcasting snooker again, and it's the World Championship. I just really love to watch snooker, at least as much as I love playing it. The only down side I can think of is that it's probably going to get really late watching this all the way until the end ... I think it's on until three a.m. so let's hope I can get out of my bed tomorrow (or after a couple of hours) as I still have to get to work ... I have to start driving at about six a.m. to be in Best at seven ... whish me luck, because I'm sure I'll need it. I'm off watching now,

Hi all. I'm finally feeling a whole lot better this morning and I'll be the first to admit that it's just about time too. Man! The past few days have been not that great but the tides are turning. I was even able to keep in some solid food and coffee (yeah!) last night so we're making vast progress. Saturday evening Bas and I went to Jaap who celebrated the big 4-0. For no less then 40 years he has been walking the earth and he thought that was a good excuse to throw a party. And we agreed of course :-) Happy birthday to him. And many good years to come. And on Sunday I had another birthday. My sister this time. 29 already. Time flies when you're ... erm ... not watching *grin* She also threw a party and allthough I had planned on going there in the beginning of the afternoon I was there around seven. When I woke up I had decided that studying is better done in the morning when you're fresh and awake than after a birthday party. Aargh, I just realized we're facing a long (normal that is) working week in comparison to last (and next) week so that needs some adjustments :-| Luckily next week should be a short one again :-) It's a nice rhythm to get used to, a 4 days week. Of course like most of you know in my case a 4 day week still contains 5 days but that's just me, hehe. Good luck to all of us for this week,

Hi all. Sorry for not posting here for a couple of days. I've not been feeling that well. A bit of trouble with my stomach keeps me from doing all sorts of nice things, like posting here. Can't keep solid food in quite well and anything stronger than thee is not received too well down there also. Must be a temporarily thing, or at least I sure hope so. Maybe the flu, who knows. It's not a really ugly thing though, and I've been working anyway so I'll live but I miss my lunches :-) Today our supervisor thought it would be a good idea for me to get at least something small to eat for lunch but the two sandwiches I ate are stirring up all kinds of things inside already. No fun at all. It'll pass like it usually does, I'm sure. Apart from that minor inconvenience I'm doing fine. Tonight I'm free (as in no plans) so we'll see what I'm going to do. Probably some computing since I've started my courses and I need to study and stuff. After I'll do some couch potato-ing I'll guess. We'll see what I feel like. Stay alive,

Hi all. Woah, snooker was good last night. All three of us where playing quite good and we had lots of fun doing so. It's always nice to see that you actually can pot those balls and that all the weeks of misery before were just a little 'off day' you had. Good for confidence building, mental peace, inner strength ... Geez, was that me talking? :-) Okay okay, but it does help to believe in your own capabilities. Knowing you can handle certain situations makes the game somewhat easier I guess. Or at least nicer. Keep potting 'em,

Hi all. Man, this race weekend was a good one again. The only downpart I can think of was carying my 35kg monitor back up the stairs just now ... Okay it's 21" big so there are also good things about a monitor weighing that much. But I really, really, need to get myself a 19" TFT someday ... TFT's rule,

Hi all. Just a quick message to let you all know that I have survived day one of the race weekend in one piece. And I don't even feel that bad yet so I'm going at it for another run tomorrow :-) Right, I'm off to bed now,

Hi all. For the first time this week I feel reasonably fine. My back doesn't hurt me permanently anymore now, just every now and then a little after a not quite so smooth move, and I slept like a baby last night. If only I had not slept this short I would have been feeling even been better :-) The short rest was due to two factors: first I was installing F1 2002 and F1 Challenge MOD's on Wouter's (son of my dads girlfriend) computer last night and so I was home quite late. These things do take time to setup correctly. Reason number two was that I didn't have to work after all today, but found that out when I was here already ... bummer I guess. My dad thought he did give me the day off like I asked but I didn't get that message and showed up, like the kind person that I am ;-) So I could have been sleeping a whole lot longer after all ... :-| Anyway. Ask me again how my back is by the end of tomorrow, or monday even, as I'm going racing with Bas again this weekend. Let's see if we can find some easter eggs at Le mans this year LOL. And even though these days don't help much with back problems, it's so much fun that I gladly feel my back again afterwards. You live only once, or at least the second time has yet to be proven, and I have planned on doing so day by day. And today feels fine,

Hi all. Congratulations to the team! Eight to one was the end score, this time in our favor. Even though my back was almost literally killing me I played quite well (or at least well enough as it seemed :-) and won all three of my frames. Bas did so too and unfortunately Jaap lost one of his. However he did state that he deserved to loose it so it was meant to be this way. Obviously we can't do anything about that now can we. It was a nice evening, again with a bunch of good folks on the other team. It was a nice evening. In the end we thought it was better not to tell them they lost eight to one from a team with 2 almost crippled guys ... sometimes you don't need to tell the whole works I think ;-) Great victory guys, on to the next,

Hi all. Yes yes, I had my what-will-happen-to-my-free-time-the-for-rest-of-the-year conversation with my employer today and I have to say it wasn't quite so bad as it seemed in the first place. We discussed that meeting we had last week and the study schedule that was laid out for us there. Also I presented my working/traveling vs free time calculations which were received with much understanding. Then I made my counter proposal: I would like to try and become MCSA 2003 by the end of this year. That seemed like a task that I could reasonably get through so they agreed. :-) And this of course means Biek is quite happy again. I might be able to keep talking to you guys after all :-) This MCSA training includes the four Core exams you need before you can choose the three elective exams to make it a complete MCSE 2003 certificate. The first two (Windows XP Professional and Windows 2003 Server) won't be that hard I think since they are 'simply' successors to their Windows 2000 counterparts. Same base, more extra's. Okay okay, so they obviously will need some work but they are not the most time consuming of them all. The other two Core exams and the three electives will be a different story I think. They all contain material I have yet few of no experience with and with which I also have little to do during my daily work so this will be somewhat difficult I presume. However I can usually learn this stuff quite easily so when I put in the time I should be able to get passed those also. I hope :-) The bookworm signing off,

Hi all. Yesterday morning I was supposed to show up at my sister & bro's house well before the Formula One race in Bahrain started but when I still wasn't there at a quarter passed one he (that's Stevie, smart guy ;-) decided to get on the phone and find out what was keeping me from pressing their doorbell. Lucky for me I can hear my phone in the bedroom because at that point I was still in a really nice and deep sleep and would have been so for at least the beginning and probably first half of the race. After thanking him very much for the wake-up call I helped myself to some coffee and bread to get my internal system going. That did the trick :-) No less then just about ten minutes later I was hanging on the couch watching the start of what would turn out to be a great race while chatting on Msn with my sister. Men can be very multitasking at some times when the moment calls for it, believe you me. It's just a matter of sheer willpower! Unfortunately because of my longer-than-planned sleeping adventure I missed the preview, a part of the whole show I like very much because of all the little facts and stuff they talk about. Next time my alarm clock will be set way before anything is even remotely close to starting This weeks SBS6 studio guest was a rather strange guy who actually had nothing other in common with racing than just his thought that it was one of mankind's last truly outrageous sports. And from that point of view he may even be having a point there. Other than that it's just a strange guy to have as studio guest in a Formula 1 show. No racing dude. But first things first. On one hand I really like the new circuit. Like some of the drivers say it looks quite boring from birds eye view but to look at them thrash their cars around was a very pleasant experience. On this track you can see how fast these cars actually are. Very nice. On the other hand I wonder why they spend all this money to have this racing venue in the middle of the desert. Ticket prices were rising sky high so only the richer fans could afford them. In my humble opinion they should have spend have the money on renovating other circuits, rather than building a new one no one needs. But hey, that's just me talking. Pay no attention. Before anyone had driven the new track everyone said that this would be nice for the rookies, because now the settled drivers could not rely on their years of racing experience like they have on the other tracks and this way the odds should be more equal. Theoretically yes. But not this Sunday ;-) Those 'darn red ones' just took another run for their money again, starting from the word 'go' ... Man these guys were fast. It's beginning to get really embarrassing for most of the other teams as this year Ferrari seems to have the better driver, car and also tires with the Bridgestone's. Good luck to all twenty of them because they'll need it. We did see some great driving by a couple of 'rookie' drivers like Klien and Sato. That was very enjoyable to watch. They had some very courageous overtaking actions during this race, out-braking both some of the big names in Formula 1 and themselves at some point ;-) Fantastic driving, we want more! We want more! Next year same place same time,

Hi all. She's gone for not even much more than about a day and a half and already I miss her so damn much. It's almost not funny anymore. Gone might be a little strong, maybe moved on is better put. I know I shouldn't be doing this to myself, but it's stronger than I am, I just can't help myself. Don't get me wrong, for her it's so great. And she's now finally where she should have been from the beginning and I definitely would not that to change. Not ever. But they say that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. I on the other hand was quite convinced I did know what I 'had' and now she's gone too ... I Don't know which version is worse, but in the end it must be feeling somewhat the same way I guess. Life's not fair, just live with it ...

Hi all. We did some snookering just now. Or at least I think we did. Don't mind me, both my back and head hurt at the moment. Grrr. Let's just get the facts lined up: 1) We were in Nijmegen at a snooker center 2) We brought cue's 3) There were other people 4) They were waiting to challenge us 5) When the dust cleared, some administrative writing was done 6) Five to four in our advantage is what the form said in the end So there you go. For some reason we seem to have won. Well one huge part was clear: Bas won all three of his frames, so kudo's to you buddy, we needed you as always :-) Jaap and I both took one frame so that's where the five total came from. My first frame was okay enough. I made some nice pots so all and all I deserved to win that one. The other two I played on another table and that just didn't work. I'm not sure how or why but I couldn't get the white to go straight anymore. Man did I miss some easy pots. My sister could have potted those right-handed and blindfolded I'm afraid. Sjeesh. Bottom line: we won and had a really good time. Very nice gents on the other team by the way, and that's what counts most. Even though we could have had a somewhat better score. Then there is that other thing. Something is wrong with my eye. The left one to be exact. Wrong may be a bit of a harsh term but it's acting funny. On some occasions where I have been wearing myself out a bit (just can't help it, sorry. the days are just too short) I noticed that I can't focus with it correctly. It's mainly with the left eye. The eyelid also sometimes starts twitching a bit. I didn't pay much attention to it as I was thinking it had something to do with me not sleeping too well or too long. But every now and then it keeps coming back, even when I did have enough rest. Strange things happen. There it goes again! I'm going to bed, spooky stuff this :-| Get some rest,