Hi all. Geez, I've underestimated the amount of work it needs to bring a forum down I guess :-) And I because of that I haven't been that active over here. I'll better my life, I promise, and get you guys up to date within the next couple of days. Anyway I actually have been making my posts but haven't put them on-line as I like to go over them a couple of times before doing so. Just a final check so to speak and to make sure it's a nice smooth story. Bare with me and you'll have plenty to read soon :-) Writers block ... what's that? *grin*

Hi all. Yeah, I know. 'The hearing'. It sounds pretty serious doesn't it. Right at this moment I begin to realize just how serious it has been wrecking my sub conscience when the invitation for it came in a couple of weeks ago ... Starting from that moment just about until yesterday I've been sleeping very bad. And I mean really bad. Four or five hours a night tops, waking up much too soon in the morning, that sort of 'bad'. Extremely heavy on my mood and overall happiness, allthough I hope none of you have noticed much of it. But no problems sleeping last night. To continue the trend of using movie quotes for expressing myself: 'Baby's don't sleep this well' - Jack a.k.a. Tyler Durden. Just watch the movie and you'll know what I mean. Man did I sleep nice last night, in comparison to the past weeks I've been catching up for countless lost hours of sleep. This feels so incredibly good, I tell you. I really need to do this more often ;-) Right. About that Hearing now. When we (that's my sister and me) got there we found out that the hearing was going to be done by two people. One who led the hearing and another one was taking notes. There is a better term for that I'm sure but I can't be bothered looking it up right now, sorry. Clerk jumps to mind (free translation from Dutch), but I'm not sure that is the correct term ... The man explained to us first of all that they both were part of an independent part of the organization, so they themselves we're not the final decision takers. He also explained that from their point of view a hearing is more common than exception and that it was basically nothing more than a face to face conversation between them and us. No heavy cross question examination or anything like that. This immediately made me feel a whole lot better. Not sure about my sister though, she seemed a but suspicious. Specially since we had been a little worried that this hearing might have been scheduled simply because we forgot something or didn't make something clear, stuff like that. None of this all, they just wanted to have and give the chance to add something to the letters that had been exchanged from and to us. Easy ;-) Then they asked us to 'make our point' so to speak, and so we did. What we told them was basically the contents of the letters we send, and added to that a bit of 'human emotion' I guess is the best way to describe it. We tried to keep it straight and simple. After we were finished they also had two questions and we managed to get by them nicely. It were no difficult ones, more clearing up a couple of small details. No problem at all for as far as I can determine. And basically that was it. No more no less. I noticed that when the man was kind of finished and was ready to wrap it all up that my sister had a little trouble letting the guy go :-) I saw a bit of uncertainty coming up and she wanted to make absolutely positively sure that that was it and that all topics had been covered. She's just so sweet. Then we went home, relieved that it was finally over and done with and finally able to relax a bit. Which was good a thing and we both needed that. In the afternoon we went shopping for a new pair of glasses for yours truly and a coupe of hours later we had picked one! The first rough eye test was nearly the same as my current glasses, only added to that was a '0.25 cylinder' ... So ... Now I know a lot about some things and I know some about a lot of things but this cylinder thing had to be explained to me ... not a clue as of what that meant. Right now I do think I now what it means, but I have no idea how to repeat it here. Let's stick with the simple fact that during the more detailed eye test I was able to see the difference clearly so I definitely want it in my new glasses. As right now I'm not loaded with money I asked the guy who helped us to write down all data we measured and the specific frame and color I picked so that when I do have the money he'd be able to look up the exact data on what I want. He said that when both glasses and frame are in stock they'll usually are able to deliver in just one day! So that would be nice. Oh look, an Eagle ;-)

Hi all. Remember the forum crash I told you about? It wasn't me. Honestly. I swear. And luckily for me Hi-Hat (the man upstairs so to speak :-) has briefly told me that it had nothing to do with me, but that they just needed a good laugh and I was a) in the neighborhood and b) have been posting quite a lot on the forum so ... Anyway, I also like a good laugh so I don't mind at all. This kind of publicity is just what I need to get my name spread like lightning. So now each and everyone knows me and knows what they can expect *grin* Mr. Wolf, our webmaster, is already working on a new forum so when that one is operational I'll just start filling that one also. Ain't no stopping me then, hehe. Bring on the new forum,

Hi all. That's one terrifying title, isn't it? Unfortunately it's true. Or at least that's what Hi-Hat, the CO of the 504th, is telling the world ;-) Look here, it might even make sense to some of you: Frontpage news For those of you who don't know this yet: Overstear is my internet / multiplayer alter ego and I use it for online gaming for example. It's Otto Verstear in full, but for games with a single handle or callsign like Lock-On I use Overstear. So I did so too on the forums of the VVS 504th Squadron I told you about. This afternoon while Maikel and I where having a good time calling each other names on that forum it suddenly crashed with the showed frontpage as a result ... Signing off, Pvt. 'Kaboom' Overstear. I hope to face you again still having this rank ;-)

Hi all. Last night I played snooker again and it was okay. One frame was absolutely superb. With two nineteen breaks and one of sixteen it was no catching up for my worthy opponent Jaap who just about won every other frame. I guess he had it coming after butchering both Bas and myself ;-) The major down side of yesterday snooker was soccer. True fans of this so immense popular game should now switch channels, or click somewhere to go elsewhere, or back, or whatever because this ain't gonna be pretty ... A couple of words to describe the situation: a snooker center. Huge screen with beamer. About fifteen people sitting there. All making a enormous amount of noise together, cheering and laughing etc. Soccer commentary on every loudspeaker with a volume to fill an entire stadium, should their sound system quit. No vacant seats. When not snookering you'd have to 'hang around' until you can play again. Right. When I go to a snooker center I go there for two reasons: to rest and enjoy the calmness and to play snooker. One of them wasn't going to happen and you're not even going to get a chance to guess which one. The other thing that killed me was the lack of even one single chair at the table. Standing all evening tore my back apart and even though the owner of the center asked if I needed a chair, I never got one. Then the noise ... Man it was loud. The ones sitting farthest from each other were no more than fifteen feet apart but they were making so much noise that some of 'em would not have had to leave home to hear the other. On top of that there also were a couple of dogs barking up one anothers end so all together it was hell. The headache didn't help there also, I'll be the first to acknowledge that, but still ... geez. By the way I'm not stupid. I do know there is this European Championship going on and that these are, for the fans at least, good games to watch. But still I believe that in a snooker center there should always be at least some degree of calmness. Last night unfortunately that wasn't the case. Usually I can take this kind of racket until a certain degree. A couple of the regulars are quite noisy sometimes but I can live with that. It happens, nothing you can do. I'll have to open my own snooker center and do it better to rule that out so they won't here me about that. Last night it all was just a little too much and I wasn't my usual happy chappy self. I did enjoy myself but the balance between fun and irritation wasn't that great. When I dropped Bas off at his home and drove home I was thinking to myself that as long as this European Championship soccer continues I wasn't going back there to prevent me from getting nuts. Now that I've had not much but still some sleep it may not be as bad as it seems. We'll see. I guess I like the game to d*mn much too skip a evening of snooker, but I do need to be able to stay focused to play it well. There is something I need to work on, just shutting out all the noise and have fun in what I'm doing. Maybe I'll give it just one more try, who knows ... Thanks for hearing me out, I just needed to get this off my chest for now, when I'm relaxed again I'll tell you guys the fun part of the deal.

Hi all. Yes yes, it's party time :-) No it's not my birthday and I sure hope it's not yours either as that would automatically imply that I forgot it ... sorry about that ... No there are two very nice things to celebrate today. The first event is that is my one hundredth post over here! Yes, you did see that correct: T h i s i s T h e O n e H u n d r e d t h P o s t ! Actually this is not the one hundredth post overall because I did keep a digital diary before I started this Blogger ;-) This previous one however was in a more simple way and I've been thinking of getting those archives online also. It's always nice to have a bit more history I think. So it's going to be continued. The other thing is that I've been promoted to the rank of Private in the VVS 504th Squadron! Yesterday evening I finaly made my checkride with Cougar and passed it with 'flying colours' to put it in his words. Which cool of course. When I come to think of it I've never before been rewarded with anykind of recognition regarding a skill with gaming. For example I've been sim racing for quite some time now but I've never been good or fast enough to get rewarded. Needless to say I'm very pleased with this promotion and hoping that there will be lots to follow over time. I have no idea what's to do next in this squadron to get higher up the ladder but time will tell I suppose. Pvt. Overstear signing off,

Hi all. Despite my back problems I still had a nice weekend. Yesterday I did some sim-flying again, taking my pre-exam to be able tp get my first rank in time so that was kind of cool. Specially since I all of a sudden found myself to be the lead flight. Never having done this before it was a nice experience, and the whole thing going smoothly (somebody up there likes me ;-) sure helped a lot. Huge thanks go out to Cougar from the VVS 504th for explaining this SU25 navigation thingy to me so now it's no more one of the great mysteries ;-) Thanks big-time mate, you saved me from going nowhere! At least from now on I know where I'm going. "Fly me to the moon - Frank Sinatra"

Hi all. This just isn't my week I suppose. Last weekend we missed Le Mans and today I'm unable to go to the air force open days in Volkel. At some point yesterday evening I wanted to connect my memory stick to my computer and leaned over. Somewhere in my back it went 'kapoing' and now it really hurts. Sitting is okay, standing when no too long and walking only when I walk normal. So going to Volkel and just creeping around all day didn't seem like a good plan now. Maikel promised he'd make lots of pictures so I'll just have to wait and see them I guess. Please let the next week start soon ;-)

Hi all. Must be the grieve I have about not going to Le Mans that made me forget to tell you folks: Biek now has HOTAS. Yes yes, last Saturday morning we (Bas, Maikel and I) went to Aalsmeerderbrug (I know I know, that is almost the end of the country) to the Luchtvaart Hobby Shop. Imagine a huge hall kind of store with everything even slightly related to aviation. Plastic model kits, ready made models, books, etc. And they have a very exclusive collection of computer accessories available and that's why we were there. HOTAS. Hands On Throttle And Stick. It's a joystick for playing pc flight simulators. But where usual joysticks simply have one base with a stick and a couple of buttons a HOTAS has two separate units, one stick unit and the other a throttle unit. Both of them have quite a number of buttons and shift options so the amount of programmable key presses are almost unlimited. This time the sky is actually the limit ;-) It's the Saitek X-45 HOTAS (view here) and it's really cool. Not only does the stick offer a much smoother control of the airplane but the throttle unit is what makes it so d*mn good. As I yet don't fully understand all the functions of the throttle unit (hey I'm only human after all) I'll have to get back with you guys on the how and what part. But I will do so in time. HOTAS rocks,

Hi all. Okay. Here's what went wrong. I think the main thing that we did wrong in the first place is that Bas and I quite late decided for sure that we wanted to go to Le Mans. For some time we just were thinking and brain storming about it but didn't decide. At that point the only tickets that were left for four of the Grand Stands at the circuit of Le Mans could only be obtained locally over there at the ticket offices and we were not going to go over there and take a gamble on weather or not there were going to be tickets left and if they would suit us. The thought of doing the distance of about eight hundred and fifty kilometers twice without having a bit of certainty didn't quite appeal to us. So we thought about it and didn't go there. Now we're going to make a plan for going next year, so that should be well in time to get things organized I think. All in all it's really sad we were not there because up and until we started looking for the tickets everything seemed to be working out just fine. But unfortunately it didn't. I guess these things happen. However the good news is that now we had the time to do a nice and long race weekend and we were able to see the Formula One race on Canada this evening, so this was a small comfort to the gee-bummer-feeling we were having. The ninety six hours of race weekend ;-)

Hi all. Well to make a long story (and race :-) short: we're not going. At the moment I really don't feel like explaining or anything right now as I was looking forward to this so very much. When my mood is getting better and I'm over it I might give it a try ... but not now ... D*MNIT!

Hi all. Yes that's right. This year I'm going, no matter what. We've been putting this off much longer then we planned but this year it seems that it's finaly going to happen! Which of course is a good thing :-) Imagine dozens of different racing cars driving each other in different classes on one of the worlds nicest street circuits for no less then 24 hours in a row. Personally I can't think of a better way to pass time then watching this event live! We'll be starting our journey tomorrow morning and head off to France. Then find us a nice camping site and from Saturday morning we're planning on being on one of the big grandstands all the way until Sunday afternoon four o' clock, when the race finishes. This thirty six hours plus is quite a while but well worth it, trust me. So until upcoming Monday you won't be hearing from me, but at least you know where I'll be :-D See you on Tuesday,

Hi all. No, I'm sorry. No Volkswagen for me (unfortunately), the Punto is still here ... Yesterday (almost) the entire IT department of Philips Medical Systems went on a team building afternoon. I'll spare you the details of the planning and getting everyone to join because that was not as easy as some of the organizing people might have hoped for ;-) Anyway, with all that cleared up we were good to go and with a group of about thirty five people we went out to play golf. That's your title for you. Now I have been to a small number of these so called 'golf clinics' and they are okay. Nothing more, nothing less. Just okay. They usually divide all the folks in two groups, one group goes to the driving range to and hit the balls into 'the great wide open' and the other group goes to a green and starts putting. When everybody get's the hang of it they switch groups and your avarage afternoon is filled nicely. They normally under no circumstances let you out on the track to go out and dig up a nineteenth hole ;-) The golf facility we went to did this another way. They have a 9 hole golf course set out and that one is specially for amateurs and beginners. We started with a brief introduction to the game of golf, got to know the official and non official terms and then it was time to start hitting the small white things towards the big green area ... Strike one! After that we did some putting practice and then we were released in small groups devided over the nine holes. This was so much fun, realy cool. We allmost felt like that Tiger Oaktree guy ;-) The only downside I can think of is that the weather was just a little too good for my likings. Lots of sun and stuff. Bummer ... Everything else was just great, and we had lots of fun trying out this game that is a whole lot more difficult then it seems on tv ... :-| Afterwards we had a nice bbq after which we all went home. These kind of things are up for a second time for as far as I'm concerned. Going for par,

Hi all. I'd like to nominate myself for goofus of the week. Or at least of the last week. Can you remember the post about the Fiat, how I got it and what I thought of it? Yes? D*mn, that means I can't edit it into something less stupid. Let me explain this. In the Netherlands we now have a couple of hot days and one of Biek's major problems is the weather. Warm weather that is. I just can't stand the sun, it gives me headaches faster than I can write about it and after 5 minutes in direct, strong bright sunlight I'm starting to feel sick. Today I made the unforgivable mistake of having my lunch outside, nicely in (yes you guessed it) the sun. Muriel, our head of the Servicedesk, really liked to go eat outside and it didn't look that hot in the beginning. That all changed when we sat down and the sun could freely have it's way with me. They always say that brighter colors reflect the sunlight better but my pale skin seemed to attract about 99.2 % (Biek's estimated guess) of all the sunlight available. I was a big boy and sat out that lunch but I swear I'll never do that again. Ever. Sorry 'bout that Muriel ... it's just not working well for me. Right now I feel really nauseous inside, not very good at all. Like when you have the flu but in a strange burning from inside kind of way. Combine that with a major headache and you'll get the picture ... Hope I can sleep it away. Back to the car. As I was driving Erik and myself home I was not getting much happier from the thought that underway to Le Mans Bas and I were probably going to get a whole lot hotter than this. Not a pleasant thought. This Fiat has no air-conditioning so it's like having your own private microwave ride home. When I dropped Erik off at his home, I was fiddling with the buttons and stuff on the Fiat's dash while he was getting out and guess what: THE DAMN THING DOES HAVE AN AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM!!! God I feel stupid. Here I was, driving around in a car that's way to hot for my likings and all I would have had to do was push in the dial for setting the fan speed ... DUH! Why do Italian car builders have to be so different than Japanese or USA car manufacturers? Can't they just make a button called A/C? Or something that even looks like a airco button? That would have saved me so much trouble and aggravation. I'll never forgive them for this. Grrr. Strange folks those Italians,

Hi all. Yes yes, they still exist: traditional family days! We had one yesterday with the family of my mothers side, and this one was combined with the sixtieth birthday of Willem, one of the uncles. The mission for a present was simple: the sisters (that's how we nephews and nieces lovingly call the mothers/aunts 'clan') had thought up the idea of making a birthday calendar and everybody was going to make a page, or month. My sister and I were in charge of June. We both decided to do a small text with fun memories of our uncle, completed with a small picture. My sister had made the first part en mailed it to me so I could finish the job. That was well finished within any deadline, accept for the printing part. My own printer hasn't been working for maybe two years now, so I needed to get my hands on a printer that would be able to print one hundred and twenty grams paper. At work the guys doing the maintenance on the printers was not that happy with the thought of me feeding one of the printers this thickness of papers, so my next guess was to print it in Katwijk on my dads laser printer. Wrong again, he was having troubles getting a nice printout sometimes as well, and I was only having one thicker paper. So I then set my hopes on my sisters printer wrote the document to memory stick and took it with me when I was picking her up to go to Amsterdam. As I got there their printer wasn't feeling o.k. either so we had to arrange a printer nearby and eventually found one at a friends and after a little stubble we finally had our print :-) So off we went to Amsterdam. For now I'll spare you the where-do-you-leave-the-car-all-day details but we barely made it to the first rendezvous point of the walking trip in Amsterdam, carefully setup by our anniversary uncle. Let me begin by saying that I really do like these family days, even though timing is sometimes bad. Through the rest of the year we hardly ever see the nephews and nieces so this is always a nice time to do some catching up. Normally, when there is no birthday plan, we just gather at one of the family's, everyone have a chat with everyone all day and somewhere in between is the unavoidable 'walk in the park' and I mean that literally ... This walk however can be skipped, but you'll have to come up with a good excuse ;-) They always set out to do a walk for about an hour and a half, but on more than one occasion it's been well over two and a half or even three hours! So yesterday was all walk, almost like a scenic tour of Amsterdam. I can take walking, it's not hard or anything ;-) But walking with a group of people means you're walking with different paces, waiting for everybody to catch up, etc. Back killing time, trust me. Man I was bust already at the first rest point, the ride over there in the Fiat not helping much for that matter. And at that point there was still plenty of walking to come. It was a nice tour. We did visit some nice parts of Amsterdam and eventually we came to an halt in a floating restaurant (it is Amsterdam of course, so plenty of water around) which was really nice. Very nice food and live music. The music part was extremely great, a flamingo group consisting of a guitarist, a rhythm guy, a singer and a dancer. Very nice, I loved that performance. Then it was getting about time to go home again, and my sister and I would need a couple of hours to do so. When I finally hit my bed it was a little over midnight ... ouch ... Right now I feel like I've been run over by one of them big American trucks ... twice ... oh boy. Let's make this week a nice and quiet one shall we? I need to be my old self again next weekend because then it is Le Mans time! Yeah! Have one on me,

Hi all. Lets start this one with a small warning: this post is all about flight sim gaming and it's probably going to be quite a long one. So please enjoy it but don't say I didn't warn you ... ever ;-) The time: yesterday evening. The place: Hyperlobby. The sim: LOMAC, Lock On Modern Air Combat. The mission (should we choose to accept it ;-): Bomb stuff! With my computer upgrade in mind I decided that it would be great fun to also join a flight sim clan or group, like I did with Grand Prix Legends. The fun we have had on-line with GPL is just to good to ignore, so why shouldn't this be the case with a flight sim. As of halfway in May I signed up with the VVS 504th Attack Squadron. The first time I read about the 504th was on the forums of Ubisoft, the ones that made LOMAC. They were enlisting pilots and when I found out they where flying both the Mig29 and the SU25 (beauty and the beast anyone? :-) I was sold. While I was doing some reading in their forums I found out they seemed to be suffering from a shortage in bomber pilots. So even though the Mig29 was (and secretly still is) my favorite plane in LOMAC I joined the 504th 1st Bomber wing. Sounds awesome right? Well the reality is even better than it sounds. It seemed like the ideal opportunity to get to know this trickery plane better, as it's not as computer packed as just about all the other fighter planes in LOMAC and therefore a whole lot more difficult to navigate and lock targets and stuff. Actually all the things you get used to when driving a luxurious car, accept for the power steering ;-) Flying the SU25 is a piece of cake. Go fast enough and an empty plane will want to go up by itself, so everyone can get it airborne. Doing a mission and returning home in one peace is a completely different story, but I'll go into that later on. First I'll do some explaining about this multiplayer/on-line virtual world. Next to LOMAC I use two more programs with multiplayer games and one other for LOMAC updates. Hyperlobby was already mentioned above and the other one is Teamspeak. Both names are to a certain level self explanatory, and I'll try to explain the rest as good as I can. The third util is Loman, but I'll come back to that another day when I have nothing else to write, hehe. First about Hyperlobby. This is a mixture of a chatting program and multiplayer game hosting/connecting/etc. The main screen is divided into a couple of sections. There is a list of logged on pilots, another list with hosted multiplayer games and main chat area. First you log in, select a sim you want to use (LOMAC or IL2 - Sturmovik for example) and then you're in :-) In the chat box you can 'talk' to everyone on-line and discuss details and ask questions. Man there are some wizards out there, and most of them are willing to help anyone out. There is a huge amount of knowledge on-line. Some know little, some know a lot but all together they know just about everything. Just great. When a host starts up a multiplayer session, pilots can join and when the host says go, they go. Hyperlobby then starts LOMAC by itself, connects the joined pilots to the host and they find themselves in the what-plane-do-you-want-to-fly-today (has nothing to do with Microsoft) kind of screen ;-) And that's when the fun starts. The only downside to this all is that the only contact you have with fellow pilots is via chat boxes or even worse: in the game it's a single chat line. And also during flight. Imagine this: using a joystick, and anywhere around one hundred and fifteen keys and combinations on your one hundred and one keyboard at the same time to keep your plane airborne and alive and at the same time chatting with team members ... Yeah, that would be very bad, unless they found a way around it ... wait a minute!? They did! It's called Teamspeak ;-) This Teamspeak is literally what the name says: you speak with your team. Sounds simple, right? My thoughts exactly ;-) The only thing you need is a microphone (a headset is strongly recommended) and of course the Teamspeak software. When you fire it up it connects to a designated server and you can start talking live with anyone in the room. Over the internet. Truly an amazing discovery :-) So your 'team' first needs to log on to a Teamspeak server. Next, in our case and thanks to the guy responsible for it at 504, we have a number of rooms and channels to choose from. The bomber wing room is the one I log on to. In there we also have some choices: four comms channels and the tower channel. Think of them as radio channels. They are used in missions to keep the channel free from distracting 'clutter' which immensely helps your concentration. For example. With yesterdays Bomber wing practice we had/were a two unit squadron: a SEAD unit and a strike unit. The SEAD unit was on comms channel one and the strike unit was on two. Each of them able to freely talk to each other without disturbing the other unit. Simply perfect. And when you need some one on the other unit, simply switch channels from within the flight sim and talk away. Brilliant, just brilliant. What makes it even better is that it's not just limited to Lock-On. It's active from the moment you start it in Windows, and for as far as I've tried out it works in or during just about every application or game. So the possibilities are more or less limitless. I can think of things like my racing team being able to talk to each other during the race, keeping track of crashes or other difficult situations, that sort of stuff. You'll be 'hearing' from me ;-)

Hi all. Man, that Fiat is going to be the end of me. My God what a terrible seat that thing has, just unbelievable! My back is really killing me. Yesterday I drove from home to my mom and back again, and this morning from home to Erik and the next stop was Best. It's hurting like hell, not funny at all. Today I'm going to get in touch with the lease company and tell them this and ask what they they'll do about it. It can't just be that this is going to be my permanent next ride as of now. And if it is, I'll have to plough the darn thing into a tree or something ... Yeah like that is going to help my back ... LOL Just kidding folks, but something has to change. To be continued,

Hi all. Just now I was going to get my car back. NOT! 'Your car has been revoked from lease' ... The sales guy from the local dealer where I left my Seat yesterday was smiling kindly. Yeah, sure. So what does this mean? 'Well, it means they want us to hold this car. And that we should give you this (guy handing over some keys and papers) car instead' ... Looking at the keys made me feel quite awkward ... FIAT it said on the logo. No buttons so no remote opening doors anymore for Biek. Or at least not today. Grrr, just my luck. What did I do wrong this time? I remember being the more than proud driver of a Subaru Legacy but that time seems oh so far away now. Being honest I can say that the car runs fine, no real down sides for as far as I can see now. Everything works as you can expect from a brand new car. One hundred and twenty eight kilometers on the dails ... Only the seat is not that comfortable to say the least, (not Seat, seat!) but that might also be me needing to get used to it. I'm going over to my mom now, to have a chat and later diner. We've not been seeing each other for some time now, other that the quick drive-by we had on the highway this afternoon when I was getting home, so it will be good to see her again. This also means fresh vegetables (that's how moms are I guess ;-) so I'll be getting my daily doses again. Yum! On my way,

Hi all. Today Bas and I decided to follow the great example of his brother and start a 'Best of hundred frames' competition with each other. Basically what this means is that we keep track of scores and won frames and the first to fifty one wins the whole nine yards. Needless to say this is not done overnight so both you and me will have to show some patience before we know who won it. I once previously started some kind of registration with Jaap, our other snooker team member, but that one is now only known as the dreaded Excel sheet and only rarely is talked about these days ... This 'new' one I've started with Bas has began okay I guess with me leading with three frames to two. Time will tell if I can keep this lead and to be honest with you guys (but don't tell Bas, because it might give him ideas ;-) I think he will win it. Normally he's the more consistent one of us, but we'll see won't we. To the hundred,

Hi all. No no, I didn't get a new unknown model Seat today. Mine just needs maintenance so i just dropped it at the local dealer. Got a nice 'loner' as a temporary replacement so no complaining here. I can pick mine up tomorrow again, so it's just for one day. Got to go now, I'm off snookering again. Catch you later. Kind regards, hehe,