Hi all. What a day I picked to resume my work. When I left my home at six thirty this morning I was feeling quite happy about getting back to work, honestly, but when I still hadn't arrived there about an hour and forty five minutes later that happy-happy-joy-joy feeling had gone down to a almost zero state. Not that I didn't want to go anymore but normally it takes me somewhere in between forty five minutes and one hour so when I finally got here I was not amused to say the least. When I slammed my badge across the clocking machine it read nine sixteen ... NINE SIXTEEN! That means two hours and forty five minutes of traveling ... When I drove along I passed a sign that said 'warning, road situation has changed' but I didn't expect it to mean that a few thousand cars had been placed on to it ... I sure hope that this was a one time off day, because this just ain't much fun and it's such a waste of time. I'll report back in tomorrow when things are a litte more relaxed here at work, as it's hell now and I need to do my thing. See you all then.

Hi all. Sorry for not keeping you up to speed on me for the past week. As they say bad luck never comes in one go, somehow it's usually an evil twin for as far as I'm concerned. Last Saturday I was so happy to take my repaired modem back home with me only to see and hear it go out of order just about an hour and fifteen minutes later. Not responding on anything I did it now is back at the store again and gets send away again. Hope they a) fix it for good and b) do that a hell of a lot faster than they did last time, although I'm not that confident they will ... them b*stards! Then I got sick in the weekend. I felt it creeping on to me during the Sunday but it really started to kick butt during the rest of the week. I'll make a short overview of my week ... Monday - pretty sick Tuesday - really sick Wednesday - thinking it got little better Thursday - knowing it didn't Friday - felling whole lot better Today - back on track Then some fortune telling: Tomorrow - hope to stay that way Monday - back to work baby! So ... That just about sums up my week which was in one word ... bad. What I missed probably the most is work, strange as that may sound. As I'm feeling much better now I hope it at least stays that way and hopefully improves a bit so I at least I can go to my work again. I'll keep you posted, thanks for waiting.

Hi all. I finally saw the house my sister and bro bought. And boy it's a nice one. Great roomy living with a build in kitchen. Not build in like my place where the kitchen is no more than just a corner in the living with a sink and cooking plate, but more like a normal kitchen without the door to the living. I'm sure you know what I mean. They have a nice garden with a shed and when you leave the gate there is a children's playground right outside the garden! It's also a no car zone which adds to the safety of course. Perfect place. Then on the first floor they have a master bedroom, one for the kid(s), a bathroom and a hobby room. When you then go up another flight of stairs you get to the attic. That houses the heater & boiler system but still is very large. And in half of the top of it they have another mini-attic so just about every bit of room in the house has been used. All together a it's very, very nice place indeed. When I drove home however I was wondering where we're all going to sit when we have a race weekend at their place again but I’m sure we’ll figure something out when the time comes ;-) We must, there's no other option LOL This weekend I'm going over to help out where I can and I hope I can take my fridge with me then also. First to get it out of their way and second because I'd like to start using it of course. I'll need to make some last minute 'adjustments' to my own kitchen to fit it in but I'll work something out tonight and tomorrow night I guess. Whish me luck ;-)

Hi all. The pure, shortest description of snooker: tick, tick, plock. That first 'tick' is the cue striking the white, the second is that cue ball hitting the object ball and that oh so wonderful 'plock' is the sound of the object ball changing course from horizontal to vertical against that leather covered brass edge of the pocket it so mysteriously disappears into. One down.

Or at least that's the glamorous way, almost BBC like if you will, most of us look at snooker when it's displayed at it's very best form on TV.

As you've probably guessed by now we have been playing another competition match of snooker last night. And again it wasn't pretty. This time however I've been playing quite nicely. Apart from my first frame which was even worse than Tuesday when Bas and I practiced and put down another couple of frames in our best of one hundred match.

After the break off shot of the first frame I spotted a chance, went for it and messed it up. The other guy kept potting balls and there was little I could do against it. I made the mess, he cleared it up. Simple.

What was lacking in the first frame however, I made up in the second. I wouldn't mind playing like that all the time. Things went so smooth, just about every ball I went for dropped like it couldn't have been any other way. In no time I was about forty points in front which, on our level of competence, is a lot.

When we came to the colors he kept trying to come back but when the brown went in he gave up, like I would have done also. For some reason the brown ball is some kind of turning point and when I'm far behind and it's gone, so is the frame.

My third and last frame was one of the nicest in play for a long time. Mainly because of two factors: first of all due to that second frame I was beginning to play really good snooker. Almost like the old form I once was in ... And the second reason was that he played snooker like I do which makes a frame even more enjoyable.

The (my?) basic idea of a good frame of snooker is that you simply try and pot balls of which you believe you can pot them for about fifty five point seven percent (rounded off to the nearest decimal ;-) or more. Not that 'hm, I don't know if that's going to work lets put it safe' kind off snooker. Which can be very useful at some times, but lets face it: it's boring. If I didn't want to pot the balls I would have turned to playing billiards and not snooker ;-)

Tick, tick, plock and counting,

Hi all. Well, it used to be until we played our practice session yesterday evening. Okay it wasn't all bad and I somehow managed to take three of the five played frames but I honestly don't recall how that happened ... All I remember is missing so d*mn much, no where near funny. Both Bas and I weren't really in good shape but we figured it couldn't hurt to get some practice before our competition game this evening. I can only hope that what they say is true about rehearsals going wrong and the thing itself goes right 'cause if it doesn't we're in big trouble folks. See you tomorrow,

Hi all. Yesterday a unexpected but very nice thing happened to me. I was having a race weekend with Bas when all of a sudden Msn notified me of a new incoming message. When I'm with Bas we hook up LAN to the internet so we can go where ever we like. The person sending me that message was HG, who I had never talked 'live' to before, and we chatted for a short while. Hopefully we'll be able to talk lots more in the future when my modem is back, as she's very nice to talk to. She didn't had much time unfortunately. The time difference between us is eight hours in her benefit so it might be a challenge thinking up a time when we're both online. This sudden chat reminded me of a similar event years ago. It was the very first time I talked to a good friend of mine, after first chatting with her for a couple of months. I met her on-line during my first weeks of chatting and from the beginning we really got along great. However taking the step and meet was something that took some time as it's always strange to meet as friends, knowing each other pretty good but without ever seeing one another. At that time I was only working at the law firm IT department for a couple of weeks and my friend and me had been thinking of meeting a couple of times, but just didn't get to it. When I started to work in Amsterdam at the law firm things looked brighter as I then was just about half the country closer to her. Now it was only eighty five kilometers ... One afternoon my boss, the head of our IT department and systems manager, called me and said he had a 'heavily breathing female' on the phone ... for me ... Believe me I had quite some explaining to do as soon as I laid down the phone. This was of course my friend who decided to take the first step and give me a ring. Later on I she explained to me she had been dancing with her daughter before, hence the heavy breathing ;-) When yesterday afternoon my Msn notified me that HG had typed something of a nice riddle in my direction I felt the same feeling I had on the phone back then. A nicely exiting but somehow uncertain feeling, mainly because I'm not that great in making first contacts. However this time I think it turned out fine :-) A dejavu can be a nice thing sometimes,

Hi all. Remember the brand new car I got just about two weeks ago? Well it ain't so new anymore because yesterday it unfortunately got her tail damaged. Some guy didn't notice I slowed down a bit to prevent a mother and child from taking a dive on the hood and he simply bumped into me. First of all, I'm okay. Or at least I think I am, I'll get back on that. Later. For now lets assume I am, just for comfort. My comfort mostly. Thanks ... :- In Holland there seems to be a growing trend of roundabouts instead of normal road crossings. Sometimes I think they get a huge discount for them, they must. They pop-up everywhere! Some actually do work a lot better than standard crossings with traffic lights but some just don't. For me it's the smaller ones that could/should have been avoided. When it comes to roundabouts it's the bigger the better. And no they are not as scary like some people think, just follow the rules and there's hardly ever a problem. When there is a problem it's seldom on the roundabout, but more often on the on and off lanes. And that's basically because not all of them have the same rules in terms of who has right of way and when they have it. Cars vs bikes, that sort of stuff. The main reason I think it comes to crashes on that point is that then everything comes together. You need to check for traffic coming at you from just about all sides, from the back, the right and crossing bicycles in front of you. When you're on a bigger one the time you have to skip from incoming traffic from the right to crossing bicyclists in front of you is longer than on a smaller roundabout. Simple as that. And that's where the driver of the grey Opel (Vauxhall for foreign readers) Vectra lost it. He just missed me from his view for a couple of seconds while still rolling on behind me, so when I slowed down he didn't notice instantly and hit the back of the car. Our luck is that on these small roundabouts the speeds are very slow so it wasn't more than a slight bump. Now this is not to be bragging about it but I've been in quite a number of car accidents and this one has been the smallest one yet. And that's a good thing, trust me. The one before this one wasn't quite that 'nice and easy' trust me. The (young) guy that hit my car was so upset I felt more sorry for him than for my car as that's likely to get fixed anyway. He just kept asking if I was okay and telling me how immensely sorry he was. When he got out of his car he was looking even more pale than I am and I promise you: that is pale. I tried my best to tell him I was fine and that he didn't need to worry about me or feel bad about the accident. Mainly because I was sure he didn't just plough in the back of me to 'see what happens' or something stupid like that. I can only hope he feels a little better about it, or at least worry a little less. Anyway, after exchanging the necessary credentials we both went on our way. I was underway to Wageningen to visit my sister and her husband ;-) my Bro in law Stefan. We had a pleasant evening, chatting up on things, making some small plans for their moving the weekend after this one. After all they then have a refrigerator for me (one of them with the freezing part in the bottom half, and the cooling bit on top) which needs to get picked up preferably as soon as possible after they get the keys of the house because then the new kitchen can be put in. Next Wednesday I'm going over there again to see their newly acquired house before they start 'rebuilding' the place. I haven't seen it in real yet, only the pictures so I'm pretty curious about how it looks for real. I'll tell you when I get back, promise. The only downside of meeting with them is that we don't see each other as much as I would like so when we do we need to (or at least are able to) chat for hours. Which is nice, but takes us in to the night quite easily. I'll sleep a bit more tonight I guess, these things simply happen and should. Can't be bothered about bedtimes at these moments. Take care folks, I'll see you tomorrow.

Hi all. What can I say ... I mean it was a small disaster. At least my bit was. We had to call Jaap just about directly from his sickbed, Bas was having a little back problems and I was still recovering from a lot. Lucky for us the first game of competition snooker for the upcoming season was played against the other team from our snooker center. They are quite a bit better but that's just the challenge we need sometimes. Personally I like playing a much better opponent very much. First of all you can learn so very much from how they solve problems, second I can concentrate so much better when I know each simple mistake can cost me a frame. However last night was not one of the better nights when it comes to snooker. I just couldn't get my act together and potted a very sad couple of balls. Bas was the only one winning one frame so we were not completely white washed, but it wasn't pretty. Eight to one is not exactly the score you'd like to start a new season with. We'll be back.

Hi all. Well I have to be honest with you people. Yesterday I really tried to get my Monster Ranking (if only temporarily) below Bas' so I could brag to him about it a little. Ever since we started we're always discussing lap times so why should a Monster Ranking be any different. Unfortunately as it turns out he has also been doing a little driving for himself and now, even though yesterday I managed to take some forty nine plus seconds of my own rank, I still (or again ... ;-) need another forty five seconds to tie. The only comfort I have is that he'll probably won't be taking forty something seconds off every time he fires up Grand Prix Legends so I might be able to catch up eventually. Hey a guy can dream ;-) Now the funny part of all this is that it reflects exactly what I've been saying for some time now, being that he's the better one when it comes to putting down the fastest laps. Weather or not I'm still the more consistent in races is something we'll see in the next season of DSZ competition I guess. But I think I already know the answer *grin* Speaking of which ... when do they start again? Hmm, need to look that up. And fast. Wouldn't miss that.

Hi all. Ever since Bas and I have been picking up Grand Prix Legends again we've been busy getting a Monster Ranking done. I'll first explain what it is and then tell you why he's a b*stard. (No no, you don't need to guess, as his (for now) is lower than mine obviously ... ;-) As I'm not sure I told you guys what a GPL Rank is I'll start with that, as it's easier explaining a Monster Rank then. On each of the Grand Prix Legends default circuits a benchmark time has been set. On Monza for example this time is 1:30.202. When you compare your own fastest lap (no matter weather it's a practice, training or race lap, and no matter which car you use) with that benchmark time you get your GPL Rank time on that circuit. In my case it's like this: With my Lotus I did a lap in 1:30.051. This is faster than the set benchmark (You honestly didn't think me picking Monza was a accident, now did you ... ;-) so for the Monza circuit my GPL Rank is -0.151. In this case it was a lap in a race, but if it had been a practice or training lap it would have counted also. A Monster Ranking is different in that not just the fastest lapin any chassis counts, but all fastest laps in all chassis are counted up. So where I have a GPL Rank of +9.463 I also have a Monster Ranking of +492.876 ... Yeah I know, but the excuse is that I've only began with having a Monster Ranking in the first place just a couple of days ago and I'm working on it, promise. Bas however (yes this is the b*stard bit) has a Monster Ranking of +439.608 which is almost a whole minute faster than mine! Now this does sound quite dramatically, I know. But please bare in mind that it's one minute divided over seven chassis and eleven tracks so that makes it (seven times eleven devided over sixty seconds) about seven tenths of a second per car per circuit so you'll have to admit that now it sounds ... well erm ... still pretty dramatically, I know. Grrr. Lucky for me I still have the lower GPL Ranking otherwise I would have needed to come up with some sort of lousy excuse for not showing up with race weekends anymore for some time ;-) I mean come on, I still do this for fun mostly but I do want to be the faster one of course *grin* Well I'm Monstering my way back old chap, you just wait (please wait!) and see :-)

Hi all. No this is not my mother telling me so take it easy. I almost whish it was her, because then there might have been a chance I could have worked around the situation. No folks, it get's even better. It comes from my employer for crying out loud! Yes that's right. My department head just called me into her office to have a little chat and she said I'm at work too long ... And that's not even the bad news. The really irritating part is that she told me that Philips just doesn't want me to be inside the building at my desk for more hours than they have me on planning! In other words they have scheduled me in for eight hours a day, so when I'm here earlier I have to leave early! Or come in later. Believe me folks it just doesn't get any stranger than this. Here they are, they're having a employee who doesn't care to be here for more than the usual amount of hours and they simply tell, no wait make that order me to go home! As you might have read in previous posts I'm carpooling with Erik my friend. This means that I have at least one hour extra each day simply because my working hours don't completely match with his. Philips now just about tells me 'Listen, we don't care where you are during those extra hours, as long as you're not behind your desk' 'But I don't care. I like my work.' 'Well we don't care either, so get lost. See what you do with those hours for yourself, we just don't want to see you here during them' So much for liking your job too much. B*stards. Philips just got herself some serious points deducted from Biek's favorite employers list, trust me. Mind you that it's not my department head I have a grunge against, after all it's not all her idea. But it's just plain sad to more or less be told by Philips to get lost. Now I'll have to punish my allready pretty tired mind to find somesort of sollution around this all as it would be a shame to have to wait in the car in front of the building for that extra hour a day. Not me. Maggots. No really, they're clearly not in their right minds. Trust me.

Hi all. Well I don't know what I did where last night and for how long (if anyone saw me please let me know because I'm very curious ;-) but my back is hurting allmost as much like it did last Monday again. Somehow yesterday everything seemed to be going the right way but today all hope is lost ... I don't care what the note in the package said but I'm getting another one of these Smarties. Workes fine for me, for now. Good thing it's allmost weekend so I can take it easy and do ... well nothing really. Accept maybe play with my new microwave, hehe. Hey I might even start liking to cook, who knows :-)

Hi all. Some of you have already notice the 'old' Blog appearing on this one. You can find it in the archives bit (The When) on the right. It starts from the end of two thousand and one and will eventually go on until about the end of March two thousand and two. Only if you want to know the whole Biek I can tell you to go and read it. Don't expect all good news as it simply isn't. Sorry. I'm having a really hard time reading it all and copy and pasting it in here. So I can't blame you if you're going to pass on this one. I know that half a year in history ain't too much but when I started it I could not have known what the future had in store for me. And when you read it you'll understand why I had to quit around that period. There are also some fragments left of the period after that one which are some loose bits between the old and current Blog and I might put them up also.

Hi all. Oh yes I do. And I'll tell you what I believe in, or at least one of the things I believe in ... But ... Just a notice before I share my thoughts on this. If you're easily irritated when someone (like me ;-) is rambling about life on other planets, little green men, or stuff like that you should skip this post. For the rest of you: Thanks for sticking around! I apreciate it. Here goes ... I think it's foolish to think that we are alone in enormous this black space all around us and maybe even more foolish to think that we're the smartest ones out there. I believe that we're NOT! So mainly because I am no scientist and do not see me making any progress in discovering the 'little green men' all by myself I like the SETI program. SETI @ home. It translates as Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence @ home. Why search in space for something we (seem to) have so much of, right here on earth? Well I won't argue about IF we have so much of it on earth and how we use it and stuff (oh, we humans are so clever aren't we?) but I'll try to explain why I like the idea so much. At the Aracibo Radio Observatory there are a number of satellite dishes setup (the really really BIG ones I mean) and they receive all sorts of radio signals from space. These radio signals can be both natural and (yes you guest it!) from for example an alien civilization, who knows. The second one is the one they're looking for of course. To filter out what is usable and what is not, they (from SETI) need to look at all the signals carefully. This takes up so unimaginable much computing power, that they cannot do it alone. And that is were we come in. The SETI program we install downloads a little bit of data from SETI and then calculates the peaks and other usable data. Then it returns the result and receives a new package. And so on and so fort, this way helping out the SETI project using my own PC's. The whole idea is to hopefully get some sort of confirmation that there actually is something out there sending signals to make a contact of some kind. Something like E.T. calling us instead of his home again :-) Click to get to SETI and sign up. The program has 2 ways of working, namely either as a screensaver or as a fulltime running application. The first modus only works when you're screensaver is active. So more or less only when you are not using you're machine. The second one, which is my favorite, runs always, thus achieving the most packages. It's not a race of course, but it is nice to see the progress from time to time. At the moment I've given allmost five years of CPU time to the project which has resulted in over thirty eight hundred packages. In all honesty there wasn't a sign from E.T. yet, but you can't say I'm not trying. For me this is the ideal (and maybe only) way to contribute my bit at this department. Which I think is very cool, but then again ... who am I? So please read the stuff @ the SETI website and then make your own decision.

Hi all. Since I moved to Boxmeer, my current home town, most of my neighbors in the apartments next to and below me have changed over the years. Only my left neighbor has been here longer than I have but the rest have changed several times now. I'll try to sketch the situation a bit so it makes more sense. <-- Pretend there's a nice looking floorplan here for now ;-) --> Right. As you can see drawing freehand on computer is something I'm not that good in, specially from here (work) where I don't have the stuff I use at home. Maybe I'll make a nicer version of the drawing when I get home and upload it. For now it's just so you get an idea. What your looking at is our apartment block from above. It's a two room apartment. Not too big but when I clean up my room there's more space than there seems to be at first glance ;-) There are two apartment layers and we're on the first floor. For me this is usually great. There is less need for stuff like curtains for example, I don't have to keep a garden in shape, I have a attic over my entire apartment where for example my heating and warm water boiler is situated, and loads of other stuff I don't normally use or need. The down side is that ever time I have a race weekend (and that's normally every other weekend) I need to get my entire computer stuff down into the car and Sunday evenings get it up there again. It's only two half stairs so things could have been worse I guess but at those times I'd like to be on ground level. Makes it easier to load and unload my hardware. Okay, back to my 'hi there neighbor' neighbor. I'm in number two (the names have been changed to protect the innocent ;-) and my 'hi there neighbor' neighbor is in number four. He's been there for a couple of years now and he's one of those always happy and enthusiast kind of people. In the summer time he's quite often at work on his balcony and when I come home and get out of the car he always cheers a 'hi neighbor' at me, sometimes quite startling me because I didn't see him. He just seems to be having fun all the time and is always busy fixing either his car or some motorbike parts for example. And no matter what he's doing he always stops and makes time for a little chat, and it's no bad thing to keep running into him honestly. Somehow it's quite contagious and he cheers me up just about every time. Makes me see that the world is not all bad I guess. Good man. Good to have around. Last night when I got home I had my new and my mothers old microwave in the back of my car which I could only take with me if i promised my mom I'd get someone else to unload it from the car. Since my back went out last Saturday I still had major problems and it just wasn't (and still isn't) good for me to lift heavy things yet. So I told her I'd get one of the neighbors to do the lifting part and she needed not to worry about my back. And who do you guess I ran into when I got home? Yup, ten points for your memory ;-) So I explained the situation kindly asked him if he would get the oven from the car and get it up to my room which he happily did. Like I said, he's a good man. Now I have the luxury of a combi microwave oven with which I can (that is if I really wanted to of course ;-) cook, roast, reheat, defrost, etc. You name it, it does it. Very, very nice. It's also somewhat smaller than my old one and, or so at least my 'hi there neighbor' said, not quite as heavy. Which is nice I guess. It replaces my old grill and mivrowave because it can do way more than them combined so now I have two machines for spare I guess. Actually I have three because I had gotten another microwave from before but never really used it. Now I'm not sure what to do with them yet. I can't just dump them because my mom hasn't had much luck with her machines so theoratically this one could break down any second ;-) And if it does, I'm from three ovens down to zero which is not handy. On the other hand in all my years living on my own absolutely nothing has broken down on me (yet) so there is a chance this apartment has good karma or something, I don't know. I don't notice it in any other department unfortunately ... just the electric machines keep working nicely. Maybe I'll just take the gamble and get rid of the three ovens, as they are taking up rather much space in my still not too big apartment. We'll see what happens.