Hi all. For the last couple of weeks I've been walking around shivering just about all day. Doesn't matter at what time or where I am, how high the heating seems to be turned up: I'm cold all over. Just can't get it warm. Last week I've been wearing a t-shirt, one with long sleeves over that one and a sweater but still no luck. First I thought it had something to do with me loosing all that weight when I was struggling with my tooth and all but it continues even now so it must be something else I guess. At home I've been thinking it had something to do with my balcony door not closing air tight if you know what I mean. As my computer is positioned directly behind it I might get some cold wind coming under the door from time to time. Now I've parked my huge two Cadillac slippers my sister made me in front of the door so the cold couldn't get in anymore. But it's not helping much unfortunately. Still feeling cold when I'm not moving. Even when I'm racing I don't get as warm as I used to. I have no idea what to do. 'Strong the dark side is, cloud's everything' good old Yoda would say at times like this ;-) And at work I'm sitting next to the windows which is nice if it wasn't for the fact that they are the old single layer type windows and let through quite a lot of coldness. It almost feels like the windows are trying to out-cool the air-conditioning and guess what? Right now they are doing a great job! The fact that the heating is below the same windows and that I'm sitting right next to them too doesn't matter nor does it help that much right now. No it must be some flu lurking inside of me, waiting for the right moment to pop-up and surprise me. Let's hope it waits until after the holidays and not spoil anything shall we?

Hi all. Well I have to admit it. As much as I'd like to pretend there's simracer blood running through my veins I too give the occasional arcade racer a go. More than once just to see what they are like and be able to have nice conversations about them at work. The first one that really gripped me was Gran Turismo 3 (and please don't give me that 'hey hey hey, this is a true sim' kind of remarks okay? The thing is not called a 'play' station for nothing ...) which kept me occupied for months on a row. I've even almost completely finished it and that means a lot for a game in my hands. Then there was nothing much worth mentioning until last year all of a sudden EA Games presented Need for Speed Underground. As was the case with GT3 in Underground you race, you win money, you tune your car, you win more money, etc. The basics of what I liked so much from GT3. Add to that the possibility to completely re-build your car with spoilers, fenders, nice rims, etc and you can guess the fun we're having with it. It's a bit like having GT3 crossed with the Fast and the Furious, only this time with a story-line :-) The biggest down side of this arcade racing is that you get AI without the 'I' ... man they are stupid, and I mean really, really stupid. I'll get back to that later. Well we're now in 2004 (only just, but still ...) and for a few weeks now we've been having the pleasure of playing with Need for Speed Underground II, the successor so to speak. What they've added is a couple of hundred miles of road which is very nicely done. They have added more customizable cars, and customizable with more options, like car audio for example. For me personally the most appreciated add-on is that they are no longer sticking with those crying for RPM's Japanese cars, but they have added a couple of solid American muscle cars: the Pontiac GTO 2004 and the new 2005 Ford Mustang GT, no less. Now I don't know about you but for me the sound of a big V8 is just about the best sound in the world. I mean really, just think about it. The deep restless rumble when the beast is running idle which quickly turns into a violent roar of thunder when someone steppes the beast on it's tail ... You can't beat that. So now in Underground II there are those two V8 monsters and I have to give EA credits for the sound of them. Never, ever, before have I heard such good V8 sounds in a game. And believe me they've tried to make it work on numerous occasions. This is close to perfection, I can't see anyone topping that anytime soon. Yesterday evening I finally unlocked that Mustang so from now on all my price money goes into that beast in an attempt to make it unbeatable :-) V8's rule, simple as that.

Hi all. Sorry about all this confusing posting of mine, but the last post ... wel the part about me not liking the picture can be striked. I just couldn't let it be the way it was so here is one I do like :-D Enjoy.

Hi all. Well appart from the main picture (which I do like very much but just isn't ... well erm ... 'me' I guess) this what we're going to have to live with for the upcoming time to come. I hope you like it as mich as I do, but if you still have doubts I'd like to ask you for your patience as the main image is nearly ready and then you'll have to agree this is again a very cool site. Maybe I'm even going to try and get the comments back in, as I had some nice reactions on having them back. Not that I did get any comments yet though ... The idea of reacting was too scary for some I guess ;-) See you later!

Hi all. Looks like Biek got obsolete all of a sudden. Haha, well not to worry because it's not as bad as it sounds. Wait, let me explain a bit more. Our snooker team, Foul and a Miss, played one hell of a snooker game last night. truly a great victory over the other team. No less than eight to one was the outcome of the competition game they played. The downside was that I wasn't there at all so now it all of a sudden seems the team doesn't really need me to get high scores ;-) Luckily for me Bas' assured me that I was still welcome so that's a good thing I guess. So congratulations to them for coming home with that victory, great job!

Hi all. Anyone seen my old template laying around? It must be here somewhere ... Now I know how the people, who I get on the phone every now and then, feel when they tell me they accidentally deleted some e-mails or data without having a proper back-up. Error 501 we tend to say at those occasions: incompetent user error ... Well we have another one to add to this list I'm afraid, and it's me :( Don't worry though, I was working on a whole new homepage anyway. I just need to hurry up that project a little more than I did so far. Meantime we all just have to get used to this boring layout, as I don't have time (and actually don't feel like it too) to do something about it right now. Hey, the bonus part is that you can leave comments again if you'd want to ... :-)

Hi all. Good news and less good news today. Yesterday we've been having another snooker competition and the good news is that we won five to four. The lesser news is that after I potted the last ball in my last competition frame I almost went 'off-line'. I guess that I'm now paying the price for not eating too well for the last couple of weeks. Since my tooth broke I lost about ten to fourteen pounds in weight and naturally this isn't a good thing. Right now I'm feeling okay but I do not have a bunch of energy left. In Holland we have a saying which goes something like feeling 'as weak as a tea towel' ... Although this may not make much sense in English, it defines how I feel perfectly. You may not realize this but when playing snooker, and specially while playing competition, requires a very high level of concentration which can be very energy consuming. So when you are, like I'm now, not in the best shape ever you can imagine things can get ugly sometimes. And last night it did. Lucky for me there was a chair very nearby because I really didn't feel well (even though I somehow managed to win all three of my frames) and was stone cold to the bones. After sitting there for a while and watching the others play their frames I started to feel better a bit, or at least a bit warmer. When I got home it didn't take me long to get to bed. Sometimes you just know you need to go to sleep ... and if you don't your body will let you know ;-) Take care folks,

Hi all. No worries, Biek is not going M&M (or whatever that rapping dude is called/spelled) here, it's just good old me who has returned after a period of absence. I'm fine now, thanks :-D I'll bring you people up to speed on what's been happening in a short while, so stay tuned for the next couple of days. Actually I have been keeping some history as concept posts and these will appear soon also so you'll have it complete soon. Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple of weeks, I've not been feeling well and I really didn't want to do anything which sadly includes keeping the Blog alive. Now that I'm feeling a whole lot better I'm going to come back here more often, as I hope you'll do too. See you later then,

Hi all. Thanks for your kind postcards and emails, it's nice to know some persons care about me. Feels good! Finally this morning my tooth has been removed (extracted as the dentist called it) so that pain is gone for good. As you can imagine I've been looking forward to this moment very much and I'm glad I got that over with. The anaesthetics are slowly going away so let's hope when they do the pain stays away, shall we? To be continued,

Hi all. I promised a small update but there is nothing concrete to tell you guys unfortunately. Whenever there is, you'll be first to know. Thanks for dropping by though, I preciate that.

Hi all. Well you've had to wait for this Biek update for quite some time to say the least, but honestly I haven't been doing anything but keeping still and taking in the (almost) daily set of pain killers for my tooth. Yup you guessed it, the d*mn thing is still broken and hasn't been pulled yet. Needless to say this is not an ideal situation and it really ticks me off how much trouble one tooth can give you and how little there is I can do about it. Just need to wait until my dentist gets things in order and can help me. Meanwhile in this period of Biek-radio-silence I've had a nice race weekend, which was a bit different than the usual ones (if there is such a thing as a usual race weekend of course) because we did only one complete GPL race on Spa race this time. Just as a little practice for the race we have for our DSZ competition Thursday. The rest fo the time we just took it easy as Bas was not quite 100% (physically ;-) in order too. Lucky for me there was no drug contol post because I used another one of them pain killers to keep going ... ;-) Guess there are advantages in the 'V' of virtual racing after all *grin* Speaking of competition: we yesterday evening we won our first snooker competition game of the season with the help of our reserve player. So thanks to him and of course the efforts of Bas we have a result curve going up again :-) Biek signing off now, I'll be back for another update Friday. Promise ;-)