and now a word from jeff

Hagelstenen van 6 cm groot, alsof het ijsballen waren. Alles waar ze op neerkwamen maakte ze schade...en ook op mijn (nieuwe, 2 weken oud) auto. Het dak lijkt wel een poffertjes pan :(

Maandag de leasemaatschappij maar eens bellen...

Ook nog goed nieuws: tickets voor Curacau zijn geboekt!

Mef is at 3:20 at the left side, behind the 2nd person from the left! You better click on the movie to view it in high quality on the YT website :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1RGt-a-XpY

Leuven people! Any idea when we'll arrange this? :)

http://www.alexthissen.nl/blogs/main/archive/2008/02/13/lolcode-2-1337-4-u-n00bs.aspx

From this terrible cave with armor pieces and moon pieces scattered across it!

http://flashgame.plaync.jp/dwarfcomplete.jsp

I just wanted to thank Pluizebol for the awesome BBQ (aka: Mefkeys his re-re-re-rescheduled birthday party :P ) this weekend. You're the best cook I know...and you rock in teaching how to bake apple-pie! *grin*

edit: BBQ HOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I am coming to Leuven this saturday somewhere in the afternoon. Anyone fancy to join me and Stan for some pub/karaoke?

So this monday was the day, I was finally starting my new job. I am starting at Atos Origin, a large ICT company. What they do and such is kinda tough to explain in a simple blog, so I'll safe you that! My job title is Junior Oracle Consultant. It has various directions within the company. From consulting to programming to administrating a database system with either Oracle or Peoplesoft. The atmosphere is awesome. It's a very open enviorment, which means you can just walk up to someone and have a chat. Even the managers. It feels very welcome and relaxing. For now I am very much reading my way trough all the information they have online to decide which trainings I'll do and setup a schedule for myself.

I ended up coming in 15 minutes late on my first day. I blame all the other cars on the highway! No seriously, I usually avoid traffic jams. You hear the stories on the news and then your glad you are NOT on that 3 lane highway with 20KM traffic jam. I still wish I wasn't there, but I am. I guess nothing can be done against it.

It wasn't a big problem, happily. So the next day I figured I should be on time. I left even earlier then monday (6:50 AM), and I still managed to get in 15 minutes late...again. This time the traffic jams wasn't the cause! Finding a parking spot on the company terrain is harder then finding a parking spot in Amsterdam on a typical saturday afternoon. I arrived at half past eight (now that's on time!) and there simply wasn't any spot free! I drove back to some guy at the entrance and he told me I should park my car at the transferium. This is a huge parking spot at the suburbs of a city. People can park their car there and you can jump on a bus to get to your destination. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it and I took a wrong exit on the highway. Resulting on another 20 minutes of traffic jams. After I finally found it, I parked my car, jumped on the shuttle bus that drives the whole day and entered the office at 9:30 :(

Next to all of this, is that I practically don't have any time left for WoW. I pity it for a bit, but on the other hand, It's a part of my life I enjoyed a lot. I'll just switch to the casual player now and go whine on the official forums that the end-game content isnt' available for casuals! *grin*

So, I'll keep you guys updated!

Cheers,
Jeff

So I did this as well, sounds pretty right! :)

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I realy don't know if this is a good or a bad start of this new and shiny year! On the 25th of december at the end of the evening at my sisters place, first christmas day, my own car broke down. Since the garage was closed till the 2nd of januari, there wasn't really much I could do. I decided to leave my car at my sisters place since I could borrow a car from my sister. Two days later I exchanged that car for a car from my dad so I was mobile at least. I had an amazing new year in Leuven with the WoW gang + friends, there was only one slight problem...the car of my dad broke down as well. The start-engine didn't run anymore so the only way to start the car is by pushing it and hope it starts running. However, the car was parked on a ramp, so we had to pull it out first. The street was under construction and there wasn't much space to pull out the car. Don't ask me how, but somehow we managed to pull it out and start the engine! I drove back home and started calling!

I called road emergency services (after this, called ANWB) , and it seems that for some silly reason, they can only help me in foreign countries. In order to update my subscription with domestic service (which I always had), I need to be at my car where I need to sign some papers to update my subscription and then they'll help me (finally!). Of course it's obvious that I have to pay a higher rate for the new subscription, but by doing that my car will be towed away to the garage where they can fix it, hurray...I think.

Stan was planning on visiting his parents, so he arrived last night at my place so he had an early start and could help me push the car so it could start! Unfortunately, I got up around 11 am, kinda late but...I was tired! Unfortunately, we didn't succeed in starting the car. Even with a few extra people, it wouldn't start. As extra new exciting thing for the new year, I wrecked the door of the car when we were pushing it back by leaving it open *sigh* So, time to call the ANWB! They arrived within 30 minutes and amazingly enough they could fix my dad's car! I signed all the papers, paid the extra subscription money and off I drove to my own car! After a relaxing 2 hour drive, I arrived and called road service again. They were happy to tell me that when you update your subscription while your car is broken, they don't tow it away *glares* We had some tough discussions and I spoke to different people with different positions within the company. However, they weren't gonna tow me away, they would if I pay for the towing costs which are around the 400 euros...man, I hate this year already!

After 30 minutes of arguing, they offered me an employe would look at my car, maybe he could fix it. After almost 2 hours, he finally arrived! He opened the hood, turned on his flashlight, looked at the broken thing, looked at me, looked at the broken thing again... "Sorry, I can't fix this, you need to bring it to a garage."

Soooo, I've been really easy about this. I decided not to get mad about it and tried to schedule it as good as I possibly could. I had to keep in mind that my dad needed his car, I had a garage standing by to fix my car after it arrived there on the towing truck, I had to travel to Amsterdam to fix a server. I had it all arranged and the ANWB told me they would tow my car...and now there was this freakin' idiot that looks for 5 seconds at the problem and told me he couldn't fix it and he wouldn't tow it away under any circumstances. At first, I tried to escalate the situation, but unfortunately the guy stayed as cool as the statue of Napoleon in London and he wasn't even thinking about changing his opinion on the matter. It was at that moment that I lost it, told the guy some nasty stuff about his mom and kicked him back in his ugly yellow car. I had nothing to loose, and it felt refreshing *grin*

Right, so the car still wasn't at the garage, my dad still wanted his car back, I still had to service the server and I was less mad then an hour before all of this. There was only one solution left, and that was to bring the car to a local garage and let it fix there. It will cost quite a bit, I probably won't get the money back from the garage that originally fixed the problem two weeks before it broke down again but I would have a a working car again!

I wonder if this last week of 2006 and the first week of 2007 were the lousiest ones I ever experienced. I don't know. Good and bad stuff happened. I met some great people, but didn't had the chance to catch up with a person in particular. I had a great time, but I drunk way too much and forgot to sleep. I guess time will learn what will happen. For now, happy new year! :)

cheers,
Jeff

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm

Current highscore, and I think it's a world record, is 38.000.000.000.000.000!

Enjoy!

Saturday, Stan and me are invading the karaoke bar in Leuven. Sander will join us later that evening, since he has this decadent job party/dinner first. Stan was supposed to make this post, but I guess he forgot about it. So here it is:

Leuven crew....come all, and enjoy our attempts to shine on the stage! :)

Jeff

We already knew they are the coolest pets one can have...but please, I couldn't stop laughing when I scrolled trough this website!

http://www.acc.umu.se/~zqad/cats/index.html

Cheers,
Jeff

As I don't expect any response from Blizzard regarding the job (yes, I think I am not qualified enough myself as well) I am continueing my search to some money earning 9 to 5 business! As I am finalizing all my current projects, I am still looking for interesting jobs. I'll skip the Oracle stuff, as I noticed it's not gonna work when I don't qualify for all the offers I see these days. So, it's training time!

Fortunately, there are loads of possibilities. Not only from Oracle, but also Belgian Universities are hosting classes. Only downside to the Belgian University is that the entrance schooling level should be some ridicules high Dutch thingie...which I obviously don't have. That being said, I should pay the big numbers to get in that class which, at the end, isn't officially Oracle Certified. Something that's really important. So, back to the Oracle webbie... it's pretty interesting! They have a shitload of professional trainings with teachers and stuff! Not a simple CD-Rom with some exercises, it's real life school...something I haven't done for ± 7 years now! Because the amount of trainings they host, I decided to give them a call and tell me what would be best. They gave me some interesting information...

First, and probably most important question would be: do I want to develop databases or do I want to administer them? When you're a developer, you're also known as the geek, run UNIX, drink shitloads of coffee and smoke a package of cigarets a day. You like dark rooms and are afraid of girls. However, you get paid big time and if you're at the right company, expect some company paid trips to foreign countries. When you're a administrator of the database system someone else develops, you're expected to run around in a suit and have a mobile charger for your phone. You get this fancy car, a massive pay check, buy a house, marry quickly and sometimes you click on backup/run/stop database server. Of course there are exceptions ;)

Seen the market asks database administrators these days, I think this is where I'll be active in. To make sure, I'm gonna follow a training of 5 days which shows me both sides. It costs a shitload of money, it's not even close to home, it will costs me 5 days of my life...but I think at one moment you need to invest in yourself. So I better do it now!

Cheers,
Jeff

Here we go again! Remember I applied to Blizzard for a job at their database development and administration department? It didn't work out well. Unfortunately they didn't have any free spots there, but they offered me a different job on their technical suppport and game master department. It was appealing, sure. However, I didn't took the job as I didn't see my future in that area.

Now, more then 6 months later, I got a phonecall that they're hiring people again for their database department...yay! According to the job offer I should have experience with databases larger then 1 Terrabyte. If I am right, not many people have seen that kind of stuff. And if they did, they wouldn't have time to play World of Warcraft ;)

Wish me luck, my letter and resume went trough my outbox yesterday evening! :)

Cheers,
Jeff

ps. For all the people that are trying to reach me from foreign countries! For some odd reason Vodafone is blocking these calls and I can't change the setting in my phone. They're looking into it, so in the meantime email will do for now!

I am 58% addicted to World of Warcraft. What about you?


Disclaimer: I tool this test as if I was still playing it ;)

Quite some time ago, I needed internet at my place. There were some wireless networks in my neighborhood that were completely in-secure. So logging in was never a problem. Only downside was that I had to position my laptop next to my window, something that isn't nice when you're on MSN for one hour. So Mefkeys configured my airport express into the network of my neighbor and there we go, free and illigal internet at my place. It was blazing fast, had coverage trough my whole home and I had access to his modem and router if I wanted to change some settings.

All this was fine, but about 2 months ago, the internet dissapeared! His wireless router was still online, but it wasn't connected to the modem anymore. Resutling in zero internet! So I walked to the neighbor and asked what was wrong. He told me he still had internet! I checked his setup, and guess what...I wasn't leeching his line! Time to take a look at my other neighbores place!

Me: *rings bell*
Neighbor: Hi jeff, what's up? (nope, he didn't knew about me hacking in his network. Hence the fact that even I didn't knew!)
Me: My internet is down, is yours up? (I pretended to have the same provider)
Neighbor: I think it works, just got my email.
Me: Do you mind if I take a look?
Neighbor: Sure, it's in the livingroom, come in and I'll show it to you.
Me: Thanks!

I followed him...strange enough he had the exact same setup as the neighbor I though I was getting the internet from. I guess they both took the special action from the local cable internet provider. Back to his setup.

His modem was working, but he had two wireless routers. Both were powered. The one I logged in at with my airport wasn't connected with the modem. The other one was, obviously.

Me: Why do you have two wireless routers?
Neighbor: I don't know, the old one didn't work too well...it was so slow all the time.
Me: *remembers his bittorrent activities*
Neighbor: A friend gave me this one and now it's blazing fast! He said the other one is crap and that someone might be using my connection.
Me: Oh, okay. Well, seems your modem is working, I'll call the helpdesk and see what's wrong. Seeya!

So the new router was the new wireless network I spotted recently, and his friend protected it and I didn't knew the password. It was kinda of a trouble, since no internet sucks for me. However, I was expecting my own internet subscription in a few days so I decided not to bother him with more questions. Now the welcome box has arrived and I have legal *coughs* internet again! Still, it's silly that two neighbors have the same setup and the same wireless network name and that I never found out!

We probably all know the stick figure. The simple drawing of a human. If you know it, then you probably know the various movies about him as well! But now, who made him? And how did he get so violent all the time?

Answers in two parts.

PART ONE:

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/animator_vs_animation

PART TWO:

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/animator_vs_animation_2