When I stopped being a freelancer, my salary dropped dramatically (to about 25%). We (back then I was part of a “we”) coped, but we needed to cut back some expenses. One of the things were my contacts. I bought them at a very good, but expensive specialist, so I switched to the so called LTP (Lens Totaal Plan) from Hans Anders. You save some money each month and after six months this money is enough for 6 pairs of contacts. And so it goes on and on. It was said, that whenever you would stop the program, the money you had save up until then, would be refunded.
Last week I sent in the form to stop the LTP. Today I got the confirmation letter. Along with a coupon for the money saved so far. To find that this money can only be spend on……contacts in a Hans Anders shop. Not even glasses, or sunglasses, no…just contacts.

What a big ugly fuck-up company Hans Anders is!

Period.

Completely forgot about this occassion to party: RaRe IT Services became 10 this year!

You know that you really left a company when you try to log in to the system and you get an “auth_fail_exception”. Buh-bye Transfer. Hello Merkator!

The new phone is not going to be the Nexus One, but the Motorola Milestone (Droid in other countries).

Open Source benefits the customers. Google recognizes this, as you can read in their press release of the new Google Android (2.1) phone. Let’s see when I can import one, or whether I’ll have to wait for the Dutch (read: expensive) release.

Update: no, it’s not gonna be cheap, $530 + $150 = $680 ~ €475.

In 2009 I wrote “As 2008 was a year of pain and suffering for me, I’m already beginning to suspect that 2009 will not be so great as I hoped it would be. For starters, I did not win the 25M euro in the lottery. I started 2009 with the flu. And I didn’t get as drunk as last year (there’s no hole in my memory). Fortunately I didn’t make any resolutions, so I can do whatever I want this year.”

Well, for starters the lottery didn’t win me the 27.5M euro nor the 10M Jackpot, and I didn’t even drink as much as last year (I even drove home by myself this time, no cab). But I didn’t start this year with the flu. That counts for something. I did some overdue backing up of my pictures to DVD, I backupped my MySQL databases, and I upgraded WordPress and Gallery to the latest (stable) versions.

I have no real new years resolutions, but my intention is to have a little more exercise again. Some running or some in-line skating, not sure yet.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you can be with your loved ones and have a great time. Again, I will be celebrating Christmas alone. But I won’t be celebrating by myself. No!!! I will be surrounded by my family, and by my friends. I just hope Santa fulfills my wish next year…

As per February 1st, 2010, I will be changing jobs. The company I work for now has its focus on Oracle. Nothing wrong with that, I’m a senior Oracle consultant (working with Oracle since 1989). But my interest lies with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and that’s not where the company focuses on. We don’t do PostGIS, we don’t do .NET, we don’t do mobile, we must use the Oracle Application Server (Weblogic now). To me, Oracle is not always the solution. So I decided to change jobs, and go work for a GIS-company. They focus on GIS-solutions, and don’t really mind about what technique is used. The company is Merkator. It’s headquarters are located in Groningen, together with a colleague I will be starting a new “cell” in the midst of the Netherlands, somewhere below Utrecht, or in Utrecht, that hasn’t been decided yet.

Please consider hiring me

Cheers!

From a colleague I got to view the DVD of Donnie Darko. Wow. This is a MUST! OWN! DVD! Don’t argue with me. You don’t know shit. MUST OWN. Yes I did hear good stories about the movie earlier, no it’s not a new movie, but for some reason I never got around viewing it earlier. So I’ll say this to you again: go buy the DVD, or better yet, the BD (there is no Dutch version of it, so I’ll have to order it abroad).

Thank you. Now go on living.

I guess you’re familiar with The Pirate Bay. It’s a torrent tracker. Under the law in their country, they are not doing anything illegal. But the funny thing with internet is, that it has no boundaries in the traditional way. So legal in one country, can be illegal in another, still you can connect to the content anyway. Mind you, the content on TPB is not illegal. Sure, there are torrents pointing to illegal material, but TPB is not hosting that material. Until it’s illegal to point to illegal software or other copyrighted digital content, they just use the holes in the law.

In every country there are numerous holes in the tax laws. Some countries even put tax on items that already are taxed. Nobody ever complains. The rich just use these holes to get richer and the government just keeps increasing the taxes and nobody ever complains.

It’s a strange world we live in.