raymondpoort.com

My brother turns 32 today, hip hip hurray!!

BBC NEWS: "The Dutch government is resigning after losing the support of one of its coalition partners, says Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende."

Adam and some of his Daily Source Code listeners sometimes use the term '420' to say bye…have been wondering what it actually meant.

A short search on the net provided light in the darkness…or should I say a lighter for the holy herb? 🙂

Check out Wikipedia for '420'!

Hmm, time of this post is 4:20h…let's enjoy?!? 🙂

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience."

Amazing match yesterday between Portugal and The Netherlands…actually, there was hardly any game, since the referee decided to stop any attempt to play…16 yellow cards and 4 red cards set the new World Cup record. One card should be added for the referee actually according to the FIFA Vice-President, Mr. Blatter. Nice, but we don't win the match with that. 🙁 After the Portugese scored 1-0 in the first half, we were not able to at least draw the score in the second half, despite the extra man in the field for most of the time and the pressure created by that on the Portugese defense…

Anyway, life goes on, eh? At least the rest of the weekend was nice!

This weekend we'll be with family in the province of 'Noord Brabant'…why do I own a house, am never there!! 🙂

The WHOLE family will be there, grandmum, uncles, aunt, cousins etc., weather is supposed to be great again…heeeaps of fun!

(Hmm, only now I remember that I still need to upload the pictures from Texelto my Flickr-page!)

My dad took early retirement as of today…he really deserved it, having worked for 39 years in the business (power company). Being only 61 he still has many good years to come and enjoy!

We'll try to fill the 'empty' days for him…:)

Despite the fact that the outcome of the Worldcup match The Netherlands against Argentina didn't matter anymore since both teams were already though to the next round and therefore didn't have the strongest team in the field, the game yesterday was nice, specially nice considering it was a 0-0 draw.

Argentina was stronger overall, but as seen from previous matches, the dutch showed that they're hard to beat!

Really looking forward to Sunday, The Netherlands against Portugal…no more Mr. Nice Guy…the tournament now really takes off!

I received an email from a guy called James Dunn lately.
At first wasn't sure if I would do anything with it. I'm quite consious when it comes to linking 'unknown' sites and this seemed spam-related. The fact that he explicitly mentioned my (previous) header graphic (the ducks) did some good though, at least he isn't some robot sending out emails automaticaly :).
Did some further poking on the net, wasn't really convinced but then thought 'oh, what the hell'…so, here is his email:

Hello, my name is James. I came across your site, ( I love the ducks ) and I noticed your site is related to the Netherlands. I just started a website to help people learn Dutch online for free (eLanguageSchool.net) and I think a link to my site would be a good resourse for your visitors. I encourage you to check out my site and see what you think. I'd appreciate any feedback too, since you seem to already know what you're doing. If you do decide to link to my site, you could use this link.

From,
James

Well, James…here you have it, a shameless plug for your site! 🙂
Goodluck with it!

Officially summer starts today…let the sun shine!!! Oof, it's raining here at the moment 🙁

Alan Alda: "The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself."

Anyone following the World Cup soccer 2006 in Germany? I must admit, I love it!

I like to watch a soccermatch every now and then, mainly if timing is right (I almost never will stay home for a game), but this World Cup…wow, have seen most of the matches or at least some part of it and I really dig it!!

The dutch team has played two games so far. They might not have played as good as everybody expected/hoped for, but still they already reached the last 16 after only two matches in the first round!! (the last one against Argentina will be Wednesday!).

I think they performed well sofar…watch them grow in the tournament and beware, if they'll play as ONE team they might surprise us!

Last year I changed my internetfeed from cable to ADSL, main reason was the monthly bandwidth limit my cable-provider put on me.

I switched back to cable per today! Cable in my region gives a much better deal (price/bandwidth) and they finally gave up on the monthlyk bandwidth limits, welcome to the 21st century guys! 🙂

The company I work for exists 10 years (of which I have worked 9…wow!). We're gonna celibrate it with a company event today, weather has cleared up, so it will be fun!

Following the announcement earlier this week of Robert Scoble, Microsoft's 'Geek' blogger, leaving Microsoft for Podtech, there was another announcement coming from Redmond creating even more attention:

Yesterday Bill Gates announced he will step back from day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft from July 2008…could there be any link between the two stories, or would this be too much for a conspiracy theory?? 🙂

Work has been killing me the last days, so I'm a bit slow no posting. Things are settling down now, so I can pick up my life again 🙂

My mom turns 57 today, happy Birthday!

Found some wireless internet and couldn't resist: the destination of the surprise weekend: Texel!

Weather will be beautiful the coming days: sun, sea and sand between my toes!! 🙂

Kristel arranged the returning 'Birthday surprise weekend'…I really have NO clue where we'll go, exciting! She's continuously putting me on the wrong foot the last days, NOT good for a curious guy like me. 🙂