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Our new office will also be Microsoft’s new Norwegian office. Today Steve Ballmer, Microsofts CEO, came over and gave a presentation for the MS employees. I couldn’t resist to peek through the doors of the auditorium and take some pictures…after all, it’s not everyday that one can see the Monkey Dance man, with an estimated wealth of $15 billion (!), in action!

After the presentation I was able to snap this picture…as you can see, I got pretty close. 😉

Oh…and obviously all pictures were taken with my Apple iPhone, a nice touch, eh? 😉 😉

I guess I got lucky that Steve didn’t see me taking the pictures; with his passion for everything Microsoft I would expect him to take the iPhone from me and crush it on the floor!

I’m home alone this week and spent this first evening updating several websites that I designed and maintain…typical, eh? 😉

I just had to process some simple changes, nothing major, and I noticed my development in style and webprogramming skills over the past years…the first site still uses frames and tables (aahhh, I’ll have to do some redesign there!), while the last one uses css and php. Quite powerful stuff, but harder to make compliant with the various browsers out there (IE 6 & 7, Firefox 2 & 3, Google Chrome and Opera)

A shameless plug for the three sites I worked on:

jaapdekkers.nl

robkouwenhoven.nl

bestenwest.nl

I’ve been picking up shitloads of wood for the fireplace this week from my friends place (thx Willy!), so no cold winter for me! I’m actually really looking forward to those long, dark evenings in the winter, sitting in the living room with a great wine, some soft music and a warm log fire to look at in the fireplace.

You might say I’m romantic, I’d say I just like to burn stuff… 😉

The news is still there, and I still can’t talk about it…jeez, I’m keeping my mouth shut for 11 days already, hehe, that doesn’t sound like me at all! 😉

Alan Corenk: “Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.”

I was talking to some friends lately about the influence of TV in our society, it’s often considered as THE religion of our time and has a deeper impact on peoples lives than they realize.

It’s time to wake up and understand what TV really does with you…take the Zen TV experiment and let that be your guide.

turnoffyourtv.com has a related piece; The Zen of Television

Become part of the awakening and the revolution!

Oh, and by the way; ‘the revolution will not be televised’! (a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron)

This song has been floating through my head for a week now…indeed, it’s a HAPPY song, YAYYY, I love it!

There’s reason for it to keep on floating, more on that later, for now…enjoy mahna mahna!! 😉

I’ve set myself to be home from work latest 18.30h every day this week. We’re almost halfway and so far I have a perfect score, 2 out of 2!

I have to say; it’s nice for a change…ha, never realized an evening has so many hours! 😉

(don’t worry, I still work 9+ hours a day and am having a ball, we’re up to some interesting things in the near future!)

Adam Curry read an essay called ‘The Rise Of The Fourth Reich‘ in last Thursdays Daily Source Code, it’s an amazing piece which will open your eyes for what is really happening.

The ‘original’ text can be found on whatreallyhappened.com, READ IT!

If reading ain’t your thing, then listen to DSC#791 (direct link to the mp3), it’s around 1h06m30s into the show.

Moreover, I can advice y’all to listen to Adam’s shows…he’s creating the momentum for anyone to awake from the televised dreamland we’re used to live so ‘happy’ in (as in ‘welcome to the real world’ from The Matrix-movie).

So, are you ready for the Awakening??

Aristotle: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

I don’t know what changed, but my blog is being hit with comment spam since yesterday. It’s not the few a day as I got used to, but 10, 20, 50 (!) false, spam related, comments…aweful! None of them will reach the blog, sorry spam-loosers, but I am manually approving any comments to be put on, so you’re OUT! It’s still crazy and taking time I shouldn’t have to take…oh well, blog maintenance, a tough job! 😉

Today was my last day in the ‘spaceship’, the office where I started my working life in Norway last year, it’s truly an amazing building to work in:

So, yeah, we’re moving offices, the new office is next to a trainstation, instead of the Oslo fjord (I’m gonna miss the nice lunches at the fjord in summertime ;)), it might look less futuristic, but it’s completely new and tailored to our needs, it’s gonna be great:

I hope there are no (IT)surprises on Monday…looking at the preparations from the ‘moving-team’, I am pretty sure we’ll have an ‘all systems GO’!

Apple released iPhone software version 2.1 last week and within a day the iPhone Dev Team updated their Pwnage tool to support the new iPhone software (that’s FAST, wow!).

The new software is supposed to fix numerous (little) issues and also add improvements…you can imagine that I wanted to have it from day one. However, being in NL and running around as I have been doing lately made upgrading impossible for now…:( I plan to do it this weekend, so, keep you posted!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

I have big news today, and I can’t talk about it now…I’m happy, so it’s all good…to be continued!

AboveTopSecret.com: “…this year on October 14th the GFL (Galactic Federation of Light) will show up in a super galactic space ship beyond human comprehension in size…this ship will cover entire cities and circle areas of earth for 3 days…they are here to reveal to the world that it’s time for our awakening, it’s time to realize we are not alone…”

It has been one of those ‘on da road’-days today; it started in the hotel with a relatively early breakfast at 10am, WAY to early after a great wedding party ;), but at least it made the day longer. We then checked out and drove to my brother to see my nephew Jurre, the little man has grown a lot since I first saw him, two hours after his birth! We grabbed a pancake after that in De Lage Vuursche, at the same pancake restaurant that my grandparents always took us to and found out that service was not what it used to be…still nice to step back in time. 😉

A really yummie Indonesian dinner with Rob and Stefanie followed and now I just arrived in my hotel in Brussels…one beer in the hotelbar and then a good night sleep; I’ll have a full day with meetings with my customer European Commission tomorrow so I’d better be fit!

Our friends Wendy and Amit are getting married today. Friends and family are gathering together at the Doorwerth castle in the east of NL, quite a romantic place for a wedding! I’m looking forward to see the bride, she’ll be gorgeous in white! Saying ‘yes’ won’t be a problem for these two lovebirds, so the party will be great. 😉

William Jennings Bryan: “Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

One of the benefits of occasionally working from the dutch office, is that I’m able to meet friends and family. Tonight was great in that respect since it enabled me to attend one of my friends (Amit) bachelor party! Not the typical kind, so no nudity 🙁 hehe. Still, a very nice dinner with friends and a hilarious pilot outfit for the groom…he’s close to getting his PPL (pilots license), that’s why. 😉 It finished not too late too, which is nice because I’ll have to start EARLY tomorrow morning, aaahhhh! Raymond out zzzzz 😉