And the world didn't end... again.

First of all, happy New Year to anyone who may read this that I haven't spoken to yet. This post will mainly be about the FnF trip to the middle of nowhere - and hence feature sand, drunk people and things that don't work unless you actually were there.

The whole event took place in a holiday park in Renesse, Zeeland in two 7-person houses. Of course we booked two adjacent houses, and of course that went wrong. We ended up with two houses at the opposite end of park (360m by air, 420m by road), but had fun nonetheless. House 35 was designated the main house, and, due to varying day/night rythms, had quiet hours from 04:00 to 08:00, as opposed to the slackers in the other house who rarely got up before 11:30 :P.

If you're ever there, this is a 'nice walk' to a lighthouse (debate still raging on whether this one is closest):
Although it does involve a lot of sand, takes over 4 hours, as it is actually 21km, and made me, Sanne and Stefan late for dinner by 15 minutes + time to change clothes. I think Sanne won't ever go walking with Stephan and me ever again. Though maybe with Stephan - well, he did carry her for a bit:

As we left late, we did the last 7km in the dark, whilst attempting to keep the pace up as not to be late. Britt did cook a wonderful meal - and then it was time for New Year's eve, which started off with drinking on every mention of Verdonk, which then led to some brilliant performances of which a few sound bites exist (though poor recordings, they're available...). The words 'star spangled banner' can almost be made out above the din, as can the comment at the very end about a p*ring around someone's head, which makes this one the adult version. For the children there is (though not tested) this battle between the mushrooms and the Zeppelins.

Updates

So I have a bad cold, which is even causing me to skip part of the working day. Thankfully, it isn't too busy at the lab anyway, though the pre-Christmas rush will kick in soon. Apart from that, not too much is going on.
I also haven't been surfing the net too much - though my rare visit to the MS site did make me find an extra theme for WinXP. Yes, MS released something different than the WinXP standard in 3 colours. The theme is released to promote the new Zune media player, and hence is available from zune.net (or straight away via this link). Its black, looks like the royal inspirat mod that is available for patched theme.dll's and has orange highlights. Probably, it has some Vista-ish looks as well.

Update:
News just in: Apparently, the ground floor of my building has been sold. Well, as soon as I and the other inhabitant sign the forms that grant our approval to the deal.
That and:

(More Cat images hosted by Knitemare over here)

Long delayed post

After hell breaking loose, hell breaking loose again and both of my previous operating systems deciding to burn in the fires of hell at the same time, things are getting back on track. Though I lost half the links and the other half is outdated, here goes:

Elections: De zweefwijzer. Sound enabled.
Elections: Another zweefwijzer. Slightly buggy.
Random: 'Vereniging ter behoud van het Nietszeggende Spreekwoord'
Scary Shit: BioTech tinkering at home, with the first site listing resources right here. The projects are a bit weird... As far as I know, you still need a license to do most of the stuff listed here...
Linux: Quick video of Beryl available from google. I think the MS Vista visual experience just became outdated.

It works!

Okay, apparently Casema has trained monkeys and psychics working for them - they sent us the codes even before they cut us off - but not in a smart way: They sent it to the parents of the guy that lives downstairs, as they have the same name and initials, but a different address. The letter appears as an overview of the services on offer at this address, and even lists this address as both the service and billing address (remember, however, this letter was sent to a completely different address) and follows a long string of erraneous invoices. I got to see this letter and only after reading it twice, did I notice that it listed a modem code and password, somewhere in the whole overview past the price, a whole lot of other numbers and before some more random numbers. No word about how important this letter is going to be...

Of course, it didn't get fixed

So, here's the full deal: My ISP, which is Casema (who now also host Orange), started denying that there was ever an internet connection at my address when my housemate called them to ask why our internet connection was no longer active. They would get back to us on that as soon as possible, (most likely) within 24 hours. >48 hours later they got back to us saying that we would just need to take a new contract with them, which, according to the commercial is 'zo geregeld', which is not the same as 'zo aangesloten' because this would take them just under two weeks. So being the geek that I am, I occasionally check the connection, figure out that it throws a modem activation page at me, served to me by their servers. So, what I'm waiting for, turns out to be an activation code. Yes people, two pairs of six characters. Which is now already taking over 1 day per character. Do they hire monkeys to type and then verify these codes? I'm sure that a room full of monkeys with typewriters could generate a short coherent story faster than Casema can generate an activation code...

Their helpdesk line has been modified to mention that if you've been cut of it's their fault: administrational problems, but you can stand in line for 10ct/min in the queue for new contracts that they refer you to.

Long Story short: Casema has a glitch and dumps it on the customers without being helpful in any manner to resolve the issue quickly. Will update blog again in two weeks or when I have internet at home, whichever comes first.