As Maarseveen is fairly deep, it usually takes quite a while for it to freeze over completely, compared to shallower waters. Somewhere this week that actually happened. Looks pretty cool :D.

The Diving Team organised an underwater hockey match in the swimming pool. Underwater hockey is an unholy combination of hockey, snorkeling, rugby and ju-jitsu. The person who said that “soccer is war” obviously never played underwater hockey :D. Had a blast, and my team had a good start by winning both matches.

Naughty is coming along fine. He went off the scale on my kitchen scales, so he’s over 2 kgs now. Gijs is…. putting up with it. There’s only very occasion hissing. While they’re not close friends, they’re obviously tolerating each other.

I’ve been thinking about my own history with computers, and the milestones there.My parents bought a Sinclair ZX81 in ‘81 or ‘82. Later we had a work related Commodore 64, and a Sinclair Spectrum at some point. Eventually a work related IBM Compatible PC entered (an Olivetti, if I recall correctly), and later my parents bought a Laser XT, a quite common 8086 based IBM clone. I was lucky that they ended up with a CGA color display. My first sound card was a SoundBlaster. I bought that one  from the insurance money from my stolen Gameboy, and build it into my parents 286. Don’t think I actually asked for permission at the time :D.

My first own PC was a 486-33. This was also the first system I completely upgraded myself, getting the best deals on components from fairs such as the HCC Dagen. My first network card (10Base2) was installed in this system as well. Originally just DOS and Windows 3.11, I experimented a bit with OS/2 and Linux (early Slackware) too. My first internet subscription was somewhere in 1995, through World Access. Later I switched to Hacom, then Demon (or vice versa), and I ended up with XS4ALL early 1996. Started out with 14k4, moved up to 28k8, upgraded to the blisteringly slow Casema DEMOS cable modem (the 28k8 was faster…), until I switched to ADSL early 2002. Stuck with ADSL until FTTH became available here in 2007.

I was an early adopter for Windows95 (as in 07:00 August 24th 1995 early). Not that I wanted it that badly, but I was awake anyway, so I went over to the computer store to pick it up. My first ICT job was at Charter Certifief Professionals, which through mergers and takeovers had ben assimilated into Landis, which I left just before they went bankrumpt in 2002. At Charter (called EXA IT by then) I had my first networking job, at Nuon. Equipment was Cisco and DEC, and later Avaya. It mainly Cisco and HP Procurve for me, now. Switched from commercial ICT to semi-government in 2003, only to be outsourced again in 2004. Eventually ended up with the government in 2007.

I found this (dutch spoken) movie online that pretty thoroughly describes the issues with modern aspects of privacy, and why it matters. Recommended viewing, also nice for those who feel they have nothing to hide, so they are okay with the ever increasing surveillance.

http://www.privacymatters.nl

Happy new year, everyone!