Dutchy in the USA

This is an excellent and not too expensive Ipod dockingstation. I use it for my Ipod Touch but it is also compatible with any other ipod. It is portable with a Li-on rechargable batterie which makes it nice to take outside on our deck.

With the extra sources of FM radio and Aux to connect another cd player or stereo system, remote control, both Ipod charging from base as well as mini USB sync port. It is a very complete system.

The sound quality is amazing and it is actually smaller then below picture shows. Now I just need to buy a touch for the wife as she only has a shuffle and that is not compatible

For all friends and family and other interested folks. Yes indeed my company Corporate Express, formerly known as Buhrmann when I worked in Amsterdam,  has been taken over by Staples Inc. Last Friday they announced to have acquired more then 95% of our outstanding ordinary shares. I expect in the next week we will be officially part of Staples Inc.

What happens next is as of this moment unclear, we will have several integration teams formed over the next couple of weeks and they will take some time to analyze our company and its departments and functions. Also it is not clear if and when our name will change, but would be obvious to me with such a brand awareness Staples has in the office products market, due to its retail shops.

For all your Dutch folks who don’t know staples, in the Netherlands they own Office Center retail stores. They are the number 1 retailer in the US and with taking over Corporate Express we are now the Global Leader in the Office Supplies Business to Business as well.

It has been busy lately so a long time ago since I posted for the last time. But I recently became owner of a Playstation 3, my first gaming console ever. After playing X-box 360 and its predecessor and seeing the WII, I have to say the PS3 is definitely my favorite.

Especially the fact it has blue ray dvd with HDMI output to my Panny LCD tv. The first game was Grand Autotheft and I rented some movies, Cars for my son as that is his favorite movie. The quality is just outstanding.

My colleague Dan also has a PS3 so he advised me of Gamefly the netflix video game rental version and I subscribed right away. Played and playing several Games so far. Drake, Call of Duty 4, Tom Clancy Rainbow six Vegas, GTA4 and I love it. Drake is a kind of Indiana Jones type of game and was one of the first PS3 games and I must say its an awesome game with a good story line and not to easy levels to complete, so you can enjoy some long playtime, certainly when you are a beginner like me…

The only thing negative is that the PS3 does not have a lot of Kid rated games so far so my son (3 years old) can’t really play yet. I found Cars the movie game so probably going to buy that for him.

Gamefly.com

I just found this easy to use tool. As SQL report developer I sometimes need to sent my SQL code to our DBA for analysis, copy pasting in an email usually messes up the formatting and copying it first in a txt file like notepad, or programmers notepad and then save and attach it to an email takes too long.

So I found this tool, where you copy paste your code for instance directly from Toad, it generates a URL and you copy paste the URL in your email you sent. The user can then open the code exactly as you copied it no format changes. It also gives a nice drop down on the right so he can select SQL or html or xml depending on the code to see the correct format layout.

Check it out : Textsnip.com

As you have seen I got an Ipod Touch after a few startup issues, mainly iTunes which I still hate to use, I got most of my music organized and under control to get into my Ipod Touch. So time to sell our CD collection, as it only takes up space and we won’t probably use those anymore.

So the wife made a big list on craigslist and I was amazed that within a couple of hours we had sold over 150 CD’s, now 1 week later we have only about 60 left mostly the CD’s everyone has.

  Then the remainder of our CDs we have listed on a website called Swapacd.com. Its like a big matching site for books and cds, people who want your CD are automatically notified when you post a CD and when they agree you can print out a wrapper label completed with all information about the person and sent the CD and its front/back cover. It costs about 75 cents postage and then you get 1 credit for which you can request a CD you want to have + 0.49 cents per CD which is the fee the buyer pays to Swapacd.com.

I posted about 70 CDs and so far about 24 need to be sent by Monday, so that works great, after I have my credits I will request the CDs we would like to have.

I think this is a cheap and excellent way to increase your music collection……

Finally I decided last Friday to purchase an Ipod. This has been already for a couple years on my wish list. Initially I was debating of getting the classic Ipod video 30 or 80 gb but after my brothers in law showed off their Iphone respective Ipod touch, I decided to go for an Ipod touch as well. The 16GB should be sufficient enough to hold most of my music, video and photo content as I am pretty selective in adding this to my player.

This is going to be a huge upgrade from my current 1GB mp3 / thumb drive, not even comparable. So I ordered my touch last Friday, guess what, today they announced the 32GB version, oh well, at this moment I don’t need the extra 16 GB for the extra 150 bucks anyway…

As we also are missing some music system in our house, we sold all our equipment when we left Amsterdam 2 years ago and did not purchase yet a new stereo or Home Theatre system, I also investigated some Docking stations. I came across the Griffin Evolve as this has wireless speakers you can place in any room. A bit expensive 299,- list price but on Ebay I bought a system for 1/3 off the price. It is all in shipping status at this moment, so can’t wait till it arrives coming week.

The evolve has 2 boxes you can place 150 feet away (45.7m) from the base, it also can connect to your TV, stereo and home theatre system.

More info: Griffin Evolve

As I did not want to spend to much money on tools like Adobe Photoshop, I found this free tool build by some undergraduate. It was intended to replace Microsoft Paint but has grown to be an excellent alternative for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro.

Paint.Net

I am not a golf player myself but my brother in law pointed out this website, which is an online golf game. It appears they used a robot to make 3D pictures of real golf courses. They plan to launch more different games and more courses over time then the one they have published now. Take a look and make a try if your a golf fan.

This week I went with my team to our yearly software conference in Miami. As always we enjoyed the first day before the conference starts with some team activities. We went to the Everglades on an airboat to see some alligators. Here a couple pictures.

So in November my niece asked me if I could get her some Ugg boots from the US, as they are so expensive in the Netherlands. I thought those were trendy years ago, but it seems it picked back up in our crazy country.

So my parents where visiting and I bought her some boots to take back for almost half the price as she would have to buy them in the Netherlands.

Now today she even made the newspapers with it as in her local province they are phoning shoe shops in Amsterdam for more supply..

Maybe I should export some of the boots from here….crazy Dutch..

Uggs in Zeeland

My niece Elles van den Berge and her friend Isolde Matthijsse showing off there Uggs!