Dutchy in the USA

Yes, under the crazy Dutch section, I noticed today it is ice-skating all over holland. The temperatures have been below 0 Celsius for a couple weeks and it is ice-skating for everyone with skates. This has been a long time ago since that was possible across the Netherlands…

Well and then below as our Dutch tradition the yearly New Years dive in the North sea, sponsored by Unox the local Dutch sausage manufacturer, some 10.000 crazy ones are running from the beach into the sea. With sub zero temperatures it must have been  very cold this year.

While I am writing this New York is just celebrating New Year, we still have 2 hours to go but its definitely a bit different from the lots of fireworks we have in the Netherlands on the streets, nothing here at all that is the Colorado law.

Tonight me and Christy made lots of food for tomorrow when a couple of our friends and their kids will visit, smokies, spinach artichoke dip, salmon cream cheese tortilla rolls, chocolate fondue, its going to be fun.

A short reflection on 2008…..

On a personal note 2008 probably encompassed two major changes. First of all my company Corporate Express was taken over by Staples Inc. in July of this year. Many changes, some good and some of course a bit sad if you loose a couple of good colleagues and friends who either left voluntarily or where part of the integration restructure process. That said there are many challenges ahead and opportunities with the new company. I am looking forward to 2009 although it will be difficult considering the current Economic conditions in the US.

The second major event in 2008 was probably the sell of Christy’s house and the purchase of my first real house ever. This was both exciting as well as really scary considering we did this in a period, the economy was going down and the house/mortgage financial crisis was really hitting everyone in the US. But with lots of luck and some help we managed to both sell and buy our houses in the same week. Just a week before the big collapse of Lehman brothers on Sept 15 and the Economic and Financial crisis was becoming a major issue.
We are now 2.5 months in our new house and we love it. So much more room for the kids to play and also the view of the mountains and neighborhood are great. The distance to work is about 20 minutes and 15 if I take the toll way.
We are looking forward to 2009 to further enjoy our house and plan to have a real office for Christy in place.

So what else sticks in my mind when looking back to 2008, well just a few words with some explanation.

Bailout
Yes the US government decided to basically spend tons of tax money on Financial institutions like Banks and Insurance companies as well as the Car Manufacturers in amounts of 700 billion dollar to prevent bankruptcy and job losses. Not sure if this is really going to help in 2009, I think certain companies will not get enough to survive after all…

Obama / Clinton
Yes for the first time in history this country selected a Democratic Black President. A milestone I believe and a good thing for America and the world after the Bush disaster. It will be though the first years to get back on track with the current financial crisis but with better spending of funds from ending the war in Iraq to internal infrastructure, education and health care projects so job creation can take place  inside this country. I think in a few years the Economic growth will come back. Also remarkable was that Hillary Clinton will take place in Obama’s cabinet after all the mud throwing campaigns during the pre-election period for the Democratic candidate. But yeah that only happens in America right.

Mumbai
The horrifying terror attacks in Mumbai, India are probably the 2nd worst after 911 I can remember. 5 days of terror in several hotels in this capital of India made the world shock and still alert that terrorism is something nobody will ever be prepared for or can protect itself  against completely. Innocent people lost their lives mostly native people from India. Another proof to me that the US should focus more on Afghanistan/Pakistan to destroy any taliban al queda cells hiding in those countries.

Gas cheaper then a glass of beer?
Due to decreasing demand in oil, gas prices have dropped in the US to the lowest levels since years. I gassed up the cars for less then 20 dollars the other day. With 1.48 per gallon, lets say 35 Euro cent per liter, this is even cheaper then drinking a glass of beer in the pub

Sport moments?

I don’t think there are a lot of sport moments I remember this year. The European soccer championship did not bring what I expected from the Dutch national team. Also further in Soccer the Dutch teams seem to loose track with other European countries. Olympic Summer Games where ok, but I think we lost to many spots in the finals when it really became important to win some medals.

Change
Probably the most spoken worth after bailout this year was Change. All around the election in November for the new presidency in the US. Change will definitely be needed after the last 8 years of screw up under Bush and to see in which state he left this country. Lets see how much Change Obama can bring to Washington and how fast he can turn the economy back on track.
That’s probably it right now for 2008, lets see what 2009 will bring…

2009 outlook..
Well not sure what to say about 2009 but there are of course always a couple of goals we have.
Ok the obvious is to say to stay healthy with the whole family and to enjoy every moment with the kids and the wife. But here is my personal small list..

1. Loose some pounds….(probably yearly a goal but food is to good in America )

2. Make a trip to the Netherlands in the summer (as I need to spend my vacation time under the new Staples rules this might be an obvious opportunity in August)

3. A bigger LCD tv (nice wish, probably ain’t gonna happen till maybe sales by end of the year )

4. A nice office (well the room is ready, just need to save up a bit for the furniture)

5. Make some trips in the US to maybe Main and California to our friends.

6. Have fun at work with the remaining five folks in our BI team..

7. Have my parents and brother flying in to the US for a visit..

8. Learning Golf this spring/summer (with the new neighborhood golf course, this is definitely on my wish list).
9. Write a bit more on my blog (just too busy with kids to take some time to write)

A pretty long list but we will see next year how far we accomplished that…

I WISH EVERYONE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2009!!

ARNOLD

“  So with my receiver running a couple days I was pretty satisfied with the endless options this box has. Future ready for Sirius/XM HD Radio and various different sound options. Nice thing also was that the remote could be programmed with various codes to control my TV, DVD player and the comcast dvr box which saves having laying around some remotes.
Next topic was to enable to pass through my Playstation 3 streaming video by using the Playon media streamer Playon link.

This tool can stream from websites like Hulu, ESPN, CBS and recently Netflix online accounts video/movie queues. It works great and really enjoying it, although still not HD top quality that is just a matter of time when more bandwith is available.

Second challenge was to connect my Ipod Touch to the receiver. For this I had bought in the past the Apple AV component cable set with including usb charger. So connecting everything to my receiver and with my component cable leftover from my dvr (switched to HDMI) connected that to my TV. It seemed it worked great but then I noticed only black and white showed up and no color. I tried to find and switch every possible setting and searched on various blogs and forums, but no solution for this, typically Apple ofcourse. So after some think work, I ended up connecting the part to my TV directly. And then using my audio out connection on my tv into an audio in on my receiver so I still have the surround sound working. After downloading a new movie Kungfu Panda for my son on I-tunes we were all set to go and it worked great. Perfect colors HD quality and surround sound in sync through my Onkyo receiver. Also with the included USB charger, the ipod will not get out of juice either which is nice, and it can charge fully overnight.

It has been a while since my last blog. But a lot has happened in the past several months. Company was taken over by Staples Inc. We went on vacation in Wyoming and when we came back we sold and bought a new house.

So about 2 months ago we moved in and one of the nice things in the new house was that it had build in surround sound speakers. But the issue was that my LCD TV, dvd player, playstation and comcast box where standalone hardware boxes, so on advice of my brother in-law I started to investigate in audio receivers. After a long search within my budget i bought this Onkyo TX SR606 at NEWEGG for 349- dollars.

You think you are done by buying a receiver but after a cheap extended manufacturing warranty of 40 bucks and all the cables and wiring I needed It ended up around 450,- still not to bad as I have seen receivers in the range of 200 to 4000,- dollar during my research.

The nice think of the Onkyo is that it had 3 HDMI in and 1 HDMI out video/audio pass through connections, which meant I can now both have my PS3, DVD player and my new Comcast DVR HD box straight through this receiver with only one HDMI cable going into my TV. The setup was done in a split second, most work was the wiring of the surround sound as I needed to strip 10×2 = 40 cable ends from my 25 feet audio cable I bought at Circuit city to hook them up in both my central wall-outlet and the connectors on the receiver. I still have 2 speaker outlets available as this is 7.1 dolby surround, which lead to my patio outdoors. Just need to buy some speakers for that next summer to have some nice sound outside. With the 2-zone on this receiver I also can have the outside sound be different from the inside. So the kids can watch a movie and we can enjoy some radio/ipod touch music.

Sent from my iPod using new print screen function and mail application.

So yes you can make a print screen (home button 3 sec and then shut down at top) of any screen when using your iphone or ipod touch.

After upgrading to the new firmware late Friday night and installing my free apps and 2 game apps I bought I have been playing around this weekend and I love it, this is really worth finally the money of the touch. I love my Pandora music app listing to Pandora stations I created under my account, it works perfectly in my dockingstation as well. I bought 2 game apps, Monkey Ball and cro-mag rally, this is quite some fun. With only 550 apps available in the store there is still a lot to look forward I think in the coming months. WordPress is adding a blogging tool for native Iphone use. The only negative aspect so far is that battery life is terrible when using the apps, i played 2 of the games and battery was done in 1 hour.

My personal wish list around the Ipod Touch:

- Flash supported app for websites like hulu, abc, nbc so you can watch tv-episodes and shows or a native flash support in safari by apple for those websites.

- Wimax so I can have internet access everywhere, most of the location based apps work only when you are connected to the internet, so far this is for most users only at home as work does not have wifi installed. This is probably wish full thinking but hopefully won’t take too long anymore. Maybe in 2 year a new phone will solve that problem but I am stucked to Verizon at the moment.

-   Expandable flash memory slot. I am sure Apple will increase to 80GB and 160 GB models in the future when SSD is cheaper available but expansion slot would be nice like other phones and mp3, camera’s support nowadays.

My niece sent me the link to this page, this guy took 80 pictures in 1.5 hour in Amsterdam about how Dutch people are biking. It remembered me about the fun days I had when learning to bike, sitting in front and later behind on the bike with my mother, going grocery shopping with 2 bags on the steering wheel to balance it out.

Yes you definitely don’t see a lot of carrying support on the back of bikes in the US and also you mostly don’t need the chains to hook up your bike.

Here is the link to the complete blog and all the fun pictures: Biking in Amsterdam!

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