Dreams Unlimited - Christian Peper's blog

Today I realized I am not getting older, I am old. :)
I read the newsletter of the Pitt Alumni and glanced upon the Athletics news. That reminded me of my Diving coach Julian Krug and I wondered how he'd be. I searched Google and found some news regarding the Olympics from last Summer in Beijing. "Cool!" I thought and read it...
It shocked me to read about Cassidy Krug, who tried to make the selection.. O_o She was 3 when I met her. Julian and his wife Dorothy often brought her to practise or diving meets where I'd help with the scoring. She would bounce all over the trampoline and make me jealous with her dare devil attitude! :) LOL Now... she graduated from Stanford (where was in the Diving team), wanted to make the Olympic team and is writing Diving history just like her father! Oh and she'll 22 years old and beautiful! ;)

Last night, Isa and I went to the Allegheny Conference in the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam. I had received an invite through the PITT Alumni Association - for which I/we am/are the Area Representatives for Benelux - and was excepting something along the previous lines. However, it was a very well organized international trip to Europe to get new foreign investments into the Pittsburgh area. It is the 250th birthday of Pittsburgh this year and it has been re-elected as the US's "Most Liveable City". The first time ever a city has been given that title twice!!! :proud:
Anyway, we met another Dutch couple who'd lived there for several years and is now living in Holland. We met the mayor of Pittsburgh. And I'm helping to get Direct Flights to Pittsburgh. And hope the PITT Alumni group on LinkedIn can help out next year... :)

A friend came by tuesday and dropped off a gift i still had coming for my time with eniac, my alumni group. He gave me 3 thinkgeek t-shirts and a way cool dipping bird. I got 98% on a nerdtest but this brings me my last percent, i believe! Lol thnx machiel!

TNO has totally revamped their website! I'm impressed!
Nice, clean, looks. Good colors, good design. Even XHTML! OK, still transitional and the code generated sucks big time, but that is a matter of tweak and polish. :)
Kudos! Check it out!

My parents told me they'd gotten an announcement for the Goois Lyceum reunion on March 17th, in honor of the 95th anniversary of my old high school. Apparently, they do not have my new address. Fixed that easily. ;)

On Nov. 2nd, there will be a meeting in Groningen of the TNO Connected group. It's an alumni association of all former KPN Research and TNO employees in order to maintain contact, inform about new innovations and keep the knowledge flowing.
I think it's a good idea. Some of my former colleagues have seriously climbed the corporate ladder and it's useful to know from time to time. I track many in LinkedIn anyway, but due to that I have an even stronger urge to talk to them from time to time... simply because I know where they are.

Freshmeat informed my that WordPress 2.0 has been released. WordPress is the successor to b2/cafelog and very designer-friendly blog tool. It very pretty and has several features I have come to love: categories, good commenting, plugins.
I still use Pivot for my work blog (currently undergoing redesign and upgrade after a virus infected all my content :puke:) and Blogger for my personal blog (which you're reading), my other work blog and my alumni blog. As I'm upgrading Pivot, I started thinking of converting everything to Pivot. It's very powerful and easily capable of supporting >1 blog from one interface. I could write an entry once and select in which blogs it should be published. That would be great. However, upto now, I didn't know WordPress was also open source and free... But Pivot doesn't need MySQL as it only uses text files. This makes it very open and accessible (as the hackers have proven ;). But WordPress is also a CMS at the same time. Pivot only h…

With Petra gone for the weekend to the Ardennen on a trip with her photography group, I went sailing on the IJsselmeer with my alumni organization ENIAC. After 5+ years of trying to get this wish fulfilled, it finally came true.
17 alumni joined a crew of 3 on this old freighter from 1914. It was grand! Gorgeous Indian summer temperatures at 20C (70F) and wind at forces 3-5. We started in Workum, sailed over the IJsselmeer and the Waddenzee to Texel. On Sunday back again. Super! Saw the sun rising at 730am on a Sunday morning... :stunned: Wow! Breathless! Sooo beautiful...

LOL :D
Not to be outdone by LinkedIn, OpenBC, Orkut and tons of other alumni network organizations, PTT Research aka KPN Research aka TNO Telecom aka TNO ICT (full name: TNO Informatie- en Communicatietechnologie) has formed an alumni organization: ConnectD.
If you were one of the 5000 former R&D employees of Dr. Neherlab or PTT/KPN Research, sign up and stay informed of state-of-the-art research and development. You will also be elligible for an informal reunion this fall!

This weekend was exhausting... On Friday evening, Petra and I had a day off we went to de Zaanse Schans near Zaandam. It's a classical area of the Netherlands with windmills, polders and cute little houses from that area (all replicas). Photos will follow...
That evening, we went to visit Sjoerd in Amsterdam, had dinner together and us guys went to Earth in de Melkweg, an alternative club near the Leidseplein. Music was excellent and I had a chance to listen to Lemon8 live, of whom I'd just bought a CD. Cool! By chance, we also ran into Rob and Suzanne, as well as Martijn, Robert and friends. So it was a great evening... except that we were bushed. Called it a night early (3am).
Saturday, I woke up at 8am, brought Petra her home keys (she'd forgotten her own) and went to Loosdrecht were I went sailing with ENIAC, my alumni club. After a day in and out of boats, we listened to a presention by Robosail. They try to use high-tech IT help to be better solo sailors... Very very…

Today I was supposed to play beach volleyball with my alumni group/club/friends from ENIAC, but I think I caught a real cold yesterday at my sisters BBQ in Almere. *sigh* *sniff* *snotter* *caugh* *sniff*
But I drag myself there anyway, around 5pm, because I wanted to at least show my face to me peers and Soomers. Once there and outdoors, breathing fresh air, things clear up enough to enjoy the evening and Petra and I stay for dinner. Sadly, when the 2nd Ssst party at Soomers starts, I must go home because my head seems to explode and overflows with the ample production of clear and yellow fluids... Yuck! Time for bed!

Pfff, just got back from the longest ever board meeting of my Dutch alumni organisation ENIAC. I got there at approx 19:30hrs, we had dinner and started the meeting at 20:30hrs. I left just before midnight... :yawn:
:Z :Z :Z

I've updated my gallery with photos from two ENIAC events last week. First I went to the Topicus BOL on Tuesday and on Wednesday I went to the Inter-Actief symposium on ICT in logistics, transport and so on. Topicus is yet another university spin-off or spin-out, related to UTopics and Ordina. We had a small lecture there by a fellow alumni on ICT in the healthcare sector. Very interesting and you wonder that some things actually go well. :)

As I am the webmaster and secretary of my Dutch alumni organization (ENIAC), I organized a nice little get-together drink aka Happy Hour in honor of the new year. I picked to have the New Years Drink in Enschede, because that's where we all went to university and many probably haven't been there in a while. I certainly hadn't! So we gathered in Paddy's, a popular student handout, from 5pm and met some old friends and acquaintances.

Still tired from the two previous parties, I tried to sleep in a little on Sunday. :) I slept over at Marcel's place but it didn't last too long because I had to be back in Den Haag by 1pm. At 2pm, my Alumni organisation had organised a beach party with volleyball and a BBQ. As webmaster, secretary and active member I couldn't cancel of course. :) Despite scattered showers everywhere in the Netherlands and strong winds, we managed to play some sets of beach volleyball and enjoyed the sunshine. The beachclub had windscreens and with the sun out, it was still summer.

You may know these Content Mngt Systems (CMS) that do a really good job at making a community portal, right? PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, Slash, ZOPE, etc. But you don't always need a whole portal. In that case, check out phpWebSite. It's the same thing, but more towards a website instead of a portal with many sections, reviews, downloads and so on, supporting a large community of (active) users. Looks cool for clubs, alumni, SIGs and the like.

Last weekend, I had tons of things to do... I'm still beat, bushed and tired, especially since we clock went ahead one hour due to Daylight Saving time. :(
On Friday, I had dinner at & with my friends Marc and Karin, was supposed to go to Pannonica for Cuban Salsa, but instead went to the Buddah Bar with colleagues until 2am. On Saturday, I had to get up on-time to be at the Annual Members Meeting of my Computer Science Alumni Organisation from the University of Enschede, ENIAC. I'm member of the board as the secretary, so I had to... :) I also co-maintain their website. Later that night, I went to Impulz with Martin, Marjon, Sjoerd, Petra, Carolien, Sander, Liedewij and Jeroen. A big dance event in the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch, together with 20000 of my closest friends! ;) I got home at 9am... :Z
Then on Sunday, I wanted to sleep in. But I got up at 2pm and went to Leiden to visit Petra for a brunch and go to the beach to take pictures. Unfortunately, the weather was gr…