Introduction
So here you are, curious about who I am. Well: Go (Baduk) player since 1968. President of the Dutch Go Association since 1997. Internet junkie. Love to cook. Profession: IT. Worked for our customers as a consultant for many years but have an internal job now as an IT director with a responsibility for application systems strategy. Love to design systems, but do not get many opportunities these days to do that.
Hope to retire from that job in 2008. What will I do then? I am thinking about some more system design projects ... But my children suggested that I should spend more time cooking, maybe open a restaurant?
[2005-09-15]
Renovating
The current project is renovating the house. Since december 2003 our children no longer live here, but in an appartment 2 kilometers from here. Close enough to see them regularly, but still: they left. It took some time to get used to. They used the first floor, so what were we going to do with the first floor? Our plans included making a library. We started on our own, but we did not make much progress. We decided to hire somebody. He came and looked around and then said: "but I can only do the walls, not the heating, and not this and that .." So that was no good. I don't want to be the project manager of this. We talked with a building contractor that my sister had a good experience with. He made some suggestions and the plans got bigger and bigger. In phase one (2004) we did the first floor, the staircase and the hall. A year later we started phase two (September/October 2005) where we do the rest.
In a sense it feels like just another IT project. We started with simple requirements, but then it just grew and grew. We are spending factors more than the initial budget estimates. The goal changed: from a simple uplift to changing everything to become exactly as we want it. But there is a difference with those IT projects: we are in full control.
[2005-09-15]
Family pictures
If you are still not fed up with this, there are some family pictures on the next page