Tagged!

I almost thought I would be able to avoid this blog-game of tagging people, but they finally got to me. Since I don't want to spoil the party, here I go:

1. My first computer (favorite geek starter subject): a whopping 386 16 mhz, when I was about 12. The favorite toy on this thing was a Soundblaster Pro. This was the first popular soundcard which offered "real" digital sounds instead of the bleeps and blops the adlib synths used (and the "pro" meant it was stereo, too!!). This was really cool at the time: especially when shooting Germans in Wolfenstein 3D. Still wondering if those guys with the blue suits said "Schutzstaffel" or "Schumacher", guess it doesn't matter anymore. 😉 The first "programming" I did was hacking the "talking parrot" application and replacing the images and sounds.
2. My first programming thing was an installer menu for game "collection" cd's, which I built using Borland Delphi. Before doing this I really wasn't oriented at computer science, I wanted to do electronics or psychology. I immediately got hooked by the various challenges this app posed to built, and this is when I took an interest in software engineering. I did a lot of side jobs during college using Delphi for a little software development shop in Uden. Object Pascal was a great language, Microsoft did the right thing by getting the guy that designed it for the creation of C#.
3. I never heard about Info Support until some guy with a light blond pointy haircut gave a talk at my school. I guess it does work for recruiting students.
4. I like to dive on holidays, it's just a brave new world down there. Unfortunately I am getting little practice, my last holidays had some bad diving weather:I just did my first dive since a couple of years last October in Greece. I should do some diving in Holland too, but I haven't managed to get myself to dive into cold, muddy water yet. I think I just need more holidays. 😉
5. Next April I will be moving to Den Bosch. I am still dealing with the last financial issues around the mortgage. The money is not directly a problem, but it took some time to find the best mortgage construction for my situation (this mortgage stuff is really complex). Just a few hours ago I finally managed to get an offer through with a good rate and without weird/expensive conditions in the side text. My advice for visiting mortgage advisers: don't trust them, always do your own investigation, always visit more than one! Spending some extra time on this saved me a good deal of money.

Since most blogging people I know got tagged already, and I am too lazy, I won't tag anyone myself. If you think that is lame, consider yourself tagged and start writing the five points. 😉