I drove a BMW F800ST and it was a lot of fun. The machine is fast, small, easy to handle and remains very trustworthy. 
Even accelerating full speed never gave the hint of a wheelie. It handles beautiful through long corners, keeping it nice on the line with just the throttle. I also went through a traffic jam like never before, because it is so narrow and good at short sprints.
One of the reasons I like computers, is because there is so much failure. I enforce some analog superiority over the digital failure to fix it. I like computers because I am capable of fixing them. Fixing problems is very satisfying.
Being a specialist usually means that you are a good problem solver. I have had my share of problems over the years and have developed a methodology to solve problems. My methodology looks extremely simple on the surface. This makes it easy to remember and explain. It does not make it easy to solve a problem, because a good share of domain knowledge is still involved. Yet I am sure that if you follow these steps and are smart enough, you can solve almost any problem.
Happiness at work is simple. At least for knowledge workers like me. There are three parameters which need to be in order: Mind, Money and Development.
It is not a secret that I am not too fond of targets. I think they harm flexibility and hence service.
Targets are fun if you reach them: most of the time they are rewarded as a financial bonus. But if you really need to push trying to reach certain targets, they are counterproductive.
I was recently confronted with a new password policy: my password needed to be a combination of 8 to 12 characters with only numbers and letters. And the numbers were not allowed to be at the beginning or end. My solution was a combination of a standard word with my zip code. But I am not convinced that it is a good password. I will not be able to remember it easily, as it differs from all my other password.
The more you work with computers, the more passwords you generate. I have to remember so many passwords that I use a program to store most of them. It is not the best option but I can only remember so much.
Talking freely about SOA has always been a bit embarrassing. I live in The Netherlands and the acronym SOA stands for “Sexual Transmitted Disease” in Dutch. STD translates into SOA. So when I talk about SOA, I immediately know if I am talking to a techie or not. Despite all the buzz talk, SOA has not yet been as viral as expected. SOA has been around for quite some time – some even call it yet another reinvention of an old concept – but it seems very hard to get it implemented. This is mostly because we are taught not to fix something that isn’t broken and the truth is that most point-to-point connections just work. So there is no obvious need to start using a SOA.