Rutger's Corner

Looked around long enough for this one:

Function GetTimeStamp {
 
    $timestamp = (get-date -format "yyyyMMddHHmmssfff")
 
    return $timestamp
}

Four of us went down to the Samba Kitchen in Amsterdam Zuid, near the Ceintuurbaan, just off tram stop “Roelof Hart Plein”. Wonderful walk, with nice shops, however the Samba Kitchen did not offer me true satisfaction. It’s a meat restaurant based on the brazilian tradition of churrasceria (don’t know if that spanish or portuguese, don’t flame me for assuming, you know what I mean). Anyway, upon entry we just flopped down at an available table, loaded up at the buffet with bread, meatballs and other sidedishes and waited for the meat. The cook came by with a sword like contraption, slicing off the meat at our table. Now maybe I’m picky, but either the meat was bone dry or it was bloody to the edge of “bleu”. At one point we were served fillet mignon, but it was stringy and greasy like hell. My collegues got bombed on caiparinhos (if that’s the correct spelling) and didn’t really give a hoot what kind of meat ended up on their plate, they polished it all off, my plate piling higher and higher with discarded meats. After polishing off a bottle of wine (the house wine, rather dry and bitter, sorry) my neighbour and I decided to join the caiparinho carroussel and get bombed as well. Sorry. I’d give it all a 6 out of 10.

Afterwards the maitre d’ informed me that the best nights to come down were thursdays and saturdays. Since we were in on a thursday I don’t put a lot of stock in saturdays, whatever Iens claims (2009 Iens Topper, yeah right).

A while back I started out on a new contract in Holland, working for ABN AMRO bank in Amsterdam. Immediately after start of work I was confronted with many questions regarding taxability. Terms like 30% rule, VAR, material employee status and fictious employee status were galore and I honestly did not know any more where to turn for solid information regarding tax rules with respect to foreigners working in Holland. Because I needed the cash I opted temporarily for an employee contract, thereby losing 35% of my gross take to salary tax. This gave me some breathing space to settle my VAR and set up a proper contractor relationship with my employer. In Holland one needs a so-called VAR WuO to be recognized as an entrepreneur and thereby being able to pay taxes in one’s home country. This goes generally for all EU countries with the exception of a few. I think UK is one of the exceptions. However, Poland and Holland have a double taxation treaty allowing for a choice where to pay taxes. This choice is of course fenced in with a number of rules, but basically paying taxes in Poland would be possible for me if I could hand over a proper contract and invoices. However, my employer will not let me have a proper contract without the VAR. So there we are. I requested the VAR end of last year. It took the tax man only a week to decide that my contract was basically an employment agreement and would not recognize me as an entrepreneur, their argument being that my contract reeked of salary conditions and that one could easily be an entrepreneur as well as a salary man. I find this argument flawed, since entrepreneurship and regular employment usually cancel each other out. Anyway, after objecting to the decision of “VAR Loon” I am now awaiting the final letter from the tax man, after which I’ll be able to contest it in court. Probably this will cost some money, will have to see whether it’s cost effective. My employer has agreed to adjust my contract for 2010, so I’ll be able to file for a new VAR this year. Hopefully this will save me some tax money, the save sorely needed because of the horrific expenses of working, eating and sleeping in Amsterdam.

Some useful links

http://www.expatax.nl/contracting.htm
http://www.expatax.nl/Workingwithfreelancers.htm

A fine sunday morning and I’m all set to go to my Dad’s in Breda for a pre-Xmas dinner, along with my brother and sister and their kids. A few snowflakes and a crisp south westerly breeze make it a fine day for travelling. However, dutch railroads, bus companies and road maintenance crews are totally unable to keep the country’s infrastructure running properly and Holland basically shuts down. Metros and trams run, but getting out of the city proves virtually impossible for anyone not having their own transport. So after a few fruitless hours trying to get a train from Amsterdam to Breda I gave up and went back to my hotel for some Christmas movies and pizza. Sad to see that a modern country like Holland has so much trouble keeping itself upright in the face of a few of nature’s farts. Look at Poland for God’s sake. A country ridiculed for its politics and people by some dutch, but a country that does manage to keep going, even at minus 12 and heavy snow! Truly. It’s a scandal. Nuff said.

I needed to set up some scheduled tasks at one point, to verify SMTP access to the outside world. To verify SMTP I creadted a small VB script which uses the SMTP object to send a message. 15 lines max. I had a list of hosts in an Excel sheet and decided I wanted to execute the VBS on all hosts remotely.

psexec \\<host> -u <domain>\<user> -p <pass> -i cmd /c “<command>”

An idea would be to create a function in Excel to translate all server names or IPs to the full command lines and then copy paste the new column to a batch file.

Someone informed me today that this tool may abend with an error 255 or else 0, but with partial results. Don’t know what could cause this.

Blue Angel at WTC. Aka Conference room 9 aka The Office. Probably similar to thousands of pubs around the world, venue of stressed out office workers and other working Joe’s coming together after hours to have a pint or five and share gossip.

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Not exactly in Amsterdam, but in Amstelveen, Thai Deum is a little bit out of the way, but certainly well worth visiting. I must have had dinner there ten times by now and every time was entirely satisfactory. My favourite dish: king prawns with noodles (Koong Yay Pad Thai). Goes very well with the red housewine (Shiraz or Rioja). Friendly priced: with three collegues around 150 every time including drinks ex tip.

A very slick place, high level of “suits”; furniture is inspired, lots of wood and leather, however a little threadbare. Had dinner with four collegues, service was rapid and efficient. Bread and olive oil after sitting down made me suspect small portions, which was on the mark. However, the food was excellent and fresh, well prepared, the wine accompanied the food nicely (I had the pasta of the day, ravioli and white cheese). I believe we all had a proper meal. 270 ex tip for five people including drinks was a bit on the stiff side, but not that bad.

Ctrl-Alt-End -> Lock Computer
or:
Start-Run-”rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation”
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Create shortcut on the desktop
Enter “rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation”
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