Mark Albert Nijhof
On this page I would like to introduce myself to you. Telling you about my interests, hobbies, where I am in live and where I want to go.
Introduction
Well my name is Mark Nijhof, I grew up in a very small village called Loenen in Holland,
which is situated near Arnhem. We lived in a sort of farm house and we had horses and sheep. I went to school in Arnhem and attended the Information Technology education. I graduated in 2000. Right after school I started working for CSC Holland as a consultant. In February 2001 I went to my cousins wedding in Australia, and during my trip I met Mona. We first lived together in Loenen, but in April 2004 we moved to Bergen, Norway. There I started working for Vizrt, a software company that makes software for the broadcasting world. Currently I am gathering all the necessary documents for our visa application for Australia, I got the oppertunity to work for our office in Sydney, and I took it :)
Work experience
As I mentioned above I started working for CSC Holand, but before that I had taken two intern ships at a company called IT’s Logic. There I learned a lot about making data driven websites, managing databases and configuring servers. And I started working with the first .Net Beta’s. I am pretty sure that this knowledge and experience got me the job at CSC. At CSC I started out as a junior consultant and later I became a regular consultant. Basically the only difference was how much they could charge for me ;). But during my CSC time I went to customers to implement systems or create completely new systems. Most of them had to do with the web. When I moved to Bergen I first checked whether CSC had an opening there to, but they did not. I ended up getting a job at Vizrt after two months. At Vizrt I develop applications for the broadcast world and I am using Delphi. Since most (99,5%) of Vizrt’s customers are located outside of Norway I have been traveling a bit to these customers to implement our software. I also realised after sitting a year in the office that I really missed customer contact. So now I am going more to customers.
As a side project I created a Content Management System entirely written in .Net C# and as a backend I use SQL Server 2000 (currently switching it to 2005) This is a personal project and I have not earned any money with it, but I have gained a lot of experience programming in .Net and keeping up to date even when my current position does not require me to be up to date on .Net technologies. I have been working on this since I finished school, and I will keep working on this until I stop programming.
On a side note: CSC Holland has offered my CMS to a couple potential clients as a software solution to their problems. This, however, did not succeed since CSC did not get the client.
Hobbies
Being raised on a farm with horses does make it easier to choose a hobby related to horses. I ended up driving with a carriage. First with only one horse not much later we added a second horse. Than we placed the horses in front of each other instead of next to each other. And than finally we added two extra horses so we had a ‘four in hand’. This is over a period of 12 years. And it has been a great way to get out of the work climate into a relaxing state of mind. Also we were competing in national competitions and we were doing very well. One person has helped me during all these years and we were a really good team. When moving to Norway I had to give up this great hobby.
But we also have a dog, Bor, he is a Wachtelhund. And this has been a new way for me to relax. Training a dog is very similar to training horses. It all has to do with being consistent and being fair. I have been going to hunting courses with him and also taken him walking up the mountain.
I also find it very interesting to take pictures, not just the occasional snapshots (however mine probably are not any better) but actually trying to be artistic about it. Also the stock market has gotten my attention. It’s a very interesting environment where you also need to be consistent to be able to succeed.
And last but not least I love to program.
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