.:| VH News |:.

since I haven't updated this thing in nearly a year, I thought i'd drop the xmas lists for the fomily right on the homepage since the news on this page was WAY old.

DVDs please:

Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t, season three - link to amazon.com
Invader ZIM, both volumes
Family Guy (I own none of them, so any season will do)

iSight webcam (yes, it has to be this particular brand. unfortunately nothing else works on a Mac)

aquarium supplies including, but not limited to:

calcium test kit
calcium suppliment
fishy food
$$ toward fishes
Compact flourescent lighting fixtures
bulbs for same
a same (<--lame joke)

Well, it has been about one and a half YEARS since I updated this page and a good deal has happened in that time:

Other than that, everything is just hicady-boo.

Oh yes, and look forward to a radical redesign of this entire site whenever the mood strikes me.

To ring in the new year, I thought I'd take the xmas lists down so as not to have a constant reminder of what we didn't get. Other than that, hope everyone has a great 2004 and hopefully we can all try to forget this is an election year.

Anybody but Bush in '04!

my Xmas list is up in the weblog, Mom and Dad's are in their respective member sections and Leslie's is on amazon.com. If the rest of you want to have your list up here, just e-mail me the list and I'll post it in your member section.

As many of you know already, I am now unemployed. While pondering my employment prospects, I've decided that since this site is used so sparingly by the family that I will use the URL for my on-line portfolio. Don't worry, I won't be erasing anything, I'll just be relocating the mainpage an making my portfolio page the default. I'm not sure how blatant the link back to the family stuff is gonna be, so I'll e-mail you guys the link to the family stuff when I get the chance.

Yes, despite your protests to the contrary, I have installed a blogging tool here.

Now don't panic! You don't have to use it if you don't want to. Just think of it as that tennis court at the front of the subdivision/apartment complex that you never use. Other people (like me) will be using it, and if you finally come around, you won't be ridiculed. too much.

View the blog at this link.

Post to the blog at this link.

Yes, I finally got off my fat ass and DID something with this site! I do so enjoy the color scheme and will be tranforming all the pages to match this one shortly. In case you find a page or two that are still in the older format after a few days (today's the 11th, by the way) let me know so I can give them the same makeover.

I bet you're also wondering what happened to me making this whole thing in Flash. Well, all the fancy stuff I can do seperately, like that neat-o website logo in the corner! So, I decided to make it in HTML and add stuff I like as I go. Compartmentalization kicks ass.

Intersection of Haynes Bridge and Lakeview: 2
Dan: 0

I think I just beat Brian's record for the least amount of time between auto accidents. It happened again, Tuesday the 12th, at the same intersection, in the same way. Someone ran into the back of my Jeep yet again, but there were a few distinct differences between this accident and the one that happened exactly one month before it. Last time it happened I had my towing hitch twist my bumper around, dent my gas tank and jam the hatchback door shut. The girl who rear-ended me was very apologetic, since it was her first fender-bender, and after a week or two, the insurance company had done an estimate, grossly over-estimated the damage, and I ended up with a little more money than I expected at the end of it.

No such luck this time. This time the girl who hit me denies any responsibility, and insists that I side-swiped her (with the BACK of my car into the FRONT of hers, no less) while speeding around to get ahead of her. I won't get into too much detail here, so if you really want to know you can e-mail me, but just to sum up; there was hardly a scratch on my car, while her car got the right headlight knocked out, and the police report states that she ran into the back of my car. I think she's going to contest this, but I have fact, evidence and logic on my side so she can sit on it and twirl for all I care. By the way, I am never going to go through that intersection again. Ever.

On a lighter note, Bellsouth has finally gotten around to fixing my DSL connection, so look forward to seeing a newly designed site in the foreseeable future. But, I am having some problems with Virtual PC so I might need to use the computer at home to do my taxes. Que sera, sera.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Okay, it looks like we're keeping the site, so you all owe me 12 bucks. Except Kevin, he owes me an extra 7 bucks for those Blockbuster late charges. Anyway, you may have noticed I have yet to redesign this site as yet. This has everything to do with my DSL connection that went on the blink the Friday before last (yes, eleven days). I decided not to use my work computer to maintain the site in the future, so the redesign will follow as soon as those F**KING MORONS at Earthlink and Bellsouth (mainly Bellsouth) get the connection working again.

But now for some good news. As you may or may not know, my roommates have gotten engaged AND Matt has gotten a new, much less stressfull and better paying job at Parsons. He is having his first day at the new place today (March 11th) and will hopefully arrive home with happy tales of not having to deal with tech support for N.O.R.A.D. (I shit you not, he has had to trouble-shoot for the crystal palace).

And yes, they are looking for a house to move into, and depending on what they find I have about a 50/50 chance of looking for a new roommate for the endof July. Since Matt's new job is located up on Peachtree Industrial Blvd. near Norcross, They're looking for houses in the $130,000 range somewhere between 400 and Peachtree Industrial. So, if you want to help them look, that's what they're looking for. They don't want to move again until they have a house, so if they don't find anything in the next few months, we've decided that we'll extend the lease here at Centergate though to the end of the year.

That's all for now. Hope to have that new site design by next time.

Cedent Web Hosting, where this site is being hosted from, has asked me if I want to sign on for another six months. The current hosting contract lasts until March 10th, less than a month from now. The domain name is registered for a full 2 years, which means we can host at vanhiel.com though till September 10th, 2003. So here's the question: does anyone look at this site?

If not, we can opt not to renew our hosting contract and this site will go away, along with our e-mail addresses with the @vanhiel.com at the end. Another thing we can do is host the site from one of our computers, but it'll have to be one with a permanent internet connection AND have some server software to boot - otherwise we'll lose the e-mail function.

Or... we can just sign up with Cedent for another 6 months. The cost for hosting is $11.95 per month - so if everyone who has an e-mail will pitch in (6 including mom), it comes to ~$12 each for 6 months. So, is this website worth 12 bucks to you guys? Now, if you want to keep this site going, I was thinking it might be nice to have some content on it.

Also, regardless of wheather or not I eventually make this a flash-enabled site, I hope to brand it and give it some design structure, me being a graphic designer and all. I've made a logo for us based off of my personal logo from school (sorry, no squid). I've put it below along with some color scheme variations. In the design I'll use the hexagon and triangle as a basis for menu bars and highlights. Also, do you want this site to be silly or serious? Translation: are you going to be sending this website address around to freinds who'll enjoy a laugh, or to business relations who you would want to impress. Let me know what you think (email me at daniel@vanhiel.com).

Oh, I took off the "Leslie's Party" link from the Nav-bar since it already occured.

VanHiel.com, providing quality VanHiel since 1870.

Yes, I've finally gotten around to putting some small amount of information on this site, and seeing as it is really just for us we can put up other things relating to the family. I've started with a very modest beginning: a phonebook. Go to the page with the family phonebook by using the newly installed navigation bar on the left. You'll also notice another button on the Nav-bar called "betting pool". This is a bit of a gag form, but it is also practice for me in making forms using HTML, so if you are so inclined to fill out the form and send in the info, it should work.

I would also like to point out that the geneology button is on its way. Unfortunately, the main source of my geneological info was Ancestry.com and they revamped their site during my research. Some of the information from the old version of the site doesn't match the new stuff I'm getting on the revamped site. So I'll get back to it when I can.

Also, does anyone have any objections to me making this a flash site? It'll look super-cool and have tons of interaction and stuff. The downside is that it'll take longer to download (unless you have a fast connection speed) and you'll need the flash plug-in for your browser (which is free). To see what I'm talking about, try visiting the FlashKit website at www.flashkit.com. On their site is a gallery of websites that use flash and is under the "featured" button in their Nav-bar.

Since this isn't a, shall we say, well-publicised site, then you are probably visiting the site for one of the following reasons:

To address the first reason; there is still nothing here as yet because I haven't received word one about what the other members of the family want me to put up here. Actually, that covers reason number two as well. If you want to see something in your respective sub-domains, send me something.

Now for the last reason; I suppose your wondering where we got our name. This is understandable considering that it is a rare surname. As far as I know, there are approximately a dozen people in our family that sport the surname: 6 in the Metro-Atlanta area and 5 in Los Angeles. I am in the proccess of building a modest family tree, and it will soon be available under "geneology" in the navigation bar. Is will be a pathetic and wildly inaccurate piece of crud unless I get the right historical info., so all relatives who have the correct information can send it to me at my new web address daniel@vanhiel.com.

If you are visiting this site because you have the same last name and have never heard of us before, or if you have heard of us and want in on a little of the action (i.e. your own e-mail address as well) than e-mail me about it at mynametoo@vanhiel.com.