About me
Skimming through this blog you are probably wondering “Who is this guy and why should I read anything he writes?”. That’s a good and fair question, that’s why I’ve decided to write my life story right here in this post. Hope I can manage to convince you to read more of my posts.
I’m Dylan Maassen van den Brink, as of writing this I am 26 years old, and I live in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands. I like to spend my time gaming, playing around with server stuff, listening to music and as of recently I’ve taken to going on walks. My LEGO collection is nothing short of impressive, okay that was a lie, but I do have all the plants.
Been living on my own for nearly 2 years now and the least I can say is that I’m still alive. Coming from someone who’s never had to do chores while living with his parents, I’m a little impressed with myself.
English is my second language, picked it up starting in primary school. Mostly from playing games or television series. For example, I do distinctly remember watching Stargate SG1 with my parents. And because they didn’t broadcast later seasons of Code Lyoko in the Netherlands I just streamed them online from some less than legal sites I bet. Those were always either dubbed in English or subbed in English and spoken in French. French is a language I am definitely not good at (as my grades in middle school prove).
Probably fair to say I have a pretty good grasp on the language, but right now I am using the LTeX extension for Visual Studio Code that does inform me when I make mistakes. I find that it’s very easy to write runon sentences in English and the extension sometimes corrects me and tells me not to start every sentence with “I”. I don’t have a big ego, I swear.
I’m disabled
Well, In a way. Ya boy is on the Autism spectrum. You’ll find advocates claiming that autism is not a disability but that we’re “differently abled”. I tend to disagree, it is a disability. For me, it mostly manifests in crippling social anxiety, easily being overwhelmed in large crowds and my motor skills are a bit iffy. Now you know what to target if you ever have to fight me in a boss battle. I don’t really have tics, I don’t stim. Although there are plenty autistic people out there that do (and stimming does not always indicate autism). For some reason I also feel more empathy towards character in fiction rather than people in real life? That one is still a bit weird to me.
I’ve never been to therapy for the ’tism, I treated my diagnosis as a way to figure out what was wrong with me and to figure out what to do with it. For me personally getting an internship/job has done wonders, probably because people are held to a certain standard of professionalism that makes behavior more predictable. Then starting a job where you do get on the phone from time to time did make me better at talking to people in general. Guess the main takeaway there is that, if you’ve got phone anxiety, just work at a helpdesk for a few months. Also helps you understand helpdesk personnel better 😎.
I hold a lot of opinions on how society and autistic individuals should interact (it’s a two-way street, I swear!). I think those would be better shared as their own post, so stay tuned!
Academic prowess
I’ve never been good at traditional education, hands-on allows me to learn something new at least 1000% faster. For the Dutch education nerds: I started at havo, struggled there for 2 years before dropping to vmbo-gt and then going on to do mbo Systems and network administrator (rough translation). At my first job I did get offered the opportunity to study hbo-ict part-time, but there were multiple reasons why I didn’t make it through my second year.
For me this was the correct move because mbo is very hands-on, and because of me doing a lot of server stuff as a hobby at the time it still got me a list of things to put on my CV. The only official certifications I got during my time in college was Microsoft Office 2010.
I wish schools would focus more on Linux as it’s definitely a big force in the world of servers. I don’t think I ever want to be a Windows administrator. Definitely understand the services included with Windows Server just fine, but I think it’s boring, and it’s generally the “easy” way out. I can say I love a good puzzle now and then, and most of the time, having systems interact with each other in a way that’s functional can be more involved when using Linux.
As for an alternative route, I have a big interest in the functions of the human body (not in a serial killer kind of way). I don’t have the brains to become a doctor, and I’m too queasy to become a nurse. So, after my second internship I did briefly consider studying bioinformatics which is using technology to deal with biological data. In hindsight, I don’t know the job prospects of that field, but I reckon the skills would be easily transferrable to other types of data analytics. I got offered a job at my second internship though, so I didn’t pursue that study.
Do I regret it? Sometimes. I do wonder what it would’ve been like to combine what I knew with more knowledge about biological data. I don’t think skills in that field are as easily ‘self-taught’ as most skills in IT are. However, I did give my saliva to one of those DNA ancestry/health companies, so I do have at least part of my genome. Might play around with that in the future 🤔.
Nerd shit
I’m a big Linux enjoyer, Debian for my own servers, RHEL for work. My area of expertise is definitely web hosting, proud to say I can get almost anything to run. I’ve built containers before and do want to learn more about them, including big scary Kubernetes. Also built my own PC and a computer to serve as a homelab (100% consumer parts though, hopefully somewhat reliable.) but I’m not up-to-date on computer hardware at all.
Defnitely wouldn’t call myself a programmer, but I do enjoy programming as a hobby and I have a few projects I want to build. You can check my Github account here. It has a few static sites built with Hugo (like this very blog) and some Go experiments. Including the tool I made to generate header images for this blog. Used to be a real JavaScript enjoyer but getting something to work in Go makes me feel smart.
Tasty music
Good audio is a thing I can appreciate but not in the capacity of spending thousands of euros on equipment, music is a big part of my day even though I can’t play an instrument. As for genres, I’ve always leaned towards alternative rock/garage rock, but I’m big enough to admit some pop artists make straight bangers. Do love me some glitches and shouty vocals as well.
For my music taste I implore you to check out this playlist on Deezer (the widget doesn’t support volume control so lower your system volume)
-I want to incorporate music into this blog, but I’m trying to figure out how. Spotify and Deezer widgets allow very limited playback and YouTube videos might not be available everywhere. I might end up just giving you a few titles.
Career stuff
Past and present
I currently work at de Volksbank, mostly from home but once or twice a week at the office in ’s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch, if you’re so inclined).
Before this I’ve worked at Elonisas (2017-2021) and Savvii (2021-2022).
Future
I intend to stay with de Volksbank for a while, it’s a stable job with plenty of work to do. Not quite as stuck in legacy as people would have you believe about banks. Because it’s a bank I can’t speak as freely about all the moving parts as I usually would. But the direction we’re heading is definitely exciting to me. We’re also hiring for plenty of positions, IT and otherwise.
Closing thoughts
I think that’s enough for now, I think posts of random shit will be a frequent occurence. Mostly what floats to the top of my mind.