John Van Essen - Home Page

Welcome to my personal web pages. Some links to other pages:

• VAN ESSEN Genealogy Pages - my ongoing genealogy research. (MOVED to Rootsweb February 2013 so that it will survive my eventual demise, whenever that may be.)

• The Flanders Family: From Europe to America (revised by Charles Flanders) is online at this site.

• Crow Wing County, Minnesota US GenWeb Site at RootsWeb - I'm the webmaster.

• Evergreen Cemetery, Brainerd, Minnesota Web Site - I'm the webmaster.

• Brainerd VacationLand Web Site has information about Central Minnesota (I'm a native of Brainerd, Minnesota).

• The Brainerd History website has quite a bit of information on the early history of Brainerd.

• FAQ and FTP and WWW sites list for the rec.games.computer.doom newsgroup (dormant as of 1999)

• Developed a perl script to generate a directory tree based on the output from the Unix ls -l command. The best example is the directory tree for the DOOM file archives at ftp.gamers.org.

• Deer Through A Windshield pictures.

• ShockWaveFlash interactive Cat (More info)

Here's my picture gallery (such as it is). The thumbnails are hyperlinked to the full-size picture.

This is a 1950's postcard of a painting of Van's Cafe, a restaurant in Brainerd started by my grandfather in 1923 and then owned by my father until his retirement in 1976. It was a familiar sight to vacationers in the Brainerd area. [534x346] (151K)

Here I am, in my DOOM II T-shirt, standing outside the log cabin that I own on Rice Lake just outside of Brainerd. Notice the vertical log and mortar construction. [388x287] (84K)

A wider angle shot, showing more of the area between the cabin and the shore. There is no sandy beach - it's all woodland down to the water's edge. [388x287] (108K)

A shot from the end of the lawn (if you can call it that) toward the lake, showing more of the cabin itself, and one of the enormous pines next to the cabin. There is also a small outbuilding to the right. [443x287] (117K)

A typical sunset. Heh-heh. Not really. This one was pretty nice. This picture was taken out the picture window visible in the above photos. [388x287] (69K)

Another sunset. That's me in the chair with my brother's dog, Heidi, nearby. (16-24K)

Three cool pictures of my brother's dog, Heidi, jumping after balls off the dock or up out of the water. Pictures by David Timm. (160-200K)

A picture of me, cropped from a group photo taken in 1984 before I turned into my grandfather and started getting offered 10% Senior discounts at various businesses. [167x210] (34K)

A picture of me, cropped from a group photo taken in 1997 during a trip to Virginia where I visited the world headquarters of 3D Gamers, LLC, a company that my two partners (a Dutch citizen and a native of Poland) and I created in 1996 which was acquired by IGN Entertainment in 2005 and shut down in 2008. [167x210] (34K)

A picture of me, cropped from a photo taken in the summer of 2008 at my cabin after setting up my new iMac (with the help of my nephew-in-law, Dave). [768x576] (84K)

Updated: March 18, 2013 by John Van Essen   (University of Minnesota Alumnus)