2007-01-30 22:36:00
In September I wrote a little about the work I do for our home owners' association (VVE for the dutchies). Back then we were about to propose major maintenance to our apartment building, which would ensure that our domicile would be able to last through the next ten years. The downside to our Ten Year Plan is the fact that we need an additional eighteen-hundred euros from all of our members in 2007. After that we should be fine.
The general meeting was held and only two home owners showed up to cast their vote in the matter. Before that we'd sent out a detailed explanation of our plans, including the expected costs, so this shows how much interest most people take in our homes. A second meeting was called because quorum could not be reached during the first meeting. Our statutes dictate that, if our proposal is -not- rejected during this second meeting, the proposal is automatically -accepted-.
This rule was created on two assumptions:
1) The HOA council always means best for all of our homes.
2) Things have to get done, one way or another.
So we have given people two chances for rejecting our proposal after informing them three times of our plans. And naturally -nobody- shows up at the second meeting either. *sigh* Good thing though, because now the upkeep has been automatically approved.
By now we've set things in motion to get all the work done: getting quotes, assigning projects and of course sending out the eighteen-hundred euro invoices. And what do you know? -Finally- people wake up! The very same day that the invoices were delivered through the mail does one of our neighbours start a petition to get the upkeep vetoed! x_x And of course their excuses are completely worthless:
* "I didn't read the letters!" -> Whose fault is that?
* "I'm sure not enough people came to the meetings to approve your plans." -> Again, whose fault is that? And you damn well know the rules about automatic approval.
* "We can get your decision vetoed!" -> No you cannot. You have a legally binding contract with the HOA and all the proceedings are completely legal.
* "But the people in the other building paid much less!" -> Ah, comparing apples to oranges are we now? There are many reasons why your comparison doesn't fly.
* "But last year we were told this work would be done around 2010, not in 2007." -> Aside from the fact that this is not true, this also does not negate the fact that maintenance is needed -now-.
* "Well, we still don't agree!" -> Too bad. You have a contract.
The thing is: people never want to pay. They hope to put off maintenance long enough so that it needs to be done when they have moved away to a new house. Well, I for one seriously care about the place I live in, so I'm going to my damnedest best to make this thing fly!
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-01-30 16:41:00
The genius behind it all. Never mind the hairdo... |
Thanks to my colleague Casper for telling me about Lasse Gjertsen, a rather awesome guy on YouTube. Lasse's a completely a-musical person by his own accord. However, he's edited video clips of himself hitting single notes and drums into complete musical compositions ^_^ |
A truly awesome, artistic experiment.
kilala.nl tags: music, internet, geeky, awesome,
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2007-01-30 08:48:00
No, this isn't one of those sex-related blog posts that I was supposed to block using a password :D
No, this is about cycling. Let's say that I've been empirically educated about my cycling posture. The past few weeks I didn't have much trouble riding my bike to work, but it wasn't very easy either. My knees usually bothered me for putting too much strain on them.
Thinking that enough was enough, I raised my saddle by about five centimeters this morning and OMGWTF does that make a difference! I'm not as tired as I used to be, my knees feel perfect and the whole trip in general took much less effort. Hills that I used to struggle against in first gear now went rather smoothly in second. All in all, it helped me cut down my time by ten minutes.
So if you think that riding your bike takes a little too much effort, please: make sure that you're properly seated! :)
Also, as an aside, I tried some new veg last night: fennel. It tastes a bit like chicory, but much spicier. I liked it well enough, but I don't know if I'll ever grow to love cooked fennel. Fennel-bread however, OMG! And maybe that I can do something stir-fry?...
For the dutchies out there: I'm talking about venkel and witlof respectively.
kilala.nl tags: sports, health, cooking,
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2007-01-28 01:06:00
It's been a long while in coming, but I've done two major tweaks to the site code tonight.
1. I've added password protection capabilities for my blogposts.
2. I've moved code that gets reused a lot to a separate include file, building functions.
Adding the password stuff wasn't that hard, since all it took was some fiddling with IF/ELSEIF switches and with cookies. Moving all that reusable code into sub-routines of their own was a lot trickier! For some reason I couldn't get elements of the array filled by SQL to go global, so I couldn't move as much code as I would've liked to. I still don't get why I can't make a whole array that's filled by mysql_fetch_array global... I guess I was doing something wrong.
Why the password protection? Well, on the one hand this blog originally did start out as some sort of diary for myself so it's only natural that I don't want all of you to read -everything-. And at other times I might write about stuff that you don't even -want- to read, so I'll take the liberty of screening it for you <3
kilala.nl tags: programming, studying, website,
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2007-01-26 14:05:00
|
OMG, this is so cool! |
kilala.nl tags: internet, holy shit, arrow emblem, anime,
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2007-01-26 13:57:00
Finally, I've finised my fourth article for ;Login magazine. It'll appear in next month's issue, in the sysadmin section.
As is the tradition with my articles, I'll try to entice my fellow folks in IT to improve their "soft skills". In the past I've covered things like personal planning and various communications skills. This time I'll try to convey why good reporting is so important to your work and your projects.
HTML version.
PDF version.
kilala.nl tags: work, writing, sysadmin,
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2007-01-25 23:27:00
They're a fun loving bunch. |
I just remembered that Kelly's heroes is another one of those movies that needs to be put into our DVD collection. |
The following bit of dialogue from Heroes is awesome :) A and B have just taken shelter from an explosion behind an outhouse, excrement being showered all over them...
C - Jeez! What happened?! You guys smell like manure!
A - Heh, yea. I bet that makes you homesick, huh?
B - Well, it does a bit... right?
C - ... ... Well, yeah...
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2007-01-24 11:21:00
Well fsck... |
Gorramit! Fsck, fsck, fsck! |
kilala.nl tags: glasses, snafu, meh,
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2007-01-22 11:09:00
Stupid spam e-mails... D: *grrr*
The past few days I've received a deluge of bounced e-mails because apparently people have started using my domain suffix for the "Sent by" line in their spam. Great. And it's not like I'm running an insecure e-mail server or whatev'... It's just that they think up random e-mail addresses inside my domain. Not much that I can do about that, is there? *sigh*
kilala.nl tags: meh, annoying, internet,
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2007-01-22 02:03:00
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." |
while leafing through the EPG this afternoon I decided that I'd stay up until around 0200 to do two things: |
It's hard to describe the genius of the story. On the one hand you want to loathe Humbert, the detestable fellow who's having all kinds of sordid affairs with his teenage stepdaughter. And on the other hand you cannot help but feel sympathy and compassion for Humbert, the old, unstable fellow who's being played every way till Christmas by this manipulative and sultry vixen. On the one hand you really want to hate scheming and too-grown-up-for-her-own-good Dolores, while on the other hand you want to love her, the naive and beautiful young girl that she is.
While I wasn't blown away by Mason's portrayal of Humbert, I do have to say that both Sue Lyon and Peter Sellers were excellently cast! Especially Sellers! That man has got to be a genius among actors. which reminds me that I have to put Dr. Strangelove on that to-see list.
By the by: I had no clue that there was a 1997 remake of Lolita. Now maybe some day I'll have to read the book as well. For those interested, here's an article telling why the book is still relevant today.
EDIT (continued from yesterday):
And relevant it will remain for as long as mankind exists, because I doubt anyone has figured out yet what it is exactly that makes one fall in love for a certain kind of person. As far as I know it can still be completely random. In this case Lolita takes a serious look at what would happen if you fall in love with a teenaged girl (American Beauty did the same) and on the other end of the scale Little Britain takes a comical approach to what would happen if you fell in love with a geriatric woman.
Whatever it is that makes you go "mmm" about a person, I'm fairly sure that it's not considerate enough to do an age check to see if it would be appropriate. That's where society expects your brain to step in, to keep you from doing anything that would fall in the "ill-advised" category. And usually that works a treat, because unlike Dolores or the school girls from Battle Royal, most high school girls don't go out actively looking for older men.
Putting that aside though, I think most of us can relate to Humbert at least in one way. I'm referring to moments when you go mad with desire for a person, where you would do anything to get their affection and where they have you wrapped around their finger. It's a strangely wonderful feeling, knowing that you're completely at the whim of someone else and that you really just ought to get out of the room, but you can't because _something_ won't let you. And that's where your brain is supposed to step in, should it concern inappropriate subjects, like Humbert's Dolores.
All in all it makes for an interesting case in psychology, although I'm actually convinced that it's as much chemistry as it is psychology. I'm sure I'll be pondering the subject for the next few days.
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2007-01-21 19:09:00
ZZZzzz... Purrr... (borrowed from here) |
Marlijne and I got into an interesting discussion this evening, seeing how she doesn't agree with some of the preferences I have regarding my work in IT. You see, I've always been very fond of books like The cuckoo's egg (Amazon link) and The soul of a new machine (Amazon link). These are books that delve into the IT/hacker sub-culture of the seventies and eighties, an era that I would have loved to live in. These were the guys walking among gritty consoles, huge clunkers of servers and dimly lit offices. They were the ones debugging new hardware using oscilloscopes and the ones who slept under their desks to keep vigil over their systems. |
For me, pulling an all-nighter and then crashing under my desk for a few hours before I drive home adds colour to my daily work. It makes a boring desk job just a little more special and thus (to me) exciting. Yes, of course I could just take a cab to the office and also call one to come and get me again and I guess that would be the sensible thing to do. I'd be safer, I'd be more rested and I wouldn't be "that odd geek".
But then I'd be missing out on a little bit of extra enjoyment of my work. And I figure that, while I'm still in my twenties, I can still get away with it :3
What do you guys think? Is this a harmless whim of mine? Or is it something that's utterly stupid and that could harm my career?
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2007-01-21 12:43:00
Only six more weeks, then we're done... |
Last week finally rang in at fifty-four hours, in part due to some unforeseen technical difficulties and some scheduled downtime, but also due to our preparations for a large software upgrade. A few of our servers still require the latest patch kit (a group of software patches that can be installed all at once) and we're going to see to it that they get their upgrades :) |
The thing with patch clusters is that they're best applied when the server isn't really up and running. And taking these beasties down has to happen in the evening or in the dead of night, 'cause they're needed by the company during the day. Which means that a few of us will be stuk in the graveyard shift for the next six-odd weeks.
Now don't get me wrong: I actually _enjoy_ this kind of work. I've missed working on difficult tasks in the dead of night, ever since I left $PREV-CLIENT. As I mentioned a few days ago, the last year-and-a-half has been nothing but ordinary desk work with forty hour weeks. But now I get to tinker with the boxen again... to sleep under my desk... to run on adrenaline and caffeine. ^_^ Glee!
I'm sure though that, once these six weeks are over, the glamour will have worn off. I'll be tired and I'll probably have a cold. Not to mention that I'll be back to my pudgy, old self because I won't be getting any cycling done. :/
But still, at least I like my work again! :)
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2007-01-18 15:22:00
and thirty-five hours of work on the clock. *yawn*
Let's see what tonight's "late" shift brings... ^_^
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2007-01-16 18:54:00
I must say that Hewlett Packard have a very interesting definition of "mission critical tech support". One of our servers isn't feeling too healthy and it's covered by one of their uber-hot contracts, so they've given us this phone number to call in case of emergencies.
Well... I just spent sixty minutes on hold (exactly sixty minutes!) waiting for _anyone_ to answer the phone and then an automated message came on, telling me they could not take my call right now. D:
What. The. Fuck?!
Did I mention that that hour was spent listening to the exact same loop of twenty seconds "No woman no cry" and ten seconds "All our operators are busy. Please hold the line." And I don't mean that the song was being repeated... NO! I mean the exact, same, fscking, twenty seconds of the song were being repeated. It's driving me nuts, because I'm on hold... Again...
What the hell are those guys doing?! x_x
EDIT:
At least the project guys left their office door unlocked so I could quickly snag a bit of their unfinished lunch... Else I wouldn't be having dinner either. =_=;
kilala.nl tags: work, meh, annoying,
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2007-01-15 21:55:00
Just a few days ago I waxed lyrically about Ashura-jo no hitomi. I thought I'd give you guys a little teaser of one of my favourite scenes.
Here's the file, Ashura.mov.
I'm not going to embed the file, since it's around 9.5MB in size. That would've been downright mean <3
kilala.nl tags: movies, japan, awesome,
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2007-01-15 09:00:00
Wow, am I having a shitty morning. I'm feeling scared and frustrated without a real release, leading me to get angrier and angrier. I fully expect myself to either break stuff or throw shit around the office sometime later this morning. D:
You see, just before the weekend we got a letter from the IB Group the dutch, national organisation in charge of students' scholarships and loans. The current arrangement with students is that everyone receives a scholarship during their college or university education. If you finish your education on time all of your debts will be nullified and thus you'll be home free and without debt (assuming that you didn't apply for an additional loan). However, if you do not finish your education or don't make it in time, then you'll have to repay every last penny. It's a more-than-fair agreement and I do think it's a good initiative of the dutch government.
Since Marlijne stopped going to college last year we knew we'd be owing the government quite a bit of money. I was prepared for that. However, just before the weekend we received a letter from the IBG, informing us that our total debt comes in at around e8100. ;_;
It's always very easy to get me worked up about monetary issues, since I tend to worry about those quite often. I regularly fret whether we're going to "make it" and tend to get a little paranoid about it all. And when shit like this happens I get quite frustrated and a little scared, because it's such a big thing to have to carry around. Try to keep in mind that this is the first time that I've ever been in debt, so it's all very new to me.
Now I know that, compared to other people, our debt is peanuts. I've had friends who were easily double that amount into the red. And I know that we can work this out, making sure that we make a payment contract with the IBG and then fork off around 90% of Marli's paycheck every month. That way we ought to be able to get rid of the debt within around three years (which is a lot faster than a lot of other students).
The fact that my computer at the office seems to be acting up is also a guarantee that I may end up throwing stuff *grr*. I think I'll go and have a small chat with my team leader, to inform him that I may be "a little edgy" today. Seems like the smart thing to do.
I need to try and relax, focus, make a plan and then to let go of the frustration. Things will work out in the long run. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
kilala.nl tags: money, problem, meh, work,
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2007-01-14 10:42:00
Shiny! |
You may remember that last year in December my then current glasses broke, literally and that since then I'd already gotten my hands on my new, spare glasses. |
kilala.nl tags: glasses,
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2007-01-13 23:45:00
Maybe I will find him... And maybe it really doesn't matter... |
Millennium Actress is a movie that's about a lot of things and at the same time the real story only covers around 20% of the running time. |
If I were to be crude and to summarize the whole plot into one sentence it would be: "Young girl chases an impossible love and in doing so repeatedly plays that exact same role in many a movie.". Hmm... there's one of those themes that I described earlier: impossible and immortal love.
Anywho: the artwork and the animation in this flick are top notch. While the character designs aren't my favourites they sure do fit the story and the way it's told! I also love how both the interviewer and the camera man actually appear inside Chiyoko's memories, to actively relive and take part in them. I can't recall any similar use of flash backs in other movies.
If you're up for an artsy, difficult kind of movie I would really recommend Millennium Actress.
Finally, just as a warning, the closing scenes can be a real tear jerker if you're susceptible to that sort of thing... which I am... ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: movies, anime, japan,
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2007-01-13 20:40:00
Below, Edo burns with fires of hell. But the blood in my body runs hotter yet! |
A review in Aniway's latest issue made me very curious about Ashura-jo no hitomi (the tragedy of Ashura), a Japanese fantasy movie based heavily upon their traditional kabuki theater. |
*cough*
Most of the time the music fits perfectly, although there are rare moments where it detracts from the story. At one point in the flick I really didn't need those electric guitars to accompany a fighting scene.
Speaking of "detracting from the story": please, oh please don't be put off by the horrible special effects surrounding the deaths of demons. I know they're bad, but I think that's intentional :) Rest assured that most of the special effects will actually be very good.
To sum things up, this movie has almost everything that makes a story a Winner(tm) to me: tragedy, immortal love, the ultimate sacrifice, impossible love. Which makes me realize something: I love stories about those things that I firmly do _not_ believe in. Remarkable.
EDIT:
While watching the "making of" I've learned that Ashura was originally a theater play and that the male lead portraying Izumo in the movie is the same actor that appeared on stage. Shiny!
kilala.nl tags: movies, japan,
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2007-01-12 22:03:00
Marieke's helping me with her powerful magic! |
I'm feeling really good about Anime 2007! |
Now you have to be asking yourself what the catch is. What's in it for us, right? Well, in the end it means we can rent out more table space to commercial dealers who'll be paying the normal table rate. Also, by taking the circles away from the Dealing Room, we're improving the overall flow of the crowd since people won't be sticking around the same two tables for over fifteen minutes. The downside for us being the fact that we're renting an additional room from the hotel, whose costs we most probably cannot cover using the circle table income.
As I said: I'm feeling all stoked up and happy to be at work again! I've already received the first three sign-ups from dealers, so I'm really enthused! Yes, three signups within an hour of sending the invitation ^_^ Glee!
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-01-10 20:17:00
Receive iPhone as your saviour! |
Most of you guys've already heard about the iPhone dozens of times by now. Many websites have taken to posting specs, expectations and glorifications of Apple's newest shiny object. |
Personally I doubt that I'll ever go and get the iPhone. I like my cell phones as simple as they can be: a single purpose device for calling, SMS and modem. If I want PIM functions I'll use my iBook and if I want music I'll grab my iPod. Still, I'm very curious where this product'll go in the near future! I'm just hoping it doesn't bomb.
kilala.nl tags: iphone, apple, comics,
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2007-01-07 15:26:00
I love the December holidays with the friends, family, food, warmth, the christmas tree, atmosphere and so on. The house always seems to be filled with friendly people and joyous stuff :) However, I also love cleaning up after the holidays! Get rid of all the random crap lying around the house, get rid of all the cooking scents, clean all the floors until they sparkle... And so on.
Well, there's nothing that spoils all of that for me as much as finding our christmas tree covered in hundreds upon hundreds of baby spider corpses. O_O Eww, eww, eww, eeeewwww! Apparently they'd been in the tree already when I got it and I guess our living room wasn't the bestest of environment for them. They all died in the tree and fell to the floor (or just stuck around in the tree).
Yuck! I seriously detest creepy crawlies! Even when they're dead. D:
Thank $DEITY that they're all gone now: the tree's downstairs, waiting to be picked up by the city's cleaning department and the whole house has been vacuumed.
kilala.nl tags: meh,
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2007-01-06 19:17:00
"Fire! Fire! Please send help. Sincerely yours, Maurice." |
Even though we don't really have the money to spare I just spent around twenty-five dollars on a piece of software called VisualHub. This software takes any conceivable video format and converts it for whichever use you choose. In this case it allows me to finally watch the six episodes of The IT Crowd that I still have lying around on the TV, instead of on my PC/laptop. |
kilala.nl tags: apple, other tech,
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2007-01-06 09:36:00
Yesterday I finally got my hands on most of the goodies that I'd ordered through Snow. All of the stuff is supposed to improve the ergonomics of my work spaces at home and at the client's office. I'd ordered two sets each of the Wacom Graphire 4 and the Microsoft Optical Desktop Pro.
Hooking the kit up to my laptop at work (an old clunker running Windows XP) took little to no effort and didn't even require a reboot. Imagine that!
Now if only hooking up the Wacom to my Powermac G5 at home was so easy! ;_; This is actually the first time ever that I'm having to fight a piece of kit in Mac OS X. The tablet works just fine with OS X's own drivers, but those won't enable the additional buttons and the pressure sensitivity. Unfortunately, installing the Wacom drivers makes the tablet completely unresponsive! The status light registers taps and button presses, but nothing happens. Not even the pointer is moving!
So I tried multiple versions of the driver -> no dice. I dug through the various log files -> nothing. I searched wacom.com's knowledge base -> nothing. Even MacOSXhints.com had nothing on this subject!
I'll go try the tablet on my iBook (running Tiger instead of Panther) this afternoon. I want this fixed though, so I'll have to contact Wacom support about the Powermac. In the meantime, if anyone else has a tip or two: please, leave a comment and help me out :)
kilala.nl tags: other tech,
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2007-01-04 21:02:00
Oooh, this could've been a potential CLM.
Earlier this afternoon all of us were quite busy tackling a few incidents and some administrative tasks. In walks a suited fellow who proceeds to converse in a rather loud (and at times agitated or even angry) tone of voice with our team's leader. I recognised this man to be my boss's boss's boss (meaning, the branch manager) because yesterday he came by as well and did exactly the same thing for almost forty-five minutes.
So after taking the racket for at least half an hour I got up, walked over there and respectfully asked the guys to get a room 'cause they were disturbing us peons in our daily work.
Luckily uber-boss took this quite well and things got a lot quieter very quickly. Even better: my chief told me that uber-boss had actually been happy to have been told off! O_O
*phew* Thankfully, my anxiety was for nothing ^_^;
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2007-01-04 20:48:00
Jonathan's asleep! Now use "Steal" to get his credit card! |
Thanks ever so much to Willow for linking to the College Saga YouTube videos made by a fellow called Mark Leung and his friends. Together they've made a parody of the Final Fantasy series of RPG games. It's is painfully obvious that these guys and their classmates have waaaaay to much time on their hands, since they've taken the time to make little under an hour worth of video. |
kilala.nl tags: games, fun, geeky, internet,
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2007-01-04 18:14:00
Snow @ T-Systems, 2007 |
Some of you may remember last year's mission badge. Well since I'm at a new assignment these days I've taken half an hour to bang together a new badge! |
Anywho: that's the new badge, up on the left. Just like with the previous badges (here's the first one) I've used a catch phrase that's coined relatively often on the work floor, combining it with an appropriate image. This time around I've used one of the cat images from the recent I'm in your house ... Internet meme: stoned kitten.
To elaborate just a little: my colleague Casper introduced the habit of answering any tough question to which you could not in any way know the answer with "Ya man", complete with a rather blank stare. This tagline has since then been promoted to higher level where it's used in silly situations as well.
kilala.nl tags: geeky, work, snow,
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2007-01-03 20:26:00
Messy! |
Today I had the chance to work on a hugely interesting incident involving a Tru64 server that keeps crashing at random moments. After each crash HP says it's a failing RAM module and that they will come and replace one or more DIMMs. But each time the problems return and the system goes down in flames again. |
I've seen it happen before with other applications, so why would SAP be any different?
Anyway, trying the get our issues resolved required coordination between all parties involved, with HP and with SAP in Germany. Lemme tell ya, that's one big fscking plate of spaghetti! Below, for your viewing pleasure, are the communications paths that were open over the course of the day.
Messed up I say...
EDIT:
Fsck... The image wrapping is giving me a hard time. Give me a minute. Why can I never figure out how to make text drop below an image, instead of starting next to it?!
I've given up on inlining the image, so here's the link to the full size image (removed by request of my client).
kilala.nl tags: work, problem,
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2007-01-03 06:24:00
"You lack in a disciprine!" |
And it's a mental one, as opposed to a physical one. |
MK, you may not realize it, but your "Faito!" from a few days back actually helped a lot! It's always stuck in the back of my head when I'm trying to beat some steep hill :) Thanks for that one buddy...
To make things easier though, I'd _love_ to have some music running on my earbuds. Some uptempo, upbeat music that's there to keep up the pace and to keep me positive. But I also know that I shouldn't wear earbuds in traffic since it's unsafe... Especially with my Shure earbuds that block out all outside sounds. *sigh* Need to find some solution for that...
EDIT:
Something that would seriously help me keep up would be "I love you Chul-soo", by the Korean Lee Jung Hyun. Or "Venus" by Hitomi, or "I have a dream" by Witches. As I said: uptempo and upbeat.
kilala.nl tags: sports, problem, annoying,
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2007-01-01 19:23:00
My memory is truly horrible: I usually cannot remember what I had for dinner two days before, let alone remember what I did last week. To jog my memory I thought I'd go through all my old blog posts and through my calendars. Just to make a list of all the big stuff that happened to us in 2006.
The year was started at Peter and Wendy's new year's party. The traditional get-together couldn't be held at our place, since we had only just moved into our new house. We didn't have any real furniture yet and were sleeping on the ground. That didn't leave much room for dinner guests and sleep overs :)
We took dance classes (ballroom and latin), both for fun and for exercise (which the both of us really need). The classes were a lot of fun and most of people we met were actually rather friendly. Unfortunately we dropped out close to the end of the year. Partially due to restricting agendas, partially due to laziness and a lack of discipline.
We learnt that we will not be having children any time soon. Doctor's noticed a few things in our health department that will be detrimental to our chances of having kids in the near future. Naturally, this diagnosis came as quite a shock.
The law suit revolving around Marlijne's father's inheritance dragged on, with the judges finally making the call near the end of the year. The whole matter is now only weeks away from being completely resolved, but in the end it means that both we and Marli's brother will be losing quite a lot of dosh.
Halfway through the year I completed favorable negotiations with my employer Snow, which resulted in me landing an indefinite contract with them. This means more stability for us since I will not have to plan for possible unemployment in 2007.
Around the same time we celebrated our two years marital anniversary. God time flies! :)
Over summer Marlijne decided to drop out of college, in favor of dealing with our personal issues. These will take up quite a lot of time and effort, which would take away a lot of concentration from school work. So instead of studying, Marlijne's taken up a part-time job at the local branch of Ulla Popken, a fashion store for plus-sized ladies.
At the end of summer we ran Anime 2006 with our friends. The festival was a _huge_ success and I have to say it was our best festival to date! While organising the festival is very gratifying it also puts a huge load of responsibility on my shoulders. After A2006 I decided that it had become too much to bare for me, so I accepted another position within our organisation. At the end of 2006 we also greatly expanded our staff which should help us a lot in organising A2007.
Getting DTV (digital television) has greatly expanded our "TV experience". This sounds horrible, like we're always watching the boob-tube, but that's not what it's like :) Anywho: DTV has returned TCM to me and also gave us access to BBC3, which has introduced us to both the modern-day Doctor Who and Torchwood. We've started following these two series almost religiously since they are so totally great!
Over the course of 2006 my love for coffee has kept on growing. I started the year only liking the dark, bitter liquid but these days I _love_ the life-giving juice :D We've been experimenting with all kinds of different kinds of coffee and we received a wonderful coffee maker from my dad as a birthday gift.
I entered our apartment building's Board Of Owners as a staff member. This has given me a few responsibilities when it comes to caring for our building and it ensures that I get to have a proper say in how the maintenance will be handled over the next few years.
I've developed three interesting friendships: I had become much closer to a colleague of mine at $CLIENT (trying to support her through a rough patch in her life), I've met and gotten closer to Floor (a lovely girl I met through Animal Crossing) and I like to believe that I've re-found my friendship with The Saint (with whom I shared my college years).
Through my employer I've been taking part in a course targeted at developing stronger communications skills. Through this course I've learnt of a few of my character's short comings that I hope to ameliorate over the next few months.
I've become more active with work-related issues outside of working hours. I've started visiting meetings at Sun and I've started going to conferences on UNIX and sysadmin topics.
After thirteen months I left $CLIENT to go work at another client of Snow's. The two to three weeks that I spent at the Snow office waiting for an assignment taught me one important thing: there are boatloads of work out there for a proper UNIX sysadmin and I've have more than enough marketable skills. That should give me a little back-of-the-head support, should things turn sour :)
My best friend Menno has taken up a job abroad, leaving us separated for at least four months. Now we've gone without each other for such a long time before, but it's still not something we particularly enjoy :) I greatly respect Menno's efforts though, since he has gone out there to live his dream.
Thanks to the tips of a few fellow sysadmin bloggers I'm reading Time management for system administrators. While I have always taken great care to work in an orderly fashion and to plan my work meticulously, this book has helped me to schedule my work in new ways. By applying only a few of the tips from the book I've already improved the way I work each day. I feel much more relaxed!
Now that I work relatively close to home I've decided to ride my bike to work. While this inconveniences the colleague that was car pooling with me, it gives me a chance to get in some much needed exercise. So far I've only done it for one week, but it already feels great!
Over the course of 2006 we've seen way too little of our respective families. We should really try to meet up with them more!
And finally, there's this website of mine :) At the beginning of 2006 it was still a hoky mix of HTML and CSS working in horrible frames. The past twelve months have seen this site go through the following phases: HTML + CSS -> PHP + CSS -> search engine optimization -> XHTML compliancy -> mySQL database for all blog posts -> commenting feature for blog -> RSS feed for blog -> tagging -> more flexible archiving.
Going back through the whole list and seeing all these things placed in a calendar perspective makes me realize how weird time flows. On the one hand a year seems oh-so-fscking long, while on the other hand blog posts from three months ago seem like they were only made yesterday.
Now... On to 2007!
kilala.nl tags: life,
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2007-01-01 18:15:00
Just so you don't think the Archives are malfunctioning: I haven't archived any posts from 2007 yet :) So please amuse yourself by browsing older posts, like those from 2006 or even those from the first year of my blog: 2001.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-01-01 17:31:00
Friends + game consoles = great evening |
God it feels weird to enter that date for this post: 2007-01-01. *sigh* |
Harmen and Remco joined us around fourish yesterday, with Remco even bringing us a set of candle glasses as a thanks for having him over (it was his first time as part of our group's tradition). He's such a sweet guy :3 Peter and Wendy joined us about half an hour later, since they had had some trouble packing all their stuff.
After a few hours of chitchat we settled into dinner, starting off with a Clinton Cocktail (chicken, mandarin, lettuce and a mild curry sauce), followed by the table grill. We had a wide selection of meats, both standard fare (beef, chicken, hamburger, etc) and wild game (boar, kangaroo, ostrich, duck, etc). All this was accompanied by various greens, a big salad made by Harmen's mother and breads. Desert was arranged by Peter and Wendy: a selection of three ice creams, accompanied by exotic fruits. Yummy to say the least!
After dinner we had just enough time to watch a movie in order to be finished before midnight. It's remarkable how hard it is to find a DVD that all six of us could agree upon from the five hundred odd DVDs that we own! In the end we had settled for only four DVDs, out of which we finally picked The Craft, a classic thriller. The other three, that had to be dropped because the votes were rather dispersed were Constantine, Serenity and Mirrormask.
Naturally midnight included the requisite hugs, kisses and phone calls (or text messages) to relatives, friends and colleagues. I'd phoned Menno earlier in the evening, to ensure that I'd at least get to speak to him :) I'm glad to hear that he's doing fine and that his job in Austria agrees with him. Hang in there Menno! We miss you too!
Finally, before heading off to bed around 0200, we played a bunch of rounds of Mario Kart on the 'Cube, passing around the controllers.
I was the first to awaken again, around 0945. Since everyone else was still asleep it gave me the chance to prepare breakfast at my leisure: serving breads, cheese and cold cuts on neat plates, baking croissants, making coffee and tea, preparing all the fruit juices, cooking and frying eggs and veggies. All in all, it was a lot of food that would end up keeping us at the table for almost an hour. I really think we ought to get together like this more often, sleeping over and having breakfast together in the morning.
While working in the kitchen, Remco woke up and joined me. One of the things that occurred to us was the fact that we're a really diverse bunch of people all joined by coincidence and circles of friendship :) In random order we had: a sysadmin, a lab technician, an economist, a metal worker, a healthcare professional and a shop keeper. That's what I love about getting together with friends-of-friends: you really end up with a mixed bunch!
The day was closed off with a game of Mario Party, which Marli had to miss out on 'cause she went to visit some of her relatives. Everyone else left around 1630 and now the house feels very empty and silent ;_;
Now... I think I'll go clean up a little and try to wind down. Maybe play a few rounds of Mario Kart to push away any mopiness. And tomorrow's a new day at the office, so I gotta prepare for that as well...
*sigh* We really need to get together like this more often...
kilala.nl tags: holiday, friends, cooking,
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