2009-07-10 12:53:00
Apparently you'll need to do it twice; at least in this new house...
* The movers damaged a few things, so they'll have to come back for restoration.
* The new dish washer was busted, so they had to bring a new one.
* There new toilet bowl for the bathroom was the wrong model and was replaced.
* One had ordered too little tiles of one colour for the new bathroom -> back order.
And today I found out that the lovely desk I bought is actually NOT height-adjustable by crank. The website said it is, but that was an error. So that thing's going to go back and I'll have to search for a completely new one. Meh.
kilala.nl tags: life, house, meh, annoying,
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2009-05-27 16:52:00
*le sigh* I guess that the previous owner was in a hurry to finish a few things.
In all the hallways I've found that his last whitewash job was done without removing any of the fixtures and lamps. So every ceiling has a 20cm circle in a darker colour, with a rim of thicker paint around it. That's gonna leave a mark.
It gets worse in the attic though. There he used the same strategy, but not with whitewash. No. No, this time it was with spray-on plasterwork =_=
So what does that leave us? A huge wall with none-too-pretty plastering that's got a big "hole" of bare wood. I guess we can always glue on some fine grit to simulate the original plaster, but it's suboptimal.
Anywho... Today was a good, but exhausting day. The house is now fully stripped and I've made good progress with the ceilings. All ceilings on the ground and first floors have been "bordered" and I've managed to fill in about 15m2. By my estimates I'll need another full day to finish the ceilings. Then I'll need two days for all the walls, possibly three. It's going to be tight, but I'll make it.
kilala.nl tags: house, meh, annoying,
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2009-03-03 10:36:00
$DEITY! All I'm trying to do is to hook up my Lacie Firewire speakers to my Powermac. The Lacie's come with a non-detachable 1m FW cable, while my Mac is about 3m away.
This should of course be easily fixable with an extension cord or a hub. Right? Were it not that this is not USB, which is the VHS to Firewire's Betamax and thus there is next to nearly nothing usable out there for Firewire. Oh sure, Belkin has a USB/FW hub, but it rings in around 40 euros. And there's -one- extension cord available in the Netherlands, but it's a whopping 27 euros o_O
I'll go trawl eBay/Marktplaats now... See what I can come up with on the secondhand market. *sigh*
EDIT: Thank $DEITY for Kleinspul.nl who have a 6P F-F adapter which will let me hook up two cables. At about five bob apiece, that's pretty good...
kilala.nl tags: other tech, annoying, apple,
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2009-02-17 21:16:00
Today we learnt an important lesson! Common sense does not always cross the boundaries that separate fields of profession.
This morning Marli woke up to find Dana'd taken a rather voluminous crap during the night and, as parents across the globe know, that shit gets everywhere (haha, clever pun, yes I know). Unfortunately Dana's lovely, new Pavlik harness had also gotten dirty so that needed to get cleaned as well. Into a bucket of lukewarm water with soap, pronto!
A few hours later the one stirrup that'd gotten dirty was clean again. Unfortunately it was also a full centimeter shorter in each direction! And this is where the thing about common sense not traveling comes in.
Everyone who's ever made their own clothing, or sewn any remotely interesting project knows that you pre-wash your fabrics to account for shrinkage. You never put anything together before the materials have been washed at least once. So why the fsck did nobody at $MEDICAL-COMPANY think of pre-washing the fabrics used for the Pavlik? Wonderful...
Luckily the local hospital could fit us in tomorrow morning so we can get some new spare parts. *grumble* They might as well provide us with proper washing instructions as well.
kilala.nl tags: annoying,
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2009-01-22 21:03:00
Gah! I know people've got to make a living, but why does it seem like all the door-to-door salespeople we get are pushy assholes? D:
Today's salesman took the cake! He claimed to be a rep for KPN Digitenne, the Netherlands' only commercial DTV-T provider. He'd managed to work his way into our apartment building, despite the locked hallway and just started ringing doorbells. Unfortunately for him our door's the first one in the flat and we kindly asked him to leave. Our building's regulations are pretty clear on the subject and I think it's fairly safe to assume that none of our neighbors want a salesguy at their doors either.
Anywho... The guy refused to leave once, twice, three times, claiming that he had a right to be on our private property (the communal hallway is owned by the VVE). When he was informed that he did in fact not have a right and after refusing to identify himself (KPN provides their salesmen with an ID card) he actually had the gall to threaten to call the police. WTF? O_o
I walked our "friend" out of the building, while he was making The Phonecall, which he was pretty much faking. He then proceeded to wait in his car in front of the building for his colleagues to finish their rounds. They finally left our street, horns-a-blaring and flipping the bird. Again, WTF? Not very representative of our national telco, que no?
Luckily the Digitenne call center was understanding when we filed our complaint and they'd at least try to find out which company the man worked for and who he was. Apparently KPN doesn't employ their salesmen directly, but they use a middleman.
Come to think of it... The only thing the guy was carrying that identified him as being "from KPN", was the Digitenne box he was carrying. He never showed an ID, he was lacking any KPN branded paperwork and his coat was also completely generic. Taking their behaviour into account him and his friend might as well have been scoping houses for burglary. Who the fsck knows?
kilala.nl tags: annoying,
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2008-10-12 16:54:00
Years ago during my first internship in IT I was introduced to funny websites as Computer stupidities and Tech tales. Both are filled with horror stories from the IT helpdesk and Tths time I contributed a few :)
Today I discovered a similar website with stories from retail and customer services. I promptly wasted four hours reading this stuff, some of which is quite scary. Really, the level of egocentrism or closed-mindednesz in some people! *shudder* If you're bored, go see Not always right.
kilala.nl tags: annoying, fun, internet,
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2008-09-26 12:42:00
*sigh* I've tried to sew velcro onto makeshift drapes for our linnen closet a few times now. The stupid thing is that I keep running into problems and I just know that I'm doing -something- wrong; I just don't know what.
My thread keeps breaking, though the polyester thread seems less affected than cotton. My needle keeps getting covered in glue and it seems that the top wire (when using my sewing machine) just isn't getting the right tension. Dammit! Who knew that sewing a few one inch strips of fabric could be so hard?!
Quick! To the Internets for guidance!
kilala.nl tags: creative, annoying,
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2008-06-08 22:20:00
In general I'm rather indifferent when it comes to football, aka soccer. I really don't care about it and find it a rather boring sport. The fact that all the vedettas are grossly overpaid doesn't help either.
However, from this year on I believe I'm sincerely going to -hate- football. Hate it to my very core. >[
Two floors up from us (with an empty appartment in between for added echo and amplification) lives a family of soccer fans. A family who bring over their eight friends for each match. A family who make use of noise makers, loud stamping and mucho shouting to make sure their Legion (aka the Oranje football team) know that they're supporting them. I think it's great that people enjoy their hobby and that they're really enthused by something... But this? No... Not so happy about it.
I'm praying that none of these football matches in the Euro Cup (or is it World Cup? I really can't be arsed to know!) last until after 2230/2300. If they do, I'm not going to get any fscking sleep ;_;
I'd better go and see how long all this will last. What is it? Two weeks? Three? Five? o_O Fsck!..
EDIT:
In the famous words of Captain Slow: "Oh cock!"
Yes, it's the Euro Cup and the final day coincides with my birthday, the 29th. Great. So these lunatics upstairs will keep it up with their noise makers for three fscking weeks. And it's not that they just make loads of noise when the dutchies made a goal... No, it's during the whole friggin' match and for at least an hour afterwards.
*groan*
kilala.nl tags: annoying, house,
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2008-04-30 12:46:00
Whenever two or more parties are convinced that they're on the side of absolute right holy wars pop up. I'm not just talking about the religious conflicts that we see every day, but also professional debates that are verging on religion.
Windows versus Linux versus Mac OS X. Emacs versus Vi versus Pico. Sendmail versus just about any decent email server. Japanese cars versus American cars versus European cars. Ketchup-on-your-steak versus Ketchup-lovers-should-die. Whatever, there's too much to even think of!
The field of education unfortunately is no different. Many people think that they know what's best for today's kids and thus philosophies about teaching vary greatly! For example, in December I wrote about the Het nieuwe leren versus Het oude leren crowds. The first think that the folks over at BON are decrepit relics from a time better forgotten. The latter think that the HNL crowd are nonsensical managers lusting for new and shiny toys. And neither side is willing to give in one inch, or to even concede that the other side has at least -some- merit.
Great.
One of the stories that's been recently snapped up by the BON-folks, is the story of Jan Verhoeven's family and their experiences with De Nieuwste School in Tilburg (The Newest School). While the Verhoevens are actually quite content in their role as chroniclers, the two battling sides grasp any chance to duke it out. The BON-ers ragged on the school on their fora, in their usual fashion. At the same time the DNS-folks grasp at any chance to portray themselves in an overly positive fashion, by grabbing media attention and by spawn camping the relevant Wikipedia pages. So instead of working on a real solution, both sides are just too fscking concerned with their little battles.
Very productive, que no?
Me, I'm just glad that the Verhoevens are alright and that their daughter's happy at her new school after getting out of De Nieuwste School
kilala.nl tags: school, annoying, studying,
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2008-01-10 12:52:00
Oh come on already!
The three parcels I sent from Osaka arrived in the Netherlands at least 36 hours before I did. Now they've been stuck in customs for over 60 hours. Good lord! *grr* I hope they aren't sicking The Man on me for the "questionable" content of some of those doujins I bought at Comiket. :/
EDIT:
Yay! It seems that the dutch postal service doesn't share EMS track&trace information. Hence, the status of my parcels wasn't getting updated. I just got all three parcels in the mail :3
kilala.nl tags: annoying,
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2007-09-27 11:28:00
Dear Lord, would it bother you to sometimes check in on what your people are doing?
Archbishop Chimoio told our reporter that abstention, not condoms, was the best way to fight HIV/Aids.
"Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose," he alleged, refusing to name the countries.
"They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time."
Yes, of course. Us evil Europeans want to finish off all Africans, so we can take their land. And we'll do it by poisoning the condoms we're sending them with HIV. What the hell is wrong with these people?! X_X
kilala.nl tags: annoying, holy shit,
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2007-09-11 19:33:00
How is it possible for one book to be both highly educational and (IMNSHO) absolutely craptacular at the same time? Case in point: Lesgeven en zelfstandig leren by Geerlings and Van Der Veen.
This course book covers basic didactics of teaching at the high school level. It covers all kinds of interesting subjects and I feel that there's a lot for me to learn.
Unfortunately the book's laced with three things that irk me.
1. To me it seems that the authors often skim over stuff that could be very interesting. Instead of taking an analytical, or academic approach, they fill chapters with examples and stories. There's nothing wrong with examples, but neither is there with pure psychology.
2. The book feels outdated and like it was written by cuddly-fluffy psychologists. The kind who want to pamper kids and feel that they should be let free to explore their youth and possibilities. *cue Care Bear song* Seriously, I'm all for letting kids discover what they can and can't do, but I believe that in the end kids also need structure and hierarchy. Besides, the original print was written in the eighties D:
3. Their writing is atrocious at times. At the beginning of chapter five there's a sentence that runs for a full -ten- lines! It runs a hundred and thirty words in length! What the fsck were they thinking?
And then there's pure genius like this:
In reality, assessing the beginning situation [of a student] is done based on 'experience'. This is a conglomerate of pedagogic-didactical knowledge and intuition.
/me shakes head
/me goes back to studying
kilala.nl tags: school, annoying, reading,
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2007-09-07 08:26:00
Good Lord... =_=
This country has turned into a political-religious quagmire. For years now the Islamic religion has been a political hot topic in the Netherlands. Years back it all started with talks about the so-called integration of foreigners into our society. These days it's turned to religious extremism and hang jongeren (annoying kids, hanging around town).
We started out trying to co-habitate this country and now it seems like most politicians see our foreign citizens as a nuisance.
All of this political crap is so counter-productive!
We've got idiots like Geert Wilders (pictured above), lashing out at any vestige of Islamic culture in the Netherlands. Just a few weeks ago his party submitted a motion to legally forbid the Koran. And if that wasn't stupid enough, he's now accused a fellow politician of treason. Why? Because she said that, yes, "I expect that in a few hundred years the Netherlands may have a Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture".
So for stating the obvious, this woman is deemed a traitor to the country. What the fsck?! This is how all cultures work! They evolve over time! Did you honestly think that right from the Stone Age the Netherlands were inhabited by Christians and Jews?! Screw that! We were a bunch of filthy heathens, scratching around in the mud! All of that Judeo-Christianism that you value so much was either imported or forced onto us hundreds of years ago.
Schmuck.
And then there's the Partij van de Arbeid. I used to think that they were folks who could get things done; go-getters if you will. But these days they're a bunch of spineless wimps! Now that they're no longer in the opposition, they're afraid to lose votes. But instead of acting and being decisive, they're firmly stuck in the middle. They don't want to speak out against muslims, but they also don't want to speak for them too much.
From a weak group like that emerge classic lines like "We are firmly behind our colleague and we fully agree with him, but we will not sign his motion because we cannot fully agree with it." The motion in question being about the protection of ex-muslims who've left their religious community.
Seriously, let's all stop making such a big deal out of this! We've opened up our borders, we invited them ourselves, so have some decency and live with the consequences.
kilala.nl tags: politics, annoying, netherlands,
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2007-09-04 07:01:00
A lot of students, both high school and college, use the Moderne Wiskunde books to study maths. These books include CD-ROMs that should aid the student in comprehending the new material. The contain various Flash animations per subject, as well as a number of tests and assignments.
Sounds good right? Were it not for the fact that these CD-ROMs only work properly in Windows. I've verified it this morning: while all of the contents are web apps, they are written purely for Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Not even the combination Windows + Firefox works, since apparently Wolters Noordhoff only use specific IE commands to work with Flash. If there is such a thing. The software wouldn't work in my Firefox, complaining about the Flash version.
As one can expect I also tried to run the CD in Mac OS X. This can be done by inserting the CD and then directing Safari to open $CD/dlo/index.htm. This part of the procedure works as expected, as can be seen from the screenshot above. However, when you attempt to start an animation it all goes to dust. No dice. I just get a blank screen.
Seriously, how hard could it be to re-write a fricking web application to work with non-Windows, non-IE systems? *sigh* I've e-mailed W-N for comments. Let's see if they'll react. Their website also sucks in Safari, clearly written for Windows-folks as well. :(
For now the only way to run this software properly on a Mac is either by installing Bootcamp, Parallels, or VMWare. You can then run Windows in a secured and tucked away place.
Updated on the 6th of september, 2007.
I've received an e-mail from the Wolters Noordhoff helpdesk. They inform me that they are aware of the compatibility issues when using anything but Internet Explorer on Windows.
They also inform me that they -are- indeed working on making all their software and websites W3c standards-compliant. However, this process will take a lot of time, since there's just so much code to go through. So unfortunately, for the next few years I guess, we'll be stuck with IE.
One tip they gave me: the first thing they'll start reworking so it fits all the standards are the online study resources. Getal en ruimte makes use of a bunch of online aids and tools and these will be recoded ASAP. These tools can be found at the method's website.
Updated on the 9th of october, 2007.
This year, Wolters-Noordhoff published the latest edition of the Moderne Wiskunde series: version 9. A new feature for this method is the inclusion of additional, online resources called I-Clips. These can be accessed through the W-N site, or through Schoolwise.nl
Ironically, even these new ICT features only work properly on a Windows system. On Mac OS X, in Safari the screen stay mostly empty while Firefox does show me some images, but goes run-away on the processor :(
Naturally I've sent N-W another e-mail about this.
kilala.nl tags: school, software, annoying,
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2007-08-24 09:18:00
Bastards...
The past week some spamming company has been using addresses from my Kilala.nl domain as their "Sent by" address. Of course this means that I'm getting the brunt of their spam-run, what with all the bounces and OORs coming back to me. Just this morning I've had >1000 e-mails thanks to those bastards.
All e-mail addresses start with the word patrolparts, followed by a few additional letters. For example: patrolpartseadih AT kilala.nl. All the bounces and such are caught by my catch-all mailbox and thus end up in my inbox. Luckily Mail.app flags them as spam, so I'm not -really- confronted with them. The only downside is that from time to time the mailbox goes over-quota.
When I make the final switch to DreamHost I plan on -not- using a catch-all box. It makes things a bit less flexible, but I don't think I'll be missing out on much. A few of my forum accounts may point to non-existent addresses, but that's easily solved.
kilala.nl tags: internet, annoying,
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2007-06-30 06:43:00
Apparently there's a Brazilian ad campaign for yoghurt that seems to send out an empowering message to big women. At first the message appears to be that, yes, plus-size women can be glamorous and beautiful. Great! Love it! But then the punch line appears and the ad takes away all of the positive message.
"Forget about it. Men's preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt."
Well... My initial reaction was to get insulted and to try and imagine what kind of idiot thought up that commercial. How would this be affecting women's thinking all around the world?! Stuff like that... After that wore off though I realized that it's just an ad and it only runs in Brazil. So over there in Brazil, the affluent will be snapping up Fit Light Yogurt, while in the rest of the world people will be clamoring over the ad.
In the meantime, I'll hunt the web for a high-res version of the American Beauty spoof, just so I can Photochop the punchline off and use it as a background. :9
kilala.nl tags: annoying, bbw,
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2007-06-21 19:10:00
Fsck! *anger*
What is it with me and laptops?! Why do I always end up damaging them out of my own stupidity? I haven't even had my Macbook for a month and I've already damanged the screen. I threw my digicam's USB cable on the couch and apparently the connector clipped the screen. So now there's a 1mm x 4mm scratch in it. Grr.
When do I learn?
kilala.nl tags: annoying, meh, macbook, snafu,
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2007-04-24 18:36:00
Of course we all know ol' Jack Thompson, the gung-ho lawyer who saves our poor children's souls from the pits of hell by protecting them against violent video games. Jack of course firmly believes that juvie delinquents are frequently influenced by video games and takes every chance he gets to tie in FPSs and the likes in with violent crimes.
Well, what if he were right? What if kids really are influenced by the games they play? See above for my logical deduction...
kilala.nl tags: annoying, internet, geeky,
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2007-03-15 12:51:00
The MacFreak team has decided to close down the forum section of their website. They were moved to make this decission because of a slander campaign directed at their lead man that's been going on for years.
Quite recently a few of the bastards had taken up the challenge of creating as much ruckus on the MF fora as possible, thus overloading the team of mods with work. Combine this with the negative effects that their lead man has been experiencing in his professional career* and you've got a rather nasty mix :(
I mean sure, Ars Technica and other fora have problems these as well with people who were banned ragging on Caesar and the likes. But I don't think it's every gotten as far as this. Shame really...
Should be an interesting case for psych-students: figure out what the heck it is that makes people obsessive-compulsive about harassing someone who, in their eyes, has wronged them.
*: MacFreak is the Netherlands' largest Apple-related forum. Just about everyone in the business who uses Macs visits the website and will thus pick up one or two things from the slander directed at Leon. This in turn affects his own business, since these people are obviously affected by what they hear about the guy, wether it's false or not.
kilala.nl tags: apple, internet, annoying,
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2007-03-13 20:25:00
I'm well fed up with the whole PCMCIA switcheroo that I had gotten into to run my stand-by duties. I finally went out to Media Markt to get myself a Wifi card of my own. Who cares if the laptop belongs to $CLIENT? I want to work dammit! X[
I bought the Linksys WPC54g which is the first card that I'd borrowed from a colleague. Back then the card worked a treat and I had no problems whatsoever. But this time around, nothing but trouble! ;_; I think the crucial difference lies in the fact that the card I bought is v3, as opposed to either v2 or v4 (which was what I'd borrowed earlier). Incidentally, I'm running Windows 2000 on this Thinkpad.
Installing the card seemed to work alright: the driver installed perfectly, the card was recognized and the configuration utility installed as well. But for some reason the config util would keep on reporting the card as "WPC54g is inactive", suggesting a driver problem.
Well... A little digging around led me to this thread at the Linksys fora. It seems that the configuration tool (aka "Network monitor") is actually a piece of shit software, that doesn't work properly with the WPC54gv3 *grr*. As was suggested in the thread I installed McAfee Wireless Security, which is an alternative and free configuration tool for Wifi cards.
And lo and behold! It recognized the card and found my Wifi network. Got me connected without a problem. Thank God for McAfee! (Never thought I'd say that!)
Needless to say that my trust in Linksys has gone down a bit. All in all this took me a good two hours, which has well soured my mood :/
kilala.nl tags: annoying, windows, other tech, sysadmin,
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2007-02-21 12:47:00
I've never been overly fond of HP-UX, mostly sticking to Solaris and Mac OS X, with a few outings here and there. Given the nature of one of my current projects however, I am forced to delve into HP's own flavour of Unix.
You see, I'm building a script that will retrieve all manner of information regarding firmware levels, driver versions and such so we can start a networkwide upgrade of our SAN infrastructure. With most OSes I'm having a fairly easy time, but HP-UX takes the cake when it comes to being backwards :[
You see, if I want to find out the firmware level for a server running HP-UX I have two choices:
1. Reboot the system and check the firmware revision from the boot prompt.
2. Use the so-called Support Tools Manager utility, called [x,m,c]stm.
CSTM is the command line interface to STM and thank god that it's scriptable. In reality the binary is a CLI menu driven system, but it takes an input file for your commands.
For those who would like to retrieve their firmware version automatically, here's how:
...
Uhm... FSCK! *growl* *snarl* What the heck is this?! For some screwed up reason my shell keeps on adding a NewLine char after the output of each command. That way a variable which gets its value from a string of commands will always be "$VALUE ". WTF?! o_O
I'm going to have to bang on this one a little more. More info later.
kilala.nl tags: unix, work, annoying, sysadmin,
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2007-02-01 12:02:00
Aww man! I want to move to a new universe where grammar is less fscked up.
Halfway through 2006 I ranted about bad spelling and grammar. And today I learned that two of the four items I mentioned are now valid dutch! D:
So it's perfectly normal for someone to call you "paranoia", because it no longer is just a noun. No! Because everybody's been using the word incorrectly it's now also a valid adjective! *grr!* WTF?!
And then there's my pet peeve "hallucinating mushrooms". Someone just informed me that this is in fact not incorrect usage of the word, but a grammar style called hypallage.
*sigh* Now I have less things to gripe about. ;_;
kilala.nl tags: meh, annoying,
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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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2007-01-16 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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2007-01-03 06:24:00
And it's a mental one, as opposed to a physical one.
I've only slept 5.5 hours tonight, as is wont to happen when certain intimacies take place in the middle of the night. And since I woke up half an hour earlier than normal I've also screwed up my rhythm, making me feel very slothy.
Now one voice in my head is saying "Dude, it's unsafe to ride your bike when your this tired. Take the bus! It's comfy!" and on the one hand he sounds like he has a point. But on the other point there's my _real_ voice of conscience that's saying "Dude, stop making up fscking excuses and get it over with!" (or as Cartman used to say "You lack in a disciprine!"). Menno's taught me in the past that you should stay positive at times like these, to get over your breaking point, so I'm gonna! Fuck this attitude! I'm gonna keep on cycling!
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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2006-11-30 12:05:00
Sweet merciful Freya... This is just.. just.... Augh! Stupid fear mongering... =_=
"[Leet-speak] is morphing into a dangerous dialect, foreign to parents. ... It gives criminals, kids, whoever another way to communicate."
Thanks to Ananth from Applegeeks for telling us about this news report.
kilala.nl tags: annoying, internet, holy shit,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2006-11-08 10:12:00
This Diesel Sweeties comic is all too true. And is once again proof of R. Stevens' sharp mind and clever writing :)
Like a lot of Dutch people who don't trust eVoting machines, I'm considering taking the day off on the 22nd of November to go vote in Amsterdam. That'll be the only city in the Netherlands that'll take your ballot with pencil and paper. All other districts will use the inherently stupid voting machines. See here for instructions on acquiring the required piece of paper to vote outside your local township.
kilala.nl tags: politics, meh, annoying, netherlands,
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2006-10-29 22:03:00
Wow... I never had a very high opinion of the dutch national ombudsman organisation Consumenten Bond (Consumer's Union), but this takes the cake. A member of the Mac Freak fora had sent them an e-mail to complain about their negative and one-sided reporting on the Apple Mac platform. Corthom tells us about this experience in this thread
The editor in chief e-mailed him back to tell him that most of their members use Microsoft Windows, but that they consider OS X and Linux as "interesting alternatives". However, he also tells him the following.
U heeft gelijk dat onze bladen nog worden opgemaakt op Apples, maar binnenkort stappen wij daarvoor over op pc's. Ik vrees dat de Mac zijn hoogtijdagen in de grafische wereld heeft gehad.
This translates as:
You are right about our magazines insofar that they are still made on Apples, but we will soon be making the transition to PCs. I'm afraid that the Mac's heydays in the graphical industry are over.
So aside from reporting quite negatively on the Mac, they also seem to think that they know it all :) Idjits...
kilala.nl tags: annoying, apple,
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2006-10-25 17:49:00
I'm sorry if my explosion of excremental expletives offends you, but this is _very_ bad news.
I just read that Lik Sang has been forced out of business by Sony after litigation upon unfounded litigation. For those not in the know: Lik Sang is a highly reputed online reseller of imported games and toys from Asia. With offices both in China and Germany they have a huge customer base who rely on them for their daily dose of gaming goodness.
And now Sony has forced them out of business because they feel they should be able to regulate how and where their hardware and software is sold.
A quote from the press release:
"Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe's ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don't see fit. It's the beginning of the end... of the World as we know it", stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.
"Blame it on Sony. That's the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally 'won', few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today."
Fsck Sony. Bastards...
kilala.nl tags: games, internet, annoying,
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2006-10-06 15:27:00
This week my client's been replacing all their vending machines because they switched from three seperate contracts to one. So instead of having the Douwe Egberts Cafitesse, we are now stuck with the Autobar San Remo.
Lemme tell ya... The Autobar coffee tastes like -crap-! At least DE's coffee still tasted somewhat like the stuff I make at home, but this? Way too sour, way too watery... :r
Makes it almost a blessing, that I'm outta here in a month...
kilala.nl tags: coffee, drinks, annoying, meh,
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2006-09-26 06:01:00
Gawd.... The past few weeks waking up has been damn hard! It's like my whole body's fighting me to stay asleep :/ Maybe I -do- need more sleep... But not today, 'cause now I really need to clean a few things up, what with a few people coming over tonight.
Also, yesterday I took part in my first VVE meeting. VVE being the Vereniging Van Eigenaren of my apartment building, which freely translates as "Home owner's association". Our building's VVE hasn't been very active for the past few years, which has led to some problems for the long-term. All in all, if we were to steady our course as it is right now (and if the calculations made by our backing organisation are correct), then we'd have a deficit of around 300k by 2015. Not a very pleasant thought!
So we'll be turning things around, tweaking the plans here and there, hopefully getting the approval of the rest of the neighbours. You see, one of the biggest problems these buildings have is that the people living there are just not committed to the building. They see no reason to offer up their time and/or money to make the buildings look nice and be well maintained. Most of them reason that they'll only be living here for a few years, so they can move on before things turn crappy.
Now, of course that all well and true if you look at it. But it doesn't make it a proper way of doing business!
What's worse is that usually most of our neighbours don't care about the VVE, the meetings, the maintenance and whatever. But three years back, when there was the matter of a large expenditure to improve our building's in a -very- nice way, they all turned up to shoot the plan down. They just didn't want to spend the additional money, for the reason mentioned above.
Seriously. How do you convince people who think they are looking out for their best interest? On the one hand there's their money that they don't want to spend. On the other hand, there's their apartment and the building it's in that needs serious maintenance and renewal of certain materials.
Well... I guess we'll have to be very persuasive if people -do- turn up in throngs to protest.
kilala.nl tags: rhythm, house, annoying,
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2006-08-23 14:37:00
Damn! I'm really starting to hate Dependency Hell. Installing a few Nagios check scripts requires the Perl Net::SNMP module. This in turn requires three other modules. Each of these three modules requires three other modules, three of which require a C compiler on your system (which we naturally don't install on production systems). And neither can we use the port/emerge/apt-get alike Perl tools from CPAN, since (yet again) these are production systems. Augh!
kilala.nl tags: work, annoying, other tech, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-08-11 09:48:00
While on my way to the office I heard something interestingly stupid on the radio.
In the Netherlands, if you get hurt/wounded in such a way that you are (partially) incapable of doing your job, you still get paid by your employer. That way people have less of a chance of getting into monetary problems.
Well, yesterday a judge ruled that companies are allowed to cut their employees' paychecks if they get wounded/disabled as a result of a "dangerous sport" that they practice. The fellow in question had gotten injured while playing indoor soccer and the judge ruled that he really should have known better.
So there you have it folks. Better cancel your winter holiday in the Alps.
kilala.nl tags: annoying, politics, netherlands,
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2006-07-26 19:39:00
So we all know how everyone's dscking around in the Middle East, right? And now the US, the UN and uncle Bob's cat (meaning everyone else) all decide to get involved as well... I think it should be apparent to them by now that they're not really wanted there.
* Fifteen countries get together to have a meeting on the whole subject (which fails by the way), to arrange for some kind of truce. None of the parties involved in the whole turmoil is even willing to be present at the meeting.
* The UN set up some observation post in Israel. It's taken under fire ten times during the day and ten times the UN asks Israel to stop shooting at them, which they promis to do. By the end of the day, the UN -suspects- that Israel was firing at them intentionally. YOU THINK?!
There's only one solution to this world's problems, and it's pictured above. I say we let the kaiju take over the world...
kilala.nl tags: annoying, politics,
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2006-07-19 09:19:00
I deem this thread on the Gathering Of Tweakers fora to be further proof of John Gabriel's greater Internet fuckwad theory. The thread started out as a discussion on why Mac users are usually percieved as being snobbish, arrogant and downright asses. After a few pages it degenerated into name calling and the wearing of lead plates before faces. Gotta love the Intarweb!
kilala.nl tags: internet, annoying, other tech,
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2006-07-06 12:22:00
Ah yes! Yet another display of my client's wonderful way of working together as a team XD
The past few weeks I've been working fulltime on a completely new Nagios monitoring environment for the division that hired me. 'sCool, since I quite like Nagios and since it's a challenge (~500 hosts with over 8000 checks). But what's seriously uncool, is the fact that the server I was building my packages on was turned off and taken apart. Yes: "apart". The hard drive containing my software is now lying in someone's deks drawer -_-;
But luckily there's some cool stuff on the horizon as well! Yesterday I received my new cell phone, a Nokia 6021. It's a really boring phone, that doesn't do anything special except BlueTooth, GPRS and Tri-Band. But that's exactly what I want! I really dislike phones with all kinds of added crap and bags on the side.
Anywho: I always thought I'd never need BlueTooth, but now that I have it I couldn't do without it! Syncing my contacts with my laptop is a dream and using Salling Clicker to control my laptop is -wonderful-! This'll come in -so- handy when I'm giving my next presentation :3
kilala.nl tags: annoying, snafu, work, other tech,
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2006-05-31 14:43:00
Just a few pet peeves of mixups people insist on making in discussions and writing. They -really- get on my nerves! Two are cases of mixed up nouns/verbs/adjectives and two are just plain bad spelling.
* Indentification. A mixup between "identification" and "indent"?
* Authentification. A mixup between "identification" and "authentication"?!
* Hallucinating mushrooms. That would be a sight to see! Toad, Mario and the princess sharing some LSD :3
* You are being paranoia. How can my state be described with a noun?! That's like saying "You are tree!" or "That cat is dog!".
kilala.nl tags: annoying, meh,
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2006-01-18 21:47:00
It seems that our wonderful minister of the justice department has come up with a brilliant idea! He'd like unruly youths to sign a contract which would make them susceptible to legal action, should they continue their non-illegal yet menacing ways. Ya, that'll happen! "Sure! I'll sign a contract that'll make me get sued for something I'm doing right now without getting sued!". I guess I'm missing something or that the news report didn't provide full coverage, because this plan sounds half-assed.
On the other hand the whole deal might not be that far fetched after all since I heard about two other idiotic law proposals recently. One of which involved a group in the EU parliament that wanted to set out legal guidelines for the size of packaging for filter coffee. Seriously... Coffee packaging! o_O
kilala.nl tags: annoying, politics, netherlands,
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2006-01-17 19:01:00
As some of you will know, Marli's been in college since the fall of 2004. This school year she's switched over to another education that suits her better. Far better. Instead trying to get her head around programming languages and company politics, she's now trying to get into people's brains and help them. She's studying to become a social worker :)
While the switch was very beneficial to her happines and overall education, it also turned out to have quite a few down sides! Whereas the FEM (Faculty for Economics and Management) of Hogeschool Utrecht had most of their facilities nice and orderly, the FMR (Faculty for Social studies and Law) is another story entirely.
From my perspective the FMR is lacking in a lot of aspects. For example the way they handle paper work and such really sucks. Not only does it seem like there are no proper procedures for most things that involve the students. It's also a fact that they want the students to find out how to go about all of these things by themselves! Mind you, I'm in favour of nurturing an inquisitive and researching spirit, but when it involves stuff of vital importance like the enrolment for exams or getting their ECTs I'm fervent that one should _not_ fuck about. What's worse is that apparently there are at least four or five offices across the building that perform certain services for their students, but nobody is 100% sure what each office does or even where each office is _located_! Scarily, this includes teaching staff as well... o_O
For those who've seen the Asterix the Gaul movie "The twelve trials of Asterix" (or whatever it's called in English, I only know it as "De twaalf werken van Asterix"): the FMR reminds of The House That Drives You Insane.
I guess maybe we were spoiled a bit by how well the FEM cared for their students... *sigh* Why, back in my day!
kilala.nl tags: school, annoying,
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2005-10-18 02:57:00
As Charlie Brown used to say: "Augh!"
This is really, really annoying! I just woke up with some sort of allergic reaction or a rash or something. It feels like about 60% of my skin is being slowly roasted D: Those ports are very red and warm and actually give off a burning sensation... Now let's see me trying to get back to sleep *grr*.
Anywho... The doc couldn't say anything beyond a normal allergic reaction. Had I eaten weird crap? Taken out my winter bedding? Turned up the heat horribly? Stuff like that and none of which were true. So now, by her advise, I'm trying to avoid head and trying to cool down a bit. Shitty things is that I now have the chills and that none of the burning is going away ;_;
We'll see what happens... Guess it'll be gone tomorrow...
kilala.nl tags: health, annoying, hyperventilation,
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2005-08-05 13:27:00
Meh... For some stupid reason I lose all my wifi signal when I move outside the apartment, onto the balcony. Today's weather is seriously wonderful and I'd like nothing more than to sit on my balcony (in the shade) and to code away at my website. The odd thing is that in the kitchen I still have about 70% reception, but when I move three meters further and out the door the whole signal drops. There are no metal constructions in the way, except for a piece of safety glass at leg height, but that's it.
I hate it :(
Now there's two possibilities:
1. Move the wifi AP closer to the kitchen, which would mean rolling out a long network cable.
2. Sit in front of the apartment building, in the sun.
I think I'll go for number 1.
kilala.nl tags: apple, other tech, annoying,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.