Millions of ants and network problems.
Nov 17Whoa, remember those days when everything goes wrong? Well, I had one of those yesterday night. Damn damn damn ! I not only had a ton of work to do for the company, I also had some paperwork lying around I need to check up on (I am very bad at paperwork) Well, halfway trough the work the entire network went pear shaped on me and before I knew what was happening the knights castle was off line for more then two hours straight. Cursing, fuming and on the edge of killing a hamster with my bear hands I had to reprogram my router, go look for the flaw in the scenario and get all worked up that I STILL had a ton of things to do while I was spending my scarce free time having to repair a basic but essential problem in my network. Damn! I hate it when those things go wrong. When I had only reconnected the Internet connection my server decided it was time to bail out and IT went off line. GRRR! A few words, the flick of a power button and threatening with a good kick fixed THAT too. It makes me smile when I notice that me and Nyana managed to survive without warm water for two weeks straight, but are at a complete loss when the broadband connection goes down. No warm water: relax, chill, we will manage. No Internet connection: Panic, Mayhem, and Stress etc. We must be weird people :p. Oh yes, while working I DID get a chance to see a movie I got from Emule. It’s about 30 years old and I saw it as a little kid once (barely remembering it). The only thing that stuck to mind was the title: Phase 4, about an army of super intelligent ants taking over the world. Classic B movie? Well not really, it does have a good story to it. I honestly enjoyed it, cause it was the 'German dubbed' version I found. It took my back to the days when we where used to watching German TV, with all their dubbed movies and TV shows. As the language somehow comes naturally to me I didn't even notice until I was ten minutes into the movie. Well, me and B movies… you know. We have chemistry!
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Social life.net ?
Nov 16Do i have a social life ? Well , you can say that i do. I even have a busy one. Got online yesterday evening at about 6 PM and ended up chatting the evening away untill nine o'clock. There was some 'social chattin' going on , but also the use of MSN as a communicational tool. I mean , i make appointments regarding school etc over MSN, Make buisiness appointments and chat up with friends that i have not seen for a while. Coming to think of it the Internet is becoming more and more the centerpeace of not only the communication tools in my life , its becoming the pinnacle of my social interaction aswell. Had the nicest conversation with Davy last sunday as he gave me the example that a friend of him didn't think it was appropriate for people to know he mett his girlfriend over the internet (because he had an inmportant job position). Hmm Amazing how the 'internet' still has this image problem. 'only freaks and sad cases can be found on line ' people say. And perhaps those are the prominent cyber citizens of today .. but these days EVERYONE is on line. I mean , does that makes us ALL sad cases ? Is the statement : "Everybode you meet on line is a freak/geak/pervert, exept me of course ? " Strange how people still feel the need to categorize. Where DO you meet decent people then. Tell me ? In a bar ? one could say NO , cause that's where all the slutts are. In a Library ? No , cause thats where all the geeks hang out. I can go on for a while stating examples and the prejudged phrases that can be stuck to it. People are people , no matter where you meet them. I have a ton of friends I've mett on line and there all nice social (ok , sometimes a bit wierd) people. Haven't met a secret bunny-rumping pervert yett. Strange strange. People want to put evertything in cubicles so they can classify the chaos they call their reality. Ps : if you don't agree … Post a comment , share your thoughts , Do your thing.
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The Strangest Party's.
Nov 15Yeey ! Thanx to the holiday of november 11th we had a four day weekend (big time) that i truely enjoyed. Allthough I have hardly recovered (lack of sleep etc) it was way fun. Wen't shopping in Maastricht on thursday cause we where all out of food and all the shops in .be where closed. Loved it ! brought home some cool exotic things like peanut butter etc that you can only buy in the dutch shops. So i'm stacked up for the week with nice cool food-ies :). Did a wee bit of wa walk in Maastricht a bit later on and went looking for some of my I-pod accesories (unfindable) but gave up not to much later. After we got home in the afternoon we started cleaning up (i seriously took some junk out that was still stored in our basement) and lounged out before the TV. Hiked up to Aachen on friday to go looking for our new digital camera (the old one is for sale , just so you know) and did a good bargain. So the next pix will be by our Nikon Coolpix 4200 , can't wait to try her out 🙂 . After we got home i had some work to do for the company and Nyana bunked in the sofa in my office. With the TV on and both working on our laptops we had a real cozy time and i got some work done. When we thought we where gonna turn in early we got an invitation from some friends to go for a late night drink. So 2 hours later we where standing in a Cafe in Hasselt with karaoke night in full swing ( i thought about singing some sinatra tunes , but the crowd was so young in decided agianst it) The evening went from strange to weird when i found mysellf sitting in a bar together with our 'amigo's accompanied by a philipino woman (that had to much to drink) , a finalist from the IDOL 2003 contest , the folks we mett up with and of course the illustrious miss bamby ( a well known transvestite ) As conversations moved from topic to topic i smiled and imagined i was having the most unexpected evening in a long time. Needless to say we had a good time and crashed in our bedds at 4 30 Am. Had to get up at eight again to do some more work and see some clients while Nyana took care of the cleaning (bless her). In the evening we wen't of to dinner with friends and had a way good time. Had my birthday party on sunday (thanx everyone for attending) and was strangely surprised by the turnout. People who I thought would come and who I expected would not where not exactly as i had expected it. A strange but pleasant surprise. (allthought it made me realise the focus of my social life appears to be shifting). As allways mixing friends and family together in one room is allways fun and we had a big laugh. Thanx to Nyana for making the afternoon go perfectly as she made magic in the kitchen and did all the work.
The roundup ? Well: These are the strangest partys. There are still some 'steady values' in my social life. People i see, things we do.. and yett , these last weeks it is all shifting in what turns out to be a wonderfully unpredictible landscape of people and places. I sometimes stop , look around and think by mysellf : I did not think i was gonna do THIS last friday ! But i like the unexpected. Somehow there is more 'p-Zazz" in my life right now. Things that have allways been, the way social relationships are built up and stuff are shifting and changing and it brings along this strange sometimes surreal enviroment. When you try to tell someone where you've been and what you've done the last weekend you get these blank stares like ' How the HELL did you get THERE ' and THATS the stuff that makes me smile.
The one line that went trough my head a thousand times these last days is ' IDIC ' Idic is a vulcan term (star trek sci fi ) that stands for Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Meaning that everyone is different , has different lifestyles and that this diversity is something we must accept and even celebrate because it it the one richness in our universe.
We've seen things that would make people wonder , frown , or even shock them.. and then again one can think : Everybody is different and 'normal' is a proprietary term exclusive to only yoursellf. Everybody is different , but in the end we are all 'people' and it is in this diversity we can find the true wonder of life. Pretty deep huh. But still 🙂 I would prefer diversity over blandness and predictability everyday. And i seem to get my wish.
At thirty i'm looking at the world with a sence of wonder, with an intense feeling of joy and happyness because I have truely found Love with Nyana. And when other people are beginning to settle down… We are only just beginning to explore. Kidds ? Staying home watching TV ? "settling down" … I laugh when i hear it ( So does Nyana) The thing we both feel right now is .. The base is solid, the bounds are tight , the camp is good. We are only BEGINNING to explore the world. As people become more narrow minded as they age , clinging to their convictions.. I am only beginning to broaden them..
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The great conspiracy.
Nov 10 Whoow. What a week. Just noticed my last blogg update is a bit messy and quite frankly so is my life right now. Problem is I’m trying to tell to much at onceand am trying to get it all said so I can slow down and rant my thoughts out.Urrg ! No matter. Lots to be done this weekend. A extended weekend my ass, have a
ton of work for my own company to do and me and Nyana are gonna TRY to get to Antwerp for a little city trip. I wonder if it will work. Got my birthday partynext Sunday so we are gonna have to get the house in ship shape. Who said it wasgonna be quiet. Meanwhile I’m getting my stuff organized to do some extra items on the website (audio blogg and stuff) and STILL have NOT had time to really playaround with the cute mixing board Nyana bought me for my birthday (bless thehoney). Hmm : A quick topic for this blogg : Well : let met choose 'the great conspiracy'. Its been in the air for a few months now but these last weeks i have felt that its 'omnipresent'. The great conspiracy to get me back in music. As you know I was a DJ with DYSC a few years ago , and back then ( from when I was 18 up to when I was about 24 ) music was a great part of my life. Playing music, and later on combining music and computers when i started making our own intro's and Jingles to party's where we played. I even teamed up with JAR JAR (Bart Graulus) to 'make' music and we played in the KAtsu and on a concert somewhere in Borgloon. It was really cool to do , but we didn't have much free time so things cooled down and unfortunately we lost touch (Bart, if you are reading this , Ping me sometime) . The absolute low came last year when i sold my mixing board and cd players cause they where literally just lying around (and i had not used them in months). So i've been out of the bizz for quite some time.But somehow all this is changing. Well first of there is the house of course, now i finally have the space to set up some gear instead of my small office in Rijkhoven.Secondly I am currently moving ALL our music cd's to MP3 , cause the shelves in the living room just can't take the pressure. Its been a lot of work , but it gave me the chance to go trough my music collection again and to finally make it digital so i can put it on my Ipod , or play it when i'm at the computer.
And there is of course my new line of work where i get to sit at a desk all day long so i have enough time to listen to music while i work. And i'm in the car for 2 hours a day, so there is a lot of time to listen to 'audio information', music , news etc…
But the big triggers are yet to come. Nyana bought me the coolest gift for my birthday (remind me to do an article on it someday). The Hercules DJ Console where i can MIX my MP3's and pitch them up and stuff. Whohoo ! Ok , its no numark MX 1800 (bless you my beloved black mix table) but its ex-actly what i need.
Add to that the concert of DJ Tiësto last weekend and its suffice to say : I'm lost !. I'm pretty mad at myself having let go of my 'musical passion" these last years , but school and my career took up a lot of time. Now i hope i have more time (and need) to be 'creative' with music again.
Now the scene is set, and we come to the possibilities this entire multimedia revolution in my life is gonna give me.
First up : I don't have much time to write anymore. I'm on the road for two hours everyday and have a lot of time to myself. But I can't spend it reading or writing on my blogg and stuff. Yet i have time to kill , so its filled up with listening to music , Audio books and audio bloggs i downloaded from the internet. (audiobloggs are spoken bloggs, transmitted via what we call PODDCASTS). Hence my idea. What if i used that time to 'speak' my blogg, like , make a little radio show out of it , all you need is a mike and a recorder (i can record on my ipod). So there was a food for thought and a possibility has been born , so hang on for more 'spoken bloggs' instead of written ones. Its a concept that is not very strange to me because i used to work as a radio DJ.. So its basically my own talkshow that i'm doing. And where there is speech there is music , so i can mix together some tunes , build some jingles and stuff. Just being creative on an whole other level. And with podcasting i get to download other people's audio-bloggs full of IT goodies and stuff and listen to them while i'm in the car.
As you can see , the limited time i have makes me shift gears as it comes to handling information in my life. I rarely watch tv but let the PC at home boot up and record all my favorite shows. Cause i'm not home to watch them i encode the streams and put them on my pda so i can watch them anywhere. I don’t have time to read up on my websites so i use an RSS news-stream reader to give me the headlines of the important sites and push them to my pc instead of surfing around. When i'm in the car or on the road i have audio bloggs and Ebooks to listen to instead of reading them on line. Basically i'm adapting to more off line time in my life , but still try to keep up with the 'buzz'. I'm even planning on using video to make articles on the site instead of writing them out. And also.. there is a lot of creative energy to be spent there.
The dawn of the third decennium has brought upon me the dawn of the digital media age i guess.
Well what do ya know , i've had time to update my blogg.
Greetz everyone, stay tuned !.
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Meditations at warp nine.
Nov 04So little time and yet so much has happened. Like lightning the shades of my life have turned around once more and i find mysellf awakening in a different chapter in my book of life. Changes are always strange and it is yet it are those very changes that tell one that one still lives. But as i look at the path that my career will take me now, Changes will be part of everyday life, and adapting to these changing situation will become a skill that i must make my own.
Changing the lanes of my career.
As for the roundup. Well , after the interview with the consulting company in Leuven (see previous post) i had to wait a few days before the phone rang. As i was getting worried about finding a new job (needlessly) the phone rang and my new "boss to be" called me up if i was interested in starting.. THE NEXT DAY. So it became a bit of a race to get everyting organised and ready for yet another turnover. All the promises i made mysellf (when i'm out of a job i'm gonna study, relax a little bit, enjoy the silence etc) where out the window (once again) and i came to the shuddering conclusion that i just cant sit still. No matter. 3 days later i was of to a big company in Turnhout for a conculting assignment (field engeneer) and had a great time. Where only a few weeks earlyer i was getting chewed out by the old boss-man and thought where the hell this was going, now i found mysellf suited up in a company car racing towards unknown horizons. And at those very moments, amids the amber rays of the setting sun, with music on the background and the silent purr of the car as it takes me to yet another adventure… Victory does taste sweet. Those who know what happened after i left my old company know what i mean. Those who don't.. It does not matter. As it is with wine : the best information and events , the greatest gossip where to be found in the bottom of the glass and I only know appreciate its delicate taste. For I have not had a hand in these events but only saw the inevitable take place. Cosmic justice ? perhaps… I miss the ones that where dear to me back there. But I am the Hedon and as the autumn calls i must spread my wings and fly on.
Celebrate the love.
Meanwhile i have come to my favourite part of the year. The autumn is now in full bloom. Fog slides over the ground and the leaves set the dying trees alight with shades of red and gold. The graves lie littered with flowers and the crows rasp their song. Today me and Nyana are celebrating that we've been together for eight years. Incredible as it may seem we are still growing stronger and closer together each day. Somebody once asked me why Saskia was the woman of my life. Well ,probably because she's the only girl that is not impressed with the 'roles i play' but with the boy thats trapped behind the mask. She is probably the one single person in the world that truely knows me and she is the one girl in the world i truely love.
The age of sound.
With my new job i find mysellf in the car for allmost three hours a day. With all kinds of music on the background i realise i have a great amount of time just to think things through. These "meditations at warp nine" as i call them are a concept quite new to me. I have time to wonder about the things that go on in my life and must somehow find a way to keep mysellf 'occupied' during these long drives. This brings me to the age of sound. More and more music takes up an important role in my life once again. Not only did Saskia buy me the coolest DJ mixing panel for my birthday (thank you my love), but I also have a lot more time to listen. While i normaly spend my free time behind a computerscreen or in a good book (the age of light) i now find that i must focus my leasures on SOUNDS. Audiobooks, music , talkshows on the radio, you name it .. At work I 'fly a desk' so have about 8 hours a day to listen to music while i'm working. A whole new world of music, on and off line radiostations and so on are opening up to me. This weekend i'll be diggin up my Ipod to get more tunes on the little white baby
And hereby i close the second decennium of my life. I've been in my twenties till now but from tomorrow i am no more.
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Stranded on the sandless shores.
Oct 13Its been a long time since i have last been here. Once every two years I drop by only to be amazed at the way things stay the same, and the way things change. From when i was four years old I have walked trough these doors, watched the people go by and looked at their faces. I never stopped wondering what their problems might be. What burden they carried. An illness ? A loved one in distress. Waiting for an answer, or praying that that answer will never come. Every time I stop and realise that ones health is not something to be taken for granted. That if it was not for this place my life would have turned out differntly. I do the things i do, live the way i live and am the one i am without ever having to stop an consider that it all might not have been this way. I take my health for granted, when i should be thankfull that i am alive. But then again : We should all stop and consider that once in a while. Imagine those less fortunate. Imagine those less healty. Imagine those to whom mortality is very mutch a thing on their mind. Over these last few years, as i grow older and wiser perhaps, the thing i have learned is never to take anything for granted. I have come to realise that EVERYTHING can balance on a sharp razors edge and can go just any way it wishes. Us mankind often thinks we are oh so in control of it all. We think we have things made and yett.. It can all change at the chime of a bell. Ritch, poor, succesfull, bumm, legal, illegal .. Healthy, sick, together or alone.. We sometimes must stop and think how it can all change. I see the people around me and think about their troubles. I find mysellf straightening my back, once again sliding into the roll of 'comforting example' that it can all turn out for the best. A warm smile to a troubled soul.. in who'se place I have luckily never stood before… but still. Life is a precious gift and so is our health. This year I look back at my life since I last was here and realise i should exercise more. My condition is hardly what it used to be and sports are way back on my priority list. I should do that more often, should relax more often. But so much to do .. So little time. Come to think of what i've been up to these last two years I realise that they have been the busyest of years in my life. The Ictopus project (many many stress !) Switching jobs and working at Harte Hanks (also quite an amount of stress) and in between buying a house, fixing it up, moving etc etc. When i look back at it all I believe I do deserve a break. Haven't had a decent holiday for two years… But we'll see how everything turns out. Perhaps a pledge that once in every day I put the books away, turn the screens of and have a cup of tea with a good book. That i give mysellf the chance to lean back, close my eyes and just listen to the silence around me. A promise to get up on a saturday and grab my bike and just cycle a bit more. Good intentions ? Perhaps … **** In other news the whole linux thing is slowly picking up pace. Before this I dreadded the Evil VI, but now i find mysellf writing this text in VI. Later on i can just copy and paste it into my blogg.. And I kind of like this simple effective interface. No need for extensive mark-up, Fancy GUI's and all that. Just a black screen with white letters. Me somehow like this. I'm starting to see the immense possibilities of an OS like Linux, and I am starting to see why people can get this fanatic over it. Reading trough these few chapters in the book it strikes me just how powerfull it is. I mean you can combine commands, let the output of one command be the input of the other and so on. I have only limited DOS knowledge so maybe thats it, but in Linux i have so far done things that are quite impossible in DOS. Combine it with the ability to run on run down computers and so.. And i'm starting to feel the magic. Imagine your peers buying the most expensive pc's , overclock them, cool them with water of even liquid nitrogen.. While you are still using that 486 laptop you can dragg around with you anywhere. Use VI or Bash to do your thing. Mail stuff from the command line. I mean , this is stuff i picked up in only two chapters. Ok you still need a good gui to 'get' most of the 'net' but as I allways say : Take a look at what you want to do and then check out what you need. I mean, if you can configure a fileserver, a mailserver, a firewall and so on just using a stupid terminal interface.. Combined with the power this OS gives you ? I would say : watch out MS ! I understand why Linux guru's love the darn thing. You can just dive into the config files and litteraly WRITE what you want it to do. Not happy with the program ? take tehe source and change it. The possibilities are indeed endless. I'm happy in my own little way that i found this first use for the shell. Amateuristic as it may be.. I'm happy to make the first step. After an escape and a Shift ZZ this little bugger will be stored on the drive. To experts this might sound lame. But for little oll me .. its kinda the first real steps into using linux for what i NEED. And as i posted yesterday.. Whenever I can USE something, i'm interested to learn in what ELSE it can do. No more pointless excercises. Time to let the mother work for the money.
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Enter sweet sandman
Oct 13Ok , i just rounded up my little tri-annual checkup and have some time to kill. Class doesn't start in 3 hours and its not worth the while to drive all the way down to limburg and back. So after doin some walking about in Leuven i've landed at Groept and dove right back in my linux book. After the fairly interesting chapters i'm now down to the increadibly borind stuff. Man i do hope it gets better cause i'm fighting sleep like a dragon on fire. I strolled into the bookstore, checking out some books and cd's ( that i'll write down so i know what do download on Emule next time :p ) Plenty of IT related books but i know that @ home I have enough books around to defeat the next invasion of gian ants. Hmm. Must be the boring Linux chapter i'm reading right now that makes me so sleepy cause i allmost dozed off a few minutes ago. But i'm trying to lay of the coffee so Java will offer me no support in this one. One big latte this afternoon will just have to keep me going for the day. Outside we are enjoying the last rays of autumn sun and in between the long shadows the land is painted gold and green. As i sit here the world moves around me. People come, people go.. and for once I find mysellf silently waiting as time flows by. Well not doing nothing (studying, remember) but still. As the atmosphere of GroepT surrounds me for the third year in a row, i'm not surprised how much i feel at home down here. I walk the big spiral way to the top as commonly as my own stairwell. Plunge down in the cafetaria as i would in my own kitchen and drive trough the streets of Leuven as if i have been coming here for years. Well.. I have but.. thats not the point. The point is that the DISTANCE between Hasselt/Leuven is sometimes a bigger issue for those around me than for mysellf. Whenever I talk to people here and tell them where i'm from they go like : 'waaw , THAT far' while to me.. Leuven isn't at all that far. I mean , ok , its 45 minutes driving when its busy , 30 min's when i can push the envelope. But.. I don't see it as far.. I mean .. Thats what you get when you live in a backwater province like mine. When you wanna do something you just have to get around. It makes me feel a little 'metropolitan'. I shop in Maastricht, get my PC stuff in Aachen, study in Leuven. Try to grab a Cappuchino with a muffin in Antwerp once in a while. Even though we live in the city of Hasselt right now its funny that I'm still more on the road then home. So hey ! I get around ! Whats wrong with that. Leuven isn't far. Neither is Aachen or Maastricht , Antwerp is up the highway straight ahead. Whats the big deal anyway. I guess people see the journey from Limburg outward like some epic trek 'lord of the rings style' well I must disappoint you my friends. Its just a hop in the car and after a few years you get pretty used to it. (The innards of Leuven have become boring to me.. THATS how much I come here) With the week fully booked (have to go to Heverlee tomorrow and back to Leuven on friday and saturday) (not forgetting Antwerp on monday) i've seen quite a little peace of little belgium these days. Good thing for my GPS-lady (Mia) who helps me get around to where i gotta be. I would not now how to get to all those places just by mysellf. Hmm. coming to think of it I could come by train friday. It would be more convenient and i could just bunk out in the train for two hours. I mean whenever you have to travel an hour to get somewhere its WHAT YOU DO during that hour that makes it lost time or not. Suppose your by car, stuck in traffic and you stress up and eat your steering wheel for f*** 60 minutes striaght.. Then thats lost time. Spend that time listening to music, arranging your thoughts, or even listening to an Audio Book.. Its not really lost time is it ? Suppose your in a train 2 hours a day. You CAN spend that time reading, listening to music , working on your website or whatever. Its a little bit of a luxury to have 2 hours to fill in to your own discretion. The thought occured to me this morning when stuck in traffic. One does not control the situation one gets into , but we do control how we react in that situation. I could have been stressed up for losing time. Instead i listened to classical music on the radio and watched the sun rise over the hills around me while peeking at the people around me and wondering who they where and where they where going. Life is a big boardgame sometimes. You only have to make up your own game to play on it. Of to school it is my friends !
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I need a guI to make me happy !
Oct 12
Well : i'm finally getting round to some studying today and i've been digging trough the first two chapters of the book while trying out the info on my laptop and .. i can only conclude in this : Aaarg!!!!!!!!!!!!! I must say. this Linux thing is proving to be harder then i first expected. Ok , i know it was not going to be easy, but i never thought what a mouse-jockey i had become. Its all howdy dandy when you give me a nice gui and i can click my way into just about anything i want. But its harder when a silent prompt just stares at me from a dark screen. I read trough the manuals and think “when am i EVER gonna need this” and the next moment i find myself completely lost when trying to preform a simple task like copying or pasting a file using the console. Its starting over from scratch and its gonna take a lot of getting used to. But I don't have the luxury of falling behind. I have to learn this. Now that is just the thing. As you all know i hate toying around with things, just to toy around with them. I have to do something useful with them. I find myself BEFORE the point that i can use my acquired skills to actually 'do' anything, but I'm pretty frustrated to type commands down.. 'just to practice them' I hate moving meaningless files around just to get into the swing of it. Well no matter, it will be better in a few days. Meanwhile i have found a universal constant in Linux manuals. Whenever they give you ONE syntax, they give you 5 ! they all do the same .. but they give you the options just to confuse you. I mean , you don't give directions to someone saying. Drive this and that way / or that and that way / or this and this way / or this and so way. I mean : That person is gonna go bonkers on ya !. Well no matter. Back to chapter two. Oh yes ! just between the lines : I have found a way to work around my freezing keyboard problem ! until suse will give me an answer to my support query , I just retype the last two characters i typed, just before the keyboard freeze. And whaddajaknow ! It works . I read it somewhere on the Internet so i decided to try it out. am very curious as to what big-old-suse is gonna tell me. The error event that pops up into the event log is : "Linux kernel: input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0 so .. i'm curious if posting this on usenet will help me to find a real solution." *** In other news i'm dug into this small pocket book about hacking, viruses and espionage. I read something about the CARNIVORE program the FBI apparently runs on the email traffic all over the globe. Its actually quite scary. I mean not to dive into conspiracy theory's and all that , but still. Its pretty scary when you think about some gov-clecrk reading trough your e-mail.. and the concequences. http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/ is a link i found on line to some kind of carnivore like program that constructs images from the data stream it intercepts (?) Its something realy freaky and i'm gonna check it out a little more. "Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software application that listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this data stream to interfaces called "clients." These clients are designed to animate, diagnose, or interpret the network traffic in various ways. Use CarnivorePE to run Carnivore clients from your own desktop, or use it to make your own clients." is the official qoute on the site. Cool enough to check it out. Imagine a picture of your face made up out of all the binary data gathered from the porn sites you surfed. Kinda cool to give to your parents. 🙂
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Is there an non-E-Existence ?
Oct 11Thoughts are a turmoil. I am troubled by questions that I was not prepared for. Questions that made me stand and think. Questions that made me put things in perspective. 'Who are you'. 'Where are you going' 'Where do you come from'. Questions as simple that any soul can find an answer. And yett, questions as hard that there seems to be no answer for them. I was asked these questions by a friend, and again yesterday on an interview. The question who i was away from the keyboard caught me off guard. I was in no way expecting a question like that. I find mysellf troubled by the fact that i had to 'think' about who i was away from the keyboard. Over these last years my life has been focused on the virtual side of my existence. Learning , gathering skills and so forth. Not a day goes by withouth a connection to the internet. The world around me and the events that peek my interests are often found @ slashdot.org or on line. I communicate, live, breath on line. I was puzzeled by the inquiry to my 'off line' life. My non-E-Existence and i had to think about it a little bit. I do plenty of things that don't have anything to do with computers .. But i never thought people would value them so much as to ask for them. Well. When "AFK" dwindle down into a world that is very personal and private for me. I spend time with my girlfriend. Hang out with the select group of friends I have, go out, have a good time. I love to read. Allways dive my nose in a good book cause I despise TV. And quite frankly those books are OFTEN (but not allways) It related. These days one can find me totaly engulfed by the BENINI MISTERY (by Dan Brown), Introduction into phychoanalisis (by Freud) and on my PDA i'm reading "Shadows of the empire'. I love a good movie (preferebly some old one) and I try to relax the mind by talking a good stroll while listening to some relaxing music. Am i the outgoing type I used to be when i worked as a DJ ? Perhaps not. I love to crawl back in the dark corners of a tavern and watch the world go by. I love to watch people, love to meet people to. But I find a lot of happyness behind the quiet glow of the screen. The question also arose a fearsome image of mysellf as some kind of horrible lonely computer-nerd. I'm not that. Not that at all. Allthough i sometimes can understand that people want to hide from the off line world and curl up into cyberspace, allthough I understand that , when someone is facinated by the thousands of things the E-world has to offer, so much that you forget what lies outside.. I'm not that kind of person. I go to the library to study. Not because it's quiet there, but because there are people there ! I like to go out for a cup of cappuchino and write some entries for my blogg because there are other people there. When asked what i would like to do best : Dive into a good well founded IRC discussion about the issues of privacy on the internet , or play some football with some testosteron-infested-beer-drinking-burping-footballyapping dudes.. I would choose the first. I'm happy when plugged in.. but i roam wirelessly.
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This is not a Democracy.
Sep 30Today my personal blogg takes on a very important role as i use it to officially make a "press statement" following the termination of my contract at Harte Hanks. Before rumours go around like wildfire and my name and reputation are put on the line , I would like to point out just what the reasons for my dismissal where. Whenever you collect enough dust its by no means hard to create a landslide. When you sum up enough errors someone makes you can easily stick them together to make a big ball of blame. When you read the words just right you can make a sentence sound any way you want to. Each of us has his own truth and we all look at the world from our own point of view. To each his own truth. No matter how strong you are you cannot stop a sandstorm and no matter how steady you stand, there is no way to fight quicksand. The inevitable cannot be put off. The bottom line is that my mentality, the way i do things, handle people, and see trough people, threatened the balance of power and knowledge in the department i worked. As the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one I can surely understand the reaction and the actions that followed it. Sometimes people work together like a charm, sometimes they collide. I have the utmost respect for my colleagues and understand that some of them found it difficult to 'get along' with my 'challenging' personality. But as a wise man once said : "This is not a democracy".(but then again : what is it ?) The other reason for my dismissal was the fact that I had already negotiated with another firm for a job opening, because, as you know , I have recently purchased a house and job stability is important for me. I still had temp-contracts with Harte Hanks and was looking forward to getting 'the contract' to be enlisted on the payroll of the company. However there where also promising options elsewhere. Because these options where contradictory I found myself betting on two horses. When i was asked by my superior if I had job-options with other companies I had to withhold the truth because I wanted to give the HH-option all the best chances. Disclosure of the information would have damaged these. I find myself deeply troubled by this, for the truth is a very important value for me, and was forced into a position where I could not be true to this value. This was very hard for me , I try to be a man of my word, but the ends justified the means. As my departure with the company has gone so fast I have not found the time to say just how nice it was to work there. Surely there have been ups and downs and in the long run, I might not have "fitted in" in the current picture. But still. It was fun to work with all these nice people. As the Vulcans once said : "The honour is to serve". Now I am overlooking a new horizon and as I gaze back I am grateful for the things I have learned and perhaps for the small but crucial insight I have brought into the whole. Goodbye my whacky Italian, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, American, Belgian and other friends. I wish you all the best.
