From a day or more ago

So it has been a while since I blogged, actually if we take the time to see how long it has been, well it has been a good few months.

Why now then? Well I am sitting in the back of a restaurant in Århus, by myself, with a large draft beer in hand, waiting for my steak to arrive. There isn't much I dislike more than eating alone. It isn't so much the eating I have a problem with, so much as it is the waiting for my food to arrive and killing the quiet time.

Once the food arrives, well then I am eating and so time sort of kills itself really.
It is the third time I find myself on this side of the country I call home, and this time I am staying at a hotel in the center of town. Well not really the center, but that has more to do with the city being built around a harbour and so the center of town is the waterfront and thus it isn't exactly the center but more the edge. However for arguments it is the center.

That is one flipping good steak.

Bugger I just noticed I am sitting under a security camera, eating off three plates and wetting my garlic bread with beer...

And naturally, there is a bloody screaming baby and a dad that thinks it is hillarious. Viva the no children in pubs rule.

So back to my third visit. Well I typed "restaurant" into google maps yesterday and was greeted by too many choices.

On my previous visits, which involved a 70s hotel from hell, miles from anything but a mcdonalds and a petrol station, the results were less than optimal. Needless to say I ate crap food, quickly, by myself in the saddest of hotel kanteens.

Last night however I picked hIndian. 5 minutes walk in the light snow. I got a table under the stairs and ordered a samoosa, kingfisher beer and chicken masala. All excellent, with the exception of the beer, which came in the form of a cobra lager, but what did I expect, this is the province after all...

Well the walk home took 3 minutes since I this time, didn't follow googles car directions. I wish they would make a walk option in google maps. I then spent a few minutes enjoying the view, of tugboats tugging around the almost active harbour, from my room, before I closed the curtains and turned on the tv.

I watched an overly acted movie about some morons building a plane, from a plane, in a desert. Crap from the moment they crash landed and the lack of acting and plot of any kind becomes blatently apparent. In its own defence, I must confess that I had seen it before. I then read through my lesson for the day and fell asleep.

iPod 5 : N95 3

Why haven't I been blogging?

So why you might ask? Why haven't I been blogging?

Well let's just ignore the obvious and say that amongst other things, Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix has been completed, I have written a good few lines of code, resigned from my job, taken a shitload of photographs, played with the cats of 505, looked after Mintable from 713, ridden on many buses, watched my hometown rugby team play to the top of the log, watched South Africa lose first spot on the rugby union ratings, drunk my fair share of good beer, drunk my fair share of bad beer, started to appreciate the finer side of red wine, gone back to enjoying beer, bought a new pair of jeans, run on a treadmill, subsequently been advised as to which running shoes to buy, bought a pair of anti-pronation Nike+ running shoes, pwned my iPod, repwned my iPod, run, played squash, run some more, run the dhl 5kms in 25 minutes, helped nic out, run dhl again and managed a sad 26 minutes, acquired a dtu running shirt, played poker, won a poker game, been to an REM concert, fallen in love with REM music all over again, bought the t-shirt, made Greek meatballs with tzatziki (τζατζίκι), forgot to remove 1/4 of the garlic and onion mix from the meatballs, woken up at some unearthly hour of the morning in a flat panic stressing that I stank of garlic beyond all hope, had a visit from my mate darryl, played xbox til some silly hour of the morning, eaten really friggin hot overpriced curry in malmo, eaten gauva rolls, decided to eat a gauva roll a day for a month, proposed to ms. 505, planned a wedding in Norway, moved said plans back a few months, decided Spain was a better bet, moved the wedding destination to Madrid, booked tickets to Spain, booked tickets to Durban, taken the metro in the sun, watched summer disappear into the gray wetness that is the Danish autumn, taken the metro in the rain, watched Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds live, thoroughly enjoyed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live again, fallen boyishly in love with Kylie, been to a Kylie concert, found out I am not the only guy who loves Kylie, realized Kylie has a huge gay following, decided never again to go to a Kylie concert without a girl on each arm, eaten some great sushi, drunk some splendid Japanese sushi beer, acknowledged that Counting Crows is full of shit, decided that Counting Crows don't give two shits about their fans, not gone to a Counting Crows concert, two useless refunded tickets to a cancelled Counting Crows concert, found out I really like Seether, decided that the N95 loses to the iPod, had my N95 in for repairs, lusted after the new iPhone since my N95 needs to go in for repairs again, blogged more recently than I realized, enjoyed taking 24 photographs without sleep over 24 hours, upgraded my flickr account to pro, made the bombest shrimp and chilli balls, purchased a new pc, cursed windows vista, fallen in love with windows vista, seen the light with no longer building my own pc from scratch, wished I had built my own pc, calmed down again and started to write a story about a bear named Thomas.

So no I haven't blogged for a while, but I have done a few other things, none of which I shouldn't have blogged about, but isn't that what I just did. Well sort of just did.

Vista vs Linux, now that I have an opinion.

So I got a new pc this week. A shiny new Dell with Vista and all its glass and eye-candy. So far I really enjoy Vista it is pretty, does media extremely well and although not as fast as XP might be, not a dead dog either. I guess it helps that the machine is rather well spec'd, with an AMD Athlon x64 5600+, 4GB or RAM and a few more bells and whistles giving a Vista rating of 5.3. Anyway, I was happily reading a blog  on not being able to get SP1 to install due to driver issues and noting that I had the same problem (that's how I found the blog).

Unfortunately I read the comments and could do nothing but sigh. How anyone can claim that Linux is better than Windows or that Apple is the way to go, I currently do not understand.

If you write software for a living, you are pretty much "stuck" on a windows machine, unless you want to write java, in which case you either have a screw loose, no girlfriend, don't mind hideous interfaces, fighting with classes and are quite simply leaning towards sadomasochistic. So windows it is then.

Some of you may remember how slow XP was when it came out, how wireless networking was virtually unusable until SP1 and how driver support was lagging for a good few months, but nobody had really used wireless networks before. So it took a while to figure out how to work with the masses.

Linux is great for people that use there pc to surf or write documents. Yes that is naive and narrow minded and I know that with a little bit of know-how you can do anything on a Linux box, but you need to spend the time. Have you managed to sync a Bluetooth device on a Linux box?

A two year old machine will of course be able to run Linux, the hardware is old, and thus there is drivers. Windows 3.11 would run fine on it. There isn't drivers for the latest ATI and Nvidia cards. That's just a fact. My new Canon printer won't play happy and Canon didn't spend the time to write drivers for it either.

If you know what goes into an operating system, to get it to "plug-n-play" with all hardware combinations and software and still stay sans BSOD, you would appreciate what MS puts together. Then you have software vendors complaining that the OS isn't open enough and that they need access to the kernel, otherwise it is unfair practices. So MS opens up and holes appear. When did Apple last open up the OS's APIs for Norton or Symantic?

Apple is great and all, but iMac is custom hardware for a custom OS, of course it works, but I have seen it crash on more than one occasion and as far as viruses and hacking goes, it has a minute install base, it just isn't worth spending time on yet.  Same thing goes for FireFox vs IE. A larger install base means more will try hack it. No firefox 3 isn't perfect, 8 million downloads in one day and a huge security flaw to boot. Oh, and while on the negatives, an Apple will also set you back at lest 2 or 3 times what a pc with even Vista Ultimate will.

As for Windows ME, that was the first OS to be built on a non-Dos based kernel and it didn't manage very well. But as far as I remember, MS released Windows 2000 between it and XP as the first NT based OS and many people still use 2000.

I have played with Linux, I prefer XP and I am pissed my new (pre-installed) machine won't accept Vista SP1 just yet. I won't go back to XP at home, I turned off User Account Control and it no longer bugs me. Vista is still young, but it is a step in a new direction. Linux may get there one day, but until hardware gets sold with "Linux Certified" I will be using windows.

Call me a fanboy, I make a living providing a service to the millions of other people who, like me, live in a windows world and most would probably agree, it does just work!

(original post: http://blogs.computerworld.com/my_nightmare_trying_to_upgrade_to_vista_sp1)

Saturday 14th June 2008

After a year of pressure, the residents of 505 have decided to give in and hold a house warming - they would like to apologize to all those with new apartments who have been waiting for them, before holding theirs and in some cases have even held off buying altogether. Beer, wine and finger food will be provided to those who promise not to mess on the floor. Shoes are optional, but if worn, must be taken off before entering the apartment. Royal beer will not be served and the fridge is full if you ask for it to be chilled. Most of the snacks will be meat based or contain traces of peanuts, so if for some bizarre reason you cannot handle real food, then please bring something you find more palatable, but be prepared to share as some people just seem to be unable to take a hint. Hege and Bruce hope you all like Spanish style tapas, not that this is going to be on any menu, but they enjoy them, so it would be a good starting point for conversation. Plastic cups and paper plates will be provided and are to be used. This is because the host won't be able to clean much, due to a future recent operation. ONLY plastic cups are to be used! Seriously ONLY plastic cups! Music will be provided and yes, apartment 505 does have dance music, however its use will be limited. 80's music will most likely feature, but please don't expect this to be a given. The same applies to rock classics. Pop music such as Britney, Kylie and Robbie may be spun once or twice. However the 505 DJ is forgiving and has a broad genre under its belt, so don't worry too much. Jazz will under no circumstances be played. This is due to the 505 cats preferring not to have to handle it. While on the subject of the cats, please, no feeding the animals. They are pedigree Siamese cats, and as such have a bizarre tendency to puke on the floor and sofa when fed something they are not used to, and as mentioned previously the host will not be able to do much cleaning. Smokers will be sent down to street level for their addiction needs. Hugo and Bella are awfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco and are concerned with its effects on passive smokers. Raclette Grills are not good gifts, any attempt to bring one into the building will be met with much displeasure and if it does end badly, its reception will be taken as a challenge and approached in a like manner in the future when considering what to give others for their house warming's. These are not guidelines, but the way this event will be handled. Apartment 505 is looking to have an entertaining day and as such, any specific points may be wavered during the event. This wavering includes only those topics listed under food, beverages and music. However Jazz is seriously not music. Northern Scandinavian death metal is classified as Jazz in 505. Bruce, Hege, Hugo, Bella and the future recent breasts can't wait to welcome you to their home.

I Quit and I Don't Care

You know that feeling when you quit your job and you have to see the remainder of a month out, or whatever the period you may have decided with your soon to be ex boss. That "I just want to get out of here and start fresh, with new promises and better colleagues".

We have all tried it, ok it is going on 10 years since my last resignation, but  I do remember the feeling.

Thing is right, I am working on a project for a customer at the moment, where both the technical and the business responsible's have quit. I have kind of been left all alone. I don't feel sorry for myself or anything, but it really does suck.

I have the feeling that both of them are putting in the very minimum, I suddenly have twice the tasks assigned and when I went in today to finally have some "alone time" with the business guy, he spends it complaining that he has too many tasks to test (I submitted 15 new on Wednesday, which I coded my head off to reach the deadline for test start). To make matters a little worse he complained even more about how long it was until lunch, after which he promptly said his tasks were to complex (he is primarily testing) to complete in an afternoon, and buggered off home.

But ok he did come into the

office as promised and he did answer the most important stuff, so I got some work done. He also managed to pawn 3 new tasks on me, but fair is fair I guess, and I had someone to eat lunch with.

As for the other chap? He didn't make it as far as the office. I got a message that he would be working from home for a bit. Thing is I can see who is online and between 9am and 3:30pm, it was me and my hungry tester. Well it does suck to have to work on a Friday, when we had off yesterday.

No hard feelings then, well except that he has now managed to bail on 3 weeks worth of meetings. Guess his excuse book will soon be running on empty sooner or later, I can only hope.

But that's the problem. They don't give two shits. They have a new job. This project can tank and they will simply blame apartheid or colonialism. It isn't so easy for those left behind.

So just to end off this little rant, I would like to say "Sorry Peter Bolgann, Dick Putter, Hendrik Fourie, Malcolm Thomson, Edgars IT, Mercantile Lisbon IT and all the other people I may have left in the shit".

...Nokia N95 8GB 3 - 1 iPod Touch (thanks Panoman and 505)

Mugabe continued.

But first, if you got to this blog via a barcode, leave a comment please!

Ok now that that's over.

One month ago I wrote that Mugabe was a twat (once again, sorry Mom), since then a good number of days have passed under the bridge and so I was wondering.

Is he still a monkey loving dictator?

Yes, the current most mentally disturbed despot is indeed still a pure, unadulterated arsehole.

Come on Africa, wake up and smell the coffee, these people you vote for (or in Zimbabwes case don't vote for) are people like you and I. However you are giving them power. Stand up tall and kick some ass. They ain't going anywhere and neither are you, as long as you stand there and take the abuse.

On a happier note, I finally found out that my phone is addicted to viral advertising...

Spread the word, barcodes are cool. N95 2 - iPod 1

Mugabe is a twat! (Sorry Mom, but he is)

My walk between the station in Malmparken and Logica each day takes me over this little grass covered mound of earth, not dissimilar to the knoll now so infamous in Dallas Texas. Nothing strange there, however the last two weeks have seen it morph during the evenings.

In the afternoons when  I leave, the hillock is green, the sun is mildly warm and birds are happily chirping for whatever reasons birds chirp. Pleasant, yes. However on my return each morn, it has been covered in a thin layer of snow.

Yes snow, and while bitter winds hamper my enjoyment of the suns glowing rays, the only birds hardy, could be read dumb, enough to be flapping around are ravens.

It's the end of March, and yet nighttime seems to insist that winter
drag on fruitlessly into what clearly is spring. I mean in a few days
time we move the garden furniture out and the little hand an hour
forward. Summer is fast approaching, but mother nature just doesn't get it.

Now I am totally against the whole Bush stance on global warming, I do believe we need icecaps and polar regions, but I will be flying really fuel hungry jets as much as possible, if the seasons don't catch a wake up soon and stick to the program.

While I am on the topic, why the bloody friggin hell did Mrs Clinton have to go and screw it up so badly. I can't vote, what with not being american and all, but she had mine. However now is a different story. Bill may have buggered up and followed his willy, but at least he didn't have video evidence available to the public when he lied. Jeez woman: "I did not have sexual relations with that sniper". Either you got shot at or you didn't, don't make out like you did. It didn't make a difference. You were there, well some of the time, but that's what counts.

 

Now however Obama has won hands down. Why are politicians so full of shit. At least Mugabe has the colonialism excuse. But don't get me started on that arsehole!