My first renewal of mongers.org failed for some reason, so I tried again, and payment was confirmed. I have secured the mongers.org name for two years now.
Went to Kingsland for dinner with Dave, "Nola", Jerry and David. Went with Dave to see a friend of his sing in a band called Lure. Well written songs, well mixed tunes and a terrific voice on a tiny female vocalist. I should have gotten a copy of their EP.
My new home office has finally been wired. I have a real desk, and an almost real chair to sit on. If you notice I seem more relaxed or more at ease with myself, when we are chatting, the fact that I am sitting in a correct position probably has something to do with it. If you do not notice an improvement, you are either unobservant or I am having a bad day.
I have caught myself in a lot of lies lately. For one, I have been telling people that the 5-6 year old supercomputer of a 80MHz 486DX I have sitting at home, which is now running OpenBSD 2.9-snapshot had 16MB RAM. This is not correct. It has 8MB RAM. When it is not made to compile software, it has almost 3MB RAM free -- note this is with the GENERIC kernel. Once I get my own kernel recompiled, I will probably have between 4 and 5 MB of RAM free during idle periods. An absolute beast of a machine, I tell ye.
Have you ever wanted to make someone else happy? The reward of seeing absolute calm and bliss in someone's eyes is probably the most mesmerising experience I have ever had. I find that, to make her happy for the briefest of moments, I will gladly endure situations in which I would normally be uncomfortable for one reason or another. The reward cancels all such things, and makes it all worth while.
So today, I will give myself the reward of seeing her happy.
I seem to find less and less time to record my experiences lately. I do consider this a step down, and will strive for greater consistency in my efforts.
I purchased two new toys today. One is a Wacom Graphire USB drawing tablet. I recall a time when I would read every book on drawing I could find, and then sit at my desk for hours, creating monsters and hairy hands out of nothing. Perhaps I will again soon. If I do, I shall share with everyone. I am taking suggestions on a name for such a section, as gallery is already taken. I would prefer not to mix photographs with my unreal creatures. Think of the misunderstandings it could cause!
Wacom have their own section, where they show what is possible to create when using the right talent and tools.
I also acquired a ELSA MicroLink ISDN device, because the ProLink ISDN T/A has been the source of much frustration lately. This new device is also USB, and seems to be unsupported by my OS of choice. This will soon change, I am certain. It supports Multilink PPP which allows me to bundle the two channels for greater download speeds. Frankly, I am quite satisfied if it does not kill the connection, every time I send more than 7 kb/sec.
Confirmed my order of the Dell PowerEdge. It should arrive next week, pending me getting around to paying for the thing. Even if it arrives before my little trip to Denmark, I doubt I will be able to bring the box online before I go.
I am looking forward to getting the beast up and running. Gorm has been very kind by giving me an account on his machine, but the quality of the network provider he has chosen causes me hardship on a daily basis.
I have been working a bit more on the Site Handbook in preparation of the live date, but it still not complete. I would also want to get account skeletons set up correctly before I start creating accounts.
Had a discussion with Jerry on code quality. I ventured that the reason projects like FreeBSD et al started to implement kernel level ACLs and other Trusted OS features was a direct result of realising they are horrible programmers, and so they only way of making their systems vaguely secure is to break the classic UNIX security model, and come up with a more restrictive one.
I was winding him up, of course, but unfortunately he caught on much too quickly. He spoiled my fun. It seems a more subtle approach is required.
Many UNIX system administrators will completely miss the point of implementing Trusted OS features, as most have too many bad habits to make use of a more restricted security model.
Gave praise to the Powers That Be for cancelling my 9am meeting. I am not certain which of the Gods came up with the idea that work is nine to five in the first place, but I have a very good view of what should be done to him (or her).
Started working on an idea in my head for a service much like Gibsons Security Scanner, except mine would be free of hype and some of the preposterous phrases seen elsewhere: "Your computer is operating in STEALTH MODE" (including the bold typeface and use of uppercase), "We are now trying to contact the hidden Internet server within your computer," and others.
I always did like the irony in Steve Gibson wanting you to download and run a piece of software to perform a remote security evaluation. Uh, like, hello?
I have changed the direction on my repository of jokes to also include other types of funny material. I hope you will enjoy. I have also created a muppets page as an ode to some of the fuckwits I have not gladly suffered.
I will arrive in Copenhagen on May 4 at 2pm, where I will be meeting up with Mercur, Picco, Hester & Goopher at 1900 hours, CET. Drop me a note if you want to join us. Much fun will certainly be had.
This Sunday, a 23 year old man was found floating in The Liffey. He had drowned of course, and post-mortem analysis suggested he had been punched in the face, and dumped in the river. Futher investigation pointed the Garda to a 19 year old friend who had been in a drunken fight with the 23 year old.
My point is that I often feel like punching someone in the face and throwing them in the river. I think I might even feel better if I made it a regular occurance.
My 9am meeting tomorrow has not been cancelled. sigh.
People who waste hours playing Windows solitaire (instead of learning) ought to be shot through the head and raped. In that order. Twice.
Felt sick today. Very sick. Diarrea and pukey sick. Slept much and often. Yay. I wonder if what I am feeling is the punishment for my sins, after tax.
You may have noticed by now that I changed the splash screen of my home page. It is difficult making it provide meaningful entry links to everything contained on my wonderful home page, while keeping the text on the page brief and flowing. Did that make sense?
Having read my diary, a friend of a friend queried "is he (me) for real?", and once it had been established I am indeed for real, she promptly classified me as "weird." -- sex was out of the question, she said. Never a break.
Still, not a bad day for my ego. </sarcasm>
Yesterday's entry resulted in a number of responses, and I think this is the first time an entry in my diary has caused more than one person to comment on the entry in question.
Most seemed to agree, and although my girlfriend fully agreed with the message I projected as my conclusion, she certainly did not agree with the reasoning I used to draw said conclusion. After much discussion, we agreed to disagree on the method I used, but she did bring one thing up I want to clarify: she said some might interpret my message as saying "There is no reason to live," and they might even take drastic measures based on this new belief.
I agree that is one possible meaning that certain individuals might draw from it. It might prompt them to give up hope, and simply drift through the rest of their life, or perhaps even take their own life. For the record, I wish to state that anyone who might commit suicide or otherwise give up on their life, either has a result of reading my diary, or simply by sharing my view, has my full support.
There ought not be room in the world for such weak individuals, and the sooner they all put me and my kind out of the misery of having to interact with them on a daily basis, the better.
If you kill yourself, be sure to leave a note to your loved ones, ensuring them that nothing they did prompted you to take your own life.
Thank you.
Speaking of eradicating someone! I watched "The Cell" this weekend. Whichever movie reviewer was quoted on the cover as comparing it to "Silence of The Lambs" deserves to be clubbed to death with a foam cushion. I do not know where he or she got off, comparing an American fuckwit such as Vincent D'Onofrio to Sir Anthony Hopkins. Feel my wrath, muppetboy.
PS: This is my good side.
Here is a reality check for the optimists among you:
Nothing you do will make a lickin' difference.
It that not wonderful? In the grand scheme of things, you are nothing. Absolutely fuck all. You could teach someone to read and write. Good for them. It does not make a difference. You could devote your life to helping the poor in Africa, and it will not make a difference. Every other part of the world carries on, oblivious to the results of your work. You could be a doctor, and you find a cure for cancer that will help save 4 million people from certain death, it will not matter: you are still going to die, and the best you can hope for is that people talk about you 50 years later, or perhaps 200 years later. What does it matter?
The world will continue towards dooms day, and some day all life on Earth will die, with a few micro-organisms living at the bottom of the sea as the only possible exception.
With that in mind, I am trying to think of a reason not to shoot every mindless twit I encounter, or possibly even engage in torture for my own amusement. To be honest, I can not think of a reason. In the grand scheme of things, it will not make a difference if I kill 20 people a day, but I would feel a whole lot better for the duration of my stay in this pitiful world.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, lazy-ass moronic ignorants are humans, too. It would not matter if I killed other humans at random. I would eventually be locked up either in a prison or a hospital -- that would not matter either, but the rest of my stay here would be uncomfortable.
What does all this mean? It means you need to make the best of any situation for you and the people you love, at any cost that does not carry significant risk of making you uncomfortable for longer than you can stand.
That is the meaning of life, right there.
Woke up around 10am which is quite reasonable for me, especially considering I felt like shit yesterday. Felt much better today. Stayed in work past midnight, though.
Spent some time re-writing the splash page for mongers.org. As I firmly believe in cool URIs don't change, I will not put a href to the new prototype here. A search engine might pick it up and link to it for years to come. That would be bad.
The prototype I am working on is available at the following address, if you are dying to see it. Note that if you read this much later than today's date, the document probably won't exist. With any luck, it will actually be the real splash page of mongers.org, if the hardware is online.
http://a.area51.dk/new/4.html
I now have XFree 4.0.3 running 1600x1200 resolution. I can fit 9 terminals on each desktop, of which I have 6. Other than that, today's insightful question must be:
<dave> To conduct government business electronically, participants need an
environment of trust that is at least equivalent to that of paper-based
operations
<dave> hehe.
<alex> Is paper trusted?
<dave> obviously.
<alex> So, paper cuts are like.. failed trust relationships?
</sarcasm>
Woke up past noon, when Dave rang me. The fucker. Told him I would not be going into work today. Emptied 5 gallons of snot into the toilet. Felt dead. My head was throbbing. Throat was OK.
Wanted to get some work done, but just couldn't think. Should take today as a sick day.
Spent 10 minutes staring at the following, when I wanted to update my diary. How fast can you spot the problem? (Bear in mind I was sick, tired and very much expecting it to work, as "I had changed nothing.")
~$ pwd /usr/home/a ~$ cd public_html/ ~/Public_html$ cd diary/ bash: cd: diary/: Permission denied ~/public_html$ ls -ld diary/ drw----r-x 2 a users 512 Apr 16 10:17 diary/ ~/public_html$ id uid=1007(a) gid=100(users) groups=100(users), 1033(stilhed), 1034(a) ~/public_html$ cd .. ~$ chgrp -R a * ~$ cd public_html ~/public_html$ chmod 777 diary ~/public_html$ cd diary/ ~/public_html/diary$ cd .. ~/public_html$ chmod 0 diary ~/public_html$ chmod o+rx diary ~/public_html$ chmod u+rwx diary ~/public_html$ ls -ld diary drwx---r-x 2 a a 512 Apr 16 10:17 diary ~/public_html$ cd diary ~/public_html/diary$
When I spotted the problem, I remembered running a strange find | xargs command recently.
I also received the following list of proposed (lame-ass) changes to the Undernet ircd.
1) Removal of server notices from users This was implemented by preventing non-opers from setting +s. Opers can oper, set +s, and then deoper and maintain server notices. 2) Removal of server wallops from users This was implemented by making all server generated Wallops into DESYNC's, and preventing non opers from setting +g (as above). 3) Removal of operator wallops from users Users cannot set +w, as above. 5) Removal of MAP from users. This is replaced with a notice explaining that the command has been removed and to refer to the website to see the list of services. 6) Removal of LINKS from users. This is the same as MAP. I'm worried however that this may cause problems with some clients who expect links to work. Oh well, we'll find out soon enough. 8) removal of TRACE from users This has been flagged as an oper only command. 9-13) Removal of STATS except for P, u and W. Non opers can't use most of stats. (bletch!) 14) Removal of server names in net break sign-offs. This is done by replacing the message with "*.net *.split", this is done to try and and make sure that clients that expect to see these messages won't break. 15) Removal of server names in replies to /WHOIS This is replaced with "irc.undernet.org". Note: users can still use remote whois and can discover if a user is local or remote. (they have an idle time or not)
I see the point in hiding the IRC server a user is on. It is an attempt at directing any Denial of Service attacks at a user rather than a specific IRC server. It is a braindead solution.
The removal of IRC server names also means that skilled IRC users will not be able to gather on servers close the people they talk to, it will be impossible to re-connect to a server that is less lagged. One will need to bring bots online that act as DCC hubs, where people can connect to.
Now we just need general support for SSL'd DCC connections.
Woke up just before noon, not feeling well. My head was heavy, my nose was clogged up, and my throat was sore. Went into work for about 5 hours, and then went home.
I was supposed to work from home, but I was just too tired.
Days not documented in my diary were removed from the universal calendar by the Gods. Any recollection you may have of the days in question is most likely caused by lack of, or excess sex. Really.
Uffe has removed his diary from the net completely. Once again I am alone.
Speaking of alone, if you feel alone, simply close your eyes and think of me; You might have the best day of your life. 3 weeks is nothing.
Let's take a look at the numbers that shape our world:
Also woke up at 2am because I could not breathe. My tonsils had once again swelled and slime blocked my airways. A number of interesting seconds followed, as you can probably imagine.
Uhm. Yeah. What did I do today? Nothing. I even called the Chinese too late to order food. Sigh. Went to bed hungry, as always.
Started the morning by listening to Rocazino, Vaya Con Dias and live songs by Tori Amos of the usual mind blowing proportions. A day that starts like this can only get worse.
Once again started the day with meetings, which turned into more CVS sessions. Installing the latest OpenBSD snapshot which included XFree 4.0.3 broke my desktop machine to a certain degree. Lack of hardware makes it difficult to play and learn at times.
The breakage made me spend the night in work, where I listened to music and tried to wrap my head around the GUI configuration tool in XFree 4.
I did not die. Consider this a ray of hope bursting through clouds of fatigue and resistance. I recently had the pleasure of pulling someone out of a hole of misery, convincing them that not all people are worth knowing, and at times it may be required to push those aside that do not consistently bring good to your life. It may be the right thing for you as well. Life is too short to allow people to stab you down on a regular basis. Let them suffer the consequences -- perhaps they are asking for it, and are merely pushing their luck to see how far they can take it.
Coming back to reality, I spent most of the day in meetings, only to emerge from the wasteland to do CVS sessions which will pave the way for my total domination of changes to production systems.
Later I joined part of the Implementations team for a few pints, which backfired. My second pint did not go down well at all, so I excused myself and by the time I arrived home I was feeling very poor.
No jokes. You're probably still a fool, though. Sod off.