Flahed out

It’s been over 2 years since I updated this ‘blog, but I recently thought I might like to give it a try again. Oh wait… it’s after mid-day…

Lunch time.

See you later.

With a new year fast approaching, I thought I should probably make another attempt at maintaining this ‘blog properly and updating it regularly. And maybe this time it will work out. Maybe. Possibly. Well… hopefully anyway.

Anybody interested in placing a bet?

I didn’t believe it was possible. I didn’t think that insane, right-wing lunatic currently running the US economy into the ground could make me lower my opinion of him any further. I thought he’d reached rock bottom. Well… it looks like he’s bought some rock breakers, because he’s currently descending into the depths at a rate of knots.

This disgusting excuse for humanity has resorted to television ads showing bodies being carried from the ruins of the World Trade Centre in an attempt to get himself re-elected. Apparently, he believes that the biggest single failure to protect US citizens lives in recent history is something he can be proud of.

He is showing utter contempt for the feelings of victims families. This man is a mercenary who will let nothing, never mind standards of common decency, stand is his way as he attempts to get re-elected, so that he may continue spending billions of US taxpayers money making his friends in the oil and arms industries ever increasing amounts of cold hard cash.

Read the BBC article here.

This is a nice quick and easy ‘blog entry for me. A url to an image, that was posted in #linux yesterday illustrating the extent of the great Irish music rip-off.

Oh and don’t limit your music purchases to the internet, remember that few, if any, countries pay more for DVDs either.

Been “listening” in on #linux to a conversation between elrond and Stewie. Apparently purchases from CD-Wow (or other vendors) under the value of €25 do not attract duty from the customs & excise people. That’s an interesting loophole. I tend to buy no more than two CDs at a time anyway, and most of the time those purchases would come in under €25.

It’s amazing what you learn on an IRC channel for Linux heads.

N.B. This information is hearsay. I have not verified it, so I will not be held responsible for customs & excise duty on your imported goods if it turns out to be incorrect

Fresh from Donncha’s blog comes the news that the website from which I buy most of my music – CD-Wow is being sued by IRMA, the “Irish Recorded Music Association”, for illegally importing music CDs “without the copyright holders consent”. For those of you who don’t know, CD-Wow sells music CDs at a fraction of the price we pay in our high-street retail music stores.

In a vicious attempt to screw the Irish consumer, IRMA want to ensure that we have no other avenue than our massively over-priced music stores from which to purchase our music. Well, fuck ‘em. The Irish consumer is under attack from all avenues as our country becomes ever more expensive to live – to survive – in. I’ve written some emails to my local TDs complaining about it, hopefully it’ll help to raise awareness, though I’m not optimistic.

Next step is to get someone to call some of the Irish radio shows about this. Would that I could but I’m not staying on hold for half-an-hour from Kenya!

Was in my local pub out here on Tuesday night, which has a – much nicer, quieter – private members bar. Me being sort of person who doesn’t like standing in a tightly packed crowd of drunk people in the bar at the weekends, I sought out the manager and asked about membership. Apparently, because I spend so much money in the place (I’m in there most nights) and I’ve never been involved in any trouble, I qualify for membership free

So, I have to go back this evening to sort that out and have a free drink or two. Nothing like a little bit of elitism The big advantage is that I can bring along guests, so the lads can all come up.

Well, the decorations have started to go up in shopping centers here finally. I still think it’s too bloody early, but at least they’re not up in late October like at home. I’ve discovered one advantage to being away though: Louise has all the Christmas shopping done, so I don’t have to worry about that

Had a look at Daragh’s blog this morning and found this. Apparently, the UK number one track on the day I was born was “If” by Telly Savalas. Kojak. Bloody KOJAK?! Bollocks. The US one wasn’t much better. That’s what I get for being born in the mid-seventies.

Apparently my new printer/scanner/photocopier/fax machine arrived at my parents’ house on Friday, which means I’m going to be really pissed off about not being home to play with it for the next three-and-a-bit weeks. It’s a Hewlett Packard MFD, an Officejet 4110. Hours of fun. Knowing me, I’ll run up a large phone bill sending people faxes until the novelty value wears off.

Spent the weekend out here sunning myself, God the weather is great Well… there has to be at least one advantage to spending so long away from home, right?

I was rereading this earlier this morning, and it occurred to me that our local councillors are playing a dangerous game deliberately shafting first time buyers so close to the next local elections. I’m thinking that obtaining a list of councillors who support these ridiculous measures to swell the coffers and publishing it prior to the local elections would be an excellent idea. As county and city council meeting minutes are public record this shouldn’t be too difficult, if there were people in each local authority area willing to take responsibility for gathering this info.

Sometimes I really wish I didn’t have to travel so much for work

Just had lunch with the boss, and confirmed that I am indeed staying here (Nairobi) until the 19th of December. So… I’m definitely going to miss Louise’ birthday. Bugger. The extra cash will be handy though.

And before anyone asks, my duty free allowance is already used

Yep, for those of you who were having doubts, I am still alive. Just about. And still in Kenya. My return date has been put back to at least the 12th of December though I’m thinking this is only the start of it and I may not be leaving before the 19th. As long as I get back before Christmas, I don’t really care, and it’ll mean spending more time living on expenses, saving my own cash for important things like paying the bills… and there are many!

I’m discovering how hard it is to find anything interesting to put into a ‘blog when you’re onsite for a couple of months. Days run into each other and pretty much the same things happen. And if I put the really interesting stuff up here, I’d probably lose my job, or at least get sued by the client anyway.

Well, I’ll update again when I have any news or anything interesting to add.

Bloody hell. Over three months since I updated this blog. Well, for those people I haven’t spoken to in a while, this is the story. Headed off to South Africa for a total of SEVEN weeks back at the start of July (Yes, I know I said four, but that’s what I was told til I’d actually arrived!).

It’s an interesting place. Looking forward to going back at some time in the future. Car-jacking is particularly prevalent down there and thanks to a decision a few years ago to hang car-jackers, said car-jackers are now murdering their victims in an attempt to leave no witnesses. Wonderful.

The food is great down there, especially the meat. In the better restaurants, you can buy “super-aged” beef, which is aged for 21-days, and is the most tender beef I have ever eaten. I’ll miss that, as the bloody EU have banned aging for longer than 10 days. Arseholes.

There’s obviously a lot more to the country but I’d be ages typing it all out, so I’ll leave it for a while. Maybe in another days ‘blog, if I’m bored enough

So, having got back from SA on August 22nd, we promptly shagged off to Lanzarote for a week on September 11th for a bit of R & R. @Twas fun – and Lou got to hire a Megane Cabriolet, so she was bloody delighted – but I don’t think I’d have stayed for more than a week given the chance. I prefer Malta.

And now I’m in Nairobi, Kenya. I flew out on September 30th, and will be here until at least November 29th. It’s a nice place, though obviously a very poor country. People are a lot more friendly than in (certain parts of) Ireland. Most things are a lot cheaper than at home. For example, I headed out for dinner last night and had dinner (a large main course including three pints of Tusker, the local brew) for about eight euro. I’d have paid probably three times that in Cork, and more again in Dublin. Talk about Ripoff Ireland.

Anyway, better go do some work.

Thought I’d better update the ould ‘blog, to let people know that I’ll be disappearing for a while at the end of this week. I’ve been told I’m going to South Africa, specifically Johannesburg, for a minimum of 4 weeks on Sunday. I’ll be flying out of Edinburgh, where I’ll be this weekend for Dad’s 60th birthday pissup party.

I don’t know whether to be happy or not. On one hand, it is further afield than I’ve travelled before, but on the other, I won’t see Louise for the whole time. I had contemplated flying her out for a week, but the cost of doing so is more than we can afford at the moment The worst part is that I won’t even have internet access very often, so chatting to her on the internet is out too.

Oh well, think of the duty free

What a weekend… the most fun I’ve had in a long time Had a wedding to go to on Friday, Louise’s cousin got married and invited nearly 400 people for the whole thing, including five-course meal, band ’til midnight and disco til 4am. Unlike a lot of really big weddings, the atmosphere was fabulous, there was no splitting up into little cliques. I can’t say enough good things about the wedding.

The following day, we headed across to a good friend in Abbeyfeale, who took us out for dinner to a fabulous restaurant called Whytes which I would heartedly recommend followed by a short pub crawl, and back to the house to see a DVD. Followed, yesterday morning by a big fry-up. If I needed reminding about how lucky I’ve been with my friends, that was it. Thanks Mike.

Yesterday afternoon we headed out to Louise’s aunt’s house for a barbecue with most of her Dad’s side of the family. The bride and groom (see above) showed up and a great time was had by all. They left early so as to get a good night’s sleep to be prepared for their flight to New York this morning, while we stayed a little while longer.

I don’t think I ever wanted anything more than another hour in bed this morning

Apparently this isn’t really news, but I hadn’t heard of ANY plans to make a film of the Hitch-Hikers Guide. So it IS news to me. So there. Here‘s a link to what the BBC had to say on the topic today.

After a long week, spent in Reading working on a client site, I finally jumped on my Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow back to Cork at 19:10 on Friday evening. At about 20:00, 25 minutes before we were scheduled to land, we were informed that we might be rerouted to Shannon, as the ‘landing equipment’ in Cork was currently knackered and being repaired and that the airport was fogbound.

We eventually landed in Shannon at nearly 21:30, whereupon we were informed that there had been no luck in obtaining coaches to take us to Cork, but that as soon as the fog in Cork showed signs of lifting, we’d be flown down. As any Cork person knows, the chance of that happening before 9am is slim. So… de boss, who’d been chatting to some people he met on the plane announced that we were going to rent a car and drive to Cork. Brilliant. Except that it would be most convenient for him to drop me at Cork Airport rather than Cork city. hmm. Rang Louise, made arrangements for a lift. We made it to Cork Airport in 75 minutes… about 10 minutes after the bloody plane.

It worked out quite well though, as I was able to collect my baggage instead of having to come back on Saturday, for which I had other plans…

On Saturday morning at about 11:30am – after breakfast – I asked Louise to marry me. She said YES!!! Needless to say, I am now still over the moon. And she loved the ring, which really helps

The rest of the weekend is a blur, we visited a lot of relatives who were all keen to see the ring and offer their congratulations culminating in a trip to Killarney today. Now I’m totally knackered and uncharacteristically still smilling, so I’m going to bed. Good night all.

..I’ve remembered to update this ‘blog again. Feeling guilty about all of the work Donncha is putting into this blogging software is my motivation this time

My latest project at home, is to move tech-mad.org to my local server, to cut out my hosting costs and substitute them for a horrifically high electricity bill (I haven’t got one since I started running the server fulltime, but trust me, it’ll be bloody high). Still trying to decide between qmail and postfix for mail. As I know next to nothing about either, it’s not an easy task, so I’m currently trawling the web for tutorials. I want to get SMTP, POP, and IMAP all running before Monday ideally. What are the chances?

I could have sworn I updated this blog yesterday, but it must have slipped my mind…

Well, I’ve passed the exams with a mark of over 90%. That’s a relief I must say, and I’m glad they’re over. I’m now a Micromuse “Netcool Certified Consultant”. Certification at last

In other good news, Esat BT finally installed my DSL on Thursday morning. The install went perfectly and I was up and running in 30 minutes. I have hardly left my computer since A case in point: it’s 2:11am now. My excuse for being such a sad bastard is that I’m installing Mandrake 9.1 updates on my server here. Anyway… updating is finished, I’m off to bed.

I’m getting really bad at updating this ‘blog, but today is a momentous day: I’ve finally got a date for when my DSL goes in. Next Thursday the 8th is the glorious day, when all my efforts will have come to fruition. I’ll have wireless broadband throughout the apartment, and halfway up to Patrick St.

On the other hand, I have to sit the Micromuse Omnibus Netcool Certified Consultant exams all day Tuesday and Wednesday. The pass mark is 80%, though we’re expected to get 90% here in Eirteic. Very high standards and all that. I’ll have my nose stuck in a laptop (hopefully not literally) until then so no more updates until next Thursday probably.