Flahed out

Seeing as I didn’t get a chance to update the ‘blog yesterday, I’ll take this opportunity to congratulate John & Julie, who got hitched yesterday. So congratulations you two and best wishes for a wonderful life together.

In other less fun news, my exam is rushing inexorably towards me at breakneck speed – kind of like a train in a tunnel. Regardless of how well prepared I may or may not be, these kind of things always terrify me. However, things are looking a little brighter, as I discovered yesterday that the two-day exam is all labs and doesn’t include a written section.

I never cease to be amazed by the way people profess their interest in something UNTIL it’s made available, and then promptly change their minds. The level of interest on the ILUG mailing lists in training and certification has always been apparently quite high. However, nobody seems to be actually interested in obtaining same as we’re looking to run a RHCE training course here and can’t get enough people to fill a class of 12. And we’d be running it at Red Hat’s prescribed rate, unlike a certain Dublin training company who seem to be adding rounghly 15% on top.

Ah well, I suppose some people just like to talk.

Still waiting on the DSL. Apparently, though the order was submitted by Esat to eircom on 31st March, eircom only acknowledged it on 8th April. If that’s the pace they’re working at, I may as well abandon hope of getting it any time soon. Damn this is frustrating.

On the other hand, the wireless network at home is great, and will be very impressive (well, I’ll be impressed) once it has a DSL connection.

Heading down to Doolin for another get-together on Friday, though of course because the bloody state continues to impose religious fasting days on us regardless of whether or not we are in any way religious, the pubs will be closed. Better hit the off-license on Thursday.

…if not exactly shiny Hopefully the weather will pick up though. Other things have started to go wrong, mind you… Irish Rail have pulled the Cobh train til the end of the month, for “essential line upgrades”, so I have to get a bus to and fro. Still, at least the bus is generally on time

Went to Dublin on Friday evening, to do a bit of work for my brother. His new PC is fantastic. 1Gb RAM, 160Gb of disk, 2.4Ghz P4 processor, ATI Radeon 9000… the list goes on, as do the constant upgrades.

I also picked up, on Saturday evening, a D-Link DI-614+ AirPlus Enhanced 2.4GHz Wireless Router, and an Alcatel Speedtouch Pro DSL modem. So I have lots of stuff to play with at home. The only damper was failure to get Samba working properly with WinXP Home and WinME on Sunday morning, which was down to authentication problems. I’ll have to read up on it when I’ve time.

It occurred to me last night that people in Ireland, the UK and the rest of Europe might be better served by a European thinkgeek-type website than the existing US-based one. People have been complaining about import duties being (seemingly arbitrarily) imposed on products they have been buying from the US.

I’m very tempted to look into what it would entail to start up such a site with a view to setting up something small scale initially. It would probably be better though to supply merchandise from Germany than Ireland, as German prices are reasonable.

Definitely something to think about, if the demand is there, given the current economic climate.

Not really, but I did buy myself a cheap desk, swivel chair and some surge protectors over the weekend. I’ve set up the alcove at the bottom of the living room as my office now, so Louise is happy, I’ve finally got all of the computers and other bits out of the bedroom. Ah, domestic bliss.

Had a barbecue out at her parents place last night too, great weather for it, and a good time was had by all. Especially those of us who headed down to Conna afterwards to see Monty’s Pass arriving home. Our timing was impeccable, we arrived ten minutes before the horse, and Lou’s little nephew was delighted that he even got to pat the horse.

Just realised, I haven’t made any entry in this ‘blog since last Wednesday, my longest break yet. Probably because I was having so much fun with the wireless kit that was delivered on Thursday. All I need now is an Ethernet->Wireless bridge/router and for my bloody DSL to be set up, and I’ll be a very happy man. Though more money wouldn’t go astray either

Just lost a big chunk of data to a filesystem problem following three consecutive kernel panics as I played with a binary wireless (rtl8180) driver. Damn. That never happened before. But then, I was planning on starting afresh with Linux Mandrake 9.1 anyway. It would have been nice to have the opportunity to back things up first though.

Now to find my hsf linmodem drivers somewhere on the web, as the link from www.linmodems.org is broken.

… I rarely seem to update this ‘blog at the weekend. Not that much HAPPENS at the weekend, but it’s the principle of the thing

I had a great weekend up in Maynooth at my parents house. Unsuccessfully tried to crack my first copy-protected game, Grand Theft Auto 3, so that I have a backup copy and don’t have to carry the original around with me. I’ll probably just have a look for a ‘No CD’ crack instead when I have time.

Also bought a WLAN card from Proinnsias for only e25. It’s a Rtl8180-based card which works happily under Windows with the supplied drivers, but has binary only modules for Linux, specifically Red Hat 7.1 / 7.2 / 7.3 / 8.0. As I’m running Mandrake 9.1 (thanks Pron!) this poses something of a problem. Forced loading of the drivers leads to kernel panics within 5-10 minutes. They have been kind enough to supply some source, though the important stuff is still in a pre-compiled object file. Well, I will get it running… one way or another.

Heading up to Maynooth for the weekend this afternoon to see the parents and my one sibling who hasn’t left the country. Louise is going to crucify me though, because I forgot to make up an MP3 CD for the car going up. Still, it’s probably better than having to listen to ‘Blue’ and ‘Nelly’ all the way to Maynooth

Broke my licensed copy of the software I’m supposed to be using to study for my exam too last night. Normally I’d get great satisfaction over that but this necessitates a bug report, which means I can’t study over the weekend. And I still have to do the exam on April 28th. Dammit.

Well, I’ve just resigned as Secretary of the ILUG. Under article 7.2 of the constitution, I’m required to give 14 days notice, but I’ve volunteered to stay on until they can co-opt someone to replace me. At least, I don’t think it makes sense to hold an EGM so close to the AGM.

I’ve been feeling for some time that what with time & money constraints, I should stand down and let someone else take over. Someone with fresher and more radical ideas (and more time). I feel that the committee needs a good shake up and that the AGM (due in May or June, IIRC) would be a good time.

My reasons for finally resigning now are simple. I don’t have the time to put into origanising anything for the LinuxWorld Expo, nor will I be even able to attend. So good luck to my replacement whoever (s)he may be.

…or am I not able to get at blogs.linux.ie from an IOLFree dialup account? Maybe I should stop being so cheap and PAY!

Well, back at work today after a fabulous weekend, where I got to see almost the whole family. Must do these things more often. As a result, am heading to Maynooth at the weekend to see my parents and bring a whole load of boxsets of Red Hat 8 up for LinuxWorld/ICT-Expo. Assuming I can get them in time. Working on it though.

Also http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ has been updated again finally. Just as well, I had been having doubts about whether or not he’d survived the bombings on Friday night.

No, I haven’t got it yet, but…

I was planning on going for the crappy 256k down / 128k up residential service with a 4GB cap offered by Esat BT for e54.45 per month including VAT. I got the line test done and was waiting for the application forms to arrive. However, I spoke to “she who must be obeyed (or else)” about it last night and we came to the conclusion that the 108.90 per month offering which is 512k down / 256k up with no cap would be infinitely preferable as we wouldn’t have to watch our traffic. I rang ‘em this afternoon and they’re sending me out new forms. And they have no problems with me running Linux either

Back at work again after a long and (mostly) relaxing weekend. Even got to go to Killarney for the day on Saturday and have lunch in Panis Angelicus (My Saturday morning breakfast café when I lived in Killarney), though that was a little disappointing – the staff have changed and the current crop are into loud crappy music. Still, the paninis are as good as ever

Looking forward to the big family pissup get together in the Rochestown Park Hotel this coming Saturday. Should be good craic, and my sister’s coming across from London too so that’s good. AND my brother is going to drag himself from Maynooth on Friday with some of his mates to go on the batter in Cork. The other brother unfortunately is not going to make it from France, but I’m sure I’ll get to see him over the summer anyway.

Esat are supposed to give me a shout tomorrow to let me know whether or not I can get DSL on my line, once they’ve run the line test. Fingers crossed. I’ll only be going for the e60p.m. 256k offering but it’s a big improvement over 56k.

… in spite of the weather and the fact that it’s Friday and the start of the bank holiday weekend. A friend got laid off today. Remembering what it’s like and being only too aware what the market conditions are like right now is really getting me down.

On the upside, I do have someone to blame. If it wasn’t for the uncertainty over war in the Gulf, the international economy wouldn’t be as bad as it is. Investors are running scared, and that’s thanks to one warmongering US president, in the run-up to the US presidential elections, looking for his kickbacks from the US defense contractors.

If I sound bitter, good. I am.

Aaargh! Ok, something else went wrong. It may have been minor, but it was still irritating. I thought today was Wednesday. All bloody day! So of course my earlier entry was called Wednesday the 13th, until some kind soul pointed it out, and I had to go change it.

Still, everything else is mostly ok. Eircom have told me they’re going to charge me 130 euro (how do you get the damn euro symbol in Linux?) to install a phone line and that it’s going to take four weeks. 4 WEEKS?! There’s already a (disconnected) line into the place from a previous tenant, and they’ve allocated me my new phone number, so how is it going to take 4 weeks to get an engineer to go the exchange and enable the bloody thing? I WANT DSL!!

In about 30 minutes, I’m going home, and then I’m going to drink myself to sleep.

Though I categorically deny being superstitious, today did start with me forgetting what in heavens name I was supposed to log in to my ‘blog as. Bugger it. That was particularly embarrassing as I had to go grab Donncha from the IRC channel and ask him. Well, nevermind. If that’s all that goes wrong today, I’ll consider myself lucky.

Also started this morning by having an IRC bot accuse me of being “completely deranged”… I think it might have set the tone for the day.

Note to self: Learn CSS, so I can make my ‘blog look cool

Finally, the application is doing what I want. Thanks Paul and others for the info, it was just what I needed. Today has been an uneventful day all round really, though the news of the murder of Zoran Djindjic, Prime Minister of Serbia was disturbing to say the least, given the amount of other (US-sponsored) shit happening at the moment.

Seriously! I’m not actually being sarcastic, funnily enough. This is the second day in a row it’s been sunny. The scary part is that I find it such a novelty. Of course the office in which I sit is currently colder than the outside temperature, but you can’t have everything.

Currently stressing out over a little app I need to write for our testing environment. The upshot of it is, I need it to be able to execute another application I specify on the command line, grab it’s process id, and monitor it at regular intervals etc. However, I can’t find a portable way to grab the process id (Portability note: It has to compile on Linux, HP-UX, and Solaris > 2.6). hmm. Time for a coffee. For this and other fascinating topics, tune in later.

Since this morning, I have had a grand total of thirteen calls from friends and family members calling to wish me a happy birthday. Only one of these people didn’t take the opportunity to tell me that I’m getting really old and should be looking into life insurance, coffins etc. And that’s only because the person in question was dying with a hangover anyway. Needless to say though, I took full advantage of his predicament and discussed at length the nutritional values of large amounts of dairy cream, at which point he dropped the phone and the last I heard was the sound of running feet.

And now, back to work. I have to get out of here on time if I’m to make my dinner reservation.

So being 28 today, I decided that it was time to start one of these yokes. Been thinking about it on and off for a while, but Donncha putting this facility up on linux.ie really clinched it. Anyway, this is more in the nature of a test post for now. More later.