Book!

Now I'm the proud owner of a hand-signed edition of bunnies "Hacking the X-Box" book :-).

Computer Ticket

During my commute from work I saw that guy with his computer sitting in the train whom I cowardly photographed from where he could not see me.

Desert Climate

Because of the hot weather here in germany, the HERA accelerator has problems dissipating all the heat the overdesigned and energy wasting machinery generates.

All provisions to reduce the cooling-water temperature have been exhausted. Feedback transmitters are off, circumfence-voltage is down to the bare minimum and the HF-power has been moved to the west . Mr. Hurdelbrink has (developed?) operation-modes for winter and summer, but not for desert climate.

A nice evening.

Tinkering, Chatting, Eating.

Heat.

awaiting new toys...

I ordered myself new toys...

Learning how to program....

Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats

T-Mobile tries to pull a fast one.

So I get a phonecall from my friendly T-Mobile user-care-agent, a very friendly saxony-accent woman who is tremendously grateful that I'm a loyal customer since 5 years. And to thank me for my loyalty, they want to offer me a FREE extra SIM-card for my mobile phone which I can give to friends or family members. I ask her if that's the same offer another friendly, saxony-accent woman, who was very grateful for my loyalty, made me half a year ago, the FREE one with the minimum turnover of 8 EURO or so? But no, this time, it's completely different. That card is FREE and does NOT have any minimum takeover. Quite the contrary, for 7 EUR per month I get 20 minutes of FREE call-time! Unfortunately she was not able to explain the difference between the two offers in a way I could understand and I politely rejected her offer and wished her a nice day. She ended the call by assuring me that she noted the fact that I'm not interested. Just as the other friendly woman with the saxony accent had told me half a year ago.

Office Temperature 30°C

Its really great weather, currently. Unfortunately it's also quite warm in my office. As long as some wind blows its tolerable though.

Holes

I just want to use the opportunity to direct the valued readers of this blog to the Wikipedia entry regarding holes. There are always too many where you don't need any, and when you desperately need them they are not there. Be wise and keep some Portable Holes in stock.

1st time on the berg

I was at the berg for the first time in my life... and I had a sausage roll with mustard, not with Ketshup.

IPSEC

Jun 5 21:12:55 entropy racoon: INFO: IPsec-SA established: ESP/Transport 192.168.1.36[0]->192.168.2.33[0] spi=254685122(0xf2e2fc2)
21:21:20.338991 IP 192.168.1.36 > 192.168.2.33: AH(spi=0x07252808,seq=0x6): ESP(spi=0x0f2e2fc2,seq=0x6), length 76
21:21:20.339403 IP 192.168.2.33 > 192.168.1.36: AH(spi=0x723baa29,seq=0x8): ESP(spi=0x29eed679,seq=0x8), length 76 < I played around with IPSEC today, it's quite some fun after you have found out all the rough edges :-). But now, hooray, ipsec between the windows-notebook and one linux-machine.

golden cone

Where I live, some prehistoric golden-cone has been found few years ago which gave one of the trails it's name: „Goldkegelweg“ (golden-cone hike).

Very bad code.

Just had a look at legacy code that spans several pages in this style:

 DO 13 K = 1,N
    Z(6) = U(K,I)
    U(K,I) = Z(5) * Z(6) - Z(4) * U(K,J)
    U(K,J) = Z(4) * Z(6) + Z(5) * U(K,J)
    IF(K .EQ. I .OR. K .EQ. J) GOTO 13
    H(I,K) = Z(5) * H(K,I) - Z(4) * H(K,J)
    H(J,K) = Z(4) * H(K,I) + Z(5) * H(K,J)
    H(K,I) = H(I,K)
    H(K,J) = H(J,K)
13  CONTINUE

All variables have 1 or two characters and it is full of magic constants and meaningless array indices.

Rubber chicken.

Don't ask.

Rain...

On my last day in Hamburg it is too rainy to do something non-work related - like visiting the city. That's sad.

The queens cheese

Phil, one of the queen's folk dancers just joined the shiftcrew of the experiment. And not only is he coming to do my work, he even brought delicious cheese, bread, grapes and olives.

Nice guestroom...

I worried that I would not have a nice guestroom but would get one with shared showers and bathrooms. Insted I got one of the rooms for disabled persons with a huuuuuuge shower.

Dumbfounded

I just read a email from one of the bosses that people would not be allowed to work more than 10 hours straight. That's the same person who, about half a year ago, told me that the minimum work expected from underlings would be 11 hours a day (9AM-8PM) including saturdays. Now someone probably pointed out that working 24 hours and having an accident would be considered grossly negligent, insurance would not pay or rather try to get the money back from those bosses. Wow, it took only one heart-attack, one almost fatal accident (that I know of) and the danger of having to pay for lifelong medical care to reach that conclusion. I'm amazed it went that fast.

Related: Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared CS. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash

Sand (sequel)

It's good to have friends when you need them the most, which, sometimes, is for such mundane tasks as moving sand. So here goes a big thank you to Phil who helped me with this task and additionally beared listening to all my slander about work.