Cristian Livadaru's Blog

Wasting Your Time

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:44:50 +0100

December 2023 I wrote a post Happiness is temporary; all scenarios lead to loss which was inspired after an episode of Rick and Morty. Little did I know that 2026 this will still be the most read post on my blog and it’s still getting traffic. I had no idea that day when I wrote it what the next chapter of my life will be, …

How I got into tech

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 12:44:27 +0100

One decision, one choice, it was the start of my tech journey. Still asking myself today, what if? What if I would have gotten that toy I wanted? Would I have done something different today? Would I work with wood instead of computers? Guess I will never know, but I do remember how I got here, and I am happy for that decision.

Traveling Through Time

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 13:49:31 +0100

When blogs started to pop up, I questioned the sense of it but did eventually gave into it. Now, over 20 years later, I am glad I did it and can now travel through time and rediscover my old self.

Coincidences

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:07:57 +0100

Many things in life start based on a coincidence. Some might say it’s destiny, faith, universes bigger plan. In the end it doesn’t matter, coincidence or not. I won’t be the one clarifying this mystery. But the stories these coincidences started are worth sharing.

We're heading towards a dark future

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:16:28 +0100

Current political events are bringing up too many memories that shouldn’t be brought back. We’re heading towards a dark future, and if we continue down this path we will end up in a place I never thought would be possible again.

Enshittification of Social Media

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 16:05:24 +0100

A short talk about the current state of social media or rather it‘s Enshittification. What options are there and what are the downsides?

Tailscale Broken After Docker Upgrade

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:13:25 +0100

After updating my linux server, which installed containerd.io 1.7.24, tailscale inside docker stopped working.

Wonderwall

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:14:50 +0100

Songs, they have this magic abbility to reappear after multiple years when they do, they bring a backpack full of memories with them. Sometimes, our encounter with an old fammiliar song might come from an unexpected place.

Authentik Authorization Webhook

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 14:38:33 +0200

We have a custom application that needs to authenticate users against Authentik, but we also need to assign this user to a group in Paperless NGX. To accomplish this, we will use the Authentik Notification Webhook.

Sync UCS LDAP to Authentik

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:53:39 +0200

We decided to use Authentik as our SSO solution, but we need to sync the users from our UCS LDAP to Authentik. The LDAP sync is not that hard, but there are some pitfalls to look out for to getting the right values mapped from LDAP to Authentik.

Database Backups in Docker with Tailscale

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 10:51:26 +0200

Running a Rails application in Docker, with a PostgreSQL is nothing new, the database however needs to be reachable from another site through where Tailscale comes in. This might make backups a bit more complicated, but it’s not impossible.

Postfix complains about Cannot start TLS: handshake failure

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:39:11 +0000

Ok, this was a huge waste of time going down this rabbit hole. Postfix complains about handshake failure when trying to send emails over TLS. Non TLS works fine, receiving mails via TLS works fine, what gives?

Backing up databases to Minio S3 with Docker

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 12:39:11 +0000

You have lots of databases and you want to back them up to a central location. You could use a cloud provider, but what if you want to keep the data on your own server? Minio S3 is a great solution for this and with Docker it’s easy to set up.

Generating let's encrypt wildcard SSL certificates with INWX and DNS challenge

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 12:39:11 +0000

Using INWX as a DNS provider for the DNS challenge with nginx-proxy-manager and Let’s Encrypt wildcard SSL certificates is easy, but what the hell is that shared secret?

Generating let's encrypt wildcard SSL certificates with ISPConfig and DNS challenge

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 11:07:11 +0000

Generating wildcard SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt and DNS challenge is a bit tricky with ISPConfig. It could be very straight forward but there is a little bug in the ISPConfig API or the nginx-proxy-manager that calls the API. Here is how you can work around it.

Happiness is temporary; all scenarios lead to loss

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 20:41:42 +0200

If you could be really happy but knew from the start it would end in sadness, would you choose that happiness or would you avoid it?

Fixing GitLab CI: dial tcp: lookup docker no such host

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 11:41:42 +0200

Another issue I keep encountering with project upgrades, which I tend to forget about, is that during the build phase on GitLab CI, the old dind (Docker in Docker) setup no longer works, resulting in a ’no such host’ error message.

Conferences with childcare

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 11:12:00 +0000

Childcare at conferences is something that I see way to little of but should be done much more often. While kids have fun and learn new things, parents can do the same. We are wasting future talent by not offering parents and children chances to learn new things.

💥Solving max_grant_frames under XEN

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:48:42 +0200

Being hit with this problem a second time, I noticed that the initial fix was not enough. There are pieces of informations scattered around several mailinglists, forum posts, blogs and also a very detailed technical explenation on what is happening under the hood, but I couldn’t find a post describing the solution. So here goes my take on how to solve this.

📣 Sensu Notifications

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 06:48:42 +0200

Notifications in sensu can be complicated, but sometimes you just need to think out of the box. Maybe there are better ways to distribute the notifications. Just send them to some central place where you have more control on distributing the notifications. While you could do this in sensu, it definitely is a pain in the ass to constantly run ansible to deploy the changes.

Wish you were here

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A wonderful book, a story of someone leaving on a life-changing trip caused by the lockdown. Leaving for a short break, accepting the unknown caused by the lockdown, and getting your life turned upside down, all plans vanished in thin air. Realizing, that everything you planned is all a sham and you were just living that plan but living your life.

The always-connected generation

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A scurity issue here, an IT emergency there, some “critical infrastructure” going now and needs to be dealt with right now. We keep taking or accepting more and more responsibilities and duties which works out fine in the beginning but at some point we realise we’ve dug ourselves into a hole which is hard to get out of or don’t notice at all that we are in a hole until it’s much to late.

The beauty of film

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There are some movies which are more then just movies. Pulling you in, taking you on a journey through time, a journey through emotions, raising questions but not giving answers, leaving you to piece it all together and give it some meaning.

Immortality

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 12:29:00 +0000

There are all kind of ways to become imortal, you can build something great, you can be a massive tyranic asshole, or do some small things and become imortal through your children.

Home Assistant With TimescaleDB and Grafana

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 16:30:42 +0200

In my pursuit of adding some nice graphs to my home assistant installation I first started going down the InfluxDB path but quickly had to give up and used TimescaleDB instead

Death

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 18:29:20 +0000

It’s a hard to talk about subject, but the earlier we talk about it, the easier it gets since we will have to deal with it at some point. It might get easier, but it always will remain a hard to talk about subject.

Copying data between two seafile servers

Thu, 19 May 2022 07:17:25 +0000

You could just copy data between two seafile servers via seafile client or web, but life’s to short for that.

mimemagic breaking bundle install

Wed, 18 May 2022 12:35:44 +0000

This is no new issue and most likely it will only be relevant to older rails projects, but since I faced the same issue again and meanwhile forgot what it was about and how it should be fixed, here a note to self.

For more details and an appropriate header image for this subject, check out Christine’s Post on this issue: What’s up with mimemagic breaking everything?

The Error

While running bundle install

Privacy focused voice assistant with Rhasspy and Home Assistan

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 15:01:04 +0000

Having my issues with privacy in regards to voice assistants like Alexa or Google home, I needed something that works without cloud services, Rhasspy delivers but getting there is quite a bumby ride.

Fuck the war

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:26:33 +0000

One moment you are out and drinking a cup of coffee, the next moment you are in the middle of a war. You have done nothing wrong, your family and friends have done nothing wrong, but you are being slaughtered regardless.

The end of an era

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 19:12:11 +0000

Everything has to come to an end at some point, the retirement and with that the end of my parents restaurant made me remember some old stories …

Freedom of expression

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 05:21:50 +0000

Freedom of expression can be a complicated thing. Accepting that someone protests against core values of yours isn’t easy. I strongly believe that you have a right to your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts.

Flooding phishing forms with bash and curl

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 10:10:30 +0000

In 2018 I wrote a quick post on how to flood phishing pages with a python script. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with python3 anymore and also doesn’t handle POST request, me not really being a python dev decided to use bash with two packages instead of coding something in ruby.

Install packages

apt install pwgen gpw

That’s it for the packages, now you have something to generate usernames and passwords.

Gather the fields

Looking at the page sources shows two fields being used, a field email and password.

I’m sorry

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 14:50:29 +0000

This is the usual answer I get when I mention the fact that I’m divorced. Then there is the “failed marriage” thing I hear and read everywhere. I have to disagree with both things.

Wallabag: Invalid datetime format

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 15:19:43 +0000

This pesky little issue prevented me in adding a lot of links to wallabag, but as it turns out, the fix is really simple.

Smile on demand

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 16:52:12 +0000

Put your phone down and observe your surroundings …

But you can work at night

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 15:01:49 +0000

It’s interesting seeing the way people without children think about how life is with kids but also how people think about work and spare time. I don’t blame them, I’ve been on both sides, so I’ll give my unasked opinion on this subject.

Why are you whistling again?

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 19:58:26 +0000

“Dad, why are you whistling again?” asked my big daughter.I haven’t even noticed that I have stopped whistling. I didn’t notice that I stopped and didn’t notice that I have started again, but yes, here I am, whistling, …

Oh the irony

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 17:34:24 +0000

This story needs a bit of a background from my time at high school for it to make any sense why this one little phone call made my day.

Taking a walk through hell

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Lyrics from the Song „I don’t listen much“ from Junior. I’ve been playing this song several times since I found it on Spotify. Sometimes I find it uplifting, some times it just drags me down.

Time to pull the emergency brake

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 10:43:59 +0000

Starting a business is easy, running it and not getting torn apart is the hard part and most often we tend to dig a hole all by our self and notice it much too late. Here is my story on this matter.

Perfect Sunday?

Sun, 10 May 2020 16:17:51 +0000

It’s a warm and windy day, not the bad Vienna kind of windy day where the wind will rip your head off, it’s a slight breeze, not cold but stilling cooling and refreshing from the suns heat.Everything is silent, the streets are almost deserted, much more so then usually on Sundays. This is perfect for riding the bike to the playground, something I have wanted to do for a long time. Riding the bike with the kids. I kept finding excuses, too busy, too tired, the little one doesn’t ride a bike yet, too late to buy a child seat for the little one…

Dear Austrian Bookstores, we need to talk!

Sun, 03 May 2020 11:58:50 +0000

Trying to do the right thing and buy local, avoiding big corporations isn’t as easy as you think. I noticed this trying to buy some books locally.

Simple Burger Buns

Sun, 03 May 2020 03:58:08 +0000

Austria isn’t a burger country, of course, you find places where you can eat burgers but can’t find good buns you could buy if you want burgers. So the only solution is to make it yourself.

The reopening of playgrounds

Fri, 01 May 2020 16:57:44 +0000

Having kids during this Corona pandemic is a completely different challenge. I won’t get into this, parents will understand what I’m talking about.But now things are starting to open up again. Is it good? Is it bad? We’ll have to wait and see.

Assets missing in Rails Docker container

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 11:28:31 +0000

So you’ve deployed your new shiny rails app as a fancy docker container in production … but what’s that? Where the f* are all the assets?

Why we love Málaga

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 06:44:17 +0000

My wife and I have been traveling to Málaga since 2007. There are so many memories we made and so many more to be made, so many adventures and short mini-trips to so many places in and around Andalusia, Málaga will always have a special spot in our hearts.

Building toys with raspberry PI

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:21:08 +0000

Trying to come up with something useful build on a raspberry to teach my daughter about tech and coding.

I don't like running

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 05:31:41 +0000

When kids tell you the honest unfiltered truth

What's the hurry

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 05:18:49 +0000

always on the run, always trying to be faster, loose less time, run, speed, don’t stop. But why?

How to talk german in Austria

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 09:33:56 +0000

If you are learning german with the intent to come to Austria, be prepared for a little surprise …

FusionPBX and anonymous callerID

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 11:27:13 +0000

Some carriers might block calls if the call has no caller id in the sip FROM. I stumbled upon such an issue while forwarding inbound calls from FusionPBX to a cell phone number. The calls were rejected if they reached fusionpbx with anonymous as the caller id.

Doing FusionPBX Provisioning the right way

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:31:03 +0000

Reusing passwords is never a good idea and by default the fusionpbx setup would use the same user and password for all domains when provisioning.

Install Mikrotik CHR on a XEN dom0

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 11:15:19 +0000

If you want to play around with mikrotik or a need a mikrotik CHR, you can install it on XEN and run it without any issues.

Transferring domains away from world4you

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 16:19:25 +0000

Domains transfers normally cause no downtime and no issues but if some registrar want’s to play rough it can definitely cause some headache.

How to deal with phishing sites

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 12:16:24 +0000

I’ve been receiving some phishing mails aimed at Zimbra users. I could just delete and ignore them, but where’s the fun in that?

Testing websites with cypress and GitLab CI - Part2

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 10:34:58 +0000

In the second part, I’ll show you how to set up gitlab CI to deploy your locomotive CMS App and run tests on it.

Testing websites with cypress and GitLab CI - Part1

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 09:26:23 +0000

Testing a web app is common practice but when it comes to simpler websites it is often overlooked which caused pain, pain which can be avoided by creating specs. Let me guide you through spec creation for simple web pages which we will then automate and have them run in gitlab CI.

Freeswitch/Fusionpbx: Play audio after call was picked up

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 09:59:04 +0000

Want to play and audio to the called number after the call was picked up?

The ugly side of fintech startups

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:24:32 +0000

Fintech is great, startups are great, everything happens so fast, progress, less bureaucracy, but is it really all sunshine and happiness? What happens if a bank decided to stop doing business in your country and you had only two months to change everything?

Upgrading PostgreSQL 9.1 to 9.4

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 17:17:47 +0000

Happy times with locales during a simple upgrade

Error: The locale requested by the environment is invalid. Error: Could not create target cluster

Switching mailservers with nginx as mail proxy

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 13:23:07 +0000

Switching mailserver with lots of active users isn’t an easy task. First you need to copy the mails to the new server and then get all the users to change mailserver settings at the same time to switch to the new server.

SSH from Mac OS High Sierra to old SSH Servers

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Change SSH client settings to enable SSH logins to older SSH servers or Mikrotik routers

Extending an LVM backed by an LSI RAID controller

Sun, 07 Jan 2018 11:47:51 +0000

Adding new disks to a LSI controller, creating a new VD and extending an existing LVM volume group

Migrating IMAP accounts to Zimbra

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 12:42:17 +0000

Having to move ~ 180 Mail accounts from an older IMAP server to Zimbra (open source version) I though I would document the process if anyone else finds themself in this situation.

Fun with ssh tunnels

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 11:28:01 +0000

How to connect to a server behind a firewall through a SSH tunnel

Dumping mysql backup from file backup

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 11:12:38 +0000

So you have backups in place but forgot to install a mysql backup? Don’t panic, it’s not the end of the world, except if you excluded the sql directory from your file backup, then go ahead an panic.

Daddy, you lost!

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 19:54:27 +0000

When my 4year old daughter realizes I am doomed.

Changing conference voice prompts on FusionPBX

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 15:50:44 +0000

Offering VoIP solutions to endusers requires the VoIP system to speak their language. Here’s how to change the language for the conference system on fusionpx

Changing disks of a Linux mdadm RAID

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 13:50:20 +0000

If you change all disks at once there will be issues booting the system and mounting the correct disks, here’s how I solved this issue.

Why Andalusia is my personal paradise

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It’s late december, winter and I am sitting on the terrace only with a sweater on and it’s already getting to hot for the sweater and this at only 11:00. If this is not enough to call it paradise then it’s view, after each hill a new stunning view of the wonderful region is waiting to be seen. Just the view from the terrace is enough to make me consider this place as a place I would like to live. But let’s not forget the food, the excellent food you find in this region. Great cheese, ham, wine, olives in each size, shape and color, lot’s of great seafood and much much more. What else is so fascinating about this region? The oriental influence in houses, food, tradition. It is a wonderful combination of europe and orient, the fascinating little shops in the small streets in Granda where you can find heaps of nice things to buy without everyone jumping on you trying to drag you in to their shop or bugging you with other things like a tour trough the city, as it happened in Morocco but a separate review on our short travel to Morocco will follow. All in all … in these 9 days we where here (3 days to go till our holiday is over) one thing is clear, we will come again, 12 days are not enough to discover all of the beauty Andalusia has to offer. Now it’s almost noon, and it’s now so hot that I have to sit outside in a T-Shirt. What are you wearing now outside, in Romania, Austria?

Skyeurope nu mai zboara la Timisoara

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

O veste proasta pentru toti care sau bucurat de zborurile ieftine Timisoara – Viena – Timisoara. Acu cateva zile am primit mail de la Skyeurope ca biletele mele, incepand din 19. Decembrie, au fost toate anulate. Mailu care mi la trimis Skyeurope nu zice nimica despre motivele. Dupa putine discutii prin mail am putut doar sa aflu ca Skyeurope nu va mai zbura spre Timisoara din 23. Decembrie. Dece mi-au anulat si biletu de pe Data de 19. Decembrie inca nu mia raspuns nimeni. Pacat … “It was fun while it lasted”. Se pare ca iara trebe sa bag kilometri cu masina

So, it finally happened in Austria

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Bad news for all People driving a diesel car in Austria. Diesel is now more expensive the normal Gasoline On Sunday I noticed this and it didn’t change in the last days. A quick check over the internet shows that nothing changed. Well let’s see what comes next. Still waiting for a 100% electro car that can get me to work and back.

Winter is here

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

As expected and announced on the news, it snowed last night till today. But as every year there are some idiots, especially lory drivers, that think they are king of the road and they don’t need winter tires. Well the result of this was, as most of the time when it snows, trucks get stuck, blocking the freeway, by this blocking the complete traffic and also the cars that should clean the snow. Since last night, the A21 was blocked, thousands (as far as I can remember from the news) of people blocked on the freeway. All trucks coming from eastern europe trying to go towards germany where also blocked. The freeway S1 was a big lory parking lot. With lorries parked on the first lane and on the emergency lane for about 4 km. I would give them huge fines to driver and to the company that owns the lorries. But it’s not only the lorry drivers, also car drivers are stupid. Yes, you don’t have to have winter tires, but at least don’t be so fucking stupid to go anywhere with your car with summer tires if you see the huge snow amount on the street. If you where to fucking lazy to put on your winter tires in time, then leave your fucking car at home and use the public transport. I mean … it’s middle of november, when did you intend to put on your winter tires? March? April?

Bored, at the airport

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So, finally, my first flight to Timisoara with Sky Europe. I didn’t expect everything to work out perfect but today was very chaotic day. At work a lot of stress, I left work as planed at 13:30 so I can get home, leave my car and that my colleague drives me to the airport. Oh well, here the first bad news, due to some troubles at work, he could come so I called a friend in the last moment and he picked me up quite late, but I made it to the airport, checked in got the boarding pass and the lady told me “Boarding at 16:30″ … ok … hmm… wait a second … should I arrive at 16:30 ? and Takeof should be at 15:30 ? What’s going on? A short look up on the display answered this question “Delay: 17:10″ oh … fuck .. Well, now I have enough time to sit back, drink a beer and relax a bit, calm down from all the stress and frustration I had in the past weeks. 2 hours to go till liftoff. My first half beer is finished. I think I will also need something to eat. If I knew that the plane is leaving late, I would have gone to the irish pub instead of this coffee shop.

Bomb alarm in US embassy in Vienna

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today a man wanted to enter the US embassy in Vienna with a back pack which initiated an alarm while passing the metal detector. The man fled the scene and dumped the back pack on the street. The back pack was filled with explosive and nails which would have caused some damage. The man was captured and is now being interrogated by the police.

Google: The Next Pirate Bay….?

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Threat Level – Wired Blogs At one of the world’s most popular sites, there’s some 300 full-length movies for the taking, including the recently released The Simpsons Movie, Shrek the Third, Oceans Thirteen, The Bourne Ultimatum, Knocked Up and more. Quality varies.

Computerworld - Just how did Microsoft get OOXML support in Eastern Europe?

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This question, is simply answered by reading my blog about corruption

After the International Organization for Standardization voted to reject Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format as a standard, the detailed results from ISO member countries give us a lot of material to analyze.

Votes from South-eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia countries showed Microsoft’s domination of that market, and especially good connections with authorities because most of the national standardization bodies voted “Yes with no comments”.

Corruption Perceptions Index 2007, well done Basescu!

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Transparency International has release the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2007 on the radio they where mostly talking about Austria being 15th this year. More interesting for me was where Romania is … but before I tell you this here some other highlights.

Taiwan … is rank 34, but no sign of Romania … Botswana – 38, still no sign of Romania, Namibia – 57 … and you guessed, no sign of Romania, Kuweit – 60 and believe it or not, still no sign of Romania, Bulgaria – 64, Colombia – 68 and finally Romania – 69 ! What a great achievement to be more corrupt the Colombia!

US to attack Iran out of Romania, Hungary and Germany?

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

According to tomorrows release of the Romanian newspaper “Ziua” the US is planing to attack Iran out of Romania, Hungary and Germany. Not so sure how good this source is the only fact that is sure is that the CIA boss, Michael Hayden, was on a unannounced trip to Romania, this can also be read in “Jurnalul National“

I can only hope that Romania will not get involved into this, but as the past has shown, Romania is very good at kissing USA’s ass.

CIA offers Government participation to Taliban

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

According to “derStandard” the CIA offered the Taliban (The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان ṭālibān, also anglicized as Taleban) are an extremist, terrorist, and ethnic fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Pashtun movement) participation in Afghan government, if they renounce to connections to Al Qaeda and other terroristic groups. Ok, let me think a minute, as they attacked Afghanistan, didn’t they want to free the people (besides trying to find Bin Laden)?

On October 7, 2001, the United States, aided by the United Kingdom, Canada, and supported by a coalition of other countries including several from the NATO alliance, initiated military actions in Afghanistan, code named Operation Enduring Freedom, and bombed Taliban and Al Qaeda related camps. The stated intent of military operations was to remove the Taliban from power because of the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his involvement in the September 11 attacks, and disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations

China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon - Times Online

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.

China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon – Times Online

creepy …

On the worm that affects Skype for Windows users - Heartbeat

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives the message.

Please note that Skype users ONLY become infected after they have downloaded the link and run the malicious software. The chat message, of which there are several versions, is cleverly written and may appear to be a legitimate chat message, which may fool some users into clicking on the link.

1 Terabyte in a month

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I did it, 1 Terabyte traffic in one month


Data from 2007/08/01 00:00:00 CEST to 2007/08/31 23:58:59 CEST
forwarded incoming GREEN (eth0) : 924G
forwarded incoming RED (eth1) : 88G

well …. almost, it’s only 1012G. Well, better luck next month

Where do our tomatoes come from?

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wondered where our Tomatoes come from? Well, here you go

You can also see it on maps.google.com Get the movie “We feed the world” to see more. It’s the kind of movie that makes you ask yourself, how stupid can we be?

Sky Europe is Flying to TIMISOARA!

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Finally after a long long time, Skyeurope is flying to Timisoara for only 0,01 Euro! (exkl. Taxes) This means 60 Euro for a round trip! That is a bit cheaper then the fuel I need to get to Timisoara and back. If you add road taxes and the time you waste … I just bought tickets for every weekend in November and December

Telekom Austria (AON) also thinks we are stupid

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Seems like AON is trying to fool consumers. They have launched (quite some time ago but I saw it now for the first time) a commercial campaign against mobile internet. They say that “real broadband” is better, faster and cheaper and also that if you have reached your limit you will have to pay for mobile internet but with “real broadband” you pay from 4 euro more and have flat rate. Ok, lets compare We will take the cheapest AON has to offer, that will be AON speed 500. This will be 20 Euro a month and receive 500MB traffic included and a speed of 512kbit/s down, we will ignore upstream. This means you could download with max 64kb/s! And what if you exceed the included 500MB ? You pay 7 cents for each MB! Oh, almost forgot, you need a phone connection for AON ! This means you also have to pay the phone, this is NOT included in the 20 Euro. Now let’s look at what one HUI has to offer. You pay 10 Euro a month and get 250MB for this, if you want extra 250MB you pay 5 Euro. So you have the 500MB for 15 Euro. How about the speed? See for your self

Fuck MTV and VIVA, long live gotv

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t watch MTV or VIVA since a long long time (over a year if not already two). First of all, the music they play is mostly crap. Second, the commercials, the ring tone commercials are just unbearable! Then they have got so many stupid shows. ehmmm… wasn’t MTV supposed to be “Music Television”? So who needs shows about the 16th birthday of some stupid kids? No matter if anybody knows them or not. Anyway, gotv also has commercials (why shouldn’t they) but they have maximum one commercial about ring tones and way on a higher IQ level then the stupid commercials from MTV. Enough complaining today, it’s way to hot …

I love public transport in Vienna

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

People who know me know that I really hate going with public transport in Vienna. Why? By car I need about 25 min. to work, with the great public transport I need over an hour, up to one and a half hours to get from home to work and the same way back again. Thats a difference of about one hour, and now multiply this with 9 years that I work at SGI, I would have wasted a whole lot of my life in public transports. The next thing I hate is when in summer some people thing there is no need to take a shower as log as not everybody from the tram will trough up their guts. I would really use the public transport if there would be a fast way to get at work. I would agree with 30 mins, but over an hour compared to 25 mins by car is really a bad argument for the public transport. Oh and why did all of this happen? Two cars and still I have to go by public transport. Well on the Passat the Air Condition is gone so I brought the car to fix that problem and the golf has no valid verification (you have to do this once a year in Austria for older cars) I could bring the car to get my sticker that it passed the verification, but then I would have to do it again in september so I will just wait a bit and then have that also done.

FT.com / World - Europeans see USA as threat to peace

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, you can count me in

FT.com / World – Europeans see US as threat to peace

Floridita

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I was in Floridita, a cuban dace bar in Vienna. If you visit their website and know what song it is that’s playing please tell me So where was I, yes, yesterday in Floridita with Ovidiu. As usual in Floridita it’s great. Nice atmosphere great music, great drinks and of course a cigar Going there by public transport wasn’t that easy. It’s quite a while since I went somewhere by public transport, but to get to floridita should be pretty easy, if the tram is going where it should. Unfortunately yesterday was love parade in Vienna, which I found out as we almost arrived floridita. Anyway the tram brought us near Prater instead of the first district, but that wasn’t to bad, U1 goes to the first district and after over an hour we finally arrived. Well there is nothing more to say, I can hardly describe the good mojito or the ron de cuba with a good cigar

The bad and ugly GOTO

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

In school you learn to never ever use GOTO in your programs, since in real life things turn out to be much different then in school it’s not quite practicable. I was looking for GOTO in Bash and came across this statement

Quote: Originally Posted by gnashley Not a good idea to use GOTO in BASH. Try using a while statement instead, or use functions.

And this was the reply

Krapfenwaldlbad - Swinming with a great view over vienna

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Where can you go cool down when it’s hot in Vienna? Well there are a lot of places, but one that you should visit is Krapfenwaldlbad The swimming pools are not really great, but the view will compensate for that. Anyway, I wouldn’t go to often there since it’s to crowded in the small pool. But look at the photos and decide for your self.

Weather gone crazy

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday we had “a bit” of a thunderstorm in Vienna. Winds up do 120km/h killed 2 people and ripped trees apart within some minutes. Luckily I came home just as the wind started it’s action.

read more in derStandard (Austrian newspaper, also with a small video)

More blogs on this issue:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog…

HowTo install openfire (former wildfire) on Debian

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This has been done on a Debian Sarge installation but it should work on Etch also, I will report if it does once I have done it, sometime this week. I found this post on howtoforge and it helped me alot.

First you need Java JRE, lucky me I had a deb package on my server from some other tests so I didn’t need to create a new JRE deb package. Follow this howto to create a debian package so you can install JRE the debian way. Once you installed the JRE you can continue with openfire.

Back in Shanghai

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Finally we are back in Shanghai. We left Beijing yesterday, again with the night train. The only problem we had this time was finding the train. The taxidriver didn’t speak a word in english but we managed to tell him that we want to get to the train station and arrived pretty quick. Now it was time to enter the station, there are 3 doors open and about 10 dozens of people pushing and trying to get in. After the security check, which from my point of view is useless since I entered with a small bag without putting it trough the X-Ray, we where in the main hall. Huge panels showing all trains and of course everything in chinese. But we saw Z13, the name of the train, and 2 … oh yes, the titles where written in english also, so 2 was for the waiting hall. Here the problems started, there was a waiting hall 2 just right near the entrance and one, also number 2, on the upper floor. I asked someone and she told me the one I have to go to is right above the one near the entrance, so we went up, in to the waiting hall where again I asked, and got a completely different answer and finally at the information counter I got again a different answer. I started looking myself and found the correct platform and none of the answers I got from the people working there where correct. Train was leaving at 19:38 and the doors for the platform was opened at 19:00. There are two doors, one on the left, one on the right. One would think it could be quite useful to open both since there where so many people, but don’t forget … you are in China! so let the people wait at both and then open just one and look at them fight, could be some weird hobby of the people working at the train station. How can I explain these few minutes it took to pass the door, let’s say there is a bomb in the train station and everyone just HAS to squeeze trough this door to survive the explosion, this is exactly the same thing while passing the doors to get to the platform. There was enough time to get twice as many people in and out again without pushing and fighting, but once again don’t forget you are in China! All these little things make you wish to get back home and tomorrow, finally, it’s bye bye China, hello Austria … There is no place like 127.0.0.1 … Anyway … back to the trip. The Z trains are one if not even THE best trains I have ever been on. There are so silent, you feel nothing when the train leaves, except Chinese people spitting, so this is from my point of view the most comfortable way to travel. The beds are indeed a bit hard but we could sleep very very good …. Ok enough of that, time to go shopping and finish our stuff for tomorrow.

Arrived in Beijing

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today morning we arrived in Beijing. We left the Beijing Railway Station at about 07:30 and it already had 25deg. Celsius. The first thing we noticed was the small sun, but I will come back later to this. The train ride was quite smooth, the only small problem we had was that our tickets where in different compartments, but this was solved quite fast after the lady in one compartment moved to the other one. So if you plan to go with the Z class train from Shanghai to Beijing, ask extra if you want to be in the same compartment. There are 4 beds in each compartment and they are numbered from one upwards (Compartment 1: 1,2,3,4; Compartment 2: 5,6,7,8 and so on).

Preparing for Beijing

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today we will go by train from Shanghai to Beijing. A almost 12 hour ride in a Chinese first class sleeping compartment, I am curios if the images found on the net about the Z class trains really match to the reality. Anyway it doesn’t really matter, what matters is that we arrive in Beijing and can see all the great things, probably the greatest things you can see in China. The Great wall and the Forbidden City. I think you have wasted your life, if you didn’t see the great wall!

[HowTo] Installing eAccelerator on Debian etch

Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This works for php4 and php5, apache1.3 and 2!

first get php5-dev (or php4-dev, depending on what you use) apt-get install php5-dev

get eaccelerator from here and unpack it.

cd eaccelerator-0.9.5
phpize
./configure
make
make install

create the eaccelerator cache directories

mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
chmod 0777 /tmp/eaccelerator

and add this to your php.ini (in my case: /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini )


extension=eaccelerator.so
eaccelerator.shm_size=64
eaccelerator.cache_dir=/tmp/eaccelerator
eaccelerator.enable=1
eaccelerator.optimizer=1
eaccelerator.check_mtime=1
eaccelerator.debug=0
eaccelerator.filter=
eaccelerator.shm_max=0
eaccelerator.shm_ttl=0
eaccelerator.shm\_prune\_period=0
eaccelerator.shm_only=0
eaccelerator.compress=1
eaccelerator.compress_level=9
eaccelerator.allowed\_admin\_path=/path/to/control.php

adjust the memory to whatever you like. Copy the control.php to whatever path you like (must be some htdocs accessible path) and set the path in eaccelerator.allowed_admin_path= … edit the file and user/password. now restart apache and you are done! go to the link where control.php is and check if you can login and if it works.

Fourteen Things That It Took Me Over 50 Years To Learn - by Dave Barry

Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

What happened on the 20th May?

Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

May 20, 1293 Earthquake strikes Kamakura Japan, 30,000 killed
May 20, 1310 Shoes were made for both right and left feet
May 20, 1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calcutta India   
1506 Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain.
May 20, 1799 Honore de Balzac, France, novelist, Pere Goriot, Human Comedy   
1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
May 20, 1892 Triple Alliance between Germany, Italy and Austria forms   
1902 The United States ended its occupation of Cuba. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the first President of Cuba.
May 20, 1902 Cuba gains independence from Spain   **
1927 Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.  
1932 Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  
1939 Regular trans-Atlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Europe.   1969 U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, referred to as Hamburger Hill by the Americans, following one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.  
1970 Some 100,000 people demonstrated in New York’s Wall Street district in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
May 20, 1985 U.S. began broadcasts to Cuba on Radio Marti
May 20, 1989 China declares martial law in Beijing
1990 – The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania.
May 20, 1990 Hubble Space Telescope sends 1st photograph’s from space
May 20, 1991 Soviet parliament approves law allowing citizens to travel abroad   
1993 An estimated 93 million people tuned in for the final first-run episode of ”Cheers” on NBC.
1994 May 20, 1994 Miss India (Sushmita Sen) selected Miss Universe   
1996 The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination. The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals.   
2002 East Timor became an independent nation.
  2003 The United States banned beef imports from Canada after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Canada’s cattle country. 
1979: I was born

Life is not fair

Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Looking around I see a lot of friends getting married, children are on the way, everything looks fine. But there are a lot of people that don’t want kids. What could be the reason ? There is this one thing, that when you have kids, some might think their life is over, no “freedom” anymore … Then there are concerns about money, kids are expensive, well not the kids, but the products for kids. Clothes for kids are more expensive then for adults. But there is one last thing that some of us might be afraid of. What if the are problems? What if the child will be handicapped? Will you think of abortion? I think by now, if anyone reads this, there will be a lot of people thinking, oh no, abortion is bad. I agree with you. But do you know what it means to have a disabled child? That will always depend on someone to help them, what will be when you are no longer there? Do you know what it means to go from one doctor to a other and nobody really can help? Do you know what it means to go with your child from one operation to the next one, from one treatment to the next one? And what if you child one day says, “Next week I will have a operation and after this I will be able to walk like all other kids” can you look in their little eyes and tell them that this will never happen? Or look in their disappointed eyes after the operation when they will notice that nothing got better? Now, still anybody that thinks life is fair? What problems do we fight with? Oh, my iPod is to small, oh, my car is not shiny enough. All my cousin wanted was to walk … something that most of us don’t even appreciate. I have been through this, I have seen how hard my aunt and uncle tried everything for my little cousin, how every stupid idiot came up with some miracle and pulled the money out of their wallet. I don’t think I managed to capture my feelings in this blog about this subject. It has passed a long time since my little cousin died, but I will never forget that one day she said those words “I will walk like every other kid” that is all she wanted.

long time, no blog

Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It’s has been quite a while since my last blog. I was quite busy since I came back from berlin. Had to finish a server, was sick, server made some problems, experimented with UCS and Scalix, started to hate stupid WindowsNT Policy files … and so on. I initially wanted to document my work on the PDC I installed and the troubles I had but having a bad cold at the same time and a lot of stress I didn’t really get to it and now it wouldn’t be any help since I forgot the most of it. So, to not get bored and maintain the stress level, I started to set up a new XEN VPS on which I installed Debian Etch, here I will move my current lcx server. There are several things that piss me of at the moment in the actual installation and I though it would be a good time to do it now and also upgrade to Debian 4.0, Apache2, PHP5, MySql5 … Well I hope I will finish it today, or at least this weekend.

Easter Reloaded

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Since I didn’t want to go to Romania to easter, because of the heavy traffic, I decided to go one week later. One of the few occasions when I went to Romania without my car, I went with my friend Razvan. This was also a good occasion to test my one HUI in the car and I must say it worked great! I was online, reading the VWclub forum, my email and using instant messenger even after the Austrian border, at least for some km. Once arrived, all of us starving, we tried to get something to eat at “Dracula” but unfortunately it was full and we chose plan B, “Casa Romaneasca” which was a very very good decision. The food was excellent! I just got hungry again only by thinking of that wonderful food, or maybe it’s just because I didn’t eat anything today. Anyway, Casa Romaneasca in Timisoara … anytime again. Saturday, party time at The Note, to packed so we left quite early and went for some beer and tequila sunrise in cafe colt. Sunday was grill day together with some members of VWforum.ro we had a great grill session, with great weather and also some crazy drivers and a frog concert in the background. For the next grill session it would be nice if one of us really takes a blanket with them or something else to seat on and not only hope that one of the others took something with them, but we can eat and drink also when sitting on the grass. Oh, I almost forgot, photos and Romanian shops don’t really seem to be a good combination. For some reason in no big shopping center it is allowed to make photos, not even in the parking lot. For example Metro … while we, or better said Rilu and Vlady, did the shopping, I took some photos and the security guy was very fast present to tell me not to make any further photos. Exaggeration? Paranoia? who knows … And what would easter be without presents? I got a wonderful invitation to Buena Vista Social Club.

IPCop out of the 'box'

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a VIA mini ITX mainboard to make a new firewall, the old one with a Pentium1 166mhz was going a bit slow and since I also wanted to use VPN I needed something better. IPCop was installed quite fast, and a quick search brought me to this great howto. After setting up VPN I needed a client for Mac OS and I found “Tunnelblick“, quick installation and everything worked great. Now together with my mobile internet connection I can log in from everywhere and also be secured. Ok but what is it with the topic, out of the box? Well, usually this has some other meaning, but I really mean my IPCop works “out of the box”, I couldn’t find a case where I could fit it in so I just took a cardboard box

My fileserver in action

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Well, after I managed to fill 600Gigs it was time to get a new hard disk. I do still have some IDE Ports on that boad free, but why not get a SATA controller and a brand new SATA disk instead? Faster and it will also work if I switch the mainboard.

Well, there was only one problem, I still had my two big discs in a RAID 0 array which can’t be expanded by a third disk so it was time to switch to LVM. Lucky me that I had 4 SATA disks for the server I am working on where I can move my data to free the disks for the LVM. It took awhile to move 600gigs but now everything is done and my fileserver is back online with a nice and big LVM that could be expanded …. if I had more power connectors for the hard disks and space in the case for a new disk, the harddisk in the photo that is outside of the case is really connected and running

Finally, mobile internet

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I went to the One shop and got a driver CD for the Mac. The driver is something under 200kb! Come on one … you could have sent me this trough a fucking e-mail!

Anyway, the speed is quite impressing! Check this out

One HUI speed

1.3mbit … coooool

Great service from One

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday I received my One H.U.I (hell fast, ultra simple internet) A fast internet connection for my laptop, from wherever I am in Austria. One delivered real fast but unfortunately there no drivers for Mac, even though they promised that it works for Mac, of course the drivers for Windows are available on the Modem itself which has about 150MB space on it. After some research on the One homepage I found out that there should be a CD in the package, which seemed like they have forgotten. Well this can happen so I called One to ask if they can mail me the drivers or give me a link where I can download the drivers, but this is not possible, they will send me a CD with the drivers. This really pissed me of, how hard can it be to offer the drivers for download like for example Vodafone does! Since I didn’t have the drivers yesterday (Thursday!!) I called the hotline once again and the lady from the hotline told me that the drivers have been sent on the 6. April, which was today! They need 4 days to send out a cd? I still don’t understand why they don’t offer the drivers for download. They told me that they have send some thousand Packages without mac drivers and that’s why it took so long to send until they have sent me the CD. Look one, this is, from my point of view, it would have been easier and a lot cheaper to offer the driver for downloading then sending a CD by mail. I am used to stupid things like this from T-Com/T-Online in Germany, but One? Anyway, the problem was solved by the hotline by calling some One-Shops and asking if they have a Mac driver which they could copy me!

There is no place like 127.0.0.1

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

home sweet home, at last! When I think back that some time ago I was up to 6 months in Germany, then the 7 weeks I have been in Berlin now could be considered as a short duration trip, but it still feels good to be back home. My own apartment, my comfortable bed and let’s not forget my 10mbit internet connection. aahhhh that feels good Ok time go shopping and clean the car, I still have pieces of a ticket I got for wrong parking on the windscreen. It started to rain and it got stuck on my windscreen.

getmail vs fetchmail

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I recently got quite fed up of fetchmail. The problem is that there are mails on an account from invalid sender domains (like foo.bar for example) since my Postfix rejects such mail because it can only be spam fetchmail didn’t manage to delete them. So it looped leaving the junk mails on the pop account and flooding my logfiles. The solution was getmail. Since I use postfix amavis cyrus there was no example config that fits my needs so I did some experiments but finally a mail from Elimar Riesebieter on the Mailinglist solved my problem.

Fanfare Ciocărlia in Berlin

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I was at the Fanfare Ciocărlia concert in “Kesselhaus” Berlin and I also purchased the new album. It was a very nice concert and it is nice to see that there still are some people out there that keep on to tradition and culture and didn’t choose the easy way making money by playing crap music, like manele.

Thank you Fanfare Ciocărlia for your great music!

Finally I have a photo bag

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I went to the Crumpler store in Berlin to check out some photo bags. I also took my equipment with me, including my laptop to see how my stuff fits in the bag. Well, no I am a happy owner of the Crumpler Match Maker.

Killergames, a new point of view

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Most people in Europe might know the debate that is going on in Germany at the moment. They are trying to forbid so called “Killergames” like CounterStrike since they accuse the games for being the reason why kids in past became killers and ran amok in schools. Most politicians and media have here the same point of view, forbid the games, then the problem is solved. So I was very very surprised to see on “Welt der Wunder”, a “knowledge” show on RLT2, that really did some research before opening their mouth. They interviewed a doctor that measured the brain activity while someone was playing counterstrike. The doctor said “The only thing these people are able to do after playing the game, is clicking the mouse very fast. There is no reason why a player would start killing”. A different person, no idea what function he has, played the games before giving a statement, his opinion was that the games can be used like a script for how one could do his mass killing, the same how books or movies can be used for that, where violent movies are twice as bad as the so called “killergames”. Ever heard something about forbidding violent movies? I don’t understand what is going on in the heads of the stupid politicians. Just look a bit at the past, forbidden games where the games that where most successful after they where forbidden. Lets say that in Germany the games will be forbidden. There is still the internet where one could get the pirated version of the game. So the result is, the state looses money by taxes it didn’t get from the sales and the people would still get to play the games. And once again, the politics saved the day

German TV

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I almost forgot how bad the german TV was … it even got worse now. Since I have my receiver and watch most of the time Cinemax, HBO, Discovery and National geographic I got rid of all the bad memories of the german TV, but now in Berlin where I don’t have a choice, except not to turn on the tv, I had to find out that the german tv got even worse. There still are some nice series but most of the time it’s only crap! Ring-tone commercials didn’t really change, but the late-night shows did, the ones where there was some girl in bikini trying to convince some stupid fools to call and solve the riddle to win some money, well now the girls don’t have a bikini anymore, they now are half naked, hoping that by showing their tits, more fools will call. What doesn’t the TV do for money? Oh, and for this high quality tv they want to charge money now. But not all german channels are like this, I really like Terranova, but it seems that I’m a bit to young for the commercials on that channel, the target group seems to be people above 70 years, anyway much better then the ring-tone commercials that seem to have as target group people with the IQ of a chicken (sorry, didn’t mean to offend chicken!).

Sweet Titles by class

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I am working on the new version of the SMS Central which will be integrated in Joomla, it quite takes some time since I don’t have internet at home and it’s more a trial and error process. This is when you notice how much one is used to the internet and google. But at least I have MAMP (Apache PHP MySql) for Mac and I can at least do some tests. I came across Sweet Titles, which is great, but by default it does the “Sweet Titles” for the complete site, which isn’t really nice on a joomla site. The simplest solution is to use getEelementById to do it only for one id, this again is also not what I want, because a ID has to be unique, and I want it on more then one place. My solution was to use a GetElementsByClass function which I found here, and modify the original sweettitle.js.

Ads for Romanian Tourism in Berlin

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I came to work today with the Metro and was quite surprised to see “Romania” on some windows. Seems that they have invested quite a lot in ads all around Western Europe. The photos you see on the ad quite want to make you go there, but there are 2 things I find real funny, first: there are no photos from the black see, this sure is a place in Romania that you do not really want to visit. Second: The tourism agency in Berlin is on the “Budapester” Street. If you know about a bit of Romanian-Hungarian history then you would understand why I think that this is kind of funny.

Arrived in Berlin

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

[![SnowBerlin.jpg][2]][2]Since yesterday I arrived in Berlin. I was quite surprised to see snow in Berlin, and -4°. Everywhere else in Europe it’s way to warm for winter, and in Berlin where it usually doesn’t snow much, it’s freezing and there is no snow.
Ok now to the bad news, I have no internet at home ![:(][2] The FON Accesspoint seems to be to far away and I only found a lot of secured Access points. Why didn’t anybody here have some netgear router like my neighbor in Vienna? Well I will survive without internet, but it’s kind of boring! I took the source of gplhost.com to translate it to German for gplhost.de and the source of my [sms site][3] to integrate it in joomla. Oh did I mention that it’s cheaper to use [sms.vampirenet.ro][4] then sending sms over skype? ![:)][5] Ok enough advertising ![:)][5]
Now it’s time to go shopping and get some beer and food ![:)][5]

Preparing for Berlin

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Well tomorrow I’m heading to Berlin … not much time left and I didn’t even start to pack my stuff. But I still have time. At least I have started to write down what I should take with me. I can’t wait to get some doughnuts in my hands. ok … think I should start doing something … but somehow I don’t quite feel like it. *sigh*

Running Kolab on a AMD64

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

To get Kolab running on a 64bit system, compile the source on a 32bit system or if you have, like in my case, a running kolab that you want to migrate then no compilation is needed. Just install the 32bit libs (apt-get install ia32-libs) and kolab is ready to go. Don’t forget to add users/groups/startup scripts to the new 64bit system. Now I just have to get rid of the stupid “User Deleted, awaiting cleanup…” message, which has nothing to do with amd64, this message is there since Kolab was installed and a user deleted.

Let the fun begin :)

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I love shopping computer parts, especially if it’s purpose will be to run a Server using Debian. Well I just picked up some parts from Ditech, not much, only 2 boxes ![:)][2] Now that the assembly is ready and debian almost finished burning … I will start to install a base system and a raid5 on it, that will be all for today.

Problems during install … Well I didn’t get to far the first problems was right after booting. The Debin installer seems to have problems recognizing the IDE (or the now so called PATA) CD-Rom on Core 2 Duo mainboards. Strange. The solution is quite simple, I took the cd-rom out of the server, used one of my old IDE cases for external harddisks and abused that to connect the cdrom via usb ![:)][2] Worked. The next thing is, network card was not detected I “worked around” this problem by inserting some 3com I found at home, but the next thing was the sata controller. arggg. Now I only have one more chance, downloading a daily snapshop of debian etch and hope that there is a new kernel on that one. That should solve my problems. If not …. I will have to continue searching tomorrow for solutions.

This is how every Internet connection should be :)

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

700MB in 13 minutes with 927 KB/s

wget ftp://ftp.easynet.be/ubuntu-iso/edgy/ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso --16:55:43-- ftp://ftp.easynet.be/ubuntu-iso/edgy/ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso => `ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso' Length: 732,293,120 (unauthoritative) 100%[========================] 732,293,120 1.08M/s ETA 00:00 17:08:49 (927.31 KB/s) - `ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso' saved [732293120]

Buissnes Talk ... Weihnachten fuer geschaeftsleute

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Message from the CEO (Christmas Event Organizer):

Dr. J. Christus v. Bethlehem:

Also Kinder, ich bin jetzt in Urlaub. Aller Vorausicht nach bin ich bis Weihnachten wieder da, aber die Vorbereitungen darauf sollten natürlich jetzt schon loslaufen:

Status: Wie Weihnachten 2005 im Internet gezeigt hat, heißt Weihnachten nicht mehr Weihnachten, sondern X-mas, also muss der Weihnachtsmann entsprechend ab jetzt X-man heißen!

Da X-mas 2006 quasi schon vor der Tür steht, ist es spätestens seit Oktober höchste Zeit, mit der Weihnachtsvorbereitung zu beginnen – Verzeihung – seit Oktober ist es höchste Zeit, mit dem Weihnachts- roll-out zu starten und die Christmas-Mailing-Action just in time vorzubereiten.

Cleaning up Gallery2 Cache

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I wondered why my Gallery2 database backup was so HUGE ! (3gigs of text!) That couldn’t be right. After I search a bit on menalto.com on the forum I found out that the cache was the problem. After deleting the cache, the same database had only 16MB ! That is quite a difference. Anyway, the cache has it’s useful part, else you could turn it of so I wrote a little script to clean up everything that is older then a week. The DB then still has about 200MB but that is not comparable to 3GB ! So here is my little script.

Kolab, a opensource Groupware solution

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Want a Mailsever for a office that does all out of the box with virusscanner, spamfilter? Well Kolab could be one thing you should look at. Due to the fact that it uses Postfix and Cyrus, there is no way you could compare the performance to an exchange server (also called by someone as the best harddisk Benchmark ). Well since I love debian as server distribution it was also the OS I chose for this installation. But unfortunately there are no Debian packages for Kolab but you can still use the sources. I found an excellent HowTo (in german). This explains step by step all you need. The biggest problem was that I had to compile all kolab packages from source. On the P3 500Mhz I had here to install it took 6 hours! so make sure you have a loooot of coffee and time to get this done. Apropos coffee, it’s time for a new one. The next problem one might encounter is, like in my case, when you use the same machine to install the new server. How do you get the old mails for the old installation on the new one? Well if you have XEN installed somewhere it’s a matter of minutes to setup a new Virtual server, install cyrus on it and follow my Howto to import the old mails on the Xen Vserver. This might sound like a bit of to much work, but it really is simple. Why didn’t I import the mails directly on the new Kolab server if the old one was also cyrus? Well, the old setup was a bit different and also a different cyrus version so I didn’t want to mess up to much with Kolab so I thought this would be the easiest way and all went out perfect. But wait, now I still don’t have any of the old mails on the new Kolab installation. Well for this task you could use imapsync. I used it like this: imapsync –host1 192.168.0.101 –user1 foo –host2 localhost –user2 –authmech1 LOGIN –password1 foobar –password2 foobar –noauthmd5 –subscribe Caution! if other users are logged in the machine where you start imapsync you should not user –password1 and –password2 since one could see the password in the process list. Refer to the imapsync manual and use the version where it reads the passwords from file! Don’t forget the –subscribe option else any folder from the old server will not be shown on the new one, they will be imported and one could manually subscribe with thunderbird or a webmail, but for some users this task could be to complicated so make their (and finally you life) easier because I bet you will not be very pleased to hear “Oh my good, where are all my mail folders” from all users you have! One final thing … if anybody is interested in installing it on a debian 3.1 on x86 platform, check the download locations carefully! There ARE binaries for debian! And you won’t have to wait 6 hours for compilation, like me, just because you where to fucking blind to see the ix86-debian-3.1 folder! arggg… I could punch myself for this. If you still didn’t find it, try here.

several thoughts

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

don’t really have a topic to blog about, or to many things but not in the mood for collecting my thoughts and put them in a blog. Just sitting in front of my monitor, with a cold beer, and in a (2b || !2b) mood. let’s see how many will figure out what on earth I mean by this anyway … sitting here, listening to some cuban music over pandora.com and trying to switch of. This is one of the days where a lot of things go trough my head like memories from the past. Oh yeah … the so called “good old times” I bet everyone has heard of them. I’m not complaining about the actual situation, and I don’t think I would change something, but still, there is this “good old time” thing coming up from time to time … maybe this comes from my inner voice, trying to remind me of some mistakes I did in the past, or rather, just a single one that I regret! All mistakes have it’s learning effect somehow, but there is just this one thing that will no leave me alone, this one think I think I will never forget and never forgive (no, it has got nothing to do with love or things like this). A different plausible explication why we have this “good old times” feeling as we get older, is because we get “wiser” as we get older. As we where “younger” we where more “stupid” and “naive” and as we get older we see how sick everything around as is. How money can change people and that the world we think we live in, is just something that exists in books and movies. If you look around, corruption, crime, lies, brothers fighting each other, hate, war … all because of money. Most of the people don’t give a fuck about what will happen in the future or how the decision, a politician takes, will effect the feature. Here I would like to post a little excerpt of “The Poverty of philosophy” by Immortal Technique:

I am becoming a ISTQB Certified Tester

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I usually don’t post blogs regarding my work but I think this one is worthy for being blogged. Last month I attempted the first part in Budapest.

“ISTQB – Certified Tester, foundation level”

I was rather optimistic about this Certification, or rather about the seminary and learning some new things, but I was quite disappointed. Things like skipping pages from the material but then get questions about that skipped material at the exam. The material was also extended, my colleagues that did that seminary one year ago, had 25 pages in the “syllabus” we (the 4 of us that didn’t have time one year ago) had the same 3 days, but our syllabus had now 73 pages. Things like the moderator not knowing answers to example questions without looking at the result page didn’t really increase my mood and the trust in this seminary.

Addicted to The Simpsons?

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Well what do you say to this? Today after watching over 10 episodes of Simpsons (in which I forgot to turn on my mobile, didn’t check my server and it really did crash … well what would homer say? Doh), I just received a mail (no clue to which list I subscribed, but thanks god I did it ) about the Movie, well I do know about the movie since quite a while and have seen the teaser, but now the Trailer has been released! Go and see it on http://www.thesimpsons.com/ Well I sure du hope they will sell doughnuts instead of Popcorn at the movie. So and instead of reading my apache security book to prevent further crashes on the server … I am going to watch more simpsons episodes

fixing problems

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

An elderly lady phoned Verizon to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called – and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always barked right before the phone rang.

The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady. He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber’s house.

How to wake up by 6:30 every morning ... for the serious procrastinator

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Just read this in Karanet. I think I will have to try this next Monday when I have to wake up REAL early to catch a train to Budapest at 6 in the morning

The plan

Make sure your PC is in your bedroom with the monitor pointed at such an angle that you can see the screen perfectly. Go to the bios of your pc. Set your PC to startup automatically by 6:30a.m. Set your alarm clock to startup by 6:20a.m. Set your alarm clock to Radio, preferably, talk radio, not music radio. Put it at the far end of your room. Download a whole bunch of stand-up comedy routines that you have not watched. Make a link to one of them in your autostart menu. Set VLC so that it startsup in fullscreen mode. Strategically place bread and the juice beside your bed. By 9pm on the first day, swallow one of the sleeping tablets. As an optional step, put on some Jenna and squeeze out some tadpoles.

Testing gallery 2.2

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Gallery2.2 still isn’t released, but since I can’t wait to see it I started to install the nightly snapshot of gallery2.2, don’t worry! only on a testsystem I’m not upgrading the main gallery installation, yet. So what’s so great about gallery2.2, well actually there is no specific feature that I’m waiting for but I do bet there are a lot of things that I will like. The first thing that I noticed was that 2.2 now also knows Romanian The installation was easy as always, but the hard part will be the upgrade, this I will test the next days to get an idea of what awaits me when upgrading the existing gallery. Didn’t do that now since I only have 300mb left on my test VPS. New modules: There is a new printing service, a Flash video player, mp3 player, replicate items (like a link only that this one really replicates (copies) the item. So and here I am now at step 9 of 11 and my installation kind of stopped activating the user modules, but that isn’t something that will stop me. Looking at the admin interface it does look a bit newer and shinier, but the first thing I saw that sounds great is the Dynamic album feature. Well, enough for now. Looks quite interesting, and as soon as I have created an testinstallation with some images in it I will post a link.

Borat, go and see it :)

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Well I have to say at some scenes I kind of expected more from Borat, nevertheless it was a great movie and worth being seen. As I have seen the trailer I was already sure that Borat his home village was NOT from Kazakhstan, it was filmed in Romania. Not only that the people, the village and everything else looks really Romanian, I have also found an interview which confirms this.

Bye Bye image spam!

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Some might have noticed the increasing amount of new spam that comes as image. This makes it impossible for a spam-filter like spamassassin to filter anything since the content of the spam is hidden as image and the text in the mail is random or some pieces from lord of the rings. The solution? OCR ! There is a nice plugin for spamassassin called ocrtext. This little plugin, among with some other tools will fight spam that comes as image. Also new tricks, like animated gifs which can bypass other ocr plugins, will be recognized by ocrtext. I have only done short testing. But I think next week I can say if it was successful or not since I recently got a lot of image spam, this really pissed me of so I finally decided to do something against it.

Camcorder Problems SOLVED

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Finally after so much time it came to my mind to ask in some forum what the problem could be. After a search on google I cam across a german video editing forum, digitalvideoschnitt. I got a reply quite fast and I just tried it out and it worked. The problems seems to be when the camera is plugged in to the source! The problems don’t occur when running on battery! The problem seems to occur because of a ground loop since there are 2 grounds, the firewire and the source. Sounds strange but it works and that’s what counts!

Shell Shock :)

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

One Week Back to Windows – OSNews.com

One of the things that has always made Unices so popular and admired was the shells out there. In fact, most operating systems today have some sort of a competent CLI interface. This is for two reasons. Firstly, in order to offer a way to automate repetitive tasks. Secondly, because you may expect to login remotely, without having access to a graphical environment. And thirdly, because there are cases when you will simply discard the GUI, like when running a web server.

Camcorder problems

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I always had this problem since I have my Panasonic NV-MX300! I do not know how to explain the problem so I will demonstrate it with this movie

Noticed the squares appearing two times at the beginning? This can be only from the camcorder. I do NOT have this on the tape if I play it with my camcorder (the same as used for recording, as mentioned, the Panasonic) on TV I do not have these problems. It can not be from the software, I had this in Pinacle, Vegas on windows and also on the Mac in iMovie and Final Cut so there is no way this could be from software or the OS. Neither could it be the hardware, it occurred on my old PC (1.7GHz), Laptop(3GHz), Mac Mini and on the iMac. I once had to capture a movie from a different camcorder, also Panasonic but a different model and there I did not have this problem. So what is this and how do I solve this? Or is there some external device I could use to capture the tapes?

Anybody want some worms, trojans, spyware?

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have seen some infected computers, but never, never, have I seen something like this


—— scan results —— directories: 1342
scanned files: 24026
alerts: **1348**

how stupid can you get in just one life?

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

What on earth did we do to deserve such punishment? This is the late punishment for o-zone it’s music. Thank you o-zone for this. We all waited for it! Really!

I think I have to create a new blog category “extreme stupidity” !

Think it cant get worse? Oh yes it can, check these 2 idiots

Extreme Idiot 1 Extreme Idiot 2

DoS attack?

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I had to reboot my server after it was unreachable. It all started with nagios sending me some sms, to many process, http doesn’t respond, https doesn’t respond … As I finally managed to try to login it was already to lade, the server wasn’t responding anymore. After a reboot everything was fine again, but not for long. Again from the same many connections to apache where made so I added the ip to the firewall blacklist and now it’s silent again. But this is not a final solution, I made some new adjustments to Apache, now only limited connections/IP are allowed, I tried first 5 but although I wasn’t doing much I got the “Service temporary unavailable” message so I increased it to 10, further have I set the MaxClients count from apache from 150, to 100 and I am thinking of reducing it further, I will have to do a stress test some day. The next step will be bandwidth limitation, some domains are already limited by mod_bandwidth but I would like to solve it different and not with a apache module. Well some information really comes when you need it, a friend of mine pointed me to TC (traffic control) so I will take a look at that, when I have time.

Photo editing

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was just playing around with some features of Aperture after watching some tutorial movies. Now this is a great piece of software, thank you apple! I would like to demonstrate what big difference you achieve by editing the photos. Of course you could just do it right with the camera, but I don’t earn my money with this so it’s ok for me if my photos are not perfect and need a retouch on the mac. First, the original one, then one edited slightly in iPhoto and the last one just played around in Aperture with Heights and Shadows, now I love the result of the last one.

Road Trip to Sighisoara, part 3

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Well here is part three of the road trip Saturday was photo day! I have shot several hundred pics. I had a total of almost 800 photos made from friday to sunday, where friday I didn’t take so many and sunday even less, so almost all photos where made on saturday. The first part of the day, coffee, food, sight seeing. I can only repeat, Sighișoara is a GREAT place! I will be going there again, this is sure! The second part was meeting with the guys from VWforum this was a bit short, but still it was interesting After this, it was once again time for sight seeing and photos. Well here I think is best I will let the pictures talk. the link to the pictures will be at the bottom of this blog. So now to sunday, the next adventure day. After so much bad luck on the way to Sighișoara, could it get worse? Yes it could …. We arrived quite fast to Mediaș and I was already starting to think that we will arrive fast to Timișoara but then I saw Vlady pull over and a black liquid tail behind his car, his oil-sump had a hole after he drove after a big rock. So what could we do? First of all get to a city since in the village where we stopped nobody could really help. I towed Vlady until Sibiu (about 40 km) but since it was Sunday, and the chance that somebody could fix this fast, even if we would find someone, where quite low. So we decided to tow him until Timișoara (about 300km). But with my car being automatic, it was better that Foka took over the towing. A very big THANK YOU at this point! That was really a big help! But please remind me when something like this happens to me that that I will not let myself towed from you, at least not in romania. As wee went towards Lugoj, I couldn’t keep up with Foka and Vlady since I was trying to not hit some road hole again, we took this road since it was 50km shorter. But if you are not towed … take the way over Arad! So I will end here my third and last part of the road trip blog.

Road Trip to Sighisoara, part 1

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

As some might know, last weekend I and some friends went to Sighisoara to a VW event organized by VWforum.ro but it was not only the fact that there was a VW event that made me drive this far, it was the magic of Sighisoara I noticed on some photos that made me do this little trip. But as life really can suck some time, the weekend was not without problems. So where do I start, lets begin with thursday, my plan was to leave at 15:30 but Razvan was of course late, as we left finally at about 16:00 there was traffic, because of an accident, or rather because of the people stopping to look at the accident (someone please shoot the people doing this). Well the next traffic problem was near Budapest, where the road was under construction so the next delay … Finally at about 00:00 I think we arrived in Timisoara after a beer and some talks about when we will leave on friday I finally got some sleep, not much but … I can sleep when I’m dead

Road Trip to Sighisoara, part 2

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

here we go with part 2 of the great adventure. Finally arrived in Sighisoara, tired, starving, even more tired … we checked in at “Casa Legena” which will be also discussed in a separate blog! This was the next adventure (this was a hell of a weekend!) but first before I continue … time for a new beer. so where was I … yes, Sighisoara, finally there. Our first way after opening the room (I didn’t even take my baggage out of the car) was directly to the restaurant. The restaurant where Vlad Tepes (Dracula) was born, well it was probably not a restaurant by that time. I can tell you the food there was so good that I get hungry every time I even think of it. Since Razvan didn’t have much time to try all foods, he ordered three meals so he can try different things. Oh and let’s not forget that it was Papulos his birthday! Cheers mate! Happy birthday and a loooong life. Our first impression about Sighisoara, GREAT! I think everybody that was with me will confirm this. I have never seen or could think about such a place in Romania, not that Romania can’t offer anything but usually everybody thinks he is the boss, as tourist you get a bad service high prices and everybody tries to fool you somehow. Well we did have a “little” problem with “Casa Legenda” but this, as I have already mentioned, will be a separate blog. Anyway, great food, acceptable prices, nice people, nice souvenirs you can get and a very very beautiful place, if you want to see something about the history of romania, you should start here! After a very good meal, it was time for some sight seeing at night. Rilu managed do drop his mobile from quite some height, but … believe it or not, it’s still working, Nokia quality After the short walk, some photos and a good cigar … it was time for some party … but we where all so tired that we didn’t manage to drink even a quarter of the Jim Beam bottle. I didn’t even manage to finish one beer! I think the only time I was so tired was about 10 years ago as I walked with a friend about 17km from a small city back to my grandmothers village since there was nobody willing to stop at 3am to pic up some crazy teenagers … oh well … this is a long time ago … time to return back to the present ok this should be enough of part 2 To be continued in Part 3 !

Wieviele DSL-Router braucht ein Mensch?

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Wieviele DSL-Router braucht ein Mensch? Deutsche Telekom liefert insgesamt 552 DSL-Router an Privathaushalt Manchmal muss es einfach etwas mehr sein, hat sich die Deutsche Telekom womöglich gedacht. Eine Privatperson hatte einen DSL-Anschluss bei dem rosa Riesen bestellt und erhielt statt eines DSL-Routers gleich 552 Exemplare. Kamen die ersten 56 DSL-Router noch per Post, wurden die restlichen 496 Geräte mit einem Schlag per Lkw geliefert. Die in Nordrhein-Westfalen beheimatete Telekom-Kundin bestellte kürzlich einen DSL-Anschluss als Ergänzung zu dem bestehenden ISDN-Anschluss. Zunächst erhielt sie aber den Hinweis, dass möglicherweise nicht genügend DSL-Router zur Verfügung stünden, berichtet der Kölner Stadtanzeiger. Wie sich bald zeigte, waren diese Sorgen mehr als unbegründet. Zunächst erhielt die Telekom-Kundin ein Paket mit DSL-Router samt Splitter. Die zweite Postlieferung mit fünf weiteren Routern hat sie umgehend an die Deutsche Telekom zurückgeschickt. Einige Tage später folgten dann fünf Paketsendungen mit insgesamt 50 DSL-Routern, die gleichfalls unverzüglich an den rosa Riesen zurückgingen. Allerdings war es da wohl schon zu spät, die Lkw-Lieferung mit nochmals 496 DSL-Routern aufzuhalten, die einige Tage später mit fünf Paletten vor dem Haus der Privatkundin stand. Gegenüber der Zeitung begründete die Deutsche Telekom den Fehler damit, dass ein Telekom-Mitarbeiter die Produktbezeichnung für den Router (Speedport 501) in das Feld mit der Liefermenge eingetragen habe. Allerdings bleibt damit schleierhaft, wie es zu der Fehllieferung der übrigen 51 Router gekommen ist. Quelle:

Backup the internet

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Just received a mail from Blizznet:

ab sofort verrechnen wir bis Ende des Jahres 2006 kein Zusatzdatenvolumen!

Das heißt, Sie profitieren rückwirkend mit Anfang September von unlimitiertem Datentransfer ohne Einschränkung und ohne Nachverrechnung!

Viel Spaß beim Surfen wünscht Ihnen

Ihr blizznet-Team

This means, 10mbit up/downstream with no limit. I must be in paradise!

Bush and Condoleza

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Old but still good

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What’s happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That’s what I want to know.
Condi: That’s what I’m telling you.
George: That’s what I’m asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow’s name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The Chinaman!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya’ asking me for?
Condi: I’m telling you Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I’m asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That’s the man’s name.
George: That’s who’s name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East.
Condi: That’s correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don’t want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.

No DVD Shrink for Mac? Think again !

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the briliant crossover office, runing Windows application on a mac is no problem. One might say “wait, there is Paralelles and VMware” but … what do they cost, compared to crossover office? and … dvd shrink does NOT work with Paralleles, at least not “out of the box” and why wait till you start a virtual machine to rip a DVD ? So move your but to the crossover office store and get yourself a licesnsed copy of Crossover Office, you won’t regret I have first tested DVD Shrink 3.1 which after 50% crashed with “not enough memory” well 1.5 gb of RAM should be enough for something like DVD Shrink. But I must addmit I had quite a lot running and my iMac got quite slow during the process. After installing DVD Shrink 3.2 and quittung some application ( firefox, camino, gallery remote, adium, mail, itunes, sofa control and some others ) DVD Shrink worked like a charm, fast, no crash and best of all, it could create a “backup” from an image I had on my HD.

Ooops I did it again ... Failing flashplugin update

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

no, not me, but Ubuntu did it again, after an upgrade the flashplayer did not finish the installation correctly, solution in the forum on the second page

Failing flashplugin update – Sep 19 – Ubuntu Forums

bye bye LVM, hello raid0

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Du to the extreme performance that LVM gave me I decided to change my 2 big disks in a raid0 instead. It’s strange, I have a LVM in the same computer with no problems and a LVM on my production server, also no problems. Only the LVM with the two 300GB Disks caused problems. just look at this performance!


dd if=/dev/zero of=dd.txt count=500 bs=4096
500 0 records in
500 0 records out
2048000 bytes transferred
in 10.020213 seconds (204387 bytes/sec)

this is 199 kb/s ! on a local disk! that performance increased to 3.6mb/s after booting with Kernel 2.4 well and here is is the raid0 performance

Fix the fetchmail antispam bug

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Fetchmail has a feature where you can tell on what errorcode fetchmail should treat the mail as spam and discard it anyway! Normaly fetchamil would not discard a mail if it wasn’t accepted, but in some cases, like when the sender domain is not valid the mail is rejected with error 450. The lcX mailserver for example does this which reduces spam a little bit. The problem is that fetchmail has a bug and will not discard the message, to fix this and remain using the debian packages, one could do this:

All computers are off :)

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

For the frst time since 7 Year I have turned off ALL computers at home. The oldest one, the Firewall, a P1 166MHz is runing without being turned off since about 5 years! Time flies by real fast isn’t it? I’m interested to see the next electricity bill

Stupid questions

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I love this message from the Hitachi RMA, hmm… what should I press? I agree or I don’t agree? The best thing was, they REALY asked me this also on the phone !

In order to create a RMA, please read and respond to the following:

Export Compliance Certification

By clicking the “I agree” button, I agree that Hitachi GST products will not be used for the design, development, manufacturing, testing, stockpiling, or use of biological, nuclear, missile or chemical weapons.

Mysql gone crazy

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Good that I always switch of my mobile when I go to sleep. Why? Imagine waking up, switching your mobile on and then the ringing begins, you get one sms after the other … a total of 45 messages. Oh no … not what you might think, it was nagios that was telling me that something is wrong with the server. For some reason (couldn’t find out why) mysql had a cpu usage of 88-99% and my server had a load average of 11 ! There was no way mysql wanted to shut down so the only solution kill -9. Everything is running again but I hate it when something happens and I don’t know why. Now I can just hope it won’t happen again.

Dear Sir Bill Gates: invoice enclosed

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Oh I love this one. Just received this from Moga, an article on TheRegister. I think my colleagues know just too good how it feels to come back from a meeting and find a rebooted PC and all you work is gone. I must say I was lucky until now since I was always in front of the pc as windows wanted to reboot and game me some time to hit a cancel button. This reminds me of a other story. Imagine writing a 300 Pages doc. With the “oh so powerful and much better then OpenOffice” Winword. You save the document and the next day you want to open it and print it, but no no … Winword has other plans, it simply crashes. This happened to my colleague. Thank good I had an older version of OpenOffice installed, I opened the “corrupt” winword .doc file without a problem, saved it again as .doc file for winword (which then had only 1MB instead of 3) and the file could be opened again in winword, without any problem and nothing was missing. Just some tables looked strange, but that was fixed much faster then writing 300 pages from 0.

Thanks google!

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I just looked at my webalizer stats and noticed, that someone got on my page due to the search term “iban t-com berlin”. So I looked up on google, and guess what, my blog is the first thing displayed when someone searches for the t-com iban in berlin. Great! now everybody can read how stupid t-com is

We won't live for ever

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

We all know that, but I think nobody ever thinks about what will be when the end comes. The end of a life somebody close to you, or even your own life. I have been trough this more times then I wished (not that I wished to make any of these experiences ever). But then this things make you think … how fast time has passed, how suddenly bad things can happen. Yesterday you talked with a person and the next day it’s a matter of life and death and all you can do is just sit around and wait, not knowing what you will hear when the pone rings or the doctor comes to you. Some say “Time heal all wounds” but as someone who has made this experience I can say this is not true. You will never forget! There will always be some photos, some words, some memories that will remind you and will remind you of the pain. Especially if it’s someone young, very young. I mean, I can say hey, my grandfather was 85! He has had bad times in life and good times in life, but he has lived his life. But what can I say about my little cousin that was 9? … the list can be continued, but I won’t. Before I get any stupid questions, no noting happened in my family, but in the family of someone close to me. I won’t go in to further details. This just brought up some of my personal memories, some of my wounds that haven’t been healed by time, even after almost 20 years. And no I do not want to talk about it, so no questions please.

Is the EU prepared for Romania ?

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was reading my favorite comic, userfriendly and there was something about youtube … so I was kind of bored and searched the term: Romania on youtube. The first thing I found was some commercial for tourism, oh my good … that commercial is almost a 1:1 copy of the Turkish commercial, so I would say … do your own thing next time. The next thing was something about a taxi driver, that had a fake taxi and was requesting exaggerated prices from passenger, I love the typical Romanian reaction as he notices the passenger doesn’t have money to pay and his excuses as he was confronted with the camera! Great!

Madrid

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Ok this blog is a bit late, but since I was sick I wasn’t really in the mood for writing blogs. Last weekend, I didn’t want to stay in vienna again, I wanted to go somewhere, but since I’m fed up of romania I wanted something else. There are only a few reasons left for me to go to romania, the few friends that have remained friends, my grandmother. So lets get back to Madrid, … so I decided to leave to Madrid over the long weekend (Tuesday was public holiday). The plane landed at about 23:30 in Madrid, I took a taxi and went of to the hotel, High Tech Hotel Clipper. Some short notes about the hotel, small but clean and nice rooms, clean bathroom with shower, what do you need more when you are sightseeing? A Internet connection? They have it and guess what? It’s fast and free! So on Saturday my big Marathon through Madrid started, I left the hotel at about 11:00 and started walking on Gran Via. At that time it was not to hot outside and I thought that it’s not so hot as I expected. This has changed at about 14:00 … walking in the sun was a suicide mission but in the shadow it was quite ok and the light wind also brought some extra cooling. On my aprox. 13km walk (I measured in the map!) I came across a lot of interesting things. I was surprised to see so many homeless people sleeping on the street. As I expected I heard a lot of romanian people, we are everywhere. ok enough of writing, I’m not as inspired as I thought, if I wouldn’t have got sick I would have written some blogs from the hotel in the evening. Anyway it was a nice trip, a very interesting and nice city and I will have to go again one day

Some facts about Romania

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

What’s with all these blogs about Romania ? No clue, but I just find some of the videos I saw quite interesting. The first one is about some facts of Romania what has been invented by romanians and I must admit I was quite surprised, didn’t know some of the things myself. So this blog I will not be criticizing Romania as usual, I think some might have noticed that since quite a while I am criticizing Romania quite a lot and some also might know what this started from, but … I said I won’t criticize in this blog. Ok here the video about the interesting facts ( in english!! ) ok and the second one is about tourism again but this commercial, I must admit, is very very good (I hope this one is NOT copied) I like the idea, this one brings the patriot in me back, at least for some minutes. so here we go, here is the next movie thanks for this one, this kind of makes me see things brighter again, and forget about some other things.

compatible=mysql40, or how to screw your database in 2 easy steps

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yes once again I had nothing better to do then move servers, fuck and today it wasn’t even raining. Ok I came across a lot of problems as usual, one was that I decided not to use debian testing anymore, I wanted only stable ! One of the problems was that stable had mysql4.0 and my old database was 4.1 and of course there where problems while trying to import the database, but hey, there is a nice parameter –compatible=mysql40 sounds like exactly what I needed … After I finished the server almost I found out what “compatible” means for the sickheads who implemented this parameter. “compatible” means that this line: `object_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, will be transformed into this: `object_id` int(11) NOT NULL default ’0′,

Free TV not free anymore?

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

RTL and MTV are planing to transmit encoded from 2007, actually they have already signed a contract with Astra. Pro7 and Sat1 are also planing to encode. This won’t affect only MTV and RTL, also everything that belongs to it, this would be: RTL, Vox, RTL II, Super RTL, n-tv, RTL Shop, Traumpartner TV, MTV, VIVA, NICK and Comedy Central! The monthly fee should not exceed 3,50 Euro and the receiver needed for decoding shouldn’t exceed 100 Euro, this is what the article says in “derStandard”

Bad memory, part II

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This one is kind of funny … Yesterday I decided to drive a bit with the golf so the dust can be washed of by the rain. so I took the license plates of the Passat and put them on my golf on of I went (in Austria you can have 3 cars with the same license plate). Today I decided to drive with the Passat again, nothing unusual. I almost reached my destination, as a police car turned around the corner and the driver of the police car looked at my car and had a strange look on his face. I could feel like they want to stop me and I was proven right, I saw in the rear mirror how they turned and followed me and pulled me over. Once the policeman approached my car I instantly knew why they stopped me. Stupid me forgot to put the license plates back on the Passat, I almost crossed Vienna without license plates on the car The policeman started t laugh after he checked the papers, at least I didn’t get a ticket for this. On my way back home to pick up my license plates I started to find this amusing

Skype for Mac 1.5 Beta and video preview now available

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Finaly ! I have waited soo long for this one

I’m happy to write this because video has been the number one thing requested in Skype for Mac since… well, pretty much ever since we released Skype a few years ago.

Microsoft is developing the iPod Killer

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

this is by far the best Joke I have read this morning ! Come on Microsoft, you can only be kidding ! Oh, will the so called “Zune” player have a nice blue screen when it crashes?

The power of music

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Music has a special power, at least for me it has. There are some songs, that put you in a state of meditation, where you start thinking of all kind of things. There is also this special power of older songs, songs you have associated with some period of time, not necessary that the song was actually from that period but somehow it brings up memories from that period of time. No mater how stupid the song is, you will like it if it reminds you of something. Let’s take for instance Culture Beat, now these are songs that are kind of stupid, but hey, it reminds me of when I was a kid, school time, vacations in Romania at the country … and things like that. Times where things seemed to be better, I don’t really think that things where better but not necessarily worse, but one always kind of remembers the good things. But there still is a kind of feeling “if I could turn back time” not necessarily changing something, just to live a moment, you have in memory, once again. Things change as time passes and so do people, but music stays the same and so do the memories you have and music is that little thing that manages to bring that up again. Music can change so much, just imagine how a horror movie would be without the right music? Imagine some children song to a horror scene … would you be afraid ? But put some frightening music to a trick film, what would you feel then? ok enough about this, iTunes just switched the music to drum ’n bass and this isn’t necessarily the right music for memories, although I must say that there is some part of my life associated with dnb, hardcore, gaba, electro and some other varieties of techno.

Cool down

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It’s way to hot! Quite a long time ago since we had such a hot summer, I think the last one was in 2003! Anyway … what can you do on such a hot day … go for a swim and lay in the sun. I’m not really a fan of laying in the sun but if there is a pool, than it’s ok for me. My sister had the idea to go to the new “Badeschiff” (Bath ship or something like this). It’s a ship on the danube which has been transformed to a pool and there is also a second part where you can lay in the sun and also have a bar. Well all this sounds to good to be true for Vienna and I must admit I would not go a second time. The pool is ok, but everything else is so packed full, you feel like anchovies in the can, that’s not mine, but one could also sit at the bar, there at least you have shadow and don’t get a mad headache like I did. Well it’s worth visiting

I want to ride my bicycle

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

If there will be no blog this evening with some new photos, than this means I fell of my bike! God, I haven’t used my bike since .. ehmm… 5 years I think!

I'm still alive

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, I survived my short bicycle trip. Only made a few photos, I was to exhausted to make more photos. It took a while to get my bike out since it was covered with car tires, boxes and all sort of other junk. After I pushed the bike to the gas station to fill it with air, my adventure could begin …. god .. that was a strange feeling to ride a bike again. and a bad feeling in the muscles … this sure will hurt tomorrow.

raid+lvm ... can get tricky if you don look exactly

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I should think twice before doing stuff with lvm on a raid ! I am setting up a new server, rebooted it with a rescue system so I could create the raid 1, this was quite simple mdadm –create …. and raid was finished, then the lvm over it, pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate and ready to go … but alas I had to reboot the rescue system ( shit happens ) after the reboot ( since it was a rescue system which is read only ) the raid didn’t start, but I could start lvm which of-course complained that things are double ( on sda and sdb, because of the raid) I actually ignored that and started installing xen, after a short time I noticed what big shit I did. so … I stoped lvm again, starte raid ( mdadm –assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 ) and the raid is reconstructing. I have NO clue what it will look like after it’s finished, no idea where the lvm acutaly write to ( sda or sdb? ) and if after the rebuild of the raid the data will still be there … maybee I should just start from scratch.

Got time?

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This was once again one of these days … it starts as a “oh, today I have nothing to do and a lot of free time” day end ends up as a day full of stress. It started with some kind of brunch at my parents, but with so much food that it was rather some kind of mix up between breakfast, lunch and supper … it then transforms to a usual chat session with my parents which can last some time. In the meanwhile my cousin from Paris calls, he is on his way to us so, new plan for the evening, not that I had any plan for the whole day except lunch a hang lazy around at home, but it looked like I could forget the lazy part. So, me with no plan for the day, my sister with the same plan, why not go in the city for an ice cream? Good idea, but as I asked for the bill, stupid me noticed that I forgot my wallet … thanks god only in the car and not home. so, back to the car to get the wallet and I must say, the car wasn’t that close … for someone that loves sport like I do Ok then the day continued with a photo edit session of Papulos his wedding photos ( which can be found here) in the meanwhile I kind of had to explain my cousin how to get here, his GPS didn’t have the details of vienna, so I had to do my best to tell him the way trough vienna. as if this wasn’t enough of things that are not working (including my memory) I got an message that new user registration doesn’t work on vwclub.ro, a quick check showed that there realy is a problem, but I have no time to fix it because in the meanwhile 3 hours have passed working on those bloody photos, ok so I hit the upload button, took my sister and of we went back to my parents. Meanwhile cousin was almost in vienna (130 km to go) so there wasn’t much time, and because I was afraid they will get lost, I told them how to get to a point that they can’t miss, the Mc Donald’s from Favoriten, the only bad thing about this is that it’s almost 20km from my parents. So one at my parents I managed to write a short note on VWclub about the problem and got a call that they only have 25km to go to Favoriten, so once again I jump in the car, and of I go to Favoriten. Don’t know if I was so fast there or they had more then 20km since I had to wait quite a while, not that I was in a hurry, I could just hang around being lazy in the car. Once arrived, back again to my parrents, more food, more chat, a beer etc. And guess what? I noticed that this time I left my wallet at home after working on Papulos his wedding photos, so I had no money and not a single document with me, good that I didn’t get in any police control. Well after a extended chat session between relatives and photo showing I managed to get back home and … not that I wouldn’t be tired, nooo not me … what do I do instead of sleeping, writing a blog. Well in short, I have done over 200km today and spent over 3 hours in the car ( according to the board computer ) excluding the time I waited for my cousin at Mc Donald’s. And the worst thing is, I can’t even sleep longer as usual because I have an appointment at work at 9 … so to get back to the title of this blog, got time? I am willing to buy a lot of it! so and now …. good night!

rain, finally it cools down

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

finally some rain … and it cools a bit down. today in the office we hit 32 deg. (sorry, cant find the deg. key on my Mac keyboard) but in my server room at home I still have 33 ,but thanks to xen I can shut down one of my servers, I only have to get some stuff copied to my file server, but since I don’t have NFS installed (don’t want to do it with ftp) I have to wait till tomorrow because I don’t have internet at home ( see ) ok so let’s see how cool it will get without this server

thank you, neighbor

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

oh no, my internet is not working today, blizznet seems to have some DNS problems, almos al .at domains are being resolved, and .. heise.de …. strange. anyway, this gives me some time to relax and forget about computers, go smoke a cigar, drink some cuban rum and write a blog. write a blog? without a internet connection? well thanks to my neighbor which hasn’t set up his wireless router correct I do have internet but I won’t abuse it, I will only use it to read my mails and write this blog, I promise

Today's Trafic stats

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

oh my good …. I never would even imagine that I would do more the 100gigs until the end of the month … and today is only the 07th !!!


ipacsum -s 200607010000
IP accounting summary
Host: foo.bar / Time created: 2006/07/07 12:48:36 CEST
Data from 2006/07/01 00:00:00 CEST to 2006/07/07 12:48:36 CEST
  forwarded incoming GREEN (eth0)                 :             75G
  forwarded incoming RED (eth1)                   :             44G

this means 119 Gigs of transfer this month ! Blizznet is going to kill me for this

10Mbit with no Traffic limits?

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

yes, Blizznet has offered it’s customers as a kind of “thank you” a real flatrate for July and August and this with normal Blizznet speed ( 10Mbit ) The result after the first weekend ( Today is the 3rd as some might have noticed ) is this:


ipacsum -s 200607010000
IP accounting summary
Host: foo.bar / Time created: 2006/07/03 13:38:19 CEST
Data from 2006/07/01 00:00:00 CEST to 2006/07/03 13:38:19 CEST
  forwarded incoming GREEN (eth0)                 :             23G
  forwarded incoming RED (eth1)                   :             13G

that would be 13G of download and 23G of upload … in only 2.5 days!

The Perfect Xen Setup For Debian And Ubuntu | HowtoForge Linux Howtos and Tutorials

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Perfect Xen Setup For Debian And Ubuntu | HowtoForge – Linux Howtos and Tutorials

I think I NEVER saw a better howto in my life. It realy is a copy & paste howto, everything works as explained, great tutorial! Now I have 3 vm on my AMD 1.67GHz and there are more to come. think I could turn of some computers at home after this. I actualy could also install IPCop as vm … ok ok this is going to far, at least now I have a teset machine to continue with my DTC Cyrus tests.

Bush has left, finaly

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

hurray mister “I-am-as-stupid-as-amonkey-but-leader-of-the-us” has left Austria, but not without leting the people know and feel that mister “I-am…” you know the rest …, is on the way. The complete city was packed, the freeway A4 and S1 where full because mister monkeyface went to the airport. Oh here a short message, not that I think that anyone would ever read this, to mister monkeyface ( yes, Bush ! ) but since the english language doesn’t have the words I need to express my self … I will write my message in romanian.

Things you have to believe to be a real American

Tue, 30 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This would be funny, if it wasn’t real

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him; a good guy when Cheney did business with him; and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Finaly ordered a new Humidor

Thu, 04 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Here it is, my new “Adorini Humidor Chianti medium” hope it will arrive until Monday. This will give enough space for the cigars I will bring back from Cuba. What a pity for all out of the US that can’t enjoy a real Cuban ciagr ( I’m not mean at all, am I?) This was once again one of that lessons … you try to save money and save on the wrong place, a tip for all of you that want a humidor, get a good one right from the beginning. Oh almost forgot to mention, I ordered it yesterday from Humidor Discount and guess what, they already sent out the package, yesterday … I’ll make some pics when I filled the Humidor

The incredible stupidity of T-Com

Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Once again I had to talk on the phone with one of my favourite German company, the big, bad Magenta coloured T-Com. I had to pay a bill, but since I have a Austrian bank account I need IBAN and SWIFT/BIC for the transaction but they wrote only the IBAN on that bill, now this is the first real stupid thing! So what should I do … call T-Com, the ones responsible for bills, so I assumed they have at least a clue about banking.

The last week

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

So here I am, my last in berlin and I had to move to my favourite hotel, hotel panorama. Do you know the beds from the 80s, with a radio clock in the middle? Thats exactly what I have here. Anyway it could have been worse so I will not complaint. The worst thing was the amount of baggage I had with me in berlin. It took me about a hour to get all my stuff in the car and the guy from the reception looked a bit strange. But after this week I will finaly have holiday, beach, sun and fine cigars.

nagios with sms notification

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

so finaly I finished seting up nagios on my server to monitor themselves and in case of a problem send me an SMS. I found a plugin to send the sms on the nagios exchange site but that didn’t quite work out of the box. First problem is that the URL creation will never work, the URL for the message is created before the session id is assigned to the variable, this can’t work! The second problem is that the message is sent “as is” for example “Server xy is down” this won’t work either! The text has to be url_encoded ( in php, or uri_encode in perl ) so I created a patch which you can download here. Then the description of the usage on the site is not correct

RTFM! posibly before installing something

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I should know it better, especially that this isn’t the first time it happens. I installed once again after a long time nagios on my server so I have something that keeps an eye on the server. Anyway … I installed nagios-mysql ( as I did the last time ) but it looks like the database has to be created before installing, or … who knows, I still didn’t RTFM. well the result was that the 5 min. nagios was running I dumped about 2 gigs of syslog messages that where saved in the syslog, message, users AND the nagios.log … I had over 8 Gigs of logs, good performance test for syslog-ng by the way. Anyway now I finally cleaned up everything, as .gz the file isn’t that big at all only 8.5 MB, OK now that logrotate is finished I should get back to my server.

Name confusion

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it’s nice to have a name that is also used in german but it written different then in german. Everybody writes my name with h ( Christian ) but in Romania Cristian is the correct way to write it. Well most of the time it really pisses me off when I see this, but today actually it was funny. I got a ticket for wrong parking, but the “officer” was to stupid to write the licence plate the correct way. Instead of CRIS he wrote CHRIS, and this means … no ticket for me since it’s a formal error.

Cohiba Siglo II

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have finaly found a simple way to start my Cigar rating, for this I will use my new WordPress blog and the “rate my stuff” plugin. So since the Cohiba Siglo ( I and II ) are my favorite cigars until now I will give them a rating of 4.5 stars! why not 5? Well there might be something better out there, so I will leave the rast of the half point open

Racism and apartheid

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Once again on Phoenix ( German TV channel ) it’s time for history. “The past 100 Years”, I already seen this once and from the most things told there I have already heard. But there was one thing that shocked me, I was shocked last year as I saw this and I was still shocked as I saw this today. It’s about the apartheid in South Africa. I can’t imagine how stupid we humans are. Racism is and will always be the worst thing on this world. I always thought that something like this is against the law everywhere but that the apartheid was still present till 1993 sounds so unbelievable to me. 1993 can you imagine this? Can you image signs that show “For members of the white race group only” ? I would be ashamed to live in such a country where somebody hasn’t got the same rights that I do just because of religion or race … This blog could be continued to a very long roman I think, but for everyone that is interested in this subject I can only recommend the.

the curse of modern technology ...

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I remember as I was a kid, with 11 Years I went by train to Romania, this was in 1990/1991, I was all on my own on a train, nothing special one might think, me nither … Ok there was some funy story at the end as I kind of got lost in Arad in the Train station

the east side gallery

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

yesterday I saw the east side gallery, a 1.3km “piece” of the Wall that once divided a city in two countrys. It’s a piece of history that you have to see when you come to Berlin. What a pitty that stupid sprayers have to destroy this important piece of history. No mater if grafitty is art or not, this is the wrong place for it. One might say that this piece of history should be kept so that our children will see and learn from our mistakes, but as history shows we will never learn from the past, history is always repeating, but this should be material for a other blog, some day when I am realy bored, drunk and liste to the right music I will write that blog

Yes I did it :)

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

as you can see I switched to WordPress the import from RSS was quite simple but all html tags have been scrambled so I hat heaps of < and > to change back so my content will display. Anyway I am ( for the moment ) happy with wordpress but time will show how good the decision was. The instalation is quite simple, not that serendipity (s9y) installation was more complicated, but if you intent to do a installation for more users with only one codebase wordpress ofers a more simple posibility or rather the debian package delivers a good configuration for this purpose.

We are everywhere !

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

something funny hapened today morning. I went to my car an headed of to work and noticed a smal flyer under the wiper, nothing unusual. As I arived work I took the flyer and what do you think was on it ? “Carti de Acasa, “ ( books from home, in Romanian ) once again I can only say that we romanians are everywhere!

Hurray Spring woke up ( finally )

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Winter is over! Oh how I waited for this day ( and many other people also ) Went outside for a walk, I was kind of forced to go outside, but didn’t regret it once I was out. The ice was melting, people where without winter jackets outside, and gues what … the sun was shining Now what could make this day even better ? Right … 6 doughnuts. This was also a good ocasion to take some pics while the shun is shining and here they are in my gallery

Stupid Microdrive

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Great … after 6 months my great 4GB Hitachi Microdrive doesn’t work anymore! I put it in my card reader, got some pics from it, put it back in the camera and that was it … no reaction anymore. Just some very strange sound. No mater where I connect it, if it’s the camera or the card reader. Good that I had a 512MB CF with me, is enough for some weekend pics. But no way I will ever buy I Microdrive, I will try to see if hitachi wil change it, since I don’t have the original package anymore which Promarkt requests. Anyway, It’s broken and in waranty and someone will have to come up with a replacement! But I’m realy disapointed from the microdrive.

Finaly, rejected mails for unexistsing users

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I think I had this small “problem” quite a long time. A few years I gues, actualy since I switched to Cyrus and this is quite a long time ago. 2002 maybee ? Anyway I knew about that litle problem but it wasn’t so bad to put to much time in it and as I was trying the first time to fix it I had the problem that I didn’t know where to get the existing users from. Oh… almost forgot to mention the smal problem I had. Postfix doesn’t know anything about the existing users from cyrus since there is no place where it should look for the users, only cyrus knows about it. But since the switch to users in mysql this problem is solved, postfix can check the database to look for the users, so in main.cf change this value:

Once again in Berlin

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Here I am again, once again in Berlin, but this time I also have some minutes to write a blog and I also made some first fotos

and guess what! I also have internet and this already in the first week unbeleavable! T-Com was quite fast making the conection and the DSL itself I got from Manitu where I don’t have to make a one year contract. Well looks like winter is still present in Berlin, and I think I’m the only one around already with somer tires on the car, but hey …. no risk no fun

me and my big mouth

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I hate it when this happens. Yesterday I said “I hope it won’t snow this week, since my Passat is in service and the Golf doesn’t have winter wheels” well and what was the answer the next day? A huge load of snow! I made it to the metro station with the Golf where I parked the car and then went with public transport to work. It was hard enough to get there, I would never managed to get up the big hill ( Bitterlichstrasse ) with so much snow on the road and summer wheels. Well thank god it rained in the afternoon and the snow was gone again. But this “big mouth” thing gives me an idea, “I hope I won’t win in lotto this week” Let’s see if this works.

Home sweet home

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Finaly … my last day in Stuttgart, in about 3 hours my plane to Vienna will take of. Not that I don’t like Stuttgart, but in 2005 I have spent only 5 months at home and I think I need some time at home, visit some friends and stuff like this. So I will try not to do so many on site visits at customers this year to do a lot of things that still are on my to-do list but which I couldn’t do since I wasn’t at home. Ok enough of this for now, have to finish some things and then take a taxi to the airport. I wonder if the reservation of the car to pick me up worked, never received a confirmation from C&K.

Land, I've got land under my feet

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Finaly back on the ground. This was one bad landing, the takeoff was perfect, the flight pleasent and without toubulance but as the plane started sinking for landing it was like a three dimensional rollercoaster. I felt my heart beating like I was on a 200km marathon, not even Moga’s mountain manages this, and I was sweating like I was in the sauna, but I have to say it was hot in the plain, realy ! Anyway, after leaving the plain I kind of fealt the necessity to knee down and kiss the floor, but I could control my self and save the other passengers from this entertaining moment. Oh how is it great to feel good solid ground under the feet !

New horizons on it's way to Pluto

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Nasa has started theis expedition to our farest planet, Pluto. Its 6 bilion (.mrd) km far away and only in 9 years it will reach Pluto. I find the speed of the spacecraft amazing, 50km PER SECOND. Well it will be a long time waiting for results, so get enough beer and pop corn. [Update 18. Jan. 2006] As I heard today morning in the News, the start has been delayed … well what’s one day more?

Fighting with tinyMCE+iManager in S9y blog

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have been trying the whole weekend to get tinyMCE with iManager to work in s9y. I found a blog about this but not realy helpful, the first problem was that you have to get the tinyMCE compressor also which isn’t mentioned in the documentation, and then read the iManager doc carfully. Well I read the iManager doc 10 times but still the iManager didn’t load from the tinyMCE. For this you have to copy the mentioned files from the doc, but somehow it still didn’t work. Today finaly everything works but I don’t understand why. The problem was the Language !!! If you use a langauage that TinyMCE doesn’t support, it won’t work!

My Mac mini

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Apple has always been for me the nice shiny thing that costs much more the a normal PC and doesn’t offer you the same software as it does on a pc. But then one day the mac mini apeared, it was smal, and at a good price and looking at the data, usb, firewire, WiFi, bluetooth, lan, modem, and a cd/dvd-writer that also suport double layer dvd …

mac mini

that was motivation enough to give apple a try, and since it’s not that expensive as a G5 it was the risk worth to try it and if I didn’t like I wouldn’t have lost so much money, but that was not the case. After truning this little mac on and giving it a first try I was more then surprised, it’s the kind of feeling that you have wasted years with something you didn’t like and now you found what you have been looking for ages. The interface is great and all it’s nice features, the mac mini is so silent that I can leave it in my sleeping room without bothering me, it boots fast and the working speed is ok as long as I don’t have iPhoto open with over 10.000 Fotos. The software package that comes with Mac OSX is great, you have iPhoto for all your fotos and with a little plugin you can use iPhoto with Gallery2. iDVD is also great for creating dvd menu’s and slide shows of your fotos. So I could create a DVD of my holiday for everyone with all fotos and a nice menu for the ones that don’s realy know or want to look at the pc at the fotos. Well I can say I love this little mac mini, this is way the best thing I could buy except of my Canon EOS 350D Now I am looking forward to the MacBook Pro with the Intel Core Duo processor in February and then I will get rid of my Acer notebook.

After more then one year, HOLIDAY

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Finaly after more then one year I took some time of and went to Romania. Not the best place if you want to relax but I had to go and visit some relatives. With that ocasion I could also meet some friends, the few that I can still call friends, but this is a different story.Continue reading “After more then one year, HOLIDAY”

Christmas, the biggest punishment for every city

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Oh how I love it every year … Trafic, a lot of people shopping like it would be their last day on earth, this can only mean christmas is coming … Continue reading “Christmas, the biggest punishment for every city”

Last Christmas, I gave ...

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Oh no… another Christmas punishment, every fucking year this stupid morron from wham! gives his heart away and every year he want’s to give it to someone special.George Michel, didn’t you notice that we all hate you? Please stop giving your heart away, or at least don’t cry every fucking year about the fact that nobody likes you!

Great support from TomTom (I'm Ironic) [UPDATE]

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So here I am with my new Palm T|X and now I want my TomTom navigation on the Palm so I install the Palm version (works incredible fast and reliable since the Palm Hotsync does the installation and copy of the maps ) anyway I installed TomTom5 conected it to the BlueTooth GPS and waited to get a GPS signal, but … what is this ? My Palm poers of … Continue reading “Great support from TomTom (I’m Ironic) [UPDATE]“

Problems with Gallery2

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I noticed last week that some pictures in Clau’s gallery are "wrong" the images displayed in the gallery where from a different album and not only that, they where from a different user. I clicked on the thumbnail and then I saw the correct image so I just recreated the thumbnails and thought that my problems are solved … until today … Continue reading “Problems with Gallery2″

Romanian Transport

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While searching for some images on the net I came acros two pictures, these are no fake, this is real life in Romania http://randomland.atspace.com/dacia.html Continue reading “Romanian Transport”

Stuttgart

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well, almos 3 months have passed since I am in Stuttgart so why not blog some comments about Stuttgart.As some might know I was in Berlin from May to August, so why didn’t I blog that? Well that’s a good question and I have a short answer … I was so fuking lazy to write something and now I am not inspired anymore.Anyway … back to the toppic, Stuttgart …
Continue reading “Stuttgart”

Server Hacked

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I received a mail from my mailer-daemon that a message could not be delivered nothing unusaual, but I noticed that the mail was sent from my server and it was a spam mail.Since the mail was send with the apache user I checked the access.log for strange things and what I found didn’t make me happy.Continue reading “Server Hacked”

Testing around with Gallery 2

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Since Gallery 2 has now been released since a while and isn’t beta anymore I thought it would be time to give it a try and see how it looks like and how the administration is. Well… I can only say "wow" this realy is a great piece of software !The import from Gallery 1 was so easy, I just needed the Path to my old album and then some clicks and some coffee to wait till the import finishes since it took quite a while for almos 3000 pics.So here it is, my first album with gallery 2

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About Me

Well, for now this page is still work in progress …

Posts Archive

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000