Nov 09
ErinGarbage shithappens
The day after having posted the previous entry my blog went down, or something like it. The site is still accessible but accessing capsule will show the web installation page for WordPress. Oh great, so I will be losing at least two posts since I only backed the site up after the Kronborg post. Better than nothing, right?
And then I found out that my precious backup was next to worthless since it only contained the basic database structure (and not the WP tables at that). Something was wrong with the CPanel database backup routines, which created the minuscule zip file without any errors.
I logged a request to my provider last Friday night and thankfully it was restored earlier this week with all of my posts intact. What a relief! I thought I was going to redo the blog again from scratch. It might have been a good “re-birthing” experience but something that I don’t want to go through if I really don’t have to.
Kudos to the Web.com.ph technical support group for the restoration, but would really appreciate it if you can tell me what went wrong. 😀
Two morals to this post:
- Backup your data. Often. And don’t forget to validate afterwards!
- Shit Happens. Embrace it.
ciao!
Oct 30
ErinGarbage
Last Friday Michael, our Danish ex-expatriate in Manila, extended a generous offer of taking the Pinoy assignees to visit some exciting places in Denmark. He has heard that we were not able to go around and we have been here for more than 4 months! The trip was set on Sunday morning, October 28.
Michael invited us to go and visit the Kronborg castle, the setting of the famous play Hamlet. Michael’s family originally offered to take Girlie, Francis and me but we asked if we can bring some of our colleagues especially those that have been in the country for less than 6 months. As of Saturday night, Tina and Alvin was supposed to come with us but they became victims of a late-starting drinking session in our apartment. Their resolve to come got washed away by some unholy concoction that Girlie was able to whip up using gin, sprite and lemon soda. 😀
Anyway, we took Francis’ car to Michael’s place where we arrived within the designated time (this is what Filipino time is all about!). Michael was skeptical with our light jackets even when I said that my fleece jacket is good of until -3 degrees if there is no wind. Michael’s eyes tinkled with devilish mischief and said “but there will always be wind, let’s see…”. He even showed his the jumpsuits his kids are wearing for the trip. 🙁
Since our Dansk lingual skills are next to zero, I went with Michael’s car and Anette (Michael’s wife) went with Francis and Girlie. The trip to Elsinore was filled with chatting about news about the Philippines, and politics in the office.
When we arrived in the parking space near the Castle entrance I got buffeted by strong winds coming from the open channel. The temperature was somewhere between 8 and 10 degrees but the chill factor is making our body shake. Girlie and I were only wearing T-shirts. My pants were even low-waisted and my shirt is not tucked! Chilling winds? How about chilling winds that gets free access to your skin? 🙁
When we got to the castle grounds we got a little reprieve from the winds. I never got the chance to read the posters at the entrance since doing so means I have to stay a little longer on the mercy of the winds. I don’t think the information is worth that much. The comfort room was directly after the entrance so the it was my first stop so I can tuck my inner shirt. Imagine what comfort a simple thing like tucking shirt tails can bring.
Erin and Soy
Michael doubled up as our tour guide in the castle. We got tickets for the #2 package which includes the visit to the Royal Apartments and the Casement (or what I would like to call as the Dungeon). The weirdness in me manifested itself because between the artsy Royal Apartments and the gloomy dungeon, I would pick the dungeon anytime.
In the dungeon, we met Holger Dansk who is fabled to wake up from his mighty slumber in the bowels of Kronborg castle if Denmark suddenly finds itself threatened. I was a little bit disappointed in our dungeon pictures because they were not able to catch the almost pitch-black “ambiance” of the dungeons.
After the dungeons, we had some more picture taking at the ramparts. Michael must be shaking his head in shame with the three crazy Filipinos acting weirdly and snapping pictures. 🙂
Since it was too cold, Michael and Francis went ahead to pick up the cars and we waited in the castle ground entrance. A car parked in front of us and I thought I caught a glimpse of Michael in the driver’s seat. I noticed that there is a single child seat on the backseat (the other one was transferred to Francis’ car for Maya (Michael’s daughter) so I opened the second passenger door and invited Jonathan (Michael’s son) to hop in. Jonathan, who doesn’t understand English, just looked at me like a crazy nut then the driver got down started asking me questions in Danish. Imagine my shock when I realized that the car was not Michael’s!!! Anette and Girlie were heckling me about giving Jonathan away to strangers. I guess I earned my 5 minutes of foolishness at that moment. 😀
From the castle, Michael decided to take us to a side trip on the beach front where the affluent lives with their huge houses with water front/beach front vie,w and super expensive luxury cars. We were going to “the Forest” but stopped in a bakery to buy some bread as we haven’t eaten lunch and it was already 3PM. When we got to the forest we decided against strolling since it was too cold, there is a slight drizzle, and Francis can take us back there if we want to. We rode again and went to this Arne Jacobsen building to appreciate “Modern and Contemporary Danish Art” but the building was closed so we just ended up walking around it. 🙂
After that we went back to Michael’s house for some Kapeng Barako (which Francis promised to replenish if he will come back to Denmark on January) and some cake. We went home after the coffee and some exchange of pleasantries.
Good thing Penpen lent us his camera or else we won’t have anything to show for it. As this blog is hosted on a thrifty 100MB space, I decided to hunt around for some free image hosting service. Picasa won over Flickr for its large free space, and the fact that it is hosted by Google. 🙂 Anyway, here is my Kronborg picasa album for those who want to see more of our pictures. 🙂
ciao!
Oct 24
ErinFLOSS, Garbage
Last night I decided to continue digging around the problems I had with my spanking new Mandriva 2008 installation. Booting my laptop shows that the wlan0 device is still missing during network initialization. This is going to be a problem so I lug my laptop and power brick to the living room so I can have a wired connection to help solve the problem.
I am assuming that the problem is somehow related to the way the wireless connection is being brought up. I read some information about ndiswrapper and iwconfig and decided to do some tinkering. I decided to shutoff the wired connection to better know when I finally get my wireless connection working. This is when the proverbial s#17 hits the proverbial fan.
Shocker of the night #1.
After clicking the system tray network utility to close down eth0 the processor then starts to do something. And then somewhere between something and nothing. Ten minutes and I still haven’t got anything and the menu windows has started to be rendered as blank squares.
Mouse works. I can move my pointer but the keyboard is dead. The capslock, numlock and scroll lock keys are not inducing any reaction. Since the mouse is still usable and I am in KDE then there is still a way out. I clicked on the K button, and proceeded to restart the laptop.
Shocker of the night #2.
Shutdown seems to work but stopped during the shutdown of the mandi service. My only option at this point is push the hard reset button with a toothpick. Exasperated and since the night is still early I decided to perform another clean install over my new Mandriva 2008 installation.
Installation #2.
Same drill. I just selected to reuse my partitions since I don’t want to mess with the partitioning. During the package selection I checked the manual package selection option (like always) and then proceeded to the next screen.
Shocker of the night #3.
The installer proceeded with the installation. What!?! Where did the manual selection screen go? I was thinking when I saw that the installation will take around an hour. I don’t want this selection as the default selection will consume about 90% of my root partition where my /usr resides. I think streamlining the packages afterwards is going to be far difficult than starting all over again. Out cames the toothpick to press the hard reset and restart the installation process.
Installation #3.
Same drill except the installer now hanged after the license screen. I waited 15 minutes before taking out the magic toothpick. Man, this toothpick is my McGyver’s all-around magic utility tonight.
Installation #4.
Same installation drill. I am beginning to hate the Mandriva 2008 installation background. No fiasco on the package selection and I would only need to wait 26 minutes for all selected packages to be installed. Neat. I think I spent more time than that during the past few attempts.
At the configuration page I decided to skip the configuration of the network. I figure to do it once the system is functioning. Restarted the Linux system twice just to be sure (I think I am developing an OC identity 😀 ).
Booted into KDE and then installed ndiswrapper which prompted the installation of other packages. I also installed the prism54 firmware that I have saved in /storage/packages/NoArch. After this I tried configuring the wireless connection first by using the Intersil Javelin drivers (prism54). At the end of the configuration wizard I still don’t have any wireless connection. The system can’t even list the wireless routers in the vicinity.
I fired up the network connection wizard again and selected the ndiswrapper option. This time the system is able to list the connections found in the apartment. I configured the parameters for our router that uses a WPA PSK. I still can’t get any connection. Just for the heck of it, I rebooted the machine and LO AND BEHOLD the dreaded error message is back informing me that the wlan0 driver is back.
Hell. I give up for now. If I don’t get my wireless connection up within the week then I am ditching Mandriva for now since my 2007.1 installer is in Manila. I will take this as a sign for me to try other distributions in this laptop.
Time to sleep.
ciao!
Sep 12
ErinGarbage, Work
Welcome to the new home of the boredom of ramfree17. Who would have thought that this incarnation of this blog will reach 100 pages and would survive the transfer to another host. I have spent a week trying to get this site up and running. I switched provider to Web.com because my previous provider killed of the starter package (1000 pesos per year which includes 100mb hosting and domain registration) and Web.com is only 100 pesos more expensive than my original one.
I also switched the domain name because the old domain registration is already blocked by the irritating big W implementation in the home office. Too bad I cant repoint the old domain to this one but those are the sacrifices I have to make.
This is also my first month on this offshore assignment. Well technically I have already been 34 days here in Denmark but it still feels like yesterday since I still do not have a hang of the things. I have already been to the Tivoli amusement park wherein we have conquered most of the adrenaline pumping rides. The only reason we were not able to conquer the dragon was because it broke down while we were on it. I have also been in the Little Mermaid park but I still don’t get it what is exactly great on this tourist hot spot.
Hopefully more posts about my assignment here in the land of the Danes. 🙂
ciao!
Aug 09
ErinGarbage
The recruiting department in the company is lauching an incentive-based campaign that blew my socks off. In return for an X number of ‘entries’ the department is willing to give
- 1-2 ‘entries’ = 3 donuts
- 2-3 ‘entries’ = 4 donuts
- 4-6 ‘entries’ = 6 donuts or half dozen
- 7-10 ‘entries’ = 12 donuts or 1 dozen
Notice what is wrong with the above allocation? The first one is that there is a overlap on the first two entries. The second one is that while the last two are grammatically correct, they are syntactically ambiguous.
Rep: Ah excuse me ma’am, would you like 6 donuts or half dozen?
Person1: Ah, I’ll get half dozen, it sounds it has more donuts than 6.
Rep: How about you sir?
Person2: I would like 12 donuts please.
Rep: May I suggest getting 1 dozen instead? It costs the same anyway.
Person2: Gee thanks, I appreciate the help.
Ok, some might comment that whoever wrote that memo was just being smart in providing an alternative term for a half and one dozen prizes. If that is the case then why not say quarter dozen or third of a dozen on the first two? Not being used enough? It doesn’t matter. Whoever wrote that tried to sound smart but ended up being ambiguously retarded.
Too bad it was sent through a generic mailer. Otherwise I could have replied back.
I’m bored.
ciao!
Jul 09
ErinGarbage, Movies
Last Saturday my wife and I went to Robinson’s Galleria to get some well needed RnR. Since we were on a diet and it was burger day,we were planning to leave the car in the parking lot and scoot to the Greenhills area to eat dinner at Brother’s Burger (since their branch in Rockwell has already closed shop). But since we got out late and I spied there was a new Wham! Burgers branch in 4th floor, we decided to eat there instead. Previously we were only able to eat Wham! burgers at Shangri-la Edsa.
We both ordered double whammies, two perfectly charbroiled burgers dripping with succulent juice, with some tomatoes, lettuce and on a soft sesame bun. I don’t know what happened with my burger but it disappeared somewhere in less than five minutes. I ended up sharing my wife’s burger. /lol
I am still debating whether Brother’s Burger or Wham! has the best burgers. But we will definitely eat there again on the 21st when we finally pick up the replacement for Betsy.
And oh, we watched the Transformers movie after to pass away the traffic. Great movie, and I can’t add anything that has not yet been said before. 😀
ciao!
Jun 17
ErinGarbage
I have officially ditched Sage rss reader in favor of Google Reader. GR allows me to centralize all of my feeds and lets me read a lot of the blogs that the Websense in the office blocks. I couldn’t comment on most of them though.
Bad Erin. But I stopped caring when they refused to listen. They say apple, I say banana. In the end they still got a fruit. 😛
ciao!
Jun 17
ErinGarbage, Technology
Sometimes the cause of the problem is glaringly simple that you could smack yourself in the head when realization hits you.
Ever since I brought home both Paquito (my IPaq rx3715) home with my Dixie, the DLink DI-624 wireless switch, I was no longer able to make them communicate like what I was able to do in Helsinki. I already tried resetting the device but still no dice. Since I was not able to get any connection from the free Wifi in Robinsons Galleria and Pioneer I decided that it might be something in the PDA. Unfortunately there is no update available so I chucked the task in my backburner until I get an inspiration or new information, whichever comes first.
A couple of weeks ago my Lala, my Mandriva installation in my laptop, lost her ability to connect wirelessly to the switch so I was forced to leash her to one of the LAN ports. I already tried reloading the PRISM driver and ndiswrapper but nothing was working. My schedule is to hectic that I decided to just let Lala be leashed for the time being. What makes me squirm is that Stubborn, my Windows installation, is able to connect to Dixie without any problems. Trying to bring up the wlan0 in Lala always churns out an error that it cannot set the WEP key. I viewed it and everything looks fine. Another dead end, it must be one of those updates that I let urpmi download and install…
Last night I was tinkering with Dixie’s web admin interface and happened to click on the Wireless page. Then I noticed something that burned a light bulb in my head; three of four digits were in a different order! I double checked the one I have in mcc and lo behold, Lala have a different key! Eureka, and gundammit! I was elated that Lala was unleashed again, and I want to kick myself for having to subject Lala to the humiliation of being chained to Dixie. I still cant figure out what happened and how the config WEP keys got exchanged in Lala but not on Stubborn is something to figure out at a later day.
This morning after a quick morning nap the light bulb flickered again. What if the same problem applies to Paquito? I switched on Dixie and reconfigured the WEP key again. After a few sputtering handshakes later Paquito was online! All this time Paquito have a different WEP key sequence. My LASIK procedure has done something more than sharpen my vision, it also jumpstarted a portion of my brain.
Typing this in Paquito, and the theme I have sucks when you are viewing it from a portable. The menu column is hugging all the real estate and all the texts are squeezed on a 8-character column. Putting the display on landscape mode is better but only by a slight margin. And for some reason I cannot complete my reply on Apple’s comment on the previous post. I think I am hitting something that makes pocket IE go back to the previous page. I have to reinstall minimo into Paquito. Would be super if Opera for pocketpcs is also free like the desktop counterpart.
ciao!
Jun 11
ErinGarbage, Top of my head
The LASIK was a success, or so I would like to believe! 🙂
Although my glasses has been replaced with a dorky protective google (two of which I have already broken in a span of 1 day), I am pleased with the results. My vision was not a perfect 20/20 but something along the lines of 20/25-30. Not bad coming from a vision that has a lens grade of 525/500 for each eye. I am willing to sport the dorky to the extreme look for two weeks as long as this dream vision lasts for at least ten years.
I am getting ahead of myself. I went on a half-day leave last Friday for the scheduled LASIK procedure (I still dont want to call it an operation). My loving wife met me in the 10th floor of the Phinma building at around 1PM before I went into the preparation room. The whole prep time was about an hour long, about 90% of which I spent snoring on a very comfortable lazy boy chair. I think the mild sedative they gave me have something to do with that.
When they brought me inside the LASIK room I was pretty scared. The reason being is that I forgot to ask Dr. Ang (the eye surgeon) how would they cut the flap in my cornea or if they have an instrument that would make my eyeball stationary. Face it, it is not normal to be unwavering if you see a blade a few millimeters from your eye. Dr. Ang was very cordial and said that I don’t need to worry about it, so I didn’t.
They made me lie down to an operating table with a specially-molded headrest that would minimize head movement. Dr. Ang talked to me throughout the whole process and keeps on reminding me to stare straight to the red blinking light. They placed something like a reverse vise on my eyelids so I wont blink. Then when it was time to cut a flap, Dr. Ang said he will place something in my eye which will darken everything and that I am to say when everything has gone completely dark. After everything went dark he said that I would feel a vibration for 30 seconds. I would assume this was the point that they were already cutting a flap. Again I would like to say that I still havent felt anything but I am completely aware of my surroundings. 🙂
The whole process then continued with my restored vision. Dr. Ang said my vision will scatter which I think was when they lifted the corneal flap. Then he said I would hear something burning but that is perfectly normal. In the background I can hear the hum of the laser and a nurse counting “25 percent, 51 percent, 76 percent, 100% percent”. Dr. Ang then placed back the flap and smoothened it with what looked to me like a small spatula and a thin wire. Then they repeated the process on my left eye.
The whole process lasted around 10 minutes. Then the nurse instructed me about the drops that would need to be administered for 2 weeks. They gave me a protective googles whose ear brace I managed to snap during the night. When I came back the following day for a checkup, Dr. Ang said there is a foreign object in the lower end of the flap and he would need to open the flap again to clean it out. So the short visit stretched to an hour since I had to go back to the LASIK room. The cleanup only lasted a few minutes so I spent much of it dozing on the lazyboy. /lol
The good thing about it is that since my wife works for Rockwell Land Corp, I was able to avail of a whooping 25% discount on the whole package cost. Neat!
Here is to a clear and lasting recovery!
Jun 03
ErinGarbage
Yesterday we went to the Asian Eye Institute for a LASIK screening exam. If you have not yet visited it, getting a LASIK treatment is included in my wishlist.
Anyway, after a few gruelling (or make it stomach grumbling) 3.5 hours, the medical team in the institute deemed me qualified for the procedure so I have scheduled a treatment next Friday. My vision is still blurry due to the dilation but I can now read printed text when using my glasses. Last night I was kinda worried because even if I can read without my glasses, putting them on makes the texts look blurry. Reading far and large texts is not an issue though. One peeve is my eyes seems to be more sensitive to light since the tests yesterday.
The tests yesterday seems a gamut of eye-drops, looking at a far-away object through a special machine, and the dreaded eye-dryness test. The dryness test involves the eye doctor putting some mild eye anaesthesia (this should have been warning enough) and then slipping two thin slips of paper in each lateral tear duct which happens to be conveniently located under each eyeball (yeoowww!!!). I had to look forward for three minutes while two strips of paper happily protrudes from my lower eyelid. grrr….
My wife asked me if I am not scared about the procedure. Of course I am scared, only stupid people claim they are no scared if something valuable (like eyesight) is on the line. But I am fed up with my dependency with my eyeglasses and not being able to enjoy activities like going to the beach and swimming because I have to protect my glasses. I also dislike going to the optical shop whenever some screws in my eyeglasses became lost, or if my eyeglass frame needs replacement because I somehow crunched it between two hard/heavy places.
Here is to having a better eyesight next week. A 20/20 vision would be nice but I can settle for a grade that woudl allow me to see something from far away without scrambling for my eyepiece. 🙂
ciao!
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