I’m flabbergasted! I’ve been trying to find context for this word from the moment I heard it and I couldn’t pray enough for a better context.

About 4 months ago somebody had the brilliant idea to create an internal telephone directory. Whoever has written a line of code knows that a telephone directory is one of the most basic, mundane and stupid applications one can be burdened to create. As usual I was instructed to create the application and it was ready on the day. Today it was launched. Near the page header I added three links to other applications (no porn, really!) I’ve created. These were there from the start since I just copy/pasted the header.

I will not go into the details of all the discussions, fuss and panic that came bundled with the telephone directory, but take a second to think about 4 months to launch an internal telephone directory application. This afternoon as soon as the e-mail with the telephone directory link was sent, the smelly bastard went to our manager (the boogie man) complaining about the headers. “Please go and tell him that baby Mike was naughty!” Instead of confronting me directly a message was passed to a colleague of mine to remove the links. I’m not exaggerating when I say that our offices are less than 10 meters away, yet the message needs to be passed on to me. I obviously refused to remove the links without a valid reason other than spite on my work. As soon as I returned from the loo, my boss this time literally came shouting at me to remove the links. I wasn’t even officially notified to remove them and I get shouted at. Hey man these links have been there for 4 bloody months and nobody gave a damn. What’s wrong with linking to internal applications now? These are simple work applications no Iraqi missile bombs.

P.S. Sorry to anyone who didn't understand a damn about what I'm talking about - I'm not usually like that but I needed to spit it out.

Unfortunately yesterday’s sore throat did not have any repercussions so today I had to go to work as usual. The schedule was on the busy side so I adopted a work now play later approach. This approach didn’t work wonders on my mood because I was implementing a simple survey first thing in the morning, and came across all sorts of problems. First, the secondary web server could not process my jsp pages, then the database libraries were not installed, and then when I uploaded the app on the main server, the java version was so old that some methods were phased out. I need to grab our suppliers from their precious ones.

Leaving the survey half way through, I went to the e-ticketing meeting. We waited for half an hour for the group head but we were instructed to start alone. Like the previous meetings, we started going around in circles. Most of the attendees were more concerned with the problems the new system might cause rather than how to implement the system. Might is a keyword in the sentence because the trivialities discussed where insulting my intelligence. At one point in time we spent an hour discussing an issue relevant to only 0.000001% of our customers per year. Obviously to cater for these customers a number of customisations and enhancements were suggested. No wonder the company works with exceptions and not rules.

As soon as the group head arrived the meeting took a definite twist, and in a matter of minutes the course of action was decided. The difference all lies in decision making and the fortitude to take responsibility for one’s actions, something all other attendees lacked. With new spirit I completed the survey and other mundane task finishing an hour early.

Tomorrow should be a calmer day at work. I need to do some searching on Itanium processors and Linux Enterprise Solutions so there’s no need for me to get sick. One little thing before leaving, do not take tomorrow’s post fore-granted because most probably we’re going to have a power failure. Two megawatts of power are going to be used in the EU festivities.

Unfortunately I am regaining my work vice again. Today I worked throughout the whole day dedicating no time to myself. The problem was that I wasted a whole two hours at a hand-over meeting completely unrelated to my line of work. Two hours looking at a HUGE (in all senses) guru typing at a keyboard without even the decency to look once at the monitor from my side. That’s what usually happens when I’m forced to do something against my will. I hope the white spot disease doesn’t infect me now.

I am of the firm conviction that the fewer things you do during the day the more tired you are. After work I collected my new tyre and went home to sleep for 5 hours straight. You can imagine why today’s post is so short, half day out of office and whole evening asleep.

Our dearest boss brought an aquarium last week. Most probably her husband needed some respite and decide on the purchase. This morning though she was sad and gloomy (more than usual that is) because the all the fish died of the white spot disease. According to an aquarium enthusiast this disease is caused by sever stress and tension. This is hilarious because I can really identify with what the fish were undergoing.

Today we saw a documentary about the Independence Day celebrations in Cotabambas, Peru. The feature was about the main celebration were a condor (vulture) is captured and treated for the occasion by 'dressing' it and singing to its highness. On Independence Day a bull fight featuring the condor tied to the bull is held at an arena purposely built each year for the occasion. This fight is obviously very bloody with the condor generally triumphing against the four legged beast. The ritual represents the independence of the Incas over the Spaniards. From the feature I doubt that the condor really cares about all this after all the torture inflicted. Nonetheless the people respect and revere the condor, which is released in great fashion after the celebrations are over.

Word: curfew

Meaning:

1. A regulation requiring certain or all people to leave the streets or be at home at a prescribed hour.
2. The time at which such a restriction begins or is in effect: a 10 P.M. curfew for all residents.
3. The signal, such as a bell, announcing the beginning of this restriction.

Usage: Our curfew has expired (refereeing to the time allotted to our break)

Comments: A really appropriate word for the situation, at a meeting with higher management.

Most of this blog was written in a white Fiat Uno. We went for a relaxing afternoon in the countryside and I forgot my book so I improvised a blog on a corn flakes carton.

My experience of changing car tyres almost matches that of F1 mechanics. Today I had another puncture, the third since March. I learned to live with this, but when I found that the spare tire was also deflated…. I inflated the spare with my semi-broken foot pump but as soon as I arrived at my fiancé the tyre started deflating again. I arrived home now, at around midnight after calling the car towing service because of the double puncture. Damn!

Most European Leagues are at their final stages so there is plenty of interesting football to watch. Milan could have put a sure foot into winning the Italian League today but they only drew 0-0 to Udinese. Roma are still hoping for the title winning an easy 3-0 against a soon to be relegated Empoli. The surprise of the day was the 4-3 defeat of Juventus at the hands of Lecce who at one point in the game were winning 4-1. Leece's new George Weah, Konan, scored the goal of the day after a solo 3/4 pitch descent and a strong shot beat Buffon. Impressive!

Arsenal won the English Premier League title today after drawing 2-2 against Tottenham. There is a particular Arsenal fan at work who'll definitely have an ear to ear smile tomorrow and pester anyone mildly interested in football.

In the evening we went to watch Real Madrid against Barcellona. It was a hell of a game even though Real lost 2-1 after playing the last 21 minutes with 10 men. In the first half Victor Valdes Barca's substitute goalkeeper made some miraculous saves after two consecutive pinball action sequences with the ball bouncing and flicking at Barca's goalpost. At last Solari opened the score but soon after the new substitute Kluivert made the score level. After Figo's dismissal for two yellow cards, Barca increased pressure and a lovely lob from Ronaldino put Xavi on goal. It seems that Frank Rajkard is doing a hell of a good job at the Catalan club.

A small snippet of this morning’s mass caught my attention. The preacher argued that during our youth we are dreamers with ideals we strive to achieve. As time goes by the harsh realities of life and experiences corrupt our youth and destroys our capability to dream. We need to keep on dreaming to keep young at heart, and experience must help us understand that we can realise our dreams at any age.

I have arrived at the final stages of my new blog design. I'm strictly holding to my recent principle that software should be released when it is ready (don’t argue that it can never be ready – I know that). The first impression is the one that counts most, so it needs to be positive to make a product successful. Keep on the alert for a link soon though.

My work PC was offended by the rejuvenation of my home PC personally. I was working for most of the day with only 20MB free physical RAM and using 81% of a 700MB swap file. You can imagine the work rate. I knew from an old article that Microsoft have a monitoring tool to monitor performance but I never remembered the name of the tool. I want to prove that I need an upgrade to 1GB of RAM. The solution lay in Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I found a great article on The Elder Geek on Windows XP website to refresh my memory. There is also a good article on the virtual memory paging file.

Here is a brief summary of what I did:-

1. Opened the performance monitor pre-defined MMC console (Start - Run perfmon.msc)
2. Created a new system monitor with the following counters
   • Memory - Available Mbytes
   • Memory - Page Reads/sec
   • Memory - Page Writes/sec
   • Paging File - % Usage
   • Paging File - % Usage Peak
   This left me with a graphical monitor of my Memory Settings. You can set the update frequency and some other display options from the (Right Click – Properties) menu.
3. I needed to output the data in excel so that I can manipulate it better so I created a counter log from the Performance Logs and Alerts snap-in with the same information and redirected the output to a csv file.

Since I’m on the subject of monitoring tools yesterday we had website problems once again, so I decided to monitor the number of apache processes on the machine. I wrote the following script to generate a file that can be easily imported in Excel.

ps -ef | grep httpd | echo `wc` `date` >> /home/ituser/httpdprocesses.log

And then I added a cronjob to run every minute (obviously care must be taken to remove the job once monitoring is finished)

* * * * * /home/ituser/httpdlogscript

The result is something similar to this. The first line contains the number of running httpd processes.

14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:18:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:19:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:20:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:21:01 CEST 2004

A new CD gave me the courage to get out of bed early, even though I knew that the pleasure would be short lived. I only managed to listen to two 4 minutes songs till I arrived to work (and that's including traffic). Today I had an Asset Management product presentation for Microsoft’s SMS. They could have at least bothered to change the name.

There are 4 key tasks that this product can perform:-

• Inventory Management
• Software Distribution
• Software Metering
• Remote Administration

All the features are very useful to us especially considering the fact that we haven’t got any solution whatsoever in any one of these areas. Throughout the whole presentation the emphasis was that the system needs very careful planning and design. In line with the usual Microsoft culture the whole presentation was demonstrated using Microsoft Examples. I wonder how the system will perform when we try to push or audit our Java and non-MS products. When I asked the question the lecturer gave me that strange ‘you shouldn’t have said that’ look.

Life with a PC at home is returning to normal. After work the first thing I did, after checking messages on my cell phone left at home, was turn on the PC. I made a conscious effort not to spend all evening installing stuff so I went to read on the roof with the best companion available at the moment - my cat.

I got some news from Zurich and I’m getting the impression that fish are extremely abundant. Apparently there is a fishy smell in the town center and most of the dishes are fish plates. This isn't the best of news since my dearest loathes fish.

I fixed my PC! This was the 4 hardware failure in less than a year. First it was RAM, then the BIOS (had to change whole board), sound card and now RAM again. At last I decided to change the power supply on my ex-colleague's advice. I think I had too little power for the machine (250V for a P4, GeForce 4 256RAM and 2 Hard disks). I now got a 400V power supply, hopefully I wouldn't need to change another part at least in 6 months time. Now I am installing Win XP (for the first time) so the blog post will be sacrificed today.

I kicked off with the PC because it was the only good thing in a very dull and lonely day. I was alone at the office and I got really bored. I always thought that I can easily live on my own, but I guess I'm not used to it that much any longer. My patience was really challenged after waiting one and a half hours for a meeting about the future of my main project. The meeting lasted only 1/2 hour and I can assure you that my voice wasn't calm in the least. The output was as expected, basically what's been decided in December. Wonder why nothing ever takes off at work.

Today I finished that article about Google's page rank: A pretty neat algorithm which thrives on increasing the power of the powerful.

Today I woke at 8.30 which is pretty early for a Saturday. Until I sipped my first cup I switched on TV and watched a short discussion about Islam in the Middle East compared to Asian Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia. The only reason that I didn't prefer watching commercials was that I heard the words Indonesia and Malaysia which are in our immediate travel plans. Apparently Islamic radicals are decreasing in popularity in Asia especially in Malaysia, where the Islamic party lost badly in the last elections. The gist of the argument was that the Middle East should attempt to match the Asian attitude to religion by separating it from politics.

After the morning thought, my car passed the roadworthiness test (after yesterday’s miraculous skid). There is nothing wrong with the car according to the test. I then made my good deed of the day by lending the laptop to a friend of mine who experienced Murphy's Law for the first time. His computer's BIOS got corrupted on the eve of his final year project draft submission! Feeling good with myself, I continued designing the new blog's look at work since I haven’t got any more usable computers at home.

Today I invested most of my time in a blog redesign so it will not be a long post, more like a hello! Today I was extremely lucky. It was raining very very lightly and I was returning home from the capital, travelling at about 35km/h when I skidded making 360' turn. I didn’t bump into anything. Damn Lucky!! This is the 3rd time I skidded this year which is a hell of a lot. I really need to do something about this.

The website crashed again today so I decided that it was about time to start checking out potential problems. In the process I had to identify all the possible log files on the Linux box. The application log files are pretty easy to locate once you open the application configuration file and search for the log file reference. The challenge was identifying the OS log files. After a couple of searches I realised that the most important log file is /var/logs/messages log file. Here you can find all the OS activity including SSH logins in the system as well as process invocations etc. The location of other important log files is specified in the file /etc/syslog.conf After the log file analysis I realised that the website problems were caused by a morning power cut, in an attempt to identify the source of an electromagnetic problem currently affecting all monitors in the upper floor.

Now that our last trip to Scotland seems light years away I'm cheering myself up by watching photos and travel accounts of the holiday. For anybody interested you can find some lovely pictures and travel tips on SanguiniA site. There are also travel accounts of Costa Rica, Finland and Slovakia. Feel free to rate tips and post comments.

Did you ever hear those computer jokes where people try to use the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, or else people inserting more than one disk at a time in the disk drive? Well listen what happened today at work and keep in mind that I work in an IT department.

About two weeks ago we decided to buy a website monitoring service because the company website was crashing frequently. A colleague of mine was instructed to test the product and about a week ago all tests where completed successfully during office hours. This morning our boss instructed my colleague to go to work today after midnight to check whether the same product works after midnight. The motive is that he is thinking that the website monitor 'watchman' might not be working at that hour.

These instructions were given by an IT boss, oh God!!! Do you realise the insanity of my workplace? This is supposed to be the age where automation is taken for granted. I feel suicidal upon hearing these things.

Mindspilllogo.jpg - The old logo with the world in it. br.gif - bottom right navigation menu corner bullet.gif - navigation menu bullet Kiwi.jpg - The main logo leave-down.gif - The leave image used in the travel section (message title) leave-up.gif - The leave image used in the travel section menubackground.jpg - The main menu background for the main blog tl.gif - the top left corner of the navigation menu

First of all HAPPY EASTER! This has been a comparatively social Easter as I managed to spend about 2 hours with more than two people during Easter lunch with my in-laws to a Jungle Theme Restaurant. Fortunately the restaurant had pizza so I was relieved from the usual 'choose the right dish with the right price' dilemma I face in such occasions. Since I was a guest I had the inkling that lunch was going to be paid for, so naturally I wanted to choose a good plate at a low price. I settled for a good-enough chilli pizza with no dessert. For once the topic of conversation drifted from the usual baby talk, and we talked about our last trip to Scotland, their next trip to France and inevitably the situation at work.

This evening we went to the cinema once again - it seems that we're going to resume our weekly cinema visit. The only promising film was Runaway Jury starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. The film is a rough adaptation of a book by John Grisham which implies that it was a courtroom thriller. As the title suggests the whole film is about the jury, the power the jury has, the studies involved behind jury selection, and jury manipulation. I am not a great believer in bestseller film adaptations but considering that I didn't read the book the film was good. According to my loved one, who is an avid Grisham reader the whole theme of the film was changed from a case against a cigarette company to a case against a gun manufacturing company. Despite this difference and another half a million she also liked the film.

Today is the last day of Easter celebrations and although the film Passion of the Christ was supposed to stir a greater awareness for this day, like all other years Christmas festivities 'overcame' the Easter festivities. The distinction I am refereeing to is more on a material and cosmetic aspect rather than on the spiritual aspect. On the spiritual and catholic side one need only consider the 40 day anticipation for Easter to realise the importance the church gives to its primary celebration. I have been thinking about this difference throughout the weekend, and although I made up some ideas I haven't come to a final conclusion. The following are just some observations, please do not hesitate to send your comments. I would love to read some opinions.

Try as I might to avoid mentioning presents and commercialisation as the first motivation I failed to find a better reason. To most people Christmas is about giving and receiving presents. The advertising, hype and enthusiasm the media creates is a key factor in Christmas festivities. Can you imagine Christmas without decorated shopping windows, jingles and presents? Where presents are involved you are ensured that you've got all children on your side and that's a really huge advantage. Unfortunately the most you can get in Easter is an egg.

The meaning of the two different feasts might also play its part in the different attitudes to these feasts. In Christmas we celebrate birth, something known to stir great joy in human hearts. On the other hand Easter brings death and resurrection with a 40 day penance period. Resurrection is too unearthly to make the necessary impact for grandiose celebration. This concept relies totally on faith as opposed to the natural experience of birth, which is experienced everyday in our lives.

On a more comic side consider the different childish representations, Santa Klaus on one side and the Easter Egg on the other. Even in such terms Christmas is more elaborate and interesting. The culture and stories around Santa by far exceed the Easter egg. I for one do not know anything about the Easter Egg but I've really missed not going to Santa's village in Rovaniemi (Finland) when I was there. At least you can eat your Easter Egg though.

As a conclusion to these few thoughts I found these links on the internet when I was looking for some ideas. The first one is basically a snack battle between Easter and Christmas, while the more serious link outlines the and their origins.

I am a notoriously untidy person but today (maybe influenced by my family's spring cleaning craze) I managed to clean up my room. This is no small task I can assure you but I finally made it. I decided to include this in the blog just to keep track how many times I'm going to say this till the end of the year. My guess is not more than another 2 times.

This morning I finally brought a bouquet of roses for my better half. I've been meaning to do this for about a year but never managed to arrive to the local florist. Flowers are a little bit like chocolates, once they're finished they're forgotten and that keeps me back from getting too much of them. They're also rather expensive for something so temporary. On the other side I doubt how many other presents can be as romantic as flowers which makes them very appealing for this time of the year. While I was getting the flowers I picked up a small conversation with the salesman and he told me that the price of roses is determined by the length of the stem. This is because a rose with a longer stem is of higher quality.

Flowers mean different things to different people and browsing through the web I found a couple of lists describing different flowers. Obviously these are subjective definitions so they shouldn't be taken so seriously, after all the meaning to your recipient should finally dictate which flowers to buy.

• Anemone - Anticipation
• Bird of Paradise - Joyfulness
• Carnation - Pride and beauty
• Daffodil - Chivalry
• Freesia - Innocence
• Iris - My compliments
• Rose - Love
• Sunflower - Pure thoughts
• Tulip - Declaration of love

I'll finish off this post with some quotes about flowers:-

Surprisingly enough I have been thinking about my blog far more than I thought I would on my first post. Initially I thought this was going a one of thing but I think I'm starting to like it - at least for how much one can like something after 3 days. I cannot deny that the comment made by Joycelyn was rather encouraging as it didn't ever occur to me that anyone was going to bother reading anything I write. It never happens at work so why should it happen at all.

Today I was trying out some new RSS software - NewsGator - and I came across a couple of articles about google (link2) and blogging. Apparently Google has been highly influenced by the blogging culture and some searches are eturning 'funny' results. For instance the search 'miserable failure' returns 'Biography of President George W. Bush' as a first result.

I'm amused by the reputation and culture Google has been making for itself on the web. Recently a new free e-mail service, Gmail, has been launched by the search engine giant giving 1GB of free storage for e-mails. Astounding!! Most probably, the best result of my morning Google quest however has been the explanation of the Page Rank Algorithm used by google to index web pages. I'll leave it as a bed time story however.

I've just arrived from a local sports pub and I'm not amused at all. Monaco have just thrashed Real Madrid (3-1), to the dismay of my better half. I'm infuriated with the stubborness of not wanting to get a decent central defender. Soon enough even Helguera and Carlos will be replaced by the likes of Van Nistelrooy of Shevchenko. Take a look at where Guti is playing!

Oh My Holy God, they managed to lose. What on earth were they thinking! Always the same mind blowing self esteem, look where it all leads to. Milan just lost to Deportivo (4-0) losing their previous 4-1 advantage gained in the first leg. Although a Milan fan from the late '80s I couldn't sympathise with them one single bit throughout the game. Winning 4-0 is no mean feat and all throughout the match Deportivo deserved to win. They were good enough to score in the first 5 minutes by Pandiani and increasing the lead to 3 goals from Valeron and (believe it or not) Luque in the first half. Milan where asphyxiated by the constant pressing and energy applied by Deportivo to surrender to the fourth goal by Fran in the '76 minute. The semi-final games are now Porto-Deportivo and Monaco-Chelsea. Although I am highly disappointed with yesterday's Real and today's Milan result it is refreshing to see the final stage of Champions League disputed by the 'underdogs' of the competition. We'll wait and see what happens.

Today we installed cable television. After years enduring a miserable television reception we decided to make the big step. Cable TV was regarded as a taboo within the family. My refurbished toy caused a considerable deal of commotion to my younger brother, who was furious for no apparent reason.

Work was pretty boring with a 2 and a half hour meeting on the newly introduced Data Protection Act. It seems that like most of the other things this will bring a whole lot of bureaucracy and wasted time. At the moment we barely have the data required to conduct our business effectively go figure use data wrongly.

Today is an exceptionally controversial day for our country. In an attempt to safeguard the nation's health a smoking ban in ALL public places started today. For one, I'm not really effected but I really would like to know the reaction of one or two chains smokers I know. As a nation we are not famous for abiding by the law and I've got serious doubts on the lasting effects of this one.

Like most Monday's today is pretty slow and un welcoming so I'll write about yesterday. The most influential event of the day was finishing the book A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki MurakamiI got the book by sheer curiosity as Liverpool's Waterstones had a full shelf of the author's works on a discounted price. I can't recall reading such a delightfully eccentric and banal book.

On the superficial layer, the story set in Japan, revolves around the protagonist "I", in search for a white sheep with a red star(??) on its back. The search starts after a right wing fanatic boss threatens the protagonist to find the sheep, previously seen on a photography sent by a mysterious friend 'The Rat'. Throughout his search the author is accompanied by his new girlfriend with marvellous ears that make sex 100 times more pleasurable.

To great effect throughout the book nobody has a name. The result is highly disturbing from my perspective, as I am an ardent name giver and user. The impersonal/"I couldn't care less" nature of the characters is clearly portrayed throughout pronoun usage. There are two whole pages dedicated naming with the protagonist arguing about name futility.

I can imagine that through the book there are a lot of political sublimities, however not being very familiar with the Japense/Western political issues I couldn't appreciate them fully. The prose and emotional descriptions are sublime. If you like well written English (although this book is translated), thoughts to ponder about, or just a silly easy read, this book is well worth reading.

After my morning literary experience I spend the afternoon playing Pictionary with my village friends. As usual Males played against Females with the latter winning the game. Afterwards we tested a variation of the game by miming the words instead of drawing them. It turned out to be pretty funny and we had a nice time.

In the evening we went to watch Along came Polly starring Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. The comedy was an average easy watch with the funniest parts at the end.

Just for the sake of mentioning it, yesterday we had a new president.

Everyday I find myself thinking about new job opportunities. Today was the turn of freelance jobs - this was always my dream just after graduation. Even though home is not exactly a perfect place I find it very amusing not actually having to spend energy going to work and trying your best to co-exist with your colleagues.

Since last New Year I haven't been out on any social activities on Saturday Night. Today we decided to go to a small gig. The music was pretty decent but the best thing of it all was that I met an old 'self-employed' pal of mine.

At the office, highly influenced by blogging hype and with nothing worth spending time upon, I decided to start blogging. I'm fresh from my first holiday (probably last) this year, spent with my friends in Scotland. My Scottish mood was radiant (Scotland itself a little bit less) and I've spent 8 out of 11 days laughing. As soon as I stepped on the first tile of the airport a snowball of negative things trampled me. We've got a saying on the rock I live in 'After laughter there is weeping'.

• my work is tied on a string
• my work pal quitting work
• PC can't start up
• TV is broken

Do you understand why I started this blog? � I've got nothing else to do and I look busy typing at work!

It always amazes me that I am willing to write whenever I'm sad. I am a great fan of holiday diaries but I never managed to keep a personal diary. On my first post I'm already wondering whether I'll manage to keep this going. Be prepared I've got a highly inconsistent personality so please don't mind haphazard thoughts/moods, irregular posts and grammatical mistakes.