Livejournal on disfinder.com 🇺🇸

Goodbye, LJ!

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 20:42:10 -0500

While looking for a way to archive the journal, I fell into the classic trap: when you start tidying up and throwing out old things — the main thing is not to start browsing through them))) It was so interesting to look back at my old posts and see the comments — would you believe it! Real, live people were reading me (and even replying!!!!). Thank you, friends) I recognize you even in anonymous comments, by the words and the warmth I feel from those words) This sandcastle will stand a little longer — just in case some old friend still has an RSS client running — and then it will finally make room for something new. I’m not a fan of marking my thoughts and significant events in social networks, and lately I haven’t been writing in blogs either. But if anyone does want to catch up on my news — you’re more likely to find it on the blog at http://disfinder.com & http://p.disfinder.com than on Facebook. So long, everyone, and until we meet again. Thanks for not changing the channel)

Moved the blog. Not this one, the other one )))

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:19:30 -0500

Dear readers, and also those who follow my other blog — the one that isn’t about life but is supposed to be somewhat technical. I moved it from the Tumblr platform to Blogger, and discovered that the RSS links on these two platforms are different. So, dear geeks who read via feed readers and other aggregators — if you want to keep following, please drop by and resubscribe. Sorry for the inconvenience; in return I’ll try to write some interesting things about XBMC. Thanks in advance for your attention.

LiveJournal annoyance

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:51:55 -0500

LiveJournal has pulled this trick on me more than once: I’m browsing subscriptions in Google Reader, and the posts I like and want to read in more detail I open with a middle-click in a new tab. And often instead of the page I get a prompt to log in to LJ. What’s more, if I notice it right away and open the address again — it loads correctly. But if I scroll further through the reader and switch to that tab a few minutes later — instead of an interesting article, there’s that… unwelcome login screen. So damn annoying!

Air humidifier

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:25:46 -0500

Today, following a recipe I saw from ibigdan, I put together a passive air humidifier. Let’s watch the results — too bad I don’t have a hygrometer. The humidifier design is very simple, like this:

Source.

Oh, where is that wind...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:01:10 -0500

You wandered too long in the dark And you thought that the night was the day You saw hundreds of desecrated bodies But were too lazy to lay them to rest You’re not a traitor, you’re simply a fool And there are millions like you all around Poor Christ would have torn off his crown Had he guessed what was yet to come… …answer me What kept you from seeing the truth? What ever became of the dream To make heaven on earth for all?

Mobile grievances

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:01:14 -0500

Do you know, dear subscribers, what happens to you when you move the SIM card of the carrier “MechanoTractorStation” into a different phone? I am currently living through the consequences of exactly that, and I would like to share them with you.

First of all, an annoying service gets activated on your device — SILENT notifications that pop up even on the locked screen. Those notifications have two options, “YES” and “NO”, and their purpose is to subscribe you to extra services, pictures, and ringtones at cosmic prices of 5–10 hryvnias per item. The notifications appear spontaneously and are noticeable only visually — no sound, no vibration. It is very easy to accidentally tap one of them while navigating the phone and end up paying extra. So don’t be surprised when a few messages follow, along the lines of “Sports Forecast” or “Horoscope”, as happened to me — you will never be able to prove to the carrier that you did not order them, since you might have tapped something by accident. The only way out is to pay, and then try to disable all this “happiness”. By the way, those silent notifications are called “CLICK” by the carrier, and supposedly can be instantly disabled through the SIM card menu. But if you are as naive as I am and believe these liars, let me disappoint you — it does not actually turn off through the menu (even though it says “Disabled”). In my case it only stopped after the second consecutive call to a live support agent — apparently the first time around the command was to NOT disable it.

Brilliant

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:57:20 -0500

The Americans have freedom, The Germans — beer and bacon, The French have haute couture, The English — the finest stadium.

But your average Ukrainian Excels at something else instead. He has a long and elastic Patience, like none you’ve seen.

Say those up top get a whim To slap a tax on trousers — The Ukrainian’s patience won’t snap, Pull it for three hundred years.

Or the gang leads him astray: Invites him to a bank — it’s a brothel. The Ukrainian will fetch his patience, Sigh — and step on the rake again…

The Day of the Great Boner :)

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:09:39 -0500

Written on 2011-11-11 11:11:11. Spotted at a very respected BSD guy’s. (Thanks to him, and also — to the Earth’s rotation for the time zone difference) Such a parade of ones won’t repeat for another hundred years, though next time there will be one extra unit.

Winter stockpile.

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:38:31 -0500

We’re not afraid of any crisis — we’ve stocked up on salo!

True, it might not last the whole winter, but still — when there’s a little box like that sitting in the fridge, somehow your soul feels a bit lighter and warmer.

Radio, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 06:02:06 -0500

Radio Rocks was so great when it first appeared — pure music, no shows or ads. Just music. 24 hours a day of proper rock. Can you imagine?

But little by little ads started showing up — taxi companies at first, then more and more, and now it’s simply impossible to listen to: wall-to-wall vodka, hangover cures, and other needs of ~~the average rocker~~. That got me thinking about the alternative Radio Rocks — the original one, from before it went nationwide and bought a local FM frequency. It now calls itself “Radio Klassik” and broadcasts only on the internet at http://hosting.express.net.ua:13000/listen.pls I only found that address buried in the settings of an old radio-player app; internet searches turned up nothing. And the quality leaves something to be desired — mono and quiet at that. Here’s hoping that’s temporary.

Work and the Bike

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:27:55 -0500

I’m cycling to work! Hooray :) Since half the route goes through Khortytsia, the exhaust fume problem is cut in half — almost no cars there. On top of that, leaving home at roughly the same time, I arrive at work 20–40 minutes earlier than I would by minibus: no waiting time, no pauses at every stop, no kilometer-long walk, and the cycling route is also a bit shorter — about four kilometers less. True, this advantage is somewhat offset by the need to change into office clothes, which eats up a noticeable chunk of time. However, I’ve run into two other difficulties: 1. My back under the backpack sweats very actively compared to the rest of my body. Practically, it’s the only part that does. 2. There’s no way to listen to audiobooks on the way.

On Victory Day

Mon, 09 May 2011 16:32:22 -0500

I didn’t want to write anything, but on my way to the store a scene caught my eye that very vividly illustrates the attitude toward Victory Day and veterans — both from our authorities and from certain circles of the public. Photo from the wall of a private café. It’s not very clear in the shot, but the eye noticed: underneath the pasted-over words “Victory Day” there was previously “Defenders of the Fatherland Day”.

about movies

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:47:02 -0500

Having run into the cinematographic crisis known as “nothing to watch” together with my loved one, we decided to go through the Top 250 list in order. We’ll only skip films that both of us have seen and not too long ago — like “Inception”, for example. Yesterday we watched the first one — “The Shawshank Redemption”. I had seen it before and I disagree that the film deserves the top spot, but my wife unexpectedly enjoyed it. The movie is long, the plot unfolds slowly, so eventually I fell asleep while my loved one watched it through to the end. That is an undeniable plus of the film, since usually it happens the other way around :)

AAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:54:22 -0500

Does everyone know about Suchov already? You’re car people, after all! Even I know about it… Those who don’t, read here. “Good afternoon. My name is Suchov Vladislav Vladimirovich. I accidentally became a police captain. And that’s understandable — the system works this way. I accidentally pulled up to the car in which the video’s author was sitting. But I didn’t know he was the video’s author!!! If I had only known that he was the video’s author — I would have immediately told him so through his closed window: “Knock-knock! Hello, video author! I am police captain Suchov Vladislav Vladimirovich, and this is my democratic baseball bat! May I knock on your mirrors to clarify the question of whether you are involved in surveillance and banditry, and whether you have a pistol with which you are about to shoot me through the closed window?” That is how I would have politely asked him, as a citizen who might be a bandit and probably intended to take all my money… later, sometime. It’s quite possible. Later. Someday. After all, anything can happen! My car accidentally came equipped with an aerodynamic spoiler not provided by the manufacturer. I accidentally opened the trunk and accidentally pulled out the bat that accidentally happened to be there. I immediately accidentally approached the video author’s car and completely accidentally threatened him with violence. In Libya, God knows what is going on — watch the news yourselves!!! And so I decided to check — what is going on in this insolent car of the insolent provocateur — the video’s author!!! I politely and lawfully asked the video author for a cigarette. In response I received a provoking, insolent refusal in a rude manner, delivered in a whisper, so that the camera turned off and then kept recording everything wrong even long before my polite, profanity-free and threat-free address. Listen to how it actually happened. Everything said by anyone other than me is a lie. I accidentally thought that I could smash the mirrors of the rude armed bandits even better than “Berkut,” so I accidentally tried to sort it out myself, as always worked while I was growing up to become a police captain. Everyone knows how many cases of police officers attacking citizens there are now, and how many citizens have been killed in this country at the hands of the police. Not long ago I myself will completely be attacked by police officers, when I am no longer a police captain. And then I too will accidentally forget to call “Berkut,” since I accidentally have a bat that I accidentally permitted myself to carry! And I did not want to be filmed on video even accidentally. And approaching the unidentified car of Libyans, I was expecting a pistol or some other surface-to-air missile system to be aimed at me from inside at any moment, with a shot ringing out at any second. For this reason I also wanted to accidentally knock out their brains and mirrors in a polite manner — with the police captain’s accidentally permitted bat. When the window came down, the person sitting at the wheel whispered in the Chinese-Libyan dialect “Allahu Akbar” and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at me. But I was loudly enough not scared… not scared… not scared… because I have an adequate bat belonging to a captain in the traffic police system. Now I understand everything in a whisper: they are bandits. After that I accidentally kept speaking the way that was accidentally provoked against me in the video, always accidentally thinking that I was talking to potential criminal offenders. I acknowledge this incorrectly. But first and foremost I accidentally thought that they themselves would be the first to accidentally provoke an entire video by the author against me. And most importantly, I was expecting a shot to ring out at any moment. But now I know: a bat does not shoot. And therefore I did not even faint at the thought that they might use a howitzer or an entire cannon against me! And in such a situation it is impossible to speak politely. Have you yourselves tried to speak politely when a howitzer might be aimed at you from a window to fire like bandits??? If the driver of the car had said he represented a civic organization, or simply wanted to film police officers on camera, I would have calmly turned around and gone to faint. And if he had told me this yesterday — well, why not??? But the driver kept telling me “Allahu Akbar, takhtarkha bar and syrasу bar!” That was clearly a lie. The obvious lie put me on alert. I am always put on alert by obvious lies, especially when a howitzer in quantities of up to a platoon of insolent bandit-provocateurs might be aimed at me from a window. Since, I will accidentally repeat myself, I accidentally knew for certain that this exact car had been following the patrol vehicle for quite some time. I carried on… I essentially went off — and I agree with that. But all my personal data was published. In a day I receive hundreds. And thousands. Now that chapter is closed. I want to ask the video’s author: was this what he wanted? Is it really that, because of me, traffic police officers in Ukraine will now start working better? I have all the personal data of the video’s creator. But I am not posting it on the Internet, because I respect his right to a safe life. I explained this to him right away, next to his car, and as proof I showed him my legitimate bat, certified by myself. I am ready to meet him at any TV channel or in any ditch — let him show his face, if he believes he is fighting for a righteous cause. Why does he keep hiding from me? A civilized country differs from a savage one precisely in that all issues must be resolved by the civilized means of my bat, and not by posting the personal data of accidentally former Interior Ministry employees on the Internet at a time when crime is running rampant in the country. And in Libya things are completely off the rails! I wish I could give them my bat! And I also believe that every person should know their rights and defend their point of view in a civilized manner. And police captains may do so by means of a democratic bat. I behaved in the best manner, comparatively speaking. But, I repeat, I was thinking. Now it is clear to me that it was a planned provocation. But the method of provocations does not work in the civilized country of Ukraine.

A Beer

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:55:25 -0500

Today we bought some beer to try, planning to enjoy it over “Velyka Riznytsia” (a Ukrainian TV show). The gist is that after the brewery (which is in Poltava) the beer is not put into a keg, but into an expensive German wunderwafe (actually “wunderfass”), where it continues to “live.” They claim that in any other container beer quickly spoils, so it gets pasteurized and preserved, and only in these wunderfasses can it stay alive for a long time. Once poured into a bottle, according to the sellers, it stays good for 12 hours, and after 3 days it’s gone entirely. Supposedly all other “live” beers in bottles are actually a scam for suckers. This super-beer is called “Oberfest” (to sound like “Oktoberfest”), sold at Amstor, poured from a fancy technological barrel, packed into a little bag, and they even give you a club card (every 11th liter is free). In light of all this, I’m reminded of the beer from our first local brewery, whose label read “live” and “Drink beer while it is clear.” That beer was great if the production date was within 7 days. After that, the taste noticeably deteriorated. If the beer was 3–4 weeks old, it was already swill. The thing is, our Zaporizhzhia “Zhyhulivske” cost 6 hryvnias per liter, while this wunderwafe stuff costs 36.

Internet Addiction

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:48:08 -0500

Just as Louis XIV once said “L’état, c’est moi,” I’ll now say “The Internet is Google Reader.” It’s genuinely strange to me to hear, for example on Radioti, questions about whether people use RSS. I, for one, have long since read nothing but RSS — if I come across an interesting site, I add it to Google Reader and follow it from there.

And so now I have 139 subscriptions covering all sorts of topics — fun stuff, IT, politics, blogs, more IT, and more fun stuff. 3,500 posts over 30 days. I can’t imagine a more optimal way to organize regular access to information. On top of that, RSS makes it possible to miss nothing that’s been published in a feed.

A Book from Childhood

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:35:16 -0500

When I was reading “The Boy with the Sword” I really wanted to hear those songs that the author includes in the text. And then, by chance, without even trying, link by link, I found an audiobook in which the author-narrator sang and played those very songs… I’m going to listen to it — the book is wonderful.

First Purchase on DealExtreme

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:28:59 -0500

As an experiment, I ordered a small pile of junk from DealExtreme:

Kitchen timer with a magnet — $2.43 = 19.44
USB sound card — $2.14 = 17.12
Mobile phone disassembly tool kit — $2.36 = 18.88
UV pen with flashlight — $1.30 = 10.40
Alarm — $1.88 = 15.04
Earphones — $2.09 = 16.72

The quality of the items is frankly disappointing. The earphones sound terrible and are made of an unpleasant material; the front panel on the timer is already starting to peel off. In general, most of the items are overpriced — for earphones like these I’d pay maybe 5 hryvnias, and the tools aren’t worth twenty either, since most parts are plastic. The alarm was actually ordered by me as a doorbell — that one’s my own fault, I didn’t read carefully enough. That said, I’m overall satisfied with the result — the service check went well, ordering is possible.

About a book and about books

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:39:20 -0500

People who have known me for a long time are aware that I love reading. But they don’t read this blog )) So for my esteemed readers, let me state: I love reading very much. It kind of started in childhood — I was taught early, and I took a liking to it. On top of that, I read fairly quickly, so the amount of literature I’ve “devoured” across various genres is quite substantial. My university years put something of a damper on my hobby, so I had to stop reading everything in sight and focus on what I really wanted. What I wanted was mostly science fiction and fantasy. Those were the years of Perumov, Lukyanenko, Asprin (and a little bit of Bjarne Stroustrup :) University ended, but no great piles of free time to lounge on the sofa with a book appeared either. On top of books costing an unreasonable (in my view) amount of money, work and daily life take up a significant chunk of our time — and there are also the news to read and movies to watch. Fortunately, humanity invented (and the internet gave us access to) the wonderful format of audiobooks. Given that the commute to work in a modern medium-sized city takes about an hour, and I ride a minibus — no need to drive, so I can let my mind wander — this is a perfect option for me. In my previous post I wrote about podcasts. I don’t think I need to explain what those are. But all the shows I listen to only last for the first two days — an hour each way every day equals 4 hours over 2 days. So plenty of time remains for literature. And now, standing before a treasure chest from which I can pick almost anything I want, the hard part is choosing. Besides fiction, there is a huge number of psychology, self-help, and other books that are very often also worth reading.

Podcasts

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:05:01 -0500

Unsubscribed today from some podcasts:

2Giga (http://2giga.rpod.ru/rss.xml)
42/ Buffer Bay (http://42.podfm.ru/rss/)
Krasnoglaziki Podcast (http://krasnoglaziki.rpod.ru/rss.xml)
The Art Of Programming (http://taop.rpod.ru/rss.xml)

Haven’t updated or listened to them in a long time — they just didn’t click for me. Removed them from the aggregator today. Added two others instead:

Habracast (http://feeds.feedburner.com/habracast)
UWP - Weekly podcast by Umputun (http://feeds.rucast.net/Umputun)

And of course, I listen to these regularly and recommend them to everyone around me:

Phone Authority

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:28:13 -0500

Mobile internet disappeared on my phone. The cause, as always in such cases — “I didn’t do anything, it just broke on its own.” For 5 days I tried now and then — no luck. Today I double-checked the settings (which I hadn’t changed) — everything looked fine, ordered new settings — they never arrived, so I called the carrier.

Endured 15 minutes on hold and 3 minutes of conversation on the theme of “maybe the SIM card broke, try it in another phone, and if it works — the problem is with your handset.” (The SIM CARD! Which hadn’t been removed from the phone! BROKE! And it still makes calls, just won’t carry data traffic! Oh, I didn’t bother arguing with the operator about how SIM cards actually work.)

A Poem

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:09:38 -0500

V. Sosyurchenko Africa Is Already Winning Its Freedom

Africa is already winning its freedom, The backward tribes are becoming people now. But you do not want liberty, my nation. Or do you dream it will fall from the sky somehow?

No, it will not fall from the sky. Freedom is won In relentless, stubborn struggle and strife — Arabs and Blacks are breaking their chains, My people, is it not your time?

Happy New Year!

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 04:48:53 -0500

Dear readers and friends! Wishing you a Happy New Year! May you welcome it IRL surrounded by your nearest and dearest, enjoy the holiday season to the fullest, and gather strength and positivity during these days for new achievements in the year ahead!

sadness :(

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 01:07:07 -0500

crunchbang broke something in their latest release — it only installs in text mode and crashes at the bootloader installation stage. and this after copying files for half an hour! you dog :(

2010-12-25 22:31:07

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 22:31:07 -0500

Linux Mint 9 LXDE with the kuki kernel plays YouTube videos at 360p smoothly in full-screen mode even with Google Reader and Gmail tabs open.

mobile phone

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:47:08 -0500

dear friends, how do you carry your mobile phone? in a holster on your belt or what?

and what if you have two? :(

Dropbox

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:27:00 -0500

Despite the fact that most of my real and online acquaintances are involved in IT to one degree or another, I very often notice a certain unawareness among my friends when it comes to geeky tools and such. For example, in a team of seven young IT folks (4 developers + 2 sysadmins + support), none of them over 35, not a single person uses Jabber! Everyone is stuck on the cursed ICQ. Well, that can still be chalked up to personal taste, to the fact that moms, wives, and girlfriends are on ICQ — fine. But when people don’t use Dropbox, I’m genuinely surprised. Or rather, regular folks can be forgiven for it, but for an IT person it’s practically a sin not to use tools that make life significantly easier and cost nothing.

Wuala

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 20:06:23 -0500

http://www.wuala.com/referral/G5F34AA5GN6G673GJABM

news

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:13:14 -0500

When you listen to several podcasts on related topics, the news starts to repeat itself. Both RadioT, and Internet Stuff, and Krasnoglaziki are all talking about Firefox’s sixth anniversary.

2010-11-16 08:56:43

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:56:43 -0500

Added some work for myself. Did you know that when Windows 7 installs, it creates an extra 100 MB partition before its own? I thought: fair enough, unix-style — put the NTLoader and its config files there. However, that bastard also writes additional data there, like a partition table. I decided to nuke that Windows 7 and install a normal Windows in its place. Obviously I planned to format only the system disk and leave the rest untouched. The installer refused to format it, so I used Acronis — and in the process wiped that 100 MB appendix as well. After booting into the freshly installed Windows, my largest logical drive showed up as unformatted and the wrong size (there were many partitions in total — 7 [yes, I’m a maniac] — only the last one disappeared, which also happened to be the largest). And that’s where the working databases were (because they’re big). Thank you to the authors of GetDataBack — it correctly identified both the partition and the data on it, whereas Acronis had stopped launching and couldn’t see anything, and R-Studio took four times as long to scan and found nothing. Slowly recovering, swearing profusely, and recalling the epic text “Real Men Work on Windows.”

Linux reinstall

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:43:36 -0500

My Olenka (the one running Linux Mint 8 Helena) started lagging terribly for some reason. I’m suspecting bug #12309, but I’ve decided to reinstall Mint anyway. At first I was thinking about downgrading — because the newer version 9 Isadora didn’t work out for me — it was saying something about the hard drive during boot, I don’t remember exactly what. And in version 7 Gloria there was still that X server under which the proprietary drivers for my ancient graphics card worked, and Compiz ran really nicely. However, just yesterday (or thereabouts) version 10 — Julia — came out. I’ll go with that one, give it a try. And specifically the GNOME edition. I thought about it — all I need from a computer is something to launch Firefox and a torrent client. So KDE or not KDE, what’s the difference? Alright then, let’s get started.

LJ + Twitter

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:45:52 -0500

Set up LiveJournal syndication to Twitter, curious to see how it works. Still, the comment tree in LJ is the best — neither Blogspot nor Twitter can match it.

Usability of virtual desktops

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:51:45 -0500

Having gotten used to multiple virtual desktops in X, I now can’t manage without them in Windows. It really is very convenient to leave the test database on the first desktop, toss the production one onto the second, and put the browser and bash on the third :)

battery on a smartphone

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:54:13 -0500

In the evening I forgot to put my new toy on charge — and in the morning I nearly overslept because the alarm didn’t go off. The battery died completely overnight, even though around 10 PM I checked and it still had more than 50%. I was generally prepared for the fact that smartphone batteries last two days at most, one day at minimum, but I want to figure out the optimal battery care strategy. So here’s the question: I’ve come across recommendations to keep the phone plugged in as much as possible, the idea being that the battery will last longer that way. I’m curious how true that actually is. On one hand, my laptop lives exactly like that — always plugged in. On the other hand, its battery life is nowhere near 24 hours.

Xmarks

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:53:13 -0500

At some point I gave up on del.icio.us (when Yahoo bought them they went downhill, in my opinion). I chose this service instead — it did an excellent job of syncing bookmarks between home and work. And now this service is shutting down starting January next year. http://www.xmarks.com/about/shutdown

It was one of those extensions I would install in Firefox first of all. Too bad. I’ll have to migrate somewhere.

little phone

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:18:41 -0500

For my birthday I got myself a little Android phone — the Xperia X10 mini pro. A neat gadget with a 5-megapixel camera, a capacitive touchscreen, and a hardware QWERTY keyboard. I went for it based on my positive experience with Sony Ericsson. Turns out Android is a cool thing. You can install a ton of junk and useful software alike. Dropbox alone is worth it.

On the downside, the body creaks a bit, Wi-Fi drops when the screen turns off, and it runs Android 1.6.

2010-09-20 19:11:39

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:11:39 -0500

Android reminds me a lot of KDE’s Plasma — you can hang all sorts of useful and not-so-useful widgets on it.

cd /pub && more beer

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:10:46 -0500

My greetings, colleagues!

The holiday is coming!

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:22:29 -0500

Aideko has announced a contest again — in addition to promoting their software, they are promising valuable prizes. Even last year’s humorous certificate was very pleasant to receive. The contest is here:

Contest “System Administrator - 2010”

My rating — “Pro”

Pro — participants who answered 75–89% of the test questions correctly

And who are you? Find out!

2010-06-21 20:25:12

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:25:12 -0500

The power went out twice in two days. For 10 minutes each time. Apparently people have gotten air conditioners and the transformers can’t handle the load. I should get one too — the heat is unbearable.

2010-06-16 06:35:17

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:35:17 -0500

Just for today I will try to live this day positively and will not try to solve all problems in advance.

2. Just for today I will be polite toward other people, will not raise my voice at them, will not judge or criticize anyone.

3. Just for today I will be happy simply because a new day has come, and this day was created for happiness from the very start.

Reading Room

Wed, 05 May 2010 17:52:16 -0500

If the LiveJournal service and this blog in particular survive until the time I become a pensioner, I would like to think that the future me will find it interesting to re-read what I, young and youthful, was doing in general, and in particular what I considered worth putting in this blog.

So. Listen carefully, old ~~fart~~ and dear readers and friends. I am currently trying to read. Or rather, I am consuming information through audiobooks. The last thing I listened to was “The Peter Principle” — a decent little book about the science of “hierarchiology” invented by the author, and the principle according to which all workplaces will eventually be occupied by incompetent people. The book is interesting, has a sense of humor, but stirs up irritation at the incompetence around you that you hadn’t noticed before reading it.

about little screws

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:55:11 -0500

My childhood was spent in a time and place where normal screws were a scarce commodity, and good-quality ones simply didn’t exist. Getting them out was a real ordeal — the vast majority had a slotted head that a screwdriver would chew up in no time.

At the same time, for some reason I was incredibly drawn to all these little screws, bolts, nuts, nails, screwdrivers, and pliers. I can’t say I’m some kind of all-around handyman — no. But alongside toy cars and Transformers, my favourite toy was my dad’s electric drill, which at the time was the only one on the whole street.

monitoring

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:32:02 -0500

I want to set up some software at home (thinking about Nagios/MRTG) to collect statistics about internet availability. I suspect that during working hours, while I’m not home, there are constant lags with the internet connection. So I want to gather some stats and then talk to my ISP if the suspicion is confirmed. I just need to find the time and pick a tool — something as lightweight and easy to configure and use as possible.

need a tool

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:39:41 -0500

I need a good software notebook. It has to work on several computers at the same time (and ideally across different operating systems, though Linux alone is enough for now). I want synchronization over the internet and a convenient interface. Don’t suggest Google Docs.

What do advanced folks use as a repository for information that is needed right now, was needed at some point in the past, or will be needed later? With grouping by contexts (or projects, or tags) and dates?

gastronomic

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:09:01 -0500

One question is bugging me: how much butter should you put in blini with red caviar, and what’s the right way to do it? I tried them at a café and loved them, but I can’t find a recipe online — everything I see recommends melted butter… bleh…

2010-04-09 10:59:55

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:59:55 -0500

after all, the UNIX developers know better, don’t they?) http://vk.com/topic-12335760_22183370?offset=5

You’re citing your own words as proof of your own words? That’s ridiculous and absurd.

TCP/IP is a protocol/document/agreement/standard/blueprint. > you understand? everyone has their own implementation.

Exactly. And, as I wrote “TCP/IP stack” (I’ll repeat for those who read slowly — “TCP/IP STACK”) — that is the implementation of the protocol. Everyone has their own, and Microsoft’s was copied from Berkeley.

MS-DOS and the USSR

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:19:22 -0500

20 years ago, on April 5th, Bill Gates presented the Russian version of MS-DOS 4.01. And a year and 10 months later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

http://video.mail.ru/list/petrochenkov/1385/1386.html

Red-eye mode.02

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:20:54 -0500

Mint and Ubuntu do make people lazy after all. Installed Arch — and the fonts are off, Flash is missing, sound doesn’t work out of the box, and Wi-Fi is a pain… Looks like I’m an oscillator.

Going red-eyed

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:33:38 -0500

I’m going to install Arch. If I’m gone for a long time, consider me… whatever you like.

a post about microsoft

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:07:24 -0500

A news article popped up in my feed reader saying that “Microsoft Ukraine” is launching a site about licensing. To quote it directly:

« »

a portal about licensing, where visitors can learn what licensing is and what it means from a legal standpoint.

Since I deal with licensing questions at work, and the legal side of it is quite interesting (because it’s so contradictory), I decided to read more.

First of all, that pathetic news site I do the honor of reading their drivel on didn’t provide a link to the portal — I had to Google it. I found the Microsoft Ukraine website, but there’s nothing about the portal in the news section. Still, some article caught my eye, so I clicked through — and it turns out they have podcasts! I thought — great, I just finished listening to Radio-T, this will be something to entertain me on the road. I’ll listen to the latest news from the potential enemy’s camp. However, the treacherous Microsoft put me through an anal Vietnam a stern ordeal. First, the podcast page content wasn’t rendering because JavaScript was disabled via NoScript. When I allowed scripts, this wretched soul (the site, that is) reloaded — but instead of showing me what I wanted (as normal sites behave in such cases), it continued showing me the error page, while slapping a banner on top of it asking me to install some Internet Explorer. When I clicked the podcast link again, the page did open. JavaScript was required solely to display, at the top of the page, a picture of a dimwit leaning back in his chair and relaxing while Win98 installs on his computer As one might guess from this eloquent image, the topic at hand is RSS. Click on it — and voilà: we’re greeted by an article in the foreign language explaining what RSS is, and informing us that wherever on Microsoft’s wonderful site you, dear reader, see this icon — — you’ll be able to take full advantage of this technology. Mind-blowing. Yet the “podcasts” section doesn’t lead to a list of podcasts — it leads to a search! And there’s no RSS in that search. And when I gave up on downloading the podcasts the normal way and decided to try a couple manually, it turned out the damn thing also requires registration. Is it really that hard to do things properly? Microsoft being Microsoft. Everything through the back door, as always. Makes you want to swear and spit.

the relevance of the classics

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:56:31 -0500

Each has their own fate And their own wide road: One builds, another destroys, Another with insatiable eye Peers beyond the edge of the world — Seeking some land To seize and carry with him Into the grave. One picks aces At his in-law’s table, While another in the corner quietly Sharpens a knife for his brother. And yet another, quiet and sober, God-fearing, Creeps up like a little cat, Waits for an unhappy Moment — then sinks His claws into your liver, — And do not beg: neither children Nor wife will win your freedom. And another, generous and lavish, Forever building temples; And he so loves the fatherland, So grieves over it, Drains its poor blood Like water!.. And the brethren keep silent, Eyes wide open! Like lambs: “Let it be,” they say, “Perhaps it must be so.” Must be so! Because there is no God in heaven! And you, yoked, fall down And plead for some paradise In the next world? There is none! There is none! No use praying. Wake up: All in this world — Both princes and paupers — Are children of Adam. And this one… and that one… but what of me?! Here it is, good people: I feast and make merry On weekdays and Sundays. And you are bored! You grieve! By God, I don’t hear you, And don’t shout! I drink my own, Not the blood of men!

positivity

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:14:23 -0500

Against the backdrop of pre-election and election garbage, I want to say something good: Ukrainian programmers from Kyiv’s Shevchenko University took 4th place at the World Programming Championship. Hooray! Well done, guys.

political cartoon

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:47:58 -0500

Uncle Yolkin captured the events on our political stage very accurately…

KDE in Karmic Koala

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:40:39 -0500

It has been 2 months since I started working with the latest Kubuntu, and I can now draw some conclusions.

1. Kubuntu itself, compared to Mint 7, looks less polished — in terms of fonts and drivers. 2. ATI drivers are a whole other story. I forget where I read it, but it turns out that ATI, starting from a certain kernel release, dropped support for my graphics card. So I have to use the open-source drivers. (And curse ATI.) 3. Things crash from time to time. Mostly Kvpnc and Krdc — the VPN frontend and the RDP/VNC tool. Annoying, though I take comfort in the fact that nothing like this ever happened in GNOME. Nothing else seems to have crashed. 4. The KDE 4 taskbar couldn’t be configured for vertical placement — the icons scale in a strange way. 5. X.Org starts growing and eating memory. It’s unclear whether it’s due to uptime or some software corrupting it. I don’t remember this happening in Mint, but on FreeBSD the laptop could run for weeks without any issues.

bookmarks and paranoia

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:56:06 -0500

I have always been terrified of losing some interesting piece of information I found on the internet. So, like a Plyushkin, I drag everything interesting into bookmarks. Now my obsession has reached its peak: after all, a page I’ve bookmarked can be deleted, edited, or the entire resource might shut down, or a blogger might just spit and delete all their posts. So I urgently remembered a Firefox plugin — Scrapbook — which lets you save an entire page to your hard drive right from the browser. I’ll install it, and what’s more — configure it so that everything gets saved directly to DropBox - then nothing will definitely be lost!

2010-01-27 21:44:03

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:44:03 -0500

lg F8056 LDP 3000 ardo flso 106s

samsung wf8508 nhw ylp

e-shepet *****excellent model Usage experience: several months Pros: Large loading hatch, wash cycle indicator, low water consumption — 40 litres, easy to use, washes everything very well, when washing is done it shakes out the laundry — no need to iron. Cons: We’ve been washing for 4 months — everything is great! Comment: We bought this model for 15,600 rubles, in my opinion a bit pricey, but overall an excellent machine!

about blank DVD (and CD) discs

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:00:46 -0500

Needed a piece of software today, and was too lazy to go online since I was pretty sure I had it on a disc somewhere.

Found it on a dual-layer (8 gigabyte) Arena blank, burned back in May 2008 (I picked up the useful habit of writing the burn date on discs). It’s late now so I didn’t feel like testing the whole disc, but the 150 megabytes I needed out of those 8 gigs just wouldn’t read :( Tried it in two different drives, too.

brief movie notes

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:35:46 -0500

Quick and concise thoughts on movies I’ve seen more or less recently.

- Avatar: stunning film, watch it only in a theatre. Technology (for the boys) and romance (for the girls). - Armored: despite the star-studded cast, it’s total rubbish. Fell asleep halfway through, not planning to finish it. - Dorian Gray: didn’t impress me much, but I can’t call it a bad film either. - Planet 51: an animated film about aliens. Worth a single watch. - The Box: I didn’t finish it myself, but my wife and others say it’s worth watching. Though the ending is not simple and a bit bloody. - Funny People: a bit dumb and rather melodramatic. Not much comedy in it — watched it and felt sorry for the wasted time. Only if there’s absolutely nothing else to watch. - G-Force: about guinea pig spies. Good for one viewing, and even then — best suited for middle-schoolers. - 2012: haven’t watched it. My wife didn’t like it, and I don’t like disaster films in principle. - The Hangover: a standard comedy. One-time watch; if you haven’t seen it, you haven’t missed anything. - District 9: watching it now (in bits), interesting, but not for the ladies in my opinion. - 9: a decent animated film; feels like it wasn’t fully realised (you want a sequel). - Svaty: a Russian film — parts 1 and 2 are movies, after that it becomes a TV series. Recommended for couples — a good-natured laugh at the parents’ generation. Parents love it to an incredible degree; I watched it too and had a laugh. - Book of Masters: a Russian film that reminded me of “The Mistress of Copper Mountain,” only poorly made. Didn’t like it. - Up: a must-watch. If you haven’t seen it, they’ll call you a loser in heaven and refuse to talk to you about the sea.

dir-300

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:25:46 -0500

Updated the firmware to the latest version. Before updating, I noticed with some surprise that this router had disappeared from the official website — in its place there is now some DIR-300/NRU, which looks different. Fortunately, the firmware files were preserved on ftp.dlink.ru, so I gave it a try. The goal was to improve the Wi-Fi transfer speed, which on version 1.04 wouldn’t even reach 1 MB/s. After the update things got a bit better — the speed to a nearby (city-local) server increased and reached 2–3 MB/s. However, the transfer speed between two laptops, each connected via Wi-Fi to this now-updated router, improved only marginally and still doesn’t exceed 1.3 MB/s. I’ll try updating the drivers too, but I still suspect the router itself — I think it just can’t keep up. Which, in principle, is not surprising or alarming given what it cost. (By the way, this is the only purchase I’ve made that actually got more expensive after I bought it. Usually everything I buy drops significantly in price within a month or two. But here — what a surprise :)

about KVN

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:57:39 -0500

To lift our spirits, we watched the 2009 KVN Premier League final. We somehow endured the first half of the show, but by the second half we had no energy left, so we switched to dinner, conversation, and tea. Today we finished downloading the “KVN Super Games” — the anniversary edition matches. We watched the most recent one, the 48th anniversary game from 2009. As it turned out, it featured the teams that hadn’t made it into the final we had already seen. I spent a long time trying to figure out what the audience in the hall found so funny, especially during the performances of the team “Fyodor Dvinyatin” — the captain of which personally makes my teeth ache, so repulsive, disgusting, and dim-witted he is, and the jokes so dull. And now, as I write this, a performance by the KVN team from NSU is playing in the background on YouTube — the one that gave the world Alexander Pushnoy, among many wonderful acts — and I think: the show is from 1997, a round of 16, yet it’s so funny that the entire 2009 final doesn’t even come close. I’d rather not think that I’ve grown old enough that even KVN has stopped being funny.

what software I need on a freshly installed Kubuntu:

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:31:41 -0500

-firefox -keepassx -krusader -yakuake -kvpnc -tcsh -audacious -mc -htop -gpodder

-kdenetwork-filesharing (for sharing via Samba through right-click in the file manager)

Don't Go to Africa

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:34:18 -0500

Broke Kubuntu a little — wanted to enable window manager effects. Turned them on — laggy. Decided to install drivers. The native Catalyst refused to install — it didn’t like the OS version. Installed what was in the repos — Kwin started crashing. Windows without title bars look quite funny :) And the keyboard stopped working, only the mouse. Found an article (the text is quoted below, link: http://www.kubuntu.ru/node/3201), used it to fix things (removed the driver).

KKK

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:58:49 -0500

So, brief conclusions after installing Kubuntu Karmic Koala: - During the installation, the disk partitioning step took a very long time to open, and after changing each option it would lag again - After selecting all the parameters and hitting the “Install” button, everything disappeared, and only the blinking of the hard drive activity light indicated anything was happening. I launched a browser and spent 30 minutes surfing the web until a window finally popped up saying the installation was complete. (By the way, Wi-Fi came up right away, and I was installing the system in the kitchen) - After the nicely polished GNOME in Mint — the fonts here are ugly. Especially in Firefox. I’m not picky, I’ll live with it, but the difference is visible, especially fresh off the other system. - Coming from GNOME, KDE runs noticeably (NOTICEABLY) faster. Most likely because Mint has compositing enabled by default, whereas here it doesn’t. kwin itself seems capable of it, but I didn’t bother enabling it. - KDE, even in its fourth version, is still native KDE. Krusader, Krdc, Yakuake, Kopete — how much I missed them in GNOME! However — Kopete somehow refuses to connect to ICQ, will need to figure that out. - Plasmoids look pretty cute. In GNOME I had found Screenlets — a similar concept, but rough around the edges. Screenlets would regularly lose their settings — coordinates and desktop assignments. - It’s unclear whether the ATI video drivers got installed or not. I already forgot where to check. - Firefox, my favorite little monster, starts up and loads noticeably faster. Empty, without plugins — it appears nearly instantly. Maybe it’s because the profile is still small, but it’s pleasant either way. - Image viewing — Gwenview — has been redesigned, big time. It became really beautiful, stunning really. In GNOME all the image viewers are garbage. - The new file manager Dolphin I liked since KDE 4.0 days in OpenSUSE. Even though I’m not a fan of single-pane file managers, Dolphin is the most glamorous of them all.

2009-11-28 21:14:30

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:14:30 -0500

Went to install Karmic Koala, the KDE version.

about Music

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:50:17 -0500

Lately I’ve mostly been listening to the radio. The pleasant St. Petersburg Rocks Radio, and the wide selection of SKY.FM stations. However, the best audio backdrop for work or study was Last.fm for me, and it’s quite sad that it went behind a paywall.

A quick search led me to the site tune.ru, which works on a similar principle: I find my favourite Dire Straits there, the browser starts playing, and when the songs end it picks others similar to that artist. On top of that, you can control the playlist, save it, or even just listen to only the songs you’ve added to the playlist manually.

Has it begun?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:05:07 -0500

Due to an internet crimes investigation, the largest portal in Dnipropetrovsk has been shut down Today, November 19, the largest internet portal in Dnipropetrovsk, Gorod.dp.ua, posted a message stating that the site’s operation had been halted by people in black masks carrying assault rifles.

Briefly

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:21:39 -0500

Bought a router, set it up. Very easy and intuitive to configure, it has a Wi-Fi power level control (turned it down to 25% right away and it’s fine — the room is small, it reaches just fine). Mint immediately detected the network and connected — by default the router had no Wi-Fi password. Set up encryption on the router, Mint asked for the password, and everything is good.

student day and totalitarianism.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:39:19 -0500

today, on International Students’ Day, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine finally passed law 404 — the one that obliges internet providers to monitor users: where we go and what we look at. I hadn’t paid much attention to this law, because I didn’t believe it would actually pass — its content is too absurd and obviously KGB-flavored. Yet today it passed after all. And the law on toughening liability for bribery, the bastards, did not pass! Sellouts and liars…

WiFi router for home

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:50:02 -0500

After thinking it over, I decided against the modem. Now I’m choosing between D-link DIR-300 and TP-LINK TL-WR340GD. The D-Link goes for 395 UAH, the TP-Link for 283 UAH respectively. The latter doesn’t support VPN tunnels (which, given the non-trivial setup on Linux, would have been very handy), but it does have a more powerful transmitter (which in a one-room apartment seems unnecessary anyway), and it’s cheaper. I have never been a fan of D-Link (all their equipment), but I’ll probably go with it anyway. It gets good reviews on Yandex Market.

mint & PPPoE

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:05:43 -0500

An unexpected problem hit me with Mint. I never would have thought that a system which found drivers for a whole bunch of devices on its own would be unable to set up a simple PPPoE connection.

Here’s what happened: I connected to a local network that provides internet via PPPoE. I tried to configure it through NetworkManager — no luck. Eventually got it working with the console tool pppoeconf, but for some reason NetworkManager then started saying my network card was no longer managed by it. (A few reboots and a reset of /etc/network/interfaces later, it started managing it again.)

ADSL+wifi router & PPPoE

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:34:03 -0500

An interesting question: We have a D-Link modem, which doubles as a router with built-in Wi-Fi. Specifically, the model 2600 (glamorous, white, belongs to a friend of mine). Well, we don’t have it yet, but there’s an intention to buy one. This modem comes with an ADSL port through which it can dial the ISP via PPP, an Ethernet port, and a Wi-Fi antenna to distribute the connection from the ISP to the end user. And we have an ISP — a local network that provides internet over Ethernet, with a PPPoE connection. That is: username, password, kind of like dial-up, the whole deal. The question is: will this modem be able to establish a PPPoE connection not through the ADSL port, but by dialing through the Ethernet port, and then distribute the internet around the apartment over Wi-Fi?

shutdown -p now

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:14:19 -0500

Shutting down servers. Yesterday I powered off my FreeBSD box that was running VPN, NTP, and torrents. Its fate from now on — a spare workstation, because after I leave, no one here needs a Unix box. Today I’m shutting down and archiving the virtual machines — Squid, Apache, TS. Archived images will take up less space, and who knows — maybe their time will come again someday. And there’s this feeling in my chest — sad, hollow, and bitter. So much time and effort put into this small fleet of machines — and none of it needed by anyone, none of it appreciated.

letters and fire

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:54:42 -0500

the cold has set in. yesterday we heated the stove. truth be told, it wasn’t the first time, so the book we’d been given for kindling had run out. had to take another one. a strange thing — burning the 8th-grade algebra textbook was morally much harder — because you felt sorry for the familiar equations and problems… the previous one, though — history — crackled away with even a certain joy, seeing on its pages about collective farms, the war, the victory of “the great russian people”, internationals and communisms.

2009-10-21 19:37:25

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:37:25 -0500

Another milestone in life has passed — today I submitted my resignation letter. The real ending will happen when I receive my final paycheck. But the mental one, the one inside your head — that’s the more important one.

on the state, public service, and money

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:34:25 -0500

I don’t remember anymore who I’ve told and who I haven’t — not long ago I happened to win a regional competition. More precisely, the regional stage of a national competition. And to be even more precise — I shared first place with an employee of a regional government body. I’m still not sure what swayed the jury into awarding two first places; maybe it was the fact that I’m just a regular village guy.

podcasts, Radiot

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:07:51 -0500

by the way, the esteemed Umputun has released a new podcast, and has already pushed out two episodes. All fans of RadioT — go download and enjoy.

topical

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:57:49 -0500

Damn it, I always rack my brain over the same thing: what to write in a cover letter for a resume? And I always end up writing something new :( No prepared template on hand. Today I managed to put together this:

Hello. Due to my need for growth and development, I would like to find interesting work at a promising company. The listed vacancy interests me primarily because of FreeBSD — as a clean and pleasant-to-maintain system. I have had some experience maintaining network equipment on a small scale, but I am ready to learn, as well as to develop skills in selecting server hardware. Theoretical knowledge is present (degree in computer networks), practical application is ongoing.

mobile internet speeds

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:32:07 -0500

Downloading Radio-t 155 via EDGE/GPRS. After a whole night, 28% done. Hello, Umputun

UPD: Turned out I was wrong to blame Kyivstar. Now downloading with wget instead of the podcast client — and in 30 minutes I got half of it at a steady 22–24 kilobytes/s

Frustrations with Kyivstar and Pidgin

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:23:59 -0500

Keeping it short. Turns out, to use Kyivstar’s 3G, you either have to sign a contract or buy a specially marked starter kit that comes bundled with a 3G SIM card. So now I’m stuck with EDGE, though at least in the regional center it’s better than out in the sticks. 5000 MB for 128 UAH, which works out to about 160 MB per day. I think that’ll do for now. And apparently because of the slow connection (I can’t think of any other reason), Pidgin, the pest, won’t connect. Not to ICQ, not to Google Talk. Looked at other clients — I want something multi-protocol, since I never managed to ditch ICQ. Nothing quite like Miranda is out there, Empathy wants to download 35 megabytes, which feels like too long a wait. I miss Kopete.

On Windows Update

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:10:27 -0500

When I got my hands on a server running a fully legitimate Windows Server 2003 R2, the question arose: what to do about online updates? They close security holes, improve performance, and generally — bring communism a little closer in one particular server.

As far as I know, everyone who doesn’t update their Windows does so because their copy is pirated. But this one was completely legitimate, wonderful, and lawful — a clear conscience and the sheep safe and sound.

Evolution hang on startup

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:29:15 -0500

Hangs on startup, found the fix here http://www.openkazan.info/node/3120

1. Close

evolution 2. Force-close it completely sudo evolution –force-shutdown 3. Open

gconf-editor , if not installed: sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

4. Navigate to /apps/evolution/calendar/notify, change the value of the last_notification_time variable to the minimum value or just set it to 0.

Launch evolution, enjoy.

New MTS Tariff

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:58:31 -0500

Attention! Super news!! The SUPER mobile operator MTS is launching a new tariff — “Super Unlimited Without a Contract”!!!

25 MB of internet!
25 MMS!
25 SMS!
1500 minutes across Ukraine with no connection fee!!! Package price — 49 UAH!!!

Hooray, that’s it, I’m switching! That’s like 3.2 kopecks/min! A steal!!

- the package is for 30 days - of those 1500 minutes:

1400 to MTS numbers (49 UAH / 1400 = 3.5 kop/min)
70 minutes to all numbers except Life (49 / 70 = 70 kop/min) - 30 minutes to Life (49 / 30 = 130 kop/min)

They lie through their teeth. MTS is a total rip-off. I’ll be dragging everyone over to Kyivstar.

mint & Google

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:44:30 -0500

In the Firefox that comes with Mint, there is a customized Google search — unusual and inconvenient. And I couldn’t disable it the standard way — you can only remove it entirely, but then there’s no way to add it back. I found somewhere (don’t remember the source anymore, but very grateful to that person) an XML file that needs to be dropped in place of the built-in one, like this cp ~/google.xml /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml because on top of that, every damn Firefox update shoves its own search plugin back in again

Writing from home via modem

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:06:13 -0500

The program takes a long time to start.

2009-09-09 09:11:30

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:11:30 -0500

Writing on the run, before I forget. Got mobile internet working under Linux. 1. Deleted a file in the modem firmware 2. Installed the Leonardo_WebKey app (download here) 3. Fixed /etc/wvdial.conf

That seems to be it — will need to reboot and try it out, might break again :)

Damn proprietary folks, making drivers only for Windows

3G from Kyivstar

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:56:56 -0500

The long-awaited kit finally arrived — a locked 3G USB modem ZTE MF100 and a Kyivstar SIM card. Under Windows everything worked right off the bat. They also provide drivers for Mac. I figured such a cool Linux would find it on its own (it did find my phone, after all), but no such luck. Turns out this modem is incredibly tricky. When plugged into USB, it first shows up as a SCSI CD-ROM with drivers. Only after that device is disconnected does the modem reveal itself as a modem + card reader. The problem is that disconnecting it in Linux is not so straightforward. Did some reading — there are two ways: 1. patch the kernel 2. patch the modem

Politics, Shukhevych, nationalism

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:30:16 -0500

Received a letter:

I recommend reading this (setting aside all emotions) http://pravda.com.ua/news/2009/9/8/101146.htm

The guy is right on many points.

I read it without emotions. Then, when I saw it was written by Syoryozha Pidrakhouy — I was disgusted for a long time.

For some reason, half of the Moscovites and “regionalists,” whenever they argue about something — whether about current affairs or past history — tend to tell only half the truth: the half that’s convenient for them, from just the right angle.

testing Drivel

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:27:51 -0500

Testing another LiveJournal client, and at the same time reporting that today I spent half an hour trying to change the shell in Mint (from bash to tcsh) — without success. It does get changed, it’s written to /etc/passwd, but the terminal still launches bash anyway.

this is how the client from the previous post works

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:04:28 -0500

work

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:41:45 -0500

This is what I’m currently working on.

I spread a sheet of drawing paper on my actual desk and drew up a diagram. The idea is to use an existing local network cable run to route a phone line into the server room, connect it there to a splitter and a dial-up modem, and then — after the modem — bring the line back to the office over the other pairs of the same cable and plug it into the phone.

GNOME Calendar

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:37:16 -0500

I can’t find where in GNOME you set the week to start on Monday. Right now the calendar that pops up from the panel looks like this:

In Evolution there is a setting for it, but changing it doesn’t affect the system-wide calendar.

dial-up

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:27:58 -0500

Connected an IDC 2814BXL VR — a voice dial-up modem — to the 2003 server. Planning to set up dial-up connectivity with my subordinate sites; drew up a diagram for moving the phone into the server room and back again :) True to form, this Microserf offspring couldn’t find the drivers and didn’t recognize the ones that were there. Maybe it’ll dial just fine without drivers.

2009-09-01 20:42:30

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:42:30 -0500

To be able to use the Win keys for hotkeys in GNOME, you need to do the following:

Gimly comments…

You can use the familiar Win+D, Win+L, and similar combinations for this purpose — found it here.

Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) — dialog translations are as of the publication date.

System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Select the Layouts tab, then click the Layout Options button at the bottom.

Mint, Firefox & Google

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:04:42 -0500

It turned out that Mint has its own search engine baked into Firefox (wrapped around Google). You can remove it, but I couldn’t figure out where it installs from in the first place. And the search itself is pretty lame — the relevance is off, the menu at the top is awkward, and there are no settings whatsoever. Thanks to Yandex, I found an XML file, replaced the default one, and got the native familiar Google search back. By the way, lately it’s been helping me more than Yandex. I’m wondering — have the search engines changed, or am I just searching for different things now…

krusader...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:59:15 -0500

I’m suffering. There’s no decent dual-pane file manager in GNOME :(

skype

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:11:18 -0500

Got Skype working on Mint today. My webcam with built-in microphone was recognized without any issues. What I didn’t expect was sound problems: Skype refused to either play or capture audio. Googling turned up this solution: set everything in the system sound settings to OSS (except recording — there, point it to the microphone via ALSA), and in Skype set the input directly as well, while the output — to pulse. After that everything works. No time to dig into audio subsystems right now, but there’s clearly a mess going on there.

one plus for gnome

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:20:47 -0500

In the desktop unlock dialog it shows the current keyboard layout. KDE doesn’t show it.

gnome screensaver

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:20:17 -0500

another gnome annoyance — the screensaver doesn’t dismiss with just the mouse, you have to press something on the keyboard.

virus

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:19:41 -0500

There’s a theory that the piece of malware that recently sent messages on my behalf through Odnoklassniki might have come from some Firefox extension — because I had installed a couple of them from shady sites, wanting to get web sticky notes.

impressions of Mint

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:25:35 -0500

GNOME is very unusual. Yesterday I was unsuccessfully trying to configure Wi-Fi — there’s no network search anywhere. The drivers seem to be installed, but I couldn’t connect. On the other hand, the webcam was recognized; it works in Skype settings, still need to test it during an actual call. Finally got the keyboard configured — managed without editing the X config. GNOME doesn’t save the session by default (unlike KDE), meaning apps that were open last time don’t launch on login. Haven’t found where to enable that yet.

Mint & GSM

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:34:01 -0500

couldn’t resist, tried connecting my SonyEricsson k750 via USB cable to the machine running Mint. and guess what? it: 1. recognized the phone as a device, let me browse its memory with the file manager 2. recognized the phone’s memory card as an mp3 player, let me browse it as well 3. offered to set up a connection through the detected modem. I selected Ukraine, chose my carrier “Beeline” — and the connection was established successfully right away!

Linux Mint

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:10:45 -0500

Installed the subject. Had no DVD drive, so installed from a flash drive. From the moment I finished partitioning the disk and clicked “Install” to when the system reported it was ready and asked for a reboot, it took 7 (!) minutes. Installed on a work machine (3GHz/1GB/160GB SATA). Impressions — superb. Despite it being GNOME, everything is quite decent: clean, though somewhat more involved compared to KDE. Maybe just because it’s less familiar. Will be testing the printer and scanner.

Potatoes

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:59:21 -0500

Went to my mother-in-law’s to help with the potatoes. Turns out I’m not bad at it — didn’t expect that from myself. I think everything will ache tomorrow…

2009-07-24 11:56:49

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:56:49 -0500

failed to update … (unexpected error)

Might come in handy for Arch Linux newcomers. If after updating pacman it starts showing the following:

:: Synchronizing package databases… error: failed to update core (unexpected error) error: failed to update extra (unexpected error) error: failed to update community (unexpected error) error: failed to synchronize any databases

don’t panic — just edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist Uncomment the lines with the mirrors you use.

thanks to http://zlord.itcrazy.ru/

2009-07-19 07:59:10

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:59:10 -0500

Hooray! The event we had been talking about for so long has finally happened! We now have running water in our yard…

Another nail in the coffin of QIP

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:17:00 -0500

From sources wishing to remain anonymous but considered trustworthy, information has been received that passwords of users from a number of jabber servers who connected through QIP have been spotted for sale. It is claimed that the offer passed preliminary verification.

source http://community.livejournal.com/ru_root/1782670.html

2009-04-27 06:32:28

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:32:28 -0500

Has life changed?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:30:38 -0500

We got married. Congratulations :)

2009-04-02 21:33:48

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:33:48 -0500

Out of nowhere, carpal tunnel syndrome has flared up (or appeared for the first time?): my right wrist hurts, even though I can’t say I’ve been using the mouse or typing on the keyboard any more than usual lately. And I’ve had a pad with a silicone wrist rest for quite a while now.

spring

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:20:11 -0500

Starting today, spring has arrived for us: ~~earthworks completed~~ earthworks begun, the house is being chipped away at for repainting, we are clearing rubbish from the garden plots and burned it at night. Hot water (autonomous) is a bit lacking, and cold water — which is also still absent — is expected to appear any moment now.

I pulled out the bicycle, replaced the tyre on the rear wheel, rode around a bit — still a bit chilly, but manageable if you don’t push too hard. I need to think about getting a second bike, otherwise I suspect someone will want to claim this one :)

Health and Soul

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:54:43 -0500

I’ve decided to take up yoga. Ksyusha even found a couple of books on the subject, though I haven’t looked at them yet. I thought I’d ask my esteemed audience — does anyone have any recommendations?

Work, virtualization

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:10:49 -0500

As part of the fight against piracy, I today switched from the decent VMWare Workstation 6 to the free VMWare Server 2. Besides being free, its significant (and, probably, main for me) advantage is the ability to start virtual machines automatically when the host operating system boots. Since my virtual machines have graduated from toys into infrastructure tools, it became a pain to RDP in every time after a power outage, launch Workstation, and click through the machines one by one. The last time that happened it was right when I was sitting exams, and I had to walk someone through it over the phone.

new toy - Citadel

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:55:18 -0500

On a tip from comrade nil59, who said: 3) if I were setting up a mail server today - I would try http://www.citadel.org/doku.php. And would report back to the community :) ru_root: Need advice on a mail server for FreeBSD. I decided to try Citadel. Started installing it today on a test machine, which, admittedly, has a lot of random junk running on it. In parallel, I’m downloading the appliance for VMware.

not a simple sunday

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:26:23 -0500

Today, on Forgiveness Sunday, I want to ask forgiveness from my friends whom I rarely reach out to, or have stopped contacting altogether. Please forgive me. I remember you and I feel truly sorry that things turned out this way. Certain life events that have been ongoing since the beginning of winter have been consuming almost all of my attention. Add to that my innate carelessness and the scatteredness that is so characteristic of me :( However, there are good things happening too — I met my Oksanka and am now spending more time offline (in particular, searching for housing and work). So I believe that the pause in our communication, which arose through my own fault, will definitely come to an end very, very soon.

DropBox

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:14:40 -0500

Discovered DropBox for myself — kind of like SVN for the lazy. On the downside — its interface is GNOME-style On the upside — it works on Linux, Mac, and Windows Currently giving it a try, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for it :)

Bookmarklet: posting to LiveJournal

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:14:22 -0500

Tema Lebedev’s work on the LiveJournal interface is bearing fruit. For instance, this very post was made using their new bookmarklet. A small thing — but handy, and it will definitely come in useful.

Bookmarklet: posting to LiveJournal

diary

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:28:06 -0500

Thanks to friends and God’s help, I finally managed to write the abstract, and today I received a reply that it had been accepted for the conference.

Now the main task is to unite the Jabber servers at work. There is one running central server (~300 people); I need to pull my users off it and move them to a local server. For now just for one branch (mine), with plans to extend it to all branches (14 departments, I think).

The Agony of Creation

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:22:57 -0500

For the second week now I’ve been racking my brain trying to write a thesis abstract for my master’s program. Since the university is very disorganized, I still don’t have a supervisor for my master’s thesis, and there’s no one to ask for guidance. I’ve chosen the topic “Software of Automated Systems” and need to write two pages of abstracts for a conference presentation (apparently no actual presentation is required). And now I’m tormented by the agony of choice — which specific problems of software in automated systems should I write about in those two pages. My thoughts categorically refuse to work in that direction :(

die, ICQ

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:44:32 -0500

if you want your communication with friends to stop depending on ICQ’s problems, get yourself a Jabber account and add me to your contacts :)

Switch to Jabber!#

Imagine that there is only one mail server in the world — www.email.com — and all fans of electronic correspondence are forced to use exactly it, install its client software, and watch its ads. That’s roughly how things work in the world of ICQ. And lately the owners of this service (AOL) have been pulling various tricks on users of third-party software. This results in me losing contact with half my friends. The business models of AOL and Rambler are built on the assumption that I am a lazy, limited creature, hooked on their precious ICQ, and will obediently watch their stupid ads and use their ugly programs. But the world doesn’t revolve around ICQ. There is a far more advanced and open system called Jabber, and a host of more convenient programs. Switching to Jabber takes just a few minutes.

2009-01-20 00:51:07

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:51:07 -0500

My prolonged silence, caused by certain pre-New Year family troubles, was made even worse by exam session. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m currently studying for a master’s degree at the Classical Private University (Zaporizhzhia, formerly the “municipal university”), in the Public Administration program. Quite a shady operation, I must say. Not only have they failed to send the enrollment notice on time for the second session in a row — they change the schedule almost every day, and on top of that the schedule itself is posted in one building while classes keep moving around another. They forgot to notify a freelance lecturer (!) about our sessions, so two classes are being pushed from Tuesday’s 4th–5th periods to Friday’s 8th–9th. The biggest joke — or rather, the most infuriating thing — is the term paper situation. At the orientation session we were told that a term paper had to be submitted before the May session. Naturally, I didn’t think to rush or even start, especially since studying was the last thing on my mind. Then, when we arrived for this session, we found out that: a) the head of our department left the university (moved to ZNU, as I understand it…) b) as a result, the term paper has to be submitted by the end of this session (the 23rd) c) the new department head, who on the 15th cheerfully informed us that he’ll be away on a business trip on the 23rd, so we have to submit it by the 21st. I’m absolutely furious at this appalling organization. It’s a disgrace to higher education. And in the Bologna Process lecture the instructor was telling us that their university ranks in the top fifty in the country and is first (FIRST) among private institutions. And they spent 15 years preparing for the state-funded enrollment of students like us. Then, when the group tried to complain to the lecturer in charge of our specialization about the difficulties with writing the term paper, the whole thing devolved into a ridiculous mess. They summoned some deputy dean who came to sort things out. And my dear classmates, like market fishwives, raised an absolute uproar, a cacophony of shouting and jabbering. In the chaos, the guy heard only what was convenient for him and steered the conversation in the direction that suited him. The women kept harping on about having no computers or internet access to work on the term paper (many of them commute from out of town). The deputy dean promised to free up 2 school days (Saturday and Sunday — economics and law lectures) and reschedule them to the following Saturday–Sunday. Through the muddle of everyone talking over each other, it somehow turned out — in a way I couldn’t quite follow — that there’d only be one such day, and the classes wouldn’t be moved to another Saturday but spread across several days instead. After further clarification, the final outcome was: nobody will reschedule anything, we’ll sort it out with the instructors, computers will be available, come on in. Well, that’s what was declared. The women calmed down. I sat there brooding. Instead of standing up for their rights, they managed to get some classes cancelled. But the instructor will still test them on the material. So in the end, nothing was gained — and the term paper still has to be written in one day of light. And these are the people governing our country! I’m ashamed to be one of them. The crowning chord of the term paper saga was the day the classes were cancelled. The law lecturer showed up anyway, found 7 students instead of 60, delivered his lecture — because nobody had warned him and nobody had made any arrangements with him. As for the majority’s absence, he said it was disrespectful to the instructor. He noted who was there and who wasn’t. We’ll see what those women’s screaming has actually accomplished. And I’m trying to force myself to write the term paper, but nothing is coming. I chose a vaguely IT-ish topic, since it’s closer to my profession. But the title “Information and Communication Aspects of Management” strikes me as very broad and in need of clarification. There are no IT people in the department; I approached the ones who teach us Word and HTML. The first has no graduate students, the second isn’t interested in public administration — he considers himself some kind of hotshot systems guy who has enough on his plate. So I sit here, twiddling my thumbs, thinking. Mostly thinking: “do I even need this?”…

MediaWiki

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:56:39 -0500

1. Hooray. Finally got Subversion figured out. Now thinking about where it would be better to live — on the work server (it has better uptime) or on the home machine (which will stay with me if I change jobs)? I’m thinking on the work machine for now, and if needed — migrating shouldn’t take long. Plus I could set up replication and pull repositories from somewhere (from home) automatically. 2. Oh no. Something I’m doing is wrong. This is already the second time my wiki has broken. I write articles, drop configs/scripts in there, put links to those pages on the front page, and then at some point it starts looking like this: And I can’t figure out what’s causing it. By the way, it’s not just the front page that gets messed up.

lytdybr

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:30:31 -0500

So much going on… There’s no free time at all. But that’s a good thing — girlfriend, grad school, interesting stuff at work. I’ve been banging my head against OpenLDAP for a week, trying to set up a single user database for all services — mail, wiki… Can’t find decent documentation on how to actually use it. Yesterday I installed eGroupWare — quite a powerful collaborative work tool. Very happy with it, very feature-rich. Hopefully it’ll help me be a bit more organized. And it should come in handy for colleagues too — reminders, knowledge base and all that…

2008-11-02 19:23:07

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:23:07 -0500

Trust those who hear the ringing clear

Of bells, and not of coins that clink.

Who measure conscience by your measure,

Whose “yes” means yes, whose “no” means no!

Hasten to those who long for meeting,

Who wait for you as for a feast.

One evening spent with them each year

Can feed the soul a whole year through.

Cherish those who are dear to your heart,

Over whom time holds no sway.

2008-10-28 23:09:11

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:09:11 -0500

So… openSUSE is installed. On the plus side — sound works out of the box, laptop special keys work, 3D graphics was easy to set up. Things I’d like to have:

mounting UFS slices. For now I can only mount /, but I need /usr
the webcam works in Kopete, but refuses to work in Skype
I want to pull the KDE icons and theme from BSD (because the current one looks horribly like XP)
Samba — I need it at work
also need to connect a network printer there
found Bluetooth but haven’t learned how to use it yet
need to learn how to lower the CPU frequency to save power

openSUSE 11

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:58:55 -0500

Dear me! Writing to you from work, running openSUSE. Tomorrow, as you know, I’m heading to Zaporizhzhia for five days for some unknown exam session, so I’m rushing to share my impressions from the front line. So, I finally installed SUSE on a proper real machine. What I liked: Wine was already installed there, and the SUSE disc offered to install itself via autorun, registered itself in boot.ini, and after a reboot — set itself up. It’s really great that the DVD comes packed with tons of stuff, and the KDE graphics don’t need to be compiled or pulled manually. By the way, I also installed GNOME — in my favorite Radio-T podcast the brave Mac guys bobuk and umputun praised it so much that I couldn’t resist taking a look at what it’s actually like :) On the downside — KDE is already at version 4.2 or higher, but the disc only has 4.0. I’ll look into how to update (I’ll mention in passing that so far I’m liking KDE 4). Special thanks to the German SUSE team for proper localization. The software is translated (only a few gaps noticed in YaST so far), keyboard layouts work out of the box and even switch the Windows way, which I’d already gotten unused to (Caps Lock is much more convenient). Now I need to check Bluetooth, hibernation, and graphics (the last one I can’t quite figure out how to test yet — probably install Counter-Strike under Wine). The machine has an onboard NVIDIA GPU, so everything should be fine. One unresolved question remains: the large partition on the hard drive. Since three systems will live here — Windows, openSUSE, and BSD (I’ll start with PC-BSD, which recently released version 7, and if I don’t like it — I’ll install FreeBSD) — I’ll probably have to format it as FAT32 so I can write to it from all systems (I have long and painful experience with ntfs3g). On that note, I say goodbye, shut down, and run. Coming up in future episodes: - connecting a proper monitor to X — will it detect that it got a 22"? - Russian filenames on flash drives and SD cards - burning discs from Linux - connecting a phone: Bluetooth and syncing the address/phone book - 3D in Linux — is Wine really as good as I think it is

Choosing a torrent client for FreeBSD

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:34:55 -0500

You can find everything in torrents. That’s why I love them. Packed trackers with detailed file descriptions and user comments are a big advantage of BitTorrent over eDonkey and other even- (or odd-) toed ungulates. On Windows, it’s hard to find a better client than uTorrent. But what do you use to download from FreeBSD? Let’s find out.

Transmission. I liked the name right away. Trrrransmission. Wow! Sounds like it’ll kick into gear and just go, go, go! It installs three things: - the client itself - the transmission daemon - a web interface for the daemon I liked it. Simple as a pencil — nothing superfluous. One problem: it doesn’t seed. And it turns out there are no settings to dig into to make it seed :)

the internet is dead

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:01:26 -0500

ugh. everything is crawling :( but the VPN is decent, works fine

a thought

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:25:32 -0500

In nearly 24 years of uptime for my biped, bipedal, featherless system — the first case of a serious Denial of Service. not that bad :)

Stop stealing

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:06:47 -0500

Author: Bob Walsh (original article). Translation: Sergey Mozhaisky It started rather innocently a few years ago, didn’t it? It didn’t feel like breaking the law or like a crime. Nobody got hurt — if there’s no victim, there’s no crime, right? Besides, everyone does it! It’s no worse than that candy you swiped off the shelf at the store, right? They didn’t catch you then, and they won’t catch you now.

Yandex Market check

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:56:35 -0500

Epson Stylus Photo RX610 — description and prices on Yandex.Market

2008-08-18 08:40:18

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:40:18 -0500

#

You are Kenny! Oh My God - you are Kenny! You are often unlucky and prone to injuries :) At the same time you are a known prankster and a dirty joker, but that’s exactly why everyone loves you! | Butters| |#

65 % Kyle| |#

55 % Tweek| |#

55 % Jimmy| |#

45 % Stan| |#

40 % Timmy!| |#

35 % Cartman| |#

35 %

Which South Park character are you? South Park - everything about the show

dang it

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:12:32 -0500

Not long ago I was this handsome, self-confident guy standing firmly on both legs.

A small observation: with a broken arm you still have three limbs left for getting around. You can walk on two legs and carry a cup of tea in your hand, for example.

But when it’s a broken leg and you have to get around on crutches — you can forget about bringing anything anywhere. I’m starting to envy kangaroos — could just toss a thermos and a sandwich in the pouch and hop from the fridge to the computer.

POSITIVE

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:42:58 -0500

Dynamo (Kyiv) - Spartak (Moscow) - 4:1 Congratulations, fellow countrymen!

frenzy foreva

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:33:20 -0500

Got a shock. Reinstalled Windows — the virus I’d caught was being found and cleaned poorly, and I didn’t feel bad about wiping it. Installed onto the same partition as before, and almost lost FreeBSD — on boot it stops at mounting root and that’s it. With a crowbar and some choice words, it turned out that the filesystems used to be mounted from /dev/ad4s4*, but now those partitions show up as /dev/ad4s2*. Why that happened — no idea. Apparently Windows wiped something and FreeBSD started numbering slices differently. I managed to mount root, but then it turned out that neither single-user mode nor the emergency shell on the first installation disc has an editor, so there’s nothing to fix fstab with. Good thing Frenzy was lying around somewhere — dear old friend! Thanks to technix for that wonderful product! Went off to catch my breath — no work passwords, no certificates, no keys, absolutely nothing had been backed up. Shame on my gray hairs! That was a pretty effective wake-up call…..

Collecting tar. First spoonful.

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:57:46 -0500

Tried to install drivers for the webcam. multimedia/linux-gspca-kmod They are ported from Linux. Not only did the system kernel-panic during the first build attempt (it did eventually compile on a retry), but the drivers still didn’t work. When trying to load the compiled module, dmesg spits out: link_elf: symbol msleep undefined Googling around showed that this issue is well known and is being discussed on the mailing list — but without any resolution. So now, if I want to show my face on Skype, I have to boot into Windows…

can't keep quiet

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:00:13 -0500

Today I found out that one of the chauvinist, Ukraine-hating, provocative blogs on LiveJournal is ceasing to exist — that is, ceasing to be updated with filth — the diary of Lukyanenko. Not Levko, but Sergei, the one who is a sci-fi writer and a hack. ~~How much longer?~~ Finally!

free desktop

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:17:38 -0500

To fully replace the desktop from Windows to BSD, I’m missing Bluetooth and a card~~dealer~~ reader. And if MyPhoneExplorer runs under Wine, my joy will know no bounds :)

ICQ

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:31:01 -0500

On the evening of July 1st, fans of chatting in virtual space were unable to connect to ICQ. The unusual problem affected the QIP and Adium (OS X) clients. Upon connecting to the network, users were greeted with a message demanding that they update their client to the latest version. Fulfilling this requirement changed nothing — the messenger would again demand an update.

However, this trouble did not affect all users. The principle by which victims of these mysterious connection failures are selected remains a mystery. No comments from specialists have been received yet.

Hallelujah!!

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:23:55 -0500

OpenVPN is working! Forwarded the SSH port on the router and redid all the settings following the recommendations of this guy And voilà!

Boot time

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:50:26 -0500

Firefox startup time in FreeBSD: 1:24.9, including the OS and KDE boot time

Installing OpenOffice

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:23:12 -0500

While building the subject, I got this:

NOTICE:To build OOo, you should have a lot of free diskspace (~ 11GB) and memory (~ 2GB).If you want SDK and/or solver, please type make sdk and/or make solver
=> OOo_BEA300_m2_source.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/openoffice.org3.
=> Attempting to fetch from http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/sources/.**OOo_BEA300_m2_source.tar.bz2 2% of 284 MB** 57 kBps 01h23m

TWO GIGS of RAM!!! Three hundred megs of sources!!! OMG! Someone kill me! And how am I supposed to install this thing??

Holy cow!

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:20:00 -0500

It works :)

Test Message from Kopete

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:19:01 -0500

First try to post to lj from IM. Trying to write from Kopete.

2008-06-24 06:11:44

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:11:44 -0500

June turned out to be a productive month. Firefox 3 came out, Wine finally hit 1.0, and yours truly got Xorg up and running on his laptop.

Installed KDE, set up Russian and Ukrainian localization. Funny side note — I was going to write in Russian, but never bothered adding the Russian keyboard layout (I don’t like having three languages on the computer). Flash works in FF, though only version 7, because version 9 just showed empty squares for some reason. And version 7 doesn’t work everywhere. Damn :/ After all, it’s a plain truth that a user works not with the operating system but with applications, so they don’t really care which OS is running underneath. Firefox and Last.fm player are the same as before — the search for other software continues. In order, here’s what I’d like to have:

Can't get OpenVPN to work

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:42:36 -0500

Over the local network it connects fine. When I try to connect to an external IP address, depending on the protocol set in the config, I get the following errors: udp: read UDPv4: Connection reset by peer (WSAECONNRESET) (code=10054) tcp: TCP: connect to 92.113.13.48:5000 failed, will try again in 5 seconds Both machines access the internet through an ADSL modem configured as a router. The necessary ports are forwarded (both TCP and UDP) from the modem to the server. The connection attempt is made to the address that is the real (public) IP on the modem (router). NAT on the modem was verified by forwarding port 80 to the same server — that works fine. Here are the configs: (commented-out lines are the result of trial and error — i.e. the options that were tried and left commented out)

Promoting. Because I love it.

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:58:43 -0500

TODO list :)

Tue, 27 May 2008 19:38:54 -0500

A Jabber server. Because local messengers are trash, and Miranda looks pretty :)
Kerio Mail Server is crap. Sorting rules are pathetic, log visibility is zero. And hMailServer too. Or maybe I’m just clueless. Looking at MDaemon and XMail.
Shadow Copy refuses to work without some filing down. The folder that’s supposed to hold the XP update for version control support — empty. Works with glitches. Figuring out nnBackup and its dump-style operation. Thinking about how to do it properly — so there’s enough space and you can roll back to any version. Haven’t come up with anything solid yet, still reading.

That’s a little plan for the week. MDaemon was aptly named — its settings are truly demonic :)

Shadow Copy

Tue, 20 May 2008 07:52:26 -0500

Turns out Windows has this neat thing called Volume Shadow Copy. Its usefulness lies in the ability to back up files that are open for writing, and on a 2003 Server you can even keep up to 64 copies of a network-shared resource. That is, a file being modified by a user is automatically backed up every time before it’s written, and also when it’s deleted. Kind of a transparent backup — transparent to the user (which is good) and to the admin (also not bad).

about kerio and vmware

Tue, 20 May 2008 07:42:16 -0500

Rejoicing at the idle capacity of the server, I set up a zoo of virtual machines on it. Installed XP, 2003, 7.0. In the firewall (Kerio Winroute) I added a rule that everything is allowed for anyone in the “virtual servers” group. In VMWare, the network type for each machine is “Bridged”. That is, their IPs are from the local network and they are visible — the Windows ones via NetBIOS/RDP and the FreeBSD one via SSH. There is a machine on the network with an ADSL connection, configured as a transparent gateway. It is set as the default gateway in all the virtual machines. And all of them show the same picture — the world is pingable (I checked against Yandex), but http/ftp does not work. Not at all. I already mentioned that the outbound access is open in the firewall. I tried all kinds of additional rules — for the server group, for the IP, for all ports, for port 80 — nothing works. Ping is there, traffic does not flow. After a week of poking around I decided the problem is still in Kerio. My suspicion is that this bastard somehow additionally filters popular protocols — I found something about HTTP and FTP inspectors in it. I disabled them, i.e. created services without these inspectors — did not help. Disabled anti-spoofing, jumped on my left leg, spun around three times at full moon — same result. Are there any Kerio users among the few readers of this journal? Tell me — where is the bottleneck?

So it turns out...

Thu, 01 May 2008 20:53:06 -0500

The picture is taken from the [relevant website

](http://www.downshifting.ru/) I learned about this phenomenon from BOR’s quote It seems to me that this sermon against shoddy work and philistinism was at the same time a sermon in favor of downshifting. More precisely, in favor of choosing between a life model based on living and a model based on experiencing. And since it is hard to keep experiencing the purchase of a refrigerator or a pay raise for long, the choice seems obvious. The only question is when it will be made, and how much time we will have left after that.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:26:25 -0500

Today is that one day of the year when the general public remembers the Chernobyl tragedy. Even Yandex Pulse clearly shows a spike in activity. Chart for the year: Interestingly, it turns out that on this day the words “Chernobyl” and “ass” are used equally often. Meanwhile, “money” remains consistently popular. Chart for 2 months, for a closer look:

2008-04-26 21:54:36

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:54:36 -0500

Seems I was wrong to blame the seventh version. Installed 6.3 and the problem remained — the ADSL connection refused to come up. Turned out the card was acting up; after a wipe with alcohol and moving it to a different slot, it started working. Hooray, we have a gateway, two networks — old and new — both running, all systems go! (knock on wood…) Next tasks: a) SSH authentication without a password, using a key b) Sending mail from a different address. This is caused by the fact that the mail setup in the organizational hierarchy is configured in a somewhat odd way, and a local user needs to send mail on behalf of our organization’s address, which is registered on the upstream mail server… something’s off here, but we’ll have to adapt to the existing rules :( c) And the dyndns questions remain. Fortunately, there’s now an extra machine for experiments. Instead of Hamachi I’ll probably try either Kerio or OpenVPN, because Hamachi lags terribly.

The second snag and plans.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:36:37 -0500

Reporting season has arrived, which means I have less and less time for network tuning. For now I’ve given up on the wall sockets (figuratively speaking), plugged a patch cord into one of them leading to one of the old switches, and I’m working like that. The plan is this: to end up with a “model” network as a result of all this work. Beautifully and thoughtfully configured according to a pre-designed scheme. Reliably protected from external interference, and regularly backed up against internal mishaps. With documentation — both ongoing and final. Something pleasant to look at. Since the existing server runs Windows, I — as an enthusiastic if not particularly skilled OpenSource advocate — want to build a gateway on FreeBSD. Both for security reasons and out of love for it. So while the girls are putting together reports that I’ll later have to shove into a buggy and glitchy program, a spare machine has been chosen, a second network card has been plugged in, and FreeBSD 7.0 has been installed (with a patched OpenSSH). Without overcomplicating things, I copied the configs from my home machine (ppp.conf and rc.conf), adjusted the login/password/interface names in them, and at a convenient moment I give it a try. What do I see? Instead of connecting to the internet and working productively for the good of the organization, I get an error message saying: **WARNING: attempt to net_add_domain(netgraph) after domainfinalize() ** Well, damn. Googling around on Google, Yandex, and opennet showed that I’m not the only one who’s seen that line, but other people mostly have issues with mpd, while mine is with PPPoE. A quick fix wasn’t found; it seems I’ll have to do a lot of reading again, and the behavior looks quite strange. And since the whole network design theory hinges on this gateway, tomorrow I’ll reinstall it with FreeBSD 6.3 instead, and if that doesn’t help either — then I’ll start reading. Because to set up a proper working machine (with internet, ICQ, a proper LAN), I need to remove the current services from it — mail and proxy. And to move those to a new server (as per my plan), I need a working gateway. Blasted nuisance.

The First Snag

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:35:11 -0500

The first glitch was rather unexpected. I decided to set up remote access to the server so I wouldn’t have to walk across the hallway. I plug a patch cord into the socket and watch as the server refuses to respond to pings, while the port indicator light on the switch blinks at a steady interval. I suspected the cable, the socket, the quality of the crimping… Until I thought to check the cable’s wiring scheme. Turned out they had been crimped according to an arbitrary scheme, as long as both ends matched. Why cables crimped the same way worked fine in the old network with simple switches but refused to work with the fancy new one remained a mystery. But I did get plenty of practice re-crimping cables to the standard wiring scheme. It’s not the connectors I feel bad about so much as the 15 wall sockets. They’re installed in hard-to-reach spots, the wires keep breaking off — over the course of a week I only managed to redo 6 of them.

First Results

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:33:13 -0500

So, about work.

A typical mid-sized government-owned office. A motley collection of PCs, network cabling running along the floor, no documentation, two cheap Surecom hubs/switches. However, the guy who managed all this before me is a very smart fellow. No irony intended. Antivirus software is installed, users work with Total Commander (all of them!), The Bat, and a local messenger. On top of that — there's the aforementioned server, which sits in a rack cabinet together with a 24-port **3COM** switch. Fifteen UTP lines (run through cable ducts) lead into the cabinet and terminate in wall outlets at the workstations. My job is to migrate the local network from its current state to the new equipment.
The server is a decent piece of iron from **DELL**, configured either at the factory or by the resellers. It runs Windows 2003 RC2 (licensed, mind you). So the question of configuring RAID arrays has (fortunately or unfortunately) been taken off my plate. It's powered on, it works, it hums away.

2008-04-21 19:12:49

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:12:49 -0500

Something like this server. Not exactly the same model, but close.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_2950_3?c=ru&cs;=rubsdc&l;=ru&s;=bsd

2008-04-10 22:07:18

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:07:18 -0500

Changed jobs. Going to do sysadmin work (well, general IT grunt work :) at a small office. Currently figuring out how everything is set up. Once things settle down, I’ll get back in touch with everyone. In brief — the network is ~15 machines. There’s a server that has never been turned on. It should be working (2×2000 Intel, 4GB RAM, 2×70GB + 3×120GB SATA or SAS, rack, cooling, a solid UPS). I need to turn it into a domain controller + file server + application server + possibly a terminal server. Chances are Windows is installed on it and it’ll probably stay that way for now. Because what software will be running there is still unknown. And I’m wary of Samba — I won’t be able to configure it quickly. Either way, first things first — figure it all out. Hope the UPS batteries haven’t died over the past year; that would be a shame. Among other things, there should be a local MTA and a proxy. Right now Courier Mail Server (looks pretty weak) and HandyCache (also a rough piece of work) are installed. Looking into what they can be replaced with. On the Windows side I know Kerio; for Linux I’m thinking of checking out Postfix and Squid. The problem is that if anything changes, it has to be done carefully and transparently for the users, because the organization is budget-driven — mistakes will be punished. Hoping a stable state will be reached soon; will be bragging about achievements. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

security in VNC

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:02:00 -0500

I’d be grateful if someone could point me to a guide on how to run VNC over SSH (on FreeBSD).

I tried to build Hamachi LogMeIn under FreeBSD — it started pulling in Linux packages and choked. I figured I didn’t know how to launch vncserver bound to a specific interface anyway, so I decided to go a different route and drop Hamachi (also tried it under Windows, opened the incoming RDP port in the firewall — it connected, but dropped after a minute. Never figured out why).

This is InternEEEEET!!!!!!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:33:58 -0500

Today is a very good day. I found a person I had lost long ago and missed terribly.

A wonderful guy with whom I have, you could say, been through thick and thin. We fought and made up, got offended and worked hard together. We learned — probably, I learned much more from him than the other way around. We ate from the same plate and drank from the same glass. I get the feeling he is basically a childhood friend, even though we have only known each other for a couple of years. But apparently the harsh everyday life of the dorms allowed us to live through quite a lot in such a short time.

2008-02-25 22:20:32

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:20:32 -0500

It has always been a mystery to me: how do people in large institutions manage to finish their work so harmoniously that by 17:01 everyone is done and heading home? When a big team, like a single organism, rises and leaves the offices, creating traffic jams on the roads, queues in the stores… It turns out it’s very simple. This situation is typical of a team that does nothing.

Is it not because we are human that we can weep, and not seem ridiculous in doing so...

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:26:41 -0500

Why does every god in their life create around themselves a multitude of stones that they are then unable to lift? Do they need this for training? Do they expect to grow stronger and cope with the tasks they have set for themselves? Or do they act unconsciously, unable to manage their own might?

It's Time to Actually Work!

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:00:32 -0500

Continuing the rural theme — found it on fishki, I crawled under my chair laughing :)

Come morning you will walk to the office, Log your arrival in the book, Then mindlessly stare at the monitor, And another day for the country — just gone.

You’ll sit there in a fog of tedium, At war with boredom, losing fast, You’ll shuffle that same sheet of paper From one corner to the last.

The Little Village

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:50:01 -0500

There’s this fellow — Timur Shaov. One of his songs has latched onto me and just won’t let go, the wretched thing.

In the beginning was the Word, time passed.
God created beer, woman, and the Earth,
And God saw that it was good.
He had the village specifically in mind.
God ordained that we should dwell in villages.
I carry out the Lord's commandments in my life.
Our village is like the Garden of Eden:
I drift, I groove, I vibe, I'm blown away.

 My little village, three small windows.
 Come on over to me, my little kitten!

Here, with God's help, we grow beets,
Carrots, onions, potatoes of all kinds,
Dill, parsley — and what parsnip we have here!
Even Boris Leonidych himself would be proud!
The women here are full of natural fire,
No Freudian complexes — honest to God!
And at full gallop, maybe not a horse,
But a man she'll stop for sure!

 My little village, trousers full of patches.
 Come on over to me, my sweetheart!

Even the local small-time crooks here
Are more decent than the capital's decadents.
People here are simpler, they eat bread-and-water in the morning
And don't shove their intellect in your face.
And yes, the men here drink a lot —
That's so the soul doesn't grunt, but sings.
At least our coachmen
Don't freeze in the steppe, taking a nip for warmth

 My little village, little tail with a tassel.
 Come on over to me, my little feminist!

The scent of manure here is a symbol of purity,
For the connoisseur — more pleasant than Chanel.
We grow out of manure like flowers,
Like Leo Tolstoy from Gogol's "Overcoat."
For city folk, manure is just "crap" —
But here, for every kilogram of dung
There falls a pearl of grain.
Everyone here wears necklaces, like Papuans.

 My little village, underfinanced.
 Come on over to me, emancipated one!

What kind of life is there in the city? Not life — a prison!
Crowds, cops, cars, heaps of garbage,
Stench, racket, stress, prostitutes, MMM,
The boss is a rat, work is lousy, friends are Judases.
The tap water is copper sulfate,
The neighbors are vermin to the fifth generation.
Neurosis, arthrosis, thrombosis, leukosis, diarrhea —
The diseases of the urban population!

 My little village, down-at-heel.
 Come on over to me, my poor dear!

Leave the stinking city smog behind,
Come to us — your carriage awaits, your carriage!
Here there is a corner for the wounded soul,
Here a poet has something to drink and to eat.
Without Kashpirovsky, nature will heal you:
Grey hair turns black again, scars on the skin fade,
Potency grows, as does your belly and appetite,
Everything that can grow grows in size.

 My little village, horseradish with parsley.
 Come on over — and not alone, but with a girlfriend!

But the union of city and village is a disgrace!
So that sailors may trample our virginity!
The village, dear friends, is no trifling matter,
The village is the quintessence of morality!
You live so here — coarse-spun and simple,
Putting on a peasant coat and a rope for a belt.
You walk in bast shoes — there's your Tolstoy!
You dash off a novel — like a woman throwing herself under a train.

 My little village, drinks on payday.
 Why won't you come to me, you pampered creature!

The steppe mare treads down the feather-grass,
All the Scythians are squint-eyed with a hangover.
July, grasshoppers, the midday dust,
And the old God snores beneath the icons.
In the village your soul is cleansed,
The village sublimates space.
And there's good potatoes here too,
And I love them with melted butter.

The Quarter of Rendezvous

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:26:14 -0500

– What are you waiting for, sir? – the smiling host asked me with friendly surprise. – Your number is 19. Go and meet your fate, my friend! – Yes, of course, – I smiled back, – thank you for reminding me why I came here… People are so absent-minded, and I am, after all, a person… – I had finally remembered what I was supposed to do. And I walked slowly deeper into the room, where solitary ladies from among the Waiting ones flitted about, lovely and not so lovely… A wild thought flashed through my mind: “I swear on my mother, no cop has ever gone looking for a mistress with someone arrested in his fist!” I grinned nervously and began to count: – One, two, three… – I couldn’t even see their faces; they blurred into one vague, swaying smudge, and I walked through that smudge with a foolish grin, – six, seven… what a pity I have quite a different number, unforgettable one… ten, eleven… excuse me… eighteen, nineteen! You’re the one I need, lady! – Are you doing it on purpose? Casting spells again? – a familiar voice asked quietly. – You shouldn’t, Sir Max. But there’s nothing to be done about it now… You don’t argue with fate, isn’t that right? I finally focused my eyes. The pale smudge of a face gradually took on familiar, dear features. Lady Melamori was watching me warily. She seemed unable to decide what would be better: to throw herself around my neck, or to flee. – This is too much! – I said quietly. – No, this is really too much! – And then I sat down on the floor and began to laugh. I didn’t care about decorum, or anything else for that matter! My mind flatly refused to take part in this absurd adventure… It seemed my hysteria convinced Melamori better than any words could that there had been no “conspiracy” against her. Never. – Let’s get out of here, Sir Max! – she said quietly, crouching down beside me and gently stroking my poor mad head. – You’ll frighten the visitors. Come on, you can finish laughing outside if you want! Get up! – And I obediently leaned on her small, strong hand. Sinful Magisters, this fragile lady lifted me to my feet without any effort! The fresh breeze quickly put everything back in its place, so my urge to laugh faded at once. – So many strange things happen in this foolish World, Melamori. – I said. And fell silent. What was there to say! – Max, – Melamori said quietly, – I’m very ashamed: in your bedroom… in short, now I understand I was talking terrible nonsense, but I was so frightened! I completely lost my head! – I can imagine… – I shrugged, – falling asleep in your own home and waking up God knows where… – Who is “God”? – Melamori asked indifferently. I had more than once had to untangle myself from such idiomatic misunderstandings, but this time I just waved my hand wearily. – What does it matter!… The thing is, I really didn’t do anything on purpose. I still have no idea how it could have happened… – I know, – Melamori nodded, – now I understand that you don’t yet realize yourself what you’re capable of, but… It doesn’t matter anymore. – Why? – Because… That’s just how things turned out. Only we’ll go to your place, not mine. I live too close, so… In short, let this last walk be a long one. – Last? Have you lost your mind, Melamori! You think I’m such a deadly fellow? That I’ll bite your head off in a fit of passion? – I tried to be cheerful, because I absolutely had to be cheerful right now, a hole in the sky above it all! – Of course you won’t bite my head off – it simply wouldn’t fit in your throat… – Melamori smiled helplessly. – But that’s not the point. Do you even understand where we met, Max? – In the Quarter of Rendezvous! You won’t believe it, but I don’t know how I ended up there myself… Think what you will, but I came there following a guy with a mother-of-pearl belt… You know about all that business with the belts, right?… – Melamori nodded, and I went on. – We roughhoused a bit, and then I arrested him. He’s still here! – And I showed Melamori my left fist with a smile. – You mean to say… – Lady Melamori burst out laughing. It ended with her taking a turn sitting down on the pavement. I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. Melamori was groaning with laughter. – And I thought you were… Oh, I can’t! You are the most amazing fellow in the World, Sir Max. I adore you! What a… what a pity! In the end we walked on. – Have you never been to the Quarter of Rendezvous before? – Melamori asked quietly. – No… Where I come from, in the Empty Lands, things are somehow simpler… Or the other way around, more complicated – it depends on your point of view… In short, I’d never been there! – And you don’t know… – Melamori’s voice had dropped to a whisper, – you don’t know that people who meet in the Quarter of Rendezvous must spend the night together and then part? – In our case that’s completely impossible, – I smiled, though my heart was slowly sinking, – we’re both not about to give up our jobs, as I understand it… Melamori shook her head. – That’s not necessary. We can see each other as much as we like, but… we’ll be strangers, Max. I mean… Well, it’s clear enough. It’s tradition. Nothing to be done! It’s my own fault – I went there out of spite, wanted to prove something, I don’t even know to whom… I shouldn’t have gone anywhere today, and neither should you… Though who can be blamed here? People don’t decide such things themselves. – But… – I was completely lost. My head was already such a jumble that I could simply shut up. – Let’s not talk about it, Max, all right? Morning is still a long way off, and… They say fate is wiser than us… – All right, we won’t, – I shrugged, – but it seems to me all this is some primitive nonsense. We can decide for ourselves what to do. What do silly traditions have to do with anything? If you like, tonight we can simply take a walk, as if nothing has happened, we won’t tell anyone anything, and then later, when… – I don’t want to… and it’s impossible anyway! – Melamori sighed, smiled, and gently closed my mouth with her icy little palm… – I told you: enough of this, all right?

Heroically Creating Difficulties for Ourselves

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:17:34 -0500

By allocating 128 megabytes of memory for video, I managed to render Windows completely inoperable — now it only works without the video card driver :(

Unclear what’s going on. Here’s a description of the symptoms:

I have an ASUS X51RL laptop with ATI onboard video that can use system RAM for its own purposes. After using the standard tools of the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) software to increase the amount of memory used by the video card (the manufacturers call it “UMA Buffer Size”) from the default 64 MB to 128 MB, Windows broke. The process of increasing the allocated memory was accompanied by a reboot (which was expected) and a “BIOS checksum error” message (which was already strange).

Today is a holiday

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:44:34 -0500

There’s a reason to congratulate the Alexanders I know, since December 6th is their name day ;)

At the new job

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:42:34 -0500

Today was the first day of hard work (gig) as a civil servant. No impressions yet — everyone is sizing each other up. So far everything is fine — a typical example of a typical rural government office…

The first day of winter marked by a laptop upgrade

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:30:05 -0500

More precisely, I swapped my nice ASUS 3500L for the same brand’s X51RL. I was tempted by a gigabyte of RAM, a SATA hard drive at 5400 RPM, a glossy widescreen display. And the ATI graphics with Wi-Fi won’t hurt either.

The first discovery was the quirky driver situation for this model. I already knew it ships with FreeDOS and the bundled drivers only target Vista. But there’s the internet, there’s the manufacturer’s website, where you can grab whatever software you need. I armed myself with the previously-mentioned Kubuntu — it spotted the monitor just fine (though that’s arguably XOrg’s credit), set up a PPPoE connection without any trouble, and recognised the flash drive — everything works. So I head to the ASUS site. Finding only Vista and XP drivers there didn’t really bother me. I downloaded them and went to install my old friend Microsoft® Windows™ 2000. No need to have been afraid of the SATA drive — it recognised it natively (and I almost bought a USB floppy), installed just fine, looking all ugly at 640×480… ugh…

One Kubuntu, two Kubuntu, three.....

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:16:58 -0500

Today during the day, the first experiment with the African Linux was conducted. It served as a vivid illustration of the fact that you cannot install operating systems without beer :) Problem statement: install Kubuntu on a virtual machine. Purpose: evaluate the installation process, anticipate subtleties in order to account for them when installing on a real machine.

Procedure.

Introduction. The Kubuntu disc I have (7.04 for i386) is a live distribution. Booting it gives you a KDE desktop with a lone “Install” icon sitting on it. I loaded it on my long-suffering computer (750 MHz), allocating 180 MB of RAM to the virtual machine. It booted with noticeable lag. No reaction to clicking the aforementioned icon was observed. The obvious conclusion: “can’t hear without legs”… The experiment was moved to a 1600 MHz processor with 256 megabytes allocated. Still with the same lag (slow hard drive), but at least there was a reaction now. The graphical installer launches (hooray) and walks through six steps. 1. Language selection (for installation and system). Chose Ukrainian. 2. Keyboard layout selection. Fairly broad. Chose the national layout. 3. Time zone selection — UTC+2. 4. A choice between two options — install automatically to the entire drive or partition it manually. Chose manually. 5. The partitioning process itself. Reminds me of the FreeBSD graphical partition editor, to which a partition bar from PartitionMagic was added. (Right now, while writing this, it hit me — why on earth didn’t you take screenshots, huh?). 6. The question “Are you sure? All data on the hard drive……..”. With a firm index finger (why worry — it’s a virtual machine after all) I click “Yeah, sure”.

Synchronization Problems :)

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:27:44 -0500

It turns out that my household members have a completely different daily schedule.

By the time my grey cells wake up and start doing productive work — calling for reinforcements in the form of tea (continuously) and cigarettes (once every 60 minutes) — everyone at home is already asleep, not at all pleased with the noise of the boiling kettle and the banging of doors. This, in fact, explains both the absence of journal entries and a certain pause in other forms of remote communication. It’s just not in me to turn on the computer in the morning and write a letter. And in the afternoon, household chores come up. Or more precisely, the people who come up with them do :)

I'm home!

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:53:14 -0500

The event everyone had been preparing for so long has finally happened! It took much less time than hauling all the stuff to Zaporizhzhia. Packed everything into boxes/bags/suitcases in two days, and two bicycles were placed on top (yep, that’s me — I’ve also got four wheels :) A gloomy thought crossed my mind: my entire life, even together with a pile of useless junk, fit into a single passenger car. Everything was transported in a Slavuta — which turned out to be a surprisingly spacious vehicle.

For a Connection Without Flaws. Part 1.

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:30:09 -0500

So, here is the first installment of the battle against Ukrtelecom in pursuit of some “WOW”-worthy internet. It turns out the existing line is not of adequate quality for ADSL. The segment resistance is 1100 Ohm, distance is under a kilometer — maybe the specialists will have something to say about the telecom folks?

And if the chukcha wants internet, then let the chukcha run a new line. But the chukcha is no fool (and, between us — not a chukcha at all :), so he decided to get away with minimal effort. The key decision was proposed and agreed upon: run the line through the air. Between the trees, yep. Through an area roamed by packs of alcoholics who, out of the wholesome childlike curiosity typical of all idiots, might easily yank on a rope — just to see if something rings somewhere.

Donating blood — first and last time.

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:59:19 -0500

The twenty-fourth year has begun

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:49:56 -0500

The most noticeable change will probably be swapping out the ~~greedy carrier~~ phone number. Besides that, I’ve made a final decision — I’m going home. Capital-H HOME.

There’s so much unfinished drinking business waiting there. True, most of it has already collapsed or is well on its way, but that’s all the more reason to charge through the off-road chaos and general sloppiness!

Fulfill the five-year plan in three years! Hooray for the rise of agriculture! We shall build communism on one individual street!