Went to exchange my TFT with the dead pixel yesterday at Mediamarkt. After queueing in line for about an hour, finally it was my turn. The service department was very friendly, I got my exchange ticket right away. Then I had to go into the store, fetch another monitor to be able to swap it. Alas, no more Syncmaster 920N available (except 3 which also had dead pixels). Can I use this paper I have in my hand here to get one at another Mediamarkt? Yes sir, no problem. Had to run to pick up Diana at her class in Mechelen (and turned up half an hour late there), so we drove through to the Mediamarkt in Antwerp. Where they had the monitors (albeit 20 euro more expensive, which I would have had to pay on top), but they were very sorry to say that I had the wrong kind of paper and they couldn’t take it. Back to Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, no time to bash the people there, just got the right paper and stormed off direction Mediamarkt Basilix, Brussels, hoping they had a monitor there. Again bad luck, it closed at 19.30 (wtf) and I was there at 19.45, thinking it would close at 20.00.

So I’m sitting here, with a 19" CRT and a 19" TFT next to eachother… sigh. Hopefully I can get another identical monitor soon, or I’ll have to bring back the other as well and buy 2 new ones of a different type. :p

Diana now started at KUL doing a "schakelprogramma" (conversion program) in Information Management so next year she can start the course she actually wanted to do this year but got rejected… Hopefully we’ll pull through with 2 years of only one person earning anything…

I’m still not very convinced any of the administration at the KUL is actually in any state that would stand a 10-point checklist of how things should work…

Good luck to my little studentje! 🙂

Last week I spent some money in "gamer-izing" my computer case. It’s a nice Silver Lian-Li aluminium thingy, a bit less nice-looking because of 2 white/beige Plextor DVD & DVD-RW front bezels… So I spent some cash via Ebay on 2 nice aluminum bezels , a nice thermometer/fan monitor display , a few Akasa blue-led fans and a sidepanel with plexi so you can see inside the case (woops, some cleanup needed ;)).

Friday we had some time to kill at Mediamarkt , and I ended up walking out with 2 Samsung SyncMaster 920N 19" TFT monitors… Now I really got the über-PC 😉 (Unfortunately I already have a dead pixel on one of my monitors, so I’ll have to go back to MediaMarkt some day soon).

As Diana is going back to college (at least when the KULeuven permits her ), she stops working at T-Systems. This means we have to give back the super cool Alfa Romeo leasing car we’re currently driving around in. 🙁

As we kind of need a car or at least got so accustomed to having one, we set off on a course to find the right car for us. Which isn’t that easy, considering the length of my legs which disqualify a lot of the cheaper and smaller cars available on the market… after a few weeks of search we found a nice Alfa Romeo (yes, we fell in love with those) 156 1.8i Twinspark. Hopefully it passes the Touring car-test (only then we’ll buy it) which is scheduled for friday. I’ll post some pics when we got it ! 😉 

Something that I neglected to post (while I didn’t really post anything else either) … 🙂

I got my temporary drivers license since 20-Jul-2006 … so in about a month I can try and do my exam to get the permanent one… finally!

I’ve had it for 2 months now and do indeed wonder why I didn’t get it a few years back 😉

Great example,the KULeuven site .

I’ve heard complaints before from friends about how the KUL admins tend to hide every useful bit of information behind 256 clicks on the site, and then spreading it out so you need about 4096 mouseclicks to get info you need. It gets worse however. When you surf to it the first time you get a choice between English and Dutch. Think long and hard about this, because little do you know, half of the information on the English site is not replicated on the Dutch one (haven’t checked the other way around) !

Say you’re foreign (like my girlfriend perhaps?) and want to take classes at KUL. You speak fluent Dutch, and assume the information will be more current on the Dutch site so you click on "Nederlands". You subscribe yourself to a course, go to the Universiteitshallen to complete the subscription… and hear that you need to fill out 5 more forms, need a few pictures, all your degrees with official stamps (+ a Dutch or English translation, as German is not a Belgian official language I guess?), and then a 6 week waiting period. They cannot tell you this over the phone, all they know is "you have to fill out the form on the website" – which was ofcourse done. Only the form is totally different on the English site… Way to go KUL. Too stupid to tell anyone in time, the international office is lazy, the faculty is slowwww… result: Diana is still not subscribed and doesn’t know if she is even approved to do so. I don’t see a problem, but classes start in a week and noone knows a damn thing. "We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything."

I’ve got a bunch of rackmount servers in my rack at home right now. All cool, but the rack is full… so no more upgrades 😉 Unfortunately a 4U and 3 2U’s with a total of 7 CPU’s (+fans), and 16 hard drives produce a lot of heat and noise, while kicking up our electricity bill. I’ve also got a 12-port gigabit switch and a 24-port 10/100 switch running and a few cisco 2500’s for tests and play 🙂

So in order to downsize this a bit the plan is to keep the cisco’s (they don’t produce a lot of noise or heat nor do they use a lot of power), replace both switches by one 24-port gigabit switch, keep one 2U box as router, replace the rest of the machines by one big badass 4U box containing all the remaining hard drives, and add a UPS.

I’ll have some leftover hardware at that point, perhaps I’ll sell some of it… or I can reuse it later without having to buy new stuff.

I’ve just bought the UPS (New 2U APC 1400VA for 150 €, not too expensive I think?), have a switch ready for me when I get some cash together, and then when I’ve got some more cash I’ll get the 4U Supermicro case and a 5-in-3 SATA hotswap tray set… In total the box can contain 15 disks (if I put in 2 more SATA 5-in-3 mobile racks). Expensive hobby this is.. but hopefully it’ll reduce power bills, heat AND noise…

I’d also like 2 19" TFT monitors one day.. Samsung Syncmaster 920n for example 😉 

Someone win the lottery and donate me some cash… :/ 

Last friday I took a nasty dive to the floor with my bike, and in the process seem to have hurt my wrist. It didn’t feel that bad at first, typing is no problem etc, but after a few days it still hurt and I couldn’t really turn my hand… so went to the doctor, now I need pills, gel cream, a coldpack and a wristbandage for 2 weeks. Hmpf. Seems Stein isn’t the only one with wrist trouble – luckily I can still type with two hands!

We bought a Philips Perfectdraft yesterday. Took a while to cool the beer to 4°C but after about 16 hours it managed and we could give it a go. We now have our own beer tap thingy in the house! 🙂 The manual mentions "Put the desired medallion on the tap" … unfortunately none was included. There are some for sale, like Grolsch and Becks, but the beer keg in ours is Stella, and we’d want a Stella medallion thingy anyway, except it seems it’s nowhere to be found. If you look very hard, some people found a Jupiler one, but not even that can be found easily it seems.. Any tips?

PS, I hope my links are clearer this way. Thanks ripperke 😉 

No, this isn’t Jeremy Clarkson screaming at the next 800bhp engine… This is me screaming after the thunder+lightning that just struck. I was about to leave the house to go back to the office, then a loud thunder followed by massive lightning, followed by my girlfriend screaming "Your computer!!!" … of which the monitors turned dark… Luckily it came up again after a powerdown/powerup (apart from an annoying noise coming from one of the fans).

boo:~# uptime

14:28:37 up 31 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.01

boo:~# ssh root@khalid uptime

14:21:34 up 18 days,  4:43,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

boo:~# ssh root@viconia uptime

14:28:54 up 30 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.08, 0.18, 0.18

boo:~# ssh root@sunrise uptime

14:28:47 up 18 days,  4:42,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 

The DSL modem also reset, and probably the switches and wifi routerthingies as well. I wonder why some kept running (like Diana’s computer which was right next to mine but in another wallplug).

While on the way back, I noticed most of Kessel-Lo/Leuven’s traffic lights were blinking orange too 😉

Next on the shopping list: a big UPS for the serverroom and a small one for our workstations… no more colo stuff. You’d think I/we’d have enough of those toys by now with 2 APC masterswitches, 1 STS, 4 switches (2 Cisco Catalyst, 2 HP Procurve), 3 routers in Brussels & 1 in Amsterdam, 2 25xx console routers, and a whole bunch of servers doing *cough* interesting stuff 😛