August 2005 Archives

but I've chosen not to do so.

I won't hold these Bjork lyrics from you though :

one day : it will happen
one day : it will all come true
one day : when you're ready
one day : when you're up to it

I do realize that these lyrics are very much open to interpretation, and if you think you know what they mean, you're quite probably wrong.

I'm the only one that can even remotely understand what they mean to me right now. Don't bother asking about it, because if I wanted you to know, I'd have called you or explained here. Maybe later.

Which basically means that I'm boring. Alright, I get the point.

Where's the fun when even internet quizzes start telling the truth?!

My new matress just was delivered and the old one taken out, so that's one thing out of the way. I was planning on installing MT3.2 today, but I really don't feel like it. In fact, the more Six Apart say "the upgrade is fool-proof" the less I trust it. I've done quite some MT installs and upgrades over the past years and let me assure you : none of them were trouble free. If it wasn't figuring out where each file needs to go, then it was editing the templates all over again, or hunting for new/adapted plugins, changing file permissions,...

I never ran into real serious problems, that I'll admit. I don't know if that is to my technical experience, or thanks to their superb upgrade/install instructions. I really think it's the first.

So... I don't feel like doing it all over again and will keep MT3.1x running on my FK blog, while other blogs remain at 2.66x - yes, I even dreaded upgrading to MT3.1 before - and if something better comes along, I may start using that. Sure that's quite a challenge too, but then I expect it to be. With a "fool-proof" upgrade routine one doesn't expect spending hours hunting down crap that doesn't work right away or tinkering with templates over and over.

To make a long story short, I'm off to lift some weights and then off to ride my bike in the park. The weather is fabulous, so why stay inside?

Dad 'n Me

Game time people.

Dad's Home
Walk-Smash-Walk
There she is!(Bunny loves Kitty. Bad for Kitty) (excellent description by crickie)
There she is! (step 2) (Will kitty make it to bunny’s birthday? Will he fight off the scary ninja bunnies?) (description again borrowed from Heather)
Egg

Movie time people, seriously.

As I was watching the new episode of Ka2's Open en Bloot - thanks for easy and freely available webstreams! - I had MTV on in the background. There ain't much other things on at 01h30 at night, you know, and then I noticed a song I didn't know yet : Jem's "Just a ride". To be honest, the song didn't really catch my attention - the TV volume was turned down substantially because I trying to follow the interviews in O&B - but the looks and image of Jem certainly caught my eye.

Unfortunately I can't find any good photographs online that catch the exact look of her in the clip, otherwise I'd post it here to show her hotness. The next song was by Anouk and even though I've got no clue as to what song it was, Anouk is always kinda hot with all her tattoos. Tattooed people rock ;)

Anyway, what was it I wanted to write? Ah, yes... I remember. What is "kinky" for you? How do you define it? I think it is very different for everyone and it probably even changes over time, but if you had to define it at right this moment, what would you answer? Secondly, has your kinkyness evolved over time? Because it seems that according to some people kinkyness is not only pushing your boundaries, but also going further each over time. I agree to a certain extend : when kinky becomes normal, it ain't kinky anymore, right?

Now, some people still have weird reactions I think. Let's take Elke Van Elderen (of "Ciao Bella" fame...) for instance. As the woman next to her said "I'm sort of single right now and I like flirting, with men as well as women", Elke kinda squeeked and moved over a little.

Even it was done jokingly, it shows little understanding of human nature if you ask me. If you as a man or woman meet someone of the different sexe, do you instanty assume they are going to jump you, ravish you, sex you up? Right, that's what I thought. You sicko's, you wish! ;)

Anyway, if you don't assume that with them, why would you think so when someone of the same sex says they're into same sex relationships? Is it because one doesn't expect it? Is it because you suddenly feel a possibility they are attracted to you? Do you feel your personal space is invaded? Help me understand, if you can. But I digress... we were talking kinky, right?

Is spanking kinky? Are strawberries kinky? Are handcuffs kinky? Is having sex in a public space kinky, or doing it when you know someone can watch? Is a photoshoot kinky? Are tattoos or piercings kinky? Are sextoys kinky? Are men in tight shorts kinky? Are women athletes kinky? I all of those can be kinky, but not all of them are kinky for me, nor are they possibly all kinky to you. It may even depend on your mood, but much depends on your peers and the society you grow up and live in.

When kinky becomes normal to you, it may not remain special, though others can still perceive it as perverse or "insane". I think that people who are open to new things are less judgemental.

Comments welcome (as always and if you feel like posting anonymously, you can do so).

Someone said he would be keeping it to play with this thing while doing shrooms, but as I don't do any kind of drugs, I toyed with it while being totally 'there' :

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~macopism/noct/data/

(I think it's called Macopism Interactive Vol.3, but I ain't sure)

Starting right this second on Een as I write this post. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (of Buffy fame). Catch it if you can.

Note : avoid Cruel Intentions 2, the sequel totally sucks.

Other short tidbits : MT3.2 is released. I'll be upgrading to it somewhere next week. A new version of FileZilla was released as well. Skype got an update too.

Just got back from getting some food, the stockmarket is about to close (will be by the time I finish writing this entry) so I'm off to do some powertraining. When I weighed in this morning, the scale showed 102.6, so this is the second time I go below 103. I'm definitely getting there, though it takes more time now.

Tomorrow I'm back off to work, and I hope to get my schedule for next month as well. If I'm free the weekend of September 3rd&4th, I may head over to Amsterdam for an End of Summer IAM/BME meeting/party. That will depend on work, financial situation and whether or not I feel up to it though.

My tattoo appointement is still on for September though moved back a day (to September 20th) due to a guest artist flying in on the 19th and he needs to be picked up at the airport. Doesn't really matter to me, this way I'll have an extra day to relax before going in. Or an extra day to get stressed, grin.

I'll probably spend the 19th in the sauna, because I won't be able to go for a while after being inked. Off to push some weights now.

Update : I'm back. Did about 10 minutes of powertraining and then hopped on my bike - had to inflate the tires first though - and had a ride of about 25 minutes. First ten minutes I pushed on the pedals as hard as I could, reaching a very nice speed (and almost crashed into a car that didn't mind where it was going), then I kicked back to a more relaxing speed that took me through the woods before I got back home. Sweaty as hell now, so off to shower.

21 Things I want in a Lover (Alanis Morissette)

Do you derive joy when someone else succeeds?
Do you not play dirty when engaged in competition?
Do you have a big intellectual capacity even know that it alone does not equate wisdom?
Do you see everything as an illusion?
But enjoy it even though you are not of it?
Are you both masculine and feminine?
Politically aware?
And don't believe in capital punishment?

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer

Do you derive joy from diving in and seeing tha tloving somone can actually feel like freedom?
Are you funny? A la-self-depriciating?
Like adventure? And have many formed opinions?

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
I figure that I can describe it since I have a choice in the matter
These are 21 things I choose to choose in a lover

I'm in no hurry, I could wait forever
I'm in no rush cuz I like being solo
There are no worries and certainly no pressure
In the meantime I live like there's no tomorrow

Are you uninhibited in bed?
More than three times a week?
Up for being experimental? Are you athletic?
Are you thriving in a job that helps your brother?
Are you not addicted?

One day I may write my own "21 things", and I hope when I do so, others will do the same.

What should I do with "all" this spare time I've got? I got home this morning and slept for a few hours, and I don't have to go back to work till saturday afternoon. On monday my new matress will be delivered somewhere in the afternoon, so monday I know what to do.

Tomorrow I'll be off to EHA to drop off some advertising pamphlets that got stuffed in my snail mail box regardless of my request not to do so. I knew there was someone who you could turn to in that case, so I gave them a call today and it turns out they reside in EHA. I had been wanting to check the building out anyway, so this is a good opportunity I'd say.

Before I leave for work, I want to give you my choice in music for tonight :

Bodycount - Bodycount
Ice-T - Home Invasion
Destiny's Child - The writing's on the wall
Vanessa Mae - The Violin Player
Björk - Debut
Front 242 - Pulse
Front 242 - Mut@ge & Mix@ge
Yasmine - Pret a porter

My computer clock tells me it's monday. It still feels like tuesday - I'm a wreck and had way too little sleep. The 11 hour shift that didn't feel too bad this morning when it ended at nine, is now coming back to haunt me it seems. Arrrgh.

What else is new? I just got a message from Marisa (all-round hipster and sweety, blogging at needled.com) that Dan has been working hard on a first rough sketch of my new ink. I can't wait to lay eyes on it! It should only be a couple of more days before I get to see and comment on it. In the mean time, I'll be reading up on some Phillipine tattoo history and designs of the Tatak Ng Apat Na Alon Tribe (Mark of the Four Waves). Link thanks to Marisa of course.

I found the Atanarjuat DVD in my mailbox this morning as I got home. Will probably be watching it on wednesday. That's all the news I have for now.

Home. Bed. Sleep. Tired. Hopefully home earlier tomorrow. Zzzzz.

Update 18:04 : I have no real clue what day it is, but it feels like a tuesday. Below some entries I wrote yesterday night :

Playlist for tonight's shift :

Scala on the Rocks : Dream On (Limited edition with 5 track Bonus CD)
Madonna - Music
Missy Elliott - So Addictive

Two more nights to go, which is a good thing. I like nightshifts as they tend to be much calmer compared to early/late shifts and I can certainly appreciate that during shut-downs. It is still work yet it allows one to relax a bit. With relaxing I don't mean "feet up and party" but rather "enough time to get all tasks accomplished without being disturbed every 5 seconds for something new that's "urgent"", 8 hours in a row.

When track 16 (4 my people - basement jaxx remix) was done blasting through the speakers, I thought we had reached the end of the Missy Elliott CD. Imagine my suprise when after a couple of seconds (I was on the phone) it suddenly jumped to track 29 and out came a slow R&B track lasting 1 minute 44 seconds where she asks not to judge her on her music, yadda yadda. I'm not all that much a fan of religious blah blah. Track 30 contained another song : close to 5 minutes of Missy praising her love for the Lord, slow R&B style. Not my cup of tea, but hey... ain't it strange to own a CD for over a year (maybe even longer) and suddenly discover two new songs?

Off to get some food now!

I just got out of bed and will go shopping for food in about 20 minutes. The fridge is pretty much empty and thus needs restocking. Last night I got some bread (frans brood) and made hotdogs and regretted it a couple of hours later. I felt so bloated!

Had tons of fruits with me to eat during the night, so that helped quite a bit. Will get more fruit and veggies today - it sucks feeling bloated while working nightshifts.

Tomorrow I'm playing a competition match in my hattrick league that I hope to win, but a draw would be awsome already. I'm playing the team in 5th position while I'm positioned last, and I've got some players injured. Hopefully they'll be recovered enough to play, if not, they should be next week. Last week I had a draw (4-4) against the number 4 in the league so I know it's possible, and I've trained well and bought some new defensive players in the mean time. My budget is wrecked but all these new young players should pay off in the (near) future.

Went to bed quite late last night, in preparation for graveyard shift starting tonight. Had a lovely time yesterday evening (BBQ at Jess & Mark's place) and this weekend I'll be cat-sitting Tigra, Astra and Simba. It ain't that much work, just giving them some food and make sure they're around and fine. It's only for a day or so since J&M will be back home on sunday afternoon.

I just paid a shitload of bills (worth €658.06) which means I'll have to watch my expenses for the rest of the month, but it also means all bills are currently paid. I like paying bills when they come in and when finances allow it. Less chance to run into nasty suprises later on.

Yesterday I made a business proposition to someone but they didn't accept. Too bad because I think we both would have benefitted from it. I found another business deal that I'm very interested in, but I lack the money right now to go through with it. If anyone has 5000 euro to spare, talk to me! It's a real estate deal in a country with a warm climate, and I know the people involved personally.

I really need to find a way to make (more) money, as just working for it every day doesn't really add up in the end. The low profile investments made so far are nice but far away from making me rich. They're more of safeguard investments, which is good and smart - but they don't really allow me to move ahead.

Oh, if you happen to have a hard time reaching FK, or commenting times out, it seems the MySQL databases on several servers at my host are shitting themselves, but HM staff is aware and working hard on resolving the issues. Shouldn't be too long before everything's peachy again.

Yesterday was an interesting day at work. I usually spend about 99% of my time inside the control room where I have no windows, no natural light and no fresh air, so when I was scheduled for outside duty I was pretty pleased with it. A full day on a bike, out in the sun, lovely weather, I was looking forward to it. When I arrived at work, I spent the first hour or so working inside the main building, then I moved to assist one of the colleagues who was checking incoming traffic.

Around 08h30 I was called on the walkie talkie and had to call the control room who then asked me to start working in the hot (nuclear) zone. Which is inside. With no windows nor sunlight. Ah well... such is life I suppose.

I worked in the hot zone till 12h00 then had troubles getting back out because of a minor contamination problem wich was taken care of, after I could go have something to eat and drink. Went back in at 13h00 and worked inside till 16h30. My shift was supposed to end at 16h00 but as being replaced by a colleague is far from easy when inside a hot zone, I called my supervisor and discussed the problem with him, and we agreed that it would make more sense for me to remain inside. Then I had to find a way to lock a door from the outside, but the problem was that it is somewhere high upon the roof of one of our buildings.

I left the nuclear zone - no problem exiting this time - took the elevator to the top floor, then climbed some stairs and finally stepped outside (yay! Sunlight! Fresh air!) onto a different part of the roof. Up next was crossing various parts, climb ladders and stairs to ultimately arrive at the door that needed locking. I called my colleague over the walkie talkie to make sure this was the door we were looking for and proceeded to lock it. As I was walking and climbing roofs, I felt like Santa Claus - I only lacked the horse and the presents to throw down the chimneys.

Maybe next time :)

When I stepped on the scale this morning, I had to rub my eyes and look twice. I broke the barrier of 103! Because I wanted to be sure, I stepped off and back on, but even after 3 tries, it still gave me a figure below a 103. The fact that I didn't eat anything last night probably has something to do with it, even though that wasn't on purpose. I got home after a slightly longer shift than expected (we were having some trouble with a fire alarm, and it took some time to do extra checks and make sure nothing was actually wrong before I was able to leave) and took a long hot bath.

When I got out, it was 20h30 and I felt sleepy so I skipped my evening meal and went straight to bed. I had eaten quite well and healthy around twelve, so I was far from starving anyway.

Radish : 2 bundles
Grapes (white) : 2 kilo
Nectarine : 1 kilo
Grapefruits (red) : 4
Pineapples : 2
Bananas : 5
Apples : 1 kilo
Paprika (red) : 3
Paprika (green) : 3
Gallia Mellons : 6

Total price : €22.69

Which really ain't bad for the amount of great quality food I've got. Just one problem : I can't get it all in my fridge.I'll probably have one pineapple tonight, combined with a salad of gallia mellon, apple and - crap, now I notice that I forgot to order kiwi! - banana and some nectarines.

Tomorrow morning and noon I'll have a yummy paprika and radishes dish with some fish (sardines) and bread. In the evening more fruits. Tuesday, the rest of the fruit will be used and then on tuesday afternoon it's back to the store for more food.

that I don't have to work. This is day number 4 and tomorrow work calls again. Ah well, I've had good times so far and in september I've got a full week of leave coming up!

Yesterdays IAM/BME Summer BBQ 2005 event was loads of fun, as the weather really cooperated up til 8 o' clock or so when the the first raindrops started coming down. We had tons of fun, even though there were only a few people present but it's not the amount that counts, it's the quality (where have I heard that before?).

Iori and Ewa were superb hosts and it was great catching up again with Elise, George, Ingrid (who did make it after all) and in the evening Patrick and Martine arrived too. I finally left around 22h30 which aint bad for just a BBQ that started at 14h00 :)

Off to go get some food now - healthy food, I had way to much meat and things like that yesterday - and then at exactly 11.11 Joco will pick me up to go fishing. He'll fish, I'll just be around enjoying myself :) It's not that I don't like fishing, but it doesn't really matter if I catch something or just spend all day looking at the line. I do things like that to be out and have fun with friends.

Land of the Dead wasn't bad, but can be summed up in just a couple of words : "lots of zombies and lots of fighting". A true no-brainer, but entertaining nonetheless.

As I wrote before, I have been looking at web-advertising and more specifically micro-ads over the past few days. Since I'm bored out of my skull right now, I'll just install an adserver and see how hard it is to just run my own. If it works, good, then I might keep it and possibly one day open it up for others as well. If it doesn't work, I'll have learned new things and had fun for a couple of hours.

Note : I should have been asleep about an hour ago, but this adserver thing is totally cool! I think I've only grasped 25% of all the possibilities so far, and it has tons of things I don't intend to use anyway, but man... it's fun!

Screwed. I just closed my browser tab while typing out a long entry. Gone.

Anyway, which movie would you go to see, just going by the trailer?

Antanarjuat trailer (Quicktime format - 12.7MB)
Land of the Dead (Quicktime format - size unknown)

Land of the Dead is pure mindless entertainment if you ask me, which is good if you want to just sit, shut off your brain and enjoy the creepiness and special horror effects. Antanarjuat may be a little more challenging mentally and has magnificent views and landscapes.

Update : my problem is solved. They only play Antanarjuat on monday the 15th at 20h00, which is almost impossible for me, as I'll be working early shifts. So I ordered the DVD instead and will go see Land of the Dead tonight.

While I was ordering Antanarjuat, my eye caught the Bottom DVD box, containing series 1 to 3. Needless to say, I preordered it! I'm not just about landscape movies...

I just spent a couple of hours looking and evaluating various small (and unintrusive) text ads options to implement on this blog. Everyone knows about AdSense/AdWords by Google, but I wanted something else.

After much searching and pondering, I've decided to apply for the LinkWorth advertising program. If you see small ads appear here over the next days (weeks?) don't panic : it's all part of my greater scheme to take over the world ;)

If you're running a website/blog yourself and think micro-ads are interesting, get in touch with me. I'd love to get feedback on what you (already) use, what you're looking for, and what can be expected.

In a recent trial, an alleged speeder was acquitted and awarded AU$3,300 when the Roads and Traffic Authority couldn't prove that the evidence produced by a traffic camera was untampered with. The problem lies in the use of the MD5 encryption algorithm to store the time, date, speed, place and licenseplate of the offending vehicule caught on camera.

Chinese scientists had produced proof that it is perfectly possible to alter the protected data - for instance increase the speed - and still end up with the exact same MD5 key. Thus, having an MD5 key doesn't prove the data itself is authentic, nor that it hasn't been tampered with.

Security and encryption is good, but it can (and will) be used against you if you don't keep up to date and rely on it never being broken.

More about this story on news.com.au and smh.com.au (requires registration).

I managed to catch up on replying to some mails, next thing to do is find out why suddenly my firewall is causing excessive drwatson activity. And with "excessive" I mean 8.5 gigabyte of logfile in under a couple of hours. In fact, drwatson stopped logging errors when the disk filled up totally. I'd like to blame yesterday's MS patches, and I really suspect they have something to do with the firewall crashing now, but I'm not yet certain. Will investigate more tomorrow morning.

Off to bed now.

You know how I always make fun of people that manage to let their domain name expire? Well, today the joke is certainly on me! I managed to let friedkitten.com expire because I was under the impression that it would be up for renewal before september, but the difference in date notation between the US and Europe caught me off guard. 08/09/2005 ain't september 8th apparently, but rather august 9th 2005 and when I logged on this morning, FK was gone.

Why can't everyone just use the international date format of yyyy/mm/dd instead? That would be so much easier! Anyway, nothing really bad happened this time and FK is still firmly in my hands so it should reappear soon enough. Always remember that if something seems incorrect with the main friedkitten.com domain, try pointing your browser to www.friedkitten.be as an alternative. If they both are down, contact me, because then something really is wrong.

Ah, another lesson learned I suppose. Off to work in a few minutes because I have to start early today. Then I've got a full 4 days off - because I took up some leave - before early shifts call again.

It seems I wasn't the only one with the uglyfuck.be idea : or so this post at Da Holy Homeboys suggests.

Better luck next time, homies ;)

Remember my post about the accident I was almost involved in a couple of weeks ago? Well, the local cops just showed up at my door to take my statement about it (I had left my name and address because I had to get to work). Luckily, I wrote down exactly what happened the same evening and sent a copy of the mail to my home mail address. So, when the cop sat down and wanted to take my statement I said "wait a second, I wrote a little statement of what happenend that day about an hour after the accident. Let me see if I can find it".

Went to my desk, opened my mailbox, searched for it, made a print and voila : statement completed. He was in and out in less than 10 minutes, of which 5 were filled with general chit chat about the fuzzies. Somehow every time someone comes in, they are interested in my carpetsharks... well, they're mighty cute so that may be the reason :)

Last early shift today, which is a relief. I crashed yesterday and even +8 hours sleep last night hasn't really make me feel better. The headaches returned but I should be fine in a day or two. It seems the lack of sleep hits me harder each passing week. Off to shave, shower and leave for work.

Here I am, blogging from my terrace. I'm sitting on my ass, on the floor and trying to get the attention of Bono, one of my carpetsharks that just woke up and realized his cage was open. Lol, right now he's using his paws to clean his face, while he rolls around in the dust that gathered in the corner of my balcony. He still hasn't noticed me, although... yes, he just realized he can walk further than the half meter he had explored so far.

It's not that the balcony is unknown territory for them, they just dont come out and play here all that often. One of the reasons being the weather sucking most of the time (it's either too cold, too hot or too wet here in Belgium), and the fact that after the winter I have to clean the place up before they can run out and play. Let me tell you, fuzzbutts have a radar for finding dust, sand and general dirtyness. Dirt and albino fuzzies don't mix too well. Max on the other hand ain't an albino, so if he's dirty, I just won't notice it as quickly :p

Today's early shift was manageable and I had lots of fun and laughs during it. I was a bit suprised when I found out I had to stay one more hour to check and close up another site of ours, but in hindsight it wasn't so bad. The time passed quickly and I could have known about it upfront : after all it was noted on my schedule, I just didn't see it when I took notes of when I have to work this month.

Off to do some websurfing now, and look at people passing down below.

(Max just woke up and came outside as well, so now I gotta be on the lookout for him trying to empty the large flowerbed outside. It doesn't have any flowers in it, but it's filled to the brim with sand!)

I'm wondering how much sense of humor the marketing boys of a leading telco here in Belgium have. They just launched a new product line for mobile connectivity : If they have none, I estimate I'll receive a take-down notice in my mailbox before the end of next week.

Alternatively, they may just not care about my little parody, or even know about it.

Anyway... if people are negligent enough to type the wrong URL in their browser, well, that's not my fault, is it? It's not as if I'm hosting adult content there, so they better be glad :)

The last three (or was it four?) days at work just sucked : too much work, too much things to get a grip on and deal with while still paying close attention to everything else that goes on. Not easy. When working with people that just do as they see fit it stops being hard and becomes virtually impossible. Enough whining about that for now. I'm starting an early shift tomorrow and using today to recharge my batteries, sort of.

Nothing else to report I think. When I weighed myself this morning, the scale stopped at 103.4 and it seems I just can't break the magic barrier of 103. However, I am convinced that one of the next days it'll give way, then I'll hoover around that limit for a couple of weeks, before setting a new goal for 100 kilo. When I reach that goal, I'll have lost about 10% of my weight.

I'm not striving for a specific weight - even though it may seem so - but just don't mind losing weight. I pay more attention to my food, when and how (and how much) I eat but without pressure. And to know that all of it just started when I tried that "conscience diet" in preparation of my first suspension.

I feel great, less bloated and I eat healthier (and less) as well.

"Good".

I've been talking about security and encryption quite a lot over the past couple of weeks, and I know not too many people are actually interested in those things, but allow me to give you two very real world examples as why it could be important to you as well.

The first article and tool I'd like to link to is the Car Whisperer project by a group called trifinite. They manage to inject audio into a car using a directional antenna and a laptop running linux. How do they do it? They use the fact that most car or handsfree bluetooth set manufacturers use "standard" codes such as "0000" or "1234". Once the pairing with the device is done - without the person carrying the bluetooth appliance noticing anything, the Car Whisperer tools allows audio to be sent through the speakers, but eavesdropping is possible as well. They just turn on the microphone and can hear anything that's being said in the car driving by! How does this affect you, you may ask? Do you own a mobile phone, a bluetooth headset or a car equipped with it? Stop reading this post, step out and verify what pincode is required to access those devices. Change it to something less standard. Turn off bluetooth if you don't use or need it.

The second article deals with hotel TV systems broadcasting data in the open and unsecured over infrared. While most people won't notice or consider that a risk at all - you can't see it, so it ain't there, right? - the technical director of The Bunker, Adam Laurie, demonstrated the exploits last week to Wired. He was able to access pay-content for free (free porn!!), but was also able to see the bills of other people, even read mails that were sent using the system and finally got into the back-end system as well.

I think these examples are proof that no matter how trivial some technologies seem, unless they are developed, installed and set up correctly with security in mind, they can and will be (ab)used. It's not because something hasn't happened yet the systems are secure. In fact, your system may have been penetrated and abused for quite a long time, you just don't know yet.

Someone asked me when I was gonna blog from bed, but I don't remember who it was. Anyway, I am in bed right now, after a very long and stressy late shift at work. If I thought yesterday was bad, today was even worse. Some (hopefully temporary) measures went into effect to deal with recent developments and while those are not that difficult to adhere to, they do wreck havoc on the normal (if such a thing even exists) day to day way things are done.

Especially if person A demands we assign someone to a specific task, while person B gives specific orders to carry out another task. Sure enough, we've got etra manpower present during shut-downs, but if they are all tied down, that leaves us with nothing to spare and extra tasks to be completed. Add to that a shitload of clueless people arriving after hours that need loads and loads of things to be taken care of, you get situations such as today : my teamleader was supposed to come up and relieve me of my job for 30 to 60 minutes, so I could take a peek outside, smell the air and possibly even see the sun, but that didn't happen. Yesterday he was able to come up for exactly 5 minutes, so I didn't even get the chance to get off my chair.

Today it was so busy he couldn't come up, nor did he have time to eat. I munched down on my bread quickly inbetween calls and the phones just kept ringing pretty much non-stop. When I finally left at 22:15 - after verifying a fire alarm that had popped up even though my shift ended at 22:00 - he was still working on a report of a little accident that happenend. While no one was injured in the accident, it did take out our intervention vehicle, which will certainly complicate things for the rest of the week, if not longer.

Only 2 more to go, then I'll be home for a period of 1 day(s) - do you see the sarcasm just dripping off? - before I start 3 early shifts, 1 late shift, followed by an 11 hour shift (10:00 till 21:00). If that 11 hour day is anything like today, they'll have to put me in a straightjacket and put me away for sure.

This may be the last boring technical post for a while, although I can't promise ;)

Just updated the RaLink RT2500 Wireless LAN card in my laptop with newer drivers, which added WPA2 to them. As the router also supports WPA2, I moved to a WPA2-AES encrypted wireless connection. Joco, if you read this, I suggest you do the same, otherwise you won't be able to connect to my network if you come over with the laptop! The easiest way to update the drivers is to let windows search for them online, and that should work like a breeze and update them from 2.2.6.0 (10/06/04) to 3.0.3.0 (21/04/05). I noticed there are even more recent drivers online at the RaLink website, but as I wasn't too sure if those were the correct ones, I'll go with the 3.0.3.0 version I've got now.

The fuzzies just love the extra playtime they've got now, and each night as I'm working on the laptop, Max tries hopping on chair and come give me kisses. So sweet!

The weather is quite wonderful today, though I probably won't see too much of it as I'm inside our control room in 3 hours, for the next 8 hours or so. Work is hectic right now with the first days of a long shut-down passing and loads of people that have no clue about anything running around on the plant. We have to be very focussed every minute and every second and when it's real busy, that wears you out rather quickly. Ah well, in a week I'll be used to it I suppose and dread the day the shut-down is over and everything returns to a slower pace again - for a week or two that is, before the next entity goes down for maintenance.

One advantage of all this is that it'll be september before I know it! I've got a full 7 days off from work then, and a tattoo appointement with Dan & Marisa for new ink and chats. Joy!

Believe it or not, this is the first ever entry made on this blog using my own secured wireless network. It took me a while to get the client and the router to play along and use the same WPA key, but in the end I got it all correct. This neighborhood has just gotten a new secured wireless network.

Because I am (just a little) bit paranoid, I've decided not only to implement WPA-PSK with a TKIP encryption, but I've turned on MAC address filtering as well. This should create an extra hoop to jump through in case someone manages to get inside the network in the first place. The default network name has of course been changed, and a strong password has been set up for administration of the router.

I've got an excellent connection in the apartment, so I should be able to use this thing anywhere I want. I'll try blogging from my terrace next time - probably on friday, providing the weather is fine - this post was brought to you from my bedroom.

Now I really have to run and get ready for work!

Mighty expensive one, that's for sure but as of this second - until the next reboot proves me wrong of course - I'm back online with my main box as well. I went to the store to grab a Thompson Ethernet modem, and the cheapest I could get was one in an Skynet ADSL installation pack. €39,- is not that much, considering it has two ADSL splitters included as well and those are sold seperately for nine euro a piece if I recall correctly. That way I'll have spares in case something happens to the ones I've got now.

Anyway, next thing up the list is getting the modem to talk to the Linksys router, so I can stop borrowing wireless access from a neighbor. It's getting rather urgent since most people are back off to work and I've only got 2 unsecured wireless networks in the neighborhood now so it seems. If those drop off before I can get everything set up, I'm screwed again :)

Shouldn't forget to leave for work in time!