Holiday Season, Special Season

I got this text last year around this time of year, from Pedro I think, and it brought a large smile on my face. I just received it by Y!M, so here it is:

One beautiful December evening Huan Cho and his girlfriend Jung Lee was sitting by the side of the ocean.
It was a romantic full moon, when Huan Cho said:
“Hey baby, how about playing Weeweechu?”
“Oh no, not now, lets look at the moon” said Jung Lee.
“Oh, c’mon baby, let’s you and I play Weeweechu. I love you and it’s the perfect time,” Huan Cho begged.
“But I rather just hold your hand and watch the moon.”
“Please Jung Lee, just once play Weeweechu with me.”
Jung Lee looked at Huan Chi and said, “OK, we’ll play Weeweechu.”….
Huan Cho grabbed his guitar and both sang….
“Weeweechu a melly Chlistmas,
Weeweechu a melly Chlistmas,
Weeweechu a melly Chlistmas,
and a happy New Year.”
(And all those with dirty minds – shame on you)

Indeed it is a special day today, it’s Mirela’s birth day, and Johnny’s Birthday. Mirela is my girlfriend if you didn’t figure that out yet, and Johnny is a good friend whom I am going to call in a few minutes. So Happy Birthday to both of you my friends.

Santa came early for me, and last night I got some nice gifts from people I love, and who won’t be in town for Christmas or my birthday, so thank you Catalin & Codruta. 🙂

Lorand Minyo, tagged me, and I have to write the best 5 moments this year brought… Here it goes:

  • Let me start with this article I wrote for WIF which got us on the front page of Digg and almost blew out some fuses of our hosting server: http://wirelessisfun.com/2007/02/20/dell-powered-by-linux/
  • Becoming a BEST Alumnus member was a moment filled up with emotion and pride.
  • I visited the Netherlands, and that was a highlight of the year, meeting new people, seeing a new culture. (pics)
  • During my visit in The Netherlands, I got some great news from home, Ovidiu and Simona will get married next summer 🙂
  • And last but not least, taking part at a job fair here in Cluj, provided me with extra reasons to be happy this Christmas. 😉

That being said, I’ll tag next the Trolls, Dobrestii and Groparu, and of course whoever else wants to take it.

PS: Talking about Groparu, I have some nice pictures with him, and some flowers he received on a date… *evil*

Windows based hosting vs Linux based hosting

Lately, Microsoft entered the hosting business with full throttle. The number of Windows servers available on the web for hosting purposes, VPS’s on Microsoft Windows 2003 or DDS’s on MSVS grows quite exponentially.

At this point the end user, the customer does not care much what platform he is hosted on (i.e. Linux or Windows) if he has a simple website, maybe a forum, a blog or something like that because technologies are intertwined: you can get an apache webserver both on windows and linux, and you can get ASP support on Linux. Maybe if he needs some VB applications to run he will definitely need windows based hosting, but that’s about it. He gets FTP to upload files, a control panel (i.e. SWSoft’s Plesk) to manage domains, mail addresses, databases, name servers etc. The main problem here is scalability. Thinking in the future, you need to decide if you are going to expand, and in which direction because you can easily switch from Linux to Windows, but the reverse is not that simple. I would suggest Linux of course, being much more secure, robust and efficient.

Today I had to delete 1 folder on a windows VPS. How much do you think that took? whatever you said, the answer is no! Let’s see:

  • remote desktop to the VPS – 15 seconds
  • locating the folder in question – another 10 – 15 seconds.
  • trying the delete button, checking permissions 1 minute
  • googling for something as trivial as “how to delete a directory with a space in its name” and finding the right solution: 15 minutes. (this is an extreme drawback… Windows problems, are often not well documented)

Add to that stopping the VPS from virtuozzo (vzctl stop VEID), mounting it on the VPS Node (vzctl mount VEID) and going to the mount point ( c:\vz\private\VEID\root\Inetpub\FtpUpload ) and then unmounting (vzctl umount VEID) and restarting the VPS (vzctl start VEID) nand you’ve got yourself a good 25 minutes spent on removing 1 folder:

C:\Inetpub\FtpUpload\ \ÿta18594-ÿ\ÿ-;; &20 @tagged .by; quit %f;;…-ÿ\ÿÿ-ÿÿ\ÿÿ–ÿ\ÿ-;% scanned by %d.-ÿ\ÿÿ-ÿ

My advice? stick to Linux. Why? because Linux is well documented, it has a great community behind, mature, and many many more qualities can go here.

Blogger’s desk 2.0

birou_simpliq.jpg

Manafu opened a blog a few months ago, where bloggers would post pictures with their desks. Of course I had my desk from home placed there, but I seldom use that desk anymore, and it was time to post a picture with the place I blog from. It’s my desk at SimpliQ Media & Technology, the company I work for.

What do you think about it? Explanations of the pic on my Flickr photo stream here.

PS: Photo was taken with a blackberry not quite in excellent conditions. My camera batteries went dead when I tried to start it. I really need to remember to load those.

Civic duty

Today the hole digger / grave digger / undertaker or simply in Romanian Groparu (Happy Birthday by the way) showed me a picture made in Germany, with a specific purpose, which is I believe: “come on people, use public transportation, or a green transportation mean… like a bicycle perhaps.” The idea is good, concept is great and realization is probably better at first hand, but I think you will understand what I mean:

Click for fullsize view

Click for Full Size

A while ago I wrote about Urinelle, a device specially designed for women, to help them pee while standing. Today, reading my RSS feeds I stumbled upon Dragos Novac‘s version of Urinelle. It’s called ‘She Pee‘ and it’s pretty similar to the former. Instructions below.

shepeeinstructions400.jpg

And yes, it’s about Civic duty also, because It was erected by charity WaterAid to raise awareness about their mission “to overcome poverty by enabling the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education”.

Rammstein… Links!

Every morning, after I get some coffee, I just sit with Carmen 2 and try to get a hold of what’s been happening the last few hours I’ve been sleeping. Today is not about Rammstein, it’s about links. Things I’ve read, things I thought were interesting, just stuff.

First of all, I have no clue why I’m writing in English today, considering most of the links will be in Romanian, but hee I go:

 

  • Licurici wrote about the Rohia Monastery, a story that got my attention after the first few words, because it had something about it, “quelque chose du cachet” if you remember the French phrase. But here it is: Povestea manastirii Rohia. Liku, you really need to add a search option on your blog.
  • Sergiu Biris, from Trilulilu told us about the problems Trilulilu is facing, and I decided we are all going to support him. RIGHT?! Here is the story, again in Romanian: Ba da, inteleg (Congrats on the Internetics award!!!)
  • Via Groparu we learn about a young Italian man who thought that if Romanians can steal in Italy, he can steal in Romania: Cetăţean italian prins la furat

Now that’s about it, things I thought were interesting. I think that most of you read already about Ion Iliescu and his new blog. Well, he is also available on Twitter now: http://www.twitter.com/ioniliescu Talking about Web 2.0 and how to gain some more votes… *schmuck*

PS: The wonderful Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 BETA is refusing to let me set my own status… 🙁 And the avatar is not working either… Come on Yahoo! team, throw a new release at me!

ym_status.jpg

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

BSG LogoI followed the series, I enjoyed the series, and I was waiting for the 4th season with my fingers crossed. Long time until April, but they surprised me pleasantly when Razor got out. Many people I spoke with did not like it, the way the camera moved, the dialogues, the fact that the story was dragging in the last season, but except the former, I think everything is part of the BSG charm. Cursing with “frak/frack“, or all those reports, notebooks, pictures or whatever piece of paper in the movie with the severed corners, making it “unique”.

Razor covers two time lines, the present, where Lee Adama becomes the Pegasus “Actual” and the adventures of Battlestar Pegasus in the 10 months between the attack on the colonies and the rendezvous with Battlestar Galactica through flashbacks, but I’m not going to spoil it here… I’ll let you decide for yourselves.

I don’t do movie reviews usually, but then again, this is not a movie… this is starting to become a saga, and deserves a special place in my “favorites list” right near Star Trek, Stargate and some others. Anyhow, this opened up my appetite for movie/series reviews, so I’m adding two new categories to my cloud: Movies & Tv.

Honey, beep me if you love me!

Continuing the recent started tradition, I’ll start the post with a joke. Of course all the women related jokes can get pretty boring, so I’d say a joke about IT guys would be appropriate today:

The IT department in a medium sized company, the geeks, decide to have a party over the weekend:
Geek1: So it’s settled guys, we’re going to have fuuuun!
Geek2: SUUURE! I’ll bring the music!
Chorus: grrreeeeeaaat!
Geek3: I’ll bring the drinks!
Chorus: grrreeeeeaaat!
UberGeek: I’ll bring the women!
Chorus: grrreeeeeaaat! how many can you get?
UberGeek: well… about 2 gigabytes

Having a cell phone is not such a big deal nowadays in Romania. Everyone has one. My parents, my grandparents, my underage cousin and so on. Prepaid, postpaid, shared minutes, flexible minutes, you name it, we have it! Calin Grigore, sent me today a link about cell phones and Africa. Apparently they discovered beeping! Beep me if you want me to pick you up, beep me if you’re thinking about me, beep me once for yes in reply to a text message or twice for no… just beep me. Carriers say that around 30% of the load on the network is because of this beeping. Do you do it? I certainly did! But things are getting tough on the beepers, and they are going to pay for beeping…

Read more about this here.

Trivia: In Australia(also known for US citizens as: “There be kangaroos”), beeping is known as “pranking”: Prank me if you want me to pick you up… and so on…

Websites: new, old, useful, funny etc.

Well, I believe we all have our habits on the web. And by habits, I mean things we do, tools we use, things we laugh at.

I spend most of my day online, due to my line of work and thus I use lots of sites and tools offered by these sites. Also, everyday I get spammed with lots of crap by mail or instant messenger, so I decided to compile a list of sites I visit. Because of the quantit, i decided to add a maximum of 10 links for each category.

And of course, now I got bored, and I’m leaving the list open… Do you want me to add some stuff here? post a comment.

Caldura mare

Am venit ieri cu auto-stopul pana la Cluj, si am dat peste doi tineri etno-manelisto something… Aveau o masina ciudata, nu as putea preciza marca, nu de alta dar era ceva japonezoid acolo(ceva subaru cred), de un vernil infricosator, umpluta de brizbrizuri, cu stelute fosforescente, zaruri de plus, picior de iepuras, deodorant care indeamna la scos capul pe geam si dat la rate, etc… Piesa de rezistenta, era o bandana cu Guns’n’roses prinsa cu ace de gamalie pe plafonul masinii. Erau “wannabe roakers” cred. Impreuna cu mine s-a urcat si un tip pe la 40-45 de ani, cu ochii injectati, ce tocmai iesise din birtul garii de vizavi… compania era asigurata!

In primele 5 minute am ascultat ceva techno dat la refuz pe niste boxe care scartaiau mai tare ca o bucata de creta combinata cu unghii lungi pe o tabla de-aia veche neagra de liceu. Nu a durat mult, si au schimbat CD’ul… prima piesa, ceva Florin Salam, Vali Vijelie sau alt individ de aceeasi coloratura, si am observat un ranjet formandu-se pe fata colegului meu auto-stopist. Nu a durat mult, ca au inceput sa sara piesele, si ranjetul s-a mutat pe fata mea. Dupa ce s-au saturat de dat next next next, si toate piesele sareau evident, au schimbat CD’ul, aceeasi poveste. Pana la urma, au scos un CD cu piese inregistrate inainte de lansarea 3 Sud Est si Andre, si ca sa vezi minune, asta chiar MERGEA! Asa ca pana la urma am ajuns cu un zgomot total aiurea in Cluj… Mi-a ramas pe retina o piesa, nu atat pentru linia melodica exceptionala, cat pentru versurile “destepte”: “Come into my room, I will think you’re Heidi Klumm…”, “We will turn out the light, and have god sex all night…”

Oare se suparau baieti daca le spuneam ca momentul in care au bagat cd’ul cu vechituri muzicale a coincis cu momentul in care s-au terminat gropile de pe drum, si probabil si cd’urile anterioare ar fi mers acum? Probabil ca nu, dar am preferat sa ascult vechiturile alea…

Caldura mare dom’le… mare.