Sep 122007
 

That’s not good, now is it? The powerbounce just a couple of minutes ago and the several reboots for some reason broke the fan of the powersupply, which is getting quite hot now. Solved one problem, now I have another one. Like a broken central-heating boiler isn’t enough?

 Posted by at 00:20
Sep 122007
 

For some reason, my desktop bounced. I have a faulty drive in my system that has a VFAT on it that seems to been unclean or something. Leftover from the Great Windows Era. It’s okay, I don’t need it anyway. I can mount it though, so it’s in the fstab.
The system didn’t come up, because of the faulty filesystem. That happens sometimes, so I reboot again. It could not be autocorrected obviously. So, I rebooted again, now in recovery mode. Recoverymode does not check the root filesystem only, no, it checks ALL filesystems. So I can’t boot in recovery mode. How smart is that? It’s the brain fart of a moron, that’s what it is. Must be some Windows loser that thought Linux is just another OS. Unix does not need ALL filesystems to be okay. I will do that by hand. Unix people are capable of that. Fucking morons. The point of having several filesystems instead of one is for recovery purposes.

Now I need to find a bootable CD, mount the root filesystem, edit the fstab and reboot. This is just plain stupid.

 Posted by at 00:05
Sep 112007
 

9/11 is a memorable day. We all remember the stories about people trying to get away via the stairways. The Scala team released version 2.6.0 final of the Scala-language today. Scala means steps / stairs. Let’s hope we can think of good things from now on when we talk about 9/11.

 Posted by at 22:55
Sep 082007
 

Since the second half of July I’m confined to being at home. I already had backpains for quite some time, but that day it was worse than ever and I decided to stay at home. Not long after that, the physio-therapist, my GP and the neurologist at the hospital confirmed what I feared: a hernia. That means that the soft disc between two vertebrea has moved out of place and is pressing against one or more nerves.

In the past a hernia was mostly immediately treated with a surgery: remove the disc and if necessary lock the enclosing vertebrea in place (with rods and screws). This is no longer the case. The doctors want you to rest, to do certain exercises and to mind your posture (sit straight, walk straight, lift things with a straight back, and absolutely no bending). For me that already means about 6 weeks of being at home. Doing the exercises, doing the occassional walk outside (when the weather allows me to do so), doing naps a couple of times a day.

I wear contacts. Doing a nap several times a time would mean taking the things out and putting them in solution. Take a nap. Wake up. Put the lenses back in. It’s okay if you do that once a day, but several times a day is a pain. Not in the back fortunately, but very close to it 😉 So since being at home, I wear my glasses. That’s okay, but it has some disadvantages. Try peeling an onion. Or looking from the corner of your eye. Walking in the rain. Taking some food out of the steaming-oven.

Today I picked up a new set of lenses. It took about 5 seconds to adjust, but man….this is a big improvement. Being at home suddenly feels just a little less like a punishment. I know, it’s just a simple thing. But now you try to be in your home for about 6 weeks. You can’t sit very long. You can’t sleep all day (muscles need exercises). Exercising is limited to what you are allowed to do. Not too much! Just what seems like a little improvement is a big improvement to me.

I don’t know if it was my state of mind or something physical, but today was a reasonably good day. Not too much pain. No painkillers needed. Let’s hope things will stay this way.

 Posted by at 00:37
Sep 062007
 

I had trouble with my forums (phpBB) because I could not stop spammers from registering and….commenting in an unappropriate way. Finally I found a mod that gives you an admin-option to disable registration. The skin I use still shows the “Register” link, but it will tell people that registration has been disabled.
If you want an account, send me an e-mail with a good reason. Thank you.

 Posted by at 00:31