Older blog entries for eskil (starting at number 72)

T-2

What can I say, I'm a bastard who hasn't updated his diary in almost a month. You'll endure it.

Well, Bjerregaard went home (lucky bastard), it was a good little visit and I'm still amazed of the amount of cd's he managed to buy. I think he survived SF, but must have missed Kbh - pretty early after he got home, I got an email sent around 8am, explaining how he just left louises (again ; lucky bastard). But in two days time, I can join in on the fun - yay!

What else has happened since then ; went barhopping in chinatown last saturday, that are some seedy bars in that area. So when you're sitting there sipping your crap beer, and this rather ugly but rather provocative dressed woman (I think) approaches you and asks if you're having a nice time or you'd like to have a nicer, what can you say, other then "no thanks, I'll stick to the beer - less health risk - but thanks...", lovely place.

I've been harassing the kids I live with into acknowledging that some cleaning action is needed to keep the den-o-filth inhabitable, it looks like it is helping. It is almost like at grønjordskollegiet, except in this case they're technically older.

My visa situation is still not good. My current visa/work permit expires 25/01, which leaves me with ca. 14 works days left (after vacation). So unless the H1B is approved while I'm in Denmark (and it starts snowing in Mountain View), I'll probably end up not working all of February. So you'll see me flipping burgers somewhere to make the rent, and running out the back door everytime the police drives by.

Oh ja, det mest utrolige er sket - trolden scorede en eller anden nørd der var på besøg fra den der landmasse med kænguruer og kaniner. Og så havde vi århundredets mest røvsyge firmajulefrokost (det her er nok den mest tamme december jeg har haft i mange år) - eneste redning var den flaske ålborg ildvand bjerregaard havde bragt mig. Enkelte personer sammenlignede det dog med vinduespuds oa., de ved ikke hvad der er godt for dem.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

Robey and I have begun the big libeazelinstall rewrite. It's progressing slowly but surely.

I have come to realise, that while the gtkobject model holds a lot of small niceties, that it can no longer even reach c++. In gnome-pilot I had begun to use GOB to do my object building, simple slick and sweet. In nautilus we're stuck cutting and pasting vast amounts of code, spending 20 minutes just to whack a basic object together, 20 more minutes to make a function virtual, 20 minutes to create the signals and then 1-3 hours fixing cut'n'paste bugs.

Wonderfull...

Now is where I could immerse myself in a long c/c++ discussion or I could just not. Let's suffice to say that I after playing with libsigc++, I've become ready to go back to c++ (unless someone writes a GOB2000/Cfront for gtkobjects).

ja7, alt pænt jeg har sagt om gtkobjekt tager jeg i mig igen (næsten alt pænt, det har stadigvæk enkelte ok ting), c++ er bare nemmere i længden, og de sprøde ting fra gtkobjekt fik vi jo for det meste banket ind i neppen med tiden.

Additionally, management keeps finding ways of screwing us in various small devious ways.

I'll be back next year.

The pain - having Bjerregaard around is just plain old wonderfull, except for the pounding in my head,

Went to the Alex Paterson (of orb) and Juno Reactor gig at some place called "Justice League". Paterson rocked pretty hard even though he more or less just turned lp's. Juno was pretty ok, although too much drum stuff imho. The place itself was not fantastic, don't think I'll be frequenting that joint except for other good musical events.

After the gig, we went by a liquer shop, picked up some sixpacks of snabelvand, and went back to the den-of-filth to quench our thirst and tell tales of old days...

We're going to skip the Vegas drive, and opt for the oldstyle slouching around. We actually began that yesterday, Monday night we went to a bar called Noc Noc for beer & chat. Their theme is Giger on LSD, defintely a nice place, although I was a bit annoyed over the low tables. Next morning, we went for breakfast at the local diner (mmm, coffee and omelet). The plan was ofcourse that I'd fuck off to work, but we just cruised over to Tower Records, shopped cd's and dvd's till we dropped and went back home. At this time, it was too late for me to go to work, since I'd have to drive back in time for the forementioned gig, so instead we stared tv while I did something that vaguely resembled work from the couch - all in all a good day.

Som sædvaneligt har jeg mængder af ubesvaret post - hav tålmodighed folkens, jeg kæmper mig igennem det. Nu har jeg fået bekræftet, at det ikke bare er mig. Den gode Hr. Torben finder også at mine sloffer trænger til et hurtigt kursus i hvodden-man-gør-rent samt et liv. Nu må jeg så se om jeg gidder at begynder at opdrage på dem, eller om der bare skal indføres grønjordsregler og køkkenhøvdings diktatur.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off). </ul>

Oh yeah, the new tivo works fine... (this doesn't really belong in the life part of the diary). It now autorecords the daily farscape and B5 episodes, stores them on the harddrive and I can watch them when I want to, sweeet. The coolest feature is watching a tv that is actually being played, pause it (while it's broadcasted), go make a cup of coffee, resume and then ff through commercials is just sweeet.

Other then that, not much exciting lately, other then it's friday night, 21 o'clock and I'm at work - so sad.

Måtte lege lommepsykolog for trolden forleden pga. skidt formuleret kommentar fra hendes chef. På den ene side giver jeg hende ret i, at hun blev skidt behandlet, på den anden side var det evt. pga. lav selvsikkerhed. Som nogen nok ved, så har jeg før skulle hjælpe en med skidt selvsikkerhed, men det var en som jeg holdt af, hvorimod det her er, ked af at sige det, er et halvtilfældigt bekendtskab som jeg nu tilfældigvis bor og arbejder sammen med, så jeg vil egentlig helst ikke skulle beskæftige mig med det.

Noksagt, nu vil jeg se at blive færdig, køre op til SF og se om min nabo er på stamværtshuset.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

Doing some serious bugfixing in the installer, hope to have it done soon, so I can begin on the bigass job of redesigned libeazelinstall.

Hrmf, yesterday, Steph and I made a Fry's run and picked up a Tivo, I decided that I've had enough of american commercials, plus I want my daily B5 without having to be home at 16 o'clock. Got home and plugged it in (we have too many things attached to the telly already, and we're still short of one dvd player).

It didn't work ... Turned it own and it showed the intro screen and then just sat there. So we had to go back this morning to get a replacement. Fry's equal oppurtunity employment policy must involve only hiring retards, the people at Fry's are in general really weird and apparently also happen to be really dumb.

While grabbing a new one, we noted that half the Tivo boxes had "Defect Item Returned" stickers on them, what the fuck?! Do they just tape the box back together and dump it with the other boxes on sale ?!

So we finally found one that didn't have a "defect item" sticker and didn't look too battered. Must try again tonight.

And apparently, vicious thinks I'll pick him up in SJO tonight... It'd be fun to not pick him up, except that'll mean not having a good reason for drinking.

The pain of PR2 is now over, www.eazel.com now holds the PR2 release, I can return to normal.

It got a bit gruesome in the end, especially the last night where a load of us were sitting rooting out the last bugs/testing till 6 in the morning where the release shipped. But now the pain is over.

I have managed some fun though, last week was halloween, that was pretty funny. My neighbors had a smash of a halloween party, pictures here. The asian guy next to me is Andrew, my primary comrade in drinking these days. Halloween night itself was just the Castro being filled with wierd people. They had blocked of a rather big part of Market street, and there was just a sea of people dressed up (and a few boring people like me, who weren't). This wasn't the tv halloween of annoying kids that I thought it would be, this was slightly more festive.

This saturday, Steph had her birhtday party, which was held in the tiki style. So there was vast amounts of booze and drinks with annoying stuff sticking up and poking your nose (and you can choke on those small plastic mermaids btw.). But the party was fun, and the aftermath was severe, but the place is now clean.

Other then that, it's a bit difficult to recall what actually has happened since then, it's mostly been work, interrupted by getting home, sleeping some hours and then hauling my arse back to work.

Now we'll have to hope that the PR2 release is good enough to make it worth the pain it was.

Og de gode nyheder er ; billetter til .dk er købt, skulle gerne ankomme til Københavnstrup d. 21/12 og skride igen d. 10/01. Andre gode nyheder, jeg får besøg omkring d. 19 af el stygge torben bjerregaard hamselv. Så holder jeg nogle dage fri omkring min fire dages thanksgiving weekend og så ræser vi til Las Vegas eller såen noget.

Nu skal jeg vist sove lidt mere.... og ja, nu hvor smerten er ovre vil jeg prøve at skrive her lidt tiere.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

In case you didn't get it, PR2 was my main object of hacking these past weeks.

Robey and I have concluded that doing dep check stuff through rpm is a pain and we can do the stuff so muchmore swiftly and with a better user experience if we skip it and do all dep stuff ourselves. So thats the post pr2 plan.

As Max (of Sam and Max) put it "it's dark and greasy and smelly under there". Thats whats under the hood of my car. But my left headlight and left front turnlights were dead, and after twice driving with only one headlight and no left front turnlights I decided to leap into action. So this morning I cruised by the Honda shop and bought the nessecary parts. Now apparently, a headlight isn't just a bulb you can replace, but a complete lightfixture for which they charge you loads of money. The turnlights are just bulbs though. So it was a total of 20$ (!!).

So after the parking lot emptied out here at Eazel, I started experimenting with The Stuff Under The Hood.

Now my fingers are greasy but I have all my lights in fine working condition.

If I get elected to the board (yeah right), I will recommend sensitivity training for everyone who is subscribing to the g-h list. Or at least one long deep breath before pressing send (or should that be sendMailNow ?)

I think that about concludes my propaganda. Now start figuring out who else to vote on.

None what so ever, well, almost, went eating & drinking with assorted eazel people last night. Arlo knows the good places to wine&dine.

Steph is now working at Eazel (congrats!), so I guess that makes the apt in SF the official Eazel SF Office.

Og en af de første ting hun bemærkede var 'følgelig hvordan folk sviner hinanden til udenfor arbejdstid... Mmmm, tilsvining af kolleger...

Og forresten har en af personagerne fra biksen prøvet at køre den danske sektion af min dagbog igennem et oversætter. Men der' vist tilpas meget slang og andet hø i disse skriblerier, til at det ingen mening gav. Hah!

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

Much nautilus bootstrap installer work. It's a mixture of fixing small libeazelinstall oddities, but mostly making the bootstrap installer use the info given by the lib, and acting just a bit sane (or at least manage to install nautilus).

I have now completely lost track of the flow in the program...

Need to do gnome-pilot hacking as soon as the pr2 madness is over.

Blam - that was tough getting back. There was quite a lot to do at eazel, and as a result, I have had no interesting experiences lately that would warrent a diary entry.

I still missing some of my stuff from the plane trip back. It has apparently been in SF since the day after I arrived. But somewhere in between United Airlines, Lufthansa and the kindergarden called US Customs, the loot just hasn't gotten further. Impressive...

george was at the office thursday, and instead of flying back home, I persuaded him into skipping classes friday and go drinking. It wasn't that hard to persuade him. Vores teamleder dummer sig stadigvæk engang i mellem. Men han er blevet bedre. Fyren er enormt usikker på sig selv, ikke just en god evne i en sektionsleder. Dertil kommer at mit hold virkelig efterhånden bare er det mest usete hold i firmaet, selvom vi får at vide at hvad vi laver er enormt vigtigt for bixen. At have et ryggradsløs tykt dyr som chef hjælper jo heller ikke på.

Nu har jeg en håndfuld personlige emails jeg skulle have skrevet for lang tid siden, men jeg har stadigvæk ulæst post fder går 2 måneder tilbage, suk.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

So I've also been persuaded to be a candidate for the gnome foundation. While my candicacy statement should have indicated that I'm not in either of the two groups that I personally think candidates normally are in. While not being opposed to being in the foundation, I just know that I 1) cannot get as engaged about it as others 2) cannot use the same amount of time (there's hacking to do). Therefore, I judge myself as not being a good choice for the foundation. But the candidacy is serious, it is not a joke.

As we finally began to use the installer on peoples weird machines, we of course found a load of weird rpm corner-cases; the most nasty are the ones where a rpm --rebuilddb is needed, but there are also cases where people have been force installing stuff, erasing stuff, rpm's with real bad dependencies and whatnot.

So it's been a long week of putting out one fire after the other, as these bugs are PR2 requirements, and often they block testing of the bootstrapinstaller.

But robey has done some nice stuff in the bootstrap installer, which we now need to move into the install view.

Also made a set of gnome-pilot 0.1.55pre tarballs, that I need to test and upload today.

Back from .dk. Frankfurt airport still blows chunks.

Anyways I had a real good time those two weeks. Enough to make me look forward to moving back. I got around to do all the stuff I wanted to do, and saw almost all the people I needed to see (missed three).

Basically I was spending the two weeks seeing old friends, getting drunk and engaging myself i general debauchery, sort of like what I was doing before I moved to SF.

The flight back was uneventfull, except that I got delayed 6 hours, ended in Chicago with half my luggage, thanks Frankfurt Main...

Oh, and the wankers in .dk voted no on the Euro, next they'll be voting for the creepy rightwing parties, *sigh*.

København er nu altså bare bedre når man er "en and i sin bedste alder", jeg savner at kunne vakle hjem fra louises i dejlig god brandert.

Selvfølgelig var der meget der var ændret, nye folk på Studenterhuset og Cafeen?, men mange af de gamle. Jeg tror at efter noget tid bliver det mindre festligt, flere og flere vil være kommet videre og have forladt stederne. Men der vil stadigvæk være hyggelige Nørrebro og Vesterbro, muligheden for at vade fra sted til sted, shawarma'er, ordentlig kaffe og leverpostej.

Og jeg vil lige pointere, at selv om Kbh er så meget federe, kan jeg nu stadigvæk godt lide at bo her, men det ændrer ikke på, at for en ung and med mine vaner er her ikke "optimalt".

Men jeg glæder mig til næste besøg, håber på omkring 20/12 til 10/1, pul og nytår under ordentlige forhold (guld tuborg og pissekoldt).

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

I almost couldn't remember where my cube was...

Robey had been hacking on my bugs while I was away, and of course he had found a spiffy case (updating libtiff of all things), which libeazelinstall couldn't handle gracefully. "gracefully" means figuring out what to download and not just say "fuck off" to the user. And fixing the case proved to be non-trivial, since I've already bolted so-and-so many special cases onto the code. So this weekend has been spent remodelling a lot of the code.

I would also like information on any ilbrpm hate clubs out there.

T-2...

Well, I finally got my IAP-66 back today, they really know how to make you feel like a second class citizen over here. But now I can go to .dk with a 80% chance of being allowed back into the country.