Recent blog entries for rosen

The terrorist attacks in the US
I don't have adequate words, so I'll refrain from commenting this terrible deed.

My student corridor
Last week was my turn to take care of our common kitchen and corridor. I didn't have time to tidy it up on Sunday, so I have to do it now instead. I guess I should do that instead of writing a diary entry. See you!

I've always wondered why people seldom interfere when there is a fight that is starting to turn ugly. Now I know. We're cowards.

I was at a party in school, yesterday. When I was waiting for the subway there came a group of loud and quite drunk people who seated themselves on a bench next to me.

After a little while a few friends joined them. Suddenly one of them started screaming that people were talking behind his back, and his friends had to restrain him, because he went mad. Suddenly, the fight started. I never understood who sided with whom, but after a while two guys were lying on the floor, while others were kicking them.

I must do something, I thought, but I didn't know what. There were enough people involved already (and most of them actually were trying to stop the fight, but instead they got involved, themselves). I took up my mobile phone to call the police, but of course the battery was out of charge.

A minute later the fight was over, the victors walking away telling each other that the others got what they deserved. The ones who were left helped the guys who were on the floor, and it appeared they were not seriously wounded.

What a relief it was to see the subway train finally arrive! When I went on board the train I saw one of the guys who had helped the ones on the floor kick one of them in the head. I don't know what happened after that, because the train was leaving.

I am not proud of myself. I should have done something, but I was scared to hell, and didn't want to get involved. Now I understand why people don't interfere when something like this happens. We're cowards. Pathetic, isn't it?

Now to something completely different

I've finally reached apprentice status. Thank you very much, everyone who has certified me!

I have a bad conscience (is that how it's spelled?) because I still haven't released any code. I will however, and hopefully not too far in the future.

Yesterday I was informed by a friend that they had decided I was a volonteer to do the grilling at the pub of computer science. It was a big event, when the pubs of all the different programs at school were open. It is part of the reception activities for the new students.

Our pub draw quite a lot of people, since we sell big sandwiches with salad, onion, tomato, potato salad and steak. They are quite a meal, and very popular.

Business was brisk, but not extremely so (which it has been previous years), so it was quite OK to work and drink free beer.

After a few hours we ran out of bread an closed down the shop. However, a couple of hours later a lot of people came looking for something to eat, so we started selling what was left. They really were desperate, and more and more people arrived. We had as much meat as possible on the grills, but still the queue was getting longer, and all of us were working in a frenzy. It was great fun, actually (might have had something to do with the free beer, too).

I came home about 4 or 5 in the morning, and I had lectures in school today. However, when I woke up this morning I realized that going to school (or anywhere) was NOT a good idea, so I stayed in bed most of the day.

Now I'm finally beginning to feel like a human being again...

Well, it was worth it. :)

Oops. It's been awhile since the last entry.

I can't say I've done anything very exciting during this period.

I visited my parents for a couple of weeks (along with my sister's family, and my brother's children - quite crowded, but fun!).

The rest of the time I've spent studying (not very effectively :( Oh, well, it is summer) and working both at PDC and with the Palm application. I'm still working with the Palm application, because I'm not very good at saying "no" :)

One great thing has happened, though. I've got a 10 Mbit/s internet connection now. Simply wonderful! Unfortunately, it is not allowed to connect a local network, so I have to use NAT. This seems to mess up kerberized X-connections :( I hope it can be solved, somehow.

Yesterday I got a letter from Telia, with papers for subscribing to their ADSL service. I applied for this a year ago, and this is the first time I've heard from them. Pathetic.

Tomorrow school starts again. It feels quite OK, since I'm going to take a few very interesting courses:

• Programming lanugage implementation
• Logic Programming
• Language Technology
• Advanced Algorithms
• The protocols and principles of the internet

Hmm. It has been quite a busy period since my last entry.

Lots of work, both in school and on the palm application. I leave the project on Wednesday, and there are still a lot of work left before I can hand my things over to someone else with a good concience.

The reason I'm leaving is that I got a job at The Center for Parallel Computers at KTH, Sweden. Part of the time I'll work at their helpdesk, the rest of it I'll work on a system that allows easy and secure log ins to a computational grid (probably using kerberos). I'll put more effort on security issues than I did on my own linux box before, that's for sure :)

My computer was cracked today.
Sigh.

I don't have the knowledge to make sure nothing was tampered with, and certainly not the time to do it (exam tomorrow and on Thursday). I guess I have been too lax about security issues.

Well, there was something good about it: Now I'll finally realize my project of setting up a linux box from scratch (something like Linux From Scratch, but I'll use environment modules as much as possible). I believe it will be a very valuable experience. I'll wait until after the exams, though.

I finally took the time to write a few things about myself. Seemed stupid to have an empty account :)

I'm in a state of deep misery. I have two five-hour exams next week; in "Graphics and Interaction programming" and "Artificial languages and syntactic analysis". It's funny how two very interesting subjects can be transformed to something awful just because you know you're having an exam soon.

I guess they'll be very interesting again after I've had the exams.

One thing lit up my day, though: I went to the book stores in town, becuase they have the annual "bokrea", when book stores all over Sweden are selling lots of books at lowered prices.

I bought 9 books:

• Eddan: The foundation of nordic mythology.
• A book with nordic myths and old stories.
• Two books by Agust Strindberg, a famous Swedish writer.
• A book about whisky.
• A book about beer.
• A book containing classic swedish lyric and poetry.
• A huge book about the great philosophers.
• The Human Beast by Emile Zola.

I got interested in nordic mythology after I read "Tolkien's Ring" by David Day.

Well, it's time to sleep.
See you! (as if anyone is reading this :)