Tag: Personal

What a cute fairy this is…

<img alt=”philip_die_gluecksfee.jpg” src=”http://www.gnegg.ch/archives/philip_die_gluecksfee-thumb.jpg” width=”100” height=”144” border=”0” align=”left” hspace=5 />Jonas’ girlfried soes some work for us updating sunrise ADSL-World. If possible, we try to get the people to return to the site by using contests like about a week ago, where one ended and they needed me to chose the lucky winner as I did not have the time yet to write a tool taking this work from me.

Anyway: Instead of just reminidng me to do it, Nina sent this picture which is a really great photoshop work. Thanks, Nina.

Fun with SPAM

Sometimes, some SPAM slips through my SpamAssasin filter and is delivered to my mailbox. A real pearl of quality-spam was delivered today. It contained the following paragraph:

Note that this is not one of the emails that some corrupt Africans do distribute to other countries of the world. You are the only person I am contacting for this transaction and can only contact another person if I found out that you are not ready to be of help. This requires a private arrangement.

yeah, right!

Each problem has a solution…

… it’s just a question whether you like it or not.

But then again: Does idealism justify using the wrong tool for a particular problem just because the right tool does not seem ideologically right?

We’ve installed an evaluation version of Microsoft Exchange and despite some problems at first, it’s working very well and is the best groupware-solution we have tried so far.

Needless to say that there are many proxies and relays between the net and the actual box. That much I don’t want to trust it ;-)

Long time no see

I really should have more discipline concerning this little weblog ;-)

Just some notes for now:

P800 and the calendar
About a week ago, after I’ve updated the SonyEricsson P800 Sync-Software to 1.3.1, it stopped synchronizing my calendar entries. There was no error message, but it did not work either – it id not touch the calendar entries at all. Then I performed a full synchronisation, overwriting the phone with the effect of having no entries at all on the phone.

Reinstalling the Sync-Software did not help. What finally had effect was reinstalling both Office (with outlook), cleaning the Registry from Office-Settings and the Sync-Software (first removing everything and then reinstalling it). This process took about 3 hours (and many of them figuring out how to fix it without having to reinstall everything). Stupid Software.

iPod and Linux
I am running Gentoo Linux using Kernel 2.4.20-gentoo-r2. Although I had HFS and IEE1394-Support int the kernel, one of the modules (sbp2 I think) oopsed when I plugged my Mac-Formated iPod and modprobe‘d ohci1394. Reformating the iPod with the FAT32-Filesystem (use the Windows-iPod-Updater from apple.com, but remove MacDrive if it’s installed – else your iPod will not be detected) did help me with this so I finally have a device to quickly exchange large amounts of data between home and office.

Browsers (1)
Apple recently released Beta 2 of Safari. Looks great – especially the Tabbed Brwosing-Feature. Too bad I still don’t have my own Mac.

Mario
I’m in World 6 of Super Mario Advance 2 and the game really is great. If only the Special World would not be so difficult to master…

Browsers (2)
I recently tried out the latest build of Phoenix which will replace the browser-Part in the Mozilla-Suite someday. It really looks great and is a pleasure to use. I am thinking of dropping Mozilla entirely and use Phoenix for the web an Becky! for email.

So. That’s half a month of notable internet expirience. I promise to report more often in the future!

got it…

If only I’d check my mailbox more often…

When I was writing my article about getting Xenosaga today, the game was already lying in my mailbox for some hours. Anyway: When I found it, I’ve started up my beamer and the playstation and began playing the game. Be prepared for a first kind-of review (nearly no spoilers – I could not really give some as I’ve only played 8 hours so far):

First of all: I like it.
Second: I don’t like it as much as I liked Xenogears (which is not very surprising given the fact that Xenogears is the best RPG ever created ;-)

As usual I am first providing you with the things I dislike:

  • Story: Please: You can do it better than this. The whole thing is much to clear in the first place. Where is the slow unfolding of events I liked so much in Xenogears? And: Misterious Plate floating through the unsiverse – androids freaking out – lunatic professors working for the goverment: That’s nothing new at all. I hope there is more to come and I hope it’s less obvious.
  • Loading times: Too long. It’s not that there are loading screens all over the place – there are no screens at all. I am currently on this ship of space trash collectors (what have I told you about the story??) and where the loading times when changing rooms in previous games by Squaresoft were not really noticable, in Xenosaga, they are: About 30 seconds waiting before a black screen just for entering the passengers cabins? That’s too long.
  • Stupidity: This is related to my complaint about the story and actually I’ve only once came across the problem: On said spaceship, the sequence of events is as follows:
    • From the citchen, go all the way down to the cargo bay where KOS-MOS and the commander are.
    • From there go all the way up to the bridge just to learn that there may be a problem with the catapult which of course is again all the way back down in the ship.
    • When I’ve finally reached the damn catapult (that’s no spaceship. It’s a labyrinth), there seems nothing to be wrong, so I am ordered all the way back up to the bridge where the next story sequence awaits me. Note: Till’ this point, going back and forth did involves nothing more than going back and forth – no enemy encounters at all, so no fights, so: boring.
    • Of course, although nothing seemed wrong, the catapult actually malfunctions during the story sequence (talk about non-obvious story) and I’ve once again to go all the way back – but this time *with* enemy encounters.

      This is boring, stupid and not what I expect from a successor of the best RPG ever.

    • Movie or game? I really like story sequences. I also like long ones with much content. But those in Xenosaga are too long. Many times in those 8 hours the play counter is displaying me, I sort of forgot that I am playing a game instead of watching a movie.
    • Camera perspective: No. It’s not nearly as annoying as in Kingdom Hearts for example. After all, the camera is fixed. And this is so much good at it is bad: Many times I am thinking that I don’t see something and I wish to rotate the scenario – but unfortunatly that’s not possible. However, I think, this is about getting used to it. Before Xenogears and FFX the camera has always been fixed.

      So. That’s it. In all other aspects, the game is just great. Especially I’d like to note the following points:

      • Music. Just Great. Mr. Yasunori Mitsuda did a wonderful job once again. And this time it’s even better as the Soundtrack is played by a real orchestra.
      • Voice-Acting: We are not quite there yet, but it’s waaaay better than FFX or Kingom Hearts.
      • Graphics and Animations: Great. I like them very much.
      • Battle-Time-Counter: On the victory-screen after a battle there is a timer that shows you how long it took to finish the opponent off. This is nice (I’d never have thought that killing a boss may well take 20 minutes)

        If you can: Go and get the game. I’ve not yet rated it relativly to the other RPGs I’ve played so far, but it will certainly occupy one of the top positions just because of the athmosphere, the good music, the balanced gameplay and the really good leveling-up system which is quite sofisitcated but understadable anyway (and does not have the same strange side-effects as the system of FF8 had where leveing up was actually a bad thing

Back Again

It’ done. I’ve not only sucessfully survived the relaunch of our broadband-portal Superspeed, I too have survived the installation of a new server at a new location. Although I’ve had muc htoo less time, I think, everything should be working again – everything besides my SpamAssissin installation which I will again patch to use my mailserver virtual user sql authentication scheme. And believe me: After my todays look at my non-spam-assasinated mailbox, I came to the conclusion, that this issue has my top priority ;-)

Things I hate

Long time, no post. Sorry for that, but I was quite busy.

Today, I was invited to a nice pre-christmas dinner by the mother of my girlfriend. I really looked forward to the event and I deceided to just come to the office for some hours and then to go and take the train to Erlenbach where my girlfriend lives.

As soon as I was in the office, someone came to me and told me that a Win2k-Server just went down. I did what I always do in such cases: Go and reboot the thing.

But this time, it did not help.

So I went to get a TFT-Display and a keyboard to see what’s wrong. And I was not pleased: Bluescreen at startup.

None of the debugging-tools provided by Microsoft was of any help, so I took the server at my place and inserted the original installation disk.

As I suspected, the repairing-tool launched by pressing “R” in the Setup-Screen did not help. The real good system repair tool can be gotten when chosing to “I”nstall a new Installation and then chosing “R” when the old installation has been found.

I was pleased to see that the server booted again, when the installation was complete. All the settings and the whole configuration was still there yess!

But two things were wrong:

  • The WINS-Service could not be started. The error in the error-log was “File not found”. An indication *what* file was missing was not given.
  • The Exchange-Server used by our renter was down and could not be started. The error in the log is german and I will not even try to translate it for you as it is meaningless anyway.

    In short: I could not fix the problem before I went to Erlenbach, so I had to return to the office instead of going back home after the (excellent) dinner because I am away around christmas.

    My solutions for the problems:

    • The WINS-Server could be reaniomated by un-installing and re-installing it.
    • With the Exchange-Server I am still trying, but I think, Q257415 and Q296790 may be of help (Note: Google Groups is really great if you don’t know any solutions any more.

      I’ll keep you updated on my progress here.

Things I hate (2)

I got it to work.

The /disasterrecovery-Option for the Setup.exe of the exchange-server was not enough. Searching more in google finally brought the solution: Q267573.

I’ve created a .reg-File so you don’t have to make 5000 clicks when in the same situation:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftRpcClientProtocols]
"ncacg_ip_udp"="rpcrt4.dll"
"ncacn_http"="rpcrt4.dll"
"ncacn_nb_tcp"="rpcrt4.dll"
"ncacn_ip_tcp"="rpcrt4.dll"
"ncacn_np"="rpcrt4.dll"

If somebody can tell me why the dedicated disaster-recovery-option of the setup program does not create those entries, please tell me here and now!

I will now make some tests with an Outlook-Client and then finally go home (it’s 1:30am localtime)

Things I hate (3)

Jepp. The test was successful. The installation is up and running again.

After many hours of stupid system administration work, I am thinking about what I have had to do if Linux would have been running on said server.

First of all, it would be highly unlikely that something like this i-will-not-boot-anymore would happen on a Linux-Server. the architecture is more straight-forward there and it cannot happen that the system destablizes itself without external intervention. But let’s say, it happened anyway (stupid administrator or even a hardware defect (like defect ram causing currupted data to be written to the harddrive at an incorrect location).

If I cannot boot Linux (or whatever other UNIX-flavor you like), I just take a rescue disk and boot from it. Unlike the disk provided by Microsoft, I would get a full-fledged console allowing me to do everything I could do on the defective installation. The Windows disk provides me with a recovery console which does not allow much more than writing a new boot-record to the harddrive and an automated recovery procedure (actually two – one works better, the other worse. As usual, the better one is hidden (behind the “new installation” step)) which will do something intransparently which is supposed to fix your installation. And: I had to work with a german Windows installation disk and the translation is really bad. I would have preferred the english version, but the administrator does not have the choice there.

As always: Intransparence is bad. Where the boot-process of every Linux-Distribution is well-documented and very transparent and thus can be modified, debugged or even stripped down to the bare minimum (init=/bin/sh), the process in windows is very complex and cannot be altered at all. This forces the user to do unneccesary time-taking reinstallations as the software is not smart enough to fix the problem and the administration is not allowed to.

Debugging the problem: In UNIX/Linux I get most of the time a nice and understanable error-message. If I can’t understand it, I can enter it to google and usually get answers. If not, I can even grep through the sourcecode and thus make me an image what it means.

Under Windows – at least some parts of the Windows-Servers, getting a really useful error-message is difficult: The Event-Viewer uses the same Error-Codes for completly different things and the same things may have the same error-message which renders google quite useless (and don’t even try to understand those messages – they are not helpful at all). Greping through the sourcecode is no alternative at all.

So after all I think my odyssey with this crashed server would have taken much less time and work if the server would have been running Linux or a different flavor of UNIX. Too bad it isn’t .

Now I am really going home