Posts Tagged ‘work-related’

Summertime!

25.06.2013 16:21

I just realized that I haven’t said anything about my life in the past six month, so I think it’s time.

Back in February, I turned 33 (Tesla would be proud), and my love life is still non-existing. My niece and nephew are growing up, but I still haven’t gotten as far as having a litter of my own. C’est la vie, I suppose. Speaking of which, I recently started brushing up on learning German to a somewhat larger extent. I’ve installed an app called DuoLingo, and with it, I get lessons in the language I’m learning. Call it an alternative way to learn a language, but it might work out.

This summer, I’m going on vacation twice, actually. First, I’m going on a vacation trip with my family to Hungary, where we’ll spend about a week in Zalakaros (which we’ve been to before), followed by a few days in Budapest (which will be a new place on my map of places I’ve been to). And a few weeks after that, I’m heading off to Berlin on my own to catch a few Blue Man Group shows, and get together with a few of the fellow fans I met at the fan event last year. Tickets to two of the shows are already on the way (I hope they’ll arrive before I leave for the first vacation trip, though). In Berlin, I’ve also secure a seat on a bike sightseeing tour, and I might reserve a seat on a second bike tour with the same tour company. Either way, I plan on renting a bike for my stay this year, so I imagine that it will be quite the experience. We’ll see.

Fingers are crossed for hot and sunny weather on both trips, though.

Last week, I was at the last weigh-in before the summer, and this brought my weight loss total up to 52.7 kg, or roughly 116 pounds. I still have some way to go, but I can finally say I’m well over half way to my final goal. The weight loss courses resume at the end of August, but our instructor has promised us an extra (unofficial) weigh-in at the beginning of August for those of us who are in on the long term courses (ie. those who are trying to lose a lot of weight), just to come to terms with any weight gain that might’ve happened during the summer.

Projects at work are still going strong, and I’ve finally been able to switch to a new work-only laptop. It took quite a while to transfer all work-related software, documents, data and settings from my previous laptop to the new one, but the time has finally arrived. I also found a small backpack to keep my lunch, iPad, extra cables (phone charging cable and extra battery), Nintendo 3DS (to earn my daily motion coins) and a few USB thumb drives, just in case. Just the basic essentials, really. And yes, I’m a little bit of a gadget guy (without going overboard, that is).

Besides a whole bunch of birthdays (most of my closest family have had their birthdays already), confirmations (for my youngest sister and another of my relatives), continuing weight loss, upcoming vacations in the near future, and being more comfy at work (on a general daily basis), there’s not much else going on in my life.

OK, fine, I was recently notified that I’ll get a small tax refund in the next month, which I’ll, uneventfully, spend on paying back a little more of my debt, and a little bit on my second vacation.

I’ve also managed to get in a few performance improvements on my site, making it a little bit faster to load. What do you think of it so far?

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. See ya around!

How does this happen?

15.11.2012 14:23

Some of you may know that I work as a system administrator, and this includes checking up on servers to make sure everything is running fine, and that nothing is blocking legitimate traffic. This also means that I need to check on the message queue on our primary e-mail server to make sure neither inbound or outbound e-mail is being blocked.

One of the e-mails that are stuck in the queue at the moment, is to a Gmail account, and includes the following error message (reason for not being delivered):

host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[173.194.64.26] said: 452-4.2.2 The email account that you tried to reach is over quota. Please direct 452-4.2.2 the recipient to 452 4.2.2 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6558 ab5si15456916obc.116 (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Just to summarize, the message (which, according to the message queue software, is around 15 kB) is not being delivered, because the Gmail account has run out of storage space. Let me repeat that: his Gmail account has no storage space left!

Thing is, each Gmail user has 10 GB of free storage space available in their account. This means that the Gmail user above has 10 GB of e-mails in his account. And it has been like that for several days. Originally, I wasn’t about to make a post of this, but I’ve seen this message stuck in the queue for several days in a row, and I just felt like venting.

Two things come to mind: One, the e-mails in his account has to have some hefty attachments on them. Two, doesn’t this guy check is Gmail account every once in a while? I mean, Gmail is bound to show a warning when he logs in to see his inbox, and tell him to either upgrade his account space or delete some unneeded e-mails, right? Besides, if he absolutely has to have all of these e-mails in his account, upgrading the account should be a small price to pay (upgrading to 25 GB costs $2.49 per month, while the upgrade to 100 GB costs only $4.99 per month – there are also larger upgrades available). Is it really that hard?

Anyway, that’s it for today’s work-related rant. I do have other pains related to work this week, but I’ll keep those to myself for now (to avoid breaking client confidentiality – the pains are more specifically related to a major site launch early this week for a client, and that’s all I can say, really).

Life in general

18.09.2012 16:18

I just thought I’d let you know what’s been going on in my life this past month or so.

About a month ago, we had visitors at our office. One of our partners we’ve been in regular contact with in the U.S. came to visit us again (the last time he was here, which was also his first time here, was back in March) for the long weekend. And while he was already here, our contact in the Netherlands also came to visit. The week was a bit hectic, but it was nice to get to know each other and get a live discussion going of future developments and what each of us was going to work on (and preferably in which order). I’m not too keen on coming in to the office on weekends, but I can let that pass when it’s on rare occasions. I decided to leave early that Saturday so I could spend a few hours celebrating my cousin’s kid’s birthday party for the family (he turned 3 that day). It’s important to not burn yourself out.

As a bonus, though, my boss treated us with tickets to Jugendfest that Saturday, which has become a local music festival. On that day, the highlight performance was Roxette, which some of you may remember from the 80’s and 90’s (at least I remember them well). It started to rain heavily towards the end of their performance, so even though I came prepared with a thin poncho, I got pretty soaked that evening.

I also got myself a new phone. This time, I decided to go for a Samsung Galaxy S III. I spent a few weeks deciding on whether or not to buy it, and after making the decision, I used some unspent gift certificates to reduce the price even further. After spending a month with it, I still have no regrets on my choice. Simply said, I think it’s the best smartphone on the market today. And yes, that’s even after the new iPhone has been released.

And regarding my trip to Oslo in November, I finally got around to book flights and hotel for the weekend. I arrive in Oslo at 5 pm that Friday (November 16), take the airport train directly to Oslo S (the central train station in Oslo, where I’ll be arriving at about 5:30 pm) and check in to my hotel, which would be Radisson Blu Plaza, a short walk from Oslo S. After checking in, I take another short walk to Oslo Spektrum, where Gabriel Iglesias will perform at 7:30 pm. I head back home on the 5:50 pm flight that Sunday. While I’m already in Oslo, I plan on visiting my friend in Oslo and his wife, but I’m also up for anything else to fill my time (if anybody reading this wants to meet up).

But first, I’ll be preparing for my vacation in Berlin, which is less than a month away. And with even more added to the fan meet schedule on October 20, I’m getting even more excited as the day comes closer.

Sometimes, I hate my job

03.09.2012 15:20

I originally meant to write up this post last week, but I was simply too exhausted to do anything productive.

I usually keep my work life and home/private life separate, and since I consider this blog a part of my private life, I’ve chosen not to talk about it much here. That’s partially because I don’t want my work life to seep much into my private life, but it’s also because I work with clients and potential clients I don’t wish to reveal the identities of (this is mainly major corporations that I don’t want to either sue me for revealing “secrets” behind the scenes, or that I don’t want to piss off in a way that might cause them to drop us as a supplier). But sometimes, I have to rant out in the open.

Because sometimes, I really hate my job. I bet you sometimes do, too. Not in general, though. It’s mainly those little moments where you’re doing something that goes largely unappreciated. Even those “invisible” tasks you do; tasks that you know in the back of your mind that you have to do, tasks you have trained yourself to do through experience over a long time in the same job. I say that these small tasks are “invisible” in the sense that even though you do them on a regular basis, nobody at work seem to notice that they are being done, or people think you’re not doing your job.
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Power outages

18.04.2011 18:31

I hate power outages. Especially at work.

Why do I hate them?

First: Since I work at a company that makes software, it means that everyone at the office (including myself) can’t get much work done, since everything they’re supposed to connect to and work with, is unavailable (mainly because either the server or the network is powered off). That is, those who are lucky enough to use laptops. Those with desktop (stationary) computers are not so lucky.

Second: Once power comes back on, who do you think is responsible for making sure all servers and computers are coming back up and no data has been lost? That’s me!

Sure, battery backups are fine, but they can only last so long.

Today’s power outage lasted almost one and a half hour, just because some idiot worker in the neighborhood dug through a high-voltage power line that provides the wonders of electricity to the entire city district (including our office). I know this because I called the power company to find out. The outage was timed to roughly the last two hours of the normal workday.

Way to go, Monday! (mumble-grumble)

At the time of writing this post, we’ve had power back on for almost two hours, and I’m still struggling with recovering data on the final server. Since the last command I entered takes a while to finish (it’s currently at 90%, and has been doing its recovery work for the last hour and a half), I thought I’d vent some steam on my blog, because I know I’m going to need it when I’m doing unpaid overtime.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. It’s just that sometimes, it hands me challenges that either knocks the air out of me or gives me one heck of a head ache. And those challenges usually comes when I least expect them to (and need the highest possible priority).

I can’t wait to get it overwith so I can go home for the day…