Advogato blog for eskil

28 Dec 2001

Fri, 28 Dec 2001 09:48:02 GMT

Finally back in .dk again, love it. Froze my balls of the first night of drinking, but it was worth it. Survived christmas with good loot and too much food.

Find mig de saedvanelige steder, eller ring til min søster hvor jeg stener paa sofaen.

21 Jun 2001

Thu, 21 Jun 2001 06:07:27 GMT

life

Igen lang tid uden dagbog, men nu ruller vi igen...

Seen Spinal Tap and Built to Spill. SP was pretty good, but we had seats (seats at a concert? what the fuck...) and there was too much music and too little show, and afterall, their music isn't that good. They did have a dancing miniature Stonehenge, but no dwarves. Built to Spill was pretty good guitar rock, but the venue was too hot, and their ending jam was about 15 minutes to long.

Except for that, the days are still a blur. I think today is wednesday. Wobbled home from the kilowatt at 5 this morning after sitting all not listening to Red Warszawa with Buddah.

I think I should start go see movies during the day, just for the fuck of it. There's all these crappy movies out these days that would amusing to see.

Venter stadigvaek paa at kunne starte paa det nye job. Det kommer nok til at tage nogle uger da de ikke engang har begyndt ansoegningen endnu. Saa jeg rykkede dem idag, bla. da det jo ik' er gratis at leve her og der er graense for hvor lang tid jeg kan gaa uden loen. Men det skulle nok ordne sig sagde de, og pengeprobs skulle de nok hjaelpe med hvis det blev et problem.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

some gnome-pilot crack and a cute little cli ripper with cddb lookup. It was fun to code c++ again, but returning to gnome-pilot and it's c/gtk+ hell was a downer, really should start working on porting gnome-pilot to c++...

I need to move the gnome-pilot pages to eskil.org, having them on gnome.org is just pretty pointless when you can't edit them nor get anyone to fix the problems, so don't expect to see those pages updated ever again.

7 Jun 2001

Thu, 7 Jun 2001 01:06:07 GMT

life

Memento

The job hunt is over, signed the offer letter from VerdiSoft, should be able to start as soon as the visa transfer stuff begins.

I got really sick and tired of talking to companies/recruites who were all gung-ho about scheduling interviews (or even actually did the interviews), untill the came across the H1B thingy on the visa and suddenly were "oh, you might not excatly have the skill set we want" or in some cases (recruiters only) just flat out "oh, if we'd known, we wouldn't have bothered". All these companies will be screaming for more H1B's in 6 months. Wankers.

Sunday we (mfleming, jsh) grilled in out "back yard", that was pretty neat, should do more of that while I'm still just sitting a home twiddling my thumbs.

Other than that, most of my time is spend doing nothing, except for the daily tour down to the kilowatt for a few pints. Oh yeah, had some danes visting, they were here for Java One, so sunday night we went to (surprise) kilowatt for some (surprise again!) beer.

Een ting der isaert var bittert var da to af de ho'der jeg bor med fik job i et firma hvor jeg interviewede (og en fra Eazel jeg arbejdede taet sammen med) hvorimod jeg fik en formumlet historie om at "uhm, du er lissom ikke helt hvad vi soegte efter til at lave embedded systemer". Jeg interviewede lissom overhovedet ikke for det job, men for server side tingene, blabla... Isaer da de ogsaa droppede min fjerde slof (som ogsaa er paa H1B og en sparke-roev programmoer) var det ligesom klart hvad der foregik.

Men nu kan jeg da i det mindste holde op med at se paa fragtpriser. Til gengaeld kan jeg ikke rejse ud af landet indtil visum overfoerslen er overstaaet, det kan tage 2-3mnd, saa eskil skal ikke til roskilde i aar heller, waaah.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

bunch on gnome-pilot hacking... really should release a new one again...

23 May 2001

Wed, 23 May 2001 03:51:48 GMT

life

Wow, Vegas was a trip. We arrived thursday night and checked into the luxor, wonderfully kitsch egyption decor, inclinators (escalators that move in an angle, really amusing when you're drunk) and the vegas casino scene (no windows, no clocks, no way to figure out what the time is).

So basically the trip involved drinking margaritas at the pool, eating goot expensive food (oh man, the steak at mon ami blabla was the best steak I've ever had</a>), and getting drunk at the roulette (yeah yeah, so I lost money, but I had a good time) and thereafter just getting a bit more drunk.

My flight out was at 7:40, so I spend most of the night with three brits in the Nefertiti Lounge at the luxer, inflicting liverdamage with the help of whiskey-sours and corona (you can't get decent beer in these hotels).

I of course almost managed to miss my flight home, so I got upgraded to first class (boohoo), fell asleep before we took off and didn't wake up till we had landed, excellent.

Now I have sunburns on my legs, more sunscreen next time.

Oh yeah, click here for the proof (bemaerk forresten haaret, naesten normalt!).

I'm still looking for a job, have had a few interviews but still no offers. Also some more recruiters from agenciens saying "we don't want no steenkin' H1b's". So my deadline for a job is around start of june, since my employment/eazel will stop mid-june and so will my cashflow. So somewhere around that time I'll have to decide what to do with my life (og mangel paa samme).

Heh, intet at sige som ikke taaler dagens lys i denne omgang. Tak til de folk som har skrevet og sagt buhu at firmaet doede, luner i disse haarde kolde tider.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Nope, need a job first...

16 May 2001

Wed, 16 May 2001 22:56:47 GMT

life

here

It wasn't a great surprise to any of us at that point, we had spend the last month assuming this would be the outcome, but it still is sad. The engineering team we had was truly awesome and I'll miss the people.

So now what ? Well, frankly I'm been more and more dissappointed with the gnome community as such, so I won't be weeping if I'm not getting a job in some gnome/linux/free-software company, even though it'd be nice. I'd like to work on setting up a server for the trilobite-install stuff, frankly, I still believe it's the coolest apt-get clone for rpm distros. If anyone wants to work on this, feel free to contact me (eskil at eskil dot dk).

So now I'm looking for a new job, and it's not going well. Even though I've only had two interviews the outlook isn't good. Both companies turned me down for hard-to-parse reasons and I suspect that it's the H1B visa issue. Most other companies reeled backwards as soon as they realised that they would have to sponsor a visa transferral. But I have about six weeks till the cash dries up, so I won't be planning relocation for the next five weeks.

Ikke meget at sige. Jeg vil foretraekke at blive her, da en flytning igen simpelthen bare er for besvaerligt. Men hvis der ikke er jobs at faa (industrien har virkeligt taget et nedsving), saa maa jeg vel nok se mig om efter groennere marker.

Hvad gik galt med biksen ? Tja, daarligt tidspunkt at soege investering, ideen var ok (havde sine mangler). Derudover var der en del skidte ting, f.eks. hyrede vi alt for mange marketingstumper som bare slugte loen og saa smarte ud, brugte for meget energi paa at lave en nyserlig filhaandteringsdimmelut og alt for faa folk til at implementere de ting som vi skulle tjene penge paa. Intet som bagklogskab.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Can't be arsed...

15 May 2001

Tue, 15 May 2001 23:13:00 GMT

life

tricky

sigur ros

Also got to see Nightwatch, a yank version of Nattevagten. Man did they manage to dumb down the movie and put in the nessecary action stuff to satisfy the locals. If they could, there would probably also have been a carchase somewhere.

The jobhunt is slow, have had two interviews and a no-go on both of them, not promising, but I still have a job, so it's not terminal yet. If anyone has leads, feel free to email me (eskil at eskil dot dk).

Last night the kilowatt was closed! Horror, apparantly the staff went away on some three day drinking binge (and didn't invite me...). So instead I ended at Lucky 13 instead, where I actually managed to beat the neighbours in pool (wow).

On thursday I'm taking of for Las Vegas for some much needed relaxation.

tja, biksen er saa godt som lukket, men pga. min visastatus er jeg ikke blevet sagt op ligesom alle andre, men istedet for opsigelsesbonus er jeg bare stadigvaek ansat indtil min bonus er udbetalt, biksen er helt lukket eller jeg finder et job. Bedre end at blive smidt ud af landet...

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Did a bunch of gnome-pilot hacking, but now I'm more concerned with finding a job...

2 May 2001

Wed, 2 May 2001 21:29:47 GMT

life

2 May 2000

I'm at Eazel, Inc. in CA now...

that was one year ago... That meant drinking at the kilowatt, was it joyfull or sorrowfull drinking ?

So another 1st May passed without any of the usual singing and drinking. I live amongst docile sheep.

Spent a sunday climbing around at a beach up north with while star was freediving and hunting for his dinner. I also went to kilowatt every night for 15 days in a row - it's good to have achievable goals.

This morning my room got flooded as the drain in the shower backwashed. Think it might be related to the losers in the top floor apartment who use the garden (where there's another drain) as their ashtray. Smelled wonderful.

Kigger mig omrking efter et nyt job, det' stadigvaek temmerligt uvist hvad der sker med biksen her. Og lige nu ville jeg meget gerne vaere sikker paa at have et nyt job, saa jeg kan raese ud og koebe billetter til roskilde e.lign.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Been doing a lot of gnome-pilot repair/features. Especially the restore feature got a lot of attention.

10 Apr 2001

Tue, 10 Apr 2001 00:08:11 GMT

life

So I was apparently even more pissed at the guadec issue than I initially thought, think I'm over it now.

The campingtrip was good for me. The drive up north 101 is pretty neat, loads of nice scenery which is good and all and becomes boring after the first two or three hours. So in my quest for a change, I picked up a hitchhiker ; it was a big burly guy with an unkept beard, old military clothes, a unfriendly expression, a bottle in a brown paper bag and a chainsaw... He didn't talk much, but actually was just a lumberjack on the way home, but since his car was dead, he had to hitch back and forth between home and work, so no chainsaw massacre.

So I finally came to the turnoff for highway 1, went down that about 15km and then weered onto Usal Road for another 12km or so. Usal Road is an unmaintained dirttrack, that was sort of fun to drive on that.

Finally you come to the campground, which sucked, so I just payed my camping fee, went back the road to this really neat place about 100m over the ocean on a hillside leading directly into the unfriendly waters of the pacific pond. At this time the sun was setting, so I hurriedly put up the tent and moved in the sleeping gear and whatever food stuff I needed, cooked crap dinner and went to sleep.

Next day the weather was bloody good, more or less just sat in the sun all day, reading Cerebus, sipping heineken and getting a good old sunburn on the back. Then spent some hours gathering rocks for a campfire and firewood. Cooked more crap dinner, watched the sun go down, watched the fire go out and went to sleep.

Started friday morning with removing a tick from my leg (using peanutbutter, a knife and vodka..) thereafter I concluded that the weather sucked severely (rained all day), mostly stayed inside the tent except when I needed to piss or cook water for some coffee, finished cerebus vol 2.

The night sucked, the tent wasn't as watertight as I hoped, so I had to get up in the middle of the night and put my tarp over the tent so could sleep well, froze my butt off.

Saturday morning the weather was ok, but I was in too foul a mood because of lack of sleep and whatnot, so I just started packing and drove back to SF, stopping on the way to "rent" a motelroom for an hour so I could grab a shower.

At this point, the tickbite had begun to look (quoting yakk:) "festy", but there was drinking at the kilowatt to be done, so I ignored my leg for that day.

The next day it looked even more "festy", and was definitely infected, so I wobbled up the hospital, got to stare at a wall for two hours untill a doctor poked a bit at me, concluded that I probably didn't have any of the five hundred bad diseases that ticks carry (since it wasn't on me for more than 10 hours or so), but put me on antibiotics for the infection, great.

Now I'm back at work, not that I've done any so far...

... og ikke at jeg' i humør til at lave meget pt. Men det kommer vel på et eller andet tidspunkt.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Nothing...

4 Apr 2001

Wed, 4 Apr 2001 00:44:27 GMT

life

Well, since last I've spent a weekend being slightly sick (think I got the Bolivian DeathPlague from Ramiro), watched dvd's all day with Ian ("The Filth and The Fury" and "Pi"). Other than that, it's been pretty much slacking around on my part. Been going to the kilowatt a lot (apparently so often now, that I occasionally get a free beer from Karla, what a wonderfull person!) went to a fun houseparty which was more or less in a Wallgreens parking lot somewhere on 3rd Street (party got shut down by SFPD around 4am).

I was supposed to be leaving for .dk today, but alas Eazel must have felt my time was so valuable that they chose not to send me (røvhuller), so I'm still in my cube. But I'll be taking of for some solitude hiking over the next few days, spending my birthday in the second best company available (myself), some books, fresh air and optionally some snaps.

We're still having fun with our property manager and the roofdeck (short summary is, that we thought we would have access to the roofdeck, but it turned out that only the topfloor appartment can use it, unfortunately our lease says we have access to it), he basically will not let us use it, so now we're at the point were we're considering filing a "reduction of services" suit with help of the SF Tenants Union to get a rent decrease or at least just to raise hell to ensure he/they don't get away with dicking us around too easily.

The office is pretty different these days, empty and a lot of people have moved around to be closer to each other. We now also have a lounge with the bar and a fishtank, I've expanded my territory to where mfleming used to sit, so now I too have a cozy little corner in which I can sleep in my beanbag.

And on the good side was, my muse sent me a package with two excellent items for me, that made my day.

Tja, som sagt er jeg temmelig bitter over ikke at være på vej til danmark lige nu, der var så mange jeg gerne ville se igen... Næsten alle som skulle have været afsted til konferencen fik et nej, kun nogle få kom afsted. Begrundelsen var, at det ville være ufedt for biksen af miste så mange arbejdsdage lige nu, hvilket lyder ok, på den anden side er det ikke just fordi vi er ved at slå os selv ihjel, tværtimod...

Men hey, jeg tager revance senere på året.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Fixed various bugs in libeazelinstall.

Still waiting for a pilot-link release so I can release a new gnome-pilot.

Think I've found a bug in glibc's writev, will mail mailinglists next week.

19 Mar 2001

Mon, 19 Mar 2001 19:56:44 GMT

life

So we finally moved (well, thats two weeks ago now). It was UHaul action time, I took the truck down to Sunnyvale to pick up yakk and his stuff (of course, as soon as we started moving stuff out, it began to rain, duh), and then went on to Eazel to pick up jsh and his furniture (a lot less than any of us). After unloading at the new place, we went to pick up my crap and then the move was complete, yay, time for beer at the kilowatt.

The next morning disaster struck - first off, I had to return the truck by 7, so I got up at 6. Then the truck just wouldn't start, the batteries seemed to be utterly dead. Now I was pretty sure that we didn't leave any lights on, and I had noted that the battery indicator had been on all day during the move. So I went down to the UHaul place and explained my issues, and they told me to call their repair center number. So I waddled back to the truck, found a payphone and called. It took about an hour to actually get them to send a guy by, during which I was standing in the rain, enjoying the scenery that is 16th street sunday morning at 7 till 8, really wonderfull, I'd suggest that to anyone coming by. So finally the repair dude called back and said he'd be at the truck in twenty minutes (woohoo). After a few attempts at jumpstarting the truck, he also arrives at the brilliant conclusion that both batteries are utterly dead. So he ends up replacing them before the truck will even sound like the old piece of crap it is.

So I conclude the affair with having to search frantically for a gas station that has diesel, drive the truck back and almost have to pay 40$ for being four hours late (which I didn't). Thereafter I went back to the old apt to clean on the rest of my room, and the move was complete.

Of course now we have do deal with a property manager who seems to be fucking people over. The add for the apt mentioned the great view from the roofdeck, even had a picture. When we looked at the place, and signed the lease, we were told we could use the roofdeck and the lease specifically mentions that we can use the roof. Of course then the people who moved into the topfloor apartment (which is a two-story apt of which the top story is on the roof) were told that the roofdeck was exclusively theirs. So now we either fight it out with them or with the property managers. In addition to that, the two windows where the frames are broken still haven't been fixed and we still miss keys for various doors. Too much shit to deal with right now...

... since the company also just laid of more than forty people, basically everyone but a few managers (founders) and engineering got laid off. So we release version 1.0 and lay off about 60% of the staff, that was a pretty though day for many of the eazelites. Apparently with the generel dropping stock market, some investors pulled out and therefore we did not get the third round of funding we wanted (which should also have been our last). By laying off all those people, the company can continue a bit longer, giving us a chance to raise the needed money - it's going to be a though few months now.

This also means that I might not be able to go to Guadec, since everyone will be doing 14 hour workdays the next few months (again...) - that would totally blow.

So Kvan just visited me for a few days, he was in the states for his annual cigar-smoking-visiting thing. Amongst things we did was getting drunk, driving down highway 1 to Santa Cruz (beaches), Fry's, go to a cigar lounge and meet with other cigar people, shopping spree in Japantown, looking at traffic accidents on Market Street. Luckily I had gotten three days off this week (after working three weeks straight), so I took wednedsday till friday off to hang out with Kvan, just dropped him off at the airport again...

Tja, så man må sgu nok sige at nedsvinget lige pludselig ramte os smak mellem øjnene. Vi har gryn til nogle måneder, men hvis der ikke sker noget så lukker og slukkes biksen, hvilket jo unægteligt ville sutte temmeligt meget. Men jeg agter at blive ved til den bitre ende og så se om vi overlever eller om jeg skal på jobmarkedet igen.

Det hårde smæk er at jeg nok ikke kommer til dk igenigen, det stinker unægteligt. Problemet er at så snart jeg er ude af thermostaterne skal jeg til en ambassade for at få stemplet mit pas. Og det kan snildt tage dem en uges tid (pga. deres latterlige åbningstider), hvoffor jeg skulle have mindst halvanden uge i Københavnstrup og det er lige akkurat lidt for lang tid.

Det må man jo nok sige alt i alt sutter væmmeligt meget, finder ud af det i løbet af ugen.

(summary for the danish impaired : fuck off).

hacking

Slaved through the Nautilus 1.0 milestone. It was though, but it was worth it. The installer was really a pain in the butt and caused the usual few firedrills ; eg. if run on a stock RH70 with glibc 2.1.9x, rpm could hang while waiting for /sbin/ldconfig would wait for someone to empty it's stderr output, good thing anyone tried on a stock 70 before we shipped.

Other that libeazelinstall stuff and installer testing/fixing etc, haven't done much other hacking. With the new situation, I may get to work on other things, time will show.