Ole's online internet presence

That went well - I survived. Because everybody wanted to get home and watch Germany beat Brazil (or so they thought), we did only the deep dive sunday. The search and rescue dive has been postponed until wednesday. Unfortunately the deep dive took a little longer time than expected so we did not finish before the match was practically over and Germany had lost. U/W navigation was interesting and nice to learn. Photography - well, now I've tried it :-) Saturday evening, after navigation and photography, we drove to another lake, waited until it got dark, and did 40 minutes of night dive. Even with powerfull flashlamps the visibility is very limited. Got home at 2, sunday morning. Sunday at 9:45 we went again, this time for the deep dive. Approximately 100 meters out and 20 meters down. 7 C temperature and 50 centimeter visibility. Nice.

I told you I signed up for the Advanced Open Water Diver course (AOW)? Well, they didn't get back to me, so I thought it was cancled, or something - until yesterday, where they contacted me. So I went by the shop at Rheinstr., and picked up the manual. In German. They were sorry they couldn't get me one in English language, and sorry I'd have to read some 150+ pages thursday evening, and do the tests. Today we'll meet at 19 at their locations, and evaluate the tests (gonna be fun) and get to know each other. Saturday we'll do U/W photography, navigation, and night dive. Sunday we'll do deep diving and then finish with search and rescue.

... and today I upgraded (again) OpenSSH. This time to version 3.4p1, which should be safe to use. Spend the rest of the day updating the WPAD for the email abuse project.

I will try to maintain the following schedule: monday - running, tuesday - the gym, wednesday - running, thursday - the gym, saturday or sunday - the gym.

Just got back after 8 km in the woods with the crazy Britons. Had a quick lunch, and now I'm applying latest recommended patch cluster to my Solaris 8 machines. Upgraded to OpenSSH 3.3p1 earlier today since all previous versions are exploitable.

Slept till 12, showered and finished the last 100 pages in Speaker (which I have also read before). Made 12 excellent tasting pancakes - hardly didn't use any salt (scared shitless they would turn out like last sunday!). Did some general vacuum cleaning, and fetched my laundry from the cellar.

Saturday. Went to the furniture shop and placed an order for an Interlübke Holmenbett. Expected delivery: end of August. If I had placed the order three days ago I would have gotten it in 4 weeks. I guess hackers (men who create furniture with axes) also have to have vacation sometime.

Spend the afternoon in the Herrngarten, reading my newspaper. Read Speaker for the Dead in the evening.

Picked up Orson Scott Card's 'Shadow of the Hegemon' at half past nine, just after dinner. Finished half past two in the morning. Of course I've read it before, and of course it's not James Joyce, but I'm glad to see I can still do 100 pages an hour.

Produced packages for Apache-1.3.26 in response to the newly published remote root exploit in all Apache servers older than 1.3.26 on virtually all major platforms. Including GNU/Linux on x86. The only published, working exploit is for OpenBSD, and it looks very easy (compiled painless on my Solaris box with gcc). Cannot last long before exploit code for the other platforms show up. I think we will not be targeted, but if someone makes a worm with this exploit as payload we could see hell break loose in short time.

30-something degrees. Phew.

Signed up for Advanced Open Water diving course the last weekend in June. Darmstadt has a 5 star PADI diving centre, which looks nice. Unfortunately Germany doesn't have any oceans nearby, but I guess a lake will make an okay substitute.

Put too much salt in the pancakes. GRRR!!! They look nice, smell nice, but are almost uneatable! I didn't throw the pan through the window, but I thought about it.

Confirmed delivery date for my dining table: end of June. Confirmed delivery date for my book shelves: end of August. I think I know what bed I'm going to buy (so far I've been sleeping on an inflatable mattress. Looses air after 4 hours).

Watched Denmark loose 0-3 to England at the An Sibin Irish pub. Luckily England won, otherwise I might have been beaten up by the 500 hooligans there.

Will head home and see if there's any food in the fridge. 11 hours at work and I'm busted. Oh, went to the gym yesterday evening. One hour of lattisimus dorsi, pectoralis major and some triceps in the end. Should be ready again for sunday.

Spend most of the day reverse engineering a handfull of sendmail.cf files to their respective sendmail.mc's. Great fun - especially since the files were build back in 1999 (sendmail 8.9.2) and the system administrators have been rearranging the files occasionally since then.

First 90 minutes of German lessons from 1730 to 1900, then 3 hours of "field testing" it with Danni and Markus (who live on the second floor in my building) and two of their friends over white wine and ice cream. Very kind of them to invite me, and quite an intellectual challenge for me to follow their conversations and try to act like I understand everything.

Started writing a Work Package Activity Description for the Email Abuse Project. The four main activities involve DNSBL with ordb.org on the external mail gateways (can run on our existing sendmail-8.10.2), upgrade of internal mail relays to newest sendmail with support for the libmilter API, and hooks into MimeDefang+SpamAssassin on dedicated servers. Anti-Virus software on the mail gateways (Symantec - will need either libmilter - and then we also need to upgrade to a newer Sendmail - or Symantec's Anti Virus for Gateways. Anyway, it's an activity which will not be addressed within the next half year at the earliest), and two Lotus Notes-thingies, which I try not to get involved in. We receive way over 10.000 emails per day, so I'm excited to see what hardware will be needed for the SpamAssassin-boxes to deal with that.

Called T-Mobile and tried to explain the kind lady that I had never received the original invoice, so it was unfair to charge me extra because I had not paid it. Sometimes I have problems finding the right words in German. Talked with the cleaning lady about it - she's from Italy and have been here for 30 years. Speaks fluent German (as far as I can hear), and have never received any lessons. We agreed (in German) that I will eventually learn it. Just needs to practice.

I asked Silvia today if all Italians now hate all Danes, because the linesman who disallowed the two Italian goals in their 1-2 loss to Croatia was Danish. She didn't think so.

Not many shops are open on Sundays! Eventually I found a backery which would sell me 1 litre of milk. Not ecological, of course. Tried a new recipe for pancakes: 3 egs, 3 spoons of sugar, salt, 3-4 dL of flour, 3 dL of milk, 75 g of melted butter produce 10 nice pancakes in less than an hour. They tasted nice, but 75 g of melted butter makes them too greasy. Vacuum cleaned the entire appartment and washed the floors. It's easy since I have very little furniture yet, and the floor is of tiles. Got an interesting email from Keith: The coffee machine downstairs will only charge 0,20 EUR if you place your own cup in the machine, and then make your selection. This way every 5. cup of coffee is free! Didn't yesterday, so I will today, soon, go to the gym and see if there are any weights begging to be lifted (and put back down. And lifted. And put back down...).

Slept till 11, went to Karstadt and bought 25 hangers for my shirts, pants etc. Went past Alnatura in Elisabethenstrasse for food on the way home. Alnatura is the 'Super Natur Markt' - ie a super market which sells ecological and biodynamical food. There are two of them in Darmstadt and they carry a wide range of food and other necessities. I only have to take 10% of my shopping elsewhere. Back home I sorted the content of the remaining crates, which I have had in my living room until now. Winter clothing in one crate, outdoor equipment (sleeping bags, tent, goretex jackets...) in another and so on. Carried four crates down the basement, and three big shopping bags to the recycling containers. Now I only have four full crates containing books left in the living room. Until I get my book shelves they'll have to stay there. Spend some hours ironing, washing, reading the news paper (I get Berlingske Weekendavisen delivered every saturday morning). Listened to U2's 'All that you can't leave behind' some twenty times.

Yesterday's gym was okay, even though it was the first time in a few weeks. Normally I tend to do two major muscle groups, three different exercises a 6-8 reps per muscle group, but to start slowly, yesterday I tried to spread it out: deltoids, pectoralis majoris, biceps, and triceps. Feels okay today - could have been much worse! Will go there again tomorrow saturday.

Went running today at noon. The people I run with are in quite good shape (understatement) and friday they normally take a 10 kilometer. With a few shortcuts so did I - and I only had to stop and walk four times. Got back just in time before the canteen closed and had a nice chicken breast with rise and spicy sauce. Chocolate mousse for desert. Watched a little part of England versus Argentina while eating. There's a large group of Englishmen working at the Agency, and they were quite excited. By now the match must have ended. Have to check the web (or ask somebody) for the result.

Today's German lessons were (noch einmal) about the adjective declination. Damn. It's not much fun, when I have to use 10 minutes constructing each sentence before I can say it. We're paying for the lessons ourselves, but it takes place at the Agency. 90 minutes each wednesday evening and 45 minutes each thursday in the lunch break. Besides the exciting international environment, the good weather, the low taxes and the high salery we also get to learn another language. Oh well.

Placed an order for book shelves today. Will arrive in some 13 weeks.

Didn't go running today. For no particular reason - other that I didn't bring my gear. Some of the guys run every monday, wednesday, and friday, in the woods behind the Agency. Have been joining them 3 times now, and should hope to be able to do it without puking on myself real soon now. Will go to the gym tomorrow with Keith after work.

Got back from Copenhagen last night. 330 EUR for a return ticket with SAS/Lufthansa. Had a tight schedule: thurday I met with Per, Erik, and Sven (business partners, friends from Uni, and more) and had sandwiches around Christianshavn. Went to Lyngby to visit my uncle and aunt and cousins in the evening. Friday Niels (old neighbour) was over from Malmoe, and I spend the afternoon with him and Charlotte (another old neighbour) whom we visited. In the evening I joined up with Andreas and his Nokia-friends at Nansensgade for some intensive beer drinking and mobile phone show-off. Later I spend 3 hours with Karine and Rene (both from high school) at Noerrebro. Was back at Bispetinget (Amager) at two. Saturday I met with the gang from ml. 7. (Egmont) at Sct. Hans torv for some hours afterwhich I headed for Birkeroed to visit my grand dad, and my mom, who came over from Jutland. Sunday I went with my former colleagues Jose and Servio to Bellevue beach to enjoy the sand, the water, the girls, and the beers. Very nice. And sunday at 19:15 I caught the plane home to Frankfurt. Great extended weekend.