Kae's Pages

29/Apr/2001

I left my previous employment on the last day of last month, and applied immediately for unemployment assistance from the local "social welfare" office. After almost a full month, they decided that I am "not unemployed" (their words), as I plan on opening an Internet cafe. Yes, they are right - I plan to open an Internet cafe - but I cannot do so until a commercial property is available to rent, so it is very obvious that I cannot be considered as employed until that happens! I don't understand that decision. Naturally, I have appealed it, as I can't live without money, and have no means of getting it - despite anything the "social welfare" might say...

Today, at 14:34, my girlfriend Bronwyn asked me to give her the use of the computer so that she could check her mail. At almost 21:45, she was finished. In that time, I formulated the second page of my Neural Net notes, including the code for the network itself. I really must get another computer... I couldn't even test the code! Also, everything I've written will have to be typed into the machine. I was so bored I even went out into the back garden and started scrubbing the patch of concrete that's out there... that (washing something), for me, is extreme.

Bronwyn's parents have offered us one of their houses to rent for only 70 quid per week (compared to 110 per week at present). The only drawbacks are 1) the house is in Monaghan, and 2) her parents don't want the pets to come. I don't mind either of those, but Bronwyn will not move without the animals (all >80 of them). The parents will be coming over for a visit next week, so we'll have to convince them to change their minds.

22/Mar/2001

I see the periods between my diary entries are growing larger...

Last week, I couldn't come into work - indirectly because of "foot and mouth" disease. I wasn't too worried, as I was only documenting, and could do all that from home. I was not happy about being forced to stay home, though - especially as I will be leaving my present employers next week, and would have liked to go off on the right foot. This, combined with me being sick, didn't make me feel in a very talkative mood, which caused even more trouble - I wasn't feeling up to calling in and explaining that I would be taking an impromptu week off...

I will be upgrading the code of http://contactjuggling.org over the weekend, and will be releasing it as open-source at the end of next month. That will give me a month to make the site code as non-specific as I can. I expect that when the code is released, I will get some very good ideas thrown at me by the site's viewers (and possibly other people).

I had a chat with someone from the Kildare County Enterprise Board about getting a grant for Binarium - my computer services company. The officer said that the business plan was sound, and all I needed was to mention potential premises, and the plan (along with the application form) would be ready for evaluation. So, I went to the local property auctioneers, but neither of them had any commercial properties to let. Ah well - I'll have to check in another month, then.

15/Feb/2001

Valentines Day was yesterday. Unfortunately, I was too tired to give Bronwyn the amount of attention I'm sure she was hoping for. Maybe I'll be less tired next year.

Yesterday, I installed QMail on my work computer, and started using mutt as my mail client. I'm quite happy with it - it doesn't take up as much space on my desktop as KMail did, and it's a lot more flexible.

I have a headache right now. Very annoying. I should quit drinking tea - I think that's what's causing it.

Fixed the DNS for the company I work for yesterday. There were multiple ways of getting to the same address, which was causing some problems with CGI and authentication on the intranet. The fix managed to break a few scripts I'd written using alternative references for the server, but I think I've got them all now.

I must try to read more technical books. I had a plan to read technical books on the way into work and my usually rubbish on the way out, but that doesn't really work, so now I think it might be best if I just alternate the two - read one technical book per fiction book. I know that the knowledge I read in the technical books will not automatically stick, but if I read enough of them, then when I come across a problem I can't solve, I'll at least no generally what to do, and possibly remember what book it was I read up about it in.

25/Jan/2001

My father and one of my brothers will be staying in my house next week to do some background work on a business plan I came up with. If it works out, then I will be leaving my present employment in a few months to pursue this venture.

What is it? A netcafe - there are _no_ netcafes in Athy, where I live. It's really frustrating. The only Internet connections there are two crap computers in the local library. One is a Windows 98 machine which had the wrong keymapping (I fixed that immediately... amazed they hadn't done it), and the other is an NT machine with _extremely_ paranoid permissions - no floppy disk access, no FTP, IE5.5 (which is not even compatible with IE5.0 javascript...), and all on a crap box which is barely 386. The rules at the place are so bad that I had to have a floppy disk virus scanned before I could even format it...

My plan will be to open up a netcafe, with at least seven computers for public use. I'll sell computers, games, and magazines, and do repairs and possibly onsite troubleshooting. The business plan is almost complete. I brougt it to a local bank official, and was told it was a lot more researched than most that crossed her path (she was in charge of business loans). All I need to do now is get some market research done, buy a company name, and get a grant. Supposedly, that's all simple, and I hope, especially as the plan is so viable.

If all goes to plan, I'll be giving my present employers my month's notice in a month.

19/Jan/2001

Notice the lack of diary entries recently? I've been a little depressed lately, so couldn't be bothered. Also, I don't have an internet connection at home anymore, since moving to Athy. I wrote a load of interesting rants about that, I can tell you... I'll put them online as soon as I'm online at home - which could be a few months, as I don't want to get a phone line with E***** (they said I could get a free connection, then they tried to charge me over £200 for it...).

16/Nov/2000

I tried to install a new kernel in my machine today - it didn't work, but I'm getting pretty close to getting it right. Being able to install kernels means that I can speed up people's computers, or make their "memory footprint" smaller. The problem I was having was that the kernel installed alright, but for some reason, it couldn't find the network modules, which I had also compiled. Ah well - a problem for another day.

I've been thinking about that incident yesterday, and realised that it was all based on context - if the situation had involved people that I was not actually acquainted with, then it would be considered merely a funny tale, like these stories here, but as I knew the people involved, suddenly a minor incident became a case of mistaken intent.

On another aspect, it was mostly just an opinion - I could have just worked through it without noticing anything strange about it, but as I am the person that I am, I noticed that things could have been done differently.

15/Nov/2000

I made a mistake today of speaking my mind - I'm sure what I was thinking was okay, but the words turned out wrong. I'd like to apologise if I offended anyone. It was not meant in an offensive manner . Sometimes my sense of humour is not very readable. It was meant as a humourous tale. I guess I'm not a good politician - depite my best efforts.

So - to lighter things - I installed KDE2 on my machine today, and learned that "wget" can read through a proxy server, so I'm using it to get one of the latest Linux kernels.

I've been writing a new version of the Orbism Timesheeting application in PHP and MySQL, which should allow it to be more easily customizable, and less easy to break.

It's a short while later, and I still feel awful about that stupid mistake I made. I should really watch what I say - examining it from _all_ angles to find out if there is anything at all offensive about it. I really feel terrible about it. I hadn't realised that it could offend anyone, and when it was pointed out to me, I immediately felt faint, with the blood rushing to my head. I hope my explanation of why I hadn't thought it was offensive was okay, but I know that the damage is done already - first impressions...

12/Nov/2000

We went to Athy yesterday to look at the house and talk to the landlord - the house is kind-of small, but it will suit the two of us, and will be cosy - especially as Bronwyn will be taking up full-time "house-wifing" - cleaning and taking care of the house, etc. I feel she has got the easier deal, but I don't really care...

We were crossing a road in Tallaght village today, and I happened to glance into a car windscreen and see Andy - desperately trying to avoid me seeing him. It was very funny to see him trying to duck and not be seen - does he not know that doing something out of the ordinary makes him more visible?? What an idiot...

I talked with my brother Michael later on about it - he had a bit of an incident with him a few months ago. Apparently, Michael was drinking with a friend of his (and an old enemy (now ex-) of mine) and got on the bus to go home. He saw Andy sitting down the back and they waved to each other. Then he remembered that we had had a falling out, and went down the back. He sat beside Andy, and asked how he was doing. Andy said he was doing okay, then made a stupid mistake. He said "Whatever you heard about myself and Kae, it was a lie" - what kind of idiot says something like that?

Michael turned around to him and said "Andy, you're a prick, and if you don't get off the bus right now, I'm going to kill you." - "kill you" meaning "batter some sense into you".

Andy knew that he was on the wrong side, so didn't try defending himself - he just got up and walked to get off the bus. As he passed Michael (and my) friend, the friend (who I will not name for obviou reasons) got up and hit him.

I think the above incident is the reason Andy was hiding from me today - he knows that even if I won't do anything violent myself, I have family and friends who will defend me whether I ask them or not.

I'm using Windows Telnet to access the server to write this, and it sucks - seriously - since Win95, this telnet client has not improved at all - I'm using WinMe at the moment, and the telnet client has not changed a single bit - it really sucks.

The music, though... I'm listening to Dead Can Dance's "Dead Can Dance" - an album I definitely recommend to anyone. I wish I could write music like that - the music I usually write has some melody and rhythm, but nothing as powerful as this stuff.

I'll be moving everything to the new house in Athy by the weekend, so by next monday (the 20^th, I think), I'll be a "bog-warrior" *g*.

10/Nov/2000

I had a bit of time on my hands, so I organised the diary section into seperate pages (before today, it was all on one page).

Over the last few days, I've lost two more animals, and nearly lost a third. The first was Weird Al - a Roborovski dwarf hamster - he escaped from his cage on the day we were cleaning the house for the landlord to inspect. A few days later (we caught him that day), he lost all his energy, and died - it looks like he must have been injured while he was out - his back legs were swollen and bruised, so I guess he must have got run over when I was shifting furniture - he probably died of internal injuries.

The second death was an albino Syrian hamster which hadn't been named yet - I found him in his cage, lying face down - when he was picked up, there was blood lying on the bedding, and his mouth and nose were clogged with it. He was still alive, but died shortly afterwards.

censored by Bronwyn

We've found a nicely priced house in Kildare, which we will be looking at on Saturday. Bronwyn is trying to urge me to get a loan off my mother in order to ensure we have enough for the deposit and rent (about £940, I guess)

Work is getting interesting - last week, I transferred all the mail to a new server, and took a week to fix the teething problems - the US office are still having trouble with SMTP, but I'm hoping that the IPEng guys can solve that - a simple matter of putting the US guys' IP numbers into the allowed RCPTHOSTS.

This week, the DNS was transferred for the web server, so I'm currently running around the new intranet server trying to fix up any broken CGIs, or other such stuff (absolute addresses and stuff).