boah, the most annoying time of the year is done again... this year i evaded christmas as good as possible by doing loads of work for my company and the university. by avoiding to turn on the radio and the tv you can circumvent almost 70% of the fuss. the remaining 30% are stuff on hoardings, in the paper and on the internet. but well, it is finally done, so 'nuff ranting. ok, besides all the commercial crap, xmess is all about one thing: presents! yahooo... this year i really got a great one from my brother - a painting. this really fine piece of art was done in acryl on canvas. it's entitled "trace". at first i didn't really get it. take a look yourself here, maybe you'll find out... _spoiler-begin_: on the next lines you get the solution... yeah... on the left you have a footprint, on the right a trail from bottom to the top. you have some red and some lurid green spots all over the picture. the green spots enclose some bubbles. ok, if you know i'm an alien fan, it should now be pretty obvious what this all is about. the footprint was done by an alien, the trail is from its tail. the red spots are blood (guess my brother thinks aliens are always on a killing spree?) and the green stuff is slime. i love this one! _spoiler-end_ but not only receiving presents is great fun (mostly), also giving presents is a pleasure sometimes. especially if it's a trip to prague on New Year's Eve with a girl you really are in love with. yeah, right - zombiequeen and i will go to prague from 30th of december 2005 to the 3rd of january 2006. i'm sure this will be a great stay! pix will definitely be included in the next bLog-entry. meanwhile... happy new year, dudez'n'dudellaz...

oh yeah - the annual party called "winterfest" (abbreviated as "WTF") took place again yesterday at hagenberg, upper austria. this year it was not that frosty as the last wtf i attended, the drinks were cheaper (non-alcoholic for me, alcoholic ones for zombiequeen), the music was ok (poor DJ was sitting in the cold all the time...) and i enjoyed talking to a lot of people i met. additionally we had fun playing tabletop football. at first with lexx and phil, then with Eliza and Uetzguer. it was great fun and a great chance to rewarm. but the best thing from yesterdays evening was this: a stamp from thinkgeek! this cool present from H-nes really comes in handy for my daily office work. read what it says here (i really luv this stamp! - thx so much H-nes)! oh, and of course - as usual - here are the pix. happy xmess, dudez'n'dudellaz...

eye bee kay...what? i b k, short for innsbruck. yop, there's been a nice party at a party location provided by GangMan. and, as promised, i took loads of pics with the new cam... besides the party, it's been my first trip to innsbruck (and first trip to tyrol that lasted longer than 1 hour) so you'll find loads of pics of innsbruck too. i think the pics don't need any comments, you'll get what it was all about... all in all i really enjoyed the party because of the people that have been there (some of them have their internship or even their work place in germany), so seeing them again was really nice. oh, finally the pics.

oh yeah! "reward yourself whenever you've finished a project!", the lecturer said in the time management lecture. ok, so i have done. my reward was a canon eos 350d, a DSLR (colloquially for "digital single lens reflex"). don't ask for what "project" this reward was. i guess for my last 3 semesters at the university of applied science in hagenberg - yeah, a quite exhausting and time-consuming project. and while it's not finished yet, at least 3 milestones have been done successfully! so, why is it brought up here in the boring-log? well, new cam means new pics! harhar... here are some hand-picked examples: * lilo_trilogy * lilo_unhappy * lilo_watching * lince_01 * lince_02 * phil_flower * red_tower * two_dragons and here is a cool sample pic done by zombiequeen: * tree a gallery of mixed pics done by zombiequeen and me is here: * dynamite05 ok, more to come after this weekend which i will spend in innsbruck at GangMan's party-place. guess some pics will be made there too...

yow. i fixed my command-line applications "wyrd" and "raggle". cool - now i'm on time again for every meeting/appointment, and up-to-date by reading all subscribed blogs again... i'm feeling lucky now. furthermore my presentation was quite ok, my professor said "nice slides". harhar... - get it online here (source is here, my other ming projects are here). hm... well, besides that, nothing new to report. maybe more after this weekend, which i will spend with zombiequeen in lower-austria. have a nice weekend, dear reader.

during the last few weeks i had a lot of work with my project for the university of applied science in hagenberg. i have a presentation on it on the 17th of november. still i don't know how many details i can tell at this presentation. well, let's see. if i am allowed to include some facts, maybe i'll put the presentation online (maybe someone's interested). besides that i finished an exposition i had to to for the last term. though focus was more on scientific writing some effort was put into the content too. feel free to get it here. yow, besides all the work there was party-time too. on 11th of november Ro had his birthday party at his new flat in hagenberg. pictures taken by several people can be seen here: JG^'s phil's Eliza's nostromo's gallery. a new gallery with pix of linux is online now too. watch it here. and finally another photo trip along the river danube was taken by zombiequeen and me. you find the gallery online here. done with the update.

introduction about what this "media gala 05"-stuff is all about can be found here. what i'm very happy about is the fact that zombiequeen's project "teapot" has won a price! this is so cool and i am so happy for her. furthermore i'm really glad this event is over now, since it really drew upon zombiequeen for weeks. this had its peak level in sleepless nights for her to finish stuff for the gala - poor her... well, it is done, and the show was really great. she (and the rest of the team) really did her (their) job very well! in summary, it was really impressive what students are able to produce. the submissions done to the media gala were really great (all of them)! enough with commendations, here are the pics! enjoy...

once a year several bigger cities (such as vienna, linz, etc...) are arranging a night where one can visit all participating museums with only one ticket. 2003 i visited the museums in linz, this year i planned to go to vienna with zombiequeen, since vienna has way more museums than linz has. well, it turned out that this is a big disadvantage. the event starts at 18:00 and ends at 01:00, so one has 5 hours to visit the museums you're interested in. since we went there with several friends there were already 3 museums that some of us wanted to visit. we started at the MAK ("museum fuer angewandte kunst"/"museum of applied arts") taking a look at an exhibition with focus on anime. there even were anime-drawing courses, but this would have been too time consuming. instead we decided to go to the "heindl schokolade museum" ("chocolate museum"). well it turned out that the shuttle-bus takes 40 mins to get there. when we arrived there it would have taken another 20mins until the next guided tour started. since it already was late and we wanted to see many more exhibitions, we decided to jump the bus back to town without seeing the chocolade museum from inside (instead we had a glance through big windows, giving an insight into the museum too). well, back to the center of vienna again took 30mins. yuhu, 80mins wasted for nothing! since it was already 00:30 we took the next museum we saw. so we visited the "naturhistorisches museum wien" ("natural history museum"). there we had a quick look at the "vivarium", mostly fishes and marine fauna. then we went on to the dinsoaur section with loads of bones, skulls and other fossiled bodyparts. pretty cool, actually. well, all in all we had loads of fun this night, but vienna has way too much museums. one can never make a lot of museums since there's definitely not enough time. next year i will stay in linz again, this time bringing my friends to linz, and giving them a guide. finally: the pix. hf

well, we (RISCSW) had the annual seminar. since this is the second seminar since i started working there, and last year i couldn't participate (though i actually don't remember why), this was my first seminar at this company. well on thursday, 16:00 we (geekU and rmu) left for bad fuessing, located in germany, near the border to austria. after a 2 hour ride we arrived there. well, as one can see from the website, bad fuessing is a health resort with a spa. due to this fact, the only people we saw in town, the hotel and the "disco" we went to, were old... _really_ old. furthermore it seems, because of the spa, people in bad fuessing don't care too much about prices for heating. additionally i think old people like it warm. so whenever we stayed indoor, it was warm, sometimes even hot. after having supper our secretary asked at the reception where to go to have fun. she was told to go to the "juwel-club". well, it turned out, that the "juwel-club" is again focused on old people, ... _really_ old people. ok, so night-life? no. instead we entertained ourself, got slightly drunk. alcohol made my colleagues do strange things, but see yourself by looking at the gallery-pics. friday morning and afternoon were exclusively for talking about company-internals. though exhausting, it was fun and i think it was really worth all the effort. afterwards we (geekU, rmu and akonda) watched the making-of movie from battle-royal. this made me quite tired, so i went to my room and took a nap. afterwards the entire company went to a pizzeria. in the evening most of my colleagues again went to club-juwel (i guess mainly because it was just across the street, so they would find their way home, even when totally drunk - well, all of them did so). geekU and i explored the streets of bad fuessing at night instead. well, as we expected, there was not much to explore. the streets were empty after 22:00 o'clock, and all restaurants, "bars" and cafes closed between 00:00 and 01:00 o'clock. but we found a garden where loads of bronze sculptures stood around - that looked pretty nice actually (see the gallery-pics again). around 02:00 we went to bed. saturday-morning again was reserved for company stuff, talks and discussions. again it was pretty cool, since the stuff we were talking about affected all of us. at about 14:00 we drove home again. i feel older now, _really_ older...

* 25.09.2005, 11:00 - 13:00 having breakfast with people from an IRC-channel i am joined in vienna. nice people, nice talking, nice breakfasting, no nice pics. * 25.09.2005, 13:30 - 16:30 climbing the "anninger" (lower-austria, gumpoldskirchen). nice woods, nice plants, nice animals (although pretty annoying), nice trip, very very very very nice companionship, nice pics. * 28.09.2005, 21:30 - 22:00 fetching k-thrin from the train station. then going to a party in hagenberg. actually it was a three-in-one party: - homecoming of c-na, from her internship in australia - farewell to n1k and k-thrin, both going abroad - birthday of c-na and GangMan nice party, nice people, nice talks, mostly nice music, and most important for you (as i guess), nice pics.

been to the zoo yesterday with zombiequeen. we went to the zoo in schmiding. though it was raining all the time, loads of animals were outdoor (out of their indoor-cages that is). see a few pix of those lovely creatures here. furthermore there is a small museum included in the zoo-area too. we went there to stay away from the rain for a few mins. thanks to zombiequeen for this beautiful day.

boah, quite impressive country. cool landscapes, flora and fauna. of course a hand-selected collection of pix i have taken is online here. well, my plan was to take a picture of every cat i see, but some were pretty shy and ran away too fast or stayed too far away so even my 5x digital-zoom was not good enough. but i caught quite a lot of cats anyway. my girlfriend and i did some trips through the south-region of portugal, named "algarve". we went there by bus and guidance. we had a boat-trip too, going into caves - pretty impressive. one thing was really shocking: the prices for connectivity in internet-cafes. the cheapest offer was 80 (european) cents for 10mins. the most expensive one was 125 (european) cents for 15mins. so i only was online for 20mins within this week. puh, pretty tough, but i made it... ok, enough blah blah for now - enjoy the pix.

ok, being on vacation now for one week, and my company had loads of work for me. unlucky me, i'm not in portugal yet but sitting in austria, being online and fixing their stuff. oh well, they will manage to get everything working without me too. i'm sure. at least... i hope they will. leaving for portugal tomorrow. never been there. people say it's wonderful. i think i like most the fact they have an internet-"C@fe" there "with a fast ADSL lines [sic]". the village i'm going to even has a homepage. listed in the FAQs as number 3: "I was wondering if there is an Internet Bar?". so, looks like a perfect place to stay... and if the environment/"ADSL lines"/weather is crap i have a wonderful, beautiful, admirable, adorable, bikini-chick at my side! *slurp* what else happened the last few days? well, not too much. my girlfriend and me slightly ran into troubles finding a cat-sitter for little cutie "lilo". but we found the perfect one, i guess, namely H-nes. though he still has to fight for lilos sympathies i'm sure the two will get along very well after a few days. meow. i met a few IRC-friends in vienna. never seen them before in real-life. we started at pandoras-box where they have tabletop-football games. while we were playing just for fun there, we were asked if we wanna join a tournament. we agreed, forming two teams. since my female team-mate got hungry while we were waiting for our first tournament-game we decided to loose as fast as possible. well, in fact all other competitors were far way better - guess they were semi-professionals. but in our four games we achieved 8 goals! wow... afterwards we went to "chelsea" having a lot of fun again. ok, not too much text at once. that's what i dislike about blogs. besides, if i write too much, no one believes in the boringness of this blog anymore.

since BOFH-stuff ain't happening these days (everybody's on vacation) i decided to rename my blog from BOFH-log to BORING-log. this has two advantages: first of all i do not disappoint anybody when not blogging about BOFH-stuff only, and secondly i can write about whatever i like. but since this "whatever" will be related to my everyday life, i'm sure it will be boring. so, "BORING-log" seems just perfectly fitting! so, have fun...

i phoned IKEA yesterday and they had an answering-machine guiding me through the entire request i had. so it was like "for which IKEA-shop do you want infos? press 1 for ..." - i punched "4" for the nearest IKEA-shop. then on and on, punching numbers on my mobile. after 1 minute and 52 seconds i got my question answered without even talking a single word, just pressing numbers. ok, no big deal, but i thought, hey, what a good service for users? like a user is calling because s/he's having troubles. the answering-machine could ask things like... * "do you have windows installed? if no, press '1', if yes, press the 'hang-up'-button" or * "do you want to print? if yes, press '1'" [...] - "is the printer turned on? if no, press the 'hang-up'-button, ..." or * "do you want to worship your sysadmin? if yes, press '666', if no press the 'hang-up-button" or * "are you sure your minor problem is worth wasting precious time of your sysadmin? sure you are sure it is NOT! so press the 'hang-up'-button NOW!" hm... i think this would really make my live easier and more peaceful! i will propose this to my boss...

well, nothing to report from my office for today. about 75% of my co-workers are on vacation. so there's not much ranting and even less emails with requests - good for me. the only things that still prevents me from having a great time at the office is the broken air-conditioner. it's now broken since thursday, and we're having the hottest days since ... guess what - thursday. i hope they'll fix it soon! well... i was watching this picture today, and a few hours later i was pointed to this link. i think patchsee is pretty cool. maybe i'll propose this stuff to my boss one day, if our server-room looks just as shown on the pic above.

yo, i was watching this cute movie today with the lovely little penguins. the touching thing about it is, the system-administrators were mentioned in the credits. well, my co-workers didn't even bring me a cup of coffee on friday :/ next year i will shutdown a few services on sysadminday, maybe this will make my company respect my work a little more. we'll see...

so i thought it's a good occasion to start my "bLog" - which means "BOFH-log". since i'm a sysadmin, let's see what is worth to mention in my everyday work... but let's celebrate the sysadminday first! LET'S PARTY! YAHOOOO...

^C: project pitchfork, carpe noctem festival

fleischverstaerker the future is now fire and ice io carnival existence v4.1 timekiller

^C: covenant, carpe noctem festival

shelter 20 hz brave new world luminal consumer beat the noise stalker call the ships to port

^C: vnv nation (soman, diorama), szene wien

chrome joy darkangel arena standing epicentre entropy endless skies legion honour 2003 homeward solitary perpetual further beloved electronaut