After an eternity (2 months), we've recieved a personalified mail from our personalified mass mailer from IC2k6. I personally feel that when you do something stupid, you should seriously burn your rear to remember not to do such things in future. As a reporter of a small newspaper, I know as no other as a mistake from my side from nearly half a year ago is still out there on the net.

But in India, information travels slowly and my blog has gotten national publicity (or something...dunno) now that India found out I posted about a sp...mass mail during IC2k6 which is hot news today!

Aaaanyway, after a lot of personalified mass mails to Rolf, I found out that the number in my very hot news today, was a cellphone number and not a contact ID. So somehow, she got called by some really interested males from the other side of India that are now riding their bike to Agra.

Morally speaking, I'd be prepared to remove that and only that from my post instead of removing the entire post which turns out to be cached on Google and turns up rather high in the hit list when you search for her name (what do you expect from hot news? o.O ). After all, I've been cached myself as well for all my stupidities in my live on the net. And they score quite high (no joke!).

But, we're guys with small hearts (I have to see the cardiologist every year for that. :) ), so after we recieved an internal copy of the news today in which we've been added, we decided to remove the personal info of the newspaper and the person herself. After all, I don't want to find my face on a very large website like http://thespoke.net/blogs/taennyn either. ^_^'

So, to conclude: There is a very nice lady in The Hague who is looking for a rich, yet old guy she wants to marry and then tickle to death to live happily ever after. Respond now guys, now that our reporter is already taken!

Ps. Those USB sticks they promised back in the stoneage are back in customs in to India. I have no idea where Microsoft mailed those things, but I'm just the messenger. No, I will not post my cellphone number. :)

After pondering a lot about what I should write today, I came with a few great subjects. Not the USB sticks that are still yet to arrive (Umm...Dutch customs? :P ), not Windows Vista RC2 which is due this friday, nor my thoughts about DRM enforcement on Zune. Today, I'm writing about "undocumented jumper settings". That's right, windows 2003 personal installations!

When a server is installed, it is meant to stand there and do whatever it was installed to do. So once you make a windows 2003 server run in microsoft virtual PC and install it to play ActiveDirectory boss, DHCP manager and DNS muncher, you shouldn't suddenly start expecting it to like IIS. Ok, maybe you might, but we couldn't. After we installed IIS and several other important services, we wanted to start a Certificate Authority after which we got really neat undocumented errors everywhere (error code 0x57 to be exact). And when we tried reinstalling, it just uninstalled twice just for the fun of it. You can't uninstall a single program often enough. Hit me again!

So after we installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, rebooted, reinstalled and then threw the whole computer out the window, we decided to just have a normal system run windows 2003 as it wasn't planning on working on MS' VPC.

And thankfully, we can expect the MSDN-AA "site" of Saxion to go up somewhere this week when Microsoft give their OK to it. After all, I was getting rather sick of hearing that students should just buy under a relatively expensive license (50 euro for an XP license) of a distributor in the middle while the faculty has multiple MSDN-AA licenses. Unfortunately, they couldn't give me details how I am going to be supposed to download it as student. But that'll come soon enough as I got many questions in store. :)

Statistics is everywhere. It's a statistic that it's already a month and a half after IC and the USB sticks are in customs on the way out of India (I won't talk about that in this post). It's a statistic that it's also a month and a half after the IC that the feedback from the judges is yet to arrive (won't talk about that in here either). But it's also a very interesting statistic that 11% (one out of nine) of the firstgraders have passed Linux shell scripting and AWK last year. And about that, I'll be posting today.

Last semester, Saxion has given the module AWK and Scripting as a part of problem oriented schooling. Because most of the lot were firstgraders, they walked in to the first lesson and got to hear they were supposed to send questions and that they were a week behind of schedule by that time. If you want to encourage students, that is not the right way. Not to mention that the whole mess went chaotic and down the hill with iffy manuals and coaches who were sub-par. So by the time the exams came up, everyone was sweating it...and failed.

So, after the exams, the response college came up. In other words: Review what the hell went wrong (or in this case, what didn't). After an hour, nearly everything that happened over the period of time was bashed, rebashed and ground in to a pulp. The message was quite clear: The teachers fouled up, the coaches fouled up and the whole course material was as questionable as it gets. The reports that the students submitted weren't just critique. It was a destructive report on a disaster from begin till end.

Fast forward to this semester. Saxion learnt their lesson. They stopped using the teacher who had zero knowledge of Linux. They threw the coaches out and brought in the big guns. This means that there are 2 coaches in each room that have extensive knowledge of coding. And in come the guys that have been coding since they've been just little kids (including myself). So far, everyone has been pushed in a positive way to do their best and preferably go above and beyond to learn the ins and outs of linux. Since a group saw me reading the paper about IC at the faculty pinboard and recognised me, they seem to have found something to look up to and work for.

So, after the first couple of meetings, the teacher has bought us a drink for a great start. I'd be surprised if the batting average would be under 60% now. We shall see. :)

It's never too late for people to contact. Especially when it's from great people that you didn't expect it from. No, I did not get mail from Queen Beatrix, a president or Gates. I got it from people that directly mean more to me at this time.

Wansang (Software Design, Korea) mailed me 5 days ago that he mailed the DVD with photos and such and I could expect it in 2 weeks or so, I was surprised that the package arrived today. Although I'd love to send the unaltered material we have here (the photos here on TheSpoke are resized for obvious reasons) I still have to wait for the remainder of material to be served. I'm not talking so much of the material Lex will send, but also the material on our own camera which Rolf still has to copy.

Tomasz (Algorithm, Poland) who I mostly remember as my bestest drinking buddy at IC (he passed on the alcohol just for me...after he got drunk anyway :) ). He remembered most of my rants I had over at the room of team LCL in Delhi. He's really interested in the project of the Slovenians (perhaps the vodka they took wasn't from the Russians after all) and completely forgot to get their email addresses. Anyway, I'll be sending a postcard to him when I get in to town (which should be somewhere this week) and hope he does the same. I still haven't gotten any IC postcard so far (the ones that were in the welcome kit) so this might be my second letter, Wansang being first. You guys rock. :)

Oh, and Mohannad rocks apart from his constant camping at Enemy Territory. It's a real shame that we were having the round when everyone was yelling at me to head for home as we were done at Sebastian's. But when I got home I still beat him 2 to 1 map.

I have no idea how long the declaration system takes over at Microsoft, but we sent the coupons and such over to our ADE's to get the expences that were made back. Perhaps someone who is reading my blog and works at Microsoft knows and is kind enough to drop a comment how long it takes (hint hint). We expected something like 2 weeks or so, but it seems that it's longer. Of course, we could also send a mail, but considering my history of "politically correct mails" during IC2k6, it's probably a good idea to let someone else do it.

So, to summarise: "Dear Bill, we sent the notes what we spent to you 2 weeks ago, but we haven't gotten a postcard back yet. That makes me a saaaaad panda." But at least Tomasz and Wansang rule in keeping the prehistoric snailmail system intact. Watch those mailboxes!

When people make software, they usually have an ideal surrounding for it. They expect that a computer has several requirements that are to be met. I can definately understand that some systems are required to have a rancid amount of RAM, faster than average CPU and a huge number of bytes free on the hard drive. But there are also unmentioned requirements. Not having odd configurations is one of those.

It seems that for the RPG that I tend to play, I fall in exactly that category. I have more computers than what's good for me. I hook up my laptop to a monitor for the sake of having dual screen. I have an AMD 64bit CPu in my other machine. I used to have a prototype motherboard from ASUS that ran dual CPU (believe it or not: Celerons).

However, when a program crashes when I go from 2 to 1 monitor (through windows. Not through yanking the cable out), I wonder if I crossed the fine line between "bug testing" or "attempting to screw the program up with a very unlikely scenario". I also wonder how likely it is that a program does not understand that DirectX is installed, although running on 16 colors. It could definately use a more descriptive error message.

But when the system performs differently than supposed, when the system lags behind because the program sucks all the energy out that it can, the line is definately crossed that should be picked up with the coders. Amusingly, quite a few bugs that are known quite well for months (if not years) are still around. Are they uncaring or is it something else? At some point, I am inclined to think that it's not that they don't care, but are simply unable to fix it. The program has existed as long as Windows 98 does. Although the program has had quite a few overhauls since it first appeared, it still feels that the core itself is still flawed all the way back to when the whole program was "just" a school project.

I think that the motto for the bugfixes are more in the style of "live with it" than "fix it". So whether reporting bugs to the coders has any sense left in it if the next possible warning for bugfixes (which is usually a few months later), I seriously wonder about. But you know how the saying goes: "Der Blinde erklärt dem Einäugigen die Farben." Really interested if they can manage to repair a house that seems to be on weak ground. How much sense does it have to report a bug that has very little chance of ever being heard, even if it's right in their face?

Joe Wilson (no Bruce Curling mistake there) sent a mail today about two things we had questions about. One of those being the "missing" USB drives and the other about the feedback from the judges which is still pending as well.

I might've forgotten completely, but the shirts that we were supposed to get each day didn't arrive because it got stuck in customs. Joe has made it clear that those shirts weren't the only things that got stuck there. You probably guessed it: The USB Drives are in India's customs. So after those are cleared, they will be shipped back to the contestants (hopefully with less time in customs). Maybe we'll get a couple of cool shirts along with them. If not, I'm sure that the ICWWF team will love the extention on their wardrobes...or donate it to the people in India that possibly need it more.

As for the feedback from the judges, I'm sure we all remember the comment that those would be spread in a week afterwards. Although they do have all the forms and such, they're scrambling to get things sorted (consolidated and organized, in Joe's words). The matters will be sent to the responsible ADE's and from there on out distributed to the right people. So poor Lex and MJ aren't in the clear just yet.

On a more brighter subject, Mohannad is improving his skills significantly in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. While he was camping like crazy when I was all over him last thursday, he picked up quite nicely and pulled the scores a bit more straight while moving around himself. Unfortunately, I still hold the better tactic (I haven't been sitting still myself) and still beat him. But next time, he's definately going to beat me badly. Already looking forward to that. I only hope that the near deserted server we've hijacked stays deserted so we don't have to kick people off.

And to top the icing of the cake, I've re-connected things and work on a dual screen again. It's a lot calmer gaming on one screen with the knowledge that any information that may arrive will be captured on the other screen. Or just watch a movie while pwning Mohannad. ;)

So, to conclude: If you see someone with a red dot on the forehead wearing an IC shirt, an Lexar USB drive and a card with feedback from judges, you can rest assured that it was a headshot from Moha while watching a movie on a second screen.

Ps. Congrats on daddyhood, Bruce. :)

I got told that my thanks post the other day was flawed. I wrote "Bruce Wilson" which was in error. One should always remember the name who keeps your rear in 2 pieces (left and right side) and our Canadian friend as square as possible. So with loads of thanks:

1. Bruce Curling
2. Bruce Curling
3. Bruce Curling
4. Bruce Curling
5. Bruce Curling
6. Bruce Curling
7. Bruce Curling
8. Bruce Curling
9. Bruce Curling
10. Bruce Curling
11. Bruce Curling
12. Bruce Curling
13. Bruce Curling
14. Bruce Curling
15. Bruce Curling
16. Bruce Curling
17. Bruce Curling
18. Bruce Curling
19. Bruce Curling
20. Bruce Curling
21. Bruce Curling
22. Bruce Curling
23. Bruce Curling
24. Bruce Curling
25. Bruce Curling
26. Bruce Curling
27. Bruce Curling
28. Bruce Curling
29. Bruce Curling
30. Bruce Curling
31. Bruce Curling
32. Bruce Curling
33. Bruce Curling
34. Bruce Curling
35. Bruce Curling
36. Bruce Curling
37. Bruce Curling
38. Bruce Curling
39. Bruce Curling
40. Bruce Curling
41. Bruce Curling
42. Bruce Curling
43. Bruce Curling
44. Bruce Curling
45. Bruce Curling
46. Bruce Curling
47. Bruce Curling
48. Bruce Curling
49. Bruce Curling
50. Bruce Curling

And not Bruce Wilson, John Watson, Bruce Johnson, John Johnson or whatnot. Just so you remember.

First of all, I'd like to say thanks to Caroline for sending the ImagineCup Times (For the occasion, I installed Acrobat Reader ;) ). Considering that she mentioned she'd send it when she'd get back to work, I can only conclude that she has arrived there (semi-)safely like nearly everyone of us has by now.

With that said, I must admit that I overslept badly while I was planning to go visit my RP daughter in The Hague. Thankfully, the problem with her computer was so minor that a gentle poke was enough to get her internet working on the new computer. After moving all the important files from the old computer to the uber-mini-slimline-HP, she's fin