New Adventures in Wi-Fi (2)

Elementary school reunion

2007-06-01T00:04:00.000+03:00

The last weekend was quite a highlight. We had an elementary school class reunion after 16 years since leaving the school.

It all started quite simple - with a dream I had in March where I was at a class reunion (of course with all the nice girls around :). The day after I contacted 4 people who's contacts I had. The next two months were spent organizing the place, contacting these 4 people and their contacts and their contacts and their contacts and in the end I got to number 29. Which was pretty good result, considering that I haven't heard from 90% of them for at least ten years.

It was interesting to hear what they're all doing now - model, TV star, fireman, accountant, teachers, salesmen, technicians, computer freaks, ...

Well, next year I hope to organize something similar, hopefully with 15 more people, 47 in total who had come and gone during the 8 years of school.

'I missed again!' drawing

2007-05-09T01:26:00.000+03:00

This is a drawing I made some 13-14 years ago, and found just yesterday ;-).

10 years after

2007-05-07T00:23:00.000+03:00

It's a strange feeling seeing again concerts of the same bands as 10 years ago. This week I went to Majales, a student festival in Prague to see good old Transglobal Underground, Clawfinger and Dog Eat Dog.

I remember seeing Transglobal Underground about 10 years ago at Jeleni Prikop and E.T. Jam festivals. The style of music is similar now, but the crew completely changed from the one then. Also the repertoir completely changed. They still play nice music, but one gets really sentimental about the good old times and songs then.

Slightly different story with Dog Eat Dog, perhaps new rising stars in '97, nonetheless now - after fading out quite a bit since then, - the concert was still a great fun. On the other hand Clawfinger, probably due to getting in their 40ies, played rather like 'retired' ;-) - a song, then 2 minutes break spent talking about nothing, and again and again, playing - sort of - like Metallica 2 years ago in Amsterdam. ;-)) Sad.

This time I was quite impressed with the organization of the festival. Considering it's just a student thing, they did better than many other 'classic' festivals in the Czech Republic!

Lego strikes back :)

2007-03-29T23:24:00.000+02:00

Can you recognize who this is :) ?

Check here.

Shopping for Christmas

2006-12-22T02:15:00.000+02:00

I have never been a big fan of shopping as some of my (girl)friends. Never went to another country to buy shoes :), never enjoyed spending hours in garment stores, never went to store just to check out what's new and what's fashionable. (The only exception is when I actually go with my girlfriend :).

Perhaps the only thing I always enjoyed to shop for - is food. And books.

And so whenever I do christmas shopping, it's about the first time in that particular year that I actually check out garment and other - wierd - stores (many of which I usually had no clue that they existed before ;-)).

The 2 last weeks before christmas I then inevitably spend scanning - what is available in stores - and unlike other people I usually don't end up buying any presents, but I rather every day come home with bags full of good food, and some new books that I like. But no presents.

Hence I always end up buying actual presents - on the last 2 days before the christmas :). - I usually finish shopping on the morning of the day we give presents (the 24th) :).

And today I am proud to say that also this year - I honour the tradition !!!

Cell phone localization

2006-12-10T17:16:00.000+02:00

With our privacy being attacked daily due to the internet or air travel requirements, here's yet another 'cool invention'. Cell phone localization. It's been around for quite a while - restricted only for use by police or secret services, but never as a freely available service to general public.

Now with a series of new telecommunication laws passed recently in several countries in latin america, even this restriction is a past.

Yes, that means - if you want to find out where e.g. your friends are at this very moment, the answer is just two clicks away:

SAT-PHONE Localization system

All you need to do is to enter a cell phone number in the international format: +XXX YYY ZZZZZZ.

I don't know about you, but I think this is quite scary. What do you think about it ?

Excited!

2006-12-01T00:01:00.000+02:00

As weird as it sounds to call a (rather flegmatic) person 'excited' ;-)), today I actually AM EXCITED!

The past months I spent hunting for a job. I spent over two and half months only applying for jobs in the UK and Ireland (kinda difficult when you're based in Czech Republic :), without much success and actually not even an interview. It was in the end of october, that I started looking for a job in the Czech Republic. And 4 weeks down the line, I'm finished. The czech experience was exactly the opposite to the UK and Ireland. For every job I applied for, I ended up with an offer. I avoided the mistake (or perhaps more precisely a not-so-well-thought-out step) of taking the first or the second offer I get - as I did the last year.

Last friday I ended up with a kick-ass offer from a czech company. Took 4 days to decide. In the meantime got from a first contact to a second stage with another company. The ONE. After the second interview I knew I really wanted this job, over the kick-ass offer, - this one was uber-kick-ass. But there was one catch.

Actually quite a big one: I needed to turn down the first offer, without knowing the result with the ONE company. - possibly ending up with nothing.

Decided to take the risk, and - suffered quite bad through the last two sleepless nights. :)

In the end, - it paid. I GOT IT.

YEEEEEEEYYYY!!!

Honestly speaking, I think I got the best what I could (while keeping both feet firmly on the ground).

Learnings?
- You need to make it through the swamp, before you reach the land.
- Fairies won't help you from hunger, they're not made out of real flesh.
- The more times you escape fairies, the better chances you get out of the swamp.
- However, escaping the fairies is not your ultimate goal.
;-)

Full

2006-11-03T02:10:00.000+02:00

Check out this site!

The least expected

2006-10-23T02:59:00.000+02:00

Sometimes life takes the least expected turns.

Like things you thought about or wished for – so many years ago, that you completely forgot about them since then. They simply seemed not meant to continue or happen, and so you stopped thinking about them.

And then, several years down the line and all of a sudden, it happens so, that they emerge again right in front of you. And there’s no escaping.

And you’re struck there with your mouth wide open :), pinching your skin just to figure out whether you’re awake or dreaming.

And then depending on whether it’s positive or negative you start laughing like an idiot, or break out crying.

Such a thing happened to me yesterday.

… it was a good news :).

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On a different note, here's a set of photos from my friend's wedding on the previous weekend.

The second set are my recent photos from Prague. I didn't do the usual sights this time, but tried to look from other places. And I think it worked out pretty well. What do you think ?

Nice memories

2006-10-17T23:35:00.000+02:00

Nice memories ... game from the early nineties:

Lemmings! ;-)

;-)

2006-10-06T20:55:00.000+02:00

1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d !!!

Study breaks between jobs

2006-10-05T00:30:00.000+02:00

One thing that I realized in the past weeks is that it is not a bad idea to take a longer break between jobs sometimes.

Not just because one needs some relaxation.

The fact is that it is a very useful period for one to develop knowledge and skills in those areas, where it is hard to do so while on the job. And even better - to refresh some skills and learn about mistakes done in the past job.

In the past month and a half I went deeper into studying the Prince 2 project management methodology, and now am doing the same with the ITIL best practise library, and am finding it both interesting and useful. It is also refreshing my head - between all the job hunting, writing all the cover letters, and constantly polishing my CV :).

And looking back I also have a lot of realizations about IT management on AI - both in the positive and negative sense.

ITIL Framework overview

Festivities in Uhersky Brod

2006-10-01T23:52:00.000+02:00

I spent a great weekend with my friends in Uhersky Brod in the south-east of the Czech Republic. This time of the year is typically connected with tasting the newly-made young wine - stum, in czech referred to as 'burčák'. And so if you go around Czech Republic in these days (especially the southern parts with vineyards), you will often see stalls at parking lots by main roads. Needless to say, it's a must-try drink, when you're here.

And in these days, there are traditional festivities happening in Uhersky Brod called the 'Ruzencova Nedele'. That's where we went. It's all centered around the lunapark atractions, drinking burčák, and on sunday a church mess.

Besides very generous allotment of burcak to our stomachs each evening, we also had more than small amount of home-made slivovice for better digestion (homemade by my friend's father), a taste of local beer, and other tasty beverages. Each night we then ended up in a local disco, which meant dancing to 10-15 year old techno :) and a lot of fun.

Because of very good weather (for this time of year!) we went to Karpaty mountains on sunday, to walk a bit and clear our heads from wine. And as you can see on the photos below, it was a nice trip.

Cheers !!

How did this happen ?

2006-09-28T22:19:00.000+02:00

I really wonder how this happened ....

Looks like supernatural powers to me :).

Can't decide what to read next ?

2006-09-28T02:02:00.000+02:00

From time to time I get to situation when I browse my home library and ponder which book to choose to read next. It often happens that I don't find exactly the type of book I'm looking for.

But there's always been one good source of inspiration for me regarding books (besides friends): OpenBC's forums. A lot of people don't know OpenBC, and those who do, often never discovered that there are forums in the system. (And those who did never thought it's worth to check them out ;-)). Anyways, there's a group of forums called "Best Biz Books ....", and here one can find plenty of short reviews, 'must-do' reading lists of other people and other userful information.

Check that out sometimes. And if you come upon another good source, let me know.

New album by Body Count

2006-09-26T22:10:00.000+02:00

It’s been already 9 years (sic!) since Body Count released their last album. Finally this august the new ‘Murder 4 Hire’ album was (very quietly) released. For those who don’t know Body Count, you might at least know Ice-T, their frontman. So basically this is his side project. They became quite (in)famous after releasing the controversial ‘Cop Killer’ record back in 1992, which was a good preview of the stuff to come in the future. Nothing too intellectual, but importantly fun, musically bright and – with a meaningful message (that is: if you’re willing to look for it the flood of F-words. As is the case of e.g. RATM.).

Having listened to the new album several times, it’s clear that it by far doesn’t reach the qualities of its predecessor Violent Demise (which I can only recommend!), and hardly compares even to the older albums. I find it quite monotonous, having too few surprises, basically lacking inspiration. On one hand it’s no wonder as the band lost 3 of its founding members in the past few years – due to reasons such as leukemia, or even drive-by shooting (RIP). On the other, when - any - band releases a new record after more than 5 years (9yrs here!), I expect it to be something that is fun, in the least, not dropping below the average of the previous records. Unfortunately this is not the case here. It's a pity.

- - -

Hey, but there are still the good old Born Dead, My Way, Necessary Evil, Dead Man Walking, KKK Bitch or Cop Killer !!! That’s not too little !! :)

Previous postings

2006-09-24T23:01:00.000+02:00

Previous postings can be found here.