A Thousand Kisses Deep

Don’t matter if the road is long
Don’t matter if it’s steep
Don’t matter if the moon is gone
And the darkness is complete
Don’t matter if we lose our way
It’s written that we’ll meet
At least, that’s what I heard you say
A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
You see, I’m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second hand physique
With all he is and all he was
A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me
I know you had to cheat
You learned it on your father’s knee
And at your mother’s feet
But did you have to fight your way
Across the burning street
When all our vital interests lay
A thousand kisses deep

I’m turning tricks
I’m getting fixed
I’m back on boogie street
I’d like to quit the business
But I’m in it, so to speak
The thought of you is peaceful
And the file on you complete
Except what I forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep

Don’t matter if you’re rich and strong
Don’t matter if you’re weak
Don’t matter if you write a song
The nightingales repeat
Don’t matter if it’s nine to five
Or timeless and unique
You ditch your life to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep

The ponies run
The girls are young
The odds are there to beat
You win a while, and then it’s done
Your little winning streak
And summon now to deal with your invincible defeat
You live your life as if it’s real
A thousand kisses deep

I hear their voices in the wine
That sometimes did me seek
The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
But the heart will not retreat
There’s no forsaking what you love
No existential leap
As witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep
by Leonard Cohen

Noaptea Sfântului Andrii

Zgomot trist în câmp răsună!
Vin strigoii, se adună,
Părăsind a lor secrii.
Voi, creştinelor popoare,
Faceţi cruci mântuitoare,
Căci e noaptea-ngrozitoare,
Noaptea Sfântului Andrii!

Vântul suflă cu turbare!
A picat stejarul mare,
Cerul s-a întunecat!
Luna saltă-ngălbenită,
Printre nouri rătăcită,
Ca o luntre părăsită
Pe un ocean turbat.

Bufnele posomorâte,
În a lor cuiburi trezite,
Ţipă cu glas amorţit.
Lupii urlă împreună,
Cu ochi roşi ţintiţi la lună,
Câmpul geme, codrul sună,
Satan pe deal s-a ivit!

Iată-l! iată, Satan vine,
Răzbătând prin verzi lumine,
Pe-un fulger scânteietor.
Umbre, stafii despletite,
Cucuveici, iele zburlite
Şi Rusaliile pocite
Îl urmează ca un nor!

Sus, pe turnul fără cruce,
Duhul-rău zbierând se duce,
Şi tot turnul s-a clintit!
Miezul nopţii-n aer trece
Şi, lovind arama rece,
Ore negre douăsprezece
Bate-n clopotul dogit.

Strigoimea se-ndeseşte,
Horă mare învârteşte
Lângă turnul creştinesc.
Iar pe lângă alba lună
Nouri vineţi se adună,
Se-mpletesc într-o cunună
Şi-mprejuru-i se-nvârtesc.

Voi, cu suflete curate,
Cu credinţi nestrămutate,
Oameni buni, femei, copii!
Voi, creştinelor popoare,
Faceţi cruci mântuitoare,
Căci e noaptea-ngrozitoare,
Noaptea Sfântului Andrii!

Acum iată, pe mormânturi,
Clătinaţi, bătuţi de vânturi,
Toţi strigoii s-au lăsat.
Aşezaţi într-un rond mare,
Adânciţi în întristare,
Pe sicriu-şi fiecare
Oasele-şi a rezemat.

Unul zice: Eu în viaţă
Cu o mână îndrăzneaţă
Multe drepturi am răpit!
Răpit-am pâinea de hrană
Unei gingaşe orfană
Ce, pierdută şi sărmană,
În mizerie-a pierit!

Altul zice: Eu în lume
Am avut putere, nume,
Căci am fost stăpânitor!
Dar în oarba-mi lăcomie,
Pentru-o seacă avuţie,
Am împins în grea urgie
Pe sărmanul meu popor!

Altul zice: Eu în ţară
Fost-am o cumplită fiară,
Plină de amar venin!
Împotriva ţării mele
Făptuit-am multe rele,
Ş-am legat-o-n lanţuri grele
Ş-am vândut-o la străin!

Foc şi ură-n vecinicie
Pe voi cadă, pe voi fie!
Strigă-atunci un glas ceresc.
Şi pe loc cad în morminte
Păcătoasele-oseminte.
Iar pe zidurile sfinte
Trece-un foc dumnezeiesc!

Vasile Alecsandri – Iaşi, 1857

Commercial espresso machine

Most of us would surely like a commercial espresso machine at home. And that’s for a number of reasons. When it comes to practicality though, the main reason is making 6 cups of coffee without spending 20 minutes doing this: the ability to pull shot after shot. Of course you have your routine finely tuned and maybe you know a few tricks to cope with entertaining five or six friends but in the end you are technologically limited by the espresso machine you have, be it a Silvia or the cheapest thing money could buy. Sorry for taking a long way round in coming to the point. I’m going to present a trick that you may want to try the next time you’re faced with a fine gathering of friends.

The main problem in that situation is the heatup time that your machine needs in between the shots and your aim is to minimize that as much as possible. You can reduce this time by landing a hand to your overwhelmed espresso machine, using a simple kettle to preheat the water that goes in your tank. Don’t overdo it! You don’t want boiling water to liquefy your rubber tubing. Instead think that every little extra helps. By fiddling around with various temperatures you will be able to get a feeling for the temperature of the water that should go in your tank.

Bottom line: you can reduce the time that your boiler takes to come to temperature in between shots by prewarming the water in your tank. That’s it, no heat exchanger, no thounsands of euros blown on a commercial machine.

Enjoy!

Quotations

Just a random mambo jumbo of quotations that I like

“Few areas in computer science deserve both these words: computer and science”
“Not every problem is a nail so having more tools than a hammer is a good idea”
“Every victory has a taste that’s bitersweet”
“I like deleting code almost as much as I like writing it”
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggy’ until u find a rock”
“We would never like the same five lines of code to appear twice in any application”
“A good coffee is black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel and sweet as love”
“Go with your gut! (and please don’t come back)”
“I find Internet Exploder an excelent tool for downloading Firefox”
“They all agreed that they needed a critical section; what they could not agree on was how critical it should be”
“Thank God for electricity because otherwise you’d still be watching TV by candlelight”

(11^2)*3

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door…

What do you do with your empty Illy cans?

I used some of them (8) to build a small shelf over miss Silvia:

Unfortunately another bunch of them is piling up… anyone got any ideas?

Espresso Knock box

We all (well some of us do) like to have a good knock box at the side of our beauty (in my case Rancilio Silvia) but before going ahead and blowing 30 punds on a fancy looking Gaggia knock out box just hold on to your money a bit! What you could do (and I did) is this:

1. Buy a simple plastic container like the ones you use for keeping food in the fridge

2. Buy a wooden mop handle (you can get this in any hardware store)

3. Buy a Victorinox Hunter (no household should be without) or just use your old wood saw

4. Measure the width of the plastic box and add 4 centimeters (2 centimeters on each side)

5. Always mark what you will be cutting: it will not help you while cutting but at least you will see where you should have cut the darn thing

5. Cut the wooden handle according to the measurements

6. Mark the width of the box on the wooden handle (leaving the 2 centimeters on each side)

7. Make two half way cuts in the wooden handle

8. Put the pieces together and you have your knock box

Observations:

When buying the plastic box keep in mind what you’re gonna use it for. Make sure the plastic is sturdy enaugh and that it can take a hit. Plastic boxes these days have fency edges to make them airtight when you put the lid on. Look for one that has the edges as regular and simple as possible. If you can, buy a lidless plastic container.

When buying the mop handle make sure you buy a wooden one. Pretty convincing aluminum made wood imitations exist.

Make sure your half cuts will fit tightly on the box

You can also measure the space you have available and buy a box that fits:

That’s it, I hope you’ll enjoy doing it yourself!

Internet

The Internet isn’t working!

Yeah… well… there are a number of problems with the ISP: the bandwidth is fairly unstable and their ADSL modem / wireless access point is maybe not the best one. It often needs resets in the morning. Sort of a wake up call. Also the wireless signal strength is not excellent.. far from it if you ask me.

The frustrating part only follows: I’ve been for quite a while network admin for a small ISP (round about 400 users) and usually when there was any kind of problem with the internet connection I could almost always fix it. But now I’m just as helpless as any other home user. And some (read my girlfriend) still expect me to fix things. Hmm… either I’m missing something or they’re missing something…

Loads of bandwidht to ya all!

On life, the universe and everything

Following is part of a conversation I had a while ago with a friend of mine who’s now a network admin somewhere in Germany (hence bastard operator from hell).

BOFH = Bastard operator from hell

BOFH says: good IT = lazy IT
BOFH says: we’re 2 lazy to do it ourselves so we write a small program
BOFH says: or do some quick hack or something
BOFH says: or …. or …. just watch a youtube vid and maybe the problem goes away in the mean time
BOFH says: because, you see, the problem has to stand the test of time before somebody starts looking into  it
BOFH says: if it’s not urgent enough it can wait until it becomes urgent
BOFH says: for you see, we only deal with urgent matters
BOFH says: anything below urgent is also below our dignity as well
BOFH says: and another thing: whatever you do, never explain to anyone anything; if they can understand it, they don’t need you
BOFH says: you can also spice up the life of your qa department by adding snipets of code such as this one
to the prouction version of your app:

int remainder = DateTime.Now.Ticks % 666;
remainder = remainder % 7;
if (remainder == 0)
throw new RandomException(“This is a random exception. It just occurs.”);

BOFH says: Where 7 is a prime number that you can adjust if the code returns null more often than you like.  The higher the prime number the smaller number of occurences. I use 13 when I don’t really feel like working.

Qué tal?

Ioana Radu: buna dimineata (Good Morning)
Serban: hello
Ioana Radu: ce faci? (How are you)
Serban: work.. some youtube… some more work
Serban: getting excited…
Serban: getting bored…
Serban: thinking of times passed and times to come
Ioana Radu:  o gramada de activitate (a lot of activity)
Ioana Radu:
Serban: feeling the woofer (bass)
Serban: missing the time to listen to the music that’s playing
Serban: things of that sort…