The Road to Elysium

So here I am, getting up at 5 AM in the morning to get to work. I get dressed, eat some breakfast and head out the door. On my way to take the bus I suddenly find myself in mid-air, landing on my knee. Stupid snow was covering a patch of slippery ice, and now I can barely stand on my leg. How’s that for a nice start of the day?

I’m not exactly what you’d call a social guy. I used to be though, back when I was still in school. I had a wicked group of friends, and we often went out for bowling or the movies, whatever a group of friends do. Some things never last forever though. I lost my group of friends as my family moved to another town, just during my last months of school. Tried to stay in touch, but soon enough everything was lost.

That was about 6-7 years ago, and back then I never would have thought that making friends now would be so difficult. People advice me to try to talk to people at work, and I do, I always get in touch first. But when you are the person to initiate a conversation each time, you know that things are going nowhere, and quite frankly, it gets tiring.

So what are you supposed to do? My daily life is pretty much getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home and be with Marte and Michael, then going to bed. Is this how things are supposed to be? People need friends, I need friends.

My sister bought me a DVD a few week back, Pablo Francisco – Ouch, to be exact. As it turns out, this is a Region 1 DVD, meaning that it’s only meant for the US, as far as I know. Anyway, DVDs with region 2 and 4 are meant for Europe. In order to watch US DVDs on a European Mac, you have to either change the DVD-region on the DVD-player itself to 1, or view the DVD with some other software such as VLC. You are allowed 3 to 5 changes on the DVD-region-settings before it locks on to the last change you made.

Now here’s the thing. Some DVDs could be multi-regional despite only displaying a region 2 emblem on them, so my problem arose when I wanted to make my last change to be a Region 2 selection. Upon choosing that option, while having a region 2-4 DVD inserted (thinking it was only level 2), I got this error:

There was a problem changing the drive region code / error: -70001

Couldn’t find a solution until I read the following somewhere. Try to find a DVD that is a region 2 DVD, and only region 2. That should allow you to make the final change with the DVD region settings.

To save yourself some trouble, use VLC to watch such a movie next time, and leave the DVD region settings alone!

Sometimes your everyday life passes by so fast that it gives no time to take a break and just think about things, appreciate things. I dedicate this post to my fiancé Marte, whom I wouldn’t be anything without.

I’m going through a rough patch right now, and I can honestly say that she’s been like a rock for me, the one and only person that I know wholeheartedly will be there for me in my  time of need. Not only is she a great girlfriend, but a wonderful mother and friend. Times come when I take things for granted, I can admit that, but moments as these I come to realize that not all people are as fortunate as I am, having found my soul mate.
Even if she is going through a rough patch herself, she always puts Michael and myself ahead of herself.

Today was a particular hard day for me, so she wanted to cheer me up and ended up with giving me my birthday-present in advance, as my birthday is this upcoming Saturday (January 5th). It was a steel-string guitar. She knows how much I’ve wanted one of those, and for how long. I haven’t mentioned it in a while, yet she still remembered. The gesture itself tells me more about her than a thousand words would. She’s really one of a kind.

I owe her my eternal gratitude, so thank you Marte, for being who you are.

These are the ten commandments we techies use in our Linpro-offices:

1. Thou shalt not worship other computer systems.
2. Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while sitting at the console keyboard.
3. Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly little card decks together.
4. Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system, especially if you’re already married.
5. Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as frisbees, nor use a disk pack as a stool to reach another disk pack.
6. Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one eight hour shift.
7. Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their files/backup just to see the look on their little faces.
8. Thou shalt not enjoy cancelling a job.
9. Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room.
10. Thou shalt not push buttons “just to see what happens”.

Gotta love techies. :)