The return of Kensha

Well, I’ll be damned, Kensha (Τάσος) has dropped by Thessaloníki and payed me a visit. Hell, I haven’t seen that soul for must have been at least 4 years.

Me and Kensha go way back to my Kali and Quake 2 times. Damn, just thinking about them makes them sound so long ago! Phew, how time has passed.
I still remember the Quake 2 training we had with one of us setting a dial-up server on his pc and the other connecting to it in order to play Quake 2 through lan. Or the times we played super intense Duke Nukem games using modems and a 4×4 stage 🙂

Good times

Anyway, It seems he came around for site seeing. Originally he called me at 3pm, waking me up in the process, and he didn’t expect me to recognize him. Of course, what he didn’t know was that I had kept his cell phone number all those years. I just didn’t really have any need to delete it and I though it could come in handy eventually.

After some communication problems, because my cell phone has crappy reception in my house, we set up a meeting at the Kamara which is a great Ark in the middle of the town. What I didn’t expect was him having brought his girlfriend along, I heard someone on the phone and I thought it was a friend of his, but it turns out it was her. She just has a bass voice.
We met in 20 minutes and after a short stroll we settled down at the Bolivar cafe.

tasos-kwstas-1.JPGMost of the time we talked either IT (he is a programmer and I am a sysadmin what did you expect) or made fun of powerfool. Powerfool (originally powerfull. Yes with the extra ‘l’) is a common friend that continuously gets into crazy schemes or develops plans to either score chicks or make money. This time he decided to perform a full body hair removal in order to play in music videos of μπουζουκοpop. This is obviously a scheme of the former category. This of course was just reason to start reciting his

older schemes 🙂

tasos-kwstas-2.JPG

Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen Powerfool for at least 4 years as well. I just talk to him now and then through ICQ.

After the, quite expensive, coffee we decided to head out to eat some souvlakia and then split up. They’ll go to a movie afaik and then meet me at the X club that has a birthday party.

And the saga continues

The Network at my company is still down. We’ve been trying like mad to bring it up but with not success. In the end it was decided to set up the Active Directory from scratch. Problem of course is how to migrate our old schema in order to save time from having to create user entries once again.

Unfortunately the big problem is creating the exchange server again because the old database is basically fried. We can still access it but there is no chance to do a normal backup-export and then import again. We’ll have to do it through manual import of .pst files.

So I started setting up Windows 2000 servers and before I could even install the first update exploits have been exploited and holes have been opened. The first thing I have to do after setting up a new server is open the hosts file and remove the loopback addresses some worm has entered. Only then can I access the network.

Right now I’ve managed to have one server ready to become the new Domain Controller and another one ready to set up the new exchange server to test how it will work.

The IT director seems to think it was a malicious attack. I on the other hand believe it was some kind of virus using an exploit to destroy the AD infrastructure. Just a thing to cause mayhem. Unfortunately it seems to have worked excellently. Now I have to work 12 hours shifts to bring this whole thing under control again 🙁

Long time coming

For the last few days I have been living most of the day in the office. Just today I closed 13 hours inside. The Active Directory has b0rked and I have been trying to fix it with the help of Microsoft and various other so called experts. Unfortunately nothing has worked and today things took a turn for the worse.
In a try to restore our previous configuration we decided to restore a previous version of the system using the Legato Networker program. In hindsight, it was a big mistake, especially the part where we started it at 6pm. At around 9:15pm and after reinstalling the 2000 Server for the second time we decided to call it a night.
This was the third day I had stayed at work late and it’s getting ridiculous. I’ve been trying to go to the post office for two days now and I can’t find the time.
Tomorrow promises to be even better. We’ll go to the office at 6:30am which means I need to get up at 5:45 and there’s no promise at all that I’m going to leave early enough to manage to GM the Evernight campaign.

At least I know it’s not my fault and even if it were, all traces have been wiped out by now 🙂

Sigh Going to sleep any time now. Military wake-up tomorrow…

Τζαμπέ

I met with Panos today after leaving work. He was at a Διαχρονικό having a cup of cofee with a friend of his. I had informed him earlier that I had his free PC ready as he was about to leave for his home town, Αγρίνιο but he decided to stay to set up a meeting in order to get the PC.

We worked out the logistic details but I got the impression that he wasn’t all that happy with the choice. The computer is one of the older ones we have for donations at my workplace and its graphics card and cpu power leave something to be desired. The important thing however, the thing that should make any such defect unimportant, is that the damn thing is completely free for him. I mean, FFS, I had to convince my supervisor on the worthiness of donating such a machine to a pennyless student and we had to lie and tell it was for my sister in order to approve it and I was waiting for more enthusiasm.
I did tell him that I may not be able to secure a monitor for him but, heck, a CRT 15” monitor can be found dirt cheap.
We also had the necessary talk about upgrades for DVD playback (Not easy) and gaming (where I mentioned that the new system would be linux equipped, heh) and the discussions went on to other matters.

After we left Panos kept pressuring me to go after a monitor as well. It was a bit irritating. I mean, come on, you get a P3 for free, keyboard/mouse and everything.

At least be a little more excited damnit! I had to call in favors (however small) for this shit.

Still Migrating

The migration process on my workplace is continuing. I am still writing down things as I go here. I’m still not doing much so it doesn’t have much activity but there are some worthwhile things to check out, mainly the guides.

As I said, I write things as I go and when I set-up something new from the ground up, I take the time to create a step-by-step guide of how I did it. This way for log may actually be useful to anyone who cares to read it. Until now I’ve written two guides, one to set up a [tag]jabber[/tag] server on SuSe ES with AD authentication and an related one on how to set up conferencing on that server.
After being asked permission, by the guys of ejabbber, to copy the text of the second guide on their servers, I decided to release all of them under a creative commons license.
This is a great way to save time for anyone who wants to copy and modify them. They won’t need to contact me to get permission anymore.

3 Days of twirling

Since my new [tag]firestaff[/tag] arrived I haven’t had time to really try it out. Only once when I initially got it did I attempt it but it was a failure due to weather.

Well the last two days I’ve been going out to Navarinou square to remember my skills. I stopped going to Alexander’s statue because the port gets kind of windy and throws my aim off.
Anyway, while at Navarinou I see lots of familiar faces and a lot of people come to talk to me. Others want to try out the staff while others just chat with me. It is a new experience for me (being this popular) and I can’t say I don’t like it. The attention I am getting is invigorating. For my part I don’t act (and I hope I don’t in the future either) like a self-important egomaniac and strike up conversations with the ones that approach, especially if they are cute girls grin, but I’ve been talking to the occasional junkie as well.

Sunday was my first afternoon (or rather night) out, I saw a girl, Δήμητρα, that possibly likes me and I also met some new people, like a young girl just now getting into staffs, her cousin and a fat girl that challenged my skills vs her chains. I, unfortunately, also saw Αννα and her boyfriend as they came around to see the rest of the group that was around at the time. I met her boyfriend’s friend who seems a nice enough chap but her boyfriend seems reluctant to acknowledge me, even if we’re in the same group of people. Αννα of course pretends she doesn’t see me at all :/

I didn’t get to do much of training of Sunday because people kept talking to me, but I did do some serious mingling and meeting. I can’t say it came out badly.

On Monday I once again went to Navarinou square, this time a little earlier so as to have some time to practice alone. Later some acquaintances showed up and once again I couldn’t focus (what with them constantly wanting to grab my staff). The new girl was also there and she seemed extremely “friendly” as well. Δήμητρα also appeared after a while but she was waiting to go for a date with a guy she met over the internet. After a while she left to meet him and later came back with him and was wondering how to get rid of him (“he just doesn’t click”), at around 23:00 people dispersed and I learned that some had gone to Carpe Diem (A Cafeteria/Live Stage) and I decided to head over there as well. I was lucky and I bumped into Μαρία and Αναστασία, two girls I met at the X Club one time and I decided to hang out with them.

We chatted for a while until the Live begun (A progressive violin/guitar duet with very strange and loud sound) and we had to shout. Later Δημητρα arrived as well, she had decided to bring the dude to Carpe Diem where her friends were in order to make him uncomfortable enough to leave. He found an excuse to leave (obviously getting the hint) and she was happy.
After a while she, quite unexpectedly, came to our table, introduced herself and sat down because she was bored with the other guys.

The night went on wand at some point the girls left and Δημητρα pressured me to take her for a walk at Navarinou. There we found the guy that initially showed me the Fire Staff and he had taken some leaps in his skills. I know I need to get in touch with him at some point to learn some new stuff. Obviously he is training at the fokas park.
We hanged around for half an hour or so where I met Χρήστος (a guy I saw all the time at the X Club but never got around to meeting him) and had to endure Δημητρα’s attempts to play with the staff or the flower stick of some other guys. In the end we went to get her bag from Carpe Diem only to find the others had left. Fortunately her bag was still there.

Yesterday was more interesting. I had set up with the young girl to gather at Navarinou again but this time use live fire. I went over there at around 7:45 pm (after buying a long-sleeved shirt I really liked, one with claw like rips in the middle) and started warming up. Βιολετιά apparently had come downtown to see me and she sent me an SMS to go and see her. I had already told her I was indisposed at this time and did so again. I told her to come see me instead, and she did eventually.
Another friend also passed by on his way to private lessons and he decided to stick around for a while to play with chains and also another girl (The fat one that challenged me) came around. So we all lighted our things and had a three person show 😉

After the show, I saw that Βιολετιά had appeared along with a friend and we chatted a bit. I also did a small show for her but she didn’t seem impressed.
Me and Βιολετιά have a habit of teasing each other with mild insults and I think I may have gone too far this time. A while after the show ended I told her to “Bugger off because I was bored of you”. Now obviously I was joking but it seems she took it a bit too seriously. She left immediately and although the obvious choice at that point would be to run after her and apologize, I didn’t realize how she took it and so I left her leave. Later I settled it through SMS and cell phone but it was another chance to hang out together lost.

Anyway, the rest of the night proved interesting as well. I ended up making out with a girl and agreeing to keep tings light, and I also went to the supposed “Nevermore night” at Silver Dollar with Μαρία (The last and only person that could come with me). The music sucked however and after 1.5 beers and no winning lottery tickets we left. Apparently the DJ thought that Nevermore is a hard as Slayer, Sepultura and Cradle of Filth groan.

There is just one small sour thing in this whole story, the replacement staff had bended way too much. I tried to bring it back but first I am afraid of stressing it too much and secondly it never works right. Damnit, I’m seriously let down by this purchase. Although I like the fact that its flame lasts for a long time, this bending and breaking business is very annoying. I’m thinking of taking it to an Iron Worker shop to see if he can straighten it.
I swear to Bob, if this one breaks as well there will be hell to pay!