Jesus Loves You

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Man, these religious fanatics are so amusing at times.

Yesterday I was at the docks practicing my fire staff skills and I decided to move away from the Alexander the Great’s statue and to a more dark area. The lights around there glare at my eyes and I cannot catch the staff correctly.
Anyway, right next to the statue some people were gathering and were making sound checks, I decided to move further down so as to not be near the noise.

Then the fun started.

It seems those people were religious zealots and they believed in “Our Saviour Christ” with an astounding fervor.

They started with a silly little song about how much “Jesus loves us” and I could hear people clapping (not many though) and then they started shouting.
It reminded me of times of past when people would stand in the town square and advertise the religion of their choice to anyone who cared to stand and listen (think The Life of Brian)

‘Jesus Loves Youuu’
‘He gave his life for Youuu’
‘Don’t look awaaay’
‘Jesus is your saviooor’

etc. which went on for quite while.
I mean, not even one convincing argument? Just that Jesus loves us and that’s that? Shouldn’t they be trying to convince us heathens with their facts and depth of knowledge?

They were also giving away pamphlets and new testaments for free. I guess reading the new testament once more after school (as if they didn’t perform a big enough proselytism there) is supposed to be all the proof we need.

At one point I was passing next to them and a fat man wearing a purple shirt came and gave me the pamphlet and the book. I was too tired to argue with him so I just took them among blessings and shit and then threw them in the garbage.

Since that whole charade was supposed to be for the teenagers and young adults, they brought forward some converted young men to talk about their experiences.
They were talking about how they were saved and it seems they only thing they were saved from were generic “sins” and booze and drugs. Well I’m not into drugs or excess booze so I can safely say that I was “saved” as well. Although in my case I’m pretty certain “God” had nothing to do with it.

Anyway I was minding my own business and hoping that they would go away soon and then along comes an old lady along with yet another fat man (I wonder how those pious men seem to be fed so well) and wanted to give me the pamphlet and the book. Only I didn’t want them this time.
As soon as they heard that, they were on me like vultures.

‘Just take the pamphlet and all will be explained’
‘I’d rather not’
‘Look, here’s the new testament, it’s free’
‘I don’t want it’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have anywhere to put it’
‘Aren’t you a Christian’
‘No’
‘What are you then’
‘I have no religion’
‘Then take the book, you need it’
‘No I don’t’
‘Look, there’s more important things than playing with that stick of yours’
‘Don’t tell him that, he’s a good kid’
‘But I like my stick’
‘Yes and it must be good excercise, but aren’t you afraid for your immortal soul?’
‘I don’t know if I do have one’
‘Sure you do’
‘How do you know?’
‘God tells us’
‘He didn’t tell it to me’
‘What are those numbers on your shirt’(reading them aloud in case they magically turn into 666)‘9-8-6’
‘Look, I don’t need the book or the pamphlet, I’ve made my choices’
‘But what about your spirit…?’

This conversation continued for a while until another lady (ugly as hell) came and took them because they were “late” (for what?)

Then after a while two little girls came, with pamphlets again.
After staring at me for a while they made their move

‘Hey mister, take a pamphlet’
‘No let me, it my turn’ the other girl would say
‘I don’t wanna’
‘You don’t? But it’s free’
‘Yes I know, but I don’t need it’

I don’t remember that conversation very well, but I do know that those girls didn’t try to convince me and I regretted not telling them to think about things a bit more.

Damn Proselytizers.

Anyway after two hours or so of yelling and preaching and whatnot, they finally left. Unfortunately at that point I was too tired as well, and had to go to the Navarinou street to mingle with the rest of the heathens 🙂
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Admin of Fruit

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I’ve just been made a SysOp over at Kiwilyrics. Sweet.
The other admins are either missing or too busy so that will allow me to fix some things that have fallen by the wayside.

In case you don’t know it, Kiwilyrics is a lyrics site using the wiki engine. This is especially helpful in the case of lyrics since there are usually a lot of typos and other mistakes. In other sites, if they allow lyrics submitions at all, you have to submit the lyrics to the admins and hope they are allowed soon. If the site sports a quick response time, that usually means that the lyrics are not reviewed at all. Fixing bad submitions is almost impossible, since the responce times are greater still.

The beauty of the wiki is that you have the power to change something immediately and it is also very hard to destroy things. See a mistype as you read a lyrics? Fixing it is only two clicks away.
Missing a song? Submit it yourself immediately. Hell, submit the whole album. Kiwizer makes that braindead easy (although it still has one or two bugs)

Bow before me for I am Op.
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Argh! Panic!

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I’m metaphorically running around like a headless chicken.
I’m saying metaphorically because I’m not actually running around but I’ve been switching through support tasks so quickly that it sure feels that way.

Today I’ve fixed the damn DFS replication of the primary file server and what I gained for my trouble is a loss or user rights in the dfs and me frantically scrabbling around to see what happened. I reset the system, took the opportunity to update the AV engine as well and between two reboots I’ve had about a million fuckin calls, and that was after I sent a notification that users should get out of the shared folders.

‘Kosta, some people got a message to close their files on shared folders but I didn’t’
‘Did you have open files on shared folders?’
‘No’
‘Then it’s logical not to get messaged isn’t it?’

‘Kosta, my shared folders are not opening’
‘I’m still working on it. I didn’t give the OK to get in yet. Why are you trying?’
‘Uh OK, when will they be up again?’
‘I dunno, probably as soon as I can get off the phone and keep working on it.’

(Well, OK. I didn’t say that last part, but I really wanted to)

‘KOSTA OMG I NEED THE SHARED FOLDERS OPEN FOR ME BECAUSE I NEED TO DO SOMETHING FOR THE IRS. IS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!1!’
(Trying to keep calm) ‘Uh, I can’t do that. I’m still in the middle of it’
‘OPEN THEM JUST FOR ME, STOP WORKING I DON’T CARE. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? WHY DIDN’T YOU CONTACT ME!’
‘Look, I cannot just “open” them for you. I’m trying to fix the system and I’m in the middle of it and I…’
‘CLICK’

and on top of that the ERP server started failing and even more calls started pouring in.
So I was trying to fix a server while answering stupid questions about two servers.
Finally we got things in line and I found out the real cause of the problem and I hope it stays fixed.

Then I tried to update the antivirus of the primary domain controller. Only he didn’t have IE6, but for some reason it thought it needed a reboot. So I do that, and the backup domain controller does not take control, so everybody is unauthenticated, which means out of the exchange server, until the primary is back up.
It comes up, I install the explorer, reboot and the same again, only now I’m also in fear because the IE6 setup has a tendency to crash the system in some cases and if that happened now…well, I’m just happy it didn’t.
Anyway it comes back up, and I install the new AV, and now I’m waiting for the inevitable reboot request, which won’t happen.

Then a remote router failed because the technicians trying to fix the network between two small stores were careless and took out one small cable, bringing down approximately 100 users. Then the systems are too slow, then the programs are not working, then…ARGH. As soon as one problem appears everyone thinks that everything is broken.

Oh and my “good mood” is not alleviated at all by my near sickness, which means a runny nose and a constant cough.

Left out again

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Yeah, OK, once more I get ignored by my so-called friends.

It seems the company had a welcoming party for Yo!Master’s return from the army, going out to eat and stuff and who wasn’t invited? Yeah you guessed it.

I found out they had something planned when I called Master’s house on Saturday to see what’s new, after getting his mail about coming home.
His grandmother told me he was staying at a common friend’s house and he was going to eat out that day with the rest of the crew. They had “forgotten” once more to tell me about it. I called Psymon to see what’s up and he validated it. They were going out that night.

So much for 6 years of friendship. As soon as you stop gaming you might as well not exist.

Screw that.

Offers you shouldn't refuse.

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Remember about that KNE guy that I had met while in Posidi? Well, he finally showed up. He phoned me while I was at Alexander the Great’s statue practicing my fire staff (post about this coming soon). We scheduled to meet up at 11pm but by 10am he was already there. In any case, we met at a bar near the white tower where he was sitting with two of his friends, one male and one female.

We chatted for a bit and then went to sit on the park by the pier, next to the bar-ships. On the way he told me the story about how he passed on a sex offer…a fuckin sex offer, and he didn’t do it on purpose either.
It seems that after I left Posidi, a group of girls arrived, one of which he was trying to make out with. It didn’t turn out well however and the company left, bar one.
At some point then, that girl, who I was led to believe was pretty good looking as well, offered him to go for a trip with her own car on another leg of Chalkidiki. Alone.
He refused. (!) I mean, how can you refuse something like that when you’re available and like the company? His excuse was that he didn’t understand at that point what she wanted. So he just said no, ditching a chance for a free sex trip (literally). But wait, there’s more.
After he refused, he reply was a joking “are you denying me?” (free translation, she actually said “Μου ρίχνεις χυλόπιτα;” which means “don’t you want to have a relationship/make out with me?”) and after such a reply I would have guessed anyone would have caught the meaning. Apparently he didn’t.
After some more discussion, the girl made this “innocent” comment: “You know, now that the other girls left I’m feeling very bad sleeping alone in my tent” (Emphasis mine). I mean, FFS, the answer here was friggin obvious! But he still didn’t get it. He didn’t even imagine where she going with this.

Needless to say, he got the hint later on, but by that time it was too late. That train had left the station.

I gave him a good lecture on behalf of all men about this little adventure. I mean, if we can’t use free sex offers like these, women may stop offering them. That girl was probably so let down by all of this that she may not even try something like that again for a long time, and who knows, I may meet her soon 🙁
On the other hand, I understand him in a way. That girl was so direct that her offer probably flew under his radar completely.
Since most women don’t act like this, it is normal for us not to expect something like that. We are trained to pick the standard minuscule signs of attraction that women usually throw our way and ignore what we think may be just a show of friendship. After the first few misunderstandings of their behavior we tend to become very cautious on when they express themselves freely.
I, for example, have many times misunderstood the show of comfortability as a sign of attraction, and of course this led to the cooling down of relations. Now I’m just very cautious. As most men I know are.

In reality I don’t know what I’d do in his position. Maybe I’d lose the hint as well.

Oh well, now we’re probably going to meet next Wednesday to go to the X Club for the Disco night. Should be fun.
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Crabholes

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Crabholes were my third vacation time this summer. It is a free camping nudist area and I was planned to go there with my sister, her boyfriend and three other friends. The others had all gone there from Thursday/Friday and I was left to come alone on Saturday. Good thing about this is that when I arrives all the tents were already set up and I didn’t need to get tired, just head straight to the beach.

When I arrived there, the place was packed. In a small beach not much bigger than a big house, there were no less that 11 tents set-up, most used by families with children, so there was quite a bit of a clutter. Luckily the crabholes area has in total 4 beaches where you can go to and one was right next to us. Fortunately, that beach was filled with young people, around my age and many beautiful girls. Unfortunately there was a constant beat played from a dude very loud, who just wouldn’t understand that not everyone wanted to hear it all the time, and all the really gorgeous girls were taken as well.

There was too much nudism going around and although the rest of the team was naked or semi-naked (topless) I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It just isn’t me. There are of course good and bad things related to a nudist beach. The good is that I got to ogle at some perfect female bodies walking around, the bad is that I had to suffer seeing countless dicks hanging around as well as some err…not so perfect female bodies.

I had also brought my training staff with me, so when we got to the beach with the beats, I found the perfect excuse to do some twirling. When people came to me to congragulate me on my skill I was of course very flattered. I mean, even I don’t think I’m that good. At some point I saw my sister looking at me with a smile that was like saying “Well done brother” and it felt better than anything she could have said. I only heard one bad comment, from a guy that just couldn’t stop making bad remarks, about how “unmanly” my style was.
After that, I took any excuse I could to bring out my staff and practice a bit. It actually helped to pass the time as well since just sitting around getting sunburns wasn’t good enough for me.

Here are some shots I got my friend to take me. I had to pester her for a while to take them and I just don’t understand why it was so hard to do it. (Press the thumbnails for fullsize)

Food was handles by way of coal barbecue (without bbq sauce of course. Just the Greek way). Usually ribs or fish (one of the girls liked fishing) with a side of tomato and onion salad. That was quite fun as well as I got to play with the fire all the time 😉

Nothing especially interesting happened though. The only things that stayed with me was my discussion with another IT pro I found there. He was a router expert and we started talking about IT infrastructure after I mentioned my plan to migrate our enterprise to linux. He tried to convince me of my error but in a way that showed he was not a MS drone. He didn’t (convince me that is) and in the end he tried to tell me some conspiration theories about the locking down of TCP/IP and shit. It was at that point that I grew bored enough to go take a swim. I later heard he hit on my friend and she grounded him fully.

The other memorable thing that happened was my hasty flee from the camp after I found out that the guy that was supposed to take me with him to Thessaloniki decided at the last minute to leave the next day. That was after I asked him 5 times when he was leaving to make sure it suited me. So I had to run to get ready and leave for the bus stop. Damn thing is expensive as well. 13.5 euros for a god damn ticket. In any case it was probably for the best this way. I later heard that the guy who was going to take me home with his bike died from a car accident on his way back…

Just kidding, but we did see a motorcycle-car accident on one of our trip to the town for supplies. The guy looked very bad.

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Updates? What updates?

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In case anyone reads this blog and may be wondering why I haven’t been updating the past few days (yeah right) the reason is that after the new Last.fm site came live, I have been busy making journals over there. They are mostly of a musical nature and I have even started my own small review chapter named R@W (Reviews at Work).

I do have some thing to write here about my recent vacations at Crabholes but I’m waiting to get my hands on the pictures in order to post things right, so hold on to yer drawers.
In the meantime, go and check amaroK! The new 1.3 version is out and it kicks some serious arse.

Super Scrobbler

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Audioscrobbler has finally finished its update and it seems that the default user environment is Last.fm from now on.

The update was supposed to have finished by Monday but eventually, as these things usually do, it finished on Tuesday evening. I Managed to log in briefly at 1:30 am before going to bed and saw the page and skimmed through the new features. ‘Twas a bit slow.
Today I tried logging in again after coming to work but the site had b0rked and I kept getting errors or timeouts, probably the surge of traffic was too great (everyone logging in to see the new thing) and something crashed and burned. It came up after a few hours or so (It seems it was down for ~5 hours) and everything was running almost smoothly ever since. Even my winamp plugin, which couldn’t submit for the last week, managed to finally unload the ~400 songs it had in its cache.

The site layout looks great and is completely based on a scripting language instead of simple html which makes it look very cool. I would like some choice of themes but that can wait for now. It has many new features such as tagging, which is putting keywords on artists, albums or tracks for easy management and search and a personal journal.
The Journal is open but it is supposed to be used for music related things. Its neat feature is that it can link stuff through AS and put them as related terms in a sidebar (with thumbnails), making it easy for anyone reading it to locate them. I’ve already made two entries which you can find here if you so wish. I plan to use the journal as my personal review site so if you find my music taste to your liking you should check it out often.

Tagging is a great idea and I plan to use it heavily to make my collection easy to navigate and manage. Problem is that the profile editor is still a bit buggy and stops saving after using it for a while (it’s been trying to save a new tagset for two hours now ) but it can work in small batches. There is also another way to tag items, by using the tag button from the web page. It lets you easily tag items you are browsing.

I tried the new last.fm player as well. It seems they have turned from the web-based stream to a standalone program that you must install. It’s a nice idea because the web-based was not performing very well (at least for me) but they haven’t implemented proxy authentication which means I still cannot use it from work. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to use it afterward, since I do not know if the port it uses will be open from our firewall. An choice between the player and the web-player would be great at this point since not everyone has administrative rights to their computer (think employees in a company) or may want to use it on multiple computers where installing programs is not always an option.

There are some other nifty things I’ve found out such as a nice Similar Artists sidebar in every artist’s page (I’d like to know how they calculate that), an option to see a complete chart of your listening habits and not just the most popular, enhanced neighbor and friend page where it shows more info (such as their recent journal entries if any) and they even fixed the group charts that weren’t working before.

The forums seems to have been reduced in number now. The classic ones are still there but the plugins seem to have been merged.

All in all I find this a very exciting upgrade. Once the people learn the ropes and fill the place with tags and journals the AS experience will become unparalleled.
Amarok will have many things to implement, especially after the Audioscrobbler page (which is a developer’s repository now) comes up again.

Vacation at last! (Part 3)

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Sunday came up and found me trying to sleep uncomfortably in the tent. The heat was just oppressing out there.
After drowsily stumbling out, I took my friends and we went to the beach where I saw one drop dead gorgeous girl entering our company. Unfortunately during the course of my stay it appeared that she wasn’t interested in me (or any of us for that matter) and I later found out that she was in a casual relationship with one of our friends, the one they called The French. Oh well, at least her almost-perfect body and deep tan made for excellent eye candy. The day proceeded uneventfully to its end. At this point we had lost sight of Mazetas who we later found out had been hanging out with some newly arrived female neighbours. The KNE guys at the Cantina where I had started hanging out (mostly because Lena was helping there for 2 hours every day) told me that they had a movie planned for the night; it was an older Greek movie, a surreal comedy of sorts.
I also surprised some of the KNE guys by volunteering for a job without being a “comrade” (Σύντροφος in Greek) as they like to call each other. The work was easy, just unload a couple of cases of beers and it showed that you don’t need to be a communist to be good guy. The fact that two of their own “comrades” didn’t lift a finger to help, even after being asked to do it, says a lot.
After I returned they asked me why I don’t join the communist party to which I replied that I do not see things going anywhere and prefer to show generic discontent. As expected a big discussion on the philosophical nature of politics followed 🙂

The movie turned out so and so, although I would like to see it again. I seems to me that it need more than one viewing to appreciate.

After that, I hanged around a bit with Lena and then, after the sun came down I bought a small bottle of Ouzo and a lemonade, hid them in my deep pockets (Oh how I love multipocket trousers) and sneaked them into the beach bar.
Said beach bar was almost empty for some reason and even after getting drunk enough to dance (alright, wobble) to Greek Light Country music (Dog Music – Σκυλάδικα, arf!) I couldn’t find anyone to accommodate me. In one case a dude almost assaulted me for having the nerve to dance near his girl. It was a silly conversation actually (and now in two language translation. In Greek and in free English. yay!)

Greek Guido – Hey man, what’up? (Τι έγινε φιλάρα;)
Me – All’s good my friend. You? (Όλα καλά φίλε μου. Εσύ;) – Thinking that he is just being friendly and patting him on the shoulder
GG – Don’t you “friend” me man, what do you think you’re doing? (Ασε τα “φίλε μου”. Τι νομίζεις οτι κάνεις εκει;) – Removing my hand and getting obviously hostile
Me – What? Was that your girlfriend? (Τι; Να σου πω, κοπέλα σου είναι αυτή;)
GG – Yeah, cut the bullshit (Ναι, και κόψε τις μαλακίες)
Me – Hey man relax, how was I supposed to know? (Έλα ρε φίλε, και πως έπρεπε να το ξέρω εγω;)
GG – You’d better watch your step, yo! ( Για πρόσεχε…)
Me – Alright man, chill. I didn’t know (Ελα ρε φίλε ηρέμησε, δεν μπορούσα να το ξέρω έτσι δεν είναι;)
GG – Yeah, fine (Καλα, αντε γειά)

Now this was extremely funny to me because I could easily turn this into a fight. I so wanted to make him look like a wuss in front of his girlfriend for acting like an ass, but I restrained myself.
In any case the night proceeded dully with the only notable parts being me trying to dance with some girls and them semi-ignoring me, and then I laid down on the beach until my friends dragged me to the tent.

Monday arrived and I wasn’t certain if I wanted to stay or not. It turned out that Mazetas had not left the last night as he was supposed to, mainly because he had been having such a good time with his new acquaintances and some other guys that labeled themselves as The guys with the branches (Τα Παιδιά με τα Κλαδιά). After the morning (ok, midday) swim, I had one conversation with Mazetas where I couldn’t decide if I was going to leave with him in the evening or not. In the end I decided to see how the day would turn out.
Well two things made me stay.

  1. A KNE dude offered to put me in the cantina to work for a few hours per day which also meant free food. Since I was seriously running out of money, this was a very good thing.
  2. Mazetas introduced me to the girls and the guys with the branches.

Now, originally I only met the girls after I hanged out with Mazetas a bit and we met them on the beach. There were 3 girls there and a foreign dude, named Asem (A very appropriate name, it almost sounds like “Ασε με” in greek which means “Let go”. He was from the middle east and he was a real “masterpiece”. At some point, because of the number of metalheads in the party, we started singing “A Question to Heaven” by Iced Earth with two doing the angels and two singing the vocals. It was awesome (although the punks didn’t really like it)!
In any case, I had become a bit light headed in the process and at some point Kathryn asked me to escort her back to the tent to get her cellphone. It was kind of strange to me because I didn’t know her at all. To make a long story short, we made out on the way back, almost by chance as well.
We took our time and even had a walk through the camp before heading for the tents and then sat down on the plastic chairs in front of their tent to make out some more.

Now for some reason I seem to draw these kind of events. This is the second time a soap opera-like situation took place in my life (or as I like to call them: Φάση Φώσκολος). As we sat there kissing, at one point Kathryn exclaimed her joy that Asem, who has been buggering her all the time since she got there and wouldn’t take no for an answer, finally left her alone (her words were more like “Good riddance to the bad bug”) immediately after which I heard a zip open up behind me and then a voice…in a heavy arabic accent: “You little whore” and then all hell broke loose…

It seems Asem has returned disappointed to his tent (which he had set up next to the girls’) after we left and as was still awake as we sat down on the plastic chairs. Once he got angry enough, he got out.
I was desperately trying to defuse the situation before it got out of hand, when a bulky dude appeared, I don’t know from where, and asked if there was any trouble (he was trying to protect the girl I think). Kathryn and Asem were too busy cursing each other and so he turned to me

Bulky Dude – Hey man, what’s happening here?
Me – Man, it’s unbelievable. The Dude wants the girl. The girl made out with me. The dude heard us and got pissed off.

The dude blinked at me, patted me on the shoulder while nodding and left. 😮

In any case, Asem wanted his pass back (As I’ve said before, you can only get in Posidi if you are a Student or a Guest. Guest carry a special pass. Kathryn was Asem’s guest) and after he got it, I managed to drag Kathryn out of there to calm her.
We walked around a bit, encountered the black metal girls returning, made out some more and then headed out for the beach again because I had forgotten my shoes 🙂

At the beach, the fun had died down a bit. The black metal girls had left because one had returned and found her wallet open and out of her bag, they had a kind of fallout and left. We sat around a bit with the guys and were talking bullshit mostly.
We even invented a new Olympic game loosely translated as “cockettes” (Κοκορέττες) which is played like beach tennis but instead of wooden rackets you have big plastic watering buckets (Ποτιστήρια) and instead of tennis balls you have live roosters…don’t ask.

In the end, after most were on the verge of collapse or had indeed collapsed, we returned to the guys with the branches area and sat around until morning. I was planning on sticking around until 8am but at around 7am I got bored and went to sleep.

Thursday wasn’t very exciting. It turned out that I couldn’t work in the cantina because I wasn’t a comrade but I did get some free food from the guy that proposed it. We actually went for a swim together and with some of his friends. I Saw kathryn at night, after we had gathered at the guys with the branches and then we left together and went to the beach to make out. I am sad to say that it didn’t go any further as it rightly should.

Wednesday was the day I was planning to leave, after the morning swim in the company of Kathryn, I packed my things and along with the Tall one and the French Dude, we got on the bus.
Kathryn didn’t come to say goodbye and so I had to give my number to Spyros to transfer it to her.
Funny thing is that the moment I stepped out of the camp I started to feel tired, feeling even more tired by the minute. By a stroke of luck I bumped into a female friend of mine who had a birthday and which was returning from her friend’s house. The fact that I couldn’t contact her to wish her happy birthday because my cellphone was dead and that I bumped into her in the most unlikely place says something about fate. In any case, she was supposed to have a birthday party at the Dizzy Rock Club and I missed it. The reason is that as soon as I reached my house I was almost ready to drop dead. I actually had fever! A bath didn’t help much and thus I had to miss the birthday 🙁

…

Phew! That’s it…finally.
Back to the routine now.