Teething and tithing

Well, those of you who are parents either have (please tell me how to survive) or will (you poor poor poor POOR bastards) live through the phenomena of teething. Ok, so little David has 1 tooth. Or rather, half of one. The other part is still below the gums, so right now, he has a dull, nicked little razorblade stuck in his gums. That explains the whines and howls over the last period. Today however, my girlfriend discovered something else. His second tooth is on the way as well. Oh yeah. Like David didnt have enough of a bad temper as it is. In the mornings, dont talk to him unless you happen to A: want to put him back into the bed or B: have huuuuge …… tracks of land if you know what i mean (I mean boobs you dunce) brimming full with milk that is all his for the taking. Naturally, you also have to look like his mom, smell like his mom and act like his mom. (at least i hope thats the criteria) He whines, yawns, moans and makes a pretty good point of going back in to bed, and if you dont let him, he gets the scowl of a century on his face, just like his old man. My, its true what they say, the apple dont fall far from the tree.

its not “bend it like Beckham”

its dodge it like Reinfeldt. Now, one of the larger political parties here, the social democrats
or rather, their leader, is fishing for votes. She says, and I quote: “Om det blir det förslag som låg i riksdagen, så river vi upp det och förändrar lagstiftningen” wich in englis translates to: If it is the proposition that was filed in parliament, we will tear it up if we win the election”

Now, I really really like to believe that, but im afraid that 95% of all political parties
have lost all their credebility for me. How so? Ok, lets look at a little facts please.
The FRA law is passed. Who passed it, well, the right wing alliance with the now current
government in the lead. _BUT_ who filed the law? Well, the former, social democratic
government with Tomas Bodström. Ok, nothing personal against him really, but
seriously. I just WISH that when he had a seat, he would listen to the people, instead
of following the smell of money.

So, then comes the religious party here in sweden. Kristdemokraterna. Obviously they
have some good points. For one thing, quite a few of them are against the FRA law
for one thing. However, theres a lot of prejudice there. For instance, the majority
of them thinks that homosexual individuals shouldnt be allowed to be married
in a church, much less be allowed to be seen in public.

I guess ill hoist the jolly rodger instead. Yarr mateys.

Oh. and just for the sake of pissing people off I present to you:
Jihad, Bomb, War, Declare, Infidel, Anthrax

Have a good one peeps
-Z-

Who pays for the governments mistake?

It is another day in the reich of sweden. Fuhrer Reinfeldt is still at the
helm of this vessel and from what I can judge, he wont go down
with his ship, he will shackle the rest of us to it and then get into the
only lifeboat there is to laugh while the rest of us drowns.

Ok, ok. I dont really have any hatred towards Fredrik Reinfeldt personally
but I really cant bring myself to agree with his politics, and well, up until
last month at least, everyone was entitled to an opinion.
Do I sound bitter? You bet. Remember what I said about things not
gonna be on my taxes? Well, they wont be, but they will come out
of my pockets nonetheless. The ISPs needs to pipe things to the FRA
and thats gonna cost a minor country’s gross national product.

How are the ISPs and the phone companies gonna finance that?
You guessed it. Higher rates. So, instead of moving technology
into evolution, we strike people where it hurts them the most, the wallet
and in doing so, we stagnate the technology, since without funding,
noone will develop new, faster things. And noone will be able to afford
these new, cool things when we all are addicted to this fad, as it was
referred to, by a multitude of ministers.

So, once again, we strike at the small people, but wait, this time we
also strike at the people that wants to aid the people by bringing fourth
new ways to do things. Cool huh?

Another thought. We have a lot of companies that really has the need
for secrecy. Screw privacy in this example, but, lets say that Ericsson
finds a new revolutionary technique for conducting phone calls, it will
revolutionize the mobile phone industry making them earn 4 times
the gross of what they usually do. They of course, have to send
this to Sony, in japan.

Wee .. its tapped by the FRA, some hackers gets it and sells it to
nokia/lg/motorola/whatever. Now dont tell me FRA cant be hacked.
Already names of their “top secret” spies have been revealed by ordinary
geeks like me. But, in the extension, that means that Ericsson loses the
dominant position it would have had, and the swedish nation loses
millions, if not billions, in taxes. Hows that for making a better tomorrow
for swedish companies?

A sidenote. Google will never place servers in sweden.
Due to the above mentioned.

Now, another sidenote, this time on a more humourus scale.

We all know that the word minister comes from latin, right?
Here’s the twist. Magister means “He who knows more”
Minister means ? 🙂

-Z-

Do you know who this is?

Camilla LindbergThis my friends is a new fav of
mine. Her name is
Camilla Lindberg
And she was one of those
who voted No on the FRA
proposal. Sadly, the scores
to the right of her tells us
a story of defeat for the personal integrity and a victory
for the swedish government to
snoop around in our private mails that goes abroad, all chat connections
that isnt within sweden (and to be honest, that would be NONE since I dont know
of a swedish IM client) and they will store that data. Now, lets see how long
it takes for the FRA to get hacked and get information leaked out to the general
public. My hope is that it is VERY soon so that they understand that they will
be having a ticking bomb in their hands. Also, I am actually considering to
apply for political asylum in another nation such as Norway on the fact
that the government is “having me under constant surveillance despite
the fact that I havent done anything criminal and this is causing me severe
mental problems related to stress, wich may turn into psychosomatic health
problems.”

Do you think thats doable?

Anyhow, this Camilla Lindberg, although being from the right wing and I am not
has earned my respect. She went against the flow of her own party and voted
from her heart, every single flower and every single thank-you mail she has
got, she definetly deserves. My hat is off for you Camilla, and for the rest of you
that voted yes on the bill, I sincerely and utterly hope that all your personal
surfing habits, how dirty they may be, and your cyberaffairs gets to be public
knowledge soon.

-Z-

safe.. for the time being

Apparently the swedish government balked a little regarding that FRA law. My guess
the sight of all those people protesting by wearing white shirts kinda made
an impact on the little people runs this little banana republic.

However, the idiocy hasn’t been revoked, just postponed.
They will return this fall with the suggesion again, with
“added control functions” wich I am pretty sure wont be
followed since they already HAVE been tapping the lines
for 10 years…. someone raise the Hue and Cry plz ?

-z-

For what its worth (note the sarcasm and irony)

I am not sure that you know whats going around in sweden these days
but it appears that now encryption software is going to be a must to
keep even the semblance of privacy. Personally i have installed Tor
and I am running it 100% of the time. Not due to the fact that I am
engaged in criminal or terrorist activity. I am not constructing bombs
to place close to the capital buildings in washington neither am I
creating gas traps to place in the subway in stockholm.

Now, if you ask an american these days what he values the most
no doubt about it, he will answer “freedom” but doesnt freedom contain
the fact that you wont have to have someone looking over your shoulder
with every letter you write? Doesnt it mean that I can say pretty much what I want, as
long as it isnt racial slurring that at least according to swedish law is prohibited?

How can someone justify surveillance on an entire population with the remark
it MAY stop a possible terrorist attack. Talk about vague pretences.

So. Now comes the next step. If they are to analyze all traffic from foreign
servers, where will that data be stored? Can I have a shell account there plz?
If not, they can be pretty sure that I wont be paying for it via my taxes.
I mean, seriously, just this post alone is about 1k, at least I think it will
be before I have vented my frustration at this possible future law.
Now, I am prety sure that there are more then 10000 bloggers in sweden
and some of them isn’t what you would call close mouthed.

Most of those probably use “blogger” service or wordpress.com
and both are NOT native to sweden. Wich means that all that the bloggers
write, even stuff that they dont post to the general public, will be under
scrutiny from the FRA. Neat-o!

So now, anything that I receive from someone NOT living in sweden will
be stored and read. I dont like the feeling of this. Now, for the sake of
just confusing anyone thats checking traffic, I will be adding a few phrases
that doesnt mean anything. Though I am sure that the following sentences
will be of interrest to any authority since we all know that they are
completely without sense of humor and irony.

I will not bomb an airplane bound to fly above the white house or the pentagon
I will not send anthrax via the postal service to random officials
The jihad against General Boredom continues with big macs
and Allah is the god of muslims.

Enjoy trying to figure out a code thats not there.
-z-

Good morning everyone

Isn’t it odd how ones perception of a job can change?
I mean, you rarely know how tough a job is until you have tried
it for a period. Now, I am gonna talk about Customer Support since
thats the area I know most about to be honest, and truth to be told
its an area that I have found most useful outside my workplace
aswell, when tackling ignorant neighbours who needed an explanation
why it isn’t a good thing to pour mocca latte down into your laptop
because it looked thirsty.

A few years back, if I called customer support at all, I would think that
they where snooty brats that didnt know diddly squat about what I
need, and they would connect me to this and that department only
to end with me hanging up with a frustrating sigh.
You recognize that? I am pretty sure that you do. How can I be so sure?
Ive been there, and I have also been the snooty brat on the other side
of the wire, albeit that I tried to treat all customers with respect until
they shown that they didnt think I was worth any.

When I started the CSR position a few years back, I hated phones
and to be honest, I still do. When I am at home, I try to touch the
phone as little as possible, unless its my little HTC of course, since
I use that for other things then calling. (More on that later)

I learned how to talk o customers, although I actually had another system
worked out in my head, that I combined with what I was taught.
I was taught the product pretty thourough and I felt I was prepared
when I came out on the floor. I loved the job, really I did. And I found it
a personal defeat when I couldnt find the “correct cause” for the error
myself. I also admitted to the callers that “I simply didnt know, I would have
to ask someone because this is a little way over my head”

Generally, when you put it that way, customers understand, because if you
ADMIT that there is something there that isnt right, they can wait on hold
for quite a while, just make sure that you project that feeling of confidence
even though you have no idea whats wrong.
(I am getting sidetracked here, gimme a minute)

Back to perceptions.
Nowadays when I call customer service for this or that reason, and yes
just because I work with one product and support for it, doesnt mean
that i know EVERY product by heart, I open the conversation with a hearty
Hello there, my name is …. and I have a little problem that I hope that we can
solve together.

I give the support person a happy encounter at first, and that WILL have a
huge impact on the call as a whole. The CSR usually asks about the problem
at this point, and since I know that the CSR mostly has a timelimit on the call
I try not to dwell on what has happened far back. I simply concentrate on
the most immediate symptoms. A good example was a call to an ISP. Ill give you
a rough writeout.

The CSR welcomes me to the support, takes my name and customer ID.
I start to state my problem. None of my computers are recieving an IP adress.
I have tried with the switch, without it. No difference. I also had a friend
try to ping the gateway and the DHCP server that is usually shown in IPCONFIG
and he cant find those either. Any clue as to what is wrong.

Ok. Here is where the CSR gets in a pickle. He can either tell me that they
might be having a problem, he has to look it up, or, he can try to see if
there might be a local problem at my end. So, he asks me, have I tried
a different ethernet cable to the switch. Good suggestions, since if that
is broken, I cant get an IP. Alas, that cable was fresh out of the box yesterday
and its the same thing with the new one. Ok, so that might not be the problem.

Here’s the killer. Since the gateway cant be pinged from the outside, and
neither could the DHCP, my guess was that something was wrong on their
end. Not a bad guess if I may say so myself. So I tell the CSR “Hey, I know
you are probably not allowed to say something about it, but is there
some malfunctions on your end?” And I can hear how this CSR sighs
and almost pounds his head on the desk and states that yes, there is.
Their DHCP has been sunk, all tables have been lost, and it will be
fully functional within the next five days. Why, thank you, thats all I wanted
to hear. I tell the CSR to take a short break while I am on the phone
and then I ask him to have a good day. No hassle. Why? Well, because
I got a straight answer, and he really did try his best not belittleing me.
I think that chap needs a raise.

I think ive confused you enough for a while. Write you later.

Weekend worker

Ok, I am soooo tired right now but im trying to do good at work anyhow.
I have someone to ask if theres something in the issues that I am not used
seeing, but still, i guess it could be worse. Last place I worked is still bleeding people
and yesterday, another of the old faithful crew jumped ship.  So I guess that
the few people that are still there are pretty much going on their knees now I guess.

Oh well, enough about writing about work. Lets do some of it aswell.

-Z-

A fresh start

So, I moved, and I have a new job, a new apartment and well, I figured
I would do some springcleaning when it comes to the server. Old accounts
that was obsolete have been removed, and my blog has been entirely cleared
out so that I can do a fresh start on that aswell.

My, I didnt know there was this much space in here, but hey, I can fill
that.

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Arkivet