A long time with no updates, so a quick summary.
In August we went to the EuroBillTracker Meeting in Berlin, it was truly great, a lot of nice people and we learned some new things about Euro tracking techniques.
For the travel I decided to buy a new notebook, a smaller one, as my 15" is to cumbersome to carry around. I selected a Fujitsu Siemens Computers Amilo Pro V3205. The machine is great for that price, except for the malfunctioning of the SD card reader. As all my gadgets are mainly SD card based it was an important feature of the product. I went back to the shop where I bought the notebook and they kindly accepted it back and sent it to Fujitsu Siemens Computers Italy. At FSC the DOA was accepted and another notebook was ordered. WHen it arrived (it was already mid September if i remember right) I decided to check the SD function still being at the shop. Yes, you guessed it. It didn't work.
So also the second one was sent back to FSC Italy. That time the DOA was turned down because the FSC technician said that the SD reader was supposed to work in that way... The malfunctioning being, that the SD card wasn't ejected mechanically. It was protruding by 2mm out of the slot, which in really not enough to take it out with normal fingers. So after a quick check with the German FSC support, they confirmed, that the SD slot should work as usual - a mechanical spring should eject the SD card, I decided that enough was enough. A really sad experience and another producer on th Nobuy list.
I did not accept the notebook that was coming back from FSC Italy and instead bought a Lenovo X61s. The X61s was manufactured on 22/11/2007 and a week later I already had it in my hands.
So after 4 month I have a small notebook that suits my mobility needs.
The X61s is great... If you dump Vista. I ordered the Business edition to have a legal way to downgrade it to XP. But for the moment I just installed Ubuntu on it. Yes Ubuntu, me, a real fan of KDE... ok It was just because Ubuntu Gutsy has the Desktop effects enabled and I wanted to impress friends, relatives etc ;) KDE4 is due in mid January.
I will publish another post with the Gutsy installation and optimization procedure later today.
On the house front I started to open the floors and to see what is under them... The floors have to be completely removed and have to be redone with the modern techniques. It was all wet under them. I'm still waiting for the neighbors to let us know if they permit us to raise the house, but have no real hope in that. I plan to go to the architect this week and start the procedure for the house renewal. In the mean time doing all the works that don't have to be officially permitted.
Yesterday I went to the agency to get a part of the amount the insurance decided to give me because of the injury I suffered a year ago. It went almost well, except for the fact that the person who followed my case doesn't work there anymore and I had to explain some things about what happened to the new lady...
I'm seriously thinking about changing my car. Toyota sent me a very good offer for retiring my 6 years old Yaris and buying a new one. I have time 'till the end of the year to decide what to do.
At work I successfully managed to migrate all the users authentication data into an LDAP database and to convert the mbox files to maildir. There were quite a few problems, but I managed to solve the critical ones in a short time.
I am now unofficially on the list of the people who will get a employment contract with no termination date... Let's see how and when.
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