The Swede in the middle of Silicon Valley

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Back home in the US

Yes. After 2 weeks of traveling in Europe I'm back home. Back in the US. Every time I get back here I feel more and more at home. I've finalized my extension of my contract through 08. Hopefully I'll stay here even longer.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Yes, I'm alive

So I've been kinda away from here, not that I know why but I haven't really had anything to talk about. So as usual I've been working my ass off. It's getting tiring but as usual I still enjoy it.
This weekend I went up to Boise with Jason to do some networking. Most things went well things are working and there isn't really any complaints...

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

HDTV for Linux

Yes!

I finally found it! A HDTV card that works with Linux, ONLY! :D
So since I haven't gotten any firm commitment on how long I'm going to stay in the US I'll just wait until I know. Hopefully I'll end up staying the whole 2008, and it that case I've decided to get some stuff, just to pass time.



                pcHDTV HD-5500                   Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080

Yes it's going to be pricy but hey. Who doesn't want to watch HDTV on a 100" screen or rock some Wii games for that part?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Making some music


So I don't know why but I ended up trying to write some music. Surely I haven't been able to finish any and I'm just doing it to pass time.
Personally I don't like to hear myself singing and I don't expect someone else to, so I've warned you!

Anyways, I've uploaded the stuff I've made so far to my server at home. You can access it at:
music.garnser.se

Monday, September 17, 2007

Dynamic updates of DHCP

So as I came to the office today I thought, wouldn't it be great if there was a tool that re-wrote the dhcpd config file based on a perl script?

Obviously I thought of doing this myself (as the programmer I am). But to make life a bit easier for myself I made a lookup at Google for dynamically updating ISC DHCP.
And woho! There's a pre-built API called OMAPI and someone built a tool on top of this called OMCMD.

After a couple of hours trying to get the stupid key to work (TSIG hmac-md5) I finally got it working.

For those of you who're used to update the DNS dynamically the syntax is about the same:

omcmd [-K keyfile | -k keyname key] [-s server] [command]


Adding to DHCP
omcmd -K keyfile -s 10.1.32.10 create host name=test ip-address=1.2.3.4 hardware-address=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff hardware-type=1;

What OMAPI does is to write the new config to
/var/lib/dhcpd/dhcpd.leases, it looks a bit funky to me

hostname {
dynamic;
ip-address 1.2.3.4
hardware-address ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff;
};


But it works.

The script that I'm using looks like this:
HOSTNAME=hostname.domain.com
IP=1.2.3.4
MAC=FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF

omcmd -k keyname md5hash create host ip-address=$IP name=$HOSTNAME hardware-type=1 hardware-address=$MAC


An issue that comes with using omcmd (I don't know if this is part of the IMAPI API) is that you cannot add DHCP entries pointing at hostnames rather than an IP-address.

Taking a different route

So I've decided to take a different route on my blog.

The reason for this is pretty simple. My new mobile doesn't support uploading to the blog and I'm simply to lazy to take the time to do it manually.

So I've decided to post more linux/network related stuff here. I'll still post some stuff that's about me as a person every now and then though.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Continues issues getting into the american society

So I've been an employee in the US for 2.5 month now and things are going pretty well at work. I'm enjoying my life overall (it's always nice to start off from the beginning) but obviously there's obstacles which one has to overcome.

One of these is the Social Security number.
So at first when I went to apply for it I ended up in a 4 hour long q, and no I'm not that patience so I dropped of after 1 hour saying to myself that I had better things to do, well working that is.
So I went back to Sweden for a month, at this point I cannot get my payment cause I can't use my US bank accounts without a SSN, woopie!
So I got back here, applied for one only took 30 minutes this time since I was there before they opened. Lucky me I guess, now that's in progress. At least I hope so cause a couple of days ago I realized that I had different names written on my I-94 and my application and I've honestly no idea of if I'm going to get a SSN or if I've to re-apply. ARGH!

So secondly is my driver license which wasn't to painful to get. Well, get in the sense of passing all the tests. So after I made the tests they told me that I should have my driver license in 4-6 weeks which sounded fine, sure it's a lot slower than in Sweden but I couldn't care less since I was going back for a month anyway.
So now when I got back I still hadn't received my driver license so I ended up calling DMV. And guess what they tell me? "You didn't apply your SSN when first applying for a driver license". Well that's just awesome. Couldn't they've been a bit more predictive and tell me that when I first applied? So this will effectively mean that I wont be able to get my driver license until I get my SSN plus 4-6 weeks. And that is if I get my SSN due to my miss-writing in the application. Not that I've a car or anything but this really bugs me out to the extreme. What's the reason of having all of the procedures when you aren't told anywhere all of the things you need?

But yet again, I still enjoy living here. Likewise work it sucks plenty some days but there's something keeping me. We'll see how it goes.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Pre-review of Transcend solid state disk


So far I haven't succeeded in getting Ubuntu installed on my solid state disk which has been somewhat of an disappointment, apparently Ubuntu isn't to friendly about installing the OS on a USB disk (which the disk appears as), there's some fixes but I'll wait with it until I receive my new laptop.
For now write and read performance hasn't been tremendous but it's at least faster than my 80GB 4.2k rpm disk. Hopefully it's better than the 100GB 7.2k rpm disk which follows in my new laptop. Since I'll only have my OS on this disk it should be fine either way.

Pimping table


So I went to IKEA yet again and found some cool LEDlamps so I decided to pimp up my table

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Preparations for the crayfish party


Yes I look ridiculos but so will everyone else at the party ;)

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Buying stuff

So I started shopping again, to much but whatever, I'm a geek, what to expect. So here's the list:

First off, a solid state disk Transcend 16GB Express Card


Second, speakers Creative GigaWorks T20 (I've 2 pairs of these back in Sweden)



Third the 3rd gen iPod "fatty" Nano


And yes I'll give you a small review on all of them as soon as I've tried them out.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Bottle finally opened!


So since I forgot to buy a tons of shit at IKEA a capopener for example I 've been kinda owned by myself a couple of times like when cooking dinner or having some beer but as you can see I managed to get one bottle open by using my keys.

Monday, September 3, 2007

My sweet guitar


So you may wonder what I'm doing on my spare time except for working? As I posted before I bought this beauty, a Paul Reed Smith SE Custom, must say that I'm really pleased with it, and so far my neighbours haven't complained, guess I should start rock out a bit more ;)

Some beer at Marks place


So Jason dragged me along to Marks place were we ended up drinking some beer, playing random old-school games and so on. Obviously I had a bit to much to drink so I cannot say that I remember to much..

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Wanna go home

So I've gotten pretty fed up, I'm getting really tired of Sweden and just wants to get back home to CA. Since I came back here I can just tell how many relations that has been lost, basically it feels like there's nothing left for me here unless I go back to my old self which I just doesn't want to.

I'm going back home on Thursday I doesn't know when I'll be back, hopefully it will take a while.

Cya Sweden, this trip was a big disappointment, all categories...

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Network hacking in Uppsala


Yes, whereever I go it's continuously networkhacking...

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Ant invation!


Ok, this is just simply disgusting, sure there's a lot of pros and cons living on the country-side but this takes the price for cons.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Right, I'm back in Sweden

So I've completely forgot to post about this, I'm back in Sweden for a month or so. Someone had to cover for everyone here while they went on vacation and who would be better than the guy who just moved from Sweden? Guess I wont get any vacation this year either...

Webbalert

So i recently read at Engadget about this new work-day daily show called Webbalert. I haven't decided if I like it or not yet but it's clearly interesting to see a woman leading shows like this, more of this please!



Mobile back


So I was lucky, it only took one week to get it repaired but obviously they wiped the whole phone and since I'm somewhat anti backups I'll just have to blaim myself. The phone on the picture is the backup I used, my worthless Treo 650.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Mobile dead..

So the reason for why I haven't blogged anything lately is because my mobile crashed when I landed in Sweden. The reparation takes 2 weeks...minimum :(

Since I came back from US I've been working all the time...not much interesting happening =/

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Guitar


So I was bored and decide to take a ride to the Guitar Central to check out some guitars, I ended up coming out with this beauty.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Samba + ACL

So I've been hacking Samba and Linux ACL with a colleague today. Must say that it's way better than UNIX standard permission structure but it still seams to have some old issues which haven't been resolved completely, automatically recursive when creation of new files for example.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Foot in the wood


Originally uploaded by garnser

I took this photo by accident last year when I went to Boise, Idaho, USA, I like it somehow, nice with the colors in the ground.

Awsome piercing


As some of my friends know I've a small "fetish" or whatever you would call it for piercings and tattoos, the only thing I've is stretched earlobes but that's about it, we'll see if I'll get some more later on (used to have more though).

Anyhow I really do like this photo and the piercings. What do you think?

Bicycling after work

So Jason and Mark took me bicycling after work today, we ended up going 8 miles which by 3 were uphill. I must say that this was really fun to do even if I would've liked to go longer but still, not everyone has been living on his bike for the last several years. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures since I forgot the mobile in the car :( wasn't to much to see though except for uphill roads and such.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Yay, internet finally!


So this morning Comcast dropped by to install internet for me, must say that it was very complicated, connecting modem to outlet and modem to laptop. I could probably not have done it myself...

Best AMV ever

So I was browsing around at YouTube for Anime music videos and stumbled upon this one which is probably the best one I've ever seen.



So since I suck at youtube stuff I posted the wrong video, the right one is up now, enjoy!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Parking-lot issues...

So I'm having some issues with the parking in my new apartment, I've been assigned parking-lot EE2 but obviously some bastard has taken it. Since I was leaving for LA I sent this email to my landlord:

Hi again.

I've located my parking slot to find that someone else is using it.

The car parked in my slot (EE2) has the following registration-number: XXXXXXX
I've now parked in slot (EE1) and my registration-number is: XXXXXXX

I'm leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6pm and wont be back until Sunday.

Hopefully my parking slot will be freed up by tomorrow but if not I'll be unable to move it until Sunday.

Please call me if you've any questions my mobile number is: 408-931-XXXX

So today I got back from LA and what do I see? I've gotten 3 parking violation notifications, and the bastard who has taken my parking-lot hasn't received any!! To bad that I'm to lazy to go to the landlord, their office is closed now anyhow. Guess I'll send em an email.

Middle of nowhere


So Oliver and I went back up to Cupertino today, a nice trip of 650 km, the road has it moments but it's mostly desert or farms all over.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Party at Olivers place


Ok, it wasn't really a party, just a good excuse to get drunk since the legal age of drinking is 21 over here. I had some fun and met some more people even though I drank a bit to much :(.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Hollywood


Ah! Finally, now I've seen the Hollywood sign. Sadly enough you cannot get any closer to it without having polices chasing you all over. Anyhow the trip up to the in-official lookup point was really nice, the closest I can come to think of would be Italy, small roads with well designed houses all over in the hills.

Downtown L.A.


So things are going well at the office, I've actually been able to have 4 days of _real_ vacation this year. Since I'm in the US now I decided to go south to LA to meet up with Oliver and have some fun for a couple of days.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Things moving on

So lately there has been a bunch of stuff going on. I've gotten my apartment, driver license, bank account, applied for a social security number and so on. Since I've transfered my mobile to AT&T I'm having some issues blogging with my mobile since I only get GPRS since AT&T decided to have 3G on another frequency than than in Europe.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Finally arrived to Cupertino

So I've finally arrived to Cupertino, here's the insane trip I had to do.

Arlanda -> Frankfurt -> Los Angeles -> San Jose

07:00 CEST: Wake up
07:30 CEST: Cab to the airport
08:00 CEST: At the airport
08:20 CEST: Checking, tickets and TSA cleared, going to gate
10:00 CEST: Announcement: The flight to Frankfurt has been delayed due to a thunderstorm, estimated boarding time is 11:00am CEST
10:15 CEST: Good news, we can board ahead of time
11:00 CEST: Boarding completed
11:20 CEST: Take off
13:40 CEST: At the Frankfurt airport, my next flight is leaving 13:55, Gotta hurry
13:40 CEST - 13:55am CEST: Runs like crazy to the other terminal
13:55 CEST: Announcement: The flight to Los Angeles is delayed due to the thunderstorm......
14:20 CEST: Boarding
15:00 CEST: Boarding completed and take off

17:00 PST: Arrives to Los Angeles, 30 minute delayed, fairly good in my opinion
17:30 PST: US immigration cleared
17:30 - 18:15 PST: Waiting for luggage, waiting a bit more....
18:15 PST: Announcement: Ehm... half of the luggage is gone, including mine (YAY awesome!!!)

My next flight is leaving at 18:55 PST and I don't have my boarding pass

18:40 PST: Goes to the self-checkin, my reservation code doesn't work, goes ahead to United services
19:00 PST: Awesome I've missed my flight, well lets hope that they can put me on another one
19:10 PST: Gets to the counter. "Your flight has been delayed until 19:35 PST" (Thank god!)
19:30 PST: TSA cleared, running without shoes to the gate (no time to put them on after the TSA)
19:34 PST: At the gate, boards quickly
19:50 PST: Takeoff!

Now I just have to wait to get my luggage, luckily enough I brought one change in my carry-on luggage, I'm just hoping that I'll get it by tomorrow, they have no idea where it is :(

Hope you'll enjoy the story ;)

Walking to the office


No I don't work at Apple I just happens to go by them on my way to the MySQL office.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Arrival at the hotel


I've finally(!) arrived to the hotel, I'll Blog about my insane trip tomorrow

Leaving Sweden


I'll be of for a trip to the US for 3 weeks to find an apartment, get a driver license and stuff like that.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Hats at the office


This is what we do at the MySQL office.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Stepping on a nail


So I was demounting a pallet and was going to the door to close it, OUCH! A nail was pointing upswards and of course I stepped on it. People has been nagging me about getting a tetanus-shot but we'll see if I'll get it or not.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Playing Zelda all weekend


I don't know if I posted that I bought a Wii but anyhow. I bought "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" this Friday and have been playing for 21 hours this weekend, I'm now at 37% completion of the game, although that's just an estimate by looking at a walkthrough...yes I'm cheating some but not until I've been trying to solve it myself for 1 hour.

Anyhow, if you have a Wii and haven't got Zelda to it, get it!

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Walking home


Since there's om bus going directly to my parents house I've to walk 2 kilometers the last part, at least during night time...

Swedens' national day


Today we're celebrating Swedens' national day. To add some extra spice to it we won against Iceland 3-0. GO SWEDEN!

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Start of the day


Since I missed the bus by 5 minutes I decided to spend most time of the morning on the porch of my house. Nothing really beats this a warm summer-morning.

Monday, June 4, 2007

The dog


So family decided to get a flatcoted, here it is after a bunch of failed photos.

The visa has arrived!

I've finally received my visa, now I'm just waiting for an approval for my flight.
As it seams now I'm leaving the 21st for 3 weeks.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The visa interview

So I just wanted to share my crazy morning to get to the interview.

06:20 am: The alarm goes off and my cousin comes into the room to make sure that I'm waking up. (I stayed at her place).
06:30 am: I've washed myself and is getting dressed with my new suit which cost me a fortune.
06:40 am: Heading of to the subway station with my cousin, ahead of schedule.

06:55 am: PANIC! I've forgotten my passport at my cousins place. I get of the train, runs to the other platform that goes back.
07:00 am: The train finally arrives after 5 painful minutes.
07:05 am: The train is now back at the first station.
~~~~~~: I'm running like a maniac to my cousins place to pick up my passport, the more I run the more sweaty I get, awesome to smell horrible for my interview....
07:15 am: I'm back on the train towards Stockholm downtime and realize that I'll never make it to 8am.

07:25 am: Suddenly I see my cousin at the subway station which the train is coming into, apparently she has been jumping on every train since I left to check for me. We're going one more station and all of a sudden she drags me out of the train and starts running. Since I know that I'm screwed in regards of timeframes I just follows her. When we get up on groundlevel she grabs the first cab she sees and tell him to drive fast as hell. (Notice that it takes about 40 minutes to go by car from this station to the embassy and the time is now 07:30am.

~~~~~~: Time passes....

07:55 am: The cab arrives to the embassy. JUST IN TIME!! My cousins throws me out of the cab to make sure that I'll get there.

So now I'm here, and what do I see.... a LOOONG queue, outside, in the cold.

So I'm standing in the queue for 45 minutes, I'm still not inside the embassy since everyone has to pass the security control. And I'm getting more and more worried that I'm screwed.

08:45 am: I'm now in the embassy, leave my papers and passport to a cashier and sits down to wait.
09:15 am: A man in the speaker says: Jonathan Petersson, please come to window D.

A small note here, everything that's within ( ) is thoughts I'm having during the so called interview.

I'm now standing in front of the immigration guy who sits inside a stall, we're divided by a glass window.

- Good morning, he says.
- Good morning, how are you?

- I'm fine thanks, and you?
- I'm fine to.

- So you're going to work for SQL in the United States?
- Yes (It's called MySQL...)

- What does SQL stands for?
- Standard Query Language (Gha! Wrong it's Structured Query Language)

- Uhm ok.
So how long are you planning on staying in the United States?
- Well, we haven't decided yet.
I guess I'll stay as long as the company needs me to.
If they want me to stay for one year I'll do that.
If they want me to stay for two year I'll do that. (Why do I continue!?)
If they want me to stay for three year I'll do that. (Gha man get out of it!!)

- Uhm, ok.
Your visa is hereby approved, you'll have it sent to you on Tuesday.
Have a nice day.

- Uhu? Well thanks....

So I'm spending all this morning hurrying like crazy, spends $30 on a cab, have bought a new suit for way to much money, and shoes for $150 which he doesn't even sees just to spend less than 5 minutes doing non-constructive talking. What an awesome way to start the day on.

Monday, May 28, 2007

More updates on the visa

I've finally received all the papers needed for the visa, a nice chunk of 180 papers or so. On Wednesday I'm having the interview and then I'm probably one week of from leaving Sweden, must say that my feelings are mixed but as we all know, the show must go on.

A piece of salad


Well this is the last week in my apartment and this will probably be the last dish that I'll do.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Ehm, what?!


Well this was the last thing I expected to see while walking home...

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Demos at Birdie


Tonight they're showingi demos at Birdie hopefully we get to see something decent.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Vienna


So I went to Vienna a couple of days with my family, it was really nice, the picture is from a lookoutpoint on a mountain near Vienna

Poker in the office


So the support team is here this week so they decided to have a poker night, not that I'm playing but I felt like joining, get to know some of the people

Monday, May 7, 2007

Going back to the Dark ages?


So for some reason my neighbours has been throwing their garbage in the front of their houses, don't ask me why...

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Slack all day long


Like my cats I've decided to slack all day

Aah


So tell me could you possibly say no to this?

Brunch by Fyrisån


The summer is coming and Uppsala is the best as always, 20 degrees C.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

No Valborg without a BBQ


Slightly delayed but the mobile network was kinda unreachable yesterday anyway as the title says no Valborg without BBQ!

Friday, April 27, 2007

Continues beach party


Well, no beach without water ;).