petru.blog

Romerican seems to be a (genuine) blog of an American that moved to Brasov. Found it by accident and spent a couple hours reading it already. It’s quite refreshing to read about your hometown as described by a foreigne.

Bird flu treatment

How to survive the coming bird flu pandemic is definitely worth a read if the subject interests you (it’s certainly interesting to me after having my parents in the middle of a quarantine zone). It seems pretty well researched and cross-referenced, so keep reading even if the very first impression you have is “medical conspiracy lunatics” :)

ISP support

What is it with ISP customer support nowadays? Just when I thought that I’ve escaped one set of rude incompetents, my new ISP proves they can’t read, either. Here’s what I wrote them:

I’m a customer of your cable broadband service. I have trouble
reaching a specific IP address from my home computer, even though it
works from computers that are not on the NTL network. I would
appreciate it if you could foward this to your engineers, as it seems
to indicate a routing problem on your side. Thanks!

(followed by detailed traceroutes and pings and other info). Their answer?

Thank you for your email. I can advise that we only provide Dynamic IP Addresses to our Residential Customers. To receive a Specific IP Address you would need to have a leased line which is available as part of our Business Package.

I’m beginning to think there are no decent ISP’s left.

Update: nevermind that. Looks like some sort of macro-responding gone wrong.

Thank you for your email. Firstly, please accept my sincere apologies for my misunderstanding in my last email.

I have passed your email including your trace routes to our Broadband Technical Support Team so that they can investigate this for you and they will contact you regarding this issue and provide information in having this matter resolved.

The Spam Diaries: Support Net Neutrality

Insightful piece on net neutrality (pretty much sums up my thoughts): The Spam Diaries: Support Net Neutrality.

siqpolicyd released

siqpolicyd just had its first “release”. I originally wrote it for myself (and ran it on NSE’s mail server) but since people started asking about it, I thought I’d make a (minimal) page and a tarball release. Grab it, play with it, break it, let me know :)

For the record

This post is here to certify that I said, in a meeting with somebody that shall remain unnamed and April, something like the following: “Give her data and servers and she will find patterns. I don’t know how she does it” (referring to April). There is no (and there will be no) audio recording of me saying that.

If it works, it’s obsolete (or a Mac)

I think I’ve become a Machead. I’ve been using my Powerbook G4 for about 4 months now, and I really like it. So much, that I’m going to get a Mac desktop at home (probably an iMac, not sure yet).

Sure, there’s quite a few people that like to run around insisting that OS X is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and industrial design doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come from Apple (I’ve seen such people, don’t laugh). OS X has its problems, and Apple hardware (while very nice) isn’t perfect.

However, the combination of OS X and Apple hardware is tough to beat. It Just Works ™. I’ve yet to spend more than 2-3 minutes in a row fiddling with my laptop configuration, and it gets regular use under a couple (quite different) network setups and works correctly with a bunch of different devices (mobile phone, external mouse, a second monitor, digicam, iPod, etc). It’s hard to describe how well it works until you’ve got a chance to try it for a couple weeks.

Disadvantages? Well, it’s not free software (speech not beer). I can live with that, but I don’t feel too happy about it. I still use a Linux workstation at work, and I like it that way (I don’t know much about OS X’ inner workings yet). That’s about it, for now — good job, Apple!

The Google cafeteria

This guy reports of a funny incident that involved him and Larry Page in the Google cafeteria. It was probably spooky for him given that he’s not an employee and obviously didn’t know how Larry looked.

It’s even more interesting when you eat there every day. You see all kinds of famous people around, and you’re very likely to be next to somebody that wrote some piece of software that you use every day (like Python or VIM). I personally find this (and not the food) the coolest aspect of the Google cafeteria. The food is good too, but what do I know about food?

Driving: California vs. France

I had a rental 2006 Nissan Sentra 1.8S while in Mountain View. While there I drove a little bit over 3400 miles (about 5500 km). When I returned it, the computer showed an average fuel economy of 29mpg (8.1 l/100km). I drove alone, mostly on highways, with notable exceptions being the daily commute in Mountain View and the occasional trips to San Francisco. I never went above 100mph (160 km/h) because nobody seemed to go that fast. Usual cruising speed when the highway was free was 80mph (~130km/h). Things I noticed:

the highways are omnipresent, free, and a central way of life for Americans. Most (all of those I’ve tried) map sites show you driving directions through highways, even if it would be shorter to go around them
the road quality varies a lot. The 280 in California was almost brand new, contrasting with the sometimes very crappy 101
while something normal for 101 commuters, the traffic jams at rush hour are a nightmare. You just can’t go anywhere — sit there and wait for it buddy, just like everybody else
most of the highways are very wide (4 lanes seems to be a standard, 5-6 or more is not unusual). The junctions and exchanges are a breathtaking maze of bridges. Everything is clearly signalled so it’s hard to miss exits or take the wrong turns.
driving is regular activity for Americans. Many of them suck at it — constant yapping on cellphones, lack of attention (you better watch out when crossing the road, because many of the drivers aren’t). They are however nice to each other. I have heard a grand total of two horn sounds in 3 months (I realize this is very different in areas such as New York, but I only drove in California).
there is no lane discipline. Basically, everybody drives wherever they feel like. Going really slow in the leftmost lane is a common occurrence and truly messes things up — you have to change lanes a lot if you want to go faster than the average, and that makes you look like a speeding idiot (even if all you’re trying to do is pass a dispersed group of cellphone-talking idiots going 55).
most cars on the road are big, gas-guzzling monsters. Not necessarily SUV’s (though there’s a LOT of those) but generally cars with poor fuel economy
fuel is cheap. At the end of my stay, it had barely passed the 3 USD/gallon mark — that works out at 0.61 EUR/liter. Dirt cheap, I’m telling you.

Last weekend I went to France for 2 days. I rented a 2006 VW Polo TDI. Awesome little car, german engineering at its best. The whole trip was about 680km, with 3 people inside and with significant portions of twisty mountain roads. Top speed was 180km/h (I was running late for my return flight) and average highway speed 140km/h. I only had to fill the tank once (right before I returned it) and the fuel economy worked out at an amazing 6.1l/100km (that’s 39mpg for you Americans). Had I been alone and driving more economically, I have no doubts that the figure would have been around 4l/100km. Things I noticed:

the highways are extremely well maintained. Same quality (if not a little better) than the best I’ve seen in California
you pay to go on a highway, and it’s not cheap (you get a ticket when you enter, and pay at the exit — just like parking). A ~170km trip from Lyon Saint-Exupery to Annecy costs 12.40 EUR, one way
the only traffic jam I’ve seen was at a tunnel that was under construction
2 lanes is the standard, although it widens up in busy areas
there is a very strict lane discipline: you drive on the right, pass on the left. Everybody follows it and traffic is amazingly fluid because of this. I’m also pretty sure that you get ticketed for driving on the left lane, if the police sees you.
most of the cars are small and efficient. I can count the number of SUV’s I’ve seen on one hand, and all of them seemed to be carrying construction equipment or otherwise have a purpose (besides “look at how huge my car is”).
fuel is very expensive. I paid 50 EUR to fill up my Polo with 41 liters of diesel. That works out at 5.9 USD per gallon. Kind of sends a strong “stop bitching and start saving” to many Americans, doesn’t it?

Fun church billboard

Stories from Brasov