Friday, August 20, 2004

Computer problems and fireworks

The net connection at work was fucked in a mysterious way yesterday, all night and all morning. At first I thought it was some Eunet problem, then figured it must be my own since Lasu in the next room had no problems at all. Looked really weird, like half of the packages were not getting through.

Ran out of ideas, asked around. Mio said her computer started doing the same thing yesterday. Turned out that a certain silly bugger whose name shall not be mentioned put our computers under the same name on our DNS server. No wonder we only got half of the packages each.

Had a nice evening with Kristiina, who had brought some nice French desert wine. Even had some coffee, which is sort of an event, because I usually don't drink it.

In the middle of the evening we heard some strange noise, sort of like thunder but longer. Turned out to be fireworks. We did not go out to see them.

I used to like fireworks when I was a kid, but not anymore. I wonder why. Spending New Year 2000 in Helsinki has definitely contibuted to it, but I remember cooling off towards fireworks even before that. I can still enjoy them from far away, but from up close they are just burning things falling through the air and making an annoying noise.

I really don't like the ones used by the population. When I was a teenager I always though it silly that it was not allowed to sell fireworks in Massachusetts. "Why can't we have fireworks in stores like in New Hampshire?" was my regular whine, as well as everyone else's. After spending my first New Year in Finland (where, thank god, people are only allowed to buy them between Christmas and New Year, unlike in New Hampshire) I realized exactly why we don't have them in Massachusetts, and hope it will stay that way.


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