Dinner

Grilled steak and hot wings, french fries, garlic sauce, tomatoes and onions salad, dark bread. Very yummy:

And in other news, a new towel holder for our bathroom with a little bit of Freya’s touch. Cute ;-)

Life update

I am still around and I did not forget the blog, it’s just that I’ve been a bit busy with other things lately. During the week not much special is happening, it’s just work as usual. Most of the time in München, some of the time in this shithole small town called Rheinbach on the other side of Germany. Which is where I will be next week, actually. I can hardly wait, I am trembling in anticipation. Umm .. no, not really. In any case, not much I can do about that right now so I have to go.

Otherwise we’ve been working on our house, which we nicknamed “The Cave”, don’t ask why. The Cave is starting to look better now. We are also trying to do something about what we call “city rats”. They are not actually rats, just pigeons. We don’t like them, they are all over the roof, they make weird sounds and they shit everywhere. Luckily Freya might’ve found a solution:

Yes, that’s a pump-action water gun with a pretty good range. We hunt them down now and I think they are learning that it’s not so safe anymore to sit anywhere they please.

At the beginning of June I finally have a week of vacation, which should be kinda nice. As it happens, my parents will also be visiting and they will also bring a very special little somebody, which I will very happy to see again. That’s also the reason we have accelerated a bit the renovation inside The Cave. It’s not yet ready to receive too many guests but hopefully we’ll get it ready in time ;-)

Professionally I am still kinda working towards my CCSP, I have two more exams left in which the Cisco ASA firewall plays a major part. That’s one thing I can’t practice with at home so I don’t have many choices. Either classes or I just get whatever books I can for self study and I do the practice online. Which is what I will do actually. Internetwork Expert is a well-known site for the candidates to the CCIE, the Holy Grail of the Cisco certifications. They also have rack rentals and I noticed that the security rack has all the equipment I need to practice for my ASA exam: 2 ASA’s, IPS sensor, ACS server and so on, just perfect.

So I just rented rack slots for one week and at the end of June and I will just stay home and practice. It’s actually not that expensive either, about $15 for a 5.5 hour slot. My boss agreed with the plan, probably the $90 price for one week  plus some books as opposed to many thousands of euros for a 4-day Cisco course plus travel expenses might’ve had something to do with it.

Last but not least, I am still trying to convince Freya to do a guest post on the blog but so far no success. I am still working on it, she has some funny stories to tell from her daily trips to work ;-) I even offered to translate it into romanian but I guess I need to offer more incentive. We’ll see.

Star Trek

Warning: There are some spoilers below so if you have not seen the movie yet then please stop reading now.

Yesterday we went and saw the new “Star Trek” movie and I must admit I liked it a lot. I am a big Star Trek fan but I never watched the original series with Kirk, Spock and so on. First of all I never liked Kirk and second, I could never get over the ancient “special effects”. I don’t know, I just didn’t like the series. But otherwise, I have watched all the other Star Trek series and movies, several times each actually.

All that considered, I liked this movie. It was a little bit weird to see Zachary Quinto (Sylar from “Heroes“) play Spock, I kinda expected him anytime to make a flicking move with his hand and open up someone’s skull. But I got over that after a short while. I also liked the whole alternate timeline twist. It’s not messing up with the old Star Trek universe while allowing for future movies to be released. I’ve read some rumors which said that three more Star Trek movies will be made, I hope they are true.

Anyway, a movie highly recommended for everybody, Star Trek fan or not.

The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan

I ordered yesterday from Amazon Richard Morgan’s last book: The Steel Remains. In case you don’t know, Richard Morgan became famous for his Takeshi Kovacs science fiction trilogy: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furries. Three books which I read without stopping and then I did it again.

Now he started another trilogy called A Land Fit For Heroes and The Steel Remains is the first book. It’s not SF this time, but fantasy. I am very curious how the fantasy genre combines with Morgan’s brutal style but apparently, quite well. I recently read a review about this book and the bottom line sounded something like this:

“Bold, brutal, and making no compromises – Morgan doesn’t so much twist the cliches of fantasy as take an axe to them. Then set them on fire. Then put them out by pissing on them.”

Not bad, I can’t wait to read it ;-)