Oleg's Big Party

Things I say - Part II

Well, its next week, I’ve compiled some more of my favourite expressions (yeah I stole a few, but who doesn’t these days)… I still have more, maybe next week?

And failed miserably.
We’re doomed.
Where, where!
Okay, fine, die.
Nothing to see here. Boring!
Soda’s on me.
Good question…
Other than that…
Without a cause.
What’s ‘sappening?
I want cake.
Luck is a skill.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 03:23 PM / Comments (3)

Things I say - Part I

With great difficulty...
I am mighty happy!
On a mission...
Incredibly dull.
The time is now.
Impossible without your support.
They said. And they did.
What about me?
Zooming ahead.
Doing stuff, massively.
I am abused.
Take this away.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:09 PM / Comments (8)

Unpleasant Surprise

I have been using the wretched computers at school again. Here is a news flash: MathWorld doesn’t work - it banned our school IP. Oh, wait, our school doesn’t have an IP, it is shared between the entire TDSB network (at least with all the schools in the East York area). Considering the relatively low amount of people actually needing math resources, it is doubtful that this banning was a result of proper use.

I tell you what happened - some idiot had to spam the damn website, and spam it hard to make them notice. Well, thanks buddy: you had to ruin it for me - you are an idiot. I will make the probabilistic assumption, that this did not originate from my school, so told you - people from other schools really are dumb.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:16 PM /

Bad Service

TTC operatives can be dumb, but to have two idiots (details omitted) on the same day? What did I do to deserve that? Operative personnel are supposed to handle “problems” in a polite, efficient and an orderly manner - that means giving passengers a little bit of respect (yeah, guess what, communicating with passengers is part of the job too). Evidently, some people at TTC don’t think so (or even if they think so, unable to do so). Why am I telling you this? Not because TTC operatives are rude in general, but because it is a trend in being so. Fare keeps increasing, service keeps decreasing.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:04 PM / Comments (1)

Farming

Sometimes I go to farms, and say hi to my friend Richard Peng. The rural household is a nice source of carrots, tomatoes and other kinds of spam (harvest). But that exactly isn’t the point. Richard is one happy guy: a computing nerd. By nerd, I mean he is a farmer, or something as silly as that. Overall, Richard is a nice guy, nice enough that they let him onto the IOI team. Speaking of which, you know how many IOI questions deal with cows?

So, why exactly am I writing this? One time, I called Richard a farmer. So, Richard started wondering why he’s a farmer. He wondered for a while, and just couldn’t figure out the answer. So, he turned to the local “Know Things Guy” (that means me) to figure it out for him. A few months passed, and the funny thing is: I still haven’t figured out the answer. Unlike Richard, I am just the sort of person who gives up (luckily, I am creative enough to cover up the shame). All I can say to you Richard, is that “your sodbustering is beyond me.”

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:53 PM /

Munching Donuts

Lately, I have been ordering non-existing donuts. Thinking of fake donut names is just as easy as balancing chemical reactions (without the actual balancing). The people at Don Mills station were very confused.

Marble + Apple Fritter = Apple + Marble Fritter.

Double Chocolate + Toasted Coconut = Toasted Chocolate + Double Coconut.

Honey Glazed + Sugar Twist = Sugar Glazed + Honey Twist.

Blueberry Cruller + Rainbow Sprinkled = Blueberry Sprinkled + Rainbow Cruller.

And the classic reply is… “We’re sold out!” Seriously, do these people know their donuts?

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:17 PM /

Lots of Noise

Instead of learning history, we went over to the library to watch a student-run presentation. Or the “Global Noyse” (it was an acronym, they couldn’t spell it right) as they called it. Overall, it was… eh, more on that in a second (can’t start bashing it away just yet). They told us to pass the message along, “reach out to as many people as we can” - so… following their advice, I will tell you my story.

Okay, now that I have introduced the topic, I would like to say that the presentation was bad. By “bad”, I mean “very bad”, by which I mean “horrible”. I just can’t stress how bad it was. For one thing, the Power Point was bad (okay, it sucked, but I am trying to be polite). Black and white pages with single-size text just don’t meet good design. Even the Cyber Club® can do better.

I tried to read a book, but they just talked too loud and my head kept on spinning. Yeah, they “talked” about Human Rights violations for an hour. Just talked, talked, talked. They could have just shaddup and let me read a book, but nooo, :). They had to suck it. They didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. They didn’t even pull an act, to pretend to know what they talked about. It wasn’t informative, it wasn’t a comedy, it was plain boring.

Now for a more formal evaluation. Hard work could be such a waste of time. Its sad that others don’t think so. They (their effort) would be recognized and recognized for this, but what have they done? Many would say that they have done something bleeding good, performed some kind of a “public service”, but I would rather classify it as a “boring waste of time”. You want public service?

Take Peter Yung. He is the newspaper man: he distributes the Metro. Not a big thing, but lightens up many a people’s day. Now thats public service. And what recognition does he get? My respect. Thats why he gets to be a case study for this blog. But unfortunately, not much more than that.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 04:35 PM / Comments (4)

Roller Coaster

My physics teacher is a short, crazy old woman. She makes people go up to the board and write up a question they don’t know how to solve, discovers an error (Good question! or Who is your math teacher?), humiliates them into crying and then calms them down saying that crying is a good human emotion. Or if to her surprise, they actually get the answer, she says “Good girl” or “She’s good” (boys don’t surprise her often).

But we still like her, room 220 will always be in our hearts. Chessclub, physics club, everything! The place of gathering, if anyone ever comes to visit the school, room 220 is a must (usually the first stop to come by). All in all, her assignments are kind of crazy too. For grade 12, we are supposed to design a roller coaster. This is how mine turned out. I hear Ben was sneaking by.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:23 PM / Comments (3)

Suddenly, its March!

Well, thats the end of February (it was rather quick). Anyway, my dad bought me another lock and off I went to school… unfortunately, someone already put a lock on there. I complained but the office was rather slow about it (and totally unwilling to help). I deserve the rights to my locker: its a good location, I am used to it, its my locker, but the administration didn’t think so. What a bummer. So off I moved to the Ivan-Kirill domain (near room 220 - the physics lab). Good lockers have all been taken, so my locker is left without a handle, but it works, you know. Hopefully I will make some new friends, forget the old ones, oh hell! This is all nice and well, but its not going without revenge - someone is going to pay (and fast).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:15 PM / Comments (1)

Phone home!

I just realized I haven’t really used the phone in the last month (besides my standard - and only reply: “Not at home - call back later.”) It has been replaced by instant messaging services such as MSN. Actually, perhaps I am anti-social… at home I live in isolation!? Maybe this is the reason for me writing a blog… to spread out my great (big) ideas that would have never met surface otherwise? To unleash the darkness of the frozen cavern? Forget it, I don’t live that much in a basement, and certainly not anti-social, just thinking you know! I have a very weird “train of thought” - just zooms around in circles and triangles, you know - hehe.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:14 PM / Comments (1)

Health Hazard

So, I was sitting outside room 102 (near the front foyer), waiting for my English class. Anyway, I am coughing, and rather badly too. Then, I hear everyone else coughing. It was rather bad: some sort of epidemic I suppose. Anyway, the teacher comes to unlock the door, and guess what, she is coughing too. Then, the rest of the class comes in, and they are coughing too. In any case, we quickly closed the door shut, and got on with English.

Turns out that a certain chemistry teacher (not my favourite one) has incorrectly balanced an equation… and instead of producing a little bit of gas, a lot of gas was produced. Thank god, that stuff is out of my body by now.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:45 PM / Comments (3)

Lots of Cola

Its Friday. I come home, and wow, I see a tower of cola before me, 8 packs of 24 = 192 cans! Such stuff just don’t happen every day. Its like awesome. I couldn’t resist: one pack didn’t make it into the pictures.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:30 PM /

Immunization

Students of Don Mills Collegiate were to be immunized from %#@$. We were called down to gym in the alphanumeric order of our home form (grade, period 2 teacher). I got to miss 20 minutes of English (which is good). Before, giving us the shot, the nurse asked us a bunch of questions… Conversation went pretty much like this (couldn’t have been more useless):

“Have you read and understood the booklet?” YES. “Do you know how to catch the disease?” - YES. “Are you currently suffering from a serious illness” - YES… wait, NO. “Are you sure?” - YES… “Are you pregnant?” Hesitation. YESSS? No comment. Boring. Can’t you give me the shot already? - YES…

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:51 PM / Comments (2)

Student cards

You cannot believe it! Someone asked me for a student card yesterday for the first time this academic year. They are actually useful, you know. I forgot I even had one - it took me a few seconds to realize that it was in my wallet. The guy really wanted me not to find it there, so I would pay the adult fare. But I did and left him rather disappointed. But still, why enforce something which has never been enforced before?

Now, for some math. If a TTC student card costs $3.25 and the difference between adult fare and student fare is 75 cents, I would need to get screwed 5 times to make buying the card worthwhile. Except, at the rate this is going, it would be only be 2 times. The card isn’t very pretty and takes up space in your wallet. Effectively, its only purpose is to avoid the humiliation of getting screwed and paying the extra fare.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 12:45 PM / Comments (1)

Chemistry Textbooks

I and Kirill were arguing:

REGARDING: Chemistry textbooks.

I SAID: Its a picture book.

HE SAID: Its a photo album.

I SAID: Its a poorly written science fiction novel.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:36 PM / Comments (1)

Law of Inertia

My theory: normal people (that doesn’t include tourists) are lazy. They don’t like travel. When I am at home, I don’t want to go to school. When I am at school, I don’t want to go home. A little strange, don’t you agree? The hardest point, as inertia suggests, is to get on the bus or walk out of the house - but once it is done, you keep rolling until you get to your destination. The bus gives a feeling of sadness - knowing that something is not done, or the day ahead will go to waste.

The bus really isn’t a nice place - especially if it is caught in traffic. Perhaps, I don’t like city travel is because its so boring - and this has nothing to do with inertia after all?!

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 02:09 PM /

A spam story

When I returned from the Summer Conference, I put the photos up on the web. Then, I asked different people to take a look…

To my amazement, Richard gets an “access denied” message. So I ask him for his IP. Out of all IPs floating out there, I recognized his. Its not a number you memorize, its a number your remember. A few months ago, it was a major source of spam. Trust me, it was not fun. Richard’s computer was infected with the worst kind of virus and he didn’t even know it. The virus not only sent spam, it also forged the email addresses; hence other people were getting the attachments from Richard but supposedly from my email address… and then they were asking me whether I am infected!?

I mean come on, this coming from a lame PC user? But from Richard - an IOI alumni!? You’d expect the guy to be some sort of a computer genious… only to find out that he is a spammer!!

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 11:31 AM / Comments (1)

Why?

I ran www.vladio.com for a couple of years as a small website about gaming, hosting some clans in the good days of Counter-Strike, and providing POP3 e-mail service and a CS server, until I was shut down by Rogers for breaking the contract - bastards. Maybe it was the 24/7 max bandwidth usage, maybe they just got lucky, who knows. Anyway, since I hated all web server providers, I left vladio.com unchecked for a bit. It just so happened at that time that the domain name expired. A couple of weeks after that happened, it came time to buy it back. So I go to check that it’s still there - and what do I see? The HUMOUR NETWORK has made www.vladio.com it’s home. Why VLADIO? That’s not funny at all. It’s still up, unfortunately, but by the content, I doubt that will last.

Posted by VladiO, 01:59 PM / Comments (3)

Mysterious Downtime

Merry Xmas! Molten Studios was hacked. No kidding. Actually, the whole server xxxx.moltenstudios.com hacked. As a result, it was unaccessible between (Dec. 24) 4:56 - (Dec. 24) 5:13 and (Dec. 24) 5:32 - (Dec. 25) 5:22M. Captain’s log:

Dec. 21, 2004. 1:41 PM. I receive an email from [QWK.net : Services] regarding an “Emergency Maintenance”:

QWK.net had a customer implement insecure website code. This customer’s code was compromised. The hacker then had permission to compile some Perl scripts to wage ware on the server. There will be a period during the clean up period where server xxxx.qwknetllc.com will not be available to the public while we restore information from tape backup.

Dec. 24, 2004. 4:56 PM. I cannot connect to my website. I check my email. It says: “Account has been suspended because [BLANK]”… No reason is provided. It looks like one of those automated messages.

5:13 PM. I get the email “Account has been resumed”. This only lasts twenty minutes…

5:32 PM. I get another “Account has been suspended” email. Like last time, no reason is provided. I try my website - and it works. But in a few minutes, it stops working again - and this time for “good”. I send a “trouble ticket” to QWK.net.

Dec. 25, 2004. 2:54 AM. I receive another email from [QWK.net : Services] titled “Important security advisory”:

For almost the past 12 hrs we have been dealing with a handful of scripting attacks driven from Google and other sources. These are variants of the original santy worm that earlier this week took out over 40,000 servers in just a few hours… Even though we are running the latest versions of Apache and PHP, We have also been under attack by a new compromise that is yet to be defined.

Afterword. QWK.net asked customers to upgrade their PHP and Perl scripts to the latest versions. I have upgraded Movable Type to v3.14 - which fixes numerous bugs and security leaks. I have other “heavy duty” code running, but this blog was definitely the center of QWK.net’s attention.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 11:08 PM / Comments (5)

Its Xmas time!

I don’t know about your house, but in my house, Christmas is “something special”. Two hours is all it takes to assemble the tree (yes, it is synthetic - we were using it every year for the past decade), lay the cables, route the lights and put up the toys.

Result of my two hours.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 02:53 PM / Comments (3)

The Better Way

TWO-NINE-NINE Bloor, TWO-NINE-NINE Bloor, TWO-NINE-NINE Call Patrol..." What does this mean? Do I need to hear this? Do I want to hear this? Well then, why do I hear this? Shaddup already.

I am riding the rocket. I meet a few friends and when they get off they leave their gloves behind. So now I have the gloves and have to give them back. But they are not really my friends, I don't really know them, they are from another school and the only way we meet is by accident (such as today). Poses a problem, doesn't it.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 02:29 PM / Comments (2)

These will not be things

I came up with "good" ideas about upcoming inventions:

Pocket Cash Changer - you know how you always have a $5 bill and wish to exchange it to buy a drink from the vending machine... well instead of finding an exchange machine around the block, take one with you! (Its called a wallet.)

Invisible Paint - its invisible, paint your walls with it and you walls shall disappear. (It doesn't make the walls disappear, its just that you don't see the paint.)

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 02:13 PM / Comments (3)

From my photo album...

The absurd must be remembered...

1. The Garbage Man
2. Very Unfriendly

Enjoy.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:48 AM / Comments (1)