РЖД

Первым делом полез на сайт РЖД. Что удивительно, сайт работает, сайт ищет и сайт находит поезда. Из минусов, делает он это не очень хорошо.

Первая проблема, с которой я столкнулся, заключалась в том, что я искал ночной поезд. Ночные поезда отправляются где-то с 11^и вечера до 2^х ночи. К сожалению, сайт не поддерживает поиск с диапазоном отправления с началом и концом в разных сутках. Поэтому если я хочу заказать билет скажем на вечер 21^го мне приходится искать два раза, c начала на 21^ое (билеты с 11^и до 12^и часов) затем не 22^ое (с 12^и до 2^х). Я согласен, фича довольна специфичная, но что-то мне подсказывает, что не один я покупаю билеты Питер – Москва (ну или Москва – Питер).

Проблема номер два. Нет возможности сразу купить билет туда и обратно, сначала ишещь и покупаешь билет в одну сторону, а потом в другую. Будет весело если человек в одну сторону найдет и купит, а обратного не будет…

Проблема третья. Не возможно фильтровать билеты по стоимости. Пока на конкретный поезд не кликнешь сколько стоят билеты не узнаешь.

Ну и последняя капля, когда я все-таки выбрал один из поездов и заполнил всю информацию о себе, с меня почему-то затребовали 2750 рублей, хотя две минуты назад я выбрал билет за 2400. Самое обидное что никакого объяснения за что они берут больше нет.

Яндекс и все-все-все

Отчаявшись я полез в Яндекс искать где еще можно купить билеты и оказалось, что Яндекс и сам рад их мне продать. Тут и поиск был немного поудобней, да и дизайн сайта по-приятней. Только жаль сам Яндекс только помогает найти билеты, а продает их нечто под названием UFS. Тут все как у взрослых. Чтоб заплатить карточкой надо пройти через хитрую процедуру добавления и подтверждения.  Однако этот UFS почему-то не любит американские карточки. Обычные интернет магазины (российские в том числе) любят, а эта сволочь нет :(

Конец

В общем, придется покупать билеты по-старинке.

P.S.

Никто не подскажет хороший и недорогой поезд?

But to tell the truth I didn’t even hope that scanning would work over wi-fi with my Linux. And guess what? I was wrong! And not only did it work, it also took me just several minutes, probably even less then on windows (for which drivers where provided on a CD) to set it up.

Big thanks to HP for their support of Linux customers!

P.S.
Sorry I’m to lazy to write a howto, so just couple links:

• http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ – the drivers that do the magic, especialy nice ‘hp-toolbox’ tool
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HPLIP – Gentoo wiki page with lots of information, unfortunately not available anymore . Luckily there is a copy in web archive and there is equal amount of usefull information on the gentoo forum.

P.S.S.
Obviously printing worked just fine too :)

UPDATE: I decided to try to migrate to KDE4 and Arch64 so I had to reinstall my printer/scanner and I’m not lazy this time, so here are the steps required:

1. Install hplip, cups, sane and some sane frontend (xsane, kooka, skanlite, etc.)
2. Start cups daemon
3. Run hp-toolbox
4. It will guide you through printer setup
5. Uncomment hpaio in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf

Now both printing and scanning should work. You might need to add yourself to group “scanner”.

I should say it was more interesting than Web 2.0 Expo. Less buzz more technical stuff. Overall I’m very satisfied. Plus I’ve got a nice t-shirt with opensource mascot patterns:

И вот что из этого вышло:

К сожалению, не удалось попасть в оффис mySql, а фоткаться у зданий AMD было малость стремно, т.к. это было похоже на маленький военный городок.

Еще мы побывали в “гостях” у Apple и IBM, но они были не очень фотогеничны…

Перед поездкой я думал, что самый классный офис будет у Google, но должен сказать стеклянные высотки цилиндрической формы компании Oracle, расположенные в живописном местечке в Redwood Shores, порвали Googleplex.

I was planning to move out on the morning of the 25th when everybody’s at home celebrating Christmas so the freeways would be truly free :)

But the downside was that no rental would work on the 25th so I woke up early on the 24th and drove to several rentals close to my home.

First I visited Hertz (probably because that’s the best known name), then Avis (I also had heard of it before), then United Alamo (never heard of it before, but it appeared to be located just in the middle of the first two) and finally Budget (which I noticed on my way home).

Most of them didn’t have any cars :(

So I guess it’s a good idea to make a reservation beforehand.

The prices where pretty much the same, just Budget was a little cheaper.

The bad news where that since I’m not 25 years old yet I would have to pay extra $25 for each day. But that still wasn’t too bad.

The worst part was that Budget was the only one that a had a car for decent money and they wouldn’t give a car to someone who is under 25 and doesn’t have a credit card. In the other places they would accept debit cards but as I said they didn’t have cars.

So I ended up saving some money and taking the risks. But hey my car took me to LA in just 6 hours and got me back home in a little more than that due to some traffic.

Error returning browse list: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED

Here is a solution I’ve found on Mepis forums:
- When you launch the Add printer wizard, choose SMB shared printer.
- In the next screen(user identification), choose Anonymous(no login/no password)
- Proceed to the next screen, and SCAN your network.(This is where you will get the NT_ACCESS_DENIED message if you try to access your Windows network)
- Now Don’t touch anything, and go BACK one step to the previous screen (User identification).
- In the user identification screen, choose guest(login = “guest”).
- Proceed to the next screen. DO NOT repeat a scan. Just try to access your Windows network in the displayed tree. You should magically see your Windows printer appear without any whining about access.

I love:
Katapult
digiKam
K3b
Kopete
amaroK
yakuake

I like:
Ktorrent
Codeine

I hate:
konqueror (both as file manager and as browser)

I wish:
there was a way to completely replace konqueror with something simpler, like dolphin for example
firefox was ported to QT
eclipse was ported to QT
openoffice was better and ported to QT
Kget was better, had download speed throttling and schedule (like ktorrent)

Applications I use:
very often:
Katapult
firefox
Kopete
Eclipse
OO Writer
konqueror

often:
amaroK
kmail

from time to time:
digiKam
codeine
mplayer

rarely:
K3b

The “I wish” part upsets me, so here is my question:
How can I become happy?

Update: I’m happy now! 

It’s been only 2 weeks since I’d decided to stick with openSUSE but in a week or so I got tired of it. It feels bloated. It’s not as bad as Sabayon of course but still it didn’t make me happy.

While looking through different distros earlier this month I noticed one that I would like to try if I have a little more time.

The Arch

Emotions

And finally I did try, and I can tell you it’s fantastic!
Probably software development did make me a little pedantic but I really enjoy the KISS principle. And that’s what Arch Linux is about. Besides – it’s bleeding edge and I like that too.

It allows you to build your own unique system and that somewhat gives you the same feeling of creation as software development does.

Not That Much Emotions

It doesn’t have a gui installer. You just boot from a CD and then run different commands to install or configure different parts of your system. It actually appeared to be much simpler then I expected.

As you could have noticed I prefer KDE and fortunately Arch has great support of it.

Summary

Arch Linux is a great distro for someone willing to build his system almost from scratch. It’s not for average user but I think many computer enthusiast, programmers, geeks and nerds should love it :)

P.S. my arch boots to login in 32 seconds and then kde starts in another 8

This is a nice cafe in Antwerpen:

Note: Panos in Russian means “diarrhea”

Dangerous hatch cover:

Please zoom in

Gentleman in Amsterdam (Red Lights District):

And you can see some more here