Category: misc

Google :-(

For past few days (days!!!) I’m not able to log into my account at Google (except GMail, thanks for that! – Voice/Blogger/Plus/Docs/… are all broken though). I’m either getting this message:

Sorry, there seems to be a problem. The service you're looking for is temporarily unavailable. We're working hard to restore your access as soon as possible. Please try again in a few hours. Thanks for your patience.
Sorry, there seems to be a problem.

Or I’m sent to infinite redirect loop. None of their self-help pages are useful or have this error mentioned.

Apparently if you get such message, you should read this message in opposite way:

“Sorry (or you should be sorry), there seems to be a problem. This service is looking for you and you seem to be temporarily unavailable. We’re not working on this at all, it may show up on some report at the end of the year though as lost revenue, sad, we see you spent few hundred dollars on our services, so you trust us, but of course we have enough money from everyone else. You may try again in few minutes, few hours or few days, it won’t help you though. Though we appreciate your patience, you should start researching and debugging this yourself instead, thank you.”

I cleared all Google cookies on my browser and it started working. Apparently this has happened to others too.

Update: again…

When bad things happen!

When bad things happen, like… ‘strace -f’ or ‘gdb’ or any other process inspection tool decides to hang your precious processes (they show up in state T in process lists), there’s always help:

#include <sys/ptrace.h>
#include <signal.h>
main(int ac, char **av) {
int pid; if (ac>1) pid=atoi(av[1]);
ptrace(PTRACE_ATTACH,pid,0,0);
ptrace(PTRACE_DETACH,pid,0,0);
kill(pid, SIGCONT); }

update

In past few months I had lots of changes going on – left the Sun/MySQL job, my term on Wikimedia Board of Trustees ended, I joined Facebook and now I got appointed to Wikimedia Advisory Board. This also probably means that I will have slightly less hands-on work on Wikipedia technology (I’ll be mostly in “relaxed maintenance mode“), though I don’t know yet how much less – time will show :)

P.S. I also quit World of Warcraft. ;-)

Knight's Cross!

Celebrating the Knight's Cross
We had very special State Award Ceremony today. Special, as it happens at the year we celebrate “thousand years of Lithuania”, special as it is the last one given by our very special President Valdas Adamkus.

Though for me, it was really special – Alvydas Mituzas, my Dad, got a Knight’s Cross, for his lifetime merits and service for our country, spanning forty years of creativity and dedication. Anyone knowing my Dad really know what the award is for, but for me it is also a symbol of support for virtues that I’ve seen in my whole life – hard work and imagination combined for public service and public good, no matter how difficult it is to start, or finish. Stories of his past are fascinating, and even I can learn more and more of them over the years. We’re proud of him, and we’re lucky to be his family.

flying…

so, I’m cruising now at 38000 feet, 530mph, flying directly over I-5 in California. In-flight wireless internet works, in-flight entertainment has some albums of my favorite artists I didn’t hear before (Jazzanova!) and movies I didn’t see. Guy in front of me is playing Doom (and he knows the secrets). Service is awesome, from the check in to flight attendants. Airplane interior has violet glow, and when I boarded, Kruder & Dorfmeister was creating the lounge atmosphere. Ticket cost – 60$. Guess, which airline it is…

Pictures! Trips!

Apparently I didn’t take too many pictures in 2008, but today I did upload quite a few to my flickr photostream. Though last year I traveled more than ever (though at least 6 trips were to SF area… ;-), I even left my handycam at home few times.

Still, there was vacation in Greece, Wikimania, which was mostly looping between library of Alexandria and hotel, and layover in Kiev (that was best (shortest/cheapest, not most comfortable) route to Cairo).