There is No Jetlag

I keep having this argument with my BIL: "there is no jetlag"... And so far I was able to prove it.

However, I think 9 hours time difference between Amsterdam and San Francisco, it's just too much to take in in just 1 day. The first two nights I slept about 6 hours each -- from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and from midnight to 6 a.m. respectively.

It's so strange that your biorhythm just doesn't want to follow the day/night intervals. Let's see what happens in the third night... Probably I'll sleep about 8 hours and then be completely shifted to this time zone.... because, of course, there is no jetlag -- you're just tired for not sleeping enough ;)

A Place to Stay

We got the place! We are now the newest residents at the Sycamore complex in North Park, San Jose. And a very nice place it is indeed for the 2245$ it costs per month. Luckilly, my BIL agreed to be our guarantor, so we only had to pay one month deposit (instead of 2).

Since we are fresh off the boat, we have no credit history, no rental history, etc. It doesn't matter you have good history outside the US. If you don't have it in the US, you don't exist. Right? Right!

Anyway, I am really excited abut the new place. Been to Ikea and already started the big adventure: furnishing! We bought kitchen utensils, bathroom stuff. This was our second visit to Ikea... and many more will come. Hail the Ikea!

As of today www.mitza.net is also up&running. So pictures will come...

With Flowers In Your Hair...

We did it. We are in California.

Fresh off the plane. Here we are in sunny 20 degrees (Celsius that is). Confortable direct flight Amsterda-San Francisco (9h45m). We cleared customs with no problems. Nobody found any illegal substances/food that we might have had on us.

Saw one nice apartment yesterday. In San Jose, North Park complex. Very impressive. The complex has pretty much everything one needs (warmed pools, jacuzzi, BBQs, gym, spinning, lots of classes, basketball court). Waiting for the approval for it today. Fingers crossed!!!

We've Got Visas

Yes, we are legal aliens as of today. Well... potentially legal aliens, as we have not moved yet.

Today, we went to the US Consulate (in Amsterdam). After horror security checks, we made it in. There were 3 queues just for getting inside. Some poor people who had mobile phones on them were waiting to get in when we get there, and they were still waiting to get in when we left. So remember, no electronics on you when you go there.

Inside there were again 2 queues: one for applying, one for the actual interview. All in all went really well. In about half an hour we we done with everything.

So in the next episode, finishing packing and flying to the US.

Holiday is here... Flying to Cluj

Finally the long awaited holiday is here. Today we flew to Cluj-Napoca (Romania). The entire flight went very well. As there are no direct flights from Amsterdam to Cluj, we had to take alternatives. The best connection/price was Dortmund - Cluj with Wizzair for about 210 Eur.

Woke up at 3 a.m., left by car at 3:40 a.m. from Amsterdam, got to the Dortmund airport at 6 a.m. after 270 km, boarded on time at 8 a.m., landed beautifully in Cluj at 11:20 a.m. 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Lovely!! In just about 8 hours we got from Amsterdam to Cluj safe and sound.

We left the car in the long-term car Park 6-7, at Dortmund airport for about 63 Eur for 3 weeks.

You always know when it's going to be a good trip. And I have this feeling now. Our luggage was heavier than allowed - no problems. Plane was pretty full - but we ahd no problems finding good seats next to each other (we were traveling with 4 people), the cabin crew was in a cheerful joking mood... and the good strike continues in the next post...

I am in a very positive mood now ;) Let's see how this holiday continues...

Santa is in town...

Santa came to town and he brought a very nice and "simple" Nikon D40.

Lovely !

JAD Command Line

These are the parameters I normally use with JAD:

jad -r -b -dead -ff -i -o -space -nonlb -s java com\**\*.class

Caseta 1 - Traducere automată

Programele automate de traducere mă distrează de foioioi. Înţeleg şi respect efortul făcut pentru a ajunge la acest nivel tehnologic, dar mă şi umflă râsul când văd ce formulări scoate "robo-traducătorul".

Deci, ceea ce urmează este o traducere automată a postului anterior "Box 1", realizată de Google translator.

Dixtraţi-vă:

Caseta 1

Acesta poate fi un pas mic pentru omenire, dar cu siguranţă un mare pas pentru noi: am trimis prin e-mail de la prima caseta de California.

Am fost scris într-un post mai devreme, că suntem pe cale de a muta, până la coasta occidentală a SUA în ianuarie 2009. În ziua de vin este destul de rapid, asa ca am inceput de ambalare. Să sperăm că nu va fi prea multe cutii, de când l-am lăsa noastre de mobila si toate lucrurile în apartament din Amsterdam.

Oricum, TNT Post - (în limba olandeză de servicii poştale) taxele de 54.95 de Euro pentru o economie de transport în America de până la un maxim de 20 de kg. Parcelă de până se termină pe o navă şi estimările de la TNT Post ajungă în 4-6 săptămâni. Voi blog despre durata efectiva atunci când / dacă sosesc. Nu jinxing!

Box 1

It may be a small step for mankind, but definitely a huge step for us: we mailed the first box to California.

I was writing in an earlier post, that we are about to move to the west coast USA as of January 2009. The day is coming by pretty quickly, so we started packing. Hopefully it won't be too many boxes, since we leave all our furniture and stuff in the apartment in Amsterdam.

Anyway, TNT Post - (the Dutch postal service) charges 54.95 Eur for an economy shipment to America of up to maximum 20 kg. The parcel ends up on a ship and TNT Post estimates to arrive within 4-6 weeks. I'll blog about the actual duration when/if it arrives. No jinxing!

Duku's birthday pictures

Some very cool photos from my friend's birthday party back in November. Taken with a Nikon D90, mostly of them with a 70-300mm indoors!.

Copyright Duku

Şurub prins cu sârmă

Duminică dimineaţă mă trezesc şi observ că nu mai merge netul. De vreo 2 săptămâni se lucrează la greu şi pică netul de vreo 10 ori pe zi. Le adresez nişte urale originale (adică legate de origine) şi mă duc să resetez modemul.

Spre surprinderea mea, modemul mergea, clipocea şi în general se simţea foarte bine. Lângă el, însă era pauză... gaură neagră. Şi anume routerul era completamente în întuneric. Foarte interesant, întrucât atât routerul cât şi modemul sunt alimentate din aceeaşi priză.

Verific priza, avea curent. Pun transformatorul routerului în altă priză, nu mergea. Se bulise. Am prin casă tot felul de încărcătoare. Le verific. Îmi trebuia 5V şi 2.5A stabilizat. Cam mulţi amperi... Tot ce aveam eu prin casă erau vreo 300mA nestabilizat la 4.5V sau 6V. Îmi bag picioarele şi le încerc pe ambele. Nu merge... Ledurile de pe router clipeau la nebunie, dar nu era accesibil. Bine măcar că nu s-a ars! Aşa că nu am ce face şi mă împac cu idea -- voi sta o Duminică întreagă fără internet. Şi dacă tot nu aveam ce face, mă apuc de reparat închizătorul la geamul din baie.

Peste vreo 4 ore mă apucă fibrilaţiile. Nu am net... nu se poate să stau o zi întreagă fără net. Suntem în secolul 21. Totuşi, e Duminică. Magazine nema. Suntem într-o ţară socialistă unde programul oamenilor se respectă. Deci Duminica mumu, totul e închis.

Mă loveşte o idee... ia să conectez laptopul direct în modem. Zis şi făcut. Uraaa! Merge. Am net măcar pe laptop. Încep să gugăluiesc... "power supply failure D-Link AirPlus". Bineînţeles, oamenii avuseseră şi ei probleme, aşa că găsesc rapid nişte nevoiaşi la fel ca mine.

Văd rapid nişte trasformatoare adecvate: 5V şi 2.5A stabilizat, dar numai Luni... Duminică nema. Până când îmi pică ochii pe un post: "if you need a 5V source, you can get it directly from your computer's power supply". Atunci îmi aduc aminte că doar pe USB ies 5V. Aşa că, fără să mai stau pe gânduri, masacrez cu cablu de USB şi cablul de alimentare al routerului şi încropesc un cablu de alimentare direct din USB.

Verific de 10 ori să nu fie vreun scurt pe fir, că îmi bulesc placa de bază. Verific să fie plusul pe interiorul mufei si minus la exterior. Finalmente, fie ce-o fi, îl conectez. Am fost convins că nu va merge. Iniţial speram măcar să nu îmi ard placa de bază. Bag mufa în USB. Computerul încă merge. Bag apoi mufa şi în router. Mă aşteptam la acelaşi spectacol de lumini ca mai devreme. În schimb, routerul îşi face iniţializările, porneşte LAN, porneşte WLAN şi se aprinde frumos LEDul de ready status. Incredibil, dar merge. Laptopul găseşte reţaua wireless, se conectează, primeşte IP. Uraaa! Nu îmi vine să cred. Am reuşit! Sunt conectat...

Sunt online, deci exist!

PHP: How to execute a command in the background on Windows?

So the problem is: how to fire and forget a command/batch etc in PHP asynchronously (or in the background)? That is, the calling PHP script should not wait for the command to finish. Rather the PHP script would launch the command, then terminate. Meanwhile the command is running in the background.

There are many examples and techniques on the Internet on how to execute a command in *NIX. It could be as simple as appending an ampersand (&) to the command.

However, since I am running Windows, I needed one that works for Windows... duh :) right?
After much testing, trying, looking around, the only way I found to achieve this is the following:

pclose(popen("start cmd", "r"));

Some variations of this approach are presented here...

All the variations of PHP function exec() will result in synchronous execution (i.e. the PHP script hangs until the command terminates).

PHP Snoopy: How to make it work with HTTPS?

Recently I came across the requirement to read the response of a URL using a secure connection. Since I have been using Snoopy for several years already, I just fired a snoopy->fetch() to the HTTPS URL. To my surprise, nothing happened.

After some investigation, it turned out you need to have cURL installed and configured in Snoopy. Basically just set the Snoopy $curl_path member variable to the full path of the executable. In my case, since I’m running Windows, it was something like C:\curl\curl.exe

Read the rest only if you are running Snoopy 1.2.3.
First of all, update asap – there is a vulnerability in Snoopy 1.2.3.
Second, if you still use v1.2.3 and access sites which don’t use trusted certificates, you will need to add the –k option in the command line of cURL. This basically tells cURL to ignore that the server can’t be verified.

You would have to edit the Snoopy.class.php and modify the following line to also include a –k among the parameters of curl_path:

exec($this->curl_path." -k -D \"$headerfile\"".$cmdline_params." \"".escapeshellcmd($URI)."\"",$results,$return);