Since we’re working with kids, and there are always kids that try to screw something up, we want to be able to stop that kid, before we’re kicked off of the servers by the people who manage things world wide. (Which can happen if you spam to much, swear, that type of thing.) But to stop the kid, we need to know he’s screwing up. And with 30 kids at a time and just 4 of us, you can’t do that unless you can centralise everything.

So, thats where I came in. In a few iterations over the years, we started with a simple C program that dumped all the outgoing IRC messages to a console, and ended up with a Java program that scans the outgoing IRC messages, nickname changes, etc. on our gateway server, gives it a spam score based on some criteria, and stores it in a MySQL database on a different server. The second server is a simple LAMP (Fedora to be exact), plus that is has two screens on which we see the newest outgoing messages, colour coded based on the spam score that was given. This happens on a different server, because in our situation (with a budget of €100~€150 a year, mostly relying on donations of hardware) our internet gateway server isn’t the most powerfull machine, and we can’t get a more powerfull machine, but we can get another not so powerfull machine. So different things get different servers. (These are SRS1 (gateway) and SRS3 (LAMP) on the diagram.)

So, that was last year. Everything worked without a problem, traffic logging happened the way we wanted it to, and it proved to be a very usefull tool for us. This year, the guys wanted to change some things. To see if they didn’t break anything, they wanted to first build up the network as it existed last year. Everything looked like it worked, but as soon as the Java program needed to log something, it crashed with a database connection exception. They double-checked the config, they tried again, and it crashed again. Then, they called me. Since I didn’t have anything better to do (this was last night) and I wanted to head over to where they where anyway, as they where going to a bar afterwards, I came over to see what was wrong.

So, I took a look. The Java program was running correctly, it was indeed an issue connecting to the database. Going to that server, the database was running. The output was working properly, I could look into the database using phpMyAdmin, everything was fine. The configuration for the Java program was fine, as well. In fact, nothing had changed, except for one thing: The harddisk of SRS3 was moved to a new system that was much smaller and more powerfull. But the system was running without an issue.

Oh, yea, and it installed some updates. Well, if you start a system for the first time in about 10 months, you can expect a few updates. What we didn’t expect, was that one of those updates would cause the firewall to stop letting traffic trough on port 3306 (which MySQL uses). Problem solved. (And luckily it wasn’t somewhere in a production environment – not that I’d use Fedora there.)

Bah, this was supposed to be short.

Another thing that changed, is that for a few months now, I’v been doing squash. Its a pretty fun game and I’m really feeling better, healthier then I did back when I didn’t do any sports. (Even though since I started at GeoTax I’ve been less active when you look at the total picture – I go there by train, while I used to go to school on my bike, which is a 45 minute drive.) Its strange how two 45 minute sessions a week (which is my goal) can make you feel like you have way more energy.

Between the internship and squashing, I have way less time then I used to. As a result of that, I’m making much less hours at work these days (not that big an issue, as the internship also pays pretty good), I’ve had to cut back on the TV shows I follow (all good shows got cancelled anyway) and I’m reading far less (as in, from a few chapters a day, to one or two a week). I’m also spending much less time online. I don’t read half the articles I would have read if I had the time, and my activity at Zetaboards Support has dropped to an all time low.

Oh, and I have a girlfriend these days. I try to spend what little free time I have with her.

The holidays are coming up, which means I need to think of stuff I want. The list of reasonably prised things gets shorter and shorter every year, and the only thing I can think of now is to just ask for some nice books. Easy, right, just ask for books. But I don’t want books, I want good books.

So, what is a good book. Well, if you look at my “collection”, you’ll see that I’m into the scifi and fantasy stuff. My copy of The Guide is in English, which wasn’t a problem for me. So for me, a good book is something in you can find in the fantasy or scifi section of the bookstore, it can be both Dutch and English. And then, the book itself has to be good. Anybody have any ideas?

On Saturday four of the leaders, including me, went to the camp location. It was a building we rented from another scouting group. It looked really nice, located right on the edge of the woods. After we unloaded we went into Zeist, were we where, to find some diner (at 9~10 PM). We ended up at some Greek place. The food was great, though kinda expensive. After we finished eating we went back to the campsite, had a few beers and went to bed.

On Sunday, two of us went back to Rijen (aka home) to pick up the fifth leader and the kids. I stayed behind with one of the others to do some decorating and stuff. When the kids arived we split them up into groups and first had them do some games that where supposed to teach them how to work together. (They suck at that, big huge time.) After that, food (rice + chicken and some sauce) and an evening game and to bed it was.

Monday, we went to explore the kingdom. (Read: Walk in circles in the woods.) We didn’t really have an evening program, but found a dead tree and decided it needed to come down. So, the three male leaders grabbed the axes and saws we brought and waisted our energy on that for about two hours. After it came down, I let some of the older kids help saw off branches and after they where tired, too, we went to the campfire (the guys made one).

Tuesday was games day. The four princes(es)es all have equal clame on the kingdom but, basically, we all suck. So, the kids had to help us become better people though a variety of games.

As the tradition goes, Wensday was swimmingday; the only chance the kids got to get a littl cleaner. We had a lot of luck that we where at an inside swimmingpool, at it rained cats and dogs all day long.

The weather was a lot better Thursday, even though it didn’t really have to be as we had a cultural day and visited a mansion. It was where the German emperor fled to after WWI. I found it pretty interesting but the kids where mostly “Ooh, shiney” (which in turn forced us to be “Don’t touch that”) save two or three.

Friday was the last full day of camp and we spend it playing our great end game that was to decide who was going to be king/queen (We ended up being in change together.) After that we had a BBQ and what we call bonte avond. I lack the will to find a translation so here is an explaination: Everybody does some sort of act. The BBQ was suposed to be on a campfire but there was just to much rain for that. So, we turned to the fireplace (which wasn’t made for a fire bigger then a box of matches, really, but who cares..?) and baked the food on/in that. The acts where fun and the whole thing lasted to about 1.30 AM. After that, we send all but the oldest of the kids to bed, had a talk with those remaining while drinking a beer (not the kids, obviously, just the leaders.) and went on for an hour more. After that it was just us leaders for one more hour, which is when we finally went to bed.

As you can probally gues, we wheren’t all to fit, Saturday morning. We had to be our of the building by 12.00 AM, though! So, we had to hurry up a bit but ultimately has time to spare.

All in all, it was a great week, for me at least, and I really hope everybody enjoyed it at much as I did.