When I was cleaning up my… erm… document storage system I came across a gift certificate I received from a former employer. As it had an expiry date, I decided to cash it in. It was a so-called “Wensbon”. The idea is that you can pick your gift from a list, up to the value listed on the certifcate.

The list was the usual affair for such certificates, in other words: pretty crap. In the end I decided to go for the surprise package, for 25 euros worth. They listed it as ‘we will not tell you what’s in it, but we can tell that the theme is chocolate’. Fair enough.

Today, I received that surprise package. And a surprise it was, but not quite in a positive way. Given that my expectations were not exactly high, it’s kinda amazing that they managed to undershoot those by quite a margin.

The package contained: a 50g box of toast, a cup of cheese spread, a bag of Klene licorice, a small box of cheese pretzels, a small pack of chocolate pretzels, and a bowl. Estimated value of the foodstuffs is less than 5 euros. The bowl is, shall we say, subject to taste. I do kinda miss the ‘chocolate theme’ here. Or a value anywhere near approaching the stated costs.

Update: I complained about the above, and they offered me 25 euros worth of DVDs from their collection. Seems they take complaints seriously, which is a good thing. I asked if they could donate it to a charity instead.

As I was analysing my power consumption, I discovered that having that 24/7 server was using about 210W, continously. Whoops. That amounts to 1800 kWh annually, which is about 45% of my total power bill. Further analysis learned that the server itself was good voor 130W, the router 65W, and about 15W in supporting infrastructure. As my server was already showing it’s age, I decided it was time for a new one.  Ideally, it would replace both the router and the old server, would use (far) less power, and would have plenty of CPU power and storage.

In the end, I ended up with an Asus Terminator 3 barebone case, an Intel Core2Duo CPU, and two 1TB disks configured in RAID1. Total power consumption: 70W. The old server ran Gentoo linux, I decided to go with Ubuntu linux this time around.

Picked up Naughty this afternoon. Goodbyes were hard, but luckily the trip was fairly uneventful, if a bit long. Naughty was very quick to explore his new place when we was released from the traveling basket. Gijs was less amused, and started growling and hissing whenever Naughty came within a meter or so. Too bad for him Naughty growls much more terrifyingly, so Gijs drew a hasty retreat. No actual violence ensued.

Seven degrees Centigrade is what the Maarseveense Plassen and De Beldert have in common. Both are quite wet, too. Visibility at Maarseveen was rather poor, with darkness being virtually complete at 10m. At De Belderd visibility was good at 5 meters, albeit a bit milky. There was still daylight visible at 15 meters. Still trying to get a hang of my dry suit, but I like it muchly already.