Florent Thoumie

... or if you know me and weren’t sure, I’m an idiot.

No need to explain or give reasons, but on a positive note, I’m working on this, and it’s getting better already.

If you like to read random crap, point your web browser or your feed aggregator to blog.thoumie.net.

My flatmate (formerly my friend) is complaining cause I’m not talking about it him in my blog. I’m having a hard time trying to get into his head that this is a technical blog but let’s talk about him for a change.

His name is Nicolas. He’s like … 26. He recently got a job at IBM in Clontarf (D3) as Software Engineer. We’ve been sharing this apartment in Stillorgan for around 10 months now (he’s been there first, approximately 7/8 months before I moved in).

So, we went to the Barge in Ranelagh (D6) last saturday (6/1/2007) for a couple of pints and there was a birthday party on the first floor I guess. Anyway, I think he fell in love with half the women in that part of the pub, so if you’re a woman and you were there, please leave him a message on his blog

I really hate perl, really, but sometimes it really does its job well.

So today, for the first time, I’ve used WWW:Mechanize (www/p5-WWW-Mechanize) and I’ve created a simple script to check my irish bank account on Permanent TSB Open24 Online Banking.

Here is the result. It’s far from perfect, and the code is ugly but it does the trick. if I find some motivation another day, I’ll probably add new features besides accounts summary.

EDIT: link was broken, it’s fixed now.

In less than 4 hours, I’ll be in the plane to go back to Paris where I’ll be taking another plane to go to Ajaccio (Corsica) tomorrow. That’s my first vacation since I moved to Ireland (6 months ago now, time flies…).

I’ll be back on 16/09.

Me blames Keytronic for not sending their keyboards to Europe anymore. Shipping costs are prohibitive. I haven’t found any website sending to Ireland for less than 45 USD (which is the retail price of the keyboard). My Keytronic KT2001 is dying, so I need to find a new one quickly

If somebody wants to do a good deed. Just contact me

Edit: I just added it to the FreeBSD wantlist.

Edit2: I just received my new keyboards, thanks Remko! Those are the best keyboards ever

I think everything is ok with the bank now. I’ve received my bank account details and my debit card. I’ve tried to register for a broadband connection at work but for some reason it has been rejected, I’ll try to find someone who knows more about it tomorrow.

Some days ago, I’ve received my first salary for the past 7 months, that’s a nice feeling I almost forgot

I’m not sure my english improved a lot but at least I’m able to order a meal at McDonalds without needing to repeat everything twice. Anyway I’m only here for one month.

Yesterday, I’ve finally been able to open a bank account a AIB (they required the PPS number I’ve been talking about earlier). I left my passport there in the morning, so I had to go back to the bank before they close (5pm on thursday).

Again I have to wait for them to send me the details via mail (and from various sources, irish post service sucks). Hopefully, I should receive the letter by the end of next week.

For those who talk to me on a regular basis on IRC, that won’t be a surprise but I finally found a job in Dublin. In early january I sent a mail to a mailing list to ask people if they know about some vacant position for a junior sysadmin in Dublin and got 4 or 5 answers the following day. The following week I came to Dublin for interviews which apparently went well since I got two definitive offers. I finally decided to take the British Telecom Ireland offer, which was more interesting because it was near where I would live, the salary was higher and there were some nice benefits (health insurance, company car, broadband connection, ...).

On 24/02, I moved to Dublin, fortunately since I had a friend here, I didn’t have to worry about where I would be living. Work started the following monday (27/02) and I had to fill some papers for BT and to apply for PPS number (that’s a number you get at the local Social Welfare Office).

On tuesday I got the mobile phone and the car. I was afraid of driving on the left with the steering wheel on the right but I got used to it quite fast, and drivers are  much nicer than in France.

Now I have to wait for the PPS letter to be able to open a bank account.

Dublin definitely rocks. I’d just like my girlfriend being here with me, but that’s quite impossible at the moment. So I’m coming back to France once every three week ends.

On a completely different matter, I’ve been contacted by a canadian company that wanted me to do some NanoBSD work for them which is quite cool (even I haven’t receive a single mail from them last week)

I’ve won an auction on ebay and the buyer doesn’t answer my mail (though he has a really good feedback). I’m not sure what I can/should do. I’ll have a look later.

It’s been some time since I posted anything in my blog, so let’s correct that.

FreeBSD 6.0-R finally was released, and I started deploying it on any computer I could find in my house. I decided some time ago to reinstall my home-server too. I finally used gmirror instead of gvinum because it appeared to be a bit easier to use. I’m working at replacing my actual mysql-based mail server with a ldap-based mailserver (in an effort to convert everything to ldap). I had to hack authldap.schema (provided by security/courier-authlib) to add attributes and change some things but it’s finally working nicely.

I have now one foot in Copenhagen since I’ve almost been hired there, but I’m still looking for somebody to host me while I’ll be looking for an apartment.

I’ve finished watching Nip-Tuck season 1 and starting to watch the second. I had a lot of unnecessary expenses these days, I’ve changed the speakers in my car, and put a new CD-player. The sound is now amazingly good, though I haven’t bought a subwoofer. I bought an IP-Bus to RCA cable on ebay.com (and just received it) so now I can plug my iPod in my car \o/ I changed my phone too, upgrading from Nokia 6600 to Nokia 6630. I spent a lot of time trying to find free software for Symbian, which is a tough task. When I’ll have some time and courage, I’ll try to port simple software.