Category: Personal

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Happy Birthday To Me, I’m 40

The big Four Oh! Unbelievable. It’s one of those milestones… I wonder if I’m going to go through a mid-life crisis and do something crazy. We’ll see.

To celebrate the event we went hiking in the desert, very similar to what we did the year before. Only this time we’re living together, so we went back home together. And this is probably the biggest thing that happened over the last year – I moved in with a girlfriend, effectively for the first time in my life.

The other big thing is Ace’s death. I still think about her, and miss her, from time to time.

I went to two Prodigy shows this past year – #21 and #22. But not all my travels were to go see The Prodigy. This year’s trips also include Denmark & Faroe Islands, and Northern Spain with my girlfriend. Both were really great,

I still work out 2 days a week. And I follow a diet I said I’ll write about, but obviously forgot (or got lazy about). All things considered – life is good :)

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Ace Is Dead

Not too long ago we moved to a new apartment. Ace had a sheltered place outside where she could sleep comfortably. And for a about ten days she was happy. So happy, in fact, that she started climbing trees again and enjoying the new out-of-the-city quietness.

But one morning we found her lying dead. Presumably, she was attacked by stray dogs.

Ace has always had access to the outside and could always take care of herself. Throughout the years I had a few scares with her when I heard cats fighting outside or when she came back home bleeding and I rushed her to animal hospital. But I learned to count on her instincts and preferred to let her live freely – going outside as she pleased.

I picked Ace up from the street about ten and a half years ago. She was just over a month old at the time and she was a part of my life since. I can’t even find the words to describe how I feel about her being gone. Sometimes I still imagine that I hear her outside.

I miss her.

At a very young age

Ace

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My 21st Prodigy Show – Kiev, Ukraine, 12-Apr-2016

I forgot how nice Kiev is. It’s been 3 years since my previous visit there. This time I went with 3 great friends and although we were there for only 24 hours, we had a blast both before and during the show.

The people in Kiev are really nice. Even during the show, in the mosh pits, people weren’t aggressive. Just there to have a good time.

I still don’t have a date for the next show, unfortunately. Hopefully some new interesting dates will be announced soon.

Here are some pictures from our visit, and a video of the madness (give it the minute :)

Hanging out in Kiev

Some monastery of some kind

More of us

Show time

Dudy Prodigy Kiev

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Intel® + E8 Storage = 💙

UPDATE: There is now a web page about E8 on the Intel® Storage Builders website. That’s cool.

A blog post from Intel® uncovers their new dual-port NVMe SSDs. To show off the performance of these drives along with the possibility of using their dual-portness to achieve high availability, Intel® used E8 Storage’s Poof of Concept storage setup.

E8 Storage high availability with PCIe level performance
E8 Storage high availability with PCIe level performance

It’s fun to work on the cutting edge :)

If you’re an experienced C/C++/Linux kernel/python developer looking for a job, you might just find it at E8. It’s a great place to work. Contact me at gnobal@hotmail.com.

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Happy Birthday To Me, I’m 39

Another birthday in which I was too busy to write on my blog. This time busy with good things – my birthday was on Saturday and my girlfriend organized a great trip to the desert, which included a picnic on the edge of a rock with a great view to the dead sea.

As I traditionally do, here’s a short look back at the past year:

  • The previous romance ended and a new one started. I’m again very happy :)
  • I went to 4 Prodigy shows (#17 and #18, #19, #20.) Always a good thing. And I already booked the next one.
  • I made some changes to my diet. I actually made some more since. I should write about those too.
  • It’s also been one year working at E8 Storage (the website will be updated soon) and I’m very happy there. A job that you actually like cannot be overrated.

To sum up, life has been kind to me. The dreaded 40 is now less than a year away. I wonder what kind of a midlife crisis I will experience :)

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Trying To Eat Slow

Following my so-far successful Diet Coke rehab, I decided to try another nutrition-related self improvement.

If you know me, you know that I eat very fast. I’m almost always the first to finish a meal, and not because I eat less than everyone else. So I decided to try and change that. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried this, but so far it’s the most successful attempt.

Over the past two weeks I started eating much slower. The first week was very tough – it required me to concentrate all my thoughts and will power whenever I ate, just to make sure I wasn’t stuffing food into my mouth without noticing. Also, my stomach had to adjust. At first it was aching to get more food faster, and it was extremely hard to resist its calling.

Eating slower is supposed to be healthier, more enjoyable and help with weight loss by allowing the stomach and the intestine to notify the brain about being full. I hope to be able to make this a habit that I don’t have to think about.

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My 20th Prodigy Show – Hallenstadion Zürich, Switzerland, 14-Nov-2015

About a week ago I traveled to Switzerland for 24 hours to see The Prodigy for the 20th time. I went by myself, so this time I could go up front for a change. It was brutal. The youth in Zürich have a lot of pent up anger in them or something, because they created mosh pits throughout the entire show, even when it didn’t really make sense.

I enjoyed the enthusiasm – people were crashing into each other and smiling, but obviously I’m not exactly at the age where this still appeals to me. So next time I think I’ll keep some distance from the front rows :)

I also got to see the rap/hip-hop legends Public Enemy, who were great at getting the crowd to jump and shout.

I couldn’t find a lot of great footage from this show, so here’s official footage from The Prodigy, filmed during a show in Russia.