sadevil.org

… or the story of our two-week vacation in Madrid. 

So, in between the jobs we thought it’d be nice for me (Jan) to go to Madrid for a two-week stay. We looked online, found a nice place with Rent4Days: a loft located close to Ciudad Lineal, some metro stops, in short: nearly ideal. The pics on the site also make you believe it’s lovely. It would also be overlooking a park, which is great - nature always is very relaxing. It also says it sleeps 7, so it’s gotta be big. Nice!

Diana did some initial shopping the day before, and on the first day we headed over to the place. We were a bit dissapointed, since it was actually more of a store that had been ‘reformed’ into an appartment. (reformed being a key word here). Oh, and it wasn’t really overlooking a park either - you had to get outside, walk a block, and then there’s the park. Ah well, as long as it’s nice, quiet, cosy…

Boy, were we wrong about this one.

Here’s a list of problems with the thing:

Overall problems:

1. The place is _cold_. Both physically cold, and not cosy at all. It lacks furniture, posters, … anything on the bare walls to make it cosy. We had to put on the heating, while it was 25ºC outside.
2. You get to enjoy the sounds of your neighbours peeing, taking a shower,… since every time they flush, or do anything with water, it sounds as if the ceiling is going to collapse. Not fun.
3. Light. I like light by day. I hate it by night. The curtains (if you can call those pieces of fabric curtains) that were there were utter, total, complete, mega crap. They let through 99,9% of the light.
   They weren’t even long enoug! The bottom part was hung from the curtains using pins… (not even sewn on)
4. Noise. NOISE. NOISE! You hear everything, the smallest movement someone makes in the other appartments, you’re part of it, you can follow it, it’s all yours!

Bathroom problems:

1. The bathroom has a leak, from the upstairs neighbours. We reported this, no one came to look or even bothered to call us back.
2. The shower is useless - it’s got a 5cm deep basin, and the drain is crap, so if you shower, you flood the bathroom.
3. Again on the shower, don’t use it. It will break. We had to buy a new shower tube because it broke, and we didn’t want to cough up 50e or more (standard fee by Rent4Days, it costs maybe 8e if you buy it in a shop)

Kitchen problems:

1. If you dare use the washing machine (good luck without the instructions), and spin stuff, don’t be amazed when the kitchen cabinet falls apart.
2. The sink is placed in a way that you can never stand completely behind it, unless you’re a plank. Wonderful.
3. There are no cabinets. Don’t even think of storing anything - there is NO room.
4. This place is supposed to sleep 7, but forget about eating or drinking with 7. Not enough dishes/glasses/cutlery! You can even forget about cooking for seven! The biggest pot is about 3l.

Bedroom:

1. This is supposed to be a double bed. It is 120cm wide, the width of a double bed about 30 years ago. Good luck trying to sleep in that with 2 people.

So after about 6 sleepless nights, we moved back into Diana’s place (which is tiny and with four definitely over-populated), and called the people of Rent4Days to explain the situation, and to tell them that their offer was below anything possible. What did they tell us? “You are the first persons to complain”. On the remark that this place does not overlook a park, they said “We know the area, it overlooks a park.” Sorry, it overlooks a GARAGE. Not a park. Not even remotely.

We took some pics so you can compare them with the things on their site.

So really, if you’re looking for something - stay away from Rent4Days. They’re crap. Expensive service that offers cheap crap.

To make a long story short, the rest of the days we spent at Diana’s place, and we didn’t really do much. The six sleepless nights were enough to drain our energy.

We did throw a party there, for our friends - even though it wasn’t allowed. Sorry, but after all this they deserve a very big screw you. It was fun, we played Killer Bunnies (having to explain everything to Diana and then she had to translate it into spanish… what a mess *g*). We had loads of food, brought by our friends and cooked by us, we also had booze! (sangria and sweet wine), and since it was the last Formula 1 sunday, the tv was on. It was great fun.

Well,

I wrote earlier that I was going to start with CTG, that story has gone a bit awry.

During my 2-week vacation in Spain (more about that here) I was contacted by KBC and they made me a proposal which I accepted. So, I’m going to work at a bank, for a bank! Scary! :p (damn, I’m going to get all mature and old….)

Tego from the userbase.be forum has created a Mac OS X widget for Dommel, my ISP.

It’s based on phptelemeter, my creation, and TeleMonitor (by Thomas Bouve)

You can download it here: zip / tgz

Finally!

Gmail now offers secure IMAP access.

To use this:

1. Activate IMAP on your Gmail account
2. Configure your favourite mail client for IMAP access

Done ;)

I’ve just updated my list of applications I use on my Nokia E65. Go take a peek!

;)

Apple has confirmed the 26th as the releasedate for Leopard!

I’ve already preordered my copy of this operating system, which has over 300 improvements.

Now go order yours! ;) (just kidding ;p)

Today is Blog Action Day, to bring awareness about the environment and the problems that we (human beans^Wbeings) are causing.

I support it, but since I generally suck at writing things ‘on demand’, I’ll just spread the word:

The points that Sade makes I support completely.

Check which tarot card you’re supposed to be. I’m appareantely “The Sun”. Scary.

You are The Sun Happiness, Content, Joy. The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way. The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon’s Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

Just in case you ever find yourself in the Brussels Airlines VIP lounge (in Brussels Airport), and you want to do something besides using IE on their internet pc’s, here are the proxy settings (that you can use in eg. putty). I had to find a way to open a command box to get to the settings, but in the end I managed.

HTTP Proxy: 193.108.215.75
Proxy Port: 8080

;)

Here’s a simple howto to get your Mac internet-connected using GPRS/3G on your bluetooth-equipped phone. I’ve only tested this with my Motorola V3 and Vodafone (Spain), so no guarantees about the other providers, but the main part should be the same.

First, let’s prepare:

1. download the necessary Modem scripts from http://home2.btconnect.com/Taniwha/. Decompress the StuffIt! file (eg. with The Unarchiver) and copy the files into /Library/Modem Scripts.
2. check your operator’s settings on this page (for Vodafone, it lists user/password: vodafone/vodafone, and APN airtelnet.es).

Now, set your phone to be detectable, and pair it with the Mac:

1. Go to System Preferences, Bluetooth, and use ‘Set Up New Device…’. Follow the wizard, and make sure to select ‘Use a direct, higher speed connection to reach your Internet Service Provider (GPRS, 1xRTT)’.
2. Set the Username and Password as found above (for Vodafone.es: vodafone/vodafone)
3. Set the GPRS CID string to the APN found above (for Vodafone.es: airtelnet.es)
4. Select the correct Modem Script for your phone. I used Motorola GPRS CID1
5. Check ‘Show Bluetooth status’ and ‘Show modem status’.

That’s it. Now you should be able to connect, starting ‘Internet Connect’ and clicking on Connect.