Holy Western Digital, Batman!

You all probably know by now - having been subjected to my sad smilies at #kaka - that I have been losing data and struggling with my external Western Digital My Book Premium Edition drive for the past week (months, actually - the drive has been troublesome for a good while now, but never before this strongly). I don't think I can be blamed for exaggerating if I claim to have tried every possible combination in terms of utilizing various setups of USB--FireWire--Crossover and Macintosh OS X--Windows XP

I went so far as to install experimental NTFS support on the MacBook Pro. I tried all the tools in the boo... www. After three long days and nights of struggling to transfer whatever files on the drive I became disillusioned, grey-haired and altogether defeated. Risto graciously offered support with whatever ideas he had (and, in the meantime, actually managed to fix a software issue we had been having with the Amiga CD32/PC combo, by replacing the serial driver with a faster one... apparently the driver files had corrupted at some point.Typically, I had spent days trying to find a fault with hardware - mostly on Zezwe, too )

So just as I was finally going to quit and send off the bloody thing back to where it came from, we decided we would give the drive one more shot, this time with Risto's computer, "Fartbox". We waltz downstairs, we plug in the drive, attempt to copy some random files... and bits and bytes start trickling in!

In the words of one Nickster, "Le gasp!"

All we could do is shake our heads in disbelief as on my computer, the symptoms were incredible! CHKDSK would freeze, Western Digital's own tool would say "Too many bad sectors" and quit, TestDisk would claim the partition was corrupited and the MFT altogether missing, and every single back-up tool would fail at one point or another.

Oh! I forgot to tell you, this all started when I first started getting the dreaded and elusive "Delayed Write Failed" error... Microsoft seems to be just as dumbfounded by this terrible error as we users are. Anyway! We badly needed a break so we drove over to the local fast food joint. Sadly, as we got back, we discovered the hard drive had finally failed with Fartbox too. That's where we started thinking overheating. At no point in time had we considered the existence of a mechanical fault, but it really does seem that this particular drive gets incredibly unstable after some use... I'm very, very relieved that I was annoyed enough to use WD's RMA service and get myself a replacement.

After three days of sorting the issue out, I now pretty much have everything covered, but no matter how I look at this I do feel like I've just lost way more than the three days (and the 120gb of lossless audio I accidentally destroyed) I've put into trying to recover the files

Today, with the brand new Kaka T-shirts, a group of kakaists has together built a Lan Happening, in a Wood Warehouse in Vesilahti. The place has been moved here, from the Cellar of Dorden, because it has more space, and isn't all cold, because it's middle of summer.

Somehow Mortis already slipped some Spam into his desk. Ain't good, if some Spam is splattering all over the desk so early.

I'm looking forward to use Karaoke-Tommi's seal of approval once again, and eat his delicious and extra cheap kebabs!

Thank you everybody!

Finally! Here is my long-winded account of our perfectly hedonistic escapades in the beautiful Baltic country of Lithuania, 7th-10th of July 2008. I'm afraid not many will have it in them to read this account in full, but... at least there are pictures. I regret to inform that the photographs did not turn out quite as well as they did during our stay in Iceland (in 2004) or Estonia (in 2007) because the weather was pretty grey overall - warm and pretty, but grey overall.

Sunshine does, in my view, miracles to photography. In any case, you can find all the photographs at http://www.slowdays.org/mortis/photographs/.

Monday

Our wake-up call was in the very heart of the morning, 5AM sharp, and as I was perfectly unable to fall asleep the travel began with ungenerous sleep. Surprisingly enough, however, we all seemed relatively cheery as we crammed our bags, suitcases and backpacks into the taxi that was picking us to the train station. In a chance meeting, we also happened to be the last customers of the summer for the tired-looking taxi driver, who told us he would start his own summer vacation as soon as he had dropped us off at the station!

The train ride from our rural Lempäälä over to the heat of Helsinki would have been largely enjoyable were it not for a duo of middle-aged Russian ladies. The constant, endless stream of yammering from the other lady - in the most unnerving voice and tone - was something one could have easily lost one's cool with.

That being said, what's really beautiful about the neighbouring Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) is that the flights from Helsinki only take up to a mere hour, so all this meant we basically didn't even have enough time to sit down in the airplane! You'd find a comfortable position in your chair and the plane would already be braking madly at the target airport. The whole plane got a thundering if nervous roll of laughter when the captain accidentally announced he was planning to fly us all to Tallinn instead of Vilnius! Unlike during our trip to Iceland (sigh!), though, the stewardesses weren't exactly stunning. For shame, for shame.

The Vilnius airport is broadly split into two halves: One building for incoming passengers, the other for the departing. The one designated to incoming passengers is relatively stuffy (seemingly with little to no air conditioning at all) and dingy. The atmosphere clearly reflects back to service performance as well: Where luggage only took 5 minutes in Helsinki, we had to wait more than half an hour in Vilnius... the upper, newer half of the airport, designated to departing passengers, is quite fantastic though.

As you all know, airport security inspections are becoming stricter and stricter every year (let's not even mention the USA) and since I have a piercing popped right through my nose, the alarms always ring... eet-eet, time for a frisk! Never gets old. As you might already know, our trip was largely booked ex tempore, an unrefusable "grab" online, if you will. Despite the obvious cheapskatery and the dreadfully unplanned, chaotic nature of the trip, the hotel we arrived at - Hotel Conti - was an excellent, excellent four-star hotel, and in fact one of the most beautiful buildings in the nearest proximity of the Old Town of Vilnius.

The old town is a different type of beast, for sure, and definitely one of the more pleasant curiosities in the whole of Lithuania! The architecture - an exciting hodgepodge of decayed old, renovated old and new. The atmosphere - schizophrenic! Oftentimes ownership of the flats and rooms would dictate the owners to renovate their own parts of the buildings only, something that result in hilarious patches and blotches of various paint jobs. One thirds of a house might be bathed in pink, where the rest would be dirty brown...

Outside the city centre there lie rain-beaten, withered Soviet-era blocks of flats (much like in Estonia, but on an even larger scale). Some of the housing is in very, very dreary condition, but curiously enough the car population is all new and the cars are high-quality. This realization also allows us to reach a perfectly logical conclusion and explanation as to why the traffic is hopelessly sluggish on the old, narrow streets. The low quality of traffic became even more obvious to us soon as we jumped onto the wild realms of public transport.

Interestingly, Vilnius has one of the largest trolleybus networks in Europe, and the public transport works relatively well compared to personal traffic ...mostly because buses have designated lanes, though... admission for the bus is 1,20 Lt if you buy it beforehand, 1,50 Lt inside a bus.

The first actual landmark we visited was the Vilnius TV Tower, which is as high as 326,5 meters - our local tower here at Tampere, Näsinneula (the tallest observation tower in the whole North at a moderate height of 168 metres) pales in comparison, though only 'til we realize the observation deck of the TV Tower is only built at a measly 165 meters! A restaurant equipped with a cheesy rotating platform can be found there. The deck is cleverly designed to be a complete tourist trap, and is in my view a fantastic display of post-Soviet empowerment capitalizing upon earlier tragedy. The TV tower played a major role in the Soviet-orchestrated Vilnius Massacre of 1991. There are actually some crosses and statues erected in memory of those who were driven over by TANKS near the entrance to the tower.

I say tourist trap because normally the price of a meal in Lithuania is roundly one thirds of the price in Finland. Up in the air, however, the meal ticket is nearly the same as what you pay here... nevertheless, an interesting quirk all around the country is that a mere bottle of water can in all actuality cost more than an actual meal! You can drink just tap water in Vilnius though. The water's not good but not particularly bad either. Despite this, for a food lover (especially for those who love a full tummy!), Lithuania is a great choice for travel as the plates are generous and the meals are very well-prepared, the only downside being that you often have to wait 40-60 minutes for your meal for a reason or another... and when you've eaten, the restaurant staff will instantly take your plate away! Instantly! Man are they fast or what?!1

There are also several very interesting and completely unfamiliar restaurant chains in Lithuania. The chain that figures most prominently on the streets is a Latvia-based chain called Double Coffee; The central streets and walkways of Vilnius are filled to the brim with their restaurants, and with good reason too, as although they primarily serve a wide range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic coffee-based drinks, you can in go to DC any time, as they have everything from breakfast (a curiosity to a Finnish-born man! They do this better in Stockholm, Sweden, I know, I know!) to ice cream dishes to full-blown restaurant meals.

If one can recommend a chain restaurant, this one might be it; there are already Double Coffees in Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia and Lithuania, so we can possibly expect one here in Finland sooner or later. Here's to hoping! Their brand name, by the way, is a reference to a fantastic double cappuccino that you can order with your meal, for a discount, too.

Tuesday: Trakai

We decided to dedicate Tuesday for a trip to the beautiful ex-capital of the country, the city of Trakai. The trip is not a very long one by bus, but as usual, the traffic was perfectly jammed and as it was, the trip took a good while on the sputtering, battle-hardened Swedish-made bus. Funnily enough, the hotel staff member at the reservation desk promised the day would be nothing but rain and thunder, but we decided to go anyway... well, what do you know, just as we reached Trakai, the sky busted right open with incredibly strong rainfall. Typical! Luckily enough, we had our silly-looking green raincoats with us, so we were unfazed by the crappy weather.

Earlier, Trakai was the agricultural centre of the country. Today, Trakai is a pretty, picturesque city that's been blessed by a fine little castle perfectly suited for tourism. The city is nothing like Vilnius, and consists of beautifully kept little houses and shiny clean streets. There are plenty of churches and religious sites for those that are interested in that stuff, and the castle is interesting enough if a little poorly rebuilt.

The hands-down strangest and most shocking incident of the trip happened on the bus back from Trakai to the centre of Vilnius! After a bit of the rough travel, one of the two passengers sitting at the back of the bus started producing what are best described as "liquid sounds", and eventually we realized the feller was flat-out barfing alcohol-tinged puke on the floor of the bus. The watery puke soon started streaming down the floor of the bus and eventually down onto poor Rip's shoes. I missed the poisonous stream by a mere second due to my sharp reflexes.

Mercifully you could open the windows of the bus - German-made this time around! - so a puke chain reaction was luckily averted among the rest of the passengers. The reek of hangover puke is really not the most pleasurable smell in the world. Poor Rip is probably seeing nightmares of the whole debacle as we speak.

After making it to our room in the evenings, Rip would always insist on channel surfing. We had what could be described one of the worst television sets known to man; The picture quality was incredibly ghastly, though the same could be said of the actual content shown - the Lithuanian television channels are really... incredible. There are plenty of foreign channels - CNN News and BBC World in addition to German, French, Polish and Russian channels. If I had to choose, I would mention the Russian channel RTR Planeta, a channel that played out like an unashamed advertisement for the Russian military. Every time one would accidentally switch on to the channel, a high-ranking military official would be narrating apparent propaganda in a perfectly monotone, bored-to-death voice over footage of rotating and spinning turrets, satellites and machine guns and various other military gadgets. Hypnotic to the max.

My second pick to mention would be the Polish channel Polonia TV. Boy. If you thought your TV was bad, think again. Polonia TV is b-a-d ass. See picture. We had the world's smallest bag of chips in our room, btw.

Wednesday

At this stage I must be frank with you: The photographs I have taken do emanate a chiefly one-sided picture of the beautiful city of Vilnius, for admittedly I found the quirks, nooks and crannies more interesting than the clean-cut middle-European city centre. Standing in the middle of it all, it could be any central European metropolis.

In the morning and amazing we headed for the nearby Vilnius University, one of the oldest in the whole of Northern Europe. For your personal kicks, I can tell you that at one stage, the school was called the Stefan Bathory University. It was opened as early as 1568, and it most certainly looks like it: The building itself is simply a piece of art - arty enough for them to tax you for an admission free - a sprawling castle-like monster of corridors and huge, dazzling courtyards; What a magnificent display of money well spent on us stinky humanists! We didn't really get to see a whole lot of the actual insides of the school - the historical school is still operational and contains several faculties - but what a beautiful place it was.

The best catch of the trip also happened at the university, for there was a peculiar little stairway souvenir shoppe hidden away in one of the little crannies of the massive university; I got two astonishing lithographs by Marius Luigana from there. They are called Kalnų Muzika (Highland Music) and Retro I, respectively. Funnily enough, I first chose to settle on Retro I alone, but later awkwardly waltzed back to get the other piece, too. I must have spent five minutes trying to decide which work I preferred best. Ultimately I became aware of the fact that I would mull over the piece left behind, too... I'm still really happy over the finding and became a big fan of Mr. Luigana's work overnight.

Early on in the trip we had also decided that we would absolutely, firmly, decidedly visit the perfectly arbitrary (just like the man himself!) statue erected in the memory of one "Frankui Zapai", the musical maestro extraordinaire. Did I ever mention how male names are always Lithuanized for weird effect, resulting in such weirdness as Džordžas Bušas Jr. or ... well, this? Peculiarly enough, feminine names are left alone.

The statue is exceptional in several ways - firstly, it was the first ever statue to be erected in honour of the visionary extraordinaire Zappa, and secondly in that the artist had absolutely nothing at all to do with Vilnius or Lithuania. The statue lies in an interesting spot all-in-all, with the walls covered in amusing graffiti. A must-see for anyone visiting Vilnius, and a nigh-religious experience for a big Zappa buff.

Later in the day we also visited the infamous "KGB museum", or the Museum of Genocide Victims. The exhibition is actually constructed in a building that was originally home to the KGB administrative headquarters and contains, among other dreadful things, an old prison ward down in the basement. The prison was "home" to a large amount of partisan fighters and members of the Lithuanian underground resistance. As we walked through the prison, the passageways and the cells littering the walls just refused to end; the basement just refused to end. After every single corner one would find himself in another hallway.

When you finally thought you reached the end, you came to a door that led you to an execution chamber. Imagine that, living your life every day knowing that the execution chamber is right around the corner. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking what you're thinking. It doesn't say "genocide" for nothing. The most sinister aspect of the prison - apart from the execution chamber, of course, and the miniscule size of the cells - was the "padded" cell.

As disjointed as this is, I'm going to talk more about food now. Earlier, we had jointly agreed that we should absolutely try the local chain - having already visited Double Coffee - so we waltzed wearily into a ÄÂÂ?ili Pica sitting at a corner near the bus station. I say "wearily" because the one major unchanging component on every day of the trip was walking, all day! As we were comfortably waiting for our dishes, four scraggly and unkempt guys barged in, ordered some drinks and generally made a big ruckus... and then left without paying!

Some alarmed-looking staff rushed after them, of course, and surprise surprise, they actually captured one guy from this unholy entourage!

At this point in time I may add that I ordered perhaps the best ultra-basic pizza that I have eaten so far. You know, your default pizza, basic stuff, nothing special, no-frills and all, but somehow it just works. This one was like that. So the staff kept arguing with the guy - or vice versa, rather - for a long, long time, and when the guy finally resorted to yelling, a security guy was brought in (looking frustrated, if I may add, ha!) and then two cops followed suit. We left the restaurant, having paid, mind you, and realized we were running awfully low on soft drinks, so we headed to the local Iki mall at the bus station. The store was just closing up, so we were swift about it, and when we waltzed back we realized the two cops were just only exciting the ÄÂÂ?ili Pica with the guy out of the restaurant.

The local police station was conveniently in the very same district as Hotel Conti, literally next to it, so we ended up trailing the delightful-looking trio all the way to the station where they took the juvenile delinquent down an eerie-looking slope next to the station... perchance intimidation tactics are still part of the repertoire of the Vilnius city police?

Thursday: National Museum, Gediminas Tower

On the last day of our visit we visited the National Museum of Lithuania. Before entering the actual museum, however, we took advantage of the location; The museum is built at the bottom of the Gediminas Tower, a remaining piece of the old Vilnius Castle Complex. Sad to say, but this "national symbol" was quite a tourist trap just like the TV tower earlier, as the pathway access had been blocked and a pay-for-admission elevator had been introduced in its stead. Even our guidebook read it'd be possible to walk up, but at this stage one had to pay for the elevator, admission to the tower, and on top of it you were not allowed to take photographs indoors. Ah well, at least the visuals were good.

We would have gladly walked down - at the very least, preferably up too - from the tower as we were haunted by a massive group of Japanese tourists. All in all, we must have crossed this funny-looking entourage of elderly Japanese travellers at the very least three times during the trip.

In similar terms, there was also a Finnish-Swedish family that we constantly crossed roads with! We helped them buy tickets at the airport, they stayed at the same hotel, accidentally met us at Trakai... lastly, when it was time to get to the airport, the hotel ordered not one but three taxis as we all left on the very same airplane! Extremely coincidental.

The museum itself was a moderate letdown as well. Many of the information signs had no English descriptions at all, and German and Russian were altogether absent at all times. It made me feel ill at ease, as it felt as though the Lithuanians didn't want you in the museum in the first place! Not a good feeling when we're talking about the national museum - the last time I knew, these things were supposed to give you a picture of the nation as an entity...

The agricultural sections of the museum resembled those of Finnish museums closely, but two tangible differences could also be discovered when comparing the exhibition to typical Finnish ones: First, Lithuania has a long-running history as a middle-European superpower. Second, the vast amount of various crucifixes, statues, crosses and holy emblems. I'm serious. To be perfectly honest, I felt somewhat queasy about these. To name an example and a reason why, one of the statues portrayed Maria's heart being forcibly dug out with swords...

One can only wonder what kind of debilitating effect all these gruesome crucifixes littering the countryside have had on the national psyche. My guidebook does nevertheless say that at this stage, the extent of church-going equals that of Finland! Working our way thru the museum also made it painfully apparent that the country has been bound to a steep downward slope ever since the 13th century, all due to the centuries-long, violent struggle between the two opposing forms of Christianity, with the fate of the country finally sealed by the very recent occupations first by the Nazi Germany and lastly the Soviet Union.

Did I mention half the citizens of Lithuania are called Vytautas, in homage to the grand duke, Vytautas Didysis the Great, the most famous ruler of medieval Lithuania? Seriously, scratch that, freaking everyone was called Vytautas! The poor guy was a tragic figure, too: Just as he was off to his official coronation to become the king of Lithuania, he fell of his horse and died on the spot. That's shitty luck.

After the museum it was basically time to go. We got one last memorable experience with the traffic as our taxi driver was a real wildebeest! The best part was when he suddenly stalled the car right at the very middle of a junction.

There's not much more of note, the airport security alarms ringing and all that jazz. Our timing was, once again, impeccable, as just as we were exchanging buses at Keimolanportti, we decided we really, truly needed some ice cream. We would have had some at the airport, but there simply was none. So we waltzed up to the nearby gas station and of course the waiter had to be cooking up panini for the previous customers, so we had to wait in line for a bit. I nearly cried foul right there! In any case, just as we were exiting the cafeteria, we see the bus and our dear mother acting hysterically!

Yes, yes, we did make the bus right on time, with happy joy ice creams in hand. The Helsinki-Tampere bus line feels incredibly long as it clocks in closer to three 3 hours. I absolutely hated coming down from the Pumpkins gig last February. We had ordered a taxi at the Ideapark bus stop and it beautifully arrived at the bus stop at the very moment we stepped out of the bus.

Perfect ending for a perfectly good holiday in Lithuania! In total, we were able to find a full round number 10 new energy drinks for the Evaluative List of Drinks. The hottest discovery of the trip was most probably Zalgiris Power, an energy drink dedicated to a local football club... now that's obscure! Don't forget to check out the all-new energy drink gallery!

Hey guys!

I'm putting this blog up here as well as sending it directly to everyone in the Kakaists group. At this point in time, we finally have enough confirmed t-shirts and will be going ahead with the printing. I will personally pay (at least for the time being) for some extra shirts so that we have a reserve in case someone wants one afterwards.

In order for me to be able to actually order the t-shirts, however, I'll need you all to pay me up front and as quickly as possible. One t-shirt costs 9€. The shipping costs are, per one shirt: 1,60€ for Finns, 2€ for those in the EU and 2,50€ for the rest of the world. I will mail out the t-shirts in envelopes to keep the shipping costs to a minimum.

The easiest way to let me know is to mail your answers back to me; I need to know four things:

1. Your current e-mail address. I will reply and send you the amount you need to pay. It never hurts to have a receit in black and white!
2. Your preferred payment method. I can take cash (nearby Kakaists), bank transfers (homeland or IBAN/BIC) or PayPal if absolutely necessary. I want you to give me one of the alternatives and stick to it, and preferably pay me as soon as you can.
3. The t-shirt size(s) that you want (anything between S and XXL goes).
4. Your postal address, in the cases where I can't give your t-shirt first-hand.

For the Europeans ordering, the BIC code of my bank is "NDEAFIHH", and my IBAN bank account number is "FI5611465001044017". Inside Finland, the bank account number is "114650-1044017".

If you're not in the IBAN area you can use PayPal to pay me. In this case, I will send you a money request to your Paypal e-mail account (that you'll be sending me) and you will pay me from there. When you're paying me through the bank, please be sure to write down what you're paying me for! If you have any questions, just ask me or write them down as you send your details to me!

Yours truly,
Kakak
High Priest of Kaka

Update 1:

Here is an approximate idea of what the t-shirt sizes are:

Update 2:

Hey guys, let's step it up a notch! I've not received any payments yet Smeagol is trying hard, though, to name one! I'd also like to add that in case you are paying by Paypal, it costs a little extra due to the transaction fees. At the moment, the "transaction rate" is 5.4% of the payment plus 0.35€.

If you're in the US and want to get the payment done easy, Nickelplate super-graciously promised to collect the US buyers' payments and then send them all together thru Paypal. Please ask him for details!