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This morning, the host, where this blog lives, had a DOS attack. This meant a number of issues for this blog. To people accessing it, things were going really, really slow and, sometimes, not working at all. From my end, a lot of the plugins were not working, not to mention the inability to create a new post. My apologies to anyone experiencing any issues.
For those that don’t know, DOS is Denial of Service. There are various types of attack but, essentially, servers are flooded with hits, stopping them from operating properly. DOS is not a virus but can be almost as inconveniencing.
In my last job as a website tester, one of the tests we used was bombarding programs with a simulated DOS attack in order to ascertain any vulnerabilities. The developers claimed their program could withstand X number of attacks so we would test for that.
We had a nifty little tool that could hit a program with however many hits we chose. We would keep upping the number until it crashed.
Anyway, by the end of the day things were back to normal. A bit like most of my day. Normal I mean.
We woke up, ate, did laundry and other household tasks, put a shelf up and went for a walk in the new very light covering of snow.
Things didn’t really climb the summit of excitement until 5:30 when Nicoline picked me up to head out to Lagnö for dinner.
On the way over, Nicoline told me about a very funny game called, simply, The Sofa Game. It was introduced last week by Viveka and, I was assured, it was a right hoot. Nicoline said it might be played tonight so she took me through the rules. It sounded like great fun.
During dinner, there was a bit of chat about the possibility of playing the game by both people who had played and some that hadn’t but who, like me, had heard about the great fun to be had.
As people started drifting off, back to their flats, and numbers dwindled beyond the optimum number required for play, the game, sadly, became an impossibility. Maybe next time.
Apart from the game, dinner went off scrumptiously. And I learned that, in Sweden, a pie is not what a pie is in Australia (or the UK). Dinner was a broccoli pie. I wasn’t sure what to expect apart from pastry encrusted veg. What I ate was, what I would call, a quiche.
I should also say that it was delicious, accompanied by a lovely carrot salad and yoghurt and garlic dressing.
On the way home, Nicoline straightened me out. A quiche contains ham and cheese, a pie was what we had tonight. One of the late night treats in Sydney, back when I was a carousing lad, was a meat pie from Harry’s Café de Wheels in Woolloomooloo. I really can’t imagine Harry doing much trade if he served quiche instead.
All up, it was a splendid dinner with some great company. I was sat next to a woman from Emil’s Backe who walks her cat on a lead and Lena and I chatted about the Gävle goat having fallen to its knees this year. I was then prompted by Magnus to talk about my visit to Gävle back in 2024.
Apologies for the pixellation. It is not my doing. Some of the comments under the video are well worth a read.
