renovation

I’ve been looking at some of the plugins that are available for nucleus. You can see the results now, there are new related category pics, a calendar and a countdown till the new season of 24 starts. (Only 70 days to go.)
I’ve also found a different skin which I really like. However, I need to adjust some things before I can to do this switch. So, stay tuned.

I’ve also decided to move the content of privat.h42.net into this blog, so my previous “travel diaries” have been integrated into a new category, called travel.

While I was doing the integration, I’ve found this pdf again, that I got from a coworker while I was working in Australia. It really cracked me up then - and it still is.

someone is going to be hurting

Which OS are You?

maniac picture

I got rid of the atom logo as you can see. No, I have not turned into a maniac, as the picture might indicate. This is just how I looked after too many beers. Original picture is here.

October Surprise

And sure enough, there it is. 4 days before US election a new video tape of Osama bin Laden has appeared. There is one interesting statement: “Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda” - that’s all that CNN.com is translating at the moment. Spiegel.de finishes the sentence - it is in the hands of the american people.

The phrase “october surprise” might be connected to this election in the upcoming history books.

600 emails

Finally caught up with the backlog of 600 messages in my linux highavailability folder. I definitely need to create a testsetup with drdb.

4 more years?

Trying to access the site www.georgewbush.com yields in an access denied error message.
News media is reporting that due to security issues access has been disabled for certain countries. (A new axis of the evil?) Apparently those certain countries are everyone except the US.
Absurd, is not it?

Upgrade

Just like the database said, my dsl account was upgraded to a 1024kbit downstream today. Downtime was minimal and the difference is barely noticeable.

Thunderstorm

I just finished showering, when I saw a bright light outside. Some seconds later I heard a loud noise. At first I thought something had exploded, but when I was looking outside our living room window I saw lots of raindrops - So, it was a thunderstorm. I think I’ve never seen one in late October here, but the weather has been unusual as well, the forecast is predicting 20 degrees tomorrow.

Waterworld

Woke up with screams that were yelling my name. Seconds later I was standing in our kitchen which was full of water. Apparently a hose got loose. (Or my mom tried to fix something which she denies, though.) It took ages till the waterflow stopped. The caretaker came by and eventually fixed it.

The downfall

Went to the movies to watch “Der Untergang” (The Downfall), a historic drama about Hitler’s last days in Berlin. I’ve been reading some comments about a lacking message of the movie. I am not sure about that. Maybe the feeling that I felt afterwards is a strong message, I felt disgusted and uneasy. And in a way it made me thankful that I did not have to grow up during war times or experience war first hand. The movie depicted on an interesting fact, a human side of Hitler, being affectionate to his dog and the girls while on the other hand portraying him as a mad-man who is out of his mind and has lost touch with reality. It was disturbing to see people still obeying his commands or commiting suicide at the end because they had nothing to believe in in their opinion. The final remarks of Traudl Jung - the story is being told through her eyes - where she compared her actions with the actions of Sophie Scholz summed it up quite well: there is no excuse being young.

pkg_add and cvs co -rOPENBSD_3_5 src

Ordered more network equipment. If this keeps on I can open up an ISP at home myself.

Spent quite a lot of time messing around with openbsds package management system and even recompiled a kernel. There’s lots of information on the web, but quite a lot seems to be outdated as well. Good ressources are the faqs from openbsd.org and the articles on onlamp.com.

Make that three…

Upgraded ford (my mom’s computer) with a 30gig hdd and thus spent most of the day reinstalling everything. Took the opportunity and installed linux and openbsd on that machine as well to do some live tests for my diploma thesis.

Someone won the 15 Million Euro jackpot. Lucky bastard. Supposedly it is a programmer from Aachen. Oh, I have won 22,40 Euros which means that I made a profit of 5,40 Euros. Not too bad.

Remembered that I wanted to get some real foto prints from my Australian digital pictures. T-Online has a nice service, where you just download a tool, select the pictures (you can even do some editing, like cropping, adjusting contrast and saturation and so on) and transfer the results to them. They are not the cheapest on the market, though. I am curious about the quality though. It’ll take 2-3 days and then I find out.

dns

Spent way too much time changing my dns setup - anyway, I now have a multiview bind setup which is kind of cool. Depending on the source ip address you get a different dns view. This url was quite valuable: http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/.

won the lottery

Don’t hold your breath - I am not super rich. I got three right ones two times. That is probably not even worth a lot since I assume that lots of people participated today.

round nr. 2

Been watching the second duell between Bush and Kerry. I think this time it was a lot closer. Best moments: Bush’s response to Kerry regarding his involvement in a wood company and Bush asking the interviewer if he wants to buy some wood like a drug dealer. Second one. was Bush telling us about rumours on the internets - hmm, is he paranoid, as far as I know, there is only one internet!
Too bad that I am not allowed to vote, I really hope, that the American people wake up this time.

back home

My dad woke me up at 8:30am. The last days really brought me back to a European timezone. Had quick breakfast and my dad dropped me off at a trainstation. Experienced one of the common public transport system delays. Luckily I don’t have to work in Berlin and ride a train every day. So it did not matter that I had to wait for 20 minutes. Arrived at home, packed my stuff and just lazed around for some hours. Left home at around 1pm to drive to the airport. Got their on time, checked in and wandered around the airport to get some food. Had a quick, fat burger and returned to the gate. Security at Tegel is more strict, they always scan my shoes and their metal detectors are also more sensitive to chains, belts and jeans. DBA has introduced a free drink and a free snack. Decided to treat myself to a glass of red wine. Arrived on time in Cologne, got my luggage within my minutes and just saw the rear light of the airport bus. Had to wait for another 20 minutes and returned to Bonn. Eventually catched the train to my home, which was also late. My mom picked me up from the train station and we chatted about the last days and her vacation in spain.

birthday party no.2

Today was my dad’s birthday. I decided to surprise him, so I did not tell him, that I would be in Berlin for the weekend.
I normally do the usual tourist things while I am in Berlin, therefore spent the morning walking around. Since I could see the new central station from the flat, I just walked outside and tried to reach it. I failed miserably and got horribly lost. Later on, I found out that I took the wrong turn and that there was a river which I could not cross anyway. With a delay of 45 minutes, I finally reached central station. I could not see many changes since last year, I guess most of the work was done underground. Continued to walk towards the Chancellor’s Office and through the tiergarden further along till the Potsdamer Platz. The “United Buddy Bears” have vanished. Looks like they are on their way to Istanbul now.
Stopped at the remainings of the Berlin Wall - it still touches me when I look on the symbolic line - that is all that is left now. Did the mandatory quick tour through the sony center and shopped at a book shop for a birthday present. Found a book that I hope my dad likes. Decided to walk to the Alexanderplatz as well. Stopped at a Starbucks and got a reviving Frappucino for the insane amount of 4 Euros. Headed for a shopping center at the Alexanderplatz to get a new pair of jeans since I left my good pair on our clothes line in Bonn. (Note to myself, don’t pack at 3am in the morning). Managed to find the darker version of my ultra comfortable climber denim bigjeans in my size and was ultra happy. Returned to the flat with a new package of t-shirts as well and got dressed for the dinner. Decided to leave a bit early since the greek restaurant was supposedly in the outskirts in Berlin.
The public transport information system did not let me down again, all trains were on time. I had to switch trains in “Friedrichshagen” and got on a really, really old tram for the last part of the way. Arrived at the station around 6:30pm. Since I had no idea if my dad and his family were already inside, I decided to call him on his mobile and just congratulate him and tried to find out, if they were already inside or still on their way. Well, they were stuck in a traffic jam. I decided to wait patiently near the trainstation and wait for their car. After waiting at the trainstation, walking around (well there was not a lot to walk around, it was a really small village, consisting of one main road, a restaurant and the trainstation) and more waiting at the trainstation for 45 minutes I thought that I had seen them going inside. So, I followed “them” shortly afterwards. The restaurant was quite intransparent, lots of artifical trees, so I was not sure if they really had arrived or not. Waved at a water and asked him, if they were already there. Well, turned out they were not. Since I did not want to wait outside again, I asked the waiter if I could wait at the reserved table. They had reserved a table for 4 people, so we had to find another table. Thankfully they served ouzus one a regular base, so passed the time with drinking a couple of them. After 20 minutes I finally heard them and hurried to another table and hide behind a menu. I waited till they all sat down and then got up. Thankfully my dad was indeed suprised, so my plan had worked out. I am not too crazy about greek food, but it was alright, the atmosphere was great and it was really busy. There were around 10 other families celebrating birthdays there, so it was a bit odd since everyone was singing “happy birthday” constantly. Decided to have a sleepover at my dad’s place, so chatted till midnight and went to bed relatively early again.

breakfast and opera

Got an invitation to have breakfast with my aunt, her new boyfriend and my cousin at their new place. I decided to take a different route with public transportation system, I took the streetcar all the way. It was pretty interesting to see some of the changes of the last decade. My grandpa took me to my aunt because he bought a new laptop and had some problems, of course. My aunt’s flat is really nice, a bit unusal though, because when you enter, you are right inside the living room. Had good breakfast with them - not that I was really hungry after all the food from the past day.
Helped my grandpa a bit with his laptop and realized that Windows can be really confusing, especially if it had been preinstalled with some strange tools, that automatically clicked on a button if you stayed over it long enough - sometimes with undesired results. Explained somce concepts of selecting and drag’n'drop. After that I wanted to install some security updates but the update server did not respond. The internet connection was horribly slow - I am not sure if I was just spoiled with my DSL connection at home or if there were some general network problems.
My aunt is working at the opera and she and her boyfriend took me to see the “Barbier”. Wandered around with her boyfriend through Berlin because we had to arrive earlier, so that my aunt could start to work. Stopped at the “Ständige Vertretung” - a famous pub where politicians during the government move from Bonn to Berlin stopped by and had a good old home-brewed beer - they still do that. Decided to do the same thing and had a Kölsch. Wandered around some more through the streets, got some food and returned to the opera. I cannot really judge if the play was outstanding or not, since I have rarely seen any operas in my life so far but overall I liked it.
Rejoined with my aunt after the performance and chatted some more before they took me home.

birthday party no.1

Did not sleep well, I woke up several times during the night - damn cold. Woke up before my alarm clock went off at an early hour, 9am. Got ready and headed off to the train station.
I had an uneasy feeling about giving all of my small change to the waiter last night and I was right - the ticket machines inside the trams only accepted coins. Asked some passengers if they could change a 10 euro bill - but no one was able (or willing) to help me. Luckily there was not a ticket controller - who are quite frequenct - so got away.
I had to get on the subway and found a more helpful machine that took my 10 Euro bill and returned some coins. Why in the world, do they have different machines?
Had to change trains again on Alexanderplatz. A lot of the subway stations have been renovated during the last year. They still have their old color scheme but overall they are more bright and modern. And it was about time after so many years…
Picked up some flowers for my grandma and walked the way that I have been going so many years to my grandparents home.
Arrived at my grandparents home and had a quick chat with them before we had to leave to a restaurant. Met with the rest of the family - I had not seen most of them for ages. The restaurant was nice and we had lunch at a winter garden.
Walked back to my grandparents place where we had coffee and long, long interesting and even hilarious and very touching chats. Apparently my mom had been telling stories about me damaging our car, so got a good mockery about that. Mind you - there were only a few scratches and a car is just too expensive to afford at the moment.

up’n'away - happy bday grandma!

Left home at around 3pm to catch my flight to Berlin at 5pm. Public transport did not let me down, thus arrived well on time around 4pm at the airport. Checked in and wandered around the airport to find a suitable birthday card for my grandma. Found a decent one for a not so decent price.
While I was waiting for the usual security check I looked at a container with a bunch of pocket knifes, nail scissors and to my surprise carpet knifes. Plane was late and HLX did not bother to inform the waiting crowd till departure time. In the meantime I had noticed a sign stating, that I was right under a t-* wlan hotspot. The system was pretty easy to handle, you have to register with a mobile text message. After that you receive your account data that you can use for login. The rates are ridiculously high though - 2 Euros for 15 minutes. Spent 4 Euros with surfing, chatting and synchronizing my emails till the plane was ready for boarding. The flight was pretty normal, arrived in Berlin 50 minutes late. Got my luggage and headed towards the bus stop. The online public transportation system of Berlin is really cool, I had looked up the necessary information to get to my mom’s appartment. Arrived at the appartment around 8pm which was too late to shop for groceries. Had a quick chat with my mom about some places to get dinner and decided to explore the closer surrounding. Wandered along some streets for almost an hour. Apparently, I was in the middle of the artist quarter. Lots of galleries were still opened. Decided to have dinner at a Thai restaurant and ordered something spicy to fight my cold. The restaurant was called “Goldenes Dreieck” (Golden Triangle), because it was at a street car intersection. Food was good, pricing was around average. Went home at around 10:30pm, watched tv and feel asleep surprisingly early.