Life

I had a very moving year with Gentoo. At first I only focussed on the stuff I already had (being vServer / openVZ related stuff), but later on also on suspend2-sources and other stuff I took over back when Hendrik retired. Sometime this year (I think it was somewhere in the early summer) I joined up with the kernel herd, helped out Daniel while he was moving from London(?) to Boston, took over hardened-sources from John (who’s pretty much away). I had a rough break (you remember, the break that turned out to be my most active time) in October till late November, while fighting with my private life and work. ...

The year has left its marks in my head. I had a biiig rock bottom this year, which froze some of the best relationships (friend-wise) I had in my whole life (which I really regret), but I got to know a few people (most within Gentoo) better and even become friends with some of them (you know, whom I mean). With focus at my physical and mental health the year has also left some marks. Mentally I’m looking forward to get some counselling in the next year, after I focussed my attention at the physical illnesses I currently suffer from. ...

I just watched CNN Live three hours ago, showing the New Year’s in Sydney Harbour, AU. Looked really great, and as a matter of fact, I wish everyone a happy new year. I know, Diego kept saying its bad luck to wish that in advance, but what the hell .. I wish every fellow Gentoo Developer and even those Gentoo Users reading the Universe from the bottom of my heart a happy new year and may be Gentoo with you.

So, as some of you know, I decided to spend New Year’s Eve with my cousin and my aunt. And how did I get from the warmish north to the coldish south ? By train as usual, that means Deutsche Bahn … I already had my gooood experiences with German Rails back in May when I headed to LinuxTag 2006. This time it was a bit different. At first the train from Stralsund to Hamburg was a replacement train, which had no reservations and only first class wagons. One pro and one con. The contra being that my reservation was nullified (meaning I had ordered one but didn’t get one). ...

Wow, it has been quite a year, this year. Christmas Eve was over pretty fast, we had a nice (smallish) lunch and in the evening we had meat fondue (which was really tasty). Today is Christmas Day, we had lunch earlier (a nice duck with Spätzle of course - to get my weekly dose) and I’m sitting now upstairs in front of my Notebook, listening to some tunes (to keep myself calm). ...

OK, you probably remember Seemant telling me I should take the weekend off. I had a nice day so far, didn’t do anything work or Gentoo related (which is a bit of a shame), had a small battle with my younger brother about him arguing with my father while having lunch, but afterwards I headed into town ( Stralsund that is), did a bit of window shopping; spotted a nice watch (which is for sale for only ~ 300 €), even tried to get into a movie, but it seems CineStar (that’s a local chain of cinema’s) is trying to boycott me. ...

OK, Seemant just started our little Bloggo-war he promised me yesterday (don’t even think about it, I just applied for protection of trademarks), I guess I need to address his questions. #1: Holiday vs. Time-out Holiday ain’t exactly what I refer to as time-out. Holiday is something for old and lazy people or those that got taken into holiday with their parents (hah, always wanted to say that 😛 haven’t had real holidays since, err, I was 10 or so). Time-out is something that I refer to when I need some time off my irssi/mail. Usually I hang out with the irssi session attached, watching my mails. Probably that’s also the reason, why I can’t take a real break along with my brain that seems to think about random stuff that happened in the last few months all day long. ...

Hrm, Seemant … were did I mention something about holidays / vacation ? 🤷 I remember that I told you (and also in my previous blog post); its even in my .away file feeding the devaway; that I’m taking a break due to increased real-time work load. 😄 I never ever said something about going on vacation or being on holiday. That would actually be great (and I could use the break from everything, even the distance to some very people) but is currently virtually impossible. Basically it’s because of an HBFG (that’s something like " University building assistance law" translated - for the Germans it’s " Hochschulbauförderungsgesetz") application that has been recommended for implementation. Now I’m stuck in the middle of an tendering procedure that has to be announced all over Germany. ...

Today (OK, it’s yesterday now, it’s again after 12:00) I had a little fun with pappy (Alexander Gabert) preparing 2.6.18 for prime time 😀 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 $ ls -AGg 2.6.18 -rw-r--r-- 1 1593 Jan 25 23:25 1500_cvs-2007-1000.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 797 Jan 25 23:25 4000_deprecate-sk98lin.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 32192 Jan 25 23:25 4105_dm-bbr.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 125781 Jan 25 23:25 4300_squashfs-3.1.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 5710 Jan 25 23:25 4405_alpha-sysctl-uac.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 864955 Jan 25 23:25 4450_grsec-2.1.9-2.6.18.6-200611100917.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 910 Jan 25 23:25 4451_grsec-2.1.9-2.6.18.2-mute-warnings.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 1034 Jan 25 23:25 4452_selinux-avc_audit-log-curr_ip-grsec.patch -rw-r--r-- 1 2097 Jan 25 23:25 4453_pax_curr_ip-fixes.patch So far all patches are applying fine and according to Alexander it even works on his workstation. But I’ll wait for Steve/Ned to get back to me telling me if this release works for them or not (as they had serious issues with their hardened desktops - something about the cursor being stuck in the corners). ...

OK, today I finally took the steps of adding Hans (that’s Hans de Graaf), and just after I kicked him from #gentoo-dev so he gets his +o and suddenly Astinus took over .. but see for yourself 😀 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 (15:28) < @Astinus> graaff: So graaff, what'd they con^H^H^persuade you into doing? (15:29) < @phreak``> Astinus: xemacs ;-) (15:29) < @Astinus> phreak``: hah! (15:31) < @graaff> Astinus: yes, xemacs, and when all of that is in order I'll see if I can help out with ruby and/or gnome (15:32) < @Astinus> graaff: to the former, good luck ;) to the latter, are you suicidal? ;-P (15:32) < @phreak``> Astinus: actually it seem like he is :D (15:32) < @Astinus> phreak``: Excellent, I see you went through the recruiting checklist thoroughly (15:32) < @phreak``> Astinus: lol (15:32) * graaff thinks better than to engage in a troll-fest about gnome on his first day (15:32) < @Astinus> (a) Should be suicidal to a degree less than ciaranm (15:32) < @Astinus> (b) should have a passion for Gentoo, but not the stalking developer kind (15:33) < @Astinus> graaff: ;-P (15:33) < @Astinus> graaff: *bait*