Vacation

Heh, I managed to catch the S1 to Hellenberg and got of in Stuttgart Rohr. The S-Bahn doors nearly squashed me. I’m now at my aunt’s place, sitting on the sofa and relaxing a bit. My aunt was really happy when she saw me (as she always is if I or my brother comes by). I’ll go to bed in a few minutes, Saturday is getting really stressing. I need to get to my cousin and his wife (and my little grand cousins). I even need to buy a new LCD display for my aunt, since she somewhere red that those need 70% less power.

Well, Arne recently (not really recently though .. 😛 ) complained about my blog being waaay to technical, so I ended up writing this lil’ anecdote. I’m finally on my long awaited, the remaining year lasting vacation. Last week was interrupted by a short job interview in Nuremberg, and also by the flu (not " again", I still got it in me, haven’t been able to shake it now for about three months). ...

As might have noticed, I haven’t posted anything in the last week. Well, as you might have figured, (oh I don’t know - maybe from the blog title) I’m enjoying a three week long vacation. I’m staying with my parents, doing day trips and getting a tan (I’m working pretty hard on that!). I still have two weeks left (well, actually only 11 days - makes it one week and change), as I’m leaving for Stuttgart next Friday. ...

Well, as I wrote last year, I spent some time with my brother on Spiekeroog (that’s where he’s currently living and working). As I left on December 4th, it started snowing like crazy .. If you read the old article, you might remember that I mentioned Spiekeroog is 100% free of fossil fueled vehicles. That being said, let’s continue with the story I’m about to tell. Anyway, my brother was walking me back to the hotel boat and we waited a bit in the harbour since we were a bit early. Now, every item is delivered by ship to the island, since there’s no other way (besides by air, which is kinda expensive ..). Anyway, them dockworkers ain’t stupid. They needed some snow-free space, and they started clearing the snow. But how ? ...

Yessir, I’m back home. Bought a new bed (god, I forgot how good sleeping can feel) and spent the first two days at work already (yes, it’s Friday afternoon already). I really thought catching up after having a 2 week vacation would take more time, but it just took yesterday morning (till ~9am). I’m surprised by the taste of black tea with milk and sugar (yes, I was like yikes initially, but I like it pretty much now 😀 ) and by the ability to rise at 7am in the morning 😛

On Monday I finally got to do an expanded test drive with my shiny, new car (that is driving it up from Stralsund down to Stuttgart). I really can’t complain, the fuel consumption is like I expected (~6.6l/100km while driving between 160 and 180km/h), the noise while driving that fast is quite low (as in you hear the engine but you don’t really consider it noise) and the acceleration is nearly like the one of a F1-car 😛 (at least I’d wish 😉 ). Spent the evening relaxing from the near 950km nonstop trip (yes, only had one stop to put some fuel back into the car), had nice curry (my cousin’s husband made yummy potato curry!!!). ...

Here’s just a note for you people out there, how’re crazy enough and want something from me in the next week (that’s 18th till 26th June): I’m on vacation … Means I won’t be around to fix anything (as I’m gonna try and relax a bit), so if you encounter something that you want to fix; consult with the herd (that’s apache/hardened/kernel …) and/or fix it YOURSELF. Just make sure you don’t break it more :rolling_eyes:

Some of us attended this years FOSDEM in Brussels (thanks to Dimitry it was really, really great). We (at least the ones attending) got to know each other a bit better (I even got to know some pre Gentoo devs .. yeah, you), and some time after FOSDEM (I think it was ~3 days afterwards), Petteri (betelgeuse) asked me why people all of the sudden start to call him with his first name on IRC. ...

The last three days have been quite amazing, I’m still stunned by all these impressions (basically meeting all those people you usually know though IRC), how nice people can be if they want (yeah dad, I’m talking about you 😛) Although I was pretty sad about leaving so early (I think, if I’m going to attend next year, I’m going by train and starting on Monday morning so I got one night more in Brussels), I’m also quite happy to be home again, as I was pretty phreaked (haha, self-pun intended) by all those people. ...

Today, I got up again at 0630 ugh went to bath, woke up Torsten, afterwards the mystery guy and went downstairs to get some breakfast. I ate some cornflakes and some bread along with a glass of chilled orange juice, then went back up to get all our stuff and prepare the room the way we found it. After we finished that, we went downstairs and met Alex along the way went to the cars and Torsten led us to the university. I went to the booth and noticed that Torsten and me where the only ones that early at the booth. So we sat down for a moment, cleaned up the booth space a bit and finally sat again preparing the notebooks. ...