Vacation

So, as I earlier mentioned, we finally found the U.L.B. and also found the booth and staffed it for nearly the whole day (I haven’t managed to view any of the speeches, neither one of the Gentoo ones nor any of the others), I talked to some interested people asking about Gentoo itself, but also asking about the EFIKA’s (the Genesi PPC’s), one by Camille and Julien providing video forwarding (from one EFIKA to another via cross-over cable), and the other one by Chris playing Descent 2 and Quake 2 at the end. Peter (I think the PR guy from Genesi Europe, will have to ask Chris / Mike again). ...

We arrived in Brussels on Friday around 2230, since we kept searching the centre of Brussels, we really tried hard since we didn’t have a map, we tried navigating by bus cards (which was quite fun). So after we finally found the city centre (which is quite bad signposted), we went to the pub supposedly having the free beer, but they told us the FOSDEM area was closed due to christel drinking all beer (just kidding), but we did find Pylon and kugelfang I think. ...

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. ...

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). ...

Today we got up bit later (07:40 am) to do some sight-seeing and shopping. We took the car “ Candidplatz”, that’s where Paula is working currently and got into the subway to “ Sendlinger Tor”. The day was starting sunny featuring 23°C at 9:00 am. Certainly I was wearing short pants and a tank top, as I’m used to have a weak till moderate wind blowing around me. We finally stopped at SportScheck to get something for Paula. She badly needed short pants and polo shirts for her physic therapy lessons she is giving at physico. ...

Boy, right after I wrote those lines they announced everyone heading to Stuttgart should get of that train and take another since they had to replace the damaged end car. I even had to switch platforms again. I’m now sitting in that other train, it’s pretty much overfilled with people who are all and everyone angry at DB. I’m gonna take a cab from Stuttgart Central Station to my aunt’s place since it’s getting later and later. We’re now supposed to arrive at 22:48 but the train already has ten minutes delay. ...

I’m now sitting in the ICE (on a little child seat), it arrived with 20 minutes delay here at Frankfurt Airport but we’re still standing here with problems on the end car, so it’s gonna take a while. It’s one of the newer ICE’s and the interior looks really great. I even managed to get some wireless connection!

I’m now at Frankfurt Airport and I nearly got on the earlier train to Stuttgart which I wasn’t able to catch, according to the service guy. I was facing the same problem than the morning before. The damn doors closed right in front of my face. Meh, Friday seems to be my bad luck day. I’m still waiting for the ICE supposed to leave at 20:54 but it’s currently having eighteen minutes delay. My cousin messaged me earlier that she’ll collect me at Stuttgart Central Station. The day is nearly finished now and I’m awake since yesterday morning 07:40 minus that three hour break. I’m still pretty excited that I really got to Wiesbaden and I really enjoyed that little trip (even if it was a bit expensive).

I’m sitting in the S8 to Frankfurt Airport where I’ll switch to the ICE to Stuttgart to visit my cousins and my aunt. Linux Tag was quite amazing, I finally met some of the people behind OpenVZ (Kir and Kirill), saw a bit of Andrew Morton’s Kernel FAQ (Kir told us that) and met some people including Bertl, doener, derjohn, zeng, foo, … of the linux-vserver community. Both workshops were quite interesting and I learned a lot of things about openvz and it’s userland tools and linux-vserver (finally I understood the CPU Tokenbucket system). ...