::People of the sun::

Joyeux Noël – Frohe Weihnachten – Merry Christmas!

:-)

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Sound of the day: Caesars – Winter Song

Ja, richtig, die Anreise koennte man schon als beschwerlich bezeichnen. Nicht nur der Temperaturunterschied hat sich als relativ anstrengend erwiesen, nein, die ewige Warterei am Flughafen machte das Erlebnis auch nicht unbedingt angenehmer. Traditionell meldet sich unser Winter, meiner Erinnerung nach jedenfalls, irgendwann im Januar, spaetestens Februar um uns mit schlechten Wetter und ein wenig mehr als noetigem Schnee zu nerven. 2010 hatte sich die Wetterfee aber etwas ganz besonderes ausgedacht und uns schon ab Mitte November mit eiskalten Temperaturen und Schnee bedacht. Vielen Dank. Spannenderweise wurde das Wetter kurz vor meiner erneuten Abreise in den Senegal dann auch so richtig schlecht. Deutschland sollte durch die Naehe zu Skandinavien zwar einiges gewohnt sein, schafft es aber trotzdem regelmaessig bei dem ersten anstaendigen Schnee komplett zu versagen. So kam es wie es kommen sollte: Puenktlich zum Abreisetag versank unser schoenes Deutschland ziemlich buendig im Schnee. Harhar. Normalerweise haette das Szenario bei mir nicht mehr als ein haemisches Laecheln und unglaeubiges Kopfschuetteln erzeugt, als Leittragender der Misere hat es mich dann allerdings doch eher ziemlich genervt. Nach 12 Stunden Warterei am Frankfurter Flughafen und 3 Flugzeugausfaellen habe ich es endlich geschafft einen Flug nach Madrid zu ergattern. Anstrengend dabei war vor allem, dass mit jedem Ausfall das Ticket ungueltig wurde und man sich einer relativ sportlichen Prozedur unterziehen musste. Zuerst stuerzte man sich todesmutig auf eine Flughafenmitarbeiterin, erklaerte, dass der Flug ausgefallen sei und man das Gepaeck gerne wieder vom Band holen moechte, um danach wieder einige Stunden in der Schlange auf der Suche nach dem perfekten Ticket verharren zu duerfen. Aber, koennte alles schlimmer sein. Ich bin ja schliesslich angekommen. :-)

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Sound of the day: Noisia – Split the Atom

As said before: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.”

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Sound of the day: Ratm – Killing in the name

It could be worse. I could be dead!

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Sound of the day: Elvis Perkins – While you were sleeping

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

Benjamin Franklin

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Sound of the day: Ruth Swan – Tainted Love

Die Frage des Tages ist ziemlich oft: Will ich dies oder jenes wirklich essen oder eher doch nicht? Gerade bei fliegenden Haendlern muss man sich das tatsaechlich ein paar Mal ueberlegen, der Gesundheit zuliebe.  In den meisten senegalesischen Restaurants und Kneipen kann man meist ganz gut und auch recht guenstig essen, auf Maerkten oder an kleinen Staenden kriegt man zudem oft allerlei Spannendes angeboten, wobei ich tendenziell vom Verzehr abraten wuerde, vor allem, wenn der Stand auch nur ein bisschen sportlich anmutet oder man keine Quelle sauberen Wassers weit und breit ausmachen kann. Den Magen habe ich mir bislang (erst) einmal richtig ordentlich verdorben und wie ihr euch denken koennt, war das kein Zuckerschlecken. Andererseits ist es aber auch nicht schlecht seinen Magen ein bisschen an die lokalen Koestlichkeiten zu gewoehnen. :-)
Anyway, Dakar ist als Stadt insgesamt viel angenehmer als wir uns das am Anfang vorgestellt haben. Mittlerweile haben wir auch ein paar nette Straende gefunden an denen man es sich sehr gemuetlich machen kann. Ein ziemlich nettes Feature ist dabei die Moeglichkeit praktisch immer am Strand eine Matte oder einen Sonnenschirm (~1000 Franc/Tag) mieten zu koennen. Nicht dass man das  alles nicht auch selbst mitbringen koennte…aber, der Trick ist, dass es eh vor Ort und nicht wirklich teuer ist und die Jungs dafuer den Platz sauber und aufgeraeumt halten. Ngor, Yoff und Le Virage sind zurzeit die Straende der Wahl wobei der letztgenannte imho der netteste Strand ist und man dort ausserdem auch surfen kann. Yeah. Surfboards koennen direkt vor Ort geliehen werden, ich rate zum harten feilschen, um nicht zu heftig abgezogen zu werden. Bonus: Die   fliegenden Haendler scheinen am Le Virage auch ein bisschen weniger  penetrant zu sein. Allerdings muss man sich darauf gefasst machen, auch nach dem 3ten Besuch nicht erkannt zu werden…die Leutchen scheinen weisse Gesichter nicht gut auseinanderhalten zu koennen. Faierweise muss ich zugeben, dass es uns da auch nicht viel besser geht.

Eigentlich funktioniert in Dakar alles genauso wie in der Heimt, praktisch aber eben doch nicht. Als Weisser faellt man ueberhaupt schon ziemlich auf, mit unserer westlichen Kleidung sowieso. Daher: Egal, wo man hingeht, was man macht und was man vorhat…man hat die ganze Zeit das Gefuehl auf Schritt und Tritt von allen Umstehenden beobachtet zu werden. Wenn dann die deutsche Introvertiertheit auch noch auf die senegalesische Offenheit trifft, kann es einem schnell zu viel werden. Viele fliegende Haendler kommen oft schon im Laufschritt angelaufen, wenn sie uns erspaeht haben. Meist hilft ein freundliches “Non, merci!”, bei einigen sehr anhaenglichen Gesellen kann es aber auch passieren, dass sie uns noch ein Stueck begleiten und auf Wolof oder Franzoesisch zutexten. Am Anfang war das alles ziemlich laestig, irgendwann haben wir uns aber komischweise daran gewoenht, zumal man dem ein oder anderem Dialog auch etwas interessantes entlocken kann. Die Leutchen sind in der Regel auch ziemlich freundlich und wollen uns eben einfach ihre Waren verkaufen, am liebsten ueberteuert. Preise sind ueberhaupt so ein Thema. Als Weisser bezahlt man bei den meisten Sehenswuerdigkeiten zusaetzlich zu den normalen Gebuehren oft noch einen saftigen Zuschlag. Richtig offiziell ist das dann oft nicht, wehren kann man sich meistens aber auch nicht wirklich. Ziemlich schnell faellt auf, dass man ziemlich lange und ausgiebig Feilschen muss, um halbwegs vernueftige Preise zu erzielen. Das nimmt einem niemand uebel, allerdings darf man sich auf haarstreubende Geschichten und wuetende Gesichter einstellen. Die Wut ist allerdings direkt verzogen, sobald man sich auf einen Preis geeinigt hat. Das Gezetter ist Teil des Konzepts. Reg’s Gastfamilie hat fuer uns die Faustregel aufgestellt, dass wir jeden Preis vierteln koennen und am Ende 50 Franc aufschlagen sollen, um einen fairen Preis zu erzielen. So billig wird es fuer uns oft nicht, was dann aber auch nicht wirklich tragisch ist, weil eigentlich alles im Vergleich mit DE relativ guenstig ist. Anway, wir leben uns ein. :-)

Wir sind also wirklich in Dakar. Yeah. Der Flug verlief erfreulich unproblematisch, der Zwischenstop in Madrid ging auch ziemlich zuegig vorbei und, schneller als gedacht, standen wir im fernen Dakar am Zollschalter und warteten. Warten ist ueberigens eine Sache, die wir in den letzten Tagen haeufig und ausgiebig getan haben. Zwangsweise. Anyway, die Papiere sind in Ordnung, das Gepaeck in Empfang genommen und *BÄMM*, stehen wir mitten in Afrika, umringt von zahllosen “Helfern” die uns ihre Hilfe, ihr Taxi oder ihre Ziege andrehen wollen. Es ist Chaos pur! Polizisten und Militaers versuchen uns in die eine Richtung zu schieben, Helfer in die andere. Wir fluechten, nachdem wir Franzi und Russel in der Menge ausgemacht haben und versuchen uns abholen zu lassen. Ziemlich schnell sind wir allerdings von knapp 10 extrem flinken Jungs umringt, die uns wieder entweder die Tasche tragen oder ein Taxi andrehen wollen. Die Luft ist unertraeglich schwuel, ich schwitze wie ein Schwein und bin froh als wir nach einigem Feilschen ein Fahrzeug zu einem halbwegs akzeptablen Preis zu unserer Bleibe kriegen. Die Fahrt durch Dakar bei Nacht schockt noch ein bisschen mehr. Alles sieht ziemlich fertig aus, den Strassen fehlt der Belag, alles ist dreckig und unfertig. Das Zimmer ist dann allerdings sehr nett und sieht man mal davon ab, dass die   Klospuelung nicht funkioniert (Loesung: Eimer), die Dusche nur troepfelt (kalt) und es immer mal wieder Stromausfaelle gibt, ist eigentlich alles ganz prima. Wirklich. Und ja, die Gastfamilie ist sehr nett, ziemlich lively und hilft uns mit guten Tips weiter. Nicht gerade unwichtig, zumal eben doch vieles ein bisschen anders funktioniert. Wir sind auf jeden Fall gut angekommen und leben uns gerade ein. Yeah.

I switched to Ubuntu 10.04 and didn’t regret it a bit because nearly everything worked out of the box. However: Quite suddenly and to my surprise hibernation stopped working a few weeks ago and since I was not able to find out what caused the problem I just switched to uswsusp which did the trick and brought a working hibernation setup back. If you’re having the same problem why not integrating uswsusp with pm-utils within your (Gnome) desktop environment?

1. Install uswsusp: ‘sudo apt-get install uswsusp’
2. Test it: ‘sudo s2disk’
3. Does hibernation work?
4. Yes? Then read 5. and integrate it.
5. Create that file: ‘sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module’
6. Put ‘SLEEP_MODULE=”uswsusp”‘ in it.
7. Save.

Happy camper?

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Sound of the day: Steve Miller – Fly like an eagle

Welcome to India!

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Sound of the day: The Prodigy – Voodoo People

I wrote about it earlier and now it’s time to give you a heads-up: We’ll  leave on the 13th of October to Dakar and will stay there pretty much over the next 6 month. Reg will study while I will mostly hang around, interrupted by two months of work. Fair enough! The last weeks have been pretty rough and we had way too many things to consider, like health, for example. :-) Yes, we had to get vaccinated against nearly everything possible which, by the way, wasn’t too funny and even rather expensive. Be that as it may, we are ready to roll and have everything we need in place. In addition to it I had my last day in the office today for the next couple of weeks and am pretty happy about it. We even found a nice friend of Reg who will take good care of the house since she subleased half of it. We’re all good now. Yeah.

Well, I guess I’m just very happy someone looks after the snail-mail while I’m away…

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Sound of the day: Supergass – Sometimes I Make You Sad

Anyone?

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Sound of the day: Hilltop Hoods — The Hard Road

The Old Lady needed a timeout and as a result I had to waste my precious Sunday on the highway waiting for towing service. Fair enough, to be honest. 401.000+ kilometers and still counting. 25 years of joy. And, I had a great day tanning in the sun. Fuck, yeah. ;-)=

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Sound of the day: Billy Talent – River Below

“My vision becomes blurry.”

Dr. Strange

Someone asked a few days ago where all the pics featured on our happy site come from. Well, it’s fairly easy…we took them with our cameras or mobile devices (!). Ha. Well, to be completely honest, some are even scans of old analog photos of us or close family members. A pretty decent amount of these pics were taken in Australia, the Eifel or on countless trips around Europe or other friendly parts of the world. We never made any arrangements to take the perfect photo and we currently don’t even use any fancy cameras. We shoot quick and dirty and try to just capture the moment. Feel free to like them.

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Sound of the day: Bliss n Eso – Down by the River

The beauty of summertime…

Dream from last night: “For some strange and to me unknown reason I had to move out of my house and was in search for a shared apartment. I took a good look through the papers and found an offer that sounded rather good. I called them, we had a chat and they agreed to send some pics which looked fantastic too. The decision was made, I took the apartment, apparently without every actually being there. Everything seemed to be alright in the first place so I decided I’ll be all good then. When I finally arrived everything felt strange although the house was pretty nice. I rang the bell. A nice old chap opened the door and let me in. We had a short chat and he showed me the room where to my surprise a big party was going on. Everyone seemed to be around 16-18 years old and as far as I was concerned there was no place on earth where I wanted to be less than in that room. Suddenly a young guy approached me and said he was Blablabla and that he was so exited we are living together now, in the same room. I turned around and directly left.”

I woke up with a big question mark floating over my head.

“I have not, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order. Not one.”

Oliver North

I’m back from Berlin and, as always, it’s so good to be back. I can’t exactly tell why but for some strange reason I’m very happy leaving that beautiful city after a certain time.

Anyway, thanks for the lovely weekend, I’ll be back anyway. ;-)

I recently deleted my Facebook account. From now on you might have to poke me in real life. Yeah.

I will be in the Netherlands over the weekend and encourage you to do the same.

We’ll catch up and have a beer or two.

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Sound of the day: … – …

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Sound of the day: Prodigy – Warrior’s Dance

“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna pass out.”

Sam

Since a lot of government officials in Germany are lately demanding random laws we like to step in and help those nutters with more random and idiotic ideas, for security reasons:

– Labeling of every citizen for quick identification
– Registration of websites only after approval by the officials
– Controling and documenting of all electronic communication
– Introduction of  “Online Drivers License” that needs to be renewed every year
– Abolishing of money
– Installation of cameras in every home
– Introduction of curfew after 10 o’clock for everyone except those who earn >100.000 €/year
– Development of Matrix for easy “citizen-handling-purposes”

I recently figured out I love the chaos of bad weather. I always thought I was more the kind of good weather guy but I guess I was wrong. For some reason rain, storm and possible destruction makes me rather happy. Strange.

I started to hate Linux pretty much directly after I tried to get it working on my new personal computer, back in 1999. The idea of having a somehow ‘free’ operating system  seems to be extremely tempting. The only problem was Linux just not being ready and/or usable  on desktop computers at all. I spent my entire Christmas holidays playing around with Suse Linux 6.something to get the video card working but finally decided it’s just not worth trying to get it running any further. Since that day I was secretly obsessed  with the idea of one day running Linux on my main computer in the far, far future. After several attempts every once in a while and lots of setbacks Linux finally found its way on all of my servers. That still was not what I’m looking for since most of that machines were headless console only boxes so I kept trying. Over the last 10 years or so Linux changed a lot, some distributions came to life and other vanished. One annoying fact over that “I-kept-trying” period was that almost every distribution had fundamental differences like different location of config files or even different names of those. Debian always seemed to have a more stable and consistent approach than for instance Suse. On the other hand Suse has been more user friendly which Debian lacked. Around the year 2005 I  figured out that my need of fiddling around with config files in a desktop environment tended against zero. What I really wanted was a System that directly worked out of the box and let me pretty much just do most of the things I used to do in my Windows environment. I kept trying different distribution and even became a fan of CentOS on my headless boxes but still failed to replace my Windows since sometimes even simple thing were just not working properly while testing Linux.

Long story cut short: I recently gave it another try with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and was extremely surprised! It is actually usable.  It also replaced my beloved Windows 7 on my main workstation very quickly. A lot of things are of course really different and I like to share some thoughts and tricks with you since I still like the idea of a free and open operating system.

Stay tuned.

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Sound of the day: Art vs Science – Parlez-Vous Francais?

While realizing this year is pretty much half over we decided it’s time to do something different soon and explore another country. Reg is right now sorting out possibilities of getting a sponsorship deal and I’m trying to figure out which country I’d like to see most. We are not exactly sure where we are heading but we do know we will leave in October for about 5-6 months and either go see Africa or the south of France. Yeah.

We will keep you updated.

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Sound of the day: rage against the machine – Clear the lane

Keeping it real…

Where were you last night…?

I’m feeling lucky.

“Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen”

Heinrich Heine

Thoughts are crossing my mind and I’ve got the feeling the world is going nuts. Question of the day: Will it affect me?

Mmh, I guess I’ll never know. It seems to depend on what I’m looking or searching for in life. The concept of total happiness doesn’t totally work out but all in all I couldn’t care too much. There is always something that saves my day and makes me extremely happy, again and again. Maybe I’m just simple minded…simple minded and very happy with how thing are and how things might turn out.

Remember: The glass is brimful! And, you decide whether you want to drink it or not.

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Sound of the day: Supergrass – Rush Hour Soul

Seems to be the perfect plan.

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Sound of the day: The White Stripes – Hypnotize

Never, ever stop fighting for your beliefs! Fight for your rights. Fight for more beer. Fight for the society of bird lovers. Fight, just for the sake of it. Fight till you drop. You’ll get up eventually. Fight for things you ever wanted to be in place. Fight for your right to fight. Fight for nothing. Fight windmills. Fight the war. Fight idiots. Fight religions. Fight stupidity. Fight your own restraint. Fight for beaches wherever you want them to be.  Fight till you are happy with what you have achieved. Fight for yourself. 

You pick your weapons. Or don’t.

Fight! Fight, but fight fair.

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Sound of the day: Pennywise – Fight till you die

Remember: It was a damn good time when you can’t stop thinking of it.

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Sound of the day: Youth Brigade – I hate my life

We hang in there!

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Sound of the day: The Hives – Here we go again

It could have been you…

…or me.

Over the last few weeks I was pretty close to edge. I had that strange feeling I needed a change and probably a new car. So I took a good look at the Net, visited a few dealers, took test-drives and enjoyed the probably near-future feeling of driving a new shiny vehicle. It didn’t last long.

That feeling faded away, as fast as it appeared. See, I just couldn’t do it. It would have been betrayal of a good friend, someone I know for a pretty long time. My car has character, is a very friendly soul and only 25 years old. How could I leave her? Impossible!

Man, I just couldn’t break her heart and exchange her for someone younger. I couldn’t.

Just for the stats: 380.000 k’s of pure lust, joy and fantastic entertainment.

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Sound of the day: Spiritual Beggars – Angel Of Betrayal

Being awesome is easy.

Just be.

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Sound of the day: Bad Religion – Damned To Be Free

“Seat belts must be worn…Until the vehicle is on fire.”

Banksy

Looking good is not a crime…

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Sound of the day: Herr Koenig – Meer Sonne

Your blog sucks.

Some people just don’t know when to stop. They don’t get it and they don’t care. They just talk, talk, talk. They don’t understand anything. They don’t adjust. They don’t cope. Some people know nothing about life, nothing about their surroundings and nothing about history. And they don’t want to. They are not some extreme lefties trying to escape our society or build a better world. They are not your neighbors. They are not nice. They don’t agree with you and if they do, they make sure you don’t notice it. Some people try to be cool and are just so fucking lame. Some people think they are better than you.

If you had one wish right now, what would that be?

I wish some people would just shut the fuck up!

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Sound of the day: The Soft Pack – Answer to Yourself

Freakin’ awesome!

“The idea that all ideas are partly true, partly false, and partly meaningless is partly true, partly false and partly meaningless.”

Hagbard Celine

Dreamed again way too strange, even for my personal taste. Everything started rather easy but got worse pretty soon. I can’t go into details too much since the situation was a bit too disturbing. Long story cut short: Random people suddenly stepped out of my TV, good friends turned into flesh eating zombies, my teeth fell out surprisingly while black cats crossed my way the whole time. In the end I went berserk and killed everyone. Even the cats. I have to admit I seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Well, the good thing in my dreams is that I never die. I just grow stronger and fight the evil. I might change my profession and do for a living what I obviously can do best in my dreams:

Go nuts.

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Sound of the day: Salvador Santana – Don’t do it

Seen on a side street, last weekend. Trash deluxe.

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Sound of the day: The CB’s – Misdemeanour

Got up at 5.20, showered, had some fast breakfast, drove 400 km’s to my client, worked 8 hours and a little more, got tired, went to the hotel, ate something, hung around just to realize that it’s the end of the month, again. Yeah, I know, that sounds awful but was in fact not too bad. Some days seem to be pretty tough whereas being in fact just busy and maybe, well, maybe a bit too fast.

Strangely enough, I’m often be able to do more things on days I’m already very busy while on the other hand fail to accomplish very simple tasks on days I have nothing to do. True fact. 

I like the second category a lot more. I like wasting time. I like being lazy, looking back at the day thinking I have given nothing to this world. Exactly nothing. Nothing I can be proud of. While thinking of this, it makes a lot of sense.

Remember: There’s nothing better than spending some premium time outdoors being totally absorbed in your private universe. You might try it one day…

;-)

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Sound of the day: Weezer – Hash Pipe