Dirk's Blog Thing

Heute haben wir unsere Arbeiten zurückbekommen, Grundlagen Digitaltechnik und WiPo.
Hab beides perfekt gemeistert.

Bei Grundlagen Digitaltechnik gab's 6 Aufgaben mit je 20 Punkten plus eine Extra-Aufgabe mit 10 Punkten. Die 6x20 Punkte reichten für eine 1, ich hab 130, also alle Punkte die man machen konnte.

WiPo war ähnlich, 100 Punkte von 100 möglichen. Allerdings war WiPo auch nicht wirklich schwer. Wir wußten im Voraus, welche 4 (!) Seiten des ausgegebenen Textes drankamen, und in der Pause vor der Arbeit hatten wir eine Aufstellung der Aufgaben. War also relativ einfach, da gut abzuschneiden.

Außerdem hab' ich erfolgreich die Kinder Riegel zurückgebracht, die ich Samstag gekauft hatte. Die schmeckten ziemlich alt und vertrocknet. Also gab's Geld zurück.

Ach, und bei der Agentur für Arbeit war ich auch noch. Widerspruch abgeben.

So. Morgen wieder Schule, danach Firma. Mittwoch Schule, danach Firma. Donnerstag Schule, danach Sozialamt (Hartz-IV-Antrag abholen), dann Agentur für Arbeit (Kollegen bei der Präsentation der Firma und der Ausbildung zuschauen). Freitag Schule, aber nur kurz. 3 Doppelstunden. Dann Wochenende! Wheee! Samstag ist nix. Also wahrscheinlich werde ich das Übliche machen, Wäsche waschen und Wohnung saubermachen. Und Sonntag fahr' ich nach Europcar, die Chefin besuchen.

... und wenn ich mich vorhin nicht entschieden hätte, die Porcupine Tree DVD einzulegen, dann wär' ich jetzt schon lang im Bett ...

When I got home today, it was uncomfortably warm in my apartment.
I wonder what it's like in here when it's actually hot outside.

Anyway, I meant to write about these past few days:

Saturday: I'd rented a car for a few days and visited Chrischi. First though, I drove to my parents to unpack. I'd planned to stay at their place for several days so I had several bags with me, mostly clothes.
Anyway, after a quick stop at my parents' I continued on to Chrischi. We ended up watching half of the first season of True Blood, a fun HBO TV series. It's a mixture of mystery, horror, comedy, romance and nakedness. Hard to classify really, but fun to watch anyway.

Sunday: Slept at my parents', then drove to Lübeck to visit Steffi at work. She'd found out a few days earlier that she's going to be out of a job again in a few months. Europcar are finally going through with the re-organisation they'd planned to do for more than a year. You might recall that Steffi was originally coerced into transferring from Lübeck to Husum last year with this very re-org being the reason.
Anyway, her successor in Lübeck got the note a few days ago for both his positions in Lübeck and Kiel. Tough luck for him, he doesn't have the tiniest clue as to what to do now.
Where was I ... Right, I visited Steffi at work. We played some games, chatted, Bine came over to say hi, and a few hours later I drove back to my parents'.

Monday I had a job interview at ISA in Hamburg. I'd left my parents' place way early to make sure I'm not too late for this. I ended up finding a parking spot right in front of their main entrance though, so I waited in the car for about half an hour calming myself with a dose of ProgRock.
The interview ended up being surprisingly pleasant though. It was conducted by an IT guy, and a trainee was also present. I was asked about my motivation to change careers into IT, about my experience in the field, etc.
The interview lasted for about half an hour, which I later realised was quite short. But they do plan to do a one day internship with those applicants they're interested in, so that'll be a chance to get a more in-depth impression of me. If they even choose me. I sure hope they do, I'd really really like to start doing my apprenticeship with them.

Tuesday: Slept in, got up, packed my stuff and left my parents' in the early afternoon. I had another job interview, this time at SPI in Ahrensburg. This interview was a lot more intense. At first I thought that the interviewers were out to discourage and criticise me for some reason, but it guess they were just very well-prepared for the meeting and wanted to see how I'd deal with this sort of "interrogation".
The interview itself lasted for about 45 minutes, after which they asked me to fill in a personality test for them to get a more precise idea of what I'm like. They assured me that the answers I'd give wouldn't have an influence on their final decision as such. The test would just help them find out what kind of person I am and whether I'm actually well-suited for the position.
I'll probably get an answer, and results for the test, early next week.

Wednesday sucked. Without going into the specifics, I caused a huge problem for one of our big customers. Well, "caused" isn't quite true in fact. Nicole assured me today that none of it was actually my fault, that I did everything "right". Anyway, it bugs the hell out of me that I let a customer down like that, and I spent most of the night wondering how to do it differently if something like that ever happens again.
*shurgs* The problem is, I can't do it any differently. The only way to avoid something like that happening again is to stop serving customers altogether ...

And now, for some randomness ...
I keep wondering, how do people wearing their hair down keep it from being in their face all the time? Or in their mouth, in their food? Any suggestions?

If you check my last.fm profile you'll find that the past few months I've been listening mostly to the bands Votum and The Aurora Project. Both are absolutely brilliant and I highly recommend them to everyone, even though I'm pretty sure most of you have quite different musical tastes than me. Anyway, if anyone reading this likes Pink Floyd, Riverside, Porcupine Tree and / or Sylvan, check them out.

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of Anesthetize (whew. At least I can write it. I'm still not quite sure how to properly pronounce it). According to the website, Porcupine Tree hope to send them out early May. If I had my way it'd be in the mail tomorrow.
Actually, scratch that. If it was then I'd end up getting just a note telling me to come pick it up at the post office on Monday, since it's both insured and too big for my mailbox anyway. If that were the case, I'd have to wait 2-3 days to get my hands on it, knowing full well that it's just sitting at the post office all weekend. Now that'd be sucky.

I ranted about one postage option you can offer on ebay.de. It's cheaper than other options, but requires the use of a Packstation. I'd offered that once, but the buyer didn't know what it even was, choosing that option for postage anyway.
Even though I said back then I wouldn't offer that option again, I did, hoping that I'd just had bad luck with that one customer.
But, of course, I didn't. Instead, it seems that people are unaware of the requirement to even choose a postage option at all. They just click through the whole procedure and leave it at whatever ebay.de defaults to (and that appears to be whatever's the cheapest). So, in future I'll either not offer it at all, or make it more expensive so that ebay defaults to something else. Kinda beats the whole purpose of it being a cheap way to have stuff delivered of course.
*shurgs*

I forget the last thing I wanted to write about ...
Feel free to educate me on the correct use of "I forget" vs "I forgot" btw. We Germans are kinda weird and never "forget" (Germans: Think about it, how often do you really use present tense "vergessen"?)

bed!

... I had to read back a few entries to find out about what I'd actually posted so far.

Let's see, as to work, I'm employed again. Not much of a "Whoooo" though. Pay's a lot less than before, work hours can be summarised as "lots", and I'm not all that motivated (which is related mostly to the pay thing). Still better than Hartz-IV, which I applied for two about months ago, and which I might actually be getting for the month of March (the first month being employed again - doesn't make any sense, but that's German bureaucracy for you).

I've applied for an apprenticeship (something along the lines of software engineer) at several companies and had my first interview a few days ago at Secra. That was interesting, informative, and downright fun actually. A few years ago I would've gone into such a thing nervous as hell, but it seems I've changed a lot since then. I feel that I've actually accomplished something in my life (just not on paper yet). Sure, my current job is nothing spectacularly difficult, but I've pretty much taught it myself in the past 7 years, and I'm still learning something new every other day. With that in mind I feel a lot more confident going into such a (job) interview than I used to. And in fact, most things the two interviewers thought might be scary about the apprenticeship aren't actually - they're motivating and encouraging.
Oh, they're requiring a 1 - 2 week internship of their apprentice to be, and their offices are about a 2 hour drive from my place. And I was jobless when I applied. So that internship might be a bit of a problem to realise, which is a petty really. Of course I don't know whether I've even left a good enough impression for them to consider me. Oh well, we'll see ...

In other news, I've been playing the c&c beta some more, it's actually quite fun. The ranking system rewards you for playing, which keeps you going.
On the other hand though, I've been playing for a few days only. I'd estimate no more than about 30 - 40 hours all in all. In that time I've managed to reach the highest GDI level, and I'm at level 14 or 15 now with NOD. Once you reach level 20 I don't see much motivation to keep playing. The last few games playing NOD I didn't even bother to change tactics even when new tech became available to me. I just kept building a few attack bikes and buggies for the sole purpose of bugging the enemies and collecting tiberium until I reached tier II tech, built stealth tanks and did hit and runs on enemy crawlers. (tehehe, buggies to bug, and "hid and run" with stealth tanks!). Anyway, I don't really see the long term motivation here, so I think I'll pass.

Oh, and I look like Ron Jeremy apparently ...

Da hab ich doch tatsächlich meine eigene Wette verloren.
Der Anruf kam nämlich nicht zwischen 16.00 und 17.00, sondern erst um 18.15.
Außerdem rief Dominik an, allerdings in Steffis Auftrag.

Do de do.

... bin gerade wieder zur Tür 'rein. Hab Bine nach Hause gebracht, und Steffi, und irgendso einen Typen, den die beiden aufgegabelt haben.
Hat 'n bißchen gedauert, so mit zwei Zwischenstops, um "frische Luft zu schnappen" ...
...

So. Jetzt ins Bett, um 12:30 soll ich bei Steffi sein, vorher noch duschen, also ca. 11.00 aufstehen. YaY!

Well, not really.

As to my actual life outside my apartment, it's been fun the past few days.
On my birthday, I drove to Hamburg to visit Christian and Alexandra, and their kid Kristian. Christian and Alexandra had asked me to be the kid's godfather, which I of course accepted. So I thought I'd go over and meet the little guy. Later that day I went to my work place, taking along some food or everyone.

The weekend I spent at work pretty much. And instead of going home at midnight on Sunday, Steffi and me stayed and played Rummikub until around 3am. Yesterday was similar. We played Risk until 4.30am ^_^
Lots of fun, though the dice hated me.
Let's see what we'll be doing today then d;

My internet connection has been pretty bad lately. For the past month I kept getting disconnects due to the DSL modem losing sync. I've called my ISP about it several times, but they've been hesitant in doing anything about it because I'm using a non-standard setup involving a so-called "router", and they believe that it might be the router causing it. I disagree, since the router is kinda on the wrong side of the modem to have any influence on the actual DSL connection. My opinion anyway. So, even though I've had the Red Alert 3 beta for a few weeks, I didn't play more than maybe a dozen games, half of which ended with a DSL desync on my side. (Beta's closed now, so I guess I can uninstall it ...).
I've just ordered a new router, same I got for my parents. It replaces both the current router and the modem, so if there's still any trouble afterwards, I can pretty safely say it's beyond my control and therefore the ISP's task to fix.
Anyway, it's bad for games, but the desync only lasts a few seconds, so it's not too bad for day to day internet usage, or else I already would've run amok in my ISP's offices. Sometimes the router fails to reconnect though, and I have to reset both router and modem for them to start working again. Which of course I can't do while I'm out. Sux ):

Finally, I created my first .torrent and uploaded it to The Pirate Bay. And there's even a few people downloading ... (:

okay let's see.
I'll start with Saturday, which I spent the first half of cleaning my place, washing dishes, etc. The usual crap I hate doing.
In the evening some friends came over. Christian & Alexandra and Schwesterchen & Stefan. I'd invited Chrischi too of course, but he was running late and called to ask about the Billard place I'd planned to go to. We decided to meet him there.
So, we talked for a bit, then decided to order pizza. Pizza arrived, we ate, yummy d:
Then a bit later we drove to the Billard place, or, more precisely, to the MuK, which is the closest place to easily find parking.
Then we started playing, Chrischi showed up a minute into the first game, then we played lots more.
At midnight a Birthday song started playing (my sister had seen to that), and I got some presents, "Happy Birthday"'s, and an SMS (:
Some time after midnight, Christian & Alexandra left, then yet another bit later, Sonja & Stefan. Chrischi and me played another 3 or 4 games, then we left too and went to my place again.
Btw, the music at the billard place rocked! Several Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits tracks, and Pink Floyd, Status Quo, Queen, etc.
Anyway, back home we did some internet things here, I packed a few things, then we both drove to Schwarzenbek. We arrived at around 4am, and I slept at my parents' place.

Was woken up at around 9am, Lara & Lena were visiting my parents' too, and were noisy d;
They're still both really cute, they're still scared of me, and Lena has a fever. O:
Anyway, did all sorts of things at my parents', then people showed up at around 3pm for coffee and cake. Yummy, Nutella cake!!!
Got more presents, and stuff.
Then later, everybody left, and my father drove me back to Lübeck.
Back here, I cleaned the mess we'd left the previous day, washed the dishes etc.

I SMSed Steffi at the airport and asked her to e-Mail me the new work schedule thing. She called a while later because e-Mail didn't work, so she told me when I'd have to be back at work (i.e. Tuesday). Then a bit later I got an SMS from her "Happy Birthday"'ing me. (:

So. Today. At some point this morning I jokingly thought to myself I should make some "New Year's Resolutions", since I've just started a new year, and stuff. Decided, again jokingly, always to get up before 10am. Which I then did. Got up at 9am, checked for e-Mails, replied to a few, then went back to bed and slept till shortly before 1pm.
(;

Right.
I made myself some very yummy food today. Then I cleaned the kitchen again. Yuck. I hate cleaning it. But it always gets so messy when I prepare proper food (i.e. not deep-frozen pizza). Oh well.
*shurgs*

Mag, I recall reading about some families issues recently. I hope you had a pleasant birthday anyway. Happy (belated) Birthday.

Damit hab ich ja gar nicht gerechnet. (:
*grins*
Ich hab grad 'ne Postkarte bekommen, von brokendreams_, aus Madrid.
Wheee (:
danke danke danke Nina!!! (:
*freu*