Dirk's Blog Thing

... There was a time when I livejournaled several times a day.

These days a month passes between entries. I blame twitter and friendface facebook; find me there for more frequent, and just as inane, posts and updates.

(Rest assured though, that I'm still reading my friends list every day.)

Anyway, I'll try writing about the past month then.

I came up with a word to describe one of my coworker's fondness of a certain hot beverage. The word is coffetish.
I came up with it while cleaning the Senseo I bought used off the very same coworker. I also discovered that you can easily make a decent cup of tea filling eco pads with loose tea. (Is loose tea even the proper term? It seems to do the trick for google image search). Now if only there was an easy way to open tea bags and get that stuff out?

Lets see, work has been a little exhausting. I've spent most time installing a certain software suite for a customer, and trying to figure out how to get two seperate databases converted into a single one for that same software suite. The complexity of that task frightens me a little, since we're still not quite done with it.
Once we're finally through with that, I'll take about 3 days off as compensation for the extra time I invested in the project.

School is fun mostly. As it turns out, those semesters studying computer science ten years ago weren't completely in vain. Even though I'm a little rusty on the particulars, I still recall basics like structured programming, recursion, encapsulation etc. And having a simple microprocessor to run programs, use input switches and output LEDs is a lot more fun than the academic approach back at university. One disadvantage though, the hardware is rather old and unreliable, so you end up trying to find errors in your code when it's just a switch acting up.
Anyway, those basics make it easier for me to understand new stuff like

int x=(P1&0x0C)>>2; /* P1 being the box o' switches you can see in the pictures ... */

We're also learning about business management, economics, processes etc. That's one subject I'm not really interested in, but the teacher we've got makes up for that by being very enthusiastic about the topic.
Of course we've also got an english lesson every week. That's kind of a no-brainer for me.

What else?
This past Wednesday, Chrischi, Moni and me went to see Gazpacho. Loved it. Awesome band. I'm having a hard time describing their music actually. I guess their music is commonly labelled progressive rock or art rock. Which I guess is right, but as with most cases, doesn't do them justice. Their music is very relaxing, soothing, dreamy. Check out Dream of Stone on youtube for example (Part I, Part II). It's 20 minutes of beautiful music.
Also, setlist. They've been changing the setlist for each concert, so I consider myself lucky that ours had The Walk, Tick Tock and Dream of Stone.

Erm. And that's it for now I think. *nods*

Weekend has been fun.
Sylvan concert on Friday with Moni and Chrischi. Lots of older stuff was played, songs I'd never heard before. Good ones. Bought three CDs, Deliverance Re-Issue among them. Deliverance was their first album, and has been unavailable for some time. The Re-Issue is not officially on sale yet.

On Saturday some of my coworkers came over for an evening of gaming. We started off with a few rounds of Fluxx, followed by a single round of Risk which took about 5 hours. We ordered pizza for dinner and finished with a few rounds of Wizard.

And today I tidied up, washed some clothes, watched a few episodes of Simpsons and the latest Burn Notice, and played some New Vegas. I've finished a few quests and I'm not entirely sure what to do next ...

Oh, and I bought a used Senseo HD 7810 off one of my coworkers. I don't drink coffee myself, but for 5€ it was a bargain - and I can now offer a decent cup of coffee to people visiting me.
That is, once I buy some ammo for it.
It also does tea and cocoa, but I guess I won't try those. First of all, if you prepare different things in it, the tastes will interfere with each other. To avoid that I'd have to thoroughly clean it every time. Also, preparing a cup of tea with tea bags and boiling water, or a cup of cocoa is well within my abilities. Coffee is not though.

A colleague of mine today recommended The Dresden Files to me. Sounded kinda familiar for some reason ...
Anyway, I pointed him towards the TV show he hadn't been aware of ...

Also ... actually, that's about it. I can't think of anything else to write about ... o_O

Just got home from my last day at work.
My parents are coming over tomorrow to help me pack up the last remaining things in my apartment. Then we'll drive to Lübeck, I'll "arrive" at my new place and get comfortable.

In case I haven't quite mentioned it, I'm starting an apprenticeship as a "Fachinformatiker - Systemintegration" (pretty much SysAdmin) at soIT GmbH on Wednesday, Sept. 1st.
I'm looking forward to that, I'm, confident I'll be successful in that (come to think of it, in the past 7 years I've become quite proficient at a job that I a. never properly learned, and b. that didn't at all fit my personality). Now I'm starting to work in a field that I've actually been interested in since childhood.

Anyway, of course I'm also nervous. Change makes me nervous. I guess that's sort of normal.
I hope the kids at school won't pick on me ...

According to my time sheet, I've had 26 consecutive work days. Those include Saturdays and Sundays, which I call "almost a day off" because they're only 4 and 2 hours, respectively.

Anyway, since it's been a month since I took my wallet out of the vest I wear at work, I of course entirely forgot to take it with me for grocery shopping today. I only noticed when I tried to pay.

Oops, I guess.

Anyway, other than visiting the store twice today, I had breakfast, and then cleaned my place and washed some clothes. That's what I usually do on weekends. I'm mostly done now, so I guess the remainder of the day will be spent listening to music, watching some TV, and playing Fallout 3 which I re-installed a few days ago.

I've started using twitter btw. Does that mean I'm twitting, or twittering, now? Anyway, I'm @ http://twitter.com/inanedirk so please make me feel important and add me d;

Work … Busy … Etc …
I’ve been meaning to write about work, but got distracted yesterday.
Anyway, work is very “busy” these days. Yesterday I read through 600 pages of dieselsweeties archives. About 3 of those comics were funny.
I’ve had an intern for the past two weeks. He didn’t come to work this past Friday though, thinking that since all his school mates had a day off he probably had too.
He was supposed to do another two weeks of internship, but those might not happen now.
I’m not too fond of having an intern anyway. Most of the work I do is very Europcar-specific and therefore only good to learn for someone who intends to work for Europcar.
Also, it’s often boring here. Most of the time I have a few hours each day that are busy, and as for the rest of the day, I’m sitting here answering one phone call every few hours. And reading online comics.
Oh well. I’m getting a new intern these days, so I’ll have to start all over again teaching her stuff. But at least she’s got a driving license, so I can send her to do some more errands, like delivering cars or getting them washed.



Splinter Cell: Conviction
I’ve been playing that for a few days now, and so far it’s really quite disappointing.
As seems to be the trend in computer games lately, this game concept has been dumbed down to suit casual gamers as well. Gameone.tv pointed out that the controls have been simplified compared to previous Splinter Cell games. I don’t get how they think that’s a good thing though. Granted, controls in Chaos Theory were complex, but it was still manageable to quickly learn and use them, and they gave you the flexibility to solve problems in different ways. You could play the game like an action shooter and just go around killing everyone. You could also sneak around the level watching the enemies and grabbing / disabling individual ones non-lethally (and since you could interrogate many of them, you learned more about the plot, making this a more rewarding playing style). Or you could just sneak past them without them noticing you at all. The level design was such that in most scenarios you could do any of these things.
This isn’t the case anymore with Conviction. The levels are designed to be much narrower, tunnel-like. You don’t get the option to sneak around enemies anymore, instead you usually have to take a frontal approach and just shoot your way through them. Playing it reminds me a little of Mass Effect 2, where you just go from cover to cover and get rid of waves of enemies.
Enemies in Conviction come in waves too. Whenever there’s plenty of cover to use you can be sure a wave of enemies will suddenly and pretty much out of nowhere appear to make your live difficult, and once the last of them has been taken care of, your character makes some comment and you know that’s the last of them. When this happens you can just walk to the next save point, where the same thing will happen all over again.
Of course you can still sneak around, and occasionally even climb up somewhere, but there’s not much point to it really tactically. Since the levels are very narrow, the enemies are always close to each other and you rarely have one separated from the herd. As a consequence the game rewards you in a very unrealistic way when you do manage a silent hand to hand takedown: You get the option to “mark and execute”, where you can mark several enemies with an arrow and then with the press of a single button execute all of them. Looks cool the first time you do it, but doesn’t make any sense.
The choice of weapons doesn’t really help with the sneaking either. You can choose between several hand guns, SMGs, assault rifles, and a shotgun, but none of them is really good for the sneaky guy. Some of the hand guns aren’t silenced, and of those that are, there’s only one with a sniper scope. And that one’s too weak to kill most targets with a single shot, so you give away your position anyway. As for the bigger guns, they seem to be either suppressed / silenced *or* scoped, never both. So you can choose between not hitting your targets from a save distance or having to change positions after taking a shot because suddenly the whole world knows where you are.
Something that came as a bit of a surprise to me was the level of violence shown when you interrogate some characters. In previous games hurting enemies to obtain information was always only hinted at graphically, in Conviction it’s been done very explicitly and a lot more interactive. I prefer the more subtle approach. The way it’s done in Conviction seems unnecessarily violent and graphic.
Oh, you can pick up weapons now. It’s the same button you use to dive from cover to cover or to jump over obstacles. So you might end up suddenly holding a different rifle in the middle of a firefight instead of hiding behind cover.
Also, there’s only one night vision gadget. It works through sonar I think, and has some very bad interference occasionally. You can find enemies hiding behind walls with it, but you might not perceive the wall between yourself and your enemy anymore. It’s a little irritating, especially during one level where you can’t see *anything* without them and you keep bumping into walls and other obstacles. Some of your opponents have the same gear by the way, so whenever you’re using it you might be giving your position away.
Anyway. I think I’m going to re-play Chaos Theory for the third or fourth time. Way better game.

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!

It's so easy!!

Assuming C3 holds the time I started work on a particular day, and D3 being the time I got off work, this calculates the time spent at work. The IF clause makes sure that nothing is displayed for those days with no starting time (i.e. days off), and the 9,5 thing substracts 1 hour from my total on those days that I worked for more than 9.5 hours (i.e. 1 hour lunch break).

Before I read the openoffice help file about "calculating with times and dates" that line was about three times as long. And didn't work the way I wanted it to.

The geek in me finds it really neat to use the boolean result 0 or 1 in calculations. Saves a lot of IF constructs. It also helps to know how openoffice works with times internally. 24 hours equals 1, so one hour is 1/24.

... 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.

Some fucker stole a mudguard from my bike. Again.
And I hadn't even left the bike in a public space, but at work.
And with my current work schedule I can't really find the time to get a replacement.