The Gentoo’ish look back

I had a very moving year with Gentoo. At first I only focussed on the stuff I already had (being vServer / openVZ related stuff), but later on also on suspend2-sources and other stuff I took over back when Hendrik retired.

Sometime this year (I think it was somewhere in the early summer) I joined up with the kernel herd, helped out Daniel while he was moving from London(?) to Boston, took over hardened-sources from John (who’s pretty much away). I had a rough break (you remember, the break that turned out to be my most active time) in October till late November, while fighting with my private life and work.

Somewhen between summer and my break I also managed to get hooked up with recruiters which turned out to be a great experience. I got to know Gentoo’s latest additions (graaff, welp, omp, eroyf …); I’m currently working on getting hyakuhei (Robert Clark that is) ready, and I think he is. Let’s see, once I’m back at my devbox (hah, just talked to my brother in the early afternoon, he’s playing Windowz games on it, probably Star Wars – Empire at War) I’m going to do the last steps before hooking him up.

I also managed to junk my time-table with ipw* related stuff (as I announced earlier this month, ipw2?00 is going away in early January – and no, ipw2?00-firmware is staying in the tree and no this isn’t going to affect kernel-2.4 users as it never was supported nor worked for them), mostly got ipw3945 working (thanks to Jan Kundrát and Hendrik who had the initial idea in his overlay iirc), ieee80211 is still a mess (and is hopefully going away soon as Robin (robbat2) told me today, starting with kernel-2.6.20 the ipw3945 stuff is going to work with the in-kernel ieee80211 stuff).

I also joined the hardened herd (only recently), which I am very thankfully for. Let’s see how the next year turns out.

Happy frackin new year !!!

My private look back

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.

I’m going to see the dermatologist on the next Friday again, the wound started bleeding, which isn’t that good. My cousin tried to convince me to go to the Katharinenhospital to get a second opinion, and even though I’m in pain with this wound (a little bit), I’m not going to spend another public holiday in a hospital. I had enough for this year from the yapping doctors and nurses.

So I’m going to spend this lovely evening with my aunt and my cousin (her husband needs to work till 2am in the next morning), eat some (more) meat fondue and go on relatives visiting tour again tomorrow (probably in the late afternoon).

Ten-Four.

Happy new Year!

I just watched CNN Live three hours ago, showing the New Year’s in Sydney Harbour, AU.

Looked really great, and as a matter of fact, I wish everyone a happy new year. I know, Diego kept saying its bad luck to wish that in advance, but what the hell ..

I wish every fellow Gentoo Developer and even those Gentoo Users reading the Universe from the bottom of my heart a happy new year and may be Gentoo with you.

Again Deutsche Bahn

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).

Next thing was, once I was in the ICE to Stuttgart they checked my ticket. The first conductor noted that my Weltmeister BahnCard (which I bought back in May) isn’t valid anymore. But I told her that I got a letter from the Deutsche Bahn, telling me that the Card’s validity cycle has been extended till 31. December 2006. She told me that she had no knowledge of that but let me be with that.

The next conductor that came along, told me that the BahnCard was invalid and I had to pay the difference I bought with the invalid card. So he demanded 31,50 € from me, which I paid. Also he told me that the BahnCard is still accepted by his ticket machine. Afterwards he gave me a receipt for the payment and went along.

The next conductor (seems like they took turns) asked me for my ticket, which I handed to her together with the receipt I got from the previous conductor and my BahnCard. So she checked all three, told me that my BahnCard was invalid and seized my BahnCard and went away.

That was pretty much of my adventure with German Rails on this sunny Thursday.

Once I’m back home, I’m going to write a formal complaint together with a demand for compensation directed at the appropriate office.

Merry frackin Christmas

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).

As usual, I had a fight with my little brother yesterday, as every year, about completely random moronic stuff. But the evening wasn’t all bad, everyone enjoyed the fondue, we had a glass of wine (one per person ;P) and sat around the table and talked. Everyone got nice presents (I finally foundSpace Cowboys” (my brother bought it for me *yay* …) and he even bestowed me with Godzilla (as in the ’99 movie with Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno), which is what I’ve been watching the last two hours.

I also got a new swivel chair for my desk, since the old, broken one is standing outside in the garden. My mom bestowed me with some more stuff to read (for those curious, the sequel of Bourne Identity – The Bourne Supremacy), which I already started to read.

On other news, my mom just asked me if I want to go to the Hospital tomorrow (because I’m badly in pain – even worse on a pretty sensitive area of my body). All that because of the darned, frackin urologist, who thought gluing some antibiotic ointment onto this part of my body would make me feel better. Turns out, now all out of the sudden, the thing is peeling. Guess this is going to turn into a most “pleasent” vacation (as in spending a part of my vacation in hospital) *shrug*

I also planned to get my ass to Stuttgart on December 28th, to visit my aunt, my cousine and her husband, and all the other relatives that still live there. Let’s see how the hospital turns out.

So long .. “Merry frackin Christmas and a happy new year !!