vincent

I don’t sleep much, I get stressed by crying babies, I miss surfing the
www. But I am the happiest man on earth.

2 weeks old

the small guy is now more than 2 weeks old and successfully took Siepke’s position as the “center of attention” of the house :)
He also managed to eliminate all my other hobbies, passions and even my night sleep. I am always tired :P
Next thing he will eliminate is the positive balance on my checkings account, I fear ;)

I am trying to get into a “normal” rhythm again after all this.. going to work helps a lot, so do my colleagues. But I really don’t know anymore where is up and where is down.. all seems distorted and shifted.. things that were important all of a sudden are irrelevant and my life all of a sudden is circling around other things. Well, one thing to be precise – and I don’t think that’s so bad :)

There were some “issues” that made the whole thing a little unpleasant, for example he kepy falling asleep while eating, effectively not eating enough.
Last week Anna “discovered” that his skin is still a little yellow. (that’s pretty tricky having yellow/orange walls and bedsheets) – while being at the consultation office (where we have to go now every now and then and get his “progress” reported…)

For the moment, Anna’s mother is helping a lot, giving me time to get back to work and into my rhythm and helping Anna to focus on Vincent, he really needs lots of attention.

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some nostalgia

Wired magazine has written an article about the “Top 10 Most Influential Amiga Games

Despite being absolutely true, seeing the pictures of this Computer made my eyes watery..
Commodore Amiga 500

End of the 80s, beginning of the 90s was the time this computer ruled the (digital) world.
I remember the endless hours of either roaming the telephone system (there was no WWW, yet) or gaming in a world of fantasy.

Games back then had no photorealistic 3D-Animations, no crazy surround sounds, no cinematic effects and movie-transitions… but they had one thing that most today’s games miss: Fantasy!

The designers of these “early” games loved what they did, creating wonderful worlds of fantasy and boy, they had ideas! With 256 colours and 2D graphics they created a colourful world of “Sprites” that probably are a major reason for my love for Anime and colourful things :)

No repetitve killing and wonderfully animated death-sequences but a plot that really “sucks” you in and takes you on a journey into a different world.
It’s a pity this machine died.. I still don’t know why.

Now that I see these games.. Where is ELITE? Where is “The Secret of Monkey Island” ???
What about Dune2 – the father of Command&Conquer… Turrican? Pirates! ???
Oh, how many hours I spent with these…

Well, probably it can’t all fit into a Top 10 ;)

a new beginning

I could look at this guy for hours.. so small and yet so human.
the way he stretches, yawns and does baby-things.. I am still high, I guess.

I went to work today again, for the first time in ages (it was only a week but it felt like ages to me) and met all my colleagues being happy and cheering at me. I almost got emotional :P

To “get into it” again, I took place in a conference call and the teammeeting, handing out “beschuit met muisjes” to everyone :)
Tomorrow at eight I will “start over” as a dad.. I hope that working will get me in a rhythm again. (which I completely lost the last days)

Tomorrow we can pick up the perambulator (nice word for a stroller, huh? ;) ) that we ordered 2 months ago.. then finally Vincent will get his first trip outside :D

got to sleep now, otherwise the small guy won’t let us sleep.

Vincent is here

How shall I start?
It’s been three days since I have had the time to sit behind this laptop and type something. I’ll just state the obvious (although I hate that usually.. ) :P

On 4th of April, at 16:01 CET, our son Vincent was born!

He is lying in our bed at the moment, enjoying late lunch (or early dinner?) from his mother. I am so happy! No, WE are happy!!! :)
He and Anna are still recovering from the delivery, which was not really “easy” (but what is an easy delivery, anyway?) and the small guy is in need for a lot of sleep.

We are enjoying a beautiful easter weekend together and a woman from the social care is looking for us every day for three hours. (a very useful institution, we think.. they show you how to hold a baby properly, how to check for this and that, how to warm the bed.. etc..)

For the rest, we are both still high on emotions, people brought flowers, our families went crazy in Bavaria and in Bulgaria, everything is as good as it can get. :)

I’ll put some photos here so I don’t have to send them around by email all the time which consumes bandwidth and takes ages… enjoy!

here I am look at me, world need… sleep..

lots of colours learning to bathe the other firstborn is jealous

phew.. more later.. other things are important now ;)

really annoying people

I usually try not to think in drawers..
(People that know me realize that sooner or later.) ;)

But there are two kinds of people that really get me pissed off. I don’t have a word for this kind of people (neither in German nor in English) so I am going to give an example.

Imagine you own a mac and you want to run internet explorer. (to open some crazy website that refuses to open in Firefox for the Admin sucks.. unfortunately it’s job related, so you have to)
No problem, you think, I just need a “light and stable” version of windows, like Windows 2000 and an emulator like Qemu or Parallels. Piece of cake.

Now, you realize, all the manuals are written for Windows XP or Vista, which you really don’t want because it just eats your memory away but doesn’t make the internet any faster.
So you go to a forum/chat and ask for help.

Question: “How do I successfully install Windows 2000 in Parallels/Qemu”

The answer should be simple, is it? If you know it and like to help me, the answer should be something like “you go like this, then like that and then you do that.. and.. .etc.”

Nope.

Answer 1: “Why do you want to install Windows 2000? Windows XP is far more advanced, has better drivers, better hardware support.. etc. etc…

Answer 2: “That’s what you get for using a mac, you should have bought a “good’ PC and run Windows Vista, then you would not have these problems.

So.. please.. tell me.. what was my question again?

Man.. I am soo pissed. ;)

I bought this Mac because I was sick of these windows problems, like crashes, bluescreens, worms, viruses, backdoors, driver failures, what else?

Humans.. never underestimate the stupidity of human beings in large groups.

P.S. Who can tell me the official english term for these kind of people? I would invite this person for lemon ice cream ;)

sunset on the balcony

well.. whenever I find the time, don’t think of the fact that Anna might go into labour any moment and that I actually should study much more Cisco to get my CSE fast, I enjoy these first days that actually feel like spring.

I am so overcharged, it just feels great :)

here is a pic I took from the balcony yesterday.. I just love the sun.

sunset

CrackBook (yes, the 13″ one)

My MacBook has cracked on the case :(

Cracked MacBookcrackbook close-up

It seems that this is a production problem, as more people are reporting exactly the same crack.
Apple’s Discussion Forum
Flickr group

Now, I am extremely happy with this laptop (and even more so with the OS) but the quality of this thing reminds me of a DELL or something similar from the “cheap” compartment in the stores, not of a high-quality, high-price, nicely designed piece of hardware.

I am really starting to hate all this asian plastic shit that is being pushed on the market.. Intel recently announced that they will build a plant there for 2,4 billion. *sigh*
Time to get back to AMD and to buy a german laptop.. oh wait, Fujitsu bought the Siemens laptop department.. same shit there ;)

guess I’ll just have to live with it.

Hardware comes from asia and is low quality (but cheap) and work is being done in eastern Europe because the people there work for much less than these “spoiled” western Europeans..