Oook!

Today I am on my way back to Tuebingen. And I am happy that I have a bit of experience on how the trains and their delays are working. For some reason, all the long distance trains that coming from the north to Muenster are delayed. So already when I booked and printed my ticket at home, I new that I was not in a rush. But I could use the extra 30min to check my options. Either I could stay on my first train, continue all the way to Stuttgart and wait to get to Tuebingen. That delay might have entitled me to a partial refund. The other option is to use another faster train to get to my destination in a better time.

My parents dropped me of at the train station in Muenster and with a delay of only 50min I finally left Muenster, planning to catch an ICE in Cologne. Arriving in Cologne, there was a bit of confusion. At least for a lot of the other passengers. Living in Tuebingen, I got used to some happenings about the trains there. Some trains arriving from Stuttgart are split in Tuebingen into three parts with two of them continuing their journey to different places and one of them staying in Tuebingen. Also the IRE going from Stuttgart to Tuebingen is usually appended with an extra train part. So when the first part of that train arrives in Tuebingen, all passengers that did not hear, understood or trusted the announcement, will run after this first part of the train. The other 20% are usually waiting for the other empty half of the train to arrive. Very relaxing to find an empty set of seats.

In Cologne now, they just did these two things with mich longer ICE trains. I suppose some people got a good workout by walking up and down the platform. The first part of the train was going up north towards Dortmund and my train was supposed to leave only 5min later on the same platform. Some people were very unsure and were hoping on and off the train thinking it might be the other train. At the same time at the end of the train, and empty part was waiting with locked doors and naturally people were trying to get in there as well. Some confusion got cleared when the first part of that ICE left the station and the people saw that there was still another ICE waiting on the same platform. So everyone was walking, running and dragging luggage to the other end of the platform where the train with the closed doors was. Then this part was moving to the other end of the platfrom and 80% of the people were walking, running and dragging luggage along those 100 meters.

The rest of us were waiting patiently for the part to arrive and now I am sitting in an almost empty car of the ICE train heading for Frankfurt Airport while the first part of the train must be rather crowded. As a bonus, I will probably arrive as planned in Tuebingen.

If I had my passport with me, I would consider to get off there and take the next to somewhere...

The other nice thing about this ICE is that I have internet access. At least the webpages related to Deutsche Bahn are free of charge to access (but apparently not the new TLD railnet.train). And lucky me can see that my connection from Mannheim to Stuttgart is delayed. Now I have to hope to get my connection to Tuebingen on time. At least I can make myself a list with the connections from Stuttgart to Tuebingen. An almost complete list. The IRE connections are not listed at the moment due to some technical difficulties with these type of trains.

***

Now I am on my train from Mannheim to Stuttgart. The original delay of 10min increased to 25min. I think the Deutsche Bahn has a new popular excuse: "Hohe Streckenauslastung" (Is that the euphemism for traffic jam when it comes to trains?) - at least I heard it a lot today. The guy in the seat next to me agrees.

And if there is no IRE running at a good time for me, I will still have a delay of more than an hour. Maybe I could saved myself the trouble of changing trains and just stayed on the original one. It should have arrived in Mannheim by now and should be on its way to Stuttgart in a few minutes while I am typing this paragraph. Oh well, at least it was more interesting this way. Staying for hours on the same train can very boring. Especially if there are many empty seats.

...

Now in Stuttgart and sitting in the train to Tuebingen. The only issue is that the train is not scheduled to leave for another 30min. And it will take about an hour to get to Tuebingen. I guess this will be the most boring and annoying part of this journey. I have to admit that there is a slighty faster connection to Tuebingen going through Herrenberg. But I am not going to risk that the train will arrive late in Herrenberg. With this train, my scheduled arrival is "only" 60min late. Wonder if I can get this confirmed. Although compensation is only given when one is more than 60min late.

...

Waiting a little longer so that passengers from another train can come onborad...
Ok... only 3min wait. Finally moving.

...

Home.

...

Senk ju vor träweling wif Deutsche Bahn. Hau abaut aua häppi aua späschäls vor ohnli...

Apparently, the spammers are also trying to use the xmas mood to increase their sales. Sigh.

A Geek's Guide To Surviving Christmas

if ($you->xmas.celebrate()) then {

  if($you->language.german()) then {

    print("Fröhliche Weihnachten.");

  }

  else {

    print("Merry Christmas.");

  }

}

else {

  if($you->language.german()) then {

    print("Schöne Feiertage.");

  }

  else {

    print("Happy Holidays.");

  }

}

Another year has almost passed and I made a new version of my yearly calender which was originally inspired by Dave Seah's Compact Calendar. I used OpenOffice to create it. While the last version was using fixed dates, this new version is always starting with the current week.


Update: Now the PDF Version is also using flexible dates.

• OpenOffice version


• Adobe PDF version

Since OpenOffice is using localized function names and because I have no idea if these are automatically converted when used with a different localized installation, it may be the OpenOffice version is not working. Feedback on this is appreciated.

Since about a month ago, after many years, I assembled myself a new computer which is running Windows 7 now. It had the strange habit of waking up from the sleep-mode by itself at night. And I just could not find out why. It was not magic packets or the network card, it was not my wireless keyboard / mouse sending random signals (check this link for info on that).

In the end, it was just the media center trying to update itself. This little annoyance can be turned off / changed in the Task Scheduler.

After a long time of consideration, carefully thinking about the options and consequences, I have finally done it: I have registed my final thesis and will be working on it a lot in the next coming months. In fact, I will be spending so much time on it that it will be like a very close relationship.

(Insert your favorite computer nerd joke here.)

As a matter of fact, I feel it will be such an intense relationship that I went ahead and said on facebook that I am engaged.

Thanks my friends for all the positive feedback and sorry to those who felt a bit cheated (but now you know that not everything is true just because it is on the internet ). I really do appreciated all your comments and questions.