2022-01-26
In November 2021, the right shoulder button on my Nintendo DSi stopped working, basically not letting me drift. Although i'm not really a gamer, it made me sad to not have Mario Kart on a dedicated handheld device anymore. Then i remembered SuperTuxKart, and i tried it this month. I installed it on an Android phone, and it is just as good. The Game Boy devices still work after all these years, Tetris never gets old, and my mom likes it. We never had a full-size video game console, because they are too expensive for their little use. This is true for anything that came after the Nintendo DSi too.
I stopped drinking coffee this month, and feel better. I don't need it anymore, and probably never needed it. I remember that i drank my first cup in Ratingen. Because my parents did it during breakfast, and i was old enough. Drinking coffee reminds me of chocolate, just without the sugar. These days, i'm already in overdrive without it. When the world is turning more stupid, there is no time for the mind to sleep. Just like my parents barely slept before the pandemic, because not many people are actually working in this world. Many are only pushing papers or waiting to press a key on a keyboard. I will not miss coffee that much, i'm now even older, and learned to cut down on things.
FYI, my father with his minimum wage income, donated in year 2020 more than 3100 Euros and in year 2021 more than 2800 Euros to the Freie Christen Gemeinde Bonn e.V., here also known as Free Church. Although they market themselves as "Centrum Lebendiges Wort", literally translated as "Lively Word Center". And yet we are still getting fucked by these dumb children in Bad Godesberg.
Mom told me that more than 4 decades ago, after dad came to Germany from Hong Kong, he didn't keep the tips from waiting tables, and passed it on instead. The restaurant owner in Düsseldorf regularly rewarded him with grilled chicken for being faithful. My father is very proud to have worked at Kautex in Bonn-Duisdorf for almost 20 years. He is a good human with a heart.
2022-01-17
I think a big part is about perspective. I would really like to have at least two children with my future wife. Because i was mostly alone in life. My parents are working all the time. So this makes sense to you? If a parent would not have to work, then i can see this change. My mother is currently paying my health insurance, so i can develop myself. She has been paying for me since more than nine years. In Germany, if you are getting older than 26, you are not covered anymore by the health insurance of your parents. You either make yourself dependent on the government, find an employer who pays it for you, or you pay it yourself.
I like to see myself as a hippie in some way, although i have never done drugs. But you don't survive in the real world being wild and free forever. Everything is regulated these days. And how do you receive letters without an address? My parents are getting older. And to survive a little longer, i like to try to get some money. If you read my blog, you know what i can do for you. Or maybe not, because some things are not that clear for non-tech people. I'm an artist, builder, designer, engineer, software and web developer, system administrator, technician, and much more. If you think i can help you, please send me an email.
2022-01-09
My character started to change between 2007 and 2008. Before Dirk tried to take my domain name away, i was different. Sure, i was getting bullied and life was not perfect, but i was still a dreamer. This is why the internet was a big part of my life, and this other person tried to steal a slice. He failed, which is why i can say today that i have continuously pioneered online communities since at least 2002. This is the year i have registered dforum dot com.
The addresses to my projects have changed since 1998, but to be honest, the basic idea is the same. Just different code, colors, and layouts. Marketing likes to sell it as innovative technology, but in the end, these are all digital forums, with slightly different flavors. The internet is about communication, with living people or with dead machines. And no one should be able to take it away.
When i look at my personal photos from my time before, i can see me smiling without too much thinking. I have slowly stopped doing it since 2008. I invite you to look at them, if you have nothing to do. I hope they stay here long enough for you to see them. I wish i was more visually attractive, because my brain is fried from being sad, about the world, and me being in it. I tried a lot to do my part, but as i said before, there are limitations on what you can make out of trash.
I can toy around a lot with things that are no longer loved, because they have done their job. But this is only something worth to me. Would you give me a place to live, and food to not die? Somewhere i'm not forced to leave, and don't want to leave? And if you read from the start, you know i liked watching The Simpsons. I liked colors and music, but i became numb to survive.
2022-01-07
Last year, in October 2021, i folded another 1000 origami cranes. This time i did it within 7 days. For now i can say that i made at least 13069 origami cranes in my life, well documented on YouTube. I started my trail in October 2013, and i folded my recent batch in October 2021. I made them in 176 days. And i did it in 22 cities. I'm really happy, something no one can take from me. This will never change and will always be true. I'm not sure i can keep this up technically. I can probably make 1000 origami cranes within 5 days. But it requires a lot of computing power and disk space to get them online for everyone to see.
At the end of December 2021, our landlord sent us a utility bill. My mother found a math error there. She marked the error on the paper and i sent the scan via email to our landlord. He didn't answer after a week. So i sent it again, from a different address, in case it got moved into the spam folder. He said he received the email and he can't see the error, insisting he is right. It is just simple math. How do you tell children they are wrong? A child with a doctor's degree, and a dog's face as a profile picture. A doctor in what? Probably something where no math is involved.
Update one day later, after me doing the math for him in another email: Our landlord admitted the mistake and it was caused by Microsoft Excel. To be fair, his mother wasn't good at math from the start. Back then, she outsourced the accounting to a "professional" who couldn't do math either. So it fits in the theme of missing basic skills. My parents had to point her to the failure. Rest in peace, landlady.
2022-01-06
I read somewhere that once you go free, you never go back. This week, after one year, i'm celebrating my exclusive OS relationship with Linux. I wrote many new tools in my first months, a lot in Bash, and of course, mostly in Perl. Windows Batch and PowerShell are no longer accepted. By doing this, i cleaned up the mess. I combined most of them into two large pocket multi-tools, reducing overhead and enabling me to faster workflows.
I added many new features to my skills, because i had to adapt to a new world. All the noise is gone, and the signal is strong. I didn't need to change too much, since i was already a terminal user before, and a developer anyway. And the Free Software collection was nothing new to me.
If something doesn't work or isn't there yet, i probably can make it work and available. For example, a GIMP plugin stopped working for me after going from Buster to Bullseye, so i wrote a complete replacement in Perl, including GUI, and used ImageMagick instead. I updated my older tools for the new environment, basically making them survive in any Unix-like system.
I do a fresh Debian install every week, so if i happen to catch something, it doesn't stay long. I streamlined the whole process to minimize my downtime. Many settings are recovered, and important data is symlinked to persistent paths. I automated this to a point where i just need to hit enter, and if needed, with options to change things at any moment.
2021-12-20
On Saturday, my mom got tricked into signing a blank paper during a Covid test at her job cleaning the Kameha Grand Bonn. The person who made her do this is employed by Sanicum Diagnostics GmbH. I don't know what will happen, but i do know that my mom gets bumped a lot, just like my dad. Being nice doesn't pay off. Mom and dad want to trust people, but this is hard to keep alive, especially in recent times. She has been working there as a chambermaid for more than 10 years, getting everything right to earn those stars.
My mom is not stupid, she is a master at the sewing machine, since more than 47 years. She can design, develop and make many things from fabrics. This is true for Chinese food too. After finishing school, mom worked at a toy factory and later a flashlight factory in Hong Kong for a year. Afterwards, from 1974 till 1984, she was sewing leather gloves, leather jackets, winter jackets, trench coats, and was a forewoman in her last 5 years. From 1976 till 1979, mom visited evening classes to learn English too. When she was little, mom wanted to become a teacher. And she did it, by becoming the leader of her team.
You can probably tell, i don't trust people that much. I like making things, because they are not leaving me, and don't lie to me. Do you want to know from whom i really got my talents? I talked a lot here about MacGyver, but my real inspiration is my dad. His father was building houses in Hong Kong. I have never met him, he died before i was born.
My dad is good at repairing things and making things too, just like me. He can do a lot, but not being able to speak German fluently has kept his skills only known to mom and me. His potential was wasted, and time is not everyone's friend. Back then, in Bonn-Duisdorf, his coworkers at Kautex used to regularly open his payroll letters to see how much money he made. Needless to say, they did it without my father's consent. He worked more than anyone, without getting paid that much more.
2021-11-06
My mom gets mobbed by her boss at her job cleaning the protestant "free church" kindergarten in Bad Godesberg. Around 5 years ago, he inherited the position through retirement of her former boss due to age. Because he was employed the longest, and not because of qualification. After all, he was a child care worker. My mom has been working there for about as long. Her former boss was older than her, and a really nice woman. My mom is a professional. She has been trained, and has been cleaning for more than 20 years. Mostly in nursing homes, hotel, and kindergarten.
Her boss now is younger than my mom, and likes inventing shit and throwing sand in her gearbox. This is not the only job my mom has. The kindergarten does not get cleaned by her everyday, because this is a so called "mini job" for her. Once each week someone else is cleaning there. This "other person" changes every so often, and they are never as reliable, or clean for that matter. And my mom has to pick up the slack. For example, by removing their smear marks on mirrors and toilets.
Maybe if you surround yourself with children all the time, you become one of them. He doesn't seem to respect adults either way. Making a living with an endless stream of children, without growing up and making progress, doesn't sound fun to me. For a person in his position, he also communicates very unclearly in his native language.
2021-10-15
My grandma, the mother of my mom died in May. She was the one visiting us twice in Germany, first in Bad Godesberg and later in Ratingen. My parents had a small rental apartment in Bad Godesberg, the place i was born. I already wrote about it. Back then, dad worked at a Chinese restaurant not far away, in walking distance. And grandma came from Hong Kong for half a year, each time. In Bad Godesberg, she had held me as a baby in her arms, but later i was too big, although i remember needing her help to clean myself, in Ratingen. Germany was the most remote place my grandma travelled to.
And mom, dad and i were the reason for her to go on this adventure, without being able to speak any German or English. Do you want to know why we came back here? Because i asked my parents to come back to Bad Godesberg. I had good memories. This makes sense, because i was still attending kindergarten, and not going to school, which was not fun. Grandma stayed at a place for old people in her last years. I got to visit her there a couple of times, and luckily, we got to properly eat dim sum together too. She was 97 years old. Thank you for giving birth to mom, and her many sisters, or i would not be here.
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