So I’m back in Deutschland. So weit so gut. I’ll have more to tell when I feel like it. Check this out while you are at it…

“We love Rammstein, because they make it so hard, so dark, so evil.”

Uh Huh-huh-huh. They make it hard.

I’m leaving any minute now for America. I will be there for 2 weeks over the holidays.

I found out recently from my friend Amy that an acquaintance from my Chicago days committed suicide in October. Carlos and I weren’t really close but I was upset when I found out. We haven’t seen each other in over four years. He was a talented tattoo artist and musician/DJ. He was fun to talk to about music. He always had some new record or band to tell me about. I bought my first real mixer from him.

It is sort of surreal to go to his website (www.cfus.info) and see his artwork as if he was still maintaining the server. It will probably stay like that until the provider doesn’t get paid and then they will shut it off and the pictures and content will be deleted and gone forever. Sad.

Another thing that upset me last week was the insane and brutal shooting death of Dimebag Darrell and 3 others in the Ohio nightclub. I was not a huge Pantera fan but I really admired Dimebag’s skill as a guitarist and his attitude towards his fans and towards his music.

RIP Carlos and Dimebag!

From The New York Times:

“Fischer also cultivated a good personal relationship with Colin Powell. When the American traveled to Berlin two months after the beginning of the Iraq war, Fischer spoiled him with Wiener Schnitzel and Flensburger Pils beer. The former general learned to love the brand’s old-fashioned, ceramic caps during his years of military service in Germany.

It’s been a year and half since Powell’s visit and since then Fischer has religiously brought along a few cases of Flensburger on each of his visits to the United States. ‘Shipment arrived,’ he likes to whisper to Powell during meetings, as if the two were part of some conspiracy.”

When they get together it may sound like this.

U.S. Expatriate Hipsters Plug Into the Buzz of Berlin :

“There are, of course, those annoying quintessential German moments: the icy stare for crossing the street when the little man is lighted red, and the ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ awaiting those who fail to separate dark glass from clear glass in front of bewildering rows of recycling bins. But most expats consider these amusing idiosyncrasies in a city full of verve.”

I find that if you stare at them with a raised eyebrow like The Rock and twitch your upper lip they leave you alone. That’s just me though. Your mileage may vary. If you do this while there are children around and you make them cry, you get extra points.

Because it’s good to have a song that you can turn up every now and then when you want to rage and blow off some steam.

Goofy’s Concern by The Butthole Surfers.

Fucking Hostile by Pantera.

Oh yeah. It is that time of year again. The Christmas Market in Lüneburg was in full swing this weekend. Walking down the street was a major challenge. I was reminded of the video from the Verve for Bittersweet Symphony where Richard Ashcroft is walking down the city sidewalk knocking and shoving people out of his way. Not that I would do something like that but if someone did, I could understand. I spent yesterday evening working on a little music and experimenting with CSS for Chillmost v2.0 which, because I decided to start again from scratch, won’t be ready till next year some time.

This coming weekend I am taking a PHP programming course. I can already work with PHP a little but I want to really learn it correctly. I have realized that when it comes to programming languages, I am not really motivated to learn it by myself. I find it more helpful to have it taught to me by a professional who knows what I should know.

In the last 3 years I have learned so much about computers, programming and the Internet. I had already known the basics and when I worked for my friend Kim I learned about hardware and networking. But in the last 3 years, as I began using OS X and the terminal, I have learned a lot about Unix-y things like permissions, root/user privileges, compiling source code and installing things, configuring Apache servers, perl, etc. Hmm. Maybe next year if I find space for yet another computer I will start messing around with Linux. I could install Yellow Dog on a partition but I don’t feel like messing around with my hard drive like that.

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For those that don’t know, Wikipedia is a free open source encyclopedia. That means entries can be added and edited by users just like you and me. Although there is some debate/controversy/misgivings over the accuracy of such a project, it is pretty good. Sometimes I might look something up and I will follow one link to the next and end up spending a good chunk of time there. It is pretty interesting. The again I used to read the World Book Encyclopedias cover to cover as a kid, so maybe it is just me. The point is I spent lots of time today reading up on Germany and German things: History, language, politics, culture, etc. Here are some links:

Germany

German Language

German History

German Politics

Soon after I got tired of German stuff so I look at more serious and interesting things like:

The Marx Brothers

Spacemen 3

Spiritualized

Psychedelic music

IIGS

So, it was a productive day.

I don’t have much to say. I’m busy with dealing with the onset of winter, the onslaught of the holidays, getting all my ducks in a row at work before I leave for the US in 2 weeks, and looking for new domain space and DSL provider. Oh and I have to get some Altersvorsorge before the end of the year.

I’m currently at 1&1 and I am pretty satisfied but I want to get a server with root access and the ability to do anything with it I want. The least expensive server with root like that at 1&1 starts at 69€/month which is whack. I think I’ll go with Evanzo’s virtual server package. Blah. As for DSL I’m not sure where to go. The prices are all squirrelly and I hate reading contracts and fine print in German. Anybody got a tip on some cheap and reliable DSL?

I’ve been sort of following what’s going on in the Ukraine for the past few weeks. It’s amazing to see “The People” rise up and tell the man to fuck off like that. Here are the blogs of some guys living in Kiev: Notes From Kiev and Foreign Notes. Pretty interesting.

Side observation: I saw a poster at McDonald’s here advertising the Wu-Tang Clan’s new Greatest Hits album. I think it was also on the sheets of paper that line the trays but I didn’t get a real good look. Would McDonald’s advertise something like that in America? Good old wholesome Micky D’s and the Wu? En Garde, I’ll let you try my Wu-Tang style!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a very rough mix from Chillmost Studios: Dein Weg

Still have to put the vocals in. Maybe we can do that this weekend. Enjoy.

I’ve been reading The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook. It has some good ideas and it discusses some approaches to mixing that I have never considered.

A few years a go when I lived in the WG, there was this kind of wierd guy, Pano (I may be misspelling that), living in the basement who plaved violin in the band for the local theater. You never really saw or heard much of him at all except when he would play his violin. Sometimes he was a complete asshole and would yell at me for no reason. And back then when my German was not that good, I didn’t know what he was going on about. I thought he was gonna flip out and stab me or something.

Once I was taking out the trash to the big dumpster in front of the house and as I had the lid to the dumpster open he laid into me about making sure I shut the lid properly and then he came over and shut the lid for me before I was done putting the trash in.

“Um , I’m not done yet. Can you please open the lid back up?”

“No!”

So I opened it again myself and bent over to pick up the trash and he closed the lid again before I could put in the garbage.

I then verbally tore Pano a new asshole in English. It felt good. I could express myself perfectly and vent some steam at the same time. The best part was that he didn’t understand (not perfectly anyway) and I didn’t really offend him. He just gave me a look like I was crazier than he was and walked off.

I’ve been thinking about that incident for the last few days. I wish I could take it back. Last week Pauno didn’t show up for work for a few days and nobody heard anything from him. He was discovered dead in his apartment in the basement. Cause of death was liver failure due to hepatitis. That’s what I heard anyway.

D’oh! Sorry about that Pano. I didn’t really mean it. I always enjoyed your violin playing. It was like a free concert in the next room.