tobias.kochs-online.net

Summer is just around the corner. At least it feels like that as soon as the rain stops falling these days. Fittingly the application period for Google’s Summer of Code 2009 started two days ago and so I thought, I could announce one myself. Unfortunately I haven’t got a whole summer of spare time. Hence I’m calling for applications for the Summer Weekend of Code 2009!

I chose the long weekend at Corpus Christi, which is 11th to 14th of June this year. In case you don’t have anything better to do and a software or hardware project in your mind you always wanted to realize (or at least start to), drop me a line. Of course I’d love to see an appetizer in the comments.

Suggestions for a supporting programme are welcome as well.

Accompanied by Adrian, his girlfriend Nici and my father, i drove to Mülheim an der Ruhr today and finally picked up my car. So three long weeks of waiting have come to an end now. As a reward everything – except for being a bit late – worked out fine: The car has been ready for pick-up, streets were dry, even the sun took a peek through the clouds every once in a while and the transfer came off without difficulty.

And because the gagging order doesn’t apply any more now, I’m gonna end the guessing game and disclose the secret. It’s a 1979 AMC Pacer D/L:

“Party on, Wayne!“

That I would buy a small car one day, noone might have expected – me included until three weeks ago! But when I stood in front of the car back then, it was plain sailing. Good condition, low quantity still existing (even in the US, I’ve read), geek factor and fancy design were a clear basis for decision-making.

And now some bare figures:

Adrian already agreed with Herr Renz, but I’d like to use the opportunity to express my resentment about the current political discussion here in Germany, which is at the bottom of the Unwort “Abwrackprämie“. Not only Herr Renz is right, but also Knut Simon, who is dealing with this issue over at Carsablanca.

Because I have to trade casual nekkidness against shirt and tie soon, I was looking for a low priced cleaning service here in Paderborn today. Since results are applicable and so maybe of interest to others, I made a short list of charges for shirts and other possible dis-/advantages of these services:

Grünewald GmbH: 1.80 €; large parking lot at no charge; Marktkauf right next to it; closes at 20:00
Die Textilpflege: 1.85 €; kind personal; in exceptional cases cleaning over night; chargeable parking at the underground parking lot Königsplatz
Textilreinigung W. Meier: 1.85 €; pickup and delivery service (5 € inside of Paderborn); closes at 18:30
Ruhe Textilreinigung GmbH: 1.85 €; noone reachable by phone at 19:45 o’clock; chargeable parking at the car park Liborigalerie

To my disappointment none of the companies offers a flatrate. Usually the shirts are ready for pickup after two days everywhere. Except for Die Textilpflege all the imployees I talked to were so impolite, it caught my eye – and I do consider myself as being quite tolerant toward a lack of service.

Update: On my way home from work I stopped at Waschsalon Karin (somtimes called Waschsalon Isik u. Kelinc as well) in Sennelager today. And guess what – they elude the dictates of the textile care cartel here. 1.60 € per shirt for dry cleaning, 2.10 € for washing, ironing and locker-ready. In addition they do have a real nice employee and I cannot help feeling you could bargain for a package deal or a flatrate – maybe that’s because of the owner’s origin…

When I just came home, I had to discover my new neighbor’s dog took a dump right in front of my apartment’s door. As if that wasn’t enough, the dog also whizzed below the flower box and had a fight with my watering can. Needless to say that the owner obviously doesn’t even think about taking care of the mess.

Welcome to my new blog!

After being silent since last October, I think it’s time to start blogging again. I’m taking this time gap as an opportunity to start over, which suits my life as well because I finished my diploma thesis in the meantime and so I’m not a student any longer, but in search for a job.

Creating this blog I’m putting a long planned project into pratice. The blog I used until the end of the last year was based on a system that was developed and implemented by myself. Now I’m using WordPress as a weblog publishing system. This is basically because of all the development and maintenance efforts such a system requires, if you’re trying to keep up on all fronts. The old blog lacked any search engine optimization (SEO) and to implement the multilingual support I always wanted to have, I would have had to rewrite most of the code anyway. Because all my attempts to attract some co-authors have failed, I was the only one writing for the blog and the decision to start over wasn’t too hard. So I pulled myself together after I handed in my diploma thesis and installed a bunch of blogs for the family domain I ordered back in June last year.

But now: Have some fun with it!