Weihnachten war echt wunderbar! Nicht nur, da? mich mein iRiver, dieses winzige Wunderwerk der Technik, das Datenstick, mp3 Player und Radio in einem ist, total begeistert, wo immer ich das Teil mit hin nehme, nein, ich gehe auch mit ganz neuer Energie damit laufen. Irgendwie checkt mein K?rper dann wegen der Musik (meist was mit treibendem Beat; bevorzugt VNV Nation, Covenant oder Apoptygma) nicht, da? ich eigentlich schon wieder v?llig am Ende bin und unter normalen Umst?nden eine Gehpause machen w?rde. Hab ich mal irgendwo gelesen, da? das so ist. Nun denn, das hat sich Alice bei der Auswahl gerade diesen Geschenkes bestimmt auch so gedacht, um schneller die Fr?chte des Trainings ernten zu k?nnen. Frauen sind Schlitzohren! Aber liebenswerte.
Das andere Highlight liegt un?bersehbar und fett schwarz auf meinem Schreibtisch. Das, was sich da Microsoft mit dem Cordless Optical Desktop Elite rausgelassen hat, ist schon wirklich state of the art. Ich wei?, die einen m?gen Logitech, die anderen Microsoft. Ist vielleicht auch besser so, dann gibt es wenigstens kein Gerangel. Jedenfalls hat sich zum Gl?ck einiges getan, seit MS damals die erste Maus noch mit Stahlkugel (!!) in die L?den gestellt hat.
Neulich fiel mir ein Comic von annodazumal in die H?nde, in dem sich Goofy vom Pizzaservice so einen italienischen Fladen hat faxen lassen. Ja richtig, die Pizza kam aus dem Fax. Mitte der 80er glaubte man wohl noch an sowas. Heute sieht es anders aus, da desillusioniert einen sowas ja nur noch. Frage: Wenn es m?glich w?re, eine Pizza zu faxen, k?nnten einem dann Cronjobs jeden Tag Essen kochen?

Und nochwas sch?nes, diesmal von McAfee SpamKiller:

Ganz so w?rde ich das nicht unterschreiben wollen, nachdem ich nun schon seit August auf die VNV-Nation live-DVD warte (gut, da kann Amazon nix f?r, wenn die nicht rauskommt), und die feinen Herren mir gestern noch ne DVD storniert haben. Und das um 1 Uhr nachts! Nat?rlich war der Rest der Lieferung schon durch Amazons geniales Logistikzentrum, wie mir die Mail von 7:30 Uhr verriet, als ich entnervt beschlo?, alles zu stornieren…

As some of my regular visitors have probably noticed, my other/former domain martinwetzel.com was not available for at least a week. Reason was, that I switched to a new provider, and somewhere between me, my old provider and my new provider a very simple fax must have gotten lost. Since I heavily doubt that, I’d rather be so keen and assume another case of stupidity or mental challenge at least at one of the companies. Or -since we talk of German firms- a consequently unprofessional workflow. Those who have witnessed me live talking to service representatives or know my style of writing can imagine that those guys wished they had a different job during the past week.
Anyways, it’s fixed now. Nevertheless, if you visit martinwetzel.com, you will only find a ‚temporarily closed‘ banner. The reason why I did not start preparing the upcoming content is simply that until Monday I didn’t even know for sure whether my domain remains my property or will be deleted and given back to NIC. Moreover, I am currently restyling Alice’s pages and this requires a lot of time. And since time is to be regarded a scarce resource even for a student, I get tired doing 3 domains parallel pretty fast. Note that there are no changes whatsoever regarding email-adresses.
So, to sum up the whole thing:
– martinwetzel.com is back, but still awaiting transformation to my CV-page
- photos.martinwetzel.com has been replaced by photos.traumdieb.com (however, for the transition time you will be redirected)
- photos.traumdieb.com now also contains a photoblog and up-to-date galleries for every month (more to come in the future)
- alter/adjust your bookmarks, but not the email-adresses and please DO write once in a while!

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the last lines i will be writing from my desk in Maastricht for at least five months. My room is now completely empty, just the PC and a bag awaiting to be taken away as well. I cannot quite describe how I am feeling, now after five years in this city. But maybe the current weather serves as a good picture for your imagination: sun and heavy rainclouds.
Well well, now the day finally came that I am the one leaving for study abroad, or at least for good. During the weekend, I looked over a book about Bamberg, and I must say, at least the photos have created some appetite for something new. The thing is why I am absolutely zero enthusiastic about anything, be it staying here or leaving to Bamberg, is simply that I don’t want to study any more. I want to get finished, receive my diploma, go and queue at the Arbeitsamt while sending out 50 job applications a day, and then finally find a job. I am sick of books and scholars, students and lectures. But hey, it’s only one semester more of courses, and a thesis and then I am finally done!
If you like, come visit this site regularly, since I will be blogging form Bamberg as well. For now, I tell all the people I have not been able to visit again goodbye, more ‚auf Wiedersehen‘, since I’ll be back (if I am allowed to quote Arnold here). Take care!

yesterday, i returned home braindead, exhausted and tired from a 3-day logistics career seminar in duisburg i attended together with jan. it was organized by and therefore took place at the locale of the kcl. the whole event was totally for free (including free lunch *lol*) since it was sponsored by the european union and the ihk duisburg. during the first two days, we had workshops with trainers from myLog consult. the workshops were held according to the method of richard nelson bolles, known as the author of the world’s best selling career planning book „what color is your parachute“ (or the german version here). normally, you would feel a certain resistance against those ever-returning „chaka“ and „wow, i can do it“ career-motivation things, but not so with this workshop. remarkably, i was able to really drag value out of it. no value i could share with you here, it’s rather intrinsic, tacit value just for me. sounds stupid, i know. anyways, we were forced to think about ourselves, make notes and go through worksheets to get to know our talents, abilities, personality and ideal-job prerequisites better. now, isn’t that something? the number one reason for job dissatisfaction and frustration is that most people aren’t even aware of the simple fact that they are obviously doing the completely wrong thing! and should i forget everything else from these two days, i will at least try to keep this in mind… at the end of day two, we made a very cool roundtrip in the port of duisburg. what many people don’t know is that duisburg is in fact europe’s biggest inland port. therefore, we really enjoyed this experience on the ‚ms lehnkering‘, a former sightseeing ship, now used by the vtg lehnkering to carry nosy students around for free. after two hours of information overkill, we went to the k?ppersm?hle for dinner, which turned out to be another highlight of this seminar. needless to mention how quickly a 3-course buffet shrinks when a herd of starving students is involved. the day ended at 23:30 due to a stupid busdriver. on the last day, we jumped into mr. boss, tied mr. joop, slipped into the lloyd twins and went to see the 18 (!) companies at the fare. to sum it up: the economy is shit, therefore you gotta be top of the pops to get a job. besides that insight, we had nice talks with some of the companies about a thesis, and had our cv checked. all in all, also the last day turned out to be a quite positive experience. probably jan wouldn’t agree so much, for he got slapped in the face twice and i only once, but hey, this was only a first meeting-up with representatives of the industry we might wanna go into. besides, didn’t we learn in statistics that you cannot draw conclusions from a sample that is too small to be considered representative? — gestern bekam ich eine der komischsten emails, die sich je in mein postfach verirrt hatte:

sorry, bitte was geht? was laufen da drau?ern denn f?r leute frei rum? -also entweder ist das die abgefahrenste spam-aktion, die ich je erlebt habe, oder aber ich wei? nun endlich, warum wir in deutschland so viele arbeitslose haben: da sitzt diese arme judith k. aus t. nun den ganzen tag vor dem sozialhilfe-gesponsorten telefon und wartet auf den startschu? zum waffelbacken, und zwar nur, weil der umsch?ler, der beim arbeitsamt eine abm-stelle hat, zu bl?d ist, die email-adresse eines arbeitsplatz-schaffers (also eines arbeitgebers im w?rtlichen sinne) richtig aufzuschreiben! ist das bitter?

on february 12, robert c. byrd, u.s. senator for 45 years held an amazing speech which somehow only today could be found in a german newspaper. i really recommend reading through it, in either german or english. i am very impressed by mr byrds, for finally demonstrating that there are high-ranked politicians in america having the balls to speak up. it is so refreshing and relieving to follow his words:
[…] To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. […] Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11. […] This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace? […] In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years. […] Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word. […] I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is „in the highest moral traditions of our country“.
-robert c.byrds
however, should you be interested in the american bullshit-talk we hear everyday, don’t miss the „axis of weasels“ website, but don’t forget to puke!
stadskern in beweging – maastricht city in motionwell, when i walked the city last week, i noticed that they had already started turnig the vrijthof and the administration buildings at the maas down. next day, i grabbed my camera to make some pictures:

   

martin in motion?well, actually not too much. i cancelled my efforts for an internship at mercedes benz. that was on monday. after weeks of talks, emails, phonecalls, it unfortunately boiled down to a topic/department/job description i did not feel really comfortable with. and since i was faced with the alternatives of doing that for 5 months or not at all, i followed what my stomach was telling me. no hard feelings at all, i simply had to make a decision. i should add that i am probably of the kind of people who need to be enthusiastic about what they have to do. and, if this is the case, they can and will give 150%. so i am following my last courses at maastricht university ever. to my great exitement, my grade for international competitive analysis and strategy was revised after i visited the complaint hour. i received additional points and they found a severe error in their formula for the grades. so i got a 7 now and am happy. so, i need only one more course and i am through with my domestic curriculum – technically. wouldn’t there be finance… however, due to my change of plans, i will be able to give it a last try. should that fail, i will ask for ‚free graduate‘ and substitute finance with another 4th-year course and drop that burden. — thursday night, i got a call from roel. he asked me whether i could do him a favor and design a banner and buttons for a website he was developing. of course i did, but i couldn’t stick to the task of designing something really „simple“ and not spending too much time on it. well, the result can be seen here… — time to say goodbye volume 2934: shorty and mathieu are off for korea. south-korea. i am very exited to hear updates and see what they ‚picture‘ there. — that’s it for now, tomorrow another beautifully boring week will start, reminding us all that every minute of our lives is valuable and should therefore be treated accordingly. stay tuned….

Allright, you wanna know what kept me from sleeping last night? Kept me out of bed until 4? I worked on my photo-section all night until I reached the point where I could not simply turn off the computer and say, „hmm, I finish that tomorrow“. Noooo way, not so easy. Cruel though, you reach this point always then when you should really go to bed. But somehow you know, it’s only very few things you have to do and then you can even upload. Enough words, here is what the „Strohwitwer“ did: my photo-section. Applaus, applaus. Anyways, it’s only one gallery and not the „final-final layout“ since I would like to ask people to test the scripts and if it works on different platforms, I will soon finish it of. Promise. But, I wouldn’t say that I am unproud of it… — Work for university is done for this block. On monday, Christoph, Nils and I did one fine job of a benchmarking presentation about low-cost carriers, on Thursday I once more did a presentation on electronic payment systems, and on Monday we are required to show our self-running presentation with voice-narration about instant messaging to the audience. I am really looking forward to this session, since Julia and I laughed our guts out yesterday, when we were recording voice to the slideshow. Really cool – two thumbs up for Powerpoint. So, more and more, I develop sophisticated Powerpoint-Skills ;) — I will spend the weekend at my parent’s place, in order to let my eyes rest a little and to withstand temptation of being busy with the remaining galleries all day. Take care!

Hey people! I just viewed my logs and saw many 404’s there resulting from links that have not been updated or altered since my reboot. Due to the fact that I am currently rebuilding my picture-galleries, the old sites aren’t online anymore. Depending on how fast I can squeeze a fancy design idea out of my head, the interested visitor will soon find all creative and artistic visual output solely under photos.martinwetzel.com. — I just want to pronounce that I do not doubt the performance of our national team in the final, especially not Oliver Kahn’s. I disagree with yesterday’s Spiegel headlines accusing Kahn for bad performance leading to two goals against. Our guys did a good job in this championships! — So much for now, I have to leave to work on where the „Star“ glances. By the way, MercedesBenz is giving away free mail-accounts with 15MB space, including free SMS to everywhere, FAX, UMS, virutal drive and so on. So check it out at the MercedesBenz Portal. Sign up and everything is of course free!