Loooooong time no blog… sorry for that. But what’s the use of blogging that I have nothing to blog, huh?! — Actually, I just want to drop another line here to indicate to you that I am still alive. Plagued by flu and cold, the usual suspects, but alive. Today I held my last presentation for the logistics course – probably the last presentation in Maastricht ever. Strange feeling… — Exiting, but also equally exhausting because incredibly stupid is the trouble we have in the house with one housemate I prefer to call “blind passenger”. On Monday, we had the bailiff in here. Actually, these people are really nice if they do not come for oneself. So I had a good chat with him about Mrs Debtfire, and he left her a letter. Not good, since Tom and I apparently are not the only ones she’s owing money. I am still curious if I will finally get it back. Since our in-house lawyer is not sure about the situation, we might need to outsource that part to check our chances… But since I am really not a fan of this kind of allotment-holder-like warfare, I find this whole story simply really sad. Especially, since I freed my mind on a piece of paper that actually made her cry, so I am the jerk again! I hate it when I consider feeling guilty about somebody else’s mess. But life is all about learning, right? It is always amazing how other people perceive reality and define words like responsibility, duties, rights, trust, understanding, and community. — Different story: Webnews. Kilian updated his design of his Skyzone with the rollout of version .5 – don’t miss that! I finished the monthly galleries in the photosection and started already with the rest, but I am not totally sure about the format. Besides, I am working on a design refresh aswell. The university was so nice to grant me access to PHP webspace again, so I will go on practicing and fooling around with that again. — Only a couple more days and Alice is coming home for Christmas holidays! I am really looking forward to that. During her stay, I promise, we will put up her picture galleries from Dublin as well. — I will be home for the weekend, since it was my mother’s birthday yesterday. I will also take a sneak into the almost finished appartment of Thomas and Kai to see whether all-male households work… — By the way, I wanted to drop a note on today’s terrorist attacks in Kenia: Should this constant and persitant tumbling of peace in the world increase over the next years, I have no problem breaking down my tents here and move to New Zealand, using my economic skills when I start growing sheep there. The good thing is, I can be sure Shorty will be my regular guest whenever he feels like snowboarding ;) — Stay tuna!

My valued visitors, life turns out to be extremely boring these days. I would not call it relaxed, since there is so much to do for university again, but I simply can’t manage to get my ass down on something productive. Horrible! I guess the only output I recently created are the 2 more galleries I added to the photo-section, and three more are about to come. So check ‘em out. — Apart from that, it seems that the christmas-season has really started and I did not fail to shop for the usual suspects: Marzipan, Lebkuchen, Pfeffern?sse and the like (I do not care about the English translations – should you be aware of them drop ‘em in the comments). Due to the weather, which is seldomly appealing, one has even less incentive to move outside, and instead rather hooking up oneself behind the computer, TV or whatever seems appropriate to enjoy what the christmas bakeries of the world have produced. If I do not watch out, I might get a belly ;). The next plausible reason not to move is the terrible pain in my back I caught while changing one of my car’s tyres. Sad enough, there was reason to do so: Once again, my car became the victim of a bored and envious kid of the neighborhood: Some mentally impaired ghetto-idiot put his knife in one tyre. Thanks a lot! I really begin to hate now, even feeling the slight effect of too many ego-shooters. I imagine myself out there with a minigun waiting for the next hair-gel-and-turned-basecap-idiot-on-a-bromfiets to appear, touching my car and receiving his well-earned load of rounds… Well, surely not the way to do it, but I can tell you shit like this really sucks! (I should watch my language…) — Enough of that crap, gotta go to university now. BTW, comments are always welcome!

I worked a little on my photo-section: ‘id’ and ’03-02′ are finished by now. Take a look if you like and tell me what you think. — Tomorrow, no today, will be dedicated to studying for the exams. I really don’t feel like it. But it is a simple choice: not to study or one week more of holidays in January…. — Take care!

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!

Wow, finally I take the time I believe to have and update my blog. In fact, this is also my preferred way of communication, since my throat feels really bad, resulting in cough and a voice that should not even be called that. — Tom is out and Nina is in. -This is so to say the short summary of last weekend. I have implemented a decent network in the house by now, based on a fantastic router from SMC (thanks to Clemens for the tip). Our ISP also seems having been busy at our connection problem, since I can download again for all the donkey is worth ;). — Regarding the week before I will take this opportunity to thank everybody for his/her condolences. Besides, I will drop a comment on funerals. This has been my first funeral for a close family member ever, and my 4th in total. It might be wrong to judge from such a small sample, but I definately hate funerals. That’s logical, you might say, but I mean the ceremony itself. Someone totally unaware and unknown to the person at stake holds a lecture on the life of the dead, trying to bring dignity into this cold (yes, cold in any sense) cemetary chapel. The emphasis, however, is on ‘trying’. A few songs, some handshakes with condolences, some tears, some flowers, some hollow thoughts to unexplained forces of the universe. Right after, morticians are to pick up the coffin, they do not even wear black, not to talk about a tie, just sweater and jeans. Horrible scenario. Must be that your attitude changes when you “work” with the dead. As the cemetary gardener put it in the mortuary: “I have had 4 of them already this week.” Nice, thanks for this information. This is all so sick! And yes, right, I did not speak the Our Father and sang none of these horrible funeral songs for I simply do not believe. At least not in this false institution called church. It’s as simple as that. — Elections in Germany: Well, my dearest wish came true, namely not to have Ede Stoiber as chancellor. The outcome is an old hat by now, so I will not elaborate on that. But it is incredibly interesting to visit the websites of the parties now after the elections. Especially Stoiber took his foot off the throttle – it’s even getting quiet around him. Maybe he is ashamed of leaning himself so far out of the window and not making it in the end. Poor Eddie, I will feel pity for you if I have time. — I just came back from the Applepark Hotel where MB Customer Promotions had organized a “teambuilding” evening with everything you can imagine: Silly games to earn your part of the (very nice and delicious) buffett, music and embarrasments on the dancefloor ;) But it was a cool evening though. Downloading the pictures I noticed that I am shortly about to take my 3000th picture with my S30. And that reminds me that I still owe you a picture-section… Damn. — On monday we have our final presentation for our strategy-course about low-cost airlines. Interesting to dig into these companies which are able to provide customers like poor students with incredible cheap flights. Yeah right, I just booked my flight to Dublin with Ryanair. Now that I have investigated this industry, I should have no doubts about these special kind of airlines. I am really looking forward to my trip, and so is Alice, who by the way would be happy to welcome you on her homepage frequently. Ireland seems to be a country being rather different from ours, so I am eager to broaden my horizon! — That’s it for today, over and out.

My valued site visitors! I am really sorry for not being able to report some amazingly interesting stories or exiting summer experiences again, but life is simply extremly boring these days! One could almost feel depressed sitting here in Maastricht in the airconditioned CAC building while the weather is rather indecisive or inconclusive on the outside. In the morning, it looks like it was fall already: If I can see the church on the Emmaplein faintly, it must be either the fog or my tired eyes. — Nevertheless, I enjoy reading Shorty’s latest news from Dubai, where he is really living grand, as he does not fail to pronounce and emphasize in every single mail he sends to his homestaying friends. I admit that I envy this great time and experience no one will ever be able to take away from him. If I had a gold-shitting donkey in my garden, be sure that I would contact the next travelling agency for a flight to Dubai! — What else? -I am still quite busy with my current webprojects, and I finally put the new website of our virtual reunion GPW Abi 97 online. The galleries are still missing, but at least this thing is online! Secondly, I launched the second beta for mein-burgsolms.de, which will go online soon. (Here ‘soon’ stands for a time period no longer than a month from now.) It is really amazing and incredibly interesting to see how much dialect material my grandmother has collected in the past 15 years. If you have any picture from the amount of text I have to put in typed format, you understand why this is taking so long. Nevertheless, I already worked on the meta-tags and search engine entries to give this site a good start when I finally launch it. — That’s it for today, I get back to work now, which means that I continue sitting here and staring into my 19″ Eizo waiting for the next patient to ask for council ;)

Soooorey for the dalay. I intended to write on a regular basis, but you all know how it is…. — Well, my last judgment about this year’s summer was not really correct, at least not for the last days. Here in Maastricht we witnessed two incredibly hot days after a nice weekend with fade-in temperatures. But we get the receipt for mournig about the heat right away: a thunderstorm invited himself for dinner. But: My chances for a night with some sleep increase with every cloud that darkens the sky over Maastricht! Last night I had a maximum of 4 hours – not counting the endless insomniac minutes of to-and-fro as a result of a room temperature of 30+ degrees, insects and mental rampage. But what does not kill us….you know?! — At the moment I am putting very limited resources and effort in this site, what you, my dear visitor might have noted already. But the thing is, that I am heavily developing photos.martinwetzel.com of which a first teaser can be found here. It is incredible what one can do with Java – I really need to get more practice with it. — Whether at work or at home, I am still researching internship offerings. I found one for Southafrika, where they explicitly warn you of crime and murder in Johannesburg. Additionally, they only recommend it to male students, since the chance of being raped is significantly lower than for women. I think I will check this out. No risk, no fun – no brain, no pain. Only the payment of 280? seems rather poor, but I have been told that 3000 Rand monthly DO make a proper living in the RSA. — Regarding internships: Shorty is doing fine in his shaikhdom, Eva is partying in Australia, Esther will leave to Curacao soon, Jan is working to finance California, Mathieu is managing in Berlin, and Alice has a couple of weeks left to prepare for Dublin. -I gotta get started with that internship-thing soon! — Enough for today – my soda is empty again, I need to drink! CU sOOn!

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!