Jan-Piet Mens

A good friend took ill three weeks ago: he suffered from lack of air and pains in the chest. He was immediately hospitalized, and a lung cancer diagnosis was confirmed on December 27th. I made a date to go and see him today. Ten minutes before we arrived at the hospital in Koeln Merheim, we were informed that he had passed away during the night.

I have known Georg for twenty six years. He was two years younger than I am.

Bonne route, mon ami!

Two words I can't bear hearing any more:

• Awesome. Only used by Americans. They use it when things don't quite totally suck. Then it is awesome.
• Community. Wikipedia defines the word as a social group of organisms. The big deal seems to be to form a community for project abc, join and then forget about it. Quite awesome.

Certain to pop up soon: awesome community.

My candidates for top notch utilities in 2007:

• Exim and OpenLDAP remain high on the list of enterprise utilities; they are both unbeatable.


• VMware continues to be a daily lifesaver.


• I've probably spent more time with a text editor in the last six months than in the last several years. All the more reason to appreciate vi.


• 2007 marks the year in which I got to know LaTeX, the document preparation system. An incredible tool.


• RedHat has the best Linux server distribution, and CentOS make it available free of charge.

One thing I experienced several times this year is what lousy tools Windows has on board; I commiserate with all who have to fight with or against Windows, and I hope 2008 brings you a real operating system.

Diese Firma erhält von mir den ersten Preis für die dämlichste Werbung des Jahres:

Wann immer ich Fernsehe oder Radio höre muss ich mir anhöhren, dass es "aber nur bis Montag" 20% auf alles gibt (ausser Tiernahrung). Glauben die etwa, dass mein Erinerrungsvermögen nur eine Woche hält?

Photo: Hataiiia Hataa

In 2007, this site served over 138,000 page views to 66,800 unique visitors. Most of you (55.93%) used Firefox on Windows (79.66% followed by 10.94% Linux), and you came from the US, Germany, UK and France in descending order of frequency.

Thank you for being with me.

Father Christmas seems to expect me to be even more punctual than I usually am. This radio-controlled Junghans Mega 1000 was under the tree.

Methinks it suits me well.