Month: April 2019

Last Day Worked (LDW +1)

A year ago today was my last day at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. As part of the many reorganizations, HPE were offering very generous redundancy packages at that time and I decided to take them up on their offer and go back to University (FOM), to study Computer Science in Cologne.

I’m now at the end of the first year, and I’m absolutely loving it! It’s such an enormous privilege to be able to concentrate just on learning, given my age and the fact that I have two (almost grown-up) kids.

To stay on top of all the developments around cloud computing I also work part-time at a small Cloud Consultancy, supporting customers on their journey to cloud; by now I’ve become pretty experienced on all things related to Containers and Security too. Serverless will be next!

In the process I’ve also lost over 40lbs – can’t complain! There’re still a couple of pounds to go, though …

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(At FOM, looking out from our lecture hall)

Endgame (No spoilers)

Last night we went to the Avengers – Endgame opening night (actually an Infinity War / Endgame double feature).

Three hours of good fun, solid action and no boring parts!

This movie is indeed the grand conclusion of the Avengers saga, very much befitting its epic, world- and time-spanning scope, and opens a lot of roads ahead for Marvel to build on that foundation, and develop the surviving protagonists, old and new.

Highly recommended!

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(Poster on display at Metropolis, Cologne)

Max and Harvey

A week after Bars and Melody, Max and Harvey came for their first ever concert to Cologne, as part of the Coming Soon tour; support was Jenna Raine and I believe it was her first time in Cologne as well. I’m so glad to see so many talented artists coming to my home town!

The venue, Luxor, wasn’t as packed as it was the week before, but the concert was really enjoyable and I hope they’ll return soon

It’s the second video I created with Adobe Premiere – I might have a closer look at Adobe’s Creative Cloud. And a music subscription.

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(Max and Harvey stage, Luxor)

Bars & Melody

On their Choke Tour 2019, Bars & Melody had a concert in Cologne!

As always, it was great fun to see them perform; this time they had Iggy Kelly with them for support.

The club they played in (Luxor) is unfortunately not well lit, so the video did not turn out as good as I hoped it to be, but I’m still quite happy with it.

For the video I changed my editing tool, from Shotcut to Premiere Rush by Adobe – it’s not Open Source, but very comfortable; I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll be keeping it, or going back to Shotcut.

I’m still behind on my videos, I hope to catch up during spring break though.

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(Queue outside Luxor)

Sankt Jakob

A tad bit unplanned I found myself driving down to Austria, to Sankt Jakob im Derfeggental (East-Tyrol) – one of my sons had broken his collar bone while snowboarding and I needed to pick him up.

Our new (company) car, a Fiat 500 Twin Air, was surprisingly comfortable during the long drive, for both of us, and I’m quite happy with the choice I made; fuel consumption was also quite reasonable.

Having said this, not being a mountain person, driving Felbertauernstrasse in a hurry is not fun. It’s beautiful, though.

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(View from Hotel Olympia, Sankt Jakob)

microXchg 2019

At the beginning of last week I was able to attend a conference on micro services in Berlin, microXchg 2019.

The conference took place in Kalkscheune, an events venue in a former industrial building near Friedrichstadtpalast.

The talks were a mix of in-depth workshop, regular sessions and lightning talks, spread over three parallel tracks.

Of the many talks I want to mention one, “Introduce kids to STEAM and reduce the gender gap” by Laura Luiz, discussing the progress being made by Hackdays4Girls.

Many thanks to the organizers at innoQ Deutschland GmbH – I learned a lot and will definitely come back!

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(Kalkscheune, break area)

Barack Obama

On Thursday I had the great privilege to witness Barack Obama in an one-hour interview; the interview took place as part of the World Leadership Summit in Cologne’s biggest indoor arena, the LanXess Arena.

He spoke in great detail about our duty to protect our planet and save the environment for future generations, and outlined his vision for a sustainable future.

In my point of view, he’s still the best leader the free world ever had, and I really miss him! It was such an honor to hear him talk in person.

I do understand that he cannot become US president again, but, if we had such a thing, maybe he could become EU president, or UN president? Please? Pretty please?

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Company Car

As of today, in addition to our Twizy, we now also have a (company) car – a Fiat 500 with the 85hp Twin Air engine.

Unfortunately it’s not electric, but it’s quite small and we’ve selected a model with really low CO2 emissions.

Hopefully next time the e.GO Life will be available for ordering (and leasing)!

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