Right after I went to the dealer to finally get my new Jeep with just 36 kilometers, I drove it to Vienna. As the first 500 kilometers are supposed as break-in, it took about 5,5 hours from Munich and arrival was just before midnight.
That was the fastest pickup of a new car for me, it felt like I went there and just drove away without further ado.
After years of thinking (actually I thought about a Wrangler even when buying the Mercedes years ago), finally moved a step up and got a new Jeep Wrangler JKU 2014 Polar Edition made for offroad. However, my goal is to use it for travelling around Europe.
As public transport is quite excellent around here, it’s not a daily drive.
The Macbook Pro got a harddisk upgrade: the old 750GB HDD was replaced by a new 1TB SSD by Samsung, the EVO 840 Series.
The replacement was done in less than 10 minutes as described by
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+17-Inch+Unibody+Hard+Drive+Replacement/3401/1.
However, afterwards I tried to put the data from the old (now external) harddisk to the new one with Apple’s Disk Utility (press command and R at boot time).
A popup with Error 22 showed up – no further description.
The issue was solved when creating a single partition Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) on the target drive. Then the copy process just took around 11 hours.
Now the machine is much faster as described in many online sources, a little bit lighter and you can only hear the rear fans if quite some work is done.
Worth it: yes!
It’s always easy if you know how it works – I wanted to switch between different windows of Firefox (not tabs) on OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4).
Easy way:
just press command and ` together – voilà, next window.
Thorough way:
go to System Preferences..., Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts.
There you find the options on how to navigate through the system once you selected Keyboard & Text Input on the left list view.
After quite some security checks I’m about to board the US Airways plane. Something tells me that it won’t be as comforting as the A380 to Dubai.
As always the ride from Nordfriedhof to the airport went flawless thanks to Lufthansa Airportbus.
Back to the plane – the A330 looks better than I thought! Enough leg space and a monitor in front of me – will I be able to utilitze advanced board entertainment?
After a more or less comfy flight (more because of space, less because of my neighbouring passengers) my conclusion is a good one. Two movies, a tiny bit of sleep and touchdown in Phili.
From Terminal A to C its not too far, the passport check and security screenings with the usual long lines of waiting people took most of the time. I threw my rucksack on a baggage thingy, still with unclosed wrap sack. So it went on its way to the plane without full protection. Also I was the first time of my life in a body scanner…urgh.
A little less space on the in-country flight, still quite enough.
KL
raining
Orchid Garden
Petronas Towers
Shopping
Iron Man 3
Grid9 Flashpacker hotel
Ipoh (bus to CH)
Cameron Highlands (5star bus, crazy fast)
Penang / Georgetown (8:30 ferry)
Langkawi (AirAsia to KL)
KL Terminal
Let’s start big: after my final work mail we’re going to board the huge Airbus A380 on the way to Malaysia.
The flight with the A380 was great. State of the art board entertainment including my favourite Battleship. Even in the economy class enough seat space for tall people. Sense for the detail concluded in a coherent environment.
In Dubai we had to move from Terminal A to C which was done by a minibus (only every 30mins).
The flight between Dubai and Kuala Lumpur in a Boeing 777 was not that luxurious and in the last hour a little baby right at my side tried to get some attention.
Just bought my first TSA lock:
The display of my new Kindle 4 just got broken one week before the next extensive trip.
I instantly contacted Amazon via the web interface, they automatically called me back via phone.
Basically the support agent asked me if it fell down or was in contact with water. Then he directly started the process of sending me one as a replacement.
Luckily I got the replacement one on time. Thanks for the good customer support Amazon.
2015-05-09 Short update:
2nd Kindle still works flawless, the Amazon Kindle Zip Sleeve protects it for two years now.
After visiting the huge Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig we went to Dresden. The Autobahn between Leipzig and Dreseden was not heavily used during the daytime.
For dinner we went to Suppenbar, a soup bar in the Neustadt, north of old city center. They offered several kinds of soups including vegetarian ones. I opted for a Bauernsuppe (peasant soup) which was quite delicious and spicy. The interior looked simple and modern, invited us to extensive talks by the indirect light and colored walls.
The next morning at another venue we had to wait for quite some time for breakfast and went to the MHM (Militärhistorisches Museum), the museum of military history. It is run by the Bundeswehr and was reopened 2011 with a new design by Daniel Liebeskind. It shows history of military starting in medieval time up until today with parts of the current military endeavours of the Bundeswehr, for instance in Afghanistan.
I recommend to attend the tour which roughly gives you an overview of the huge 10.000m² area. Afterwards we went through the different areas, in the end we were exhausted and a bit short of time as the museum closed.
The old city centre was really impressive and is completely restaurated. The huge buildings show the power of the saxony rulers from the past. Zwinger, Semperoper and Frauenkirche are just parts of that ensemble of old buildings.
Frauenkirche was not as expected on the inside its just painted concrete instead of real marble.
As a conclusion I am looking forward to come back and see more of this exciting area, but next time in the summer.