Fear is the mind-killer

"I must not fear. 
Fear is the mind-killer. 
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. 
I will face my fear. 
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. 
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain" 
-- Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear"

Lately I’m quite often confronted with fear. Not my own fears as well as the ones of friends and loved ones. People seem to fear good stuff because of bad stuff which happened to them. For example former relationships: They are forgetting all the good stuff because of all the bad stuff that happened. Instead of realizing that they own their feelings and are responsible for most of the shit they went through they blame the whole relationship business. This fear often leads to pushing away/dumping folks because they are coming too close or the relationship to them is becoming too intense. I’ve been pushed away for that exact reason for some times and lately got the lucky chance to talk about it with a good friend who has been dumping good guys for that reason for years. I guess I understand the mechanism quite well and that really helps to not holding a grudge for people running away from me. I now understand that it’s no use to put any expectations in people who are running away. I try to make myself understood to rule out any misunderstandings as good as possible and then let them run as far as they like. Surely I hope that they will come back eventually but I learned that chasing after them or putting any hopes in their return is just a waste of time and energy. I really like brave folks who admit and face their fears and work on them because that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m sick of running. It doesn’t matter if you’re running away from something or to some distant goal. Most of the time it’s just exhausting and brings you nowhere. So I changed my tactics: I stand my ground. That doesn’t mean that I’ll stay in Hannover but it surely means I won’t leave unfinished business or run away from awkward situations.

I forgot the mentioned quote quite some time ago and was quite amazed hearing it by coincidence today. In the last year and a half I had to face some of my biggest fears. There was no place to run to so I faced them. It seems I really changed. I like what remained. If that’s the new me, I’m fine with it.

Mercedes 310D vs 307D

Last weekend I got the chance to drive a Mercedes 307d campervan. It’s the same model as mine, but being ten years older it was one of the first versions build while mine is the last stage of evolution. They look the same from the outside, but boy, these are totally different animals. The design of 4cyl OM616 65hp 137Nm@2400RPM from the 307 dates back to the sixties and the engine was first deployed in the /8 model. It loud, noisy, rough and doesn’t produce any power. It’s a sturdy little fella though, it was revived in the 90s for the MB100 and is still being produced today by Force Motors in India for their license builds.

The OM602 is a 5cyl engine of the 310d has 95hp and 192 Nm@2400RPM. 30hp more isn’t that much but 55Nm is. Combined with a true five speed gearbox it makes a completely different car (normally you start off in second gear with these cars and use first gear only for steep hills and full load. Due to my gearbox/differential combination I have to start in first gear). The design is from the 80s and the famous direct injection version of the engine (OM 602 DE 29 LA) was used till 2000 in the Mercedes Sprinter and the G-Model.

Since there are no acceleration figures for the campervans, let’s compare the sedans with the same engines. The W123 240D takes 22 sek from 0-100km/h and weights 1395kg.  The W124 250D takes 16,5 sek and weights 1320kg. So almost the same weight but 5.5 sek faster. On top of that, the OM602 in the sedan has 400ccm less displacement than the van version (2497ccm vs. 2874ccm). So in real world experience I’d wager the 310 is almost twice as fast in acceleration than the 307. Keep that in mind when comparing raw hp figures. There is more to the magic of acceleration than just horsepower…

Adventure XBOX 360

Already owning a kinect for hacking purposes and wanting to play GTAV let me to the adventure of getting a XBOX 360. Buying it in sweden, registering it online in the UK and finally moving it to germany is not exactly a common case. After an account migration (which disturbingly is a “new” feature) to germany my xbox menu was a funny mixture between english and german, language- as contentwise. The only real problem was that it advertised only british apps (yeah, bbc and netflix) which wouldn’t work due to my german IP. And I couldn’t install any german apps due to the marketplace still thinking I’m in the UK. In short: Almost all Apps rendered useless and I was unable to use my watchever account.

Even magic support codes like “clean the cache for three times” and uninstall updates by pressing “LB RB X LB RB X” while highlighting the harddisk did nothing but making me remember some windows vodoo from back in the days and streetfighter special moves…

After an hour with the microsoft support chat they delegated my problem to the technical support because something with my account migration went wrong. Quite an educated guess, actually that was my best guess BEFORE I contacted the support. The adventure continues in approximatly three business days…

Good old Gießen

This weekend I paid a short visit to my old hometown Gießen. I made a short stopover in Göttingen and discovered that a friend lives in the same house where other friends have been living for some years. It’s a small town… Anybody remembers this doorbell?

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I haven’t been in Gießen for more than a year and it didn’t change too much. Most notably the “Hohe Warte” ( a former US nuclear launch site for the fulda gap and later patriot air defence missile site ) has been renaturalized. All remainders of former structures have been removed. I went there for a walk with a friend and was quite astonished.

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Archive Pic: Hohe Warte Summer 2010. Lots of rubble and ruins

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Almost the same shot taken a couple of days ago. Same area but a little bit more to the right.

I reconnected with some friends I haven’t seen for some time and it was awesome to discover that we still have quite some stuff in common. And I was amazed how much I changed since I saw them the last time. They were as well. I’m more open nowadays, I’ve got more self confidence and we had some very deep and personal conversations. I guess I’m heading in the right direction. Commitment to personal growth has never been easy but it’s totally worth it.