Games are bad for Debian. Especially time-killers like wesnoth. They make me very unproductive, even though I'm not playing any of the higher difficulties, I cannot resist the urge to play through all campaigns (with saveloading, i.e. cheating)... If the release managers agree that this is a sufficient reason, I will remove the "enigma" package from Debian (which was recently mentioned in the earthlink newsletter, driving many new people to play it - and create new levels).

Yay, OpenSource games rock!

After having found that Google Maps finally has some high-res satellite images for some small parts of germany (including my home), I figured that the images are probably from around september 2004. Bingo:

Oktoberfest tents being set up

Too bad they didn't take shots when Oktoberfest is on - there would be thousands of people on the streets, and even more hidden in the tents.

Bad luck day.

We were in Yosemite, which is said to be really beautiful this year: their web page says that they have almost twice as much snow up there than usual, and about two weeks ago they actually had to close most due to floodings. There is still water flowing everywhere in the woods, and one road is lined with sandbags to prevent water from flooding it. The waterfalls are great, and when I have more time online (I don't know when I get to upload this post) I might also provide some nice pictures.

One of the nices waterfalls, bridesomething (don't have a map ready) was fun: The way up to it was already covered with a few mm of water flowing down. Every now an then, wind would blow over a shower of rain from the waterfall. A bit further up, there was a part like 5 cm deep flooded, so I removed my shoes and went up there (like a dozen others). The flooding part was filled by a cm of water rushing down the sloped path. There I dropped my camera. It was attached to my belt in a FujiFilm bag designed for this camera. But it's a bad construction: the belt clipping part is only fastened by a velco strip, and its way to easy to rip of accidentially. I immedeately jumped after my camera (and at least the bag is of some nylon material, it didn't seem too wet either). Then I took a few seconds of video with my camera, some more pictures, too. Reviewed some pictures... but when we reached our RV, it complained about low power from the batteries. :-( Even from some that worked fine in a different camera (which uses more power). With some it would just not take pictures (but flash the out-of-battery warning and power down), with some not turn on at all.

I thought that my new camera was already dead, and was quite unhappy... but I still had hope; I had removed the batteries and put it to a warm, dry place in our RV. About one hour later I tried and since then I can use the camera fine again.

Rain proabably is one of the most common deaths of digital cameras and phones today, I guess... But the manufacturers should be able to do something about that, instead of just trying to squeeze more megapixels in there...

On the way back, a couple of hours later, bad luck struck again: I knew that sooner or later... friggin' wide RVs... damn!

Well, after all its not that bad. In Yosemite, soon after H120 and H140 meet, there were roadworks. They setup a traffic light during the day, and in the evening, when we were about to leave Yosemite, the traffic light was on. So we were waiting in line with a couple of cars in front of us and dozens behind us. While we passed the lights they turned yellow, still three more cars took the chance (the line outwards was very long, and the interval very short).

When we passed the cars waiting for the other direction, the fourth car or so was quite far out... I hit its mirrors with mine. The mirrors of the RV stick out quite a bit. I couldn't immideately stop, since there were three more cars quite fast behind me, and - like almost everywhere in the mountains - no stopping lane or so. So I had my father hop out, then continued to the next parking lot, where he soon arrived with the other driver.

The formalities, driving to the hotel of the other driver to get his insurance data, calling the rental service (I was on hold for a couple of minutes; they apparently don't have a separate number for these cases, so it kept saying like "most of the questions are answered in the drivers manual" - any yes, this was explicitely the phone number to call to report an accident. Then it suggested to leave a voice message for a call back, or stay in line in case of an emergency. One more minute and I actually got someone to talk to, and he was competent.) etc. - luckily, we got a site on the RV park just a few miles down the (only) road, where I'm blogging right now.

And guess what: no WiFi and no cell phone coverage here. ;-) So I'm offline-blogging, and hope I'll be able to upload sometime soon.

I don't know about the costs yet. I expect that we basically have to pay both our mirror damage (the lower, wide-angle part of the mirror is gone, but it looks like this is a snap-on plastic frame with the mirror) and probably the whole mirror of the 2005er Dodge car of the guy I hit. While I say that it definitely is partly his fault too, sticking out that far, I expect that the rule is "we were moving, he was not, so we have to pay". The insurance we have from Cruise America only covers high costs I think - without knowing any details (I didn't make the contract) I expect that we have to pay up to like $500 or $1000 or something.

Damn.

Well, at least my camera is still working. But I would be happier to wake up and just find the whole day a bad dream.