Last edit: 16.03.2005, 20.05
My full name is Dirk Blankenburg. I was born on the 25th of september, 1979 in Lübeck. Some time in the early 80's my parents moved to Schwarzenbek because the old place had gotten too small for them, my sister Sonja, and me. I'm told that before my parents' house was finished being built, we all lived at my grandmother's place which was just a few meters away ...
Anyway, I don't really remember all that much from that time, except for a huge hole where the house now stands ... d:

I went to kindergarden for a few days, but as it seems I didn't really like it all that much. So, some time later, at the age of 5, my parents sent me to some kind of music school, probably hoping that I was as talented as my sister was. I'm pretty sure it was there that I met Christian for the first time. We became friends, and some time later, went to school together ...

So, the first 4 years of our school career took place in the Compeschule in Schwarzenbek. One of our favourite teachers during that time was Frau Jerutka, who we're still in contact with now, and even visit occasionally. As far as I remember, that time was pretty much fun, but then again it's long ago so I might be wrong about that d; ...
I guess around the same time I somehow got introduced to sports. I don't actually remember how I got into that, but I did gymnastics kind of sports for quite a few years.
Other than that, I also learnt to play the guitar, but I stopped playing when I changed schools.

After the first 4 years at the Grundschule, I went on to the Gymnasium Schwarzenbek, where I had my first encounter with the english language. I still remember being quite crap at it too d;. The new school also meant not being in the same class as Christian any more, as the classes were devided by each pupil's choice of secondary foreign language. I had chosen to do French, while Christian had gone for Latin. As far as I remember it was around that time that I stopped enjoying school, as everything had become more time consuming, and very much less fun. I never had a lot of contact with the others in my class and I felt a lot like "those rejects in the corner" (InvaderZim). I started spending less time on sports, and instead went to a christian youth group more often, after I was introduced to them by my sister, who'd spent a lot of time there too.

I felt quite happy in there, because it was very much unlike school. People were friendly towards me, and lots of activities were organized which I took part in. Around that time I had my confirmation too.
Every summer a vacation was planned and a lot of people from this group came along. That was great fun too. If I remember correctly, the first time I came along we went on a one week sailing trip in Holland. Then the next year it was Sweden, then sailing again, then Norway, sailing, and Denmark. I met a lot of new friends on these trips, and during the group meetings on Mondays of course. I met Chrischi, a very close friend of mine, on the trip to Sweden if I remember correctly. Well, at least, that's what he's telling me. I'm not really sure, as I've met Nadine on that trip as well. She quickly became my girlfriend, and all my attention was with her at that time ... d;

I don't really remember when exactly it was, but in school-related news I went on an exchange to England. I guess suddenly being exposed to a foreign language triggered my interest in learning English. Now that I think of that exchange, I'm coming to the conclusion that the English are weird d; Driving on the wrong side of the road was really weird, as was having a water war (?) when it was still freaking cold outside.
As far as I can tell, that was the first time I travelled in an airplane too.

Around the same time my interest in computers came up. I think it was Carsten who was the first who had a computer around to play with. Some C-64 or something I guess. Then, Christian got himself an Amiga 500, and we spent countless hours playing some racing game, and The Great Gianna Sisters (sp?). In fact, we were so good at that game that I think we were both able to play through most of it with our eyes closed (the only exception being the two piranhas you had to jump over in the last level, because those were kinda randomized.) Another of my favourite games was Super Cars 2. It was so much fun earning money from winning races, and then equipping your car with more powerful engines, and weapons.
I got an Amiga 500 too, some time after Christian (I think). The only legal games I ever had for it, as far as I remember, were Test Drive 2 (hmmm, Porsche vs. Ferrari) and Lemmings 2 - The Tribes. d; ... But I didn't play games all the time. I also took a computer course in evening classes, and joined the Computer Science work group at school. That's where I was introduced to my first programming language, BASIC. That was fun, because the qBASIC we used at school was pretty much the same as the AmigaBASIC I had on my own computer, so I could play around with that a lot.

Some time later, my mother asked me to learn to dance. I don't really remember how she managed to get me to do that, but she did, so I went to dance classes. I didn't really enjoy it, but I did several courses anyway. I guess I'd found that it was a great way to meet girls, and I was single at the time ... d; I even offered to go to dance classes and dance "just for fun", because there were never enough boys for all the girls that wanted to learn dancing.
The meeting girls went great, and I ended up with The Most Beautiful Girl I had ever seen. I only noticed quite a while later that I absolutely couldn't get along with her, so I left her. That resulted in a few people asking me whether I'm insane or something, leaving such a wonderful girl etc ... That was kinda funny d;

Now then, back to the topic of computers: Around 9th grade or something, I could choose to take Computer Science as a subject, which for some weird reason allowed me to stop doing chemistry and biology, both of which I hated. There were only 4 people on that course, but it was fun anyway. It all seemed pretty easy to do and stuff. We learned to use PASCAL, which required a semi-colon at the end of each command. That felt weird, at that time, for some reason.
At home, I stopped being all happy with the Amiga, and got myself a kick-ass, but fucking expensive 486DX4, with 100Mhz and somewhere around 100MB disc space. I guess that was the first computer I opened and took a look inside.
Later, my mother brought a Pentium 1 - 75Mhz (480MB disc) home from work. It had been infected with a virus, and the PC "expert" they'd hired at her work place said that there was nothing one could do about it, and that purchasing a new one was required. So, I formatted the hdd and had myself and even better computer, all for free. This was also the first PC I took a closer look at, because I'd always told myself that, as it was considered broken when I got it, it wouldn't be too bad if I fucked it up. So I ended up overclocking that machine to 90Mhz, just to find out how to do that ... d:
Then, one day, my father suddenly entered my room with a box, some cables, and a letter from Telekom / T-Online. He told me that he'd won in a quiz, and that he'd gotten a modem and an internet connection. He handed me the box, the letter with the user name / pass, and left me to my destiny. Upto that time, I'd always said to myself that I don't actually need internet access, as I didn't know what I would be doing with it anyway. But now that it was available, I might just as well check it out. For some obscure reason, I came across newsgroups pretty fast. As you can see, I was addicted to C&C Red Alert at that time, because Christian had introduced me to C&C Tiberian Dawn some time before.
So, from that moment onwards, I was hooked up to the internet. It was quite bad at times, I remember producing phone bills of 300DM and more o:
Anyway, again a while later, I decided to buy a new PC at the local computer shop, Arcadeau. I got myself a Cyrix 266, with 233Mhz and 6GB IBM disc. I upgraded that with some additional RAM, and a 10GB disc later (I'm still using that particular PC, and the monitor I bought along with it, today!)
Then again later (don't really remember when), I bought a new PC: P3 - 900Mhz, 40GB disc, DVD drive, burner. I also started using a flatrate, so that I could spend more time online, without having to pay too much ...

In between all that upgrading and stuff, I finished school. I didn't do too bad in my opinion, considering that I never actually spend time learning stuff. Or doing homework. I had a few months of lazyness, then I had to go to the army ... ): I'm wondering today how things might have been different had I chosen to do the non-military alternative.
Army was a new and different expercience for me. All the time before I had mostly been surrounded by people from the Gymnasium or Realschule, and had taken a certain level of intelligence for granted. So it was quite difficult for me to suddenly have to get along with "stupid" people. I don't intend to be mean here, or anything. But it seriously had never occured to me that there were people out there, about my age, who had trouble forming coherent sentences, or writing down a few words without spelling errors. And it turned out that, of course, everything in the army was done in a way that those people could cope. There was a saying that you'd best leave your brains at the front gate when entering the barracks, and get them back when you leave. It's true really. Try not to think, just do what you're told to do, and you'll get along. Start to think, and you'll quickly get depressed and frustrated from the futility of it all.
That changed my view on life, and what I want to accomplish in life, quite a bit. When I finished school I was full of enthusiasm, I wanted to study Computer Science, earn a shitload of money, buy a Ferrari, live in a big house, etc. Then I spent ten months in the army, doing idiotic work and spending every minute (except for most weekends) with people you just had to get along with. It was then that I started seeing things differently. I found that the life I've lead so far (except for the army), was actually pretty nice. Just sitting in my room, surfing the net, or playing games, listening to music, meeting friends, going to the cinema, etc ...
I started to ask myself, do I really need the Ferrari, the big house, the money, to lead a happy life? And I came to the conclusion that the only requirement for me to be happy is not to be in the army and that was easy to accomplish (just wait 10 months, and you're out of it).
So, if you ever wonder why I don't show any enthusiasm about my uni career, this is why ...

Right. Back to happier events. I eventually got out of the army, with lowered expectations of life. I'd heard that my aunt was planning to go on a 4 week vacation to Australia, so I asked her if she'd mind if I came along. So that's how I got to Australia. It was awesome, it had been a long time since I had enjoyed myself so much. We visited friends and family there, and did trips around the country, and stuff. We were in Sydney, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, among other places, and we visited Uluru of course. The flight there and back sucked though. More than a day pretty much just sitting around, not a lot of space to move your legs, very dry air so that you had to drink lots ...
But I still want to go there again, some time ... (:

After we'd got back, University lay before me. And an appointment at Endless Pain, a tattoo place. My parents were very non-happy when I told them about it, but I got my tattoo anyway. Some time later, lectures started and me and my parents quickly noticed that it was a bitch getting from Schwarzenbek to Lübeck on time for the lectures. So while I got real busy studying, my parents looked around Lübeck trying to find an apartment I could move to. They found one some time later, I moved in, and here I am now.

The first semester of Computer Science went real well, which led one of the CS institutes to invite me to work for them. I'm still really happy about that, because now I can get jobs at university relatively easy. Most of the other courses since then haven't been quite as successful though, but I hope that I can manage to get me degree in the end.
After I'd moved here I decided to get myself an ADSL connection by the way. Not too expensive, and very fast. I love it ... d;

Last year there was another PC upgrade by the way. It wasn't me who wanted the upgrade though. My parents came to me whining about how crap their PC is (they'd used the P1 - 90Mhz upto that point). So they'd decided to get a new one, 1.8Ghz, 80GB disc. I started complaining to them that it can't be that they get a better PC than I have, and so I "offered" them my PC, if they buy me that new, 1.8Ghz one. I told them that they wouldn't actually use the capacity the new one would have and promised that they'd be perfectly happy with the 900Mhz one I had at the time.
So, we did that, and I ended up not paying for a brand-new machine. All I had to do of course was setting it up, and setting up the old one for my parents.
I'm writing this document on that machine d: ... The Cyrix machine is humming along next to it. I've installed Linux on that one, because I need it every now and then for CS stuff ...

Well ... Some time early this year, I decided to get my eye brow pierced at Kingstreet. That was another thing my parents were quite upset about. I think I only did it because I was in a very weird mood at that time, but I'm still happy with it today anyway ...

A year has passed since the last paragraph I think, and not too much has happened really. I've started working at the airport in Lübeck, renting out cars for Europcar. It's quite an interesting job really, but a few things can be quite annoying too. Anyway, you can read about those experiences in my journal, so I won't bother noting them down here ...

Well, so much about my life so far. I guess I've forgotten many things, but I'm sure you get a general idea. Well, if you bother to read all of it, anyway ... d;
Onto something more about me ...

Favourite ...
Colours: Black, blue, dark colours in general ...
Time of the day: Late afternoon / evening ...
Food: Pizza, McDonald's ...
Bands: (I've decided that a decent list of songs would be too long here) ... Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, Seatbelts, Yuki Kajiura, Ärzte, Farin Urlaub, Runrig, Joe Satriani, Machinae Supremacy ...
Albums: Pink Floyd - Pulse, Runrig - Stamping Ground, Runrig - Proterra, Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia, Yuki Kajiura - Fiction ...
Music DVDs: Die Ärzte - Die Band die sie Pferd nannten ...
Movies: Seven, Leon, Kill Bill 1, Fight Club, Grave of the Fireflies ...
PC games: Planescape: Torment, Jagged Alliance 2 ...
TV shows: Invader Zim, CSI ...
Anime: Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop, Noir, Trigun ...
Books: The Hitch Hiker's Guide, Timeline, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code ...
Authors: Douglas Adams, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, Ephraim Kishon, John Grisham ...
Comics: Dilbert, UserFriendly ...

Tags: me