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shenanigan87

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Seems like I haven't written anything here since September 2020! And I don't really know whether anyone reads these things. But I thought I'd give a short update about myself, and things going on at the moment.

Health

First and foremost, health: I had the misfortune of a herniated disc in my spine, which was pressing on the nerves in my lower back, causing a number of neurological issues and pain in my left leg. I had problems with my back the year before, but the disc only appeared to be bulging a little bit on MRI images, with some physical therapy and spinal injections helping me get rid of the back pains. Or maybe it was just time healing all wounds, I'm not sure.


Unfortunately, last March, I had to do some heavy lifting, and even though I tried to use only my legs for that, it was apparently too much for my back. The disc ruptured quite catastrophically, visible even to my untrained eyes on the MRI scan, definitely requiring surgery. Thankfully, the doctor I was referred to, Prof. Viola Bullmann of the St. Franziskus-Hospital in Cologne, is regarded by many as a renowned expert in the field of spinal surgery. I had to postpone the procedure by a week due to an important event at work (that I will come to below), so it was carried out on the 18th of March. Three large chunks of tissue material had to be removed, but once the actual disc became visible, it showed no sign of perforation or damage any more, so didn't have to be touched. I'm happy to report that the phantom pains in my leg were gone immediately, I no longer limped, and could walk normally again. The nerves were so badly compressed that some reflexes in that leg stopped working, so it was a great relief for things to return to normal. I was discharged after a 3 day hospital stay, and could immediately drive my car again, which was important for my irrational feeling of being independent. I'm not allowed to do any heavy lifting (duh) or sports for the time being, and am on sick leave until late April. However, I did start going back to work every now and then to check on things and to run some measurements, with the doctor's permission of course. And that brings us to the next big thing:

Job

The important event I mentioned regarding my work was an evaluation by the DFG, the German Research Foundation. Since completing my PhD in late 2018, my position was funded via a CRC, a Collaborative Research Centre, which I helped my group to become part of by participating in the initial evaluation back in that year. Such a CRC can be extended two times at max, and one funding period lasts for four years, so ours was due for review last March. Despite my phantom pains, I just had to attend, as we had been preparing for this day for the past few months. Thankfully, due to Covid, it was entirely online, so I could do it from my desk, without having to travel anywhere. And it went quite well, I was able to reply to all questions that the referees had, and a backup slide I added just the day before proved invaluable for some unexpected queries regarding potential future experiments. All in all, we got top marks for all of the projects involved, so hopes are high that our CRC will be selected for another funding period. Without it, my contract would end at the start of July, and that wouldn't be very nice.


However, being in academia means that you constantly have to formally beg for your continued employment. And if you keep up this hopping from project to project, you might end up being 50 and suddenly unemployed, with low chances of finding another job. Since this is something I definitely don't want to end up experiencing, but also don't fancy working as a number cruncher in some bank, it was always a bit unclear what my future path might be. I'd love to continue doing what I do now, but permanent positions at a university are rare as hen's teeth, unless you want to become a professor. And professors have to hold lectures, travel a lot, are constantly stressed, while also having to do HR without ever being trained for that (which might be the reason why many profs are bad bosses). And worst of all, you can't become a professor at the university where you are now, so you might receive an offer for professorship at some faraway university, and then have to pack up your life and move there. Which I obviously don't want to do.


But worst of all, a professor doesn't work in an actual lab (in fact, most students valiantly try to keep professors away from all lab equipment, lest they break something), and working with machines is what I enjoy the most. You would not believe the obsession with which I work on what appear to be meaningless endeavours behind the scenes, just to have some backup solution ready in case things go south.


As (mis)fortunte would have it, our technician, or rather, the magician who keeps all of the ancient machines in miraculous working order, is retiring towards the end of May. And since I've been in this group for probably a decade by now, already the caretaker of quite a few machines, it seemed obvious to use this opportunity to get a permanent position. It's not finalized or even decided yet, but work is being done to achieve that goal, and I'm hopeful that things will work out. It would be the first permanent position I'd have, and with me being in my mid-30s, that aptly shows the bane of working in academia.

Photos

As you no doubt noticed, my photographic output appears to be pretty much nonexistant these days, which isn't strictly true. I take photos every day, but they're not that interesting, and taken with my smartphone. It's not that I don't care about trains any more, but the modern stuff commonly seen these days is just uninteresting, and I often can't really be bothered to go places just to take photos. The pandemic also made sure that I refrained from traveling, and I didn't set foot on aircraft or trains for over two years now, which took away many chance encounters with interesting photographic targets.


I did start collecting old laptops and similar computer-related items from the late 90s and early 2000s, but I often have the feeling that I'm the only person who cares about them. Though I have to admit, the site algorithm really pushed my Windows 95 photo when I posted it, so who knows, maybe there are others out there who are interested in this stuff.


I did finally upgrade my smartphone (since my bf got himself a new one, letting me have his old one), so I now have a Galaxy Note 10, which at least has three lenses, allowing some choice of focal length, rather than being stuck at completely wide angles all the time. Let's see whether this will increase my photographic output in the long run. And being a stupid idiot who always falls for nostalgia, I will of course keep submitting older photos from when my photographic output was so high that I still have mountains of unpublished pictures.

Eschede

If you're a German, or a railfan with some knowledge of larger catastrophes, you probably know all about the tragic accident of Eschede in 1998, still representing the worst high-speed rail disaster, and also the worst rail-related disaster of the Federal Republic of Germany. I don't think I need to explain what you can also look up on Wikipedia, but past me did basically just that in this journal entry from 2009.


This accident is now close to 24 years in the past, but there was a short blip of information that only railfans may have taken note of: The one surviving passenger car of this train, 802 808-6, the very car that "caused" the entire accident by the fracture of one of its wheels, has been quietly scrapped in Nürnberg. And it was none other than the well-known scrap dealer Bender from my hometown of Leverkusen who was called in to dismember this remnant of history. After the accident, and once all court dealings were completed in 2005, this car was given to a THW (Federal Agency for Technical Relief) school as training object, stored on their premises for a few years. In 2007, DB gave the THW a different car to train on, and 802 808-6 was taken back, kept in Nürnberg as a spare parts donor, in some far corner out of sight, until last month, when Bender's mobile crew came in and reduced it to scrap metal.


Personally, I'd have put that thing in a museum to serve as warning to all engineers who design safety-critical items, but I don't think any museum would have any interest in it. I was also surprised that the surviving car of the Kaprun 2 disaster that I babbled about before also ended up being scrapped, rather than in some form of preservation. Though I don't know whether survivors or family members of those who died in such catastrophes would approve or disapprove of such things being preserved in some way. Maybe they do want them gone, I'm not sure.


Apart from the one passenger car that now no longer exists, the two power heads of the train are still in service, with the front one not having sustained any damage during the accident, while the rear one was used as spare parts donor for years, but ended up being rebuilt when two other power cars were lost due to fire and derailment damage.

Well, that's all from my side! I don't really know why I write such overly long things, but I guess I just enjoy writing, even if my writing isn't that good. And speaking of that, I did some more writing on the topic of British boarding schools that I might upload in the near future. A very niche topic, but the way the Brits treat children is a great way to understand all the ailments of their society, much like the way Russia mistreats its soldiers representing a surefire way to create an inferior army.

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I often use dA as a repository, in terms of using the search function to look up certain photos if I need one of a specific locomotive or train. But recently, I discovered that I can't find the majority of my own works via the search field, despite always tagging them with all the appropriate keywords. I was a little shocked to discover that my older works now don't have any tags at all!


More specifically, tags seem to have disappeared between August and September 2014. Deviations from before that time don't have any tags any more, while deviations submitted after that point in time still have all their tags intact.


Is this happening to others as well, or is this just a problem with my gallery? o.o

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Hello everyone,

it's been some time since my last journal entry, as life has been keeping me pretty busy, which you may have noticed by the low number of photos I put up. I just wanted to mention some news that I found quite interesting, and perhaps some of you will too, if you're interested in aircraft. I submitted this photo years ago, using it as an excuse for some history babble that you can still read in the description, if you're so inclined.

To cut a long story short, the "Landshut", a Lufthansa 737-230C, was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in 1977 at the height of the German Autumn in order to force the German government to release members of the Red Army Faction from prison. They were a violent far-left militant group that was responsible for a number of assassinations, abductions, bomb and arson attacks. The airliner, en route from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, was taken over by four hijackers and flown to Rome, Larnaca, Bahrain, Dubai, Aden and finally Mogadishu. The passengers had to endure the constant terror from the crazed leader of the hijackers, a forced landing on a sand strip due to the runway in Aden being purposefully blocked by vehicles, as well as sitting in the blazing desert heat with no air conditioning when fuel ran out while on the ground. The pilot, Jürgen Schumann, was shot by one of the hijackers in Aden, leaving the co-pilot Jürgen Vietor to fly the plane to Mogadishu alone. It was there that the (at that point completely unkown) GSG 9, an elite tactical unit formed after the Munich massacre, stormed the plane, freeing all hostages and killing three of the four terrorists within minutes. After hearing about this on the radio, a number of imprisoned RAF members commited suicide. It was a turning point in the German Autumn, showing that the government was willing and able to fight back, not bowing to terrorist demands. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt personally gave the order for the storming, ready to take responsibility for any deaths that may have occurred, his written resignation at hand, which was destroyed after the successful freeing of all hostages.

The aircraft in question received only minor damage and returned to regular service with Lufthansa. In the mid-80s, it was sold, converted to a freighter, going through six owners, ending up with TAF Linhas Aéreas. In 2008, a severe defect during takeoff sealed her fate, ending up pushed to a distant corner of Fortaleza International Airport with other abandoned airframes of defunct airlines.

Back when I first became interested in this topic, I lamented that this aircraft, such a symbol for a turning point in German history, is rotting away somewhere in Brazil. I always thought that it should be put up as a monument to those who lost their lives in the German Autumn, and those whose heroism and uncompromising stance lead to a victory over the RAF's terror. Now though, this is exactly what happened. Thanks to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the aircraft was bought for its scrap value and will be dismantled for shipping to Germany. There, a team from Lufthansa will restore her before she'll be displayed at the Dornier-Museum in Friedrichshafen. To my mind, that's a happy ending to this 737's career.

:)
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President Trump

5 min read
As you may have noticed (if you've known me for a while), I rarely get into politics. It's a nasty business, and can quickly destroy friendships that have lasted for years. However, I can't really contain my shock at the results of the US election. You might argue that I'm neither a US citizen, nor do I spend a significant amount of time there to be directly influenced by any new policies. However, the US has unparalleled influence over the rest of the world, for better or worse. And there are two problems I have with Donald Trump being elected president. One being that he seems completely unfit for the job, and I'm not talking about mere political correctness, which in itself is a debatable topic. I'm talking about the things he said being outrageous, and the things he said he'd do once elected being even more outrageous. If a politician anywhere in the civilized world would utter any of his statements, he'd be forced to resign by just about everyone around him. I'm no fan of Clinton, but if I had the choice of stubbing my toe or falling down a flight of stairs, I would seriously consider kicking the next wall. But Trump still persevered, to the shock of the rest of the globe, except for the gleeful dictators of Eastern Europe like Erdogan, Putin and Orbán.

And that brings me to my second point: Right wing nationalist parties everywhere rejoiced upon hearing of this victory, a victory of aggression and trash-talk over reason and sanity. Many people quickly began calling Trump supporters racists and sexists, homophobes and whatnot. I'm sure that not all people who voted for him are. But the surge of racism, xenophobia and fearmongering has skyrocketed, just as it did after Brexit. The stupid and simple minded feel that they have won, that they can go further, that they can go up to people who don't appear to be caucasian and tell them that they'll now finally be deported. The word deported alone rings alarm bells if you're German, bringing back the memory of what happened here during the reign of terror.

I fear that while the majority of the population is weary of politics, with no really likeable candidates from large, old parties, it will inevitably lead to the rise of extremists, because those always cast their ballot. I sincerely hope that this will not happen. Here in Germany, the AfD, the "Alternative for Germany", is gaining unprecedented momentum. A party that, like Trump, is not part of the "establishment" or "elite", usually making headlines through fearmongering against refugees, with one party member thinking aloud that if refugees were to refuse to be stopped at the border, it would be the rightful thing to shoot them. She later backpedaled, saying that children, perhaps, should be spared, but not their mothers, those could still be shot. And this is just one example. When the car of one high ranking party member was torched, she publically asked why there was no widespread condemnation of such a criminal act. But nobody in her party ever spoke up when dozens of refugee accommodations were torched in the past months here in Germany, when people actively interfered with firefighters who tried to put out the blaze.

This is the kind of thing we're dealing with. Thanks to extremists who propose simple "solutions", like building a wall, deporting all Muslims, "solutions" we know will never work to stop the global problem of refugees, wars, illegal immigrants, or whatever else people feel like threatens their cushy lives. As I seriously don't think many Trump voters live in war-torn places or have to fear for their lives every day. But people with simple minds buy it. They want simple solutions to complex problems, and that seems to be were their horizon ends. They don't seem to have any fear about the current shift of power towards nationalism, towards a future where the rights of women, gays, immigrants, those who are not the majority, are in danger of being taken away again. Everything that was slowly built up seems to be in danger of a quick and merciless teardown by those who get angry about women getting abortions, gays getting married, and other things that don't have any effect on their own lives, while not having any problem whatsoever to disenfranchise others, make their lives worse, impose their will on them. They don't seem to understand that democracy doesn't meant that anything that the majority says is okay. Slavery, segregation, relationships between consenting adults being illegal, I'm sure there were majorities for all of that at one point. That doesn't make wrong right.

I sincerely hope that we won't drift back towards the dark ages, and that people will stop sitting at home when it's election day. Personally, I'd be in favor of compulsory voting. I just can't really bear to watch how perhaps a quarter of the population decides what the other three quarters also have to endure, because half the population refuses to make use of the right that others have died for. I know, we all heard that one a thousand times. But it's not exactly hardship or rocket science to make an informed choice once every few years. It really isn't.

So no matter where you live, if you have the possibility to cast a vote, by all means, do it.

And don't vote for extremist shitheads, but that's just my personal opinion.
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Featured

Health, Job, Photos, and Eschede by shenanigan87, journal

The Landshut returns to Germany by shenanigan87, journal

President Trump by shenanigan87, journal

My feelings regarding the US election by shenanigan87, journal

Commonwealth Railways NSU class by shenanigan87, journal