I’m once again in a train in Germany on my way home. While the trains I personally took didn’t have any relevant delay (< 5mins), the high speed train system globally continues to be a total mess (nearly every ICE is delayed).

Otherwise, it was an enjoyable trip!

I live in an area that’s considered “sparse suburban”, or as I like to call it – “the sticks”. So imagine my surprise when a company started stringing fiber on the utility poles this past December. A few months later, and I got an email yesterday saying “ok, it’s available now”. I figured there’d be a bit of a wait to schedule the installation because everyone would be signing up for the new service, but nope… today was available. The tech just left and now I have gigabit internet.

I put some PVC conduit in the garage yesterday to make the installation nicer and the tech was very nice about helping me fish the cable through. I’m quite pleased with the result.

They have up to 5 gig available, but I don’t have anything that could even use that. My router has a 2.5gig port, and I could buy an SFP+ module that goes to 10gig, but at this point I don’t see the need. I never thought I’d say this, but 1gig is fast enough. Even my “old” 400 mbps was fast enough, but it was very slow on the upload, and I like keeping everything backed up so that would take days sometimes.

Anyway, yay fast internet!

So I turned 30 on March 1st, 2024. Still hard to believe. 30 damn years on this planet… Feels like just a while ago when I used to get up on Saturday just to watch cartoons, later graduated from school, took a few sidesteps in my path and now? Boom, thirty.

I was actually anxious about turning 30, believe it or not. All those expectations that society has about someone in their 30s is weighing down on me a bit. I always hoped to live a successful and great life by now. But well… It’s never too late to change your ways once you realise you’ve been following a wrong path. My SOTD post goes a bit more in depth about this, but I digress.

My internship is fucking brutal to say the least - me and my classmate hoped for relaxed late shifts by Tuesday, but the first one was already hard and it only became worse. By now, half of the station I work at is sick with Influenza A. So I have to wear a lot of PPE on top of the already hard job at a neurological rehabilitation station. Quite a few colleagues there are sick too. For some reason, I still push through. I want to get through this. I survived working in pandemic conditions, so I know I can do this.

On another note, some young folks believe that every bit of fun ends when you’re turning 30 and that you’ll need to be super serious by then. But well, let me disappoint you: I still wear my skull shirts and jewelry, I still crack stupid and annoying jokes and laugh about weird and random stuff, I still don’t listen to freeform jazz or “Volksmusik” and I still don’t wear fancy suits if I don’t have to. If I could tell my 20 year old self something, it’d be: Life is what you make of it - follow your own path, don’t be afraid to fail, don’t be afraid to turn a complete 180° and develop in another direction. Don’t give a damn what others say behind your back about you, because it only matters that you are comfortable with yourself and the way you do things. Cherish those who really support you and be there for them as they will return the favour when you’re in need of help and support. That’s it.

I’m ready for my thirties and I hope it’ll be one of the best times of my life when I reflect on it someday.