An open letter

[Moritz Heiber]

Hello dear friends,

I decided to write this letter to inform all my closer friends (Yes,
if you have recieved this email you may call yourself one my closer
friends ;-) about the changes that occured in my life throughout the
last few weeks.

First of all, if you don't want to know the details just skip the
long part in between and get right on the last paragraph. Nobody
necessarily needs to read either my bitching or whining.

So .. whats this fuzz all about? Well, let me summerize the changes
that bumped my road of life lately:

1) My dad is getting married again soon (He's moving in with his new
girlfriend during the next two month I suppose). This of course
means he'll have to get divorced first. And that means he won't be
able to support me that much (or literally not at all) from next
January onwards. He told me about that a week ago and I'm still
ashtonished since it wasn't only him who urged me to move out (Since
he didn't want to move again for having more space for my brother
who was moving in with him) but he also promised to pay my rent for
as long as I needed it to get payed. Well, to me it seems that he
wasn't serious about both of those things neither the 'I'll never
move again' part nor the 'I'll pay your rent' one.
Don't get me wrong. I'm really glad that he finally found his love
and is enjoying his time but ... yet again he proves to be a
miserable father by just throwing away the responsability he took
over years ago.
However, he's been doing that ever since and so I'm sort of not
_that_ surprised at all .. I just thought we'd might be able to work
it out this time. But .. Quote: "I'm sorry Kiddo but you
thought wrong".

2) I quit my studies. For those of you who didn't know about it:
I've been studying computer science since last october but never
really got into it. During the past weeks I've decided to quit them.
Its just wrong if you keep on doing something without the passion
and the eagerness it deserves no matter what it is. The reason is
simple err complex err simple .. well: I just ain't a computer
scientist. I _am_ quite skilled towards computer use and of course
the use of Linux .. but I just ain't good or dedicated enough to be
a scientist (If somebody is able to point me to a subject like
'Linux science' .. go for it! ;-). I don't know what forced me to
join the smartass crew (Speaking for my university  .. I've only met
about 3 - 4 people ever whom you may consider to be average human
beings .. the other ones happened to be lousy idiotic smartasses)
but fortunately I'm out of it in time (wasted only 8 month).
Now, I know quite of you to actually be computer scientists .. but
all of you sure are _no_ smartasses. Just to make that clear ;-)

3) The company I'm working with at the moment cancelled my contract
for the summer. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't a
contract for 4 month making me about 2500 bucks (Thats _a lot_ of
money for me .. especially considering my situation in the near
future). Moreover, simply the way it was cancelled offended me as well
for I am a very direct and honest person and the company I'm working
with has just proven to discard those rather noble (IMHO) attitudes
by mumbling around the facts without telling me the real reasons for
liquidating the contract. I'm still baring with them but just because
I've got to know some really cool people among them a lot of guys
whom I share a lot of interests with. This is going to be a burden
I'll be willing to take for this summer .. lets see what is going to
happen about the next one.


All right .. now that you all know that I'm a skilled whiner (Notice:
Whiner .. not Wiener ;^) here comes the conclusion:
I'm going to have to decrease the time I'm spending on Lunar and its
developement for a few month to focus on my ongoing life until it
has become as somewhat stable as it used to be when I started as a
developer for Lunar. Neither does this mean that I'm going to vanish
from this earth nor that I'll be gone for years without notice. Of
course I'll be around in #lunar from time to time or answer some
emails .. I just won't be able to do much work or hardly anything
concerning much more brain usage than usual (right .. no jokes here).
The same applies for Xfce .. just that I have rather been more like
a nagger than a dedicated developer over the past and that the Xfce
developers might actually be glad about that I'm leaving for a while ;-)

So .. thats it. I'm going to leave for Spain (They got me some lousy
paid backup job down there) next Friday and at least for 5 weeks ..
and if I'm going to do well (And I definitely will) I might even get
back the job they offered me earlier. Who knows. The good side of
this is that I might get the chance to meet Jaime during my stay in
Spain .. that'ld be awesome :-)

But the main idea for writing this letter still is different from
what I've said before:
All you guys have become really good friends to me .. some
friendships have grown far beyond the point I ever expected an
typical 'internet relationship' to grow and I'ld like to thank you 
for the past 3
years you bared with my ups and downs, changing moods and all the
nagging I sure have done (There is a high probability I'll be doing
that all my life though ;-). You were and will be a supporting, rock
solid part of my life .. and I'm very glad about that fact.

Thanks for baring with me and thanks for your time.

Thank you

Your's sincerely,

Moritz