An American Furry in Germany

Sigh... it happened again.

    I was visiting the Cinemaxx website today, looking up showtimes. I had heard good things about Iron Man and The Forbidden Kingdom, I hadn't been to a movie since Sweeney Todd, and my financial aid is finally coming through, so I thought I'd treat myself. Turns out they're not showing the Forbidden Kingdom, so I looked up the showtimes for Iron Man (and found, to my surprise, that they would be open tomorrow and Monday as well). Then I decided to look up the prices.
    I know I'm cheap, nobody has to tell me that. But when I go to the movies, I understand that it will be an expense. I expect to pay $5, minimum, if I'm lucky. usually around 7 or 8 dollars, sometimes up to $9 (although at that point I'll have to start rethinking it). And I'm in Europe, so I reasonably expect to pay around €7,50. Even though that comes out to more than $10, it's a once-in-a-while thing, so I won't let it worry me. So it wasn't the price pissed me off. It was the fact that underneath the price, there was a list of "Additional Fees". For 1 Euro more, you could get a box seat. (Nice idea, but I wasn't interested.) For movies longer than 120 minutes, there was an additional fee of 50 cents or 1 Euro, "depending on the film". Iron Man is 123 minutes long.
    If it's not clear exactly why I'm pissed off, I'd like to illustrate it by explaining a little phrase we have in English (I don't know if it's limited to America): "nickle-and-dime". It's used as a verb, and it basically means "charging additional small amounts for individual small reasons, which over time ends up raising the total cost much higher than expected".  Usually it's used when the original price is an atractively low "base" price that ends up being very misleading--but it's not limited to that. Generally nickle-and-diming your customers is seen as bad practice--it tells them that you don't respect them, and that you only want to get their money, even if you have to trick it out of them. In Germany, though, it seems to be a sort of cultural identity. I'm afraid I may be crossing the line into "arrogant American" here, but it really bugs me. I still want to go see Iron Man... but not on those terms. And of course that's the only theater in Bremen (that I know of). So in the end, they don't get my money, and I don't get to treat myself. So we both end up unhappy.

    I'm going to state some opinons. I may get some that disagree with me, which is fine. I'm not looking to convince anybody. I just want to explain why I never really got into Linux, and find out if I'm correct, or why I'm wrong.
    This is written from my perspective, which is almost always a unique one--in this case, I would call it the "lazy nerd". I could have been one of those AV club guys, spurned from social circles to retreat into the safety of the machine world, where through mastery of the keyboard and the soldering iron, they could create gods. I think anyone who owns their own server counts into that group--and I think at least half the population of Germany has a Linux server in their basement. Either that, or they're in a band. Sometimes both.
    But instead, I stuck to Windows, and grew up learning all the nooks and crannies inside XP. Not with any sense of dedication, although I did take a bit of pride when I was the "go-to" guy for computer problems (the first ten times, anyway...), but only incidentally, learning it along the way because it interested me. And a lot of the Linux philosophy seems very interesting to me. So I guess my chief question is whether I don't like Linux because it's just very faulty in many different ways, or whether I'm simply too accustomed to doing things the Windows way.

    I started this post because I just started learning how to program ATMEL microcontrollers. It's not an easy task by any means, but even as a beginner I'm certain that it could be easier.  This is the point where you say "If you can make it better, then why don't you?" The answer is that I'm still at the foot of the learning curve, and it's a steep climb. By the time I get to the point where I'm capable enough to simplify the process, I'll have reached the point where I can look back at a line like "OBJ = $(SRC:.c=.o) $(ASRC:.S=.o) " and say "what's so complicated about that?"
    I think that's probably Linux's biggest problem. It's written by people who are at once interested in it, and capable of writing code for it. And if the subject is complex enough, then the only people interested in it and capable of working with it will be those already comfortable with the complex interface. Which means that those users who are just interested in it, but not enough to learn how to deal with the complex interface, are turned away. Windows has the advantage and responsibility of a paying consumer base, so they have the funds to hire a bunch of idiots to come in and explain why they can't figure out their software.
    But it's not only idiots. I don't consider myself an idiot. But I consider myself rare in that I value simplicity. I suspect the problem with the Linux mindset is a sort of elitism--a value that prides itself on complexity, often for its own sake. Having to rewrite your driver files just to increase the screen resolution (to give a simple example) requires a certain amount of obscure, arcane knowledge, which feels like power to those who already know it. But it's not an advantage. A simple graphical slider could do the same work with much less preparation required. Simply put, the computer does it for you. And isn't that what computers were supposed to do all along?

    Trouble is, I'm only interested in this subject enough to write a blog post about it. If someday my skills improve sufficiently for me to be able to solve some of the problems I've seen, I'd like to think I could be of some help. But I'm not interested in it enough to pursue it as a quest. So until someone is, I think I'm going to stay away from Linux for a while. Just as long as I don't have to buy Vista.

Dear Germany:
What's so hard to understand about the term "water fountain"? We need water to live. When I'm visiting a public landmark, I don't want to walk around thirsty for hours and hours because all the shops are closed. When I'm in a restaurant, I don't want to go thirsty because it costs €1,50 for literally just a few swallows of water (0,2 liters). I can understand that there might not be much incentive for McD's to give out free ketchup, but I won't die for lack of ketchup. Not that I've ever been in any real danger of death by dehydration... I'm just thirsty.

Oh, and in case there's anyone reading this who doesn't know what a water fountain is (no, it's not a "fountain"): it's a box that sticks up out of the ground and squirts water into the air when you press the button. You drink the water out of the air--which sounds a lot harder than it actually is, now that I think about it. Usually the water is cold and filtered (often it's too cold, actually, and it hurts the teeth), and of course nobody charges you to use one. They're found in schools, office buildings, parks, and public areas like libraries, monuments, and touristy areas. (Not in restaurants, just to clear things up--in restaurants the waiters come around and refill your glass of water whenever it gets low. Plus they give you free bread.)

At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to get the typical emotional high, then low usually associated with travel. At least not at any extreme level--I think I'm too moderate to let myself be that unbalanced. But I'm tired today, so I'm feeling a little put out by everything being so different. :P Pardon me while I bitch for a bit. I'd keep it to myself, but then I'd never know if some of my complaints might be reasonable.

• First of all, your keyboards. I can understand the need to have the umlauts and ß (I set up my US keyboard to display them on Ctrl+[, ], \, and 8 (for ß)). But that's still no excuse for "Alt gr". Admittedly it's not used much in everyday life, but when you're trying to program, the many important brackets are all assigned to that key--and it's in the most inconvenient place on the whole keyboard. It's under the knuckle of the middle finger on the right hand, where we just have a redundant Alt key, and I always end up hitting the spacebar whenever I go for it. Plus most of its useful features are on the same side of the keyboard, so you have to hit both keys with the right hand. I've tried to change the keyboard layout (it's been years since I actually needed to look at the keys) in the OS, but I was never able to do it--and I'm not sure why, because the operating systems in the computer labs are all in German. Either the English layout isn't installed, I don't have the right permissions, or I was doing something wrong.
• Actually I'm kind of growing fond of the money. All the bills are different sizes, which makes them easier to distinguish, and you can't shuff them all together--which is inconvenient sometimes, but it reminds you that if you have lots of different sizes, you have a lot of money in your hands. In America we just have to go by the numbers and the much less colorful styles. Plus here you can have a handful of change worth 10-20 Euros, if you let it accumulate. It makes the money more fun.
• I don't see why everything has to close on Sundays. It's just inconvenient. I'm actually mostly just surprised by it. Shouldn't capitalism have intervened by now? I'm used to the customer always being right.
• I'm really surprised at the amount of paperwork. It seems antiquated. And when I say "paperwork", I mean the literal paper--everthing is printed. It all goes into the computer eventually, but in the meantime countless resources (both time and trees) are wasted in writing things down, handing them over to be read, photocopied, and typed in, probably only for someone else in Berlin to read it off the screen and fill out some other forms on paper... I get the feeling that the people typing things into computers before granting me a visa would accept anything with a signature on it. (And a signature is just a scrawl of a pen, worn smooth through endless repetition.) I was almost tempted to test my theory, but I'm not stupid. :P Which sometimes leads to me having less fun.
• Jimi Hendrix was not German. Heh, got you there. :P
• O.J. Simpson was also not German... aww.

Okay, I think I'm good for another month. :P