Ubuntu :: Disable Tilde Key Press-twice Feature

I have noticed quite often that the tilde key only works when I press it twice. I've searched a while and found out that it can be used for accented characters like with the n (can't do that on Windows here anyway). I only know of the tilde-n from Spanish, I've never seen all of the other tilde-characters. And I do not need any of then ever. But I do need to type in my home directory (~) quite often and I want that to work the first time I press that key. Especially when it works through a PuTTY/SSH shell from Windows, but not directly in Gnome Terminal. The system preferences for the keyboard mapping don't help me out.

So how can I disable that double-press feature for the tilde key? It's allright for the accent keys, the � and ` accents alone are invalid characters and should never be used anyway (there's real quotation characters for that) (except for shell backtick expressions) and I don't need the ^ symbol (for coding only) often on Linux.Using Ubuntu 10.4 with German keyboard mapping (de), directly at the machine or via NX/VNC.