With yesterdays news being kind of depressing it’s time to take a look on the bright side life. Today our team went playing golf at the Golf Resort Pankow which was great fun. We practised the most basic things on the driving range before we moved on to a 3-hole training course where everybody is allowed to play. Of course we played like shit, but it’s good to know that there’s a place nearby, where you can practise golf without having a licence or having to pay club fee.
Also the HTC Hero I carry with me got an update to Android 2.1 today. Even though this update isn’t officially released for Germany, David found out a pretty easy way to get it anyway. I just had to set the phones date to 2011 and instantly a message popped up, telling me of an update being ready to download. When I chose the HTC Hero as one of our test devices, I was pretty confident that over time HTC would give a lot of sweet love to what was there flagship phone back then, but the exact opposite did happen. Prior to this 2.1-Update the Hero was one of the last devices that had to deal with crappy Android 1.5, there were no updates to 1.6 or whatsoever. Now it seems as if the old Hero is back into play with free navigation, Google Goggles and all the other cool stuff that comes with Android 2.1. YEEEHAW!
And to make this day even better my World of Warcraft druid got the ultra-cool and pretty rare blue protodrake mount dropped at the Utgarde pinnacle. Yeah, another rare mount for one of my chars, even if it’s not my main char! Hey fate, more of these days please!

Yesterday Karsten pointed me to an animation done by Isao Hashimoto that is apparently seven years old but which I didn’t know until now. The animation is named „1945-1998“ and shows each and every detonation of a nuclear bomb in the same years.
While everyone is well aware that nuclear weapons have been tested over and over again, I was kind of shocked that „over and over again“ doesn’t refer to a number like two hundred or maybe even five hundred. Not that anyone on earth would have needed to detonate two hundred nukes for any reason… but what the nuclear powers did is worse. They ignited more than two _thousand_ nukes from 1945 to 1998. Watch the animation here, it’s a must see in my opinion!
As if that’s not enough madness for one day I stumbled into web forum for Nazis*. Reading the crap those shitheads spill into the world is just sickening and stresses my strong belief in absolute freedom of speech a lot. People discussing about „racially incorrect“ couples and Jewish people being congenital bonded to be criminals feels so disgusting and makes me rage in helpless anger. It makes me want to cry „Somebody _DO_ something about this…“ but I know it doesn’t make any sense to ban such stuff. Those people just move their servers to another country that does not forbid and suddenly internationalisation is not that bad any more…

So, everybody: _DO_ something! Talk, educate, be cross and maybe most importantly: Don’t turn away but intervene! Sage NEIN!

*I thought long about linking to this crap, because seeing is believing and maybe it would have helped raising awareness. Also I am quite confident that non of the people reading this will be seduced by the simple „truths“ of these people. But then again I am responsible for the links on my page and I decided not to take any risk by linking to anti-constitutional and prolly indictable stuff.

Even though I am not (yet?) into this whole microblogging thing and even though I definitely do not need more things that are able to distract me from work, I created a twitter account today. What for I really don’t know, but maybe it’s a exercise being confined to 140 characters. Maybe it’ll help to polish my texts, to make them more slender and more precise. We’ll see.
Unfortunately the nickname „Riipa“ was already in use and I had to find another. Neither was I ready to abandon my nickname completely nor did I want to use one of those cryptic names like riipa77_de. After something like an hour of try and error I remembered Neil Gaiman’s account Neilhimself… hence I proudly present my Twitter account Riipahimself.

Now that’s what I call a weekend of Rock ’n‘ Roll! On Friday we went to Dresden where the Eastside Boys played at the famous street festival „Bunte Republik Neustadt“. The Boys played some classics like „26 PS“ or „Günther Netzer“ as well as some new material from their upcoming split album with „Lousy“. Street Punk back in the streets – it was great!
We spent the night at Manu’s apartment and attended a American Football game on Saturday afternoon. Fortunately the „Dresden Monarchs“ had to play against the „Berlin Rebels“ so we didn’t have a problem to choose a team to support. Homeland Saxony against the evil Prussians it was – and Dresden won. *cheer* In the evening we wanted to pay another visit to the „Bunte Republik Neustadt“ but I have to admit that Markus and I just felt asleep at Manu’s couch right after having lunch. Seems like we’re getting old. Or the guy from the Italian restaurant poisoned us…
On Sunday started off calmly. We watched „John Rambo“ and „Hancock“ since I missed them both at the cinema and then moved on to the main event of the weekend – AC/DC live. When we arrived the Ostragehege was quite packed, but there were still more people to come. Lot’s of people. Something between 65.000 and 80.000 people.
The first band of the evening was „The New Black“ from Würzburg. I didn’t know them before but they for sure made me well-disposed by using „The Unkown Stuntman“ as their intro song – I just _love_ the 80s series „The Fall Guy“. They did a good gig and so did „Volbeat“ the second support act.
AC/DC entered the stage at nine o’clock and besides some new tracks from the latest album „Black Ice“ they played most of the important classics like Hells Bells, T.N.T., Back in Black, You shook me all night long, Highway to Hell and whatsoever. Okay, I missed „Money Talks“ and „Hard As A Rock“ which I personally like very much, but they did a great show anyway. The pure energy of these old farts (No offence!) is just awe-inspiring and I am very happy I opened my purse for them. 🙂
Also I want to emphasise, that the AC/DC crew damn sure did a hell of a sound job. They were loud – but not too loud. The sound was perfectly clear but pounding. I’ve seen a lot of the „big“ ones playing open air concerts, but AC/DC definitely had the best sound!

Last weekend the long-awaited wedding of Antje and Ronny took place. I went to Gera early Thursday morning where I met with Cris and Ronny for his stag party. We moved on to Jena where we teamed up with Marcus, Steve, Olli, Andreas and Marek and had brunch at the Stilbruch. Later we went for a walk in the park having some fun time on a playground and a barbecue. Then we brought the evening to an end with delicious Tequila at some generic stag party bar. Altogether this was a quite relaxed day without intoxicated people ending up under a smeary bar’s table, but it was great fun anyway.
On Saturday we attended the wedding ceremony and even though one may argue the marriage registrar rattled out her text a bit, it was a moving moment anyway. The actual party took place at a local restaurant. While the afternoon was reserved to a lot of good food and the inevitable party games the dancing part started right after the launch. The DJ did a good job and so we danced a lot and played the air guitar even more. Let’s hope the videos will never be on the internet…
Again: Thank you Antje & Ronny for having us. What a great day that was!

Today I joked with Karsten about Fate being the stupid bitch she is. Karsten of course did warn me not to joke about her and about her prolly taking this personal. Well, this is the second time in a few days I should have listened to his good advice.

When I arrived at home I found a demand note in my letter box claiming a hell of a lot money for a traffic offence I am said to have committed in Leipzig in June 2008(!!). Needless to say that I never heard of this and I have no frikkin idea what the heck this is all about. I don’t even own a car since early 2006, I don’t drive around in Leipzig any more. I am really looking forward to the phone call tomorrow, I can already imagine this office sitter guy telling me that he’s just doing his job, blablabla, a request for administrative assistance from the city of Leipzig, blablabla more senseless gibberish talk without responding to my arguments, you have to pay this or we make you, because blablabla and most important we have more pull, bwhahaha!

To crown it all I found my World of Warcraft account „hacked“ and nearly all my virtual goods gone. Of course a game master will take care of this mess and hopefully I will get back my stuff in a few hours time, but then again it leaves me behind with the question how anybody could possibly get my account data. Do I have a key logger on my computer? Luke Filewalker and Spybot Search & Destroy keep telling me that everything is fine and so does the Bitdefender web scan. Now I’ll have to stay up all night, waste my sleeping time, scan my box with a trillion tools – in all likelihood without finding anything. Gnarf! GNARF!

The moral of the story: I am not going to tell anything bad about lovely Fate any more. She’s such a cutie and I totally adore her…

P.S. I almost forgot to rant about prices. Today I bought a belt for my new suit and I thought the salesman was just kidding me, when he told me, that this tatter of leather costs something like 45 Euro. Srsly guys, this is no rocket science. It just a strip of leather. It doesn’t come with a parachute or something…

The fitness program for the „Weasel In Distress“ project started quite good, no injuries or laziness thus far. At two out of three days we even stayed longer than planned in the gym. Sweet. On a side note: Now I know what „I never saved anything for the swim back.“ really meant. It never took me as long to get home as did today after being on a treadmill too long. After all maybe I should listen to Karsten’s good advice.

When I signed up for a local health club back in 2007 I was perfectly willing to start a more healthy life style and things seemed to shape up well. Some months later I suffered from sprained ligaments and had to stop the training for some time. The Wheel of Time turned, months and years came and passed, leaving memories that became legend and for various reasons I never moved on.
Long story short, last Thursday I’ve been to the gym for the first time since late 2007 and it felt good. I definitely have to keep this going! Motivation shouldn’t be much of an issue this time, since some fitness will be required in order to succeed with the most mysterious „Weasel In Distress“ project.*

The last weekend was quite packed with exciting events to watch. Formula 1 paid a visit to Turkey, the German football team ran against Hungary, Vitali Klitschko trashed yet another contender and last not least Lena trashed them all. Hence I didn’t do much these days but surfed through the channels and read some interesting articles from the German issue of „Technology Review„. Quite different from the weekend before, but nice anyway.

*I would love to tell more about this, but then I’d have to kill you. Seriously.

With Markus making fun of Fate and prolly annoying her beyond endurance it was just a question of time until Fate starts to punish me in order to create a precedent.
Hence I got the annual utilities statement for my flat and (again!) the bastards want several hundred Euro of additional payment. It’s no as if the costs were stable for some years, they did heighten the prepayment just a year ago. And now it’s an additional payment of _several_ hundred Euro again?! What the F*ck!?!
/me is frustrated.
/me needs a raise. Badly.

I spent the Pentecost weekend in Wolfsburg. Even though the weather was unstable we managed to go out to look for a geocache or just take a walk in the sun. It always amazes me how much cleaner and greener everything is compared to filthy Berlin – regardless of Wolfsburg being an industrial city and Berlin not.
In the evening we watched „Boxhagener Platz“ at the „Kino im Hallenbad“ which is a pretty nice and small repertory cinema located in a (Hence the name!) former public bath. The movie was quite good and the supporting movie (No stupid ads, but a supporting movie! Haven’t seen this for decades! *cheer*) was as good. Luckily I found the whole supporting movie at Youtube so you can watch it too. 🙂 -Click-
Now that I am finished reading Art Spiegelman’s „Maus“ I would like to take the chance and do some more promotion for it. Buy this book, lend it or maybe even steal it but make sure you _read_ this book! You won’t find too many other books that tell as good as „Maus“ about the horror of the camps – and the damage that was done even to those who were lucky enough to survive.
Also I finished reading „White Line Fever“ the auto-biography of Motörhead’s (in)famous band leader Lemmy Kilmister. For my taste it sounded a bit too much like Jay from „Clerks“ boasting about doing drugs and fucking everything that moves. But then again he _is_ the singer of Motörhead and maybe his life is all about doing drugs and… well, you know. Anyway, if you are not a die-hard fan of Motörhead you might want to leave this one in the shelves.
By the way: The closer Ronny’s wedding day is coming (and it’s coming real close now!) the less I feel prepared. Most importantly I have to buy myself a proper suit… darn it. This will prolly cost me a months salary. Or at least something that _feels_ like a months salary.
P.S. Just a week after Ronny’s wedding the next big thing will take place. I’m going to see AC/DC for the first time in my life and Manu, Markus and Roman will be with me. Awesome! I can’t wait!