Privat

After several months of waiting, the most mighty Fitbit has arrived today! When I read about the nifty little toy in late May, I didn't think it could be much of a problem to get one of these. Well, of course I was wrong.
One of the main issues was that (due to missing radio approvals) Fitbit doesn't ship to countries other than the U.S., so Markus and I asked the guys from Dollarpig for an offer. Their offer sounded reasonable and we agreed. That time the Fitbit website said that they have to fulfil queued orders and distribution of new orders should start on June 15th.
Now it was just some "minor" supply bottlenecks, exchange rate fluctuations and the German customs that stood between us and our toys and it was only three months later when they arrived. /me is a happy boy with a brand new toy. /me will post more after trying out everything.
All in all ordering stuff from the U.S. still seems to be a bit of an adventure. For goods not to be delivered directly to Germany, I can definitely recommend Dollarpig, they did a good job and the delay wasn't their fault at all!

Last week we went to the movies to see Inception. Karsten called this one a complete mind-fuck and I couldn't agree more. It's been a decade since I saw an action movie that complex and that layered. Even though you constantly have to concentrate on all the seemingly irrelevant details and a running time of nearly 150 minutes, Inception didn't feel long-drawn-out or even tiring for a single second. The movie is beyond brilliant, don't miss it on the big screen!
By the way: Most of you might have missed Kevin Smith's latest movie "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", because it didn't make it into too many German cinemas. It surely enough is not as good as Clerks or Dogma, but it's still a hilarious funny and also romantic movie, so give it a try!
Today David presented me a piece of ancient technology for my collection of CPU's - an IDT WinChip C6 from 1997 that he recovered from some office PC. How cool is that? Many thanks! Gosh, I wish I didn't give away my mighty Slot-A Athlon as a "loan", these beauties seem to be hard to get nowadays... that'll teach me!

P.S. It's been awhile since I successfully destroyed some of my non-IT equipment, but yesterday it was about time. When I brought back my stuff to kitchen after having lunch, I found my stalwart pot red-hot and totally annealed. Obviously I forgot to turn of the heat after pouring of the spaghetti. R.I.P. poor little fellow... you've been a trusty friend through countless packages of pasta!
P.P.S. One more for the road. I chose rather not to think about it and giggle painfully embarrassed instead. It's a mad world...

On Friday - just one week after Jamba's summer party - we went to Leipzig to visit 5C Basic at their first annual (;)) summer party. The guys also invited a suckling pig which happened to be a very tasty conversationalist. Despite the return run being not exactly edifying we had a very, very nice evening at the fireplace, thanks for having us.
On Saturday I had quite a hard time getting up early enough to get some new parts for my computer (Why do computer shops close at 3 p.m.?!?!) but with the help of Micha I managed to be there in time. I bought the new power supply unit (Your right Arno-Lars-Micha, it is always the power supply unit...), took the opportunity to clean my case and physically killed my hard drive's SATA port. D'oh! Fortunately I was able to somehow attach the cable to the electrical contacts and run a backup. What was meant to be gaming weekend turned into a torturous backup party. But folks I won't complain, 'cause I sweated blood when I fist spotted the whole cable mess and I am kind of delighted that I was able to secure my stuff anyway. Don't be as silly as I am, disk it or risk it!

Yesterday was the first day I regularly went to work by bike - and of course it rained cats and dogs. When I came home after having dinner with Marcus, who happened to be in Berlin, I was wetted to the bones and therefore seriously pissed. I towelled myself and wanted to quickly check for mails and enter the track I drove at bikemap.net, when my computer screen suddenly went all black.
Of course I did what every IT expert would do in such situation: I jiggled all cables, used a lot of swearwords and repeatedly tried turning it on and off but nothing seemed to have an effect. Obviously something is fucked up beyond any "repair". What annoys me most is that I have no idea what exactly that would be and how to find out. Where are the good ol' days when Manu and Karsten (and their computers!) were just a few steps away?! We always found out what's wrong by quickly replacing one part after another with parts from each others computers - or with spare parts that seemed to lie around virtually everywhere... glory days.

If you want to show your sympathy please don't hesitate to push this button:

Some time ago I decided to stop giving tons of money to the BVG just for getting at work and go by my bike instead. Unfortunately my wheel was kind of hosed and needed some loving care. Today I got the bike back from the local bike-fixing-place and everything works like a charm now. Sweet! When cycling back from work I took the opportunity and extended the trip a bit. Seems like a nice thing to do if I am too lazy for a real workout at the gym. Or maybe a cool balance thing to do after a real workout. One way or another I can see some cycling and a sore ass coming up.
Also the ultra-cool posters that Markus and I ordered when the Oatmeal turned one year old finally arrived. But instead of putting them to the next best wall I spent most of the evening tagging terrible old MP3 files and jawing with Ronny. Let's see how long this task will keep me busy...