When I watched Black Swan last week, I didn’t think of the whole Swan Lake thing as very realistic stuff. An innocent, white beauty turning into a black being of feral energy… seriously, how could _that_ be true? Now this week it turned out to be quite easy. The innocent, white Xbox360 turned into a a even more beautiful, black 360 slim. True love and dedication, presented in the form of some bucks, made this miracle come true. A HDD twelve times as big, as the old one, HDMI, WLAN, super quiet, less power consuming… and most importantly: black. piano black. *rrrrr* Btw: Don’t even bother asking if you can have the white one. Arrangements are already made. 😉
Now I gotta run, because I have to do what the script says: „On the fifth day of the week thou shalt eat unhealthy food and do the role playing. And yes, that does include the kinky kind of role playing as well as the nerdy kind.“

As I wrote earlier, I was a bit scared about two guys going to ballet movie. It turned out that I had every reason to be scared… in so many ways. This for sure is the most frightening, disturbing and painful movie I have seen in ages.
Give Natalie Portman the well deserved Oscar. Then burn each and every copy of this work of the devil. Burn this brilliant masterpiece for the good of all us. Go and see this movie! No! Don’t! Don’t see this movie! Burn it! It’s a must see!… GAWD! I better go to bed and sob myself to sleep.

After Christmas being that dreadful I definitely needed some time to pick myself up and catch breath. I did clear my poker bonus, my move went as planned, New Years Eve was just amazing (Thanks guys!) and after three endless weeks even the lazy bastards from the house management gave me the keys to my letter box. But of course the next piece of bad news was just days away. And this one sucks big time. You know I am kind bad at finding the „right“ words in such situations, so there is only one thing I _can_ say: Get well! GET FUCKING WELL BRO!
Beside from this bad news things seem to work out quite well. The new job is just great, dad’s back from the hospital and it’s absolutely great to have Karsten around and do all the nerdy things as well as having those talks at the stairways which remind me at the good old times.
To cheer me up a bit I ordered a lot of cool stuff lately that arrives bit by bit, little by little. Some books (Neil Gaiman’s „Marvel 1602“, „XKCD vol. 0“, „Cyanide & Happiness“…) and even a BluRay player with two dozen BluRays ended up being mine. This week my new washing machine will arrive. From that point it’s just two tables, a bed, some chairs and curtains until my buying spree is coming to an end. And maybe a new stadard zoom lens for my DSLR and a new bike… 😉

But now it’s off to the movies. Black Swan it is. I’m scared.

P.S. Aaaaah, statistics. Sweet statistics. Read at Oktrends latest posts, why trying to be unattractive to _some_ people might be an +ev move overall.

„Hang on, it doesn’t have any wires or anything…“
„It’s WIRELESS!“

Relocation done, teh internets is already here. Thanks a lot Karsten.

What could I say. Of course the cake was a lie and sweet lady faith was perfectly able to counterbalance all the good things that happened lately and give a nice little bonus on top. Worst. Christmas. _EVER_.

Anyway. Merry Christmas to you! Take care folks!

Two days ago:
*the phone is ringing*
1: Yap, hello.
2: Good day, Lady Faith’s office, am I speaking to Mr. Riipa?
1: Yeah, right, that’s me. What’s the matter?
2: Our files show that you erroneously were granted a lot of luck lately. I hate to tell you, but we are required to somehow counterbalance this.
1: Yes certainly, you’re very welcome to ruin my Christmas, my world, my everything!

Now:
1: Receipt. Definitely. :-/

Anyway. A blessed Christmas everybody!

P.S. I lost at The Game.

Now that everything seems to be home and dry I think it’s time to reveal where my path will lead me. I’m coming home! Some days ago I signed a contract at the 5C Basic GmbH & Co. KG and today I signed the lease contract for a beautiful flat in the very same house Karsten lives in. From January on it will be just two stairs to see The Man, which is an awesome thing. 🙂
In the past six* years I hardly passed on a chance to rant about Berlin and the Prussians. And justifiably so! I always thought there might be a day in the (distant) future where I’d miraculously start to like this dirty, chaotic megalopolis and the rude „charm“ of it’s inhabitants, but obviously I thought wrong. Now as the time of leave-taking has come quite suddenly, I am still not in the same melancholic mood I was in, when I left Leipzig in 2003.
Of course I am going to miss the lads a lot, but at the same time I am so very excited about my new job and about getting back to sweet, sweet Saxony. Also time passes swiftly these days and I have serious trouble to get everything done in time, so maybe there is just not enough time to get melancholic. I won’t complain… 🙂

On a completely unrelated note I have to give kudos to Samsung. I bought a Samsung ML-1520 laser printer back in February 2005. By that time I also operated a (thrice as expensive) HP LaserJet 1000, which really was a great piece of hardware! The LaserJet printed thousands of pages through the time of my self-employment without the slightest issue and the Samsung was just meant to be a cheap makeshift for the few things I had to print in Berlin. In January 2008 I installed Vista to my box and forgot about the Samsung… I just didn’t need a printer at that time.
When that changed lately, I remembered about the Samsung still being around. The brave LaserJet was gone for years, since Hewlett Packard did not care creating drivers for Windows Vista and Windows 7 and rendered a perfectly working device worthless as a result. To be honest: Therefore I didn’t have too much hope that Samsung would do better. But to my greatest surprise they did. There are drivers available for Vista, Win7 and even Linux. Amazingly well done Samsung, shame on you Hewlett Packard! 🙂

Also Automattic did release the official WordPress client for Windows Phone 7 today, which is outstandingly good news. You can get it for free in your phones marketplace. If only someone did a similar thing for Serendipity… 🙁 But anyway, expect some more activity on this sites photo blog very soon!

And now everybody please raise the glass and join GLaDOS and me in singing this great tune on the occasion of… well, you know, getting home, the new job, the the new flat… generally things turning out unexpectedly and actually dauntingly well I think. Let’s see if the cake is a lie! 😉

1,2.. 1,2,3,4…
This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

*Five years and ten months to be precise. Anyway.. who cares.

I’ve been a bit lazy lately updating the site so let’s do a short recap.
The weekend before last Marcus came to Berlin to pay me a visit and see Swedish power metal sensation Sabaton with me. Because of the shitty weather we did only a little sight seeing and a lot of gaming. Marcus turned out to be talented racer at Forza Motorsport 3 and I guess we both had a lot of fun. On Tuesday we went to see Sabaton with Mario and Silke. We arrived just in time to see Alestorm who did a helluva support job. The first time I heard of Alestorm and the „True Scottish Pirate Metal“ they play, I couldn’t help but laugh. Then I listened to them and what can I say… it IS True Scottish Pirate Metal. Arrrrrr! 😀
Sabaton were just great. A kick-ass band with kick-ass songs, walls of sound and a history lesson as an extra. What I like most about the band is their good sense of humour. Contrary to their martial appearance and their reflective lyrics they don’t take themselves too seriously after all. Therefore Sabaton is an absolute recommendation, you should go and see them!
On Thursday my copy of „Gib Acht“ the brand new album from Dritte Wahl arrived and on totally unrelated news we went to David to see Microsoft Kinect and Grant Turismo 5 and have a nice meal.
Last weekend I went to Leipzig to visit Leo, have a tasty knuckle and to see the glorious Chemnitzer FC battling „Rote Brause Leipzig“ for supremacy in the Regionalliga Nord. Much to my delectation Ronny and Ela, whom I did not see since June, did join in from Gera for the knuckle-part. On the battlefield „Rote Brause“ managed to achieve a draw against the sky-blue heroes but nevertheless I am sure that Chemnitz will prevail in the end! Maybe the best thing about the game was that despite the freezing cold not less than 4500 people came from Chemnitz to see the team, which is an awesome number!
And by the way: I got fired today. No hard feelings though, ‚cause it is kind of good news I guess. I’m going to leave Berlin asap. *cheers*

Karsten pointed me to this blog entry from a guy who obviously did nothing other than assuming his right to refuse being scanned by one of those shiny, new body scanners.
I have read quite a lot nonsense about these scanners lately, as a lot of people are afraid and also ill-informed to a certain degree. But what scares me about the whole thing, is how people who obviously did nothing wrong, are humiliated and forced to give up their alleged freedom to choose not to be body scanned.