n00bawan

Yep, that's what I'm at work. At least so far but I catching up pretty fast though my second week was easy too. This week I got my final "workbench" consistent of two tables in a row one for the computer and stuff the other with a lot of technical equipment which I might use in the near future. It looks like I might start realy doing something for the money they pay me with next monday. We'll see how that works out.

My appartment, well, I experimented with the dishwasher. I hope everything is still allright when I get back on sunday. I still don't have a ISP yet but have done some other stuff among them I want to a Martial Arts Academie and tried out Arnis.

It was just a small group, four children, four teens and the teacher but it is more traditional arnis and the teacher is half philipino himself so I think I'm in good hands. I'll be definitly going there more often but next week I'll try out kickboxing just to see what else they are offering before I make a final decision, what I'll be doing there. They are also offering two different Kung Fu styles, something I might check out as well.

Anyway today is friday, I'll be at my old appartment for this weekend to move stuff around. I might write something more but otherwise it's see ya next weekend!

So it's just a week

and I'm already back in OL to annoy you all LOL.

"How was it?" - Well, it's been pretty cool so far. I met a lot of people and it's been pretty fun, if you can say that of your work, but I have it kinda easy so far. I'm not sheduled to a certain project yet, thus have not realy much to do. They take me to several different meetings so I can get to know how they work and what kind of work I'll be facing soon and there is a lot to learn but nothing difficult. Just a more "getting used to". I myself am kinda excited to see what more I'll be facing and I'm asking a lot of questions, which they say is good. "Now I got the time to ask questions and get to know things, later I'll be drowning in work," was their advice to me. Most people tend to work from 8am to 4pm and that's okay for me. I never had any problems getting up "early" anyway.

My home is getting more organiced. There are still some things left to do and I miss some screws to assemble one bookcase but I got rid of a lot of packing cases this weekend. I got phone, thanks to my mobil homezone from my mobilphone provider but I'll try to get a ISP during this week. It's not that I'm realy missing the internet but you get used to it so easy. I had and have enough to do in my appartment anyway and there is always Firefly and Serenity. I do have a TV hooked up but who is watching TV anyway. Talkshows, Reality Shows, ... crap crap crap... . Only fun thing is that I have a dutch TV channel and I might gonna start watching that just to refresh it. I miss some of my pictures and posters so I'll be taking some of these with me but as long as I haven't finally decided where to put my furniture I'm not sure where to put those anyway.

I also found a martial arts school and had a short look at their offers and especially modern arnis sounds interesting, if I find the time I'll check it out next week. The rest of the city is well, kinda deserted LOL, its pretty small not even a train station but that's nothing that is bothering me anyway. I'll borrowing my brothers bicycle so I'm better suited to explore the area where I live and I can start cycling to work rather than driving there, 2.2km isn't realy a distance where you need a car.

I think I'm the only one in my workgroup (AFAIK yet) who is living right there. All the others have an average of 45km to drive. An option I do not have since I don't own a car. For April I'll have my roommates car but after that I'll be dependent on my or better my brothers bike. And that's the way I wanted it to be. I don't like driving 45 or more minutes to work. Getting there fast and getting away fast is more important to me for now.

Anyway enough for now. I'll be writing something probadly next weekend again, earlier if I get hooked up to the internet during this week, but you'll sure notice that ;).

p.s.: feel free to leave comments or ask questions ;) ...

Last night ...

... in Oldenburg.
I have invited some friends to tag along tonight and tomorrow it's finally moving to my new home.
I'll be around "here" during the next few weekends to clear up the last pieces that are staying here and going to be storaged away.

I'm looking forward to sleep in my bed again - I have been sleeping on my couch for the last week - but still leaving feels kinda wierd. Well see how things turn out ;).

On the net ...

The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay? (found at Little gamers) is an article about the website The Piratebay .
Very interesting read, and if you read: Mindjack: Is Piracy Good? - How Battlestar Galactica killed broadcast TV you might say, TV is fighting their own future customer base.

Next stop: Video Game Voters Network found at Ctrl +Alt + Del. They are here to help stop people like Jack Thompson.

Sitting in the ruins of my appartment - part II

With a lot of help of a some friends and my parents (BIG BIG BIG THANKS TO ALL OF YOU!) I managed to load 90% of my stuff into the rented truck/van and moved it to my soon-to-be home. We started at 12, took till half four to load it and then the 3 hour drive. Moved everything in and managed to assemble the bed and the couch.

One drove home with my parents, two friends stayed with me to finish some assembling today before we drove home as well. Everything fits in there and the appartmenet starts to look like something I ll be calling my home soon

And now I'm sitting again in the last remaining ruins of my appartment. Have to sort this out, between - throw it away - storage it - take it with me - something I've been doing the last 5 days with all of my stuff. Just one more week here and I'm realy out of my the place that was my home for close to 5 years.

Sitting in the ruins of my appartment

"Fast paced and highly interactive" - I just miss the "iconic" because there is nothing "iconic" in packing up your own stuff within 12 hours to move, but otherwise yeah, "fast paced and highly interactive". Tomorrow I have it loaded - yeap I have it loaded ;) - by some friends into the Van and then move out to my new home to unpack it there. Since I get my keys at 8pm I think we'll unload most of the stuff on sunday and then drive back.

There is still some stuff to do here and there but I'll have the bulky stuff moved.

Btw. I have to much stuff.

800 kilometers later ...

... I have an appartement. Yeah don't talk about it. I'm tired.
If things are going good, I'm moving this weekend - How many days left ?
I don't want to know. I think it's wednesday right now.

Wish me luck.

Tomorrow afternoon, 6 people, 8 appartments and me. If I'm lucky, I might be able to move this weekend.

Just some old stuff

Got my new hard disk to back up my data and here are some old links from my former Homepage

Stuff:
My old guestbook.
Budo Dojo Rastede - My shotokan karate "home" dojo.

Friends:
Chrissy - guitars at hasperath
Hasperath - the band in which I started learning to play the drums.
Kleine Tante Amick - Sadly under construction since ... ages ?
Jan Langhorst - old school friend

Still looking for an apartment to move. Wish me luck!

Gaming

It all began september 2004 with a free 10 (or was it 14?) day trial for Star Wars: Galaxies. Starting in a time now called as PRE CU or post publish 10, my roommate, another RL friend and myself started playing the greatest saga ever told in a galaxy far far away, our own.

For close to one and a half year SW:G became like a second part of my life, I met dozens of new people from all across the world and add to that, that you got to know them twice, once IC or "in character" and once OOC, as in "out of character". I was a Master Squad Leader - Master Carbineer. I survived together with my guild the CU and we went on exploring each our own saga in the Star Wars universe.

Ingame, the game was rich, promising and fast but technically or game mechanic wise, it was more like a huge construction site where somebody with a great vision started to work but didn't get the time to finish it. Still with patience and time and maybe a bit more money, I was, as we all were, hopefull and having faith that the development one day would finish all these visions to their completion. At one point I even had to chance to contribute to it, by taking the chance to become a correspondent representing the carbineer profession on the official forums, gathering and forwarding issues and wishes from the community toward the developers, still hoping that they would take our input and ideas and implement them.

Then the NGE hit and there has been realy said enough about it. The server I played on - Ahazi - took a hard hit, but my guild managed to survive the loss on players. As correspondent, renamed to senator, but now without a task or a community to represent, I held on to the game to see and experience the new direction of the game.

They realy tried to fix the game, but they lost their vision and above all the changes totally forget to preserve the ingame achievements of all players and so I left.

In the time after the SW:G, all "normal" computer games became boring. I was used to play together with friends and so I tried Dark Age Of Camelot, though it felt to small on "just" a german server. I got a Dungeons and Dragons Online beta access but the box I call computer didn't run it. Then came Eve Online but the lack of player interaction I percieved made it boring. It felt like a single player game, there was no real motivation to interact with anybody or I must have done something completly wrong. Now I'm looking at Dark and Light and it's free prequel Settlers of Ganareth. A world bigger as all other MMO worlds, as they like to advertise it, and with that an immersion beyond anything I have seen so far. It looks very promising, but at the same time is that what you can see in SoG so far away from what DnL should be that you start to doubt the release in April.

"So what? No online game anymore so go out and play IRL!" you might say, but it's not the game I miss, it's all those people who I met during the time I played. Luckily I got hold of a lot of them but wherever we go, it will never be the same again.

Kicking off

So as a "short" starter and a reason why I start this blog:

Just a couple of weeks ago I sent an application to an interesting job offer. I have been looking for a job for a while and I was still being picky to where I sent an application but here the description of the offered position sounded very interesting to me. Also with my real life name being Handy I couldn't resist working at a company developing mobile phones (germans will understand the irony).

My 2x16=32 birthday has come and gone, on the sunday after my birthday party my mobile phone screamed for my attention which it so deserved, the call became an interview regarding my job offer, and this is where things started to roll. More or less with "this has been a very promising interview" the man on the other side said, that they would call me back.

And they did, right on monday came an invitation to a more formal interview at their office, and to keep it rolling the suggested date was wednesday. Naturally I said yes and on the wednesday that week I hijacked the next "available" car and drove it to their office, followed by about 50 cops. After a two and a half hour long interview, yepp that's a pretty long one IMHO and that's a long time to make "mistakes", we parted quite positive with a "you will hear from us, probably during this week".

And again they did. Right on thursday I got a phonecall with the offer to take the job. And that's what I did.

Of course that means I'll be leaving my current place and home, and with that a lot of friends who I use to see on a daily basis and that's where this blog will come in handy ;).

So to all of you who want to know what the "walking mobile" is doing or want to say hello but don't have the time to pass by, here is another way to see what's going on or to drop a note.

Hi !

I once had a homepage and well ... that didn't worked out to well for me.
Let's see how this turns out.