Xmas & Doomsday

Yesterday was like Christmas :-). I came home, and my mailbox was so stuffed full that the last packet hung out from the slit. I received the following:

- The Beatles "Yellow Submarine". A video cassette. Sure, this format is out of date and dying, but still, why should I pay five times the price for a DVD? Anyway: The greatest film of all times!

- SimCity 4. Finally! The days of simming start all over again! (Well, and the nights. I just installed it, and whoo, it suddenly is 01:54 a.m.)

- A Scart cable. Which is for...

- A DVD player! Finally! The days of carefully balancing Dian-Hua aka the Futurama Viewing Device on the lap are over! No deafening hum of the notebook fans any more when watching films! And it connects to my 16:9 TV set! And it works! Whoo!

- And two DVDs: "In the Mood for Love" by Wong Kar-Wai and "The Road Home" by Zhang Yimou. I won't give any opinion here, just look on IMBD for yourself. (Great viewing, though :-) ).


That much for Xmas.
Today was Doomsday, in a way. In the beginning my Dian-Hua only worked slowly. Nothing new, it has been doing so for a week or two, but today it got really painstaking. So I asked our sysadmin over, and we both hunched over the notebook for several hours. And finally!, the file system on my home partition started giving out. A quick backup took another half hour, and file system repair another, and in the end it just threw new errors on us. That was today's achievement. Whoo.

Payback

Today, a real flashback occurred. After four and a half months, my last conference cost statement finally got processed. What's more, somehow generously (as usual, so no big surprise on that front).

So, another nice dinner out might be in.

Anybody?

Smørebrød Reloaded

The day before yesterday, Smørebrød had finally gotten on my nerves so much that I had to give it to a garage for an inspection. Every little bump in the street made one rear wheel bang so loudly that I somehow felt memories of the Bourgemobile Hannover Incident of early 2001 creeping up.

So I had to walk back home after giving it away, and yesterday I had to walk all the way to GSP to work as well. Of course, this is because I did not manage to listen to my friend who advised me about the bus schedules.

Anyway, I learned about a new part in cars. While another Bourgemobile incident has taught me the true meaning of a Hardy disc, this time I learnt what a Domlager is (it provides connection between the suspension strut and the car body). However, not even LEO provides a translation into English. At least I know that it costs about EUR 70, plus work time.

The Pot

Today, a tea pot exploded in our robot laboratory.

An accelerated object of styrofoam with largely cylindrical shape impacted on a hand-held tea pot, which exploded into a flurry of tea drops, tea pot tops, and shouts, which in turn came from 2 male assistants, one of which left a dry mark on the wall behind him, keeping flying tea drops from hitting the wall.

(A hot contestant for the Eternal Hall Of Fame.)