Happy 2010 to all my readers! :-)

So, it was time again to do some upgrading…WordPress 2.8.4 it is from now on. All plugins updated as well…it’s been a while since I did a major upgrade, but as usually everything went dandy, thumbs up WordPress!

So…half a year with no post…I didn’t even realize I didn’t post here in ages…really weird, but hey, ever since I started using twitter, I tend to post little tid-bits there instead of posting a new post on here…maybe I should change that again…and post at least a wrap-up of what’s been going on around here…we’ll see…I wonder if anyone is still reading this anyway ;-)

Well, the new year is already a few weeks (errm months) old and I didn’t have much time to blog around here…busy busy…work work work…all good though, just wanted to give you all a headsup that I made it safely into 2009…may it be a blessed year for you and yours….

The answer:

Merry christmas to you and yours…

Hi there one and all, greetings from munich. Foggy, cold, munich. At least the beer is still one of the best in the world and my hotel room, read: suite, is mighty awesome. Not that I can enjoy it much during the day – training courses start at 9am and last until probablyy 5:30pm….but hey…better little time in an awesome room than a long time in a hawesome room (like it was the case two weeks ago in cologne where I stayed in an extended closet for a whole week ;))…alrighty…I’m outta here….

…because I started a new job, which I really like, but it keeps my private online time to a minimum…so don’t wonder about the not all that regular updates around here. Next week I’m off to cologne for the week…after that I’m in munich…getting around…I guess I’ll take my digicam with me so maybe you’ll see a few snapshots…we’ll see….

Due to a minor injury less doing sports and more watching sports. The olympics, german football league starting…and what not. Along the way I worked off my last freelance jobs…so the coming weeks should be a lot less crowded…at least when it comes to working, unless I get the new job I’m applying for, then the “workless” times could be over quite quickly ;)

Football preparation for the new season has started two weeks ago and so far I didn’t miss a single training session – so far. Today I missed the first one, a friendly match, as my foot is shining in different colours ranging from green to blue. It wasn’t the best idea to train on friday after suffering the injury on thursday, but oh well. Nontheless a lot of sport going on.

First of all, the Beijing Olympics…so far nothing much going for the german athletes when it comes to winnnig medals, but at least some of the national teams seem to be in good shape (e.g. handball, basketball)…it’ll be fun to watch them compete for the next few days/weeks.

Secondly, the german professional football season is about to start next weekend, so in good old tradition the competition for the german football cup ( “DFB Pokal” ) started this week…so far quite a few good matches and no major upsets…

Alrighty…enough about sports, I’m going to do a little sport myself now…called “couch-surfing” ;)

…I get no support at all for an original product, genuine baby, that I bought from this company. What do I get instead? “Support” from a russian call-center basically telling me “click here, click there, oops doesn’t work, good day sir”. Wtf is going on here? Is there no qualified staff anymore where cases like mine could be escalated to? Wtf is going on…I’m so mad right now, you wouldn’t even believe it.

Note to self and anyone else out there pondering a Vista install for one reason or another: If you’ve got the “old version” (without SP1), make sure you use this version in the install process and install SP1 after the install. Why? Because Vista+SP1 is not Vista and then SP1…sorry…can’t activate your install…thank you very much M$…that’s what you get for buying your software instead of stealing it…thank you very much….

Edit #1: It seems that even the gurus at Technet can’t help…so I guess I’m in for a reinstall, yet again…

Edit #2: Still waiting for my new external hard-disc to show up…grrr….I hate delays….

Edit #3: Almost there, system up and running again…with official activation and the whole she-bang…still need to install some updates and then I’m good to go again…wheeeeeeeeee.

Today was one of these days. Sit down at computer, do some small stuff…get the feeling that it’s totally sluggish. Hmmm, it’s windows after all and has been running for two weeks straight now…oh well, let’s reboot. Poof. Bad idea. System doesn’t come up again and throws the black screen of death. This or that driver is missing or damage.

Okay, let’s do a repair. Repair done – same problem.

Okay let’s do a restore to system restore point “yesterday” – not working.

Okay let’s do a restore to system restore point “two days ago” – not working.

…

Okay…all system restore points aren’t working. Groovy. Why did the system do them again? Sigh.

Okay, let’s do a repair install. Errm yeah, (upgrade aka repair) only possible when started from within the “old” install. Errm yeah, genius…I need the repair out of pure desperation…not because my system isn’t coming up you dumb***…sigh.

Oh well…burned up the whole afternoon and evening and now I’ve gotta do a clean install anyway…bad beat right there…

…not that I had an old-one, lol, but as I got myself a new digital camera today, I thought I’d start a photoblog as part of ingoal.info. It can be found here. Let’s see how long I can keep it uptodate with photos…my plan is to post a photo every day, let’s see how that works out. If you would like to follow my photoblog, check in regularly or subscribe using your favourite feedreader…

I just wanted to give a big shoutout to the makers of SuperAntiSpyware as their software did a really great job on cleaning my system. It all started a few days back when some nasty spyware infected my system. No big deal I thought, so I fired up all the usual tools (e.g. Adaware, Spybot S&D, HijackThis)…to no avail…not even a safe-mode reboot and cleaning-procedure could get rid of it.

Bring in SuperAntiSpyware – Free Edition. Installed it, auto-downloaded the newest updates and definition files, ran it once, rebooted once and my system is clean. Awesome.

So once again, this is not a paid review, it’s just a message from me saying: Great software and if you’ve got problems with a spyware-infected system, give it a try!

…well, kind of, I would say I know how it feels like being scalped on local anaesthesia. Got a lipoma removed from my forehead this morning. I’m usually a pretty tough person and the local anaesthesia really helped a lot, once it wore off though, it started to hurt pretty good. The funny thing is that you normally don’t even realize how much your forehead is used in expressing stuff, as it’s really automatic. So it automatically hurt a lot during the day…thank god for (light) painkillers…

The compression bandage will come off tomorrow during the usual after-OP checkup…let’s see how it looks with a normal bandage on tomorrow…

Well, if the new MSI Wind will really hit the market with a price tag around the 399$ range, I’m soooooo going to get one. Why? Not because I desperately need one, after all I’ve got a regular notebook ( 14″ ) and an Apple iPhone already, but because I think this could be a nice gadget in between those two devices. Ultra portable and yet a full computer…

Inspired by ShoeMoney’s Free Shirt Friday I would like to introduce the Ingoal.info Free Stuff Day. How I envision this thing to take off is:

1. You’ve got a site you want to promote?
2. You’ve got some swag* promoting your site?
3. Send it to us and we will post a pic of the swag and provide at least one link back to your site.
4. Both sides win ;-)

If you’re interested in sending us your swag, feel free to send it to:
Ingo Hildebrandt
ATTN: Ingoal.info Free Stuff Day
Neckargasse 7
71726 Benningen
Germany

If you’ve got questions and suggestions feel free to contact us at swag@ingoal.info! Oh, and if it’s a T-Shirt you’re sending, please make it XL and include a note with the address of the site/blog on it (only necessary if it’s not on the T-Shirt). Thank you.

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* Promotional merchandise for a band, record label, or other entity in the music business, usually distributed at concerts.

May include t-shirts, stickers, promo CDs, posters, etc. Often free, but not necessarily; a t-shirt or record purchased at a concert might still be considered swag, especially if it is a design or release that is not readily available in the mass market.

Many independent record labels throw in a handful of free swag when they ship out mail-order packages (stickers, sampler CDs, etc).

The chief difference between swag and regular merchandise is that its purpose is not to make a profit, but to promote the band/label, and reward its supporters by giving them something cool and unique.
Source: Urban Dictionary

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