The new season in good ol’ Engerlund has kicked off and for the first time in a few years I didn’t signup for the manger game as someone (you know who you are) either didn’t start a league this year or forgot to invite me. Oh well…I’m mostly busy with my diploma thesis anyway…so maybe it’s best that way.

Speaking of footie…I just came across this site and I gotta say I love the idea of buying a footie team with the help of some thousand ppl…although I’m a little bit sceptical about the whole thing. Is it really a good idea to have that many “voting members”? Maybe, maybe not…I’m going to keep an eye on the site and see how it’ll go…

We did it…with a decisive 8-0 victory in the last season game we claimed the league championship, 3 points clear at the top of the table. Champions! Finally…here’s the pennant…

Only 7 more championships until we’re in the german bundesliga…lol… ;-)

Fifteen years of waiting for the next german bundesliga championship…no more waiting…with a 2-1 in the last match VfB Stuttgart claimed the first championship in 15 years (last championship was 1992)….yes, yes, yes!

Finally some good news from the “upgrade nightmare” front. Finally, finally, they shipped my upgrade copy of Vista Business on tuesday (so basically just on the day I ranted about them not shipping it, lol, did they read my blog?! )…now it should be only a matter of a few days until I hold it in my hands, the excitement

Man, this really sucks. Now, I’m usually not the one to jump on the train right away anyway, so it’s basically not the biggest deal, but slowly I’m getting annoyed. Why? Because I ordered a WinXP license with an upgrade coupon back in december when I built my new pc. So far so good. I then sent the upgrade coupon to Modus Link (the company handling the upgrades). That was in the first week of January. Since then I’m waiting and waiting and waiting…

Today, I checked the status again and the upgrade claim has finally been approved. Well, that’s the first step, but the thing still isn’t shipped yet. Are you kidding me? Three months and you’re unable to send me a dvd with a license sticker? Hello?! Absolutely ridiculous! The only upside: by the time I receive my copy I can be absolutely sure that there are drivers for everything in my pc and on a funny note: maybe SP1 will be already out by then

Yes! Yes! Yes! We did it! Handball World Champion 2007!

Nothing better than to win it, well, there is, winning it in your own country!!!

Well, it’s been a while since I last upgraded my pc…almost 3 years…

So, I decided it’s time for a new one…some funky dual core stuff or something and yup, there are lots of possible configurations.

First decision: Intel or AMD?

I know that Intel’s Core 2 Duos are powerful, fast and sexy…but they’re a little more expensive too…so I thought I’d go with AMD, yet again…(my current system is an AMD Athlon XP, the one before that was an AMD, ……

Second decision: Fastest/expensive, medium/alrighty, lower end/cheap

I decided to go with middle ground…an AMD x2 3800 it is, the Energy Efficient version of it - that’s perfect for a smaller case and it’ll help me save some energy costs, after all my pc is running most of the time. Combined with a funky mATX board, 1GB of ram (for now), 500GB Samsung SATAII (16MB Cache), DVD-burner, DVD-Rom and a nice mATX case by aplus…

The case arrived today and I’m hoping that the rest will arrive tomorrow (it was sent off by the shop today)…it’s going to be fun to build a pc, haven’t done that in a while…

Ooooh and I almost forgot, I ordered a new copy of Windows XP Pro…117€ including an Express upgrade coupon to Vista business….sounds like a good deal

I’ll post some pics once I’m done building…

…well, what can I say. I’m madly busy these days. Why? Because I started my internship in early september and so I’m mostly “at work” most of the weekdays (leaving early in the morning, coming home, knackered, in the late evening)…so nothing too spectacular to report, apart from the fact that I’m missing some sleep.

Missed the chance to get some extra sleep on saturday, when I scheduled a business meeting at 9am - what did I think ?! But at least I got some extra sleep and some chillin in today. Missed our footie match (we won 3-2 and are back in the hunt for the championship), but watched another good game.

My father had some VIP tickets to the german first league basketball match Ludwigsburg (10min from where I live) vs Trier. Ludwigsburg was unbeaten so far in the championship race (4 Ws in 4 matches). So we drove there early and met up with my aunt and her son and had a really good time - it’s always nice to watch a game in Ludwigsburg’s “Rundsporthalle” as it’s a rather small building and the vibes are just there. It’s awesome. In the end Ludwigsburg held on to win the match 84-81. So now they’re still unbeaten (5Ws in 5 matches) and are on top of the table. Nice.

Now it’s almost midnight again, so it’s time for me to log off…better catch some sleep before the week begins in less than 7 hours

Well, there were no games scheduled for week 3, due to international competition, so no score to report from there. Normal play resumed in week 4 and I didn’t do all that well. Keep in mind though that it’s a long season and there are still many many games to be played and trades to be made

Ingoal: 22 points, 107 total

Mr. Price: 45 points, 101 total

…and I’m with Mr. Price again in our SuperLeague called “THE COLLECTIVE ALL-STARS“.

Weeks 1 and 2 are already down and so far my Crunchtime CF is off to a good start.

Week 1:

Ingoal, 47 points

Mr. Price, 24 points

Week 2:

Ingoal, 38 points

Mr. Price, 32 points

Man of the match…Bastian “Schweini” Schweinsteiger…

We can all be proud of our team, nuff said!

The dream of yet another World Cup final was so close and yet so far tonight. After holding our own for 119 minutes, Italy finally scored their goal to go up 0:1 and scored the second one minutes after that. So final result Germany 0:2 Italy, we all hoped to get to the penalty kicks, but it wasn’t to be. A deserved victory after two kicks hitting the bar and the crossbar and our chances: 0.

Really sad that our series had to end today instead of the other one (we didn’t lose a match in Dortmund prior to this match and we didn’t win a match against Italy in the WC yet)…nontheless it was fascinating to see all the people still cheering for our national team and keeping their head up - even in defeat. So it’ll be Stuttgart on saturday (against either France or Portugal) instead of sunday in Berlin…

Side note: I’ll try to put up another post with some pics about “my world cup” so far in the next few days…

Well, we’ve got the Fifa World Cup over here in Germany and everyone sure is excited. Footie is everywhere and you almost can’t escape - not that I wanted to anyway

I was actually in the middle of it last friday. I was in the stadium watching the match Netherlands vs Ivory Coast. What a great match and I can’t even begin to explain the spirit in and around the stadium, unbelievable. Here are some photos taken by my (not so high resolution) mobile phone cam, showing me (in the Eat, Sleep, Code SitePoint Shirt), the stadium and the Premiere broadcasting box which was right there a couple of meters away from us (Premiere is the only PayPerView channel over here in Germany, their expert in the box was Christoph Daum, who is one of our better known coaches - he almost became our national coach a few years back…:

In related footie notes: After the lost championship, some of us played footie again for the first time. It was supposed to be a fun “hobby tourney”, but it turned out to be a ankle-busting slugfest…so not much joy, but at least a little time with the ball and some time in the sun with mates…could have been worse

Apart from the whole World Cup thing there are the NBA Finals, which I follow closely - after all Dirk Nowitzki and his Dallas Mavericks are in it. Too bad that they slipped in the third game and failed to take that game down. Instead of a 3-0 lead going into game 4, they were only ahead 2-1 and now the Heat have built up there momentum pretty good. Last night they pulled out yet another tight tight win in overtime to take the series lead 3-2. Now it’s up to Dallas to protect their homecourt to take it down in 7. Goooooooooooo Mavs!

I don’t even know how to start this post, I’m so excited. It’s after 3am and I’m still awake. Why? The NBA Finals are about to start with Game 1 from Dallas, featuring the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat. Why am I that excited? Two words: Dirk Nowitzki

The second time a german player has made it to the NBA Finals - if you don’t remember, Detlef Schrempf was in the Finals with the Sonics, but Michael Jordan’s Bulls denied their quest for the championship. This time it’s a different thing though. Dirk is the leader of the Mavericks and they got a real shot at the title. Let’s see if they can play their game and get Shaq, Wade and the rest off their game.

Jam packed? Yup, as the FIFA Football World Cup 2006 starts tonight - right here in Germany. We’re opening the Footie WC (or Soccer WC for the Americans) against Costa Rica. I’m really looking forward to the whole Cup, not only because it’s here in Germany, but because the Fifa World Cup is one of the most important cups there is, period. What adds to it, is that it is indeed in Germany and I was lucky enough to get some tickets - not for a germany game, but Netherlands vs. Ivory Coast should be a great match too :-)

Now I’m out of here…the Mavs starting lineup is presented now…goooooooo Dirk!

Update: Yes! Mavs 90-80 Heat! Not a particular good game, but tension right down to the wire. Not a good game by Dirk, but Jason Terry took over and that was enough to wrestle down the Heat. So the Mavs take the series lead 1-0, let’s see what sunday’s game two will bring…

What a frustrating day. We were, once again, on the verge of winning the championship - an amazing feat considering the fact that we just came into this higher class last year. We played and won our last game on thursday, so no game for us today, but the other team in contention (FV Oberstenfeld) played today. They were down 1-0, pulled level, were down 2-1, pulled level, went ahead 3-2…then Neckarrems pulled level to 3 a piece again, which is the result: 3-3. What does that mean for us? We lost the championship!!! Both them and us won 17 matches, drew 5 matches and lost twice…we even score the same amount of goals (74), but they conceded three less (21 to our 24), so they win the championship….

Side note: if and only if we hadn’t played 2-2 against the bottom team two weeks ago or if we had won with two (we won our match 6-1 on thursday, but the ref only noted a 5-1 win for us)/three more goals on thursday we would have been the champions :-(

Now we will have to play relegation matches again….the first match will be on friday against a fellow second placed Kreisliga B team. The second match will be against the next to last from Kreisliga A, but only if we win the first match…if not, it’ll be a lost season…damn, footie can be cruel sometimes…