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Insane!!

Some news some olds

Its been a long time since my last post. Not that I was particularly lacking in things to report on, but it seemed like a torture to get myself to sign in. Its like that with many activities that aren't a priority and I presume many people have the same problem. In scientific terms one could say that the activation energy is just too high. While the whole process may be exothermic (i.e. pretty satisfying) its just too darn hard to do the first step of signing in and writing the first sentence.
Well, here I am now and on fire writing up anything and everything that comes to mind...or not?

Life Updates:

1) I bought a new condo. Its not just a new condo for me, but its also brand spanking new!! It even smells new...though that smell is slowly going away. After throwing a lot of money out of the window on rent I followed suggestions I've been hearing for a long time and chose to move out of my favorite apartment - the one with the view on a lake. The new condo has a view on a golf course / driving range, has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a living room integrated with a kitchen. While its very different than my old apartment (which was very open with only two rooms but lots of space) it does have its benefits such as nice shower, large bathroom, cool bedroom etc. Its also nice to know that I own the place I live in!

2) I'm currently in Germany!! My father was celebrating his 80th birthday last weekend. He invited 52 guests for a grand party at the Hotel Oranien in Wiesbaden (snobby hotel....) and wouldn't let me miss this celebration. Unfortunately this time around most friends were not in Wiesbaden. I haven't been able to go do too much drinking so far (and most likely won't at all) but I've been busy with many other tasks (shopping, eating cake etc) and its been pretty good.

I also got to see many of my relatives thanks to the birthday celebration which I really enjoyed. I hadn't seen many of them for years and there were many changes - bigger stomachs (babies) and lots more kids. Its silly how families work...everybody seems to function in distinct flows. When one person has a kid, everybody else does as well...pretty much all my cousins has been turning into parents over the past 2 years (only one exception out of 10 cousins...wtf!!??). I'm really happy for them and hope that I can see and help those kids grow up. That said, some of my silly aunts thought it'd be funny to suggest that I was next on list for a baby etc. Haha, yeah right...thats like giving a baby to a 16 year old - bad idea! So anyways, it been a good time.
Picture of a new stream type addition to the city center (walking area)
Tomorrow my parents and I will be driving 5 hours to my company's production site to do a tour...then after two days there I'll be finally flying home to Minnesota. I can't wait! Its nice to be here, but I feel its time to head out. Parents...not good to be close for extended periods (like putting two big chunks of plutonium and reaching the critical mass...just a baaad idea!).
4 more days to go!

Wow, summer has been real busy and I've left this blog untouched for long. Will I start posting blogpost again? - I don't know, but time will tell. I always want to but I never get the time to...sorry folks!

Long weeks finally over...I hope

Its been a long time since my last post. Not that I was particularly lacking in things to report on, but it seemed like a torture to get myself to sign in. Its like that with many activities that aren't a priority and I presume many people have the same problem. In scientific terms one could say that the activation energy is just too high. While the whole process may be exothermic (i.e. pretty satisfying) its just too darn hard to do the first step of signing in and writing the first sentence.
Well, here I am now and on fire writing up anything and everything that comes to mind...or not?

Life Updates:

1) I bought a new condo. Its not just a new condo for me, but its also brand spanking new!! It even smells new...though that smell is slowly going away. After throwing a lot of money out of the window on rent I followed suggestions I've been hearing for a long time and chose to move out of my favorite apartment - the one with the view on a lake. The new condo has a view on a golf course / driving range, has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a living room integrated with a kitchen. While its very different than my old apartment (which was very open with only two rooms but lots of space) it does have its benefits such as nice shower, large bathroom, cool bedroom etc. Its also nice to know that I own the place I live in!

2) I'm currently in Germany!! My father was celebrating his 80th birthday last weekend. He invited 52 guests for a grand party at the Hotel Oranien in Wiesbaden (snobby hotel....) and wouldn't let me miss this celebration. Unfortunately this time around most friends were not in Wiesbaden. I haven't been able to go do too much drinking so far (and most likely won't at all) but I've been busy with many other tasks (shopping, eating cake etc) and its been pretty good.

I also got to see many of my relatives thanks to the birthday celebration which I really enjoyed. I hadn't seen many of them for years and there were many changes - bigger stomachs (babies) and lots more kids. Its silly how families work...everybody seems to function in distinct flows. When one person has a kid, everybody else does as well...pretty much all my cousins has been turning into parents over the past 2 years (only one exception out of 10 cousins...wtf!!??). I'm really happy for them and hope that I can see and help those kids grow up. That said, some of my silly aunts thought it'd be funny to suggest that I was next on list for a baby etc. Haha, yeah right...thats like giving a baby to a 16 year old - bad idea! So anyways, it been a good time.
Picture of a new stream type addition to the city center (walking area)
Tomorrow my parents and I will be driving 5 hours to my company's production site to do a tour...then after two days there I'll be finally flying home to Minnesota. I can't wait! Its nice to be here, but I feel its time to head out. Parents...not good to be close for extended periods (like putting two big chunks of plutonium and reaching the critical mass...just a baaad idea!).
4 more days to go!

Funny spoof

I'm getting sick of those stupid mac's are better than PCs bullshit advertisement. Not because they're blatantly lying to their customers, but because those customers actually take that shit as the truth. Its pathetic how people hear things and think its automatically for real. No more subliminal messages, now its blatant lies and we still fall for it...At least there are some places that have a good sense of humor. Check the video out.

Post # 100

Woot, got up to post 100. Considering the frequency at which I update this blog it makes for some serious time spent with blogspot.

So what to write...there are two things that come to mind immediately. One, I haven't smoked for 6 1/2 weeks. I still miss it like crazy, but I gotta get over it for the time being. Two, I went nuts this week. The NE trip two weeks ago was fun. We got to do some skiing on the weekend and then had to drive 3~5 hrs a day to get to our different target locations.



Then this last week I went to Decatur Alabama. I really enjoyed the weather down there. It was a comfortable 80F and many people were walking around in t-shirt / shorts. Sadly, I had to hear that it was below 0C up in MN before leaving the place. I really wasn't looking forward to the cold weather...then I got delayed on the flight back home. First there was a 1 hr delay at Huntsville Al airport which caused me to arrive at Atlanta at 8:20pm (on Tuesday), just the time my connecting flight to MN was leaving. So I got placed onto the 10:25pm plane and was hopeful that I could get back home before 1am. But no...1am was the time at which this flight finally let us get into the plane bearing MN. I ended up arriving home at 4:30am. Yes, I slept in till 10am and then went to work the same day!

So you may consider this week so far somewhat crazy ...well, thats not were it ends. On Thursday I asked whether some guys from work would be interested in biking. Well, considering that it was below 0C I didn't expect too many hurray but one colleague was crazy enough to say that he'd love to go. Couple hours later Katie, the colleague and myself went on a 24 mile ride in the cold. By the end of the ride my toes were frozen and I really couldn't walk. After putting the bikes back into the car we drove straight to Bonfire to meet up with some other colleagues and got a nice big dinner. The ride was way cold and too long. By the end of the ride my back was in hardcore pain and I wasn't all too sure if I have the ability to do the Firehouse 50 later on this season.

Then today (Saturday) the crazies kept on going. We went on another bike ride. This time we were 5 people today (Kt included)...and we biked a whooping 45 miles. Don't worry, this time I actually used some toe covers (windstopping covers). These kept my toes nice and toasty till maybe 30 miles into the ride. Here a list of what I was wearing: 1) long tights 2) bib shorts with thick thick pad 3) socks 4) leg warmers 5) underarmor shirt 6) jersey 7) wind and water resistant jacket 8) arm warmers 9) wind resistant mitten / gloves 10) scull cap. I was glad of every piece of clothing I had on...would have frozen otherwise!!


I can't describe you what pain I am in right now. I even had problems carrying Katie's bike down to her car. My legs were shutting off while I tried walking down the stairs step by step. I just popped two ibuprofens and had a glass of my awesome accelerade. Time to head to bed...

PS: after a nice long ride in the cold nothing beats a cup of chi tea and muffins!

3 weeks and counting

First off: Its been 3 weeks of non-smoking. I still don't see any fitness improvements...they better be coming soon (no, there is no "...or I'll start smoking again")!

Well, I was hoping to write something more long, but its late and I need sleep due to multiple reasons (need to go to work early, worked out and need recovery sleep) but I also know that its been a while since my last post so here I am with this little update.

I had a great weekend. Katie and I watched a concert by the Ditty Bops at the Varsity Theater last Friday. Chris was the one that persuaded us to go as we both had no clue what this "Ditty Bop" is. No sure what to expect I can't say that I was all that excited about it. Anyway, it turned out to be really fun. They didn't play the most masculine music but if was really really fun and they had great vocals. If you're looking for some fun music then you need to go see their performance! (Plus you don't get to see Chris dancing all that much....and the singers were wearing Target bags :) ).

Then on Saturday there was the 2007 NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Finals at the U of M. We spent pretty much the entire day there and got to see amazing swimming and seriously crazy diving. I was expecting some 3m dives that were better than the D3 stuff, but holy cow, they were actually diving off platforms! Below you see a girl off a 10m platform (trust me this is way high!! I've wrecked a watch jumping off 7.5m and the watch was a Casio. Its high and the impact hurts - they were even higher at 10m!).Seriously who does this?? I really don't know what would get me to go up there and do these crazy stunts. Man, hats off to those girls up there. They were awesome! The picture below just makes me speechless...The diving was sensational!

Enough about diving though, after the meet Katie, Christian, Collin, Emily and myself went to Sally's for a drink. I ended up drinking 'bout a 1l of beer and chugged a Irish car bomb. Man, considering I hadn't had any alcohol in the past 2 months I really did well. I was pretty drunk by the end, but nothing unpleasant. Don't remember being so pleasantly dunk :). And yes, I did not drive home. Thanks Katie! I think we all had a good time...I really miss going to bars sometimes.

So now to the future: After months of no travel I've finally got a couple of trips popping up. Next week I'm off to the east coast to visit a couple of places (and go skiing if the snow hight permits). Its going to be a full week of being gone and I'm looking forward to it.
I'm coming back from the trip on Fri and after a week of normal work its off to Alabama area for another 7 days. I'm sure I'll be sick of traveling after those two weeks but right now I'm really excited! I'll try to take some pictures of the area and post them here on my blog!

Who's paying what?

Check out this NBC article on smoking. It talks about the health costs to the state relating to smoking. It shows that smokers pay not only for their own health costs, but also for education and health care of others. Not a fact many media companies and governments like to portrait since it doesn't fit the smokers are evil money eating killers and should rot in hell image.

I agree smoking is bad for health and that people should quit, but the smoker bashing and calling them scum of society needs to end!! Don't we live in a free country in which the people are entitled to make up their mind whether to smoke or not? Can't people choose not to go to a non-smoking bar? If there are enough people willing to go to non-smoking bars there would be a bunch of them all over the place. That's how the market functions. If there is a demand and people take advantage of it because there is money to be made. Northfield has a couple of them and its because people there want it. If one can't find any non smoking bars that means people don't care for them and so maybe that person could open a bar and make a good profit (or maybe nobody cares for them in that specific town). Apparently people in the US are too dumb for that and thus need some authority figure to step in. Needless to say that reminds me of communism in which the State always knows better and regulates everything. Is that were we're headed? The way I see it is that smoker bashing has turned into a trend, and politicians want to capitalise on this trend by implementing bills in which they ban smoking.

Even looking at the global warming issue it seems that the government is years behind the market. Companies all over are moving in the direction of cutting down emissions while the central government is dumb found. Maybe the people in charge need to listen more to people and facilitate things rather than banning everything that isn't trendy. And with facilitating I mean taxes and caps (carbon caps). That way the smoker, polluter, whatever can choose whether to quit or to pay a fine (as smokers have been for years!!).

Here is an except from the aritcle: It is clear that states could see some medical savings from reduced smoking, but it is difficult to say how much, and whether those savings might offset the lost tax revenue. Minnesota’s Department of Human Services estimates it spends $295 million a year to treat smoking-related illnesses for 647,000 people on public assistance....

...In 2005, tobacco taxes contributed $13 billion to state budgets. But cigarette tax collections that year were down in 15 states compared with the year or years before, according to a study backed by the tobacco industry. States such as New York, Massachusetts and Illinois are all forecasting a drop in revenue.

Sure, there may be more cost involved with smokers but 13 billion versus 300 million should give some better perspective on the contributions of smokers to the state budget.

PS: After smoking for 12 years I finally got to the point at which I haven't smoked for 6 days. This should prove that my smoking or not smoking has nothing to do with what I perceive about this bull crap that's going on.