Cheryl on the Web

Today the hard drive of my work laptop got sick and died. At least that’s how I picture it. It wasn’t an immediate death, no shot to the head or head-on collision; but it went relatively fast, considering that everything seemed fine on Friday. I guess it was more like a viral infection that came up this morning and quickly lead to a high and fatal fever.

I must admit with some pride that every single laptop I have ever used has suffered hard drive failure. My very first laptop was a Sony Vaio ultra-thin 12.1″, the first of its kind on the market back in ‘99; of all the laptops I have ever had, it was by far of the best quality. It took a good 3 years before I managed to run that hard drive into the ground, and if I would have de-frag’d a bit less often, I think it would have lasted even longer; I learned my lesson. After that I picked up another Sony but sold it within a year; the hard drive on that died on the next owner but I’m sure I contributed to its demise. Then I bought an Acer and - you know the quality we can expect from them - it was in the first 120 days that the hard drive on it succumbed. Two years later, the replacement hard drive I had gotten under warranty also went under. Less than a year ago, the work laptop I had gotten second-hand for work started having issues after about 2 years of use, and the particular laptop that died today was only 6 months old so it doesn’t speak much for the quality of this particular brand.

To the credit of these laptop manufacturers: they are not built for serious hard drive endangerment. And that is definitely what I put them through. On Friday my paging file was over 1.5 GB large because the thing simply doesn’t have enough memory for all the apps I run for my work. Add on top of that all the recompilations I do when programming, and the hard drives probably get 300-500% more use than on average.

Anyway, it just goes to show: they’re hard drives, not hard core.

I’ve decided that having a German place of residence doesn’t mean that I really live in Germany, and no amount of German class is going to change that. I mean, apart from the address on my mail, it would be hard to know exactly what country I’m in. You know, saying “Good evening”, “Bye”, and “Can I have a plastic sack with that?” in German in the supermarket on a weekly basis is not enough to convince me that I live in Germany. Even the lack of fresh vegetables in the supermarket, the crazy number of holidays, the mandatory recycling of plastic, and the lack of speed limit on the highway don’t really give me the German feeling. I mean, all these things can be found in various other countries as well, and I can’t really identify any of them with Germany.

That’s the crux of the problem: I can’t identify anything with Germany. And it’s not because I’m a recluse (at least not by choice), it’s just because I have no familiarity with anyone or anything German, with the significant exception of my lovely neighbor who - for good or for bad - speaks better “American” than I do and therefore does not count. At least not at the moment. For the rest, there are no Germans in my department at work; the neighbors above us are also not German; most of the people we socialize with through Tim’s work either aren’t German or the conversation and interaction is always in that multi-culti English mode because of the work connection.

I would find it really handy to speak German 100% fluently (which is really the only reason I’m taking the course) but I admit that I am beginning to feel a sense of futility, because language and integration go hand in hand - it’s hard to get one going without the other. I will learn a lot in my German class, but as with most things: practice makes perfect, and without practice .. well, you know :)

There’s nothing like biking across town and up a huge hill in order to get to my bi-weekly German class on time to bring out the youth in me. Though, given the huffing and puffing that accompanied the trek up the hill, the amount of youth I demonstrated is perhaps questionable. If nothing else, I should at least improve in biking up hills in addition to learning some German, given that this course is 2 semesters long and runs until May next year. (more…)

Today I made mini zucchini muffins, which are - in my variation - no relation to zucchini bread. They are light-colored with a “refined” (read: subtle but sophisticated) taste, consisting of zucchini with hints of parmesan, lemon, and nutmeg. Having made non-sweet muffins now for the first time, I have to say I love them. They are a great substitution for potatoes or rice in meals where meat should really be the main focus, and they are healthier than sweet muffins since there’s no sugar - not to mention that in this particular case each mini muffin contains the equivalent of at least one thick zucchini slice!

I’ve got a muffin recipe book full of recipes for various muffin types, both sweet and non-sweet. The next non-sweet ones I want to try are the pesto muffins, mmm. I liked the zucchini muffins I made today, but they are better with a meal than just by themselves I think, even though we ate them today as a sort of appetizer to our meal. If you want the recipe, let me know :)

No one really believed they could do it. Of the 5 sports analysts on my favorite midnight ESPN sports talk show (Around the Horn), only one picked the Rockies to make the playoffs a few weeks back. And here they are, living the American dream of the up-and-coming underdogs - and giving the Philadelphia Phillies a good beating in the first 2 games of their 5-game playoff opening series. That’s what I’m talking about, I believe in you, go, Rockies!