Memory Lane

I am very lucky to own music by this formidable band*, which doesn't exist anymore.




Especially a recording of their famous last show, which I remember well, because I myself was there, and so were all my friends who I don't see so often anymore, which sometimes makes me sad a little.

Sometimes I even listen to aforementioned music.

Today is such a day.



*and of course the band that opened for them that day in July.

Hotspot

After hearing about a little program called Connectify, which supposedly is able to turn a Win7 computer into a WLAN hotspot I wanted to try it out.
So I downloaded it and started it etc, but for some reason the program kept turning off DHCP on the virtual wifi miniport adapter, so my poor old xp-laptop who had to play client couldn't find a network adress, thus the connection remained incomplete.

So I researched the whole thing a bit on the internet and found out that Connectify is really no more than a GUI for features that are already part of Windows 7.
I immediately de-installed Connectify, rebooted, checked the virtual wifi miniport adapter and found DHCP still off, so I turned it on.
Then (as admin) I brought up a command window and typed:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid="name" key="password" keyUsage=persistent

Name being the name of the network of course, and password the password. Choose to your liking.
After that I opened the sharing options of my internet connection (right click on my real wireless adapter, properties, sharing) and turned the option to share the internet connection on; and of course I had to select the connection associated with the virtual wifi adapter there.

Back to my command prompt:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

And that was it. My client-computer immediately* found the new wlan and could access the internet through the connection of my main computer.

Very nice. To turn the hotspot off type:

netsh wlan stop hostednetwork

to see it's status type:

netsh wlan show hostednetwork


*Honestly, all this took a lot longer to figure out, but in the end it works, which makes me happy. It was all because of Connectify, effin' third party software had fucked up half of my settings.

ps: for those who don't wanna type all the lines all the time it might be easier to just create one or two .cmd files, then right-click-execute-as-admin them.
(use pause if you'd like the command window to stick around)

More information can be found for example here (German).

The Little Man In The Boat

Today was a quite educationally valuable day. During breaks in the staff room I learned that one is never really alone, even though their wife might be out of town. How's that, I asked, and my co-workers immediately enlightened me.

It is because appearently Handselina Jolly and Palmela Handerson are always with me, where ever I go. Furthermore I was also informed that there is in this world a little man in a boat, although according to a different co-worker this little man might also be a quite big man in a boat sometimes.

Two fingers, they added, as if holding a cigarette, are usually quite enough to touch this little man in his boat.

I was amazed and almost spilled my coffee.

The Queen's Tits

So what do I do when my wife is out of town?

I pick up new sayings, like for example what you say when somebody shuffles the deck forever:

"You're gonna wear the Queen's tits off."

Way funnier than the German equivalent, roughly: "Once there was someone who has shuffled himself dead."

We had a delicious dinner first, complete with a nice chess game and interesting conversation, and then afterwards went someplace else and played poker all night long. It's 5 in the morning now and I just came home. The last time I did something like that I can't even remember.

Oh yes, I have to remind myself to put those 30 bucks into my expense-statistics, category: fun.

I better go to bed now.

Best Before

Today after work I walked home as I usually do. It was raining, that is not unusual. With my left hand I carried a plastic bag. Inside the bag: 2 loafs of toast, 1 dozen eggs, 1 long distance phone card. In my right hand I carried an open can of coke.

Then I slipped in the mud und saute mich total mit dem dreckigen Schmotter ein. Die ganze Hose eine einzige Matschwampe, die Jacke ein kompletter Modderhaufen, Schuhe total schlammverschmiert, Pfützenwasser in der Einkaufstüte und Colaschwappe überall.

Großartig.

None of this spoiled my happiness in any way, not at all. I got up and walked on and kept singing made-up dubdub dubdidei songs* in the rain. The wetness of my clothing was annoying though, and cold.

At home I stripped naked, started laundry, put my groceries away and discovered that 4 eggs were broken, took a shower, put a frozen pizza in the oven, whipped up a cake, took the pizza out, put the cake in, ate the pizza, moved the laundry along, took the cake out.

This is the cake:

pretty basic poundcake, made using 4 broken eggs; with chocolate swirl AND raisins, some of the necessary sugar substituted with honey; powdered sugar not yet added

By the way, the other day (last week) I baked a different cake, because I had to use up that good old Rocky Mountain Quark before it went worse-after.

This is the quark container:

container, now empty, once filled with quark

This is what's left of the part-quark cake.

yeast dough replaced by quark-oil-dough, topped with a quark-egg-lemon mix, other half: sugar and butter

*One of the songs was about a fish in a tank. The fish was at least 213 years old and very hungry, because I hadn't fed it in a while. It had belonged to my dad once, and to his dad, and to his dad, and to his dad, and to his dad, and to his dad, and to his dad, and before that to one Mr. Jerkoffsky, a Polish immigrant from Poland, who happened to have opened a pet store somewhere in New York.

**Also my beard is growing nicely.

3 times Brato, with 5.5 month-beard, today

September, September

In the morning when I step outside the air is crisp and fresh. It smells like fall now.

Man, am I happy that I finally finished all this posting about the game Survivor. It only took me a month. Oh, now that I mentioned the word month, yes: My wife left town for a number of months, work-related. So I am all by myself here, going to work everyday, and not cooking as much.

I bet this will reflect in the statistics of grocery-purchasing: I had to include a new category: processed foods (for frozen pizza). Also I think the snack and softdrink catagories will experience a total boost. To balance that the overall weekly cost will go down a lot (as well as fresh fruit and vegetables), probably to 50 or 60 bucks per week, or less.

We had a long weekend recently, I completely spent it doing nothing. 3 days of doing nothing. That was very nice. (I also played computer games a lot (Risen), and read a bit (Jack Higgins: The Eagle Has Landed; it drags a little).)

And now, humming an old tune (...ich lebte...so leer und frei...im September...da ist alles vorbei...), I say: Good Night.