As you may (or may not) know, there was a threat of more train strikes in Germany. On Sunday in the evening (or maybe late afternoon) that threat could be abolished.
Today (March 10th, 5:30 pm) the website of the local train service (S-Bahn München) says on its front page: "Die für morgen, den 10.03. angekündigten Streiks, konnten abgewendet werden. Die S-Bahn München fährt nach Normalfahrplan."
Translation: "The strikes announced for tomorrow, March 10, could be averted. The S-Bahn München runs according to the normal schedule"

*checks calendar* hmmmm....

This morning, the S-Bahn didn't run the normal schedule, there were some trains missing from the normal schedule. I can hear every train going by out house if I concentrate a bit.

I finished another book, "Something rotten" by Jasper Fforde, the start of the book was not as good as the other Fforde books I read, but it got better and at the end it was as great (as the others). On monday evening and tuesday I read Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
On thursday evening I went to play Hordes, a tabletop game where you lead an army of human (or elven, or trollish) troops and wild beast into war and had nuch fun with it. On wednesday evening I had much stress because I needed to glue the troopers together, which was not really easy, the glue didn't want to hold. But eventually I managed that too, and nothing went off in the tranport.
On friday evening I went shopping, bought some cloth to sew myself some cozy pullover/shirt in midnight blue. I have the instructions from a german website (www.natronundsoda.net) that has lots of instructions how to make "goth" clothing, some cool and some rather strange stuff (imo) there.
On Saturday morning I woke up very early, because my husband went to Austria playing a Confrontation tournament (another tabletop game). Then I went back to sleep and had a nice breakfast with my parents. I got home at about lunchtime, and discovered that I have some nice red cloth (cotton/linen mix) laying around for about a year that I wanted to transofrm into two cushion covers. Next time I'm washing dark clothes that will be washed too, then ironed and then I can start the cutting and sewing.
Last weekend I washed the blue cloth for my shirt, I'll probably begin making it tomorrow.

I finished "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde last friday and started on his fourth book "Soemthing rotten" already.
And I read the last number of the german magazine c't (about 200 pages) too last week.

Apart from that, not much is happening.
I'm still happily married, still at the same workplace, still have the same hobbies...
I bought myself a new Pratchett book yesterday to read when I'm through with Fforde.

I should read more books at work when I have nothing to do.
I finished "Lost in a good book" today in the S-Bahn, after reading about half of the book yesterday, in the S-Bahn or at work when nobody called me.

So here's a book update.

I'm starting "The Well of lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde sometime today, maybe already at work in a pause. I'm now a fan of Thursday Next. The book is just hilarious and the author really has talent for playing with words.
I can recommend Fforde's work to anyone who likes fantasy literature, expecially to Pratchett fans.

I'm trying to read more books this year and will report here what I read.
Soem people are doing this and I tried it a few years ago too. Let's see how it works out this year and how far I can keep it up.

January 08
Terry Pratchett - The Truth
Jasper Fforde - Lost in a good book (finished Jan 16)
Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots (finished Jan 25)
Neil Gaiman - Sandman Preludes & Nocturnes (finished Jan 26)

February 08
Jasper Fforde - Something rotten (finished Feb 02)

Currently reading:
c't magazine

In addition to that I get a computer magazine (c't) every two weeks. That magazine is quite thick and full of information so I sometimes don't finish that in two week, because I only read it while commuting. When I finished the mag, I take a book or other magazine with me. Sometimes I try to read a book at home, but I rarely find time for that.

Yesterday afternoon and this morning the news were spreading that Deutsch Bahn (the german railroad company) and GDL (the train drivers union (or at least one of them)) agreed in the tariff conflicts that started last summer/autumn. Last autumn there were a few hours of strike, but in the late autumn and early winter there were longer strikes, when I had to stay with my parents' to be able to get to work.

Finally they found a tariff agreement both sides could agree upon and we are (90%) safe from train strikes again.

I'm still alive, still reading my friends list, sometimes even commenting your entries, but rarely posting. I don't know why I'm so rarely posting, I can't seem to find the time for it, but for many other hobbies.

Some fun stuff I found at work:
In a description of a printer/fax/scanner-machine, the document says something about a "flatbat" scanner.
When I saw a printer of that model last time, it still had a "flatbed" scanner.
Maybe I'm weird, but I think that's funny.
Especially after I met a person called "Bat" (as nickname) in person.

Around New Year's Eve (and New Year of course) I was at a party organised by members of the german Terry Pratchett fanclub and by LoTR fans (also some organisation, but I forgot which). The party was in an old castle , nearly 1000 years old and full of stairs. You had to walk stairs up and down whenever you wnated to go anywhere.
It was much fun and games and stuff. :-)
My husband (no Pratchett fan and not a big LotR fan) was also with me. There were poker games most of the days and he participated in about all of them (but in no other action).
On New Year we, me, my husband, and four other friends we met there, started at 11 am to find a place where we can play Munchkin. We play Star Munchkin bites! (point for everyone who guesses the participating games correctly). At 5:30 pm we were quite exhausted and nearly everyone was at level 9 already. We were out of "ammunition" and didn't want to play any longer, so we let one player win (we couldn't have prevented it that easily). After that it was time for dinner already.

My dear husband got an installation DVD for Ubuntu 7.4 from a friend. He tried yesterday evening to install Ubuntu with that disk on his computer. the istallation went through, but at the end, wen the system prompted him to remove the disc from the drive and to press enter to get on, it didn't react to him pressing the enter key. No success whatever we tried.

So he tried with openSuse10.1, even though he doesn't want Suse. The installation was painfully slow, but finally he got a walking system. It was really slow at booting and the resolution was at 640x480 pixels and he couldn't change it. He went and downloaded a driver from ATI (the manufacturer of the graphics card). Installing the driver was a hassle because of that low resolution. But we succeeded eventually. When he tried to change the resolution (to 1024x769 or even 800x600) the x-server crashed. After the last try the computer wouldn't even boot anymore.

So today it's my task to install a working Ubuntu system on his computer.
At first I tried the Ubuntu 7.4 DVD, but that always collapsed after the boot screen. It showed me the boot screen and I could choose what I wanted to do. But after choosing either "Check the CD" or "start or install Ubuntu" (which should start the live system and worked yesterday) I saw a linux kernel loading and then the screen went dark.

After several tries I was fed up and took the Ubuntu 5.4 installation DVD (with which I installed my system) and inserted in the drive. Currently the installation is running, or rather, it just asked me for the user name and password of the first user.
Looks like success, but I won't yell that until I have a running system wth Gnome as GUI on a screen resolution of at least 800x600 (preferrably a higher resolution, it's a 17" flat screen).

Update: first reboot (after installing from disc) worked, and he's currently busy istalling very much stuff (but is still in text mode). That looks similar to how it looked when installing my computer (from which I'm posting) .

Second Update: X-Server did not start, but at least give me an error message. So far the installation is better than yesterday. Let's see what I can do about the x-server problem.

Third update My husband called and told me the hint to get the live cd running. And he said that the installation would just take ten minutes once the live cdis loaded. Reality is: after at least 5 minutes the live cd is finally loaded and 15 minutes later the system prompts for a reboot.

And now I'm back at the same problem as yesterday. Screen goes black when starting the system. It's either a missing driver or maybe the system tries again with a redicilously high screen resolution.

I'm currently active in three rpg groups, all of the meet this week.
Yesterday my online D&D group met in the usual irc-channel. It was a fun game, although the wizard-boy was acting stupid again and rolled very bad scores (survival 9, reflex save 8, grapple check even less) and therefore nearly got killed by a strangling vine. Why was I so nice to save him? I think that happens when you play a chaotic good character. Always mocking the boy, but when he's about to die, saving him form his own stupidity (and the malevolant tress he didn't notice)

This evening my new Shadowrun group meets again. Last time we were three players and the GM and played a nice little starting adventure. Today at least one of the other players will join us (finally). Let's see what we'll do today and what character he brings.

Tomorrow should be our longest running D&D group, meeting at the house of some of the players. But I still don't know if we're going to play, because two players can't come tomorrow and the game is not really playable if we're missing two players.

On Saturday we're not going roleplaying ;)
We (my husband and me) are going to try out the tabletop game Warmachine or probably rather Hordes. That should be fun. :-)
Later on Saturday we're going to meet some friends and play Descent, a board game, that's similar to rpg's.

The sunday will be needed to get back into this world and this reality. ;-)

The last post I made was about my wedding. Then I posted a meme, like a still-alive-message.

So now I'm writing a longer entry to keep you updated on my life.

( What we did on honeymoon )

After our honeymoon we returned to our normal life, and I gained interest in reenactment again. Or rather, I gained interest in calligraphy and medieval calligraphy and book-making. So I went to the meetings of my SCA shire again. This summer I started two sewing projects, both are very well in progress.

We (my husband and me) also painted a lot of tin miniatures for the taabletop game Confrontation, that we both played. We went to two big Confrontation tournaments this summer, and wanted to play there with fully painted miniatures. We didn't quite succeed in painting all the miniatures that we wanted to play. But someday all our miniatures are assembled and painted. (the day after that the world will probably end ;-) )

( sewing project from hell and fun )

That was most of what happened this summer. Or at least most of the interesting stuff from my life.