HEY, well done! Looks like it will be a celebratory drink now, rather than a consolation drink

I'm really happy for you matey

Thanks!

Boy, I'm really glad the news was good btw, as tomorrow I depart for Pinkpop, three days of great music. http://www.pinkpop.nl/page.php?pagID=421 So this is a great start to what promises to be a very entertaining weekend. I'd hate to have had bad news about it one day before the festival, I don't think I'd have been able to get into it otherwise.

Woo Hoo, Alexander! Dog biscuits for everyone! Congrats, my friend.

Thanks Trey!

Congrats on that, its always nasty waiting for results, especially when they matter and you're not sure how it went.

First of all, Congrats to my dear Alex for passing your exam! Way to go sweetie!

And speaking of exams...my eldest daughter, Kristina, did very good on her big test after the first semester of her medical studies! She does not know her score yet, but she feels she did a good job....

Personally there's much to do now, Lena is graduating from high school on thursday and we're going to have a perty for her. I don't have time for work, now my bosses do not accept that sort of thing, unfortunately so I just say: lucky the nights are long!

I was on a music-festival friday-saturday, a b-day present from Lena. It was a synth-music-festival and just guess who the big stars were!!!

Welle Erdball!!!!!!!!!!!! Awesome, sheer joy it was...mmmmmm. And no, I was not the eldest one! Haha...

So, I just got back from Pinkpop this morning, and it was awesome!

The first multi day festival I've gone to, and I really enjoyed the experience.

My highlights;
Metallica. Without a doubt IMO the best performance of the three days. I've been a Metallica fan since as long as I can remember but this has only been the second time I've seen them live. It was well worth it though. Far better performance then the first time I saw them, not that that was a bad one mind you.

Flogging Molly. I've listened to a few songs of this band while at a friends place, but that was nothing like seeing them in real life. This was the first act performed on the main stage and a great way to kick things off. So much energy involved with this band, and the great sound they can produce using a fiddle and banjo along with classical rock instruments really impressed me.

Kaiser Chiefs. Another band I wasn't too familiar with, but one I'm definitely going to look into. Really put a fire in the crowd.

And I loved the Verve. Hearing the bittersweet symphony at a concert is so much better then hearing it from a cd.

I guess I could go on and on here, but suffice to say I can recommend Pinkpop with such a lineup to anyone who enjoys Rock and the likes. Really a great experience

So Metallica would still be worth seeing, huh? Might have to go to Bonnaroo (a music festival for those who don't know) this year. Mastodon is going too, which would rock my world.

I've also seen Flogging Molly live, and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to. The song "Devil's Dance Floor" was my favorite that day.

The best concert of my life though, was when I saw The Mars Volta a couple months back. Words cannot describe.

Yeah, Metallica is definitely still worth it.

hm, The Mars Volta eh? I don't know them. Perhaps I should look up some of their music. Can they be compared to another band?

Imagine rock mixed with eastern influences, no wait add a smidgeon of funk... they're a lot of very talented musicians almost playing freeform jazz in metal/rock style...oh, nuts to it, just take a listen


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqVD7cxujb0

A late congratulations to Alexander on passing his exam. Glad to hear that your daughter did well too, Minque.

Just think, you can torment him (and me) with it in just two days!

Congrats to Minque's daughter, and Alexander. Now that it's summer vacation, I'm currently in Turks & Caicos, one of the U.K. islands in the Carribean. I'm forced to use this lap top that has a mediocre wireless connection. And when my family goes back home I'm off to church camp the day after.

I don't think I'll be on-line for that brief time period. But congrats to everyone else who's graduating from something, or on their finals.

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Now graduation is approachin extremely fast for daughter number two! On thursday is the big day so I will be a tad absent for the rest of the week, me and Daedroth that is!

Congrats to Minque's daughter on her graduation. On to even more exciting frontiers! Have fun, folks.

So, guess who has a broken front tooth?

Not sure how I managed it, either. I was out with some friends last night celebrating the end of exams, and at no point did my face or mouth bash against something. Only thing I can think of that might have done it was a fall I had when I tripped that jarred my teeth together kinda harshly. But nevertheless, I'm no missing half my right front tooth, it makes me look like a hobo (even moreso than usual ) and makes me talk kinda funny

EDIT: Just got back from the dentist, where my tooth was rebuilt XD. So I no longer look hobo-ish or speak with a slight lisp.

Bad luck there, I imagine it was a good night if you don't remember breaking a tooth...

I'm all happy here because my motorbike just passed an MoT it might have failed so all is well in the world. Well barring the price of petrol which just hit £1.15 a litre which stings a bit.

Nah, I remember everything. That's why I can't figure out how the damn thing broke.... at no point did I do something/have something happen that should have been able to break a tooth >_<
Was definitely a good night though

Okay so I chose to come home earlier. I'm not th one who's got the pictures but I toke some pictures with my phone at the environment (or landscape) to show you that Sweden is NOT like Bloodmoon (in the summer).
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Your just taking those in summer so we can't win by pointing out the snow in winter.

Just kidding, of course.

We don't have any snow in the winter either.

You've never had snow for winter? Texas is as south as you can get without being tropical, and we sometimes have snow for a couple of days

Yep, I've been off for a while. Still looking for an apartment in Lander, Wyoming--seasonal job through mid-September. Haven't been able to unload my PC from my car yet (I'm in the public library right now). But once I get a place I'm going to see about catching up with my writing obligations.

Catastrophe is here! My pc laptop got itself a very nasty trojan...or rather two trojans. Those beggars have very thoroughly prevented me from getting online, they also took the opportunity to damage my videocard or its drivers so I have a sweet turqouise line across my screen!

But thank all mighty gods for my Mac! Which is the device I'm using right now.

I hope I can save my documents on the pc because that one is going to "hospital-for-computers" tomorrow!

Canis- great to see you back! Good luck with the living-space search.

Minque- Once the PC is repaired, AVG is a good, free anti-virus program. We are considering a MacBook ourselves for when we travel to visit the grandsons....

It has been consistently over 90 F (32 C for our metric and European readers) here. July will probably be brutal.

Of course, but we had snow in like a week last winter. Snow is getting more rare these days.

Minaque, I just went through the nasty experience myself:

Try these, and they are ALL free, and VERY effective.

Malwarebyte's Anti Malware - Slow, but VERY VERY thorough, free updates

Comodo Firewall Pro - free udpates, very powerful as well, will take some time to get used to as it is a third party firewall, and everytime you bring up a program at first, you'll get a pop-up

Spybot - Serch and Destroy. I like the name. Its freeware, so it isnt too shiny but lives up to its name.

To be honest, with Anti Virus I tend to believe you get what you pay for. AVG et al are fine, but they only pick up viruses when they scan - they don't have real time scanning on the free editions.

The best I've found has been Kaspersky, which doesn't hog all the system resources like Norton or MacAfee. Just depends on whether you want to spend money or not

Your statement is quite true BSD-IES. Norton and MacAffee, I find to be quite ineffective honestly. While you dont really have realtime scanning with the free ones, it s a burden you bear to do it manually, and considering just a few mouse clicks is all it takes, versus 20 or 30 bucks, ill do the few mouse clicks. Besides, comodo firewall pro DOES have realtime protection, it just wont have autoscanning, again, all you have to do is click two things.

I find a great antivirus to be Avast. It automatically updates, it's free, and it scans in realtime. I've been saved more than once from inadvertently downloading a virus by it due to it's saving a popup type thing saying "the file you are attempting to download contains a <whatever>"

Good suggestion, wolfie.

ONLY ONE MONTH AND SOME CHANGE UNTIL I GO TO ARGENTINA!

The wait is murder... absolute murder

Thanks guys for the support! You know I actually paid a great amount of money to get a good Anti-virus program! I bought Norton 360! It should be ever so good and safe! Firewalls and daily searchs and updates...Continous scanning..oh gee you mention it! But somehow these trojans got through....hmm I do have a fairly good idea how, but ..hmmm nevermind, let's just say I might be one to blame...

Now Norton is quite messy so I think I'll get another program when the darn thing is cured.

I'm going to my niece's graduation on friday.....oh boy more party! "hick" I was out on the sea yesterday with my colleagues, it was very nice except from the fact that due to very heavy wind, a glass of red wine just emptied itself over me and my handbag! It completely ruined my white blouse so...crap I'll have to dye it dark blue or something...."sigh"

But we had a lot of fun!

Argentina would be cool to visit. What are you going to be doing over there?

Well...... I use Avast, don't know who in my family chose it, but we've used it once and the thing that got in our comp was destroyed. I'll be in camp from sunday to friday next week, the no-electronics-allowed. They don't let you have a cell to call your parents (is texting really that bad?).

i have returned to florida and thus returned to the internet!

how is the chorrol community?

We're good. Wow, it's been a while since I last saw you around

Welcome back!

Welcome back Shogun Sniper!! Doomie, do you go to Argentina every year? Didn't you go there last year around this time too? Or was that another South American country ..

so i totally got a PS3 for the sole purpose of playing metal gear solid 4... anyone else got one?

Ahh Shogun! Nice to see you around...

Anyway I'm off to Finland on monday...business and work, probably no free time at all..but still I like to go away...see something different..

Summer is officially here, and the weather has cooled about 5 or 10 degrees (F); which is a relief. However, we are experiencing the Invasion of the Grandsons, so hot weather is the least of our worries....

There will be much shouting, running about in a random fashion, perhaps abrasions and contusions, tears, etc., etc.-- not to mention what the boys themselves will get up to....

Hope everyone else is having a great start to their summer (or winter for those of you who live in the Southern Hemisphere).

Phew..I'm copying my 35GB of music from my crashed pc to an external harddrive, jeez it takes time! Then I'll have to check that darn thing for viruses as well....It's just sooooooo boring.

Thank god for my Mac! Otherwise I'd been very much out!

Poor hubby, his ethernet-usb adapter is dead, he's got no internet! I'm just so tired of all this crap

treydoggie .. that sounds like such fun with the grandsons. It must be grand to have little boys after raising your own kids once. I saw a wonderfully fit handsome grandfather at the traffic light with snowy white hair and beard under a straw hat wearing an orange shirt and he was pushing the cutest round little baby in a lime green stroller under a lime green umbrella and they both looked so happy. As I said hi and walked on, I thought that is really the perfect picture of Florida 'the grandparent and grandchild generation together having fun in the sun.'



And Minque, I know your frustration. We are never so aware of how dependent we are on the internet as when a sudden lightning storm pops up and we have to go off computers and unplug from the wall. At least I do, Cain now has an APC surge protector. But even worse than that is when the electricity totally goes out and man does life stop then. Like during Hurricane Charlie when we spent 3 days in the dark in our windowless soundproof studios .. but man we could still hear Charlie howling outside. It was frightening. We all pay attention to hurricane preparedness now; we didn't really before the summer of '04.

Yeah I know. Everything with internet has been weird lately in our house. My msn didn't work for 2 days and my xbox live hasn't been working for the past week. I may need to buy a new router though. ZyXel isn't xbox 360 compatible. But it did work for 2 weeks.

Oh crap! I can see what that means! I'll have to fix a new router and worst of all the darn thing must be compatible with broadband-TV as well!

Oh I'm soooooooooooooooooo tired of all the internet crap, I'm lucky now at my hotel I have excellent wi-fi

Okay I'll send you a link to an Xbox 360 compatible router. It's not ZyXel. None of them works properly with 360. Mine worked for 2 weeks. There are som Linksys and Dlinks. I found a very cheap Linksys.

Oddly enough even when I failed to connect to the internet, I still have a reasonable connection to Live..... wierd. The way my family's comp is set up it would be an ordeal to disconnect it every time there was a thunderstorm (a very heavy piece of furniture would need to be moved in order to do that).

I've never had to endure a hurricane (I'm in Texas so that figures), take shelter for a tornado a couple of times, but it passed our part of town by. So I'm pretty much zero on first-hand storm experience, but discovery helps fill in the gaps.

Well, my life right now is pretty much just a bittersweet mixture of excitement and anxiety. I'm moving next week (for a whole year) and while I'm excited to start school and stuff, it really sucks leaving everything behind. So...

I'm just hoping all goes well.

I can see clearly now! There's gonna be a new router, hopefully compatible with all our gear....but I put internet as number 1 priority! Just as information. There!


Danny where are you moving to? Which school will you be going to then...

I do wish you all the best, and just imagine how fun it will be to live on your own! I couldn't wait when I was a student....

I'm moving too, in two weeks to Colorado. Permanently. Good luck with the move and school, it should be fun .

The only bad part about me moving is I won't see my wife for 22 weeks while I'm at the academy, which really, REALLY, sucks. I'll have a good job at the end though so I'll just bear it.

I got Live working for the moment. Don't know how. It just works.