Books: Recap 2011 – Outlook 2012

January 1, 2012 / Katrin / No comments

First post in 2012. I am not much of a Christmas or New Year’s fan, that is why I made no posts about it. The first post of 2012 will be about books. I updated my list of books. I made it to 44 books in 2011, not as much as I wanted to read but progress compared to the last couple of years.

My roommate gave me a kindle for Christmas (I asked for book store vouchers and this is what I got) and I am so in love with that thing. I got it on the 27th and have already read 5 books on it. At the moment you get a book for free each day (until Jan 6) and the Kindle Deal of the day where you get a book for 99 cents instead of 8 or 10 Euros. I downloaded most of them and some books that are for free anyways.

I also finished Fall of the Giants and the first book of Game of Thrones. It took me ages, however I pretty much liked Fall of the Giants. I need a beak from Game of Thrones now and read something else. As I stated in a post before: too many characters, too many places, it is all confusing for me and I am still not too sure where the author is going with the series.

Short reviews about the Kindle books I read:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
I knew why I wouldn’t spend any money on that before, but since it was for free in the Kindle Store I gave it a try. I was horribly bored. Really? That is all the fuss about it. There were 12 stories and I liked 2.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
I have to admit, I never read that before and I really liked it. I liked the plays with words, maths and logic. Nerd alert!
The book was also for free in the shop.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Another free book. I never read it, just saw the movies they made. Also not really my kind of thing. Might be more of a boy’s book.

The Importance of Being Earnest
I saw that play in theatre by the American Drama Group more than 10 years ago and I still remember it to be hilarious. I laughed so much. Reading a play takes away a lot from the performance, but still I would recommend it to everyone :) It is free in the Kindle Store!

Painted Ladies
This was either one of the free books they offered or the Kindle Deal. I downloaded it because it had a bit of Holocaust relation in the story. It is not outstanding, but was a quick read because the author avoids long and detailed descriptions of everything, which I really liked. The dialogues were witty.

Right now I am reading (on the Kindle) God is not Great which was one of the free books. I think I really like it. The author describes why he has a problem with what people make out of religion. I only read 10% so far (Kindle shows you that) and he said “Religion is poison” several times already. Me likes.

Since I have no sleeve for the Kindle and those are ridiculously expensive, I don’t want to carry it around with me, yet. That gives me the option to read the “real” books during my travels to and back from work. I will start with Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave, which I got for Christmas from a friend.

What I absolutely have to read is Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith. The 3rd book of his series. It is already out. According to Amazon the English soft cover will be out mid January and so far the price would be cheaper than the Kindle edition. So I will wait if it stays like that. If so I will buy the regular book. Now that I think about it, I will do this anyways because I have the other 2, so it would be stupid not have the 3rd in the shelf.

Also I will definitely buy the real book versions of any book Sebastian Fitzek publishes in the future. It will be hard to get the signature on an ebook.

Another series I am interested in is The Hunger Games. My friend Suzie loves them. All three books are available in the Kindle Store for about 15 Euro right now (instead of 42). I am still thinking to buy it.

Now that I am done with my distance learning studies (I sent my thesis in time), I don’t really have anything to worry about and could spend so much more time on reading. I hope I will have the energy after work to do so.

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Review: FataL-Exception

December 8, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

My flatmate Claus is member of metal band (I think if it has to be categorized even more, it would be Power Metal) and on October 27 I attended one of their gigs for the first time. They had already played some concerts before, but for some reason I hesitated to go to a place called “Orgasmatron”. Additionally they played gigs in Halle/Saale. (Today they play in Chemnitz). Anyways, this time they played in the social cultural centre “Die Villa” in Leipzig, so I gave in to eventually see them live. I am not much of a fan of crowds of people and loud environments, so I have to admit I haven’t gone there with too much enthusiasm. Still, I was really surprised, because Claus’ band is pretty good. (Plus I was on the “guest list”, muhahaha, GUEST LIST, you know, I am important).
Already seeing them do their soundcheck was like “Woah”. Yes, even though Claus is my flatmate I really haven’t had a clue what music they were actually playing, because I force him to play his keyboard with headphones to not drive me crazy.
FataL-Exception (the name was more or less initiated by Claus, being on a phone call with one of his computer science friends, who happened to have a fatal exception in his program…) played for around 40mins, but it felt like only 20. I was not bored one time, even though their slow song didn’t really do it for me. I have no clue what they sing about (which might also not be too important in the genre), but the music was outstanding and in my opinion they were the best of the three bands that played that evening. They surpassed my expectations of being just a regular amateur band, hammering on their instruments to let off steam. I loved the guitars in particular. In general I really do like music including lots of E-guitars and drums. The drummer came with a huge set of drums, however I wondered if he did to hide behind it, because he didn’t actually use all of it too much. But it looked good :) Also I adored Juliáns voice, even though as stated before, I have no idea what he was singing about.

I am unable to describe the music, because I am not good with words, luckily some of their tracks are available on MySpace and videos of that night’s performance can be seen on YouTube. I list the links below the member list and play list of the evening.

FataL-Exception
Julián- Vocals/Guitar
Marcus Wheel-Laugh – Guitar
Conrad – Bass
Claus – Keyboards
Ziege – Drums

They are in progress of recording their first demo CD at the moment. However there is already a CD available with two of their songs.

Setlist of October 27
My own desert
Until the end
Rise of ignorance
Tears of glory
Lost diamond
Salto al Vacio
Gemini
Evil red eyes

Links
www.fatal-exception.de (MySpace page. You can listen to Tears of Glory and Salto al Vacio there)
FataL-Exception YouTube Channel(You can see three videos of the concert there)
Facebook Page

I demand all of you to go to the YouTube Channel and watch the videos.

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Cats: Heaven’s 1st Birthday

December 8, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

On November 26 it was Heaven’s first birthday. My camera is broken, but I wanted to have some decent pictures of her and my mobile really cannot fulfill this. So Suzie came to visit me and brought her camera. Unfortunately neither Heaven nor Felix were in a mood to be photographed o.O – still there are ca. 20 new pictures in the cat gallery.

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NaNoWriMo Recap

December 8, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

November ended 8 days ago and I didn’t make it to the 50000 words, however I wrote more than 41000. Since I am no regular writer, I find it a very good result. I even like the idea I followed with my story, just that my writing pretty much sucks. I think I am not too good with words and describing things to make it appear lively and a nice read. In the end, it was what it was like every year, a recap of events in my life of the past year and I could live out some things, I just can’t in real life. That is a good thing for my soul and mental well being. The incentive to write 50000 words forced me to go a bit deeper and not have my main character commit suicide after 5000 words. It helped me to develop different views and let my heart AND brain speak through them. That was worth it.

I think I even could have made the 50000 words. I didn’t even write every day, mostly weekend and the story is not really finished yet. I just had no energy after work, plus the bad feeling that I am supposed to write my thesis (for which I didn’t write a single word). I will be on the road again this weekend with two 6 hours train rides and hope to work out my thesis then. I have to hand it in by the end of December.

As for NaNoWriMo. I am pretty sure I will handle it again next year.

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November is here – National Novel Writing Month

November 1, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

November came way too fast. No real plot or outline or character except for the two main characters. It is the same every year, but this year I am open about it and even registered on the NaNoWriMo website. I never made it to the 50000 words, my main character committed suicide way too early all the time o.O I always used to work through stuff that happened in my year. I am positive my main character will survive this time. I wrote 411 words this morning before work. (I got up at 3am to see an epic “Castle” episode and going back to sleep for an hour would have been really stupid). I could have kept going on but I had to get my tram and almost missed it o.O

So now all you know. I am participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo – officially and work is absolutely in my way right now and I also have to write my thesis. I started with that already, but I have so much to write about or that I could write about, damn, I really need time management at the moment. :D

Oh and don’t expect high class literature in any way. I am actually not a good writer. I don”t think I really have a go for good wording, but it is enough for getting stuff off your chest and deal with it somehow and maybe get another perspective by developing the scenes and characters. it is a bit like role playing.

EDIT: 11.58pm: Made it to 1731 words in total today. Whohooo.

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Website: New Content

October 27, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

Alright I added a bit more content to the website.

I created a gallery with pics of myself. See my development :D
Also I added about 100 pictures of my cats.

A little update on what I am doing right now. I finally started my thesis titled: “Improvement of Customer Satisfaction by increasing the amount of first call resolutions and better ticket handling through knowledge transfer, employee motivation and communication”

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Cats: Introduction on BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods)

October 14, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

Most information of this will be in videos, because I wanted to try my webcam and I was a bit tired of writing. Unfortunately the videos are not too good both in quality and showing myself. it was the first time I did that so I felt pretty awkward. Also my English could have been better.

I want to state first: After watching the videos you will have only an idea what BARF is about. If you decide to do this with your cats as well, please get more information on it, also you need to consider the needs of your own cats.

Introduction
How to calculate supplements
More on supplements
Summary and final result

In addition a few links:
DuBarfst Community (German)
Blaue Samtpfote Lots of information and recipes for starters (German)
Lillys Bar Webshop where you can order supplements (German)

A house full of Cats Introduction on how to BARF (English)

(For some reason I had a bit of trouble finding some good sites on BARF in English, but maybe it is also just Google, refusing the English speaking sites to me when there are millions of German ones).

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Road trip Germany // October 4 – 8, 2011

October 12, 2011 / Katrin / No comments

I was so glad that October finally came and with that my vacation. It was overdue for me. The decision for my road trip was made in very short terms and actually I only wanted to go to Stuttgart to meet up with J. But then I thought, well when I am already on the way why not go a bit further and spend some more time with my dear ladies at Spangdahlem. Landstuhl was added just a couple of days before I was planning to leave for Spang. I just made the quick decision to leave another day earlier. It cost me quite a bit of money but I had a great time, so damn the money. It outweighed boredom at home. However many would say it wasn’t really vacation because all the days I spent with work related people, but those people are not just work, they are also friends, plus I am very pro establishing good customer relation. I also don’t plan to visit every store I work with.

This will be a longer entry, so I put everything behind the Read More link. I hope I won’t bore you too much.

» Read more..

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