so what does that have to do with chernobyl you may ask? let me explain! those that know me better are well familiar with my interest in everything nuclear; in fact at one stage during school i wanted to study quantum physics and work at a research nuclear reactor. nuclear reactors hold a certain fascination… i can’t exactly pinpoint it, but it’s partly due to the fact you can’t see, hear, smell, taste or feel radiation and yet it can kill you. running a nuclear power plant is like playing with fire: if you aren’t careful enough you can get burned… or burn the whole plant down. and that what happened on april 26, 1986 in the reactor block 4 of the chernobyl nuclear power plant.

what followed is well known (at least i assume) and the impact of the meltdown was underscored by cold war politics and the way communism worked. (in fact, one could easily point out the communist system as one of the culprits that eventually led to the meltdown but that would be too easy. shift changes and less experienced night shift workers were/are also common in western countries.) so reactor block 4 blew up and nobody actually knew the extend of the incident or how to deal with it properly. brave firemen rushed to the site to deal with the fire but eventually that made things worse and the top of the reactor blew off and spew a crazy amount of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. naturally, communist russia didn’t tell anyone in the west about the incident: mind you, cold war times didn’t promote open communication between the east and west at all. only when workers at a swedish nuclear power plant picked up unusual high radiation readings things started to surface… and the nuclear fallout cloud was well on its way to central and western europe.

i do remember quite clearly the day when it was made public in austria: authorities urged everyone to stay inside and discard home grown vegetables and fruits. in school we weren’t allowed to go play outside in the playground in the breaks. but my father, being the man he was, ignored all of that. by the time the fallout cloud reached austria it was raining heavily and hence all the radioactive isotopes came nicely down with the raid. and my father was out in the field all day long, right out there in the radioactive rain… you can’t see or smell radiation so he didn’t believe that it could do any harm to him. he even insisted on eating the home grown salad from our garden, just to prove nothing could happen to him.

well, he clearly was wrong. in november 1991 he was diagnosed with colon cancer… he underwent surgery and one round of chemo but he lost the fight to cancer on june 24, 1992. of course i can’t say with absolute certainty that chernobyl is to blame for him getting cancer. “official” reports say that the overall effect on the health of people in central/western europe is negligible and the fallout cloud did not cause an increase of cancer. anyway, austria got hit by the fallout pretty hard and there is still a lot of cesium 137 in the ground. in fact authorities still issue warnings not to eat large amounts of wild mushrooms.

this all led to me being quite interested in radiation, nuclear fission and the chernobyl accident in general. the internet is a wonderful source for information in this regard… since a year or so you can book guided day trips to the “exclusion zone” (30 km around the power plant) and see the places of the worst man made industrial accident yourself. some people who went there post awesome pictures and reports. it’s both awesome and creepy at the same time. i often say i would like to go on a day trip to the chernobyl nuclear power plant… time stands still there, everything is like it was at the end of april 1986 with all the cold war atmosphere to it. considering the remaining reactor blocks were only shut down back in 2000… it cannot be so dangerous. yet it still has a dangerous aspect to it… step off the road into the vegetation and you are greeted with a hefty dose of radiation… the fascination remains…

what is a more fitting view at the future than going back to the moon? how exciting! funny how they are going back to the good old design from the 1960s. i want to live to see human beings returning to the moon and establishing a permanent base there. additionally, i want to be there when the first human being sets foot on the mars.

case and accessories:
SilverStone Temjin T10 black with window
Enermax Infiniti 720W
Noiseblocker Multiframe MF12 S2 fans
Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW 22″ widescreen display

water cooling:
Innovatek G-Flow CPU water block
Innovatek Coolmatic GTX 280 GPU water block
Innovatek HPPS Plus 12V pump
Innovatek Fan-O-Matic Pro controller
BlackICE GT Stealth 240 radiator

components:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Asus P5E64 WS Evolution
Corsair TW3X4G1600C9DHX G DDR3-1600 8GB
Asus EN GTX280
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500gb SATA II x4 for a raid 0+1 setup totaling 1TB of useable space

• intel or nvidia chipset? thats the big question regarding my new computer i am about to build. i am perfectly happy with my current intel chipset and hence going for a motherboard with an intel x48 chipset would be the logical choice. however, there is still that big question whether or not i should invest into SLI which means i have to get a nvidia chipset (like the 790i) for SLI to work since it does not play nice (or rather not at all) with intel. i am really not sure if SLI is worth the trouble and if a 9800gx2 (instead of 2x 9800 GTX) will suffice. meh.
• i finally caught up on the forth season of House and now i am looking for a new tv show to turn my attention to during summer. i am going to give Lost a try since it is something different than House and having J. J. Abrams as co-creator/writer/director/executive producer is always a plus.
• oh my, why do Maxim Recovery Bars in the flavour Banana with Chocolate coating taste so unbelievably good? the downside is that they are rather hard to come by here. why can’t Powerbar create something similar tasty? 

ad 2. You gotta stay active. well, i wasn’t very active when i left school to begin with but my activity level dropped almost to zero when i started my studies. at around my 21st birthday i noticed that climbing one flight of stairs makes me breathless and i told myself to do something about it. i got myself a mountainbike and a stationary trainer and that’s where my obsession with cycling started. i think it is very important to maintain a decent level of fitness as you get older.

ad 4. Junk food will come back to bite you in the butt. i think that goes hand in hand with point 2 actually. during the early years of my studies, was not only sedentary but i ate like 5 times per week at McDonalds because it was “fast” food. i simply did not have the time to cook or prepare healthy meals. unfortunately, i did not stop going to fast food joints until i have almost finished my studies. i wish it had occured to me earlier that junk food is simply bad for you. these days i try to make up for it by eating loads of whole grain or organic stuff and being a part time vegetarian (that means i eat chicken and/or fish once or twice a week but no other red meat).

ad 10. Make time to pursue your passion, no matter how busy you are. yep, i am still working on that one. during the last two years of my studies i was so consumed by my work and research that i couldn’t focus on anything else. it wore me down and if i had to do it all over again, i would certainly do it differently. i would set aside some hours per week for stuff i love to do or always wanted to do.

ad 13. All that time you spend watching TV is a huge, huge waste of time. i wish someone would have told me that when i was 15. i watched way too much TV in my late teens and early twenties. luckily, i managed to quit watching TV about eight years ago and i do not regret it. all the junk on TV is just not worth your precious time.

ad 18. Tequila is seriously evil. yep, i could not agree more on this one. maybe i should change it to “Red Bull is seriously evil” though, since i did not drink as much alcohol as guzzled down Red Bull in my early to mid twenties. so for me personally, Red Bull is the drink of the devil.

ad 19. Yes, you can do a marathon. Don’t put this goal off — it’s extremely rewarding. i would rather replace marathon with Ironman but a marathon is alright as a first goal in terms of endurance events. i would love to cross the finish line of a marathon one day. i believe it teaches you an important lesson about yourself: that you can really do stuff that seems impossible to do if you set your mind on it.

at the moment i am at the end of season 1 and one thing struck me as weird because i haven’t noticed it before: the subtle religious or spiritual undertone of some episodes. i find it hard to believe that our dominant belief systems can survive another 200 years without any significant changes.

additionally, i am trying to picture the “galaxy” of B5, ie. put it on an actual map of our galaxy and see how big it actually is. google came up with useful information and it seems that the area of space B5 covers is actually pretty small. but still, considering the Voyager probes that were launched from Earth in the 1970s are “only” to leave our solar system now after thirty years countinous travel.

it is New Year’s Eve today and i am not sure what to expect from 2008. maybe i should put it in a B5 like phrase: i want to find something worth living for because nothing is the same anymore.

with that being said, i created a set of rules to be able to enjoy an online game and avoid a “WoW-like” situation in the future. first off, i will not take on any responsibility ingame in the form of running a guild or organizing events (including hosting a guild website or forum). i will not hurry home or rush through ordinary tasks like eating or showering in order to be online at a given time in the evening. i will not play or even consider playing when there are other things to do. last but not least i will try to remember that it is “just a game” and shrug off any incidents that can induce drama or frustration as insignificant to me or my life. (i am not a better person just because my ingame character wears a certain armor or wields a specific weapon because in the end it really does not matter at all.)

so people are leaving WoW and are looking for greener pastures for various reasons. summertime may be a valid explanation but i think that WoW is really on a downward spiral. i was a pretty “hardcore” player raiding 5 to 6 days per week and still the eternal grind became too much to be enjoyable.

maybe it is really just a habit and you can turn every nightowl into a morning person but i doubt it would suit me. nighttime is the most productive time of the entire day for me. i get more done between 8pm and 1am than during daytime.

so here’s a list of potential (new) hobbies:

i have to admit sometimes i am tempted to “push that button” again, but i “wasted” over two years playing that game and it’s not something im proud of. granted, it was partly a worthwhile experience, but when the game takes over it is just too much.

right now im in the middle of “reconstructing” my life, not only as far as furniture and hobbies are concerned, i think i have arrived at a crossroads and i need to decide which way to take. it is one of the “big questions”, namely “what do you want to do with your life?” goes hand in hand with “who are you?” and “what do you want?” but i digress from the issue at hand. i don’t know the answer yet, but i am trying to figure it out.