v2.dirkz.de

Uwe already gave recommendations on for whom to vote in Sunday’s German Federal Election; in addition I was the victim of a shameless attempt to sway me into a conservative direction. My future husband sent me this.
I know that sex usually sells, but “In Bed with Angie” is not really what I want to have in my head for the next four years of her as our chancellor. Oh, and by the way: I cast an absentee ballot already, so any campaigning is lost on me …

My parents have sent me back to the Seventies for Easter. In their latest email they attached the following picture:

Now that brings back many memories:

• Sexy shorts and stockings
• Plastic bags with cool designs
• Early childhood mullets
• Knitted underwear (oh yeah!)

… and of course the fond memory of times when we actually believed that the easter bunny hid all those eggs for us and never realized that we were finding the same 10 eggs over and over again.
(just in case you are wondering - I’m the bottom left kid, a true blonde as you can see; and thanks to my dad for digitizing all the photos he took during our childhood - and for sharing them with me and now the world)

After struggling with my MovableType upgrade for some days now, I decided to move to Wordpress, picked & enhanced a new layout and uploaded my previous posts. Now I contemplate how to easily integrate my photoblog and the moblog. So there’s still a bit of work ahead. That was easier than expected - first pictures are online already!
Update on 12/4: After moving to Flickr with my pictures I also changed the gallery (which is integrated into the weblog thanks to Ramon Darrow’s plugin). So now everything can be found at the same place.

After almost one complete month without visitors (and even more weeks without posts - I know) we will now have a couple of people over at the same time. Uli will be here with a friend as soon as they make it here from Chicago (by car!?!). On Monday night Tomtom will arrive from Holland, so with Lennart, Uwe and myself here the house is going to be full again. That’s going to make it easier for the sightseeing part - we can combine a lot of the standard trips for the three of them.
The next week is Thanksgiving week - Uwe and I will be celebrating in New York, with Macy Parade and more East Village fun. Stay tuned as events unfold …

I tried out a new piece of software this weekend, called Mambo. It’s basically an Open Source system for Content Management, allowing you to put together a complete website without a single line of HTML code. There are also a couple of nifty plugins for e.g. calendars, forums, galleries, etc. that allow you to plug and play your site really easily (here’s a demo server). The administration is fairly easy, too (demo for admin site, user/pw is admin/admin).
So if you want to publish content beyond a simple weglog I would truly recommend looking into this great piece of software. Here’s what I did in 2-3 hours of installation and configuration.
Update @ midnight: I also put together a new site for klugscheisser.com, using a better engine and a cleaner layout.

The Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival brings quite a few interesting movies to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. Preceding some of these they throw in an extra short movie. The one I liked best was actually a real music video by Jonny McGovern a.k.a the Gay Pimp called “Soccer Practice".
Jonny himself stars as the infamous Gay Pimp:

Rick stars as a cute straight soccer dude:

Jonny and his possee keep stalking him and eventually get him to participate in their “manly” activities:

Fun to watch - here’s the complete clip.

We went to see Spiderman 2 last night - and were pleasantly surprised how great a sequel it is. In contrast to some other flicks, Sam Raimi took the story to a completely different level than in the first one and made us live through Spidey’s quarterlife crisis with him - including questioning his career and relationship, something we probably all can relate to. Go see it!

After not writing for a couple of weeks let me briefly summarize the main events:

• I didn’t make it to the New York Gay Pride: After last years’ experience I couldn’t really be tempted again. I did however spend two weekends in the East Village dive bars …
• I didn’t make it to the Cologne Gay Pride: That one I actually regret, but the flights ran above $ 1,000 which wasn’t really worth it. But I did get quite a few audio impressions from the festivities :-)
• Lennart and I spent this 4th of July weekend in Washington: That was entertaining. I remembered Washington as a quaint city with nothing but Government officials, but we actually found some nice spots where real people hang out and have fun. So we’ll probably be back some other time for a real pub crawl.
• Uwe is out of the country and enjoying Germany: The apartment is in need of a little attention, our meal choices tend to be less from the fridge and more from the local restaurants, and probably the mobile bill will be going through the roof this month - only two more weeks and it will be back to normal again.
• my latest geek-tool is a HP iPaq
• my latest non-geek-tool is a bicycle

We spent last night with Michael and Shelle to celebrate not just Independence, but also Michaels birthday - we couldn’t find out how old he actually turned and he refused to wear his present for the parade, but it was a fun evening regardless.
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I’m leaving for Germany today. I’ll be in Erlangen for most of the time (Monday night until Friday noon) but hopefully will also be able to visit friends and family while I’m there. If the IT works out I will post some news and maybe some pictures from my trip.

And why did this horrible woman Ruslana win this year’s Eurovision Song Contest?

I admit, there was no extraordinary entry this year that would have been a safe winner, but her Wild Dance was definitely in the bottom half for me. Well, at least next year we’ll see a new host location in East Europe.

Finally, the wait is over … Tomorrow we’ll be able to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, live from Istanbul through a webstream. Of course we’ll also have the third annual Eurovision Party once we have the Video CDs over here - then with all the true fans of fantabulous Euro-Hits.
Finally, the wait is over … On Friday I’ll be heading to Germany for a customer meeting, and I’ll have the weekend to synch up with everyone. No plans yet, but I’m sure the schedule will fill up quickly.

One of the little known (or just seldomly talked about) facts of like is that beer has a blurring effect on the already fine line between straight and erm not-so-straight. Here’s yet another example:

Two perfectly straight dudes meet for a fun day under their car.

They even have a cute girl that not just accepts their favorite hobby, but even joins them in a fun do-it-yourself afternoon.
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During Equality Forum’s Blockfest in the Gayborhood:

Have you ever heard of wikis? Germans in my age might remember a young viking boy who always had brilliant ideas and thus could save his father’s ass in every episode of a German cartoon series.
But the wiki I’m talking about is a great invention on the web. It’s a collaborative knowledge platform (the original WikiWikiWeb can be found here). It allows everybody to enter their knowledge, opinions, etc. about a certain topic and also to comment on or add to others’ entries. It’s basically using an automated linking system to build up a network of knowledge nodes that serves as a repository for various topics. The term “Wiki wiki” means “super fast” in the Hawaiian language, and entering & maintaining information is really super-easy.
My current favorite wiki-sites are:
- Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia
- halfbakery, a home for half-baked ideas
Everybody who has known me for a while now will most certainly remember my brilliant idea of a collection for knowledge that is only borderline-useful, mainly serving smartasses and the like. As I already had reserved the domain www.klugscheisser.com (translating to www.smartass.com), it was easy to decide that a wiki would be the most appropriate concept for this.
So without further ado I introduce klugscheisser.com, the up and coming platform for all the facts of life that didn’t really make it into the encyclopedias of the world. If you have any of this type of knowledge to share, be my guest and let the world know.

I finally managed to get this dual purpose site to work. My personal weblog and an integrated photoblog where I can publish all my collections of images for you.
As usual, feel free to comment or send me feedback.