This window popped up at me this morning at work. Thought it quite funny. Microsoft is protecting me from Internet Explorer. Nice.
Oh, and a cool link - check out this INCREDIBLY close-up detailed picture of a grain of salt next to a peppercorn. I like to think how God is not only infinitely big, but also infinitely small - going into the depths of cells, atoms, quarks is just as amazing as going into the depths of space.

Joshua on Cover of Cute Babies Magazine!

There are some nice little Flickr toys over at http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/.

In just about five minutes I made up this (fake) magazine cover. Pretty cute, eh? ;) Admit it, at first you actually thought this was genuine! ;)

Found this neat little personality test on politics right here: The Politics Test. Here's how I fared, believe it or not:

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (50% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist

For those of you faithful readers who don't speak a word of German, try using Google's Translate tool to decipher what Stephi wrote. It gets especially interesting when you translate it into French then back to German then English.
"I hope you forgive me for not having written a blog entry for such a long time" then becomes:
"I hope that you forgive me, in order one blogeingang during a so long hour to have written."
Nice, eh?

One final note - the comments for the posts are getting spammed, so I had to switch to a word verification thingy that you have to enter. Sorry, but better than having a bunch of offers for "curing baldness" or enlarging your...uh...credit rate, for example. ;-)

Well, we're back!

We've been gone on our vacation for the past two weeks which is why the blog hasn't been updated for a while.
I'm debating whether or not to do one major post on everything or a bunch of littler ones and think I'll do a bunch of littler ones.
What's really cool is I can set the time and date for each post so at first glance you'll think you just missed all the updates when in fact I'm actually just now adding them.
Muahahaha...

Anyways - short version: REFRESHING, RELAXING, GREAT. Long version: Read below. :)

Oh yeah, one more thing - guess when our flight left to go back to Berlin? 5:05 a.m.
What does that mean? It means the bus came to pick us up at the hotel at 1 a.m.
Yeah. Ouch is exactly what I said.
So we got in about 1.5-2 hours of sleep before the bus trip then maybe another 2 on the plane trip to Düsseldorf (yep, they threw in an extra stop just for fun), then another 2 this afternoon. We're dead tired. We need a vacation. Just kidding.

BTW, Joshua, as always, did INCREDIBLY well during the entire time. On each of the 5 flights over the past two weeks he pretty much slept from takeoff to landing. At the hotel, he was gushed over by more "antique little girls" (that is, grandmas) than you could shake a stick at and smiled back at each one. Even during that belly dancer thing on the boat when the music was REALLY REALLY loud, he was snoozing away. I remember my sister Jana being really easy-going as a baby, but Joshua is just ridiculously easy, it's so great!

Unfortunately it rained pretty much the whole day on our last day there, which was especially disappointing for Stephi, since we had planned to get a whole day at the beach - something she had really been looking forward to. Tuesday and Thursday would have been perfect for that, but I had asked if we could just chill at the hotel on those days (not thinking the weather could actually change) - so we had planned on doing the beach on Friday and Saturday, neither of which ended up working.
But at least it stopped raining in the evening, so we went shopping.

OK, moral question of the day - I bought two Game Boy games there for pretty cheap, unfortunately the reason they were so cheap is because they weren't original games, they were copies. The police apparently completely tolerates that there (there was a police station right on the main store street where they were selling all sorts of crap). So - what should I do? Toss the games? Keep them and just don't buy any more of that sort? I think that legally I'm fine, since that sort of thing is completely allowed in Turkey, and I didn't do the copying of the game which is the big offense in Germany - but I'm not sure.
Thoughts?

Well, all in all: Simply great vacation, wonderful time.

Wednesday was the highlight of the trip, at least for me - we took a day's cruise along the coast of Turkey stopping at a few different inlets to swim in the ocean (jumping off a ship into a beautiful blue ocean is a very relaxing experience, BTW).
Then, shortly before lunch, we stopped at Phaselis - basically a set of ruins of an old city (probably dating back to around 700 B.C.) - mainly Roman / Greek ruins.
You can still see the aquiducts and the Roman baths' floors and an old theater with the awesome acoustics. Not especially informative, seeing as there were no signs anywhere about anything, but a beautiful place surrounded by forests.

Then the afternoon was more swimming plus a (very good) male belly dancer who I think put Stephi under some kind of spell since she dragged me onto the dancefloor (in the center of the boat) where she and about twenty others danced and I wiggled for two songs or so. :)

Pictures soon.

Our first actual "just us" vacation for the past two years! We're in Kemer, Turkey.
Phew, the weather is awesome here - pretty much non-stop sunny, the water's about 24°C, we're in a great four-star hotel (which is about the equivalent of a U.S. or Euro 3-star hotel) with good food, as many free drinks as you like, and a nice swimming pool.
We went to the beach on Monday, which is a pebbled beach rather than a sandy one (advantages: no sand in every crevice, disadvantages: it...ouch...can hurt your feet a...ouch...bit to just walk in or...ow...out of the water).
We'll be updating our Flickr page with pictures soon - remember boys and girls: the address is h-t-t-p-:-/-/-w-w-w-.-f-l-i-c-k-r-.-c-o-m-/-p-h-o-t-o-s-/-j-o-h-n-s-t-e-p-h-i.

We've been in Krakow this first week for the GCM Euro Pastors/Leaders' Summit.
It's been a wonderful time, touching base with various church leaders and their wives from all over the place.

Krakow itself is an interesting place, there's a very cool castle-plus-cathedral up on a hill that Stephi and I visited called uh..."Wawel" - John Paul II. actually served there as a priest for a long time.

Other than that: There was some major planning time for the upcoming GCE (Great Commission Europe - gotta love them abb.). Also, some awesome prayer times for the various countries in Europe - each of the different countries represented shared on what's going on, and then we'd pray for that country and its neighbouring countries (including mini mini countries like Andorra or San Marino, or the Holy See).
The food was just great, we had some good Texas Hold'em poker-playing with my Dad, my brother Timothy and his wife.

Oh, and, gotta share this with you, it was in our free Krakow travel guide - it seems the author has quite the experience:

Drunk Tank
Be warned: Polish beer and vodka are rocket fuel. If you’re determined to make a prat of yourself then make sure it’s not in front of the law. A trip to Krakow’s premier drunk tank (ul Rozrywkowa 1 – which literally translates as Entertainment Street) will set you back 250 zl [equivalent to about $85] for a 15 hour stay. In return for your cash expect a strip search, a set of blue pajamas and the company of a dozen mumbling vagrants. Those resisting arrest will find themselves strapped down to a bed, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-style. Refreshment comes in the form of limitless coffee, though the mug it comes in will smell of urine for a reason. Credit cards not accepted.

OK, before I go to bed, three very cool links (I know, I really need to stop always just handing quick links to you guys and writing more substantial stuff, just don't have the time right now...):

1. Digg - this is actually where I'm finding a lot of cool links. Basically anyone can sign up there and submit a "cool link" (in their opinion that is) - anyone else can then "digg" the link if they like it - basically give it one positive vote. There are no negative votes, only one (1) positive vote or not, per person. The links with the most "Diggs" (up in the thousands) really tend to be very cool - it's kind of like grassroots democracy for cool links! :)

2. PocketMod - Create your own organizer with just one single piece of paper and a pair of scissors - it has folding instructions, and a little tool for making your own pocket-size 8-page daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly organizer, or to-do list, etc. I like this idea a lot, maybe having a little thing like that will make me actually use it rather than forget it at home all the time. Then again, maybe not. ;)

3. BlogLines - sign up and create a list of your favorite sites with an RSS feed (if you don't know what that is - basically any blog or news site has one). BlogLines keeps the list and can notify you if there is a new article. So basically you no longer need to visit the sites to know whether someone put up a new entry or not - you just go to your BlogLines account and see for ALL the sites you like whether there's anything new or not. No more asking yourself over and over again: "Did Mike Biang finally update his blog?" ;) (That one goes out to my new faithful reader...)

Woohoo! I now have 100 GMail invites. So, anyone who wants an invitation to the invitation-only exclusive top dog GMail club, simply ask me (either in the comments, or send me an email)! :)

Oh, and I repeat what I wrote last week some time: GMail rocks!

Here's a funny quote for the day:

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
- Emo Philips

US President announces "War on Weather"

:D