blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

My trainer, Rolf Stebler recommended me this book. After explaining that the author, Achim Achilles, can not stand “nordic walkers”, I knew I had to read it… His style of writing allows you to be with him in his situation. Often this situation will be familiar to you which makes the reading even more emotional. Sometimes I encountered myself sympathizing with the author.

This Book was fun to read and reminded me of many experiences I had and still have in my life as sportsman.
I definitely recommend this book to every runner or triathlete.

Sorry for the German title but as far as I know this book is only available in German therefore it does not make sense to translate the title.
This book is a guide for complete unhappiness. The author explains in several chapters different approaches which can and will lead to unhappiness. At the beginning it is somewhat strange to read, because till now I have only read books which told me what to do to accomplish something which I wanted. But who wants to be unhappy?
Anyway I think it is a great book and it is fun to read even though sometimes it is exhausting to catch all the statements the other way around.

After installing Windows Vista on my new Lenovo, Windows claimed the whole disk space for itself. Maybe I missed the option to adjust it during the installation process.
Anyway, Vista provides a tool to shrink a hard disk partition. Using this tool I was able to downsize the partition to 145GB but not more. After some investigation I found out, that many unmovable files (system information) where written at the end of this 145GB. With only about 20GB on a 145GB volume it was no possible to reduce it more.
Fortunately I found help on the Internet. I will not explain the whole process here again, because I think they did a pretty good job on How-To Geek. I have to add only one thing: I did not delete the c:\pagefile.sys.
On this How-To Geek site there are several programs mentioned. The one I used was PerfectDisk2008. An absolutly brilliant tool! The only down is that it is not free… but with this tool I could have downsized my partition to 21GB
Now I am working happily with an 80GB partition.

Maybe a better Title would be “beer crate walk” or as we call it: Harassenlauf. But that would not sound so reputable.

We met on Friday (9th Mai) at 5o’clock; several people gathered on the platform #1 at the Zürich HB. Well equipped with meat for the barbecue and a beer crate per two individuals. We drove together to Adliswil where we took the cable car to Felsenegg. There we started our journey to the Uetliberg which is nearly 6 Km to walk. Our travel route was along the planetary path which was not so important at all. But at least we had a good reason to put the crate down and rest a little at every planet to read the information about it.
Fortunately we had enough liquid energy with us so we were able to sustain an impressing speed. After a little more then just two hours we arrived at the Uetliberg with nearly no leftover beer and no casualties.

The rest of the evening was used to barbecue the meat and enjoy the splendid view over Zürich.
Thanks to all who took part at this event!

Ps: Another report on the planetary path with more details about the path itself

I started this post over a week ago, but forgot about it…

From time to time I think back to this great day on the racing track. Of course I remember only the good parts of it. I certainly will not remember that I got up at 5o’clock in the morning.

The last time I did not write much about this day, so here is some more information:

Overall there were about 50 people attending this course. These people were split into three groups: novices, amateurs, experts.
The whole morning and the half afternoon we worked by turns. Break, theory, driving, and each turn was 30 minutes long. But before we could go onto the track we attached a sticker with the start number to the bike. Moreover we had to do a volume test. After that, we, including our bikes, were ready for the track.
The second half of the afternoon we had some time for free training. Again we worked in 20′ turns but this time only two groups: slow (relatively spoken) and fast. As novice I joined the slow driving group

The ride home was quite arduous, because I had to be very careful and slow down all the time to prevent a speeding ticket!

As I promised here are some pictures:

I read the book Into the Wild. It is the true story of Christopher McCandless who died in the wilderness of Alaska in summer 1992. After graduating in 1990 he decided to leave the society to live alone and in poverty. He drove, walked, and hitchhiked for nearly two years through the USA.
The book gives an insight of the living and thinking of McCandless. It is not always thrilling but I liked reading it especially because it made me think about my own life!

After I finished the book I watched the movie adaption. Of course the movie does not give us such a deep insight into his weltanschauung and beliefs as the book. Even though I think it is a very good movie. Watching this movie was for me like getting a summary of what I read. Maybe it is a little bit lengthy for people who did not read the book. But I would recommend it anyway
One thing I do not understand is why “they” have to change parts from the book. The topless girl is never mentioned in the book and neither is the river patrol. But at least it does not falsify the story line.

Both the book and the film have something in common: The end is very touching!

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