I'm 25 years old now. Actually, I'm for a couple of hours, but I'm celebrating in the local timezone, not in my home-timezone.

Time passes... maybe a good point to review my life. Most people would say I'm doing very well:

I have great friends all over the world I can visit or call anytime. Actually almost no day passes I don't IM a couple of them. They are my life.

Studies are coming along just great. I was just a term at one of the best universties of the world (and Berkeley certainly is very likeable, it doesn't have the snobby air to the name like the private universities), my paper for the extreme markup languages got excellent peer reviews and was accepted. In fall I will be starting with preparations for my diploma exams.

Work. The job I had been working on in Munich (and will likely continue once I'm back) is great. Challenging but interesting, and the colleagues are just great friends to have. They alone would make the difference already.

With my Linux experience, work experience and academic success, combined with low spendings, I'm not afraid of not finding a job... Well, so everything is working out just perfectly. Only that I'm not happy. Or at least often unhappy. When I have my friends around me I'm probably actually happy most of the time...

Mmhh... why do I always get somewhat depressed after a great evening with friends? It doesn't make any sense.

Right now I'm wondering what I'm going to buy myself as birthday present. I intended to buy a MP3-Player for a long time, but it was hard to find the perfect match (just like with mobile phones, there is so much wrong with all of them...). My favourites are Rio Karma and iAudio X5. There are not many more players in the final set, since they have to support Ogg Vorbis (which an ipod for example doesn't). Rio Karma has one or two good features, and I've found an interesting deal on it. iAudio has lots of features, some of which are a clear benefit over the Rio Karma...