VfB Stuttgart had a horrific start to the season where they went 1-7-7. The were in the midst of a relegation battle, when the front office decided to fire then coach Markus Babbel. The newly appointed coach Christian Gross had a profound and immediate impact winning his first game 3-0 just 4 days after he was hired. The newly revitalized squad continued this momentum and kept winning in the league, and playing well in the champions league. Current, Stuttgart sits at sixth place with a record of 15-8-9 with 2 weeks remaining.. They are capable of clinching a place in a european tournament with a win over the weekend, and with some luck may be able to make it to the champions league once again. Although it was not an ideal season, it does make me look forward to next year.

The coaching will be intact and we will be returning a large number of our current players. However, the thing that excites me the most of the retirement of our current goalie, Lehmann. He is one of my least favorite players and has lost us many many games. The team will greatly improve with his retirement... not to sound rude or anything. The team is very young, with I believe the majority of the starters being under 22 years old. They will continue to improve and we will soon be competing for a title once again. We may not have the money that teams like barca, real madrid, or the big 4 from england do, but we are capable of developing talent... which often gets taken by those teams with money which really pisses me off. But o well, what can you do.

So is this the last blog or do we have to do one for next week? Don't we get one off at some point? I am not sure, but I guess we will see.

As we approach finals and the end of school year, I feel my motivation to do work decreasing each day. There have been many days where I sit down to work, and I will hear down the hall "anyone want to play ____(various things)" and I will join them without a moment of hesitation. I am sure that I am not the only one that this is happening to. I have seen my grades drop in several classes, but hopefully I can bring them back up since the drop wasn't anything too significant. At least this semester is almost over, I can't stand the classes I'm taking. I have two humanities classes which is awful for me, a ridiculous yet pointless engineering class, and physics class that is practically impossible and a math class that almost puts me to sleep every time I go. Not only are my classes dreadful, it has become increasingly beautiful outside. I could go on, but I just realized that I feel like I talk about this every time so I guess I'll find something else to write about.

To be honest, I am not sure of what to write, so I think I am just going on a Wikipedia run and tell you guys about it... so here goes.

Apparently, A viking is a Norse explorer that colonized many places between the late eight and early eleventh century. Norse being those who speak North Germanic Languages. The North Germanic Languages is part of the three Germanic languages. Among these languages is the now extinct East Germanic Languages which include languages such as Vandalic, Burgundian, and Crimean Gothic. Paul the Deacon was a Benedictine monk who was primarily a historian. His major work was the Historia gentis Langobardorum which accounts the history of the lombards from 568 to the death of King Liutprand.

That is all for now.

Here is my story for the assignment we did the other day

The origin of fans

It was a scorching summer afternoon when I was first amazed by the capabilities of wind. The cooling experience of it flying pat me caused an insatiable desire to harness this power. I had lived many years being forced to deal with the heat, but no longer, the wind would be mine. All else seemed meaningless now; I rejected the outside world and spent many sleepless days devoting myself to developing concepts to harness this power, yet all failed. Becoming desperate I was forced to quit my job and began to seclude myself even from my family. Unaware of the situation my wife attempt to console me, yet upon hearing the truth behind my actions she grew frustrated. She raised her hand and stuck me. It was at this moment that a cool breeze followed. But how could this be? I was inside... there was no wind. It soon dawned upon me that this was what I had been looking for, artificial wind. With haste I constructed an apparatus that would enlarge my hands. With my new invention in hand I went around town slapping those who looked as if they needed a break from the heat. Yet the response was different from expected. All of those who had received my aid quickly turned to anger and cast me away. Perhaps they were just simply unaware of the miraculous gift I had just given them. Their ignorance was astounding. I had just accomplished something that had previously been reserved for the gods. Perhaps they were just afraid of the abilities I now possessed. It became clear to me that I would have to develop a machine that would slap people for me. Thus I began work on a set of rotating hangs capable of doing so. After its completion I left it in town saying it was a gift from god. Although I never saw it again, I am sure that it has been put to good use.

Every year around this time I am reminding of my growing contempt towards baseball. It is not the actual sport that bothers me(in most cases, I'm really not a fan), but what really grinds my gears is that baseball ruins many of the programs I generally watch on ESPN. Sportscenter becomes unwatchable because like 95% of the airtime is all baseball, and the same happens to the other shows on that network.

In other news, a month from today is the last day of class. It has felt to me that the spring semester has gone by much more quickly than fall, perhaps because of the placement of the breaks. We are starting to approach the final stretch, where the workload always begins to pile up. The weather gets really nice outside, and the last thing I want to do is work, but with tests and finals preparation approaching I realize that I may have to waste beautiful days working. With all of that being said, I am really looking forward to summer. Although I have no trips planned(money is a little tight nowadays), I am really looking forward to relaxing. I plan to work, but that won't prevent me from hanging out with friends, maybe even taking a few small trips to places.

I guess since I'm talking about summer I should quickly mention the world cup again. It starts in June, and will make the summer even better. I still remember watching the world cup in '98 and being marveled by it. It leaves me speechless each time and yearning for more. I don't feel like doing an in depth analysis of the teams right now, maybe another time; but there are so many teams that I feel could win it that I think it will be an excellent event.

As I sit here eating my dinner realizing how far behind I have gotten on all my work, I am left pondering how I have gotten to this moment in my life.

It all started many years ago on the date of January 11, 1991; My mother gave birth to me that day in the town of Ulm, Germany (same town as Einstein... no big deal). I have very few memories of my life in Germany, but the ones I do have are.. I guess interesting would be the correct word choice. Memories such as falling into a pond full of snakes, getting yelled at by the old lady across the street for drawing on the side walk, and playing soccer with my way cooler and older seven year old neighbor fill my mind. I do not recall the emotions I felt at the time when it became official that we were moving to America, but I expect them to be normal.

I arrived year in December of 1995 to see 6 foot high snow lying on the ground. I was at the ripe-old age of 4 then, turning 5 the next month. The first few weeks were spent in a hotel where I learned how to swim. When I finally moved into my current house, I was quickly introduced to the neighborhood kids. I instantly made friends with a fellow immigrant from Germany who was one year older. Realizing that it might be scandalous to only hang out with older people, I befriended another child who remains my friend to this day.

The transition to school life was difficult but I was up to the task with youth-like vigor. I quickly adapted and do not recall any hardships in learning the language. It was at this time that my habit of procrastination began to develop. Throughout elementary school I had to constantly forge my parent's signature so the teachers thought they knew I was not doing my homework.

Yes, those were the times that would eventually lead to my current state. Behind on my work, yet this time the teachers won't be upset.. I will just do poorly in class. Oh the path that fate carried me is a harsh one, yet I regret nothing. My younger and more innocent days were excellent and I am truly blessed to have spent my youth the way I have.

Every week I am constantly surprised at the engineering professors lack of knowledge about computers. It seems that every class, they have either a problem with their internet, or powerpoint or other related software. I know that this may be considered a generation gap, but this stuff has been out for quite a while. The always tell us how they have been teaching this class for a while, yet seem to be unable to do so. I am not saying that it is entirely their fault. Some of the problems I have seen are legitimate software or computer problems, but occasionally it is due to a lack of knowledge of the program.

This is not my only complaint about these engineering classes. The way this class is organized is horrendous, there are many different parts all of which seem to have no clue what the other is doing. The homework is time-filling monotonous work that is entirely unnecessary. We were assigned a tutorial on new software that we were doing, then instructed to follow along on a separate "voice over". Yet these two stated basically the exact same thing word for word. It is almost as if the professors are not sure what is actually in the material they assign to us.

This is not just for 1114, but I don't even want to get started on last semesters 1024. Hopefully this is just due to it being freshman year and them not being able to teach major specific material because the majority of people have not selected one. It is not so much the material that bothers me, but rather the inadequacy and chaotic nature of how it is presented. The teachers should just sit down for a while and re-evaluate the structure of the freshman engineering class, because they are way to poorly organized.

7th

Now the spring break is over I'm being forced right back into work. I am not sure who planned this but I managed to have four tests in the next two weeks. Luckily there are only eight more weeks until this semester is over. I feel like I always talk about this so I will leave it at that; I just wanted to let people know that these tests were poorly planned.

My break was pretty good, but boring occasionally. My travel plans fell through because there was only one other friend available. However, I was still able to meet up with a bunch of people and hang out. My parents went to Rome for the week which made my break significantly better. I basically just spent the week hanging out with friends and my brother. It was slightly uneventful, but still relaxing. I am really looking forward to the next break.

I am happy that the snow has finally melted because of the possibility of activities that it has opened up. I personally enjoy the outdoors greatly and look forward to being able to spend more time outdoors. I really can't wait to get out there and start playing some sports. I just hope that it doesn't become too much of a distraction but we will see.

I really don't have much else to say, but somehow I am still a decent amount of words away from the limit. Maybe I will just start writing down some random nonsense, or perhaps I will be able to think of another topic that I want to write about.. who knows.

Just wanted to mention really quickly that people get embarrassed too easily. I was doing the robot in my hall and asked someone to join in, but they just laughed, turned red, and walked away. Not really a big deal, just felt like sharing my beliefs.