Michael At Netscape, there was recently a small introductory event for the new AOL employees--a so-called "Beer Bash." On such occasions, delicious food is served, and a beer keg is tapped. To help people get to know each other more quickly, each newcomer was given a so-called Nerf Gun, which, we were told, is part of the traditional equipment of a Netscape hacker. "Nerf" is the name of the company that manufactures the device. It is a fairly large toy gun, which you pump to pressurize the chamber and then shoot small foam darts with suction cups. The long-time employees also brought their equipment--and the battle began. I managed to land some good hits. Everything raged for an hour!

The photo in Figure 1 was digitally altered, by the way. After Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were also digitally altered in Stanley Kubrick's last film, I didn't want to be left behind. For the computer geeks among you: the program is called "Gimp" and is the free version of "Photoshop" for Linux. But enough techno-babble!

I now take half an hour every day to properly learn basketball -- one of the basketball courts is right in front of the building where I work, and ever since I bought one at the Target supermarket, there's always a basketball ready in my cubicle. We play one-on-one, just like on the streets of New York's Harlem! It's incredible how well some Americans can play basketball. I haven't seen anyone do a slam dunk yet (for that, you have to jump as high as the hoop and slam the ball in with one hand), but the level of play is much higher than in Europe.

Everyone has at least a few tricks up their sleeve, and I can't do much yet, but I'm getting better every day. The only problem is that when I rush around on the basketball court in the summer heat, and it can get up to 40 degrees in Silicon Valley in the summer, and then return to my cubicle, I end up sweating like a pig. Recently, I came back from an exhausting match, and right after that, someone came to my cubicle with a question, so I started explaining a technical problem, and while I was talking, I noticed that I was starting to sweat profusely. Sweat was literally pouring out of my pores, and my colleague began to wonder and looked at me questioningly, as he didn't know that just minutes before, I had been running around on the sports field. It was quite funny when I explained that it wasn't his question that caused it, but the physical exertion. Just recently, I managed to beat one of my colleagues 5-4 in a unique action -- in his defense, he had worked through the night due to an important project deadline and had only slept for two hours on one of the sofas lying around at Netscape -- nevertheless, a respectable success!

My colleague Dan at Netscape has a snake in the office. Its name is "Slash." I had already mentioned the dogs that some employees bring in. Aquariums in the cubicles are also popular. And Dan has a terrarium with a snake, only two feet long, but still. Once a month, it gets a mouse to eat. A few days ago, it was time: During the lunch break, Dan got a mouse from a pet store and tossed it in with the snake. At first, the snake behaved very calmly and watched serenely as the mouse ran back and forth. Then suddenly, it opened its jaws, snapped at the mouse, and sank its long teeth in. The mouse soon stopped struggling, and the snake, whose head is perhaps two centimeters wide, began to stretch its mouth over the much larger mouse. It took a few minutes, and then the mouse slowly disappeared into the snake, whose body bulged accordingly. Not for the faint-hearted.

By the way, the Netscape employees have better vacation conditions than we at AOL. Those who have been with the company for four years are allowed to take a so-called "sabbatical" for 4 weeks. The dictionary says that this is the "sabbatical year of a professor." It is meant to allow one to reflect on life and think about how to move forward every few years. Many Netscape employees add their two weeks of annual vacation to this and then have six weeks off, which is simply incredible by American standards. Since I still work for AOL, I'm stuck with two weeks a year -- it's enough to make you cry!

Our last prize puzzle was probably too easy for you -- just about one and a half hours after the email version of the newsletter was out, the first correct answer came in: After 3 strikes, the hitter is out, yes indeed. The good Thomas Wiest from Augsburg won the CD, which, as requested, was filled with songs that were half chosen by Angelika and half by me. Even the dear "Dr." Günter Speckhofer from Baden/Switzerland claimed that he only lost due to a misfortune of fate -- allegedly, his internet provider had an outage, and therefore he couldn't send the email in time. To spare ourselves costly legal proceedings, we also gave the good doctor a CD, we're not that strict. However, we didn't find it funny at all that a certain Willi R. from Erding near Munich commented on the fact that someone from Augsburg had won with "We thought right away that the Swabians would stick together again!" (verbatim). You can't make this up, people. Anyways, this time, there's something else to win. The question is: Which of the printed pictures (except for the first one) was also manipulated? As always, there are two prizes: One for the fastest email, one for the fastest letter/postcard.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	X-Games in San Francisco
  	Shop for special offers
  	Rental Cars
  	Shopping at Fry's
  	Carpet Cleaning
  	Firefighter Angelika
  	Angelika's Photographic Art
  	Austin Powers
  	Perl Power
  	The Bike Nazi